The Reign of Henry the Eighth | Page 5

sturdy, high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit which, under the stimulus of those great shins of beef, their common diet, were the wonder of the age." Carlyle's advice when he read this passage in proof was characteristic:--"Modify a little: Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops; Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge; and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal." But the passage stood unmodified, in spite of Froude's regard for his master.
How this fierce and turbulent people fought their way to world-wide empire was a problem which Froude thought he was able to solve. It was, in the main, because they broke down the power of the priests, and insisted on the supremacy of state over Church. Therefore all his filial affection, his patriotism, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were arrayed on the same side. If history be an exact science, then Froude can lay no claim to the title of historian. He was a brilliant advocate, a man of letters endowed with a matchless style, writing of matters which interested him deeply, and in the investigation of which he spent twenty years of his life. Froude himself would have been the first to repudiate the idea that history is philosophy teaching by examples, or that an historian has necessarily a greater insight into the problems of the present than any other observant student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once wrote, "believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made the greatest progress are the arts of destruction."
It is absurd to attack Froude on the ground that he was biassed. No man has ever yet written a living history without being biassed. Thucydides detested the radicalism of Cleon as heartily as Gibbon hated the Christianity of Rome. It was once the fashion of the Oxford school to decry Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed, did pay public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost alone of his school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude with a persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story of English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant vindication of Froude in Mr. Herbert Paul's Life, it would be superfluous to go into the details of that unhappy controversy. The only difference between Froude and other historians is that Froude's partisanship is always obvious. He was not more favourable to Henry VIII. than Stubbs was to Thomas �� Becket. But Froude openly avowed his preferences and his dislikes. Catholicism was to him "a dying superstition," Protestantism "a living truth." Freeman went further, and charged Froude with having written a history which was not "_un livre de bonne joy._" It is only necessary to recall the circumstances under which the History was written to dispose of that odious charge. In order to obtain material for his History, Froude spent years of his life in the little Spanish village of Simancas. "I have worked in all," he said in his Apologia, "through nine hundred volumes of letters, notes, and other papers, private and official, in five languages and in different handwritings. I am not rash enough to say that I have never misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. I profess only to have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability." Few, indeed, have had to encounter such difficulties as met Froude in his exploration of the archives at Simancas. "Often at the end of a page," he wrote many years after, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and have wondered how I got down. I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no one had opened the road for me. I have been turned into rooms piled to the window-sill with bundles of dust-coloured despatches, and told to make the best of it. Often have I found the sand glistening on the ink where it had been sprinkled when a page was turned. There the letter had lain, never looked at again since it was read and put away." Of these difficulties not a trace is discoverable in Froude's easy and effortless narrative. When he was approaching the completion of his History, he vowed that his account of the Armada should be as interesting as