ake of the highest and greatest
interests to sacrifice all second-rate and subordinate ones.

When his friends, after his death, published selections from his
journals and letters, the world was shocked by what seemed his amazing
audacity both of thought and expression about a number of things and
persons which it was customary to regard as almost beyond the reach of
criticism. The _Remains_ lent themselves admirably to the controversial
process of culling choice phrases and sentences and epithets
surprisingly at variance with conventional and popular estimates.
Friends were pained and disturbed; foes naturally enough could not hold
in their overflowing exultation at such a disclosure of the spirit of
the movement. Sermons and newspapers drew attention to Froude's
extravagances with horror and disgust. The truth is that if the off-hand
sayings in conversation or letters of any man of force and wit and
strong convictions about the things and persons that he condemns, were
made known to the world, they would by themselves have much the same
look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence to those who disagreed in
opinion with the speaker or writer they are allowed for, or they are not
allowed for by others, according to what is known of his general
character. The friends who published Froude's _Remains_ knew what he
was; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful
passages; they knew that they really did not go beyond the liberty and
the frank speaking which most people give themselves in the _abandon_
and understood exaggeration of intimate correspondence and talk. But
they miscalculated the effect on those who did not know him, or whose
interest it was to make the most of the advantage given them. They seem
to have expected that the picture which they presented of their friend's
transparent sincerity and singleness of aim, manifested amid so much
pain and self-abasement, would have touched readers more. They
miscalculated in supposing that the proofs of so much reality of
religious earnestness would carry off the offence of vehement language,
which without these proofs might naturally be thought to show mere
random violence. At any rate the result was much natural and genuine
irritation, which they were hardly prepared for. Whether on general
grounds they were wise in startling and vexing friends, and putting
fresh weapons into the hands of opponents by their frank disclosure of
so unconventional a characte