ider the sharp and almost unique judgment passed
upon Tacitus at the bottom of page 133 and the top of
page 134, or again, the excellent sub-ironic passages in which
he expresses the vast advantage of metaphysical debate:
which has all these qualities, that it is true, sober, exact,
and yet a piece of laughter and a contradiction of itself. It
is prose in three dimensions.

That pedantic charge of inaccuracy, with which I have
already dealt in another place, in connection with another
and perhaps a greater man, is not applicable to Froude. He
was hasty, and in his historical work the result certainly was
that he put down things upon insufficient evidence, or upon
evidence but half read; but even in his historical work (which
deals remember, with the most highly controversial part of
English history) he is as accurate as anybody else, except
perhaps Lingard. That the man was by nature accurate,
well read and of a good memory, appears continually throughout
this book, and the more widely one has read one's self,
the more one appreciates this truth.

For instance, there is often set down to Disraeli the remark
that his religion was "the religion of all sensible men." and
upon being asked what this religion might be, that Oriental
is said to have replied, "All sensible men keep that to
themselves." Now Disraeli could no more have made such a
witticism than he could have flown through the air; his
mind was far too extravagant for such pointed phrases.
Froude quotes the story (page 205 of this book) but rightly
ascribes it to Rogers, a very different man from Disraeli--
an Englishman with a mastery of the English language.

Look again at this remark upon page 20, "The happy allusion
of Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here:--the
fugitive is alone permanent.'" How many Englishmen know
that Du Bellay's immortal sonnet was but a translation of
Quevedo? You could drag all Oxford and Cambridge to-day
and not find a single man who knew it.

Note the care he has shown in quoting one of those hackneyed
phrases which almost all the world misquotes, "Que
mon nom soit fletri, pourvu que la France soit libre." Of a
hundred times that you may see those words of Danton's
written down, you will perhaps not see them once written
down exactly as they were said.

So it is throughout his work. Men still living in the
Universities accuse him vaguely of inexactitude as they will
accuse Jowett of ignorance, and these men, when