BOOKS RECEIVED.
Messrs. J. Murphy & Co., Baltimore: The Paradise of the Earth. 18mo, pp. 528. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By Rev. S. Franco, S.J. Pp. 305.
P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia: Hetty Homer. By Fannie Warner. Pp. 142. The Beverly Family. By Joseph R. Chandler. Pp. 166. Beech Bluff. By Fannie Warner. 12mo, pp. 332.
P. O'Shea, New York: Knowledge and Love of Jesus Christ. Vol. iii. pp. 632.
Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: History of the Foundation of the Order of the Visitation; and the Lives of Mlle. de la Fayette and several other members of the Order. 12mo, pp. 271.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XI., No. 65.—AUGUST, 1870.
MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[177]
SECOND ARTICLE.
In our first article[178] we referred in general terms to the fact that Mr. Froude had plunged into a great historical subject without the requisite knowledge or the necessary preparation. This judgment was presumed to be so well established by the concurrent testimony of the most opposite schools of criticism, both English and French, that it was not thought necessary to cite examples from his pages. In that notice we merely undertook to state the general results of criticism as to Mr. Froude's first six volumes, reserving particular examination for the latter half of the work, with special reference to his treatment of Mary Stuart.
Since, however, it has been said that we charge the historian with shortcomings, and give no instances in support, we will, before proceeding further, satisfy this objection. This could be most easily and profusely done by going into his treatment of questions of the contemporary history of foreign countries, or of general history preceding the sixteenth century, in both of which Mr. Froude is deplorably weak. But we prefer a more decisive test, one that leaves the historian without excuse, and will, therefore, not only confine it to English history, but to English history of the period of Elizabeth, with which, according to his late plaintive appeal to the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Froude has labored so diligently and is so entirely familiar.
And the test proposed illustrates not only his imperfect mastery of his own selected period of English history, but his total unconsciousness of the existence of one of the most peculiar laws of England in force for centuries before and after that period. A clever British reviewer, in expressing his surprise at our historian's multifarious ignorance concerning the civil and criminal jurisprudence of his country, says that it is difficult to believe that Mr. Froude has ever seen the face of an English justice; and the reproach is well merited. Nevertheless we do not look for the accuracy of a Lingard or a Macaulay in an imaginative writer like Mr. Froude, and might excuse numerous slips and blunders as to law pleadings and the forms of criminal trials—nay, even as to musty old statutes and conflicting legislative enactments, (as, for instance, when he puts on an air of critical severity (vol. ix. p. 38) as to the allowance of a delay of fifteen days in Bothwell's trial, claiming, in his defective knowledge of the Scotch law, that it should have been forty days;) but when we find his mind a total blank as to the very existence of one of the most peculiar and salient features of English law, we must insist that such ignorance in one who sets up for an English historian is far from creditable.