in my life.  I have never seen any person—­not one—­in whom, as I now think of him, the excellences of intellect and character were combined in fuller measure.  Of my personal feeling towards him I cannot speak.  I am ashamed to have been compelled, by what I can only describe as an inexcusable insult, to say what I have said.”  It was not difficult to show that Freeman’s four articles in The Contemporary Review contained worse blunders than any he had attributed to Froude, as, for instance, the allegation that Henry viii., who founded bishoprics and organised the defence of the country, squandered away all that men before his time had agreed to respect.  Easy also was it to disprove the charge of “hatred towards the English Church at all times and under all characters” by the mere mention of Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and Hooper.  The statement that Froude had been a “fanatical votary” of the mediaeval Church was almost delicious in the extravagance of its absurdity; and it would have been impossible better to retort the wild charges of misrepresentation, in which it is hard to suppose that even Freeman himself believed, than by the simple words, “It is true that I substitute a story in English for a story in Latin, a short story for a long one, and a story in a popular form for a story in a scholastic one.”  In short, Froude wrote a style which every scholar loves, and every pedant hates.  With a light touch, but a touch which had a sting, Froude disposed of the nonsense which made him translate praedictae rationes “shortened rations” instead of “the foregoing accounts,” and in a graver tone he reminded the public that his offer to test the accuracy of his extracts from unprinted authorities had been refused.  Graver still, and not without indignation, is his reference to Freeman’s suggestion that he thought the Cathedral Church of St. Albans had been destroyed.  Most people, when they finished Froude’s temperate but crushing refutation, must have felt the opportunity for it should ever surprised that have arisen.

Froude had done his work at last, and done it thoroughly.  Freeman’s plight was not to be envied.  If his offence had been rank, his punishment had been tremendous.  Even The Spectator, which had hitherto upheld him through thick and thin, admonished him that he had passed the bounds of decency and infringed the rules of behaviour.  Dreading a repetition of the penalty if he repeated the offence, fearing that silence would imply acquiescence in charges of persistent calumny, he blurted out a kind of awkward half-apology.  He confessed, in The Contemporary Review for May, 1879, that he had criticised in The Saturday all the volumes of Froude’s Elizabeth.  This self-constituted champion proceeded to say that he knew nothing about Froude’s personal character, and that when he accused Froude of stabbing his dead brother “in the dark” he only meant that the brother was dead.  When he says that Froude’s article was “plausible, and more than plausible,”