Becket.  But the following passage from his “Concluding Survey” is apparently aimed at Froude.  Freeman, we are told, “was unable to write or speak politely”—­and if the Dean had stopped there I should have had nothing to say; but he goes on—­“of any one who pretended to more knowledge than he really had, or who enjoyed a reputation for learning which was undeserved; nay, more, he considered it to be a positive duty to expose such persons.  In doing this he was often no doubt too indifferent to their feelings, and employed language of unwarranted severity which provoked angry retaliation, and really weakened the effect of his criticism, by diverting public sympathy from himself to the object of his attack.  But it was quite a mistake to suppose, as many did, that his fierce utterances were the outcome of ill-temper or of personal animosity.  He entertained no ill-will whatever towards literary or political opponents.”

There is more to the same effect, and of course Froude must have been in Stephens’s mind.  But the reputation of a great historian is not to be taken away by hints.  It may suit Freeman’s admirers to seek refuge in meaningless generalities.  Those who are grateful for Froude’s services to England, and to literature, have no interest in concealment.  Froude never “pretended to more knowledge than he really had.”  So far from “enjoying a reputation for learning which was undeserved,” he disguised his learning rather than displayed it, and wore it lightly, a flower.  That Freeman should have “considered it to be a positive duty to expose” a man whose knowledge was so much wider and whose industry was so much greater than his own is strange.  That he did his best for years, no doubt from the highest motives, to damage Froude’s reputation, and to injure his good name, is certain.  With the general reader he failed.  The public had too much sense to believe Froude was merely, or chiefly, or at all, an ecclesiastical pamphleteer.  But by dint of noisy assertion, and perpetual repetition, Freeman did at last infect academic coteries with the idea that Froude was a superficial sciolist.  The same thing had been said of Macaulay, and believed by the same sort of people.  Froude’s books were certainly much easier to read than Freeman’s.  Must they therefore have been much easier to write?  Two-thirds of Froude’s mistakes would have been avoided, and Freeman would never have had his chance, if the former had had a keener eye for slips in his proof-sheets, or had engaged competent assistance.  When he allowed Wilhelmus to be printed instead of Willelmus, Freeman shouted with exultant glee that a man so hopelessly ignorant of mediaeval nomenclature had no right to express an opinion upon the dispute between Becket and the King.  Nothing could exceed his transports of joy when he found out that Froude did not know the ancient name of Lisieux.  Freeman thought, like the older Pharisees, that he should be heard for his much speaking, and for a time he was.