persistent attacks of The Saturday Review. It is difficult for
the present generation to understand the influence which that
celebrated periodical exercised, or the terror which it inspired,
forty years ago. The first editor, Douglas Cook, was a master of his
craft, and his colleagues included the most brilliant writers of the
day. Matthew Arnold, who was not one of them, paid them the
compliment of treating them as the special champions of Philistia,
the chosen garrison of Gath. On most subjects they were fairly
impartial, holding that there was nothing new and nothing true, and
that if there were it wouldn't matter. But the proprietor* of the
paper at that time was a High Churchman, and on ecclesiastical
questions he put forward his authority. Within that sphere he would
not tolerate either neutrality or difference of opinion. To him, and
to those who thought like him, Froude's History was anathema. Their
detested Reformation was set upon its legs again; Bishop Fisher was
removed from his pedestal; the Church of England, which since Keble's
assize sermon had been the Church of the Fathers, was shown to be
Protestant in its character and Parliamentary in its constitution.
The Oxford Movement seemed to be discredited, and that by a man who
had once been enlisted in its service. It was necessary that the
presumptuous iconoclast should be put down, and taught not to meddle
with things which were sacred.

--
* Alexander James Beresford Hope, some time member for the University
of Cambridge.
--

From the first The Saturday Review was hostile, but it was not till
1864 that the campaign became systematic. At that time the editor
secured the services of Edward Augustus Freeman, who had been for
several years a contributor on miscellaneous topics. Freeman is well
known as the historian of the Norman Conquest, as an active
politician, controversialist, and pamphleteer. Froude toiled for
months and years over parchments and manuscripts often almost
illegible, carefully noting the caligraphy, and among the authors of
a joint composition assigning his proper share to each. Freeman wrote
his History of the Norman Conquest, upon which he was at this time
engaged, entirely from books, without consulting a manuscript or an
original document of any kind. Every historian must take his own
line, and the public are concerned not with processes, but with results.
I wish merely to point out the fact that, as between Froude
and Freeman,