With a half-grasp of his material, Mr. Froude totally fails to make it up into an interesting consecutive narrative. He lacks, too, the all-important power of generalization, and, as has been aptly remarked, handles a microscope skilfully, but is apparently unable to see through a telescope. Heroic and muscular, his over haste to produce some startling result came near wrecking him in the morning of his career.
While his work was in course of publication, our historian wrote from Simancas a sensational article for Fraser's Magazine, in which he announced some astounding historical discoveries, which only a few weeks later he was only too glad to recall. The trouble was that he had totally misunderstood the Spanish documents on which his discovery was grounded.
Along with his apparent incapacity for sound and impartial judgment, there is an evident inability in Mr. Froude to distinguish the relative value of different state papers, and the most striking proof that he is still in his apprenticeship as a writer of history, is his indiscriminate acceptance of written authorities of a certain class. Historical results long since settled by the unanimous testimony of Camden, Carte, and Lingard, the three great English historians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries respectively, are thrust aside by Mr. Froude and made to give way to some MS. of doubtful value or questionable authenticity. The term "original document" magically invests every writing falling into his hands with all the attributes of truth. When he finds a paper three hundred years old, he gives it speech and sets it up as an oracle. Nor can the simile be arrested here; for, treating his oracle with the tyrannic familiarity of a heathen priest, the paper Mumbo Jumbo must speak as ordered, or else be sadly cuffed. It is a puerile idea to imagine that when the historian has found a mass of original historical papers, his labor of investigation is ended, and he has but to transcribe, to put his personages on the stage, let them act and declaim as these writings relate, and thus place before the reader the truthful portrait of bygone times. Far from it. It is at this point that his work really begins. He must ascertain by comparison, by sifting of evidence, by many precautions, who lies and who speaks truth. In matters of Elizabethan diplomacy, for instance, the truth floats not on the surface. A royal dispatch gives orders, but it does not give motives. And even if the motives are stated, is it certain they are truly stated? A minister is explicit as to what he wishes done; but he does not say why he wants it done, nor what results he looks for. Cases numberless will suggest themselves as to the difficulties of such documents. Very few of these difficulties have any terrors for Mr. Froude. Commencing his investigation with his theory perfected, it is with him a mere choice of papers. Swift is the fate of facts not suiting his theory. So much the worse for them, if they are not what he would have them to be; they are cast forth into outer darkness.
Mr. Froude has fine perceptive and imaginative faculties—admirable gifts for literature, but not for history. Precious, if history depended on fiction, not on fact. Invaluable, if historic truth were subjective. Above all price, where the literary artist has the privilege of evolving from the inner depths of his own consciousness the virtues or the vices wherewith it suits him to endow his characters. But alas! otherwise utterly fatal, because historic truth is eminently objective.
It is well said that to be a good historical student, a man should not find it in him to desire that any historical fact should be otherwise than it is. Now, we cannot consent to a lower standard in logic and morality for the historian than for the student; and thus testing Mr. Froude, it is not pleasant to contemplate his sentence when judged by stern votaries of truth. For we have a well-grounded belief that not only is it possible for Mr. Froude to desire an historical fact to be otherwise than it is, but that he is capable of carrying that desire into effect. It is idle to talk of the judicial quality of an historian who scarcely puts on a semblance of impartiality.
In matters of state, Mr. Froude is a pamphleteer; in personal questions he is an advocate. He holds a brief for Henry. He holds a brief against Mary Stuart. He is the most effective of advocates, for he fairly throws himself into his case. He is the friend or the enemy of all the personages in his history. Their failure and their success affect his spirits and his style. He rejoices with them or weeps with them. There are some whose misfortunes uniformly make him sad. There are others over whose calamities he becomes radiant. He has no unerring standard of justice, no ethical principle which estimates actions as they are in themselves, and not in the light of sympathy or repulsion.
It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Mr. Froude makes up an attractive-looking page. Foot-notes and citations in quantity, imposing capitals and inverted commas, like little flags gayly flying, all combine to give it a typographical vivacity truly charming. Great as are his rhetorical resources, he does not despise the cunning devices of print. Quotation-marks are usually supposed to convey to the reader the conventional assurance that they include the precise words of the text. But Mr. Froude's system is not so commonplace. He inserts therein language of his own, and in all these cases his use of authorities is not only dangerous but deceptive. He has a way of placing some of the actual words of a document in his narrative in such a manner as totally to pervert their sense. The historian who truthfully condenses a page into a paragraph saves labor for the reader; but Mr. Froude has a trick of giving long passages in quotation-marks without sign of alteration or omission, which we may or may not discover from a note to be "abridged."
Other objectionable manipulations of Mr. Froude are the joining together of two distinct passages of a document, and entirely changing their original sense; the connection of two phrases from two different authorities and connecting them as one; and the tacking of irresponsible or anonymous authorities to one that is responsible, concealing the first, and avowing the last.
Then his texts, and the rapid boldness with which he disposes of them; cutting, trimming, clipping, provided only that he produce an animated dialogue or picturesque effect which may cause the reader to exclaim, "How beautifully Mr. Froude writes!" "What a painter!" "His book is as interesting as a novel!" And so it is; for the excellent reason that it is written precisely as novels are written, and mainly depends for its interest upon the study of motives. A superior novelist brings characters before us in startling naturalness—his treatment, of course, being subjective, not objective; arbitrary, not historical. Mr. Froude, with his great skill in depicting individual character and particular events, follows the novel-writer's method, and may be said to be the originator of what we may designate as the "psychological school" of history. This power gives him an immense advantage over all other historians.
While they are burning the midnight lamp in the endeavor to detect the springs of action by the study of every thing that can throw light upon the action itself, he has only to look through the window which, like unto other novelists, he has constructed in the bosom of every one of his characters, to show us their most secret thoughts and aspirations. One may open any of Mr. Froude's volumes at random and find an exemplification of what is here stated. Here is one: