Froudes Essays in Literature and History | Page 5

could, he was talking nonsense. There is such a thing as
style. It is that combination of rhythm, lucidity, and emphasis, which
certainly must not be consciously produced, but which if it arise
naturally from a man's pen and from his method of thought makes all
the difference between what is readable and what is not readable. If any
one doubt this let him compare the French Bible with the English--both
literal and lucid translations of the same original; or again let him
contrast the prose phrases of Milton when he is dealing with the claims
of the Church in the Middle Ages with those of Mr. Bryce in the same
connection.
Now I say that just as the excellences of Froude's prose proceeded from
this universality of his so did the errors into which that prose fell, and it
is remarkable that these errors are slips of detail. They proceed
undoubtedly from rapid writing and from coupling his scholarship with

a very general and ephemeral reading.
A few examples drawn from these essays will prove what I mean. On
the very first page, in the first line of the second paragraph we have the
word "often" coming after the word "experience," instead of before it.
He had written "experience," he desired to qualify it, and he did not go
back to do what should always be done in plain English, and what
indeed distinguishes plain English from almost every other
language--to put the qualification before the thing qualified; a
peculiarly English mark in this, that it presupposes one's having
thought the whole thing out before writing it down.
On page 3 we have exactly the same thing; "A legend not known
unfortunately to general English readers." He means of course,
"unfortunately not known," but as the sentence stands it reads as though
he had meant to say, somewhat clumsily, that the method in which
English readers knew the legend was not unfortunate.
He is again careless in the matter of repetitions, both of the same word,
and (what is a better test of ear) of rhymes within the sentence: we have
in one place "which seemed to give a soul to those splendid donations
to learning," and further on in the same page "a priority in mortality."
On pages 34 and 35 you have "an intensely real conviction." You are
then told that "the most lawless men did then really believe." Then that
the American tribes were in the eyes of the colonists "real worshippers"
of the Devil, and a few lines later we hear of "the real awfulness of the
world."
The position of the relative is often as slipshod as the position of the
qualicative; thus you will find upon page 37 that the pioneers "grayed
out the channels, and at last paved them with their bones, through
which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out of all
the world." This sentence is quite deplorable; it has a singular verb after
two nominatives, and is so framed that one might imagine the
commerce and enterprise of our beloved country to have flown through
those hollow interior channels, with which, I believe, our larger bones
are provided, and in which is to be discovered that very excellent

substance, marrow.
It is singular that, while these obvious errors have excited so little
comment, Froude should have been blamed so often and by such
different authorities for weaknesses of the pen from which he did not
suffer, or which, if he did suffer from them, at least he had in common
with every other writer of our time and perhaps less than most.
Thus, as an historian he has been accused of two faults which have
been supposed by those who are ill acquainted with the history of
letters to be correlative: a straining for effect and an inaccuracy of
detail. There is not one of his contemporaries who less forced himself
in description than Froude. Often in Green, very often in Freeman and
always in Carlyle you feel that your author is deliberately exciting his
mind and your own. Violent colours are chosen and peculiar
emphasis--from this Froude was free. He was an historian.
To the end Froude remained an historian, and an historian he was born.
If we regret that his history was not general, and that he turned his
powers upon such a restricted set of phenomena, still we must rejoice
that there was once in modern England a man who could sum up the
nature of a great movement. He lacked the power of integration.
He was not an artist. But he possessed to an extraordinary degree the
power of synthesis. He was a craftsman, as the modern jargon goes.
There is not in the whole range of English literature as excellent a
summary of the