People to-day seem to regard Mr. Froude simply as the Boswell of Carlyle, and, forgetting his own great services to historical literature, degrade him to the mere chronicler of the bilious sage of Chelsea.  This is absolutely a distortion of fact, and one calculated to do injury to the memory of both these famous men.  Therefore it may be of real utility to state that during my long and very intimate acquaintance with Mr. Froude, he never mentioned the name of Carlyle to me but once, and that was to describe a conversation between Lord Wolseley and Carlyle, which dealt with the contemporary situation in Ireland.  There was, therefore, nothing to show me that my friend ’was utterly absorbed in the Carlyles, and had no thought for any one else.’  On the contrary, he was a man full of keen interests, of which they were only one, and, as far as I saw, an entirely subordinate one.  He was a broad-minded man, who hated petty misconception or a narrow view of anything, and he would have been horrified at the prurient indecency with which the most private affairs of the Carlyles have been exposed and distorted to please a public which really has a higher moral tone than is possessed by those who have gibbeted the defenceless dead.

Mr. Froude was not addicted to talking much about his own works, but I remember his telling me that Oceana had paid him best of them all, and I think his view therein that the colonies will recede from England when they are strong enough, following the example of the United States, is accurate.  Just tax Canada as Ireland has been taxed, and see how long the Canadians will be contented.  The ministers of George III. tried that policy on the United States with the result that, before many years, George had to receive the Plenipotentiary Minister of dominions over which he himself had once reigned.  It is absurd to compare Ireland with Yorkshire, as has been done, for Ireland once had a separate Parliament, and the Union was a matter of agreement, the outcome of which was that Mr. Childers’s Commission found she was taxed three millions more than she should have been.  The colonies are on the alert, with all the rather irritable uppishness of youth on the verge of manhood, and their younger generations are sure to take full advantage of any tactless conduct of the British Government.  Such was Froude’s view, and nothing has happened since his death to shake its inherent probability.  The waves of Imperial patriotism in war time go for very little, for Ireland is admittedly disloyal, and yet Irish soldiers and Irish regiments were absolutely the most successful in South Africa.

When the Government was introducing some quack measure into Ireland, Froude wrote to me:—­

’I see they are putting some fresh sticks under the Irish pot, so it will soon boil over.’

Which it did, with a vengeance.

To the end of his days Froude was a great reader, but his interest in Church affairs and in ecclesiastical differences had completely died away.  He told me that the most accurate man of business of any period was Philip of Spain, and that his notes and memoranda were a marvel of practical aptitude.  He derived the chief information for his History of England from Spanish despatches, and would to-day have benefited considerably by the translations of Major Martin Hume.