United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Froude, in the course of an estimate of this work which leaves little room for other criticism, dwells on the fact that it was written for a purpose, i.e. to show that rulers, like those of the French in the eighteenth century, who are solely bent on the pleasures and oblivious of the duties of life, must end by being "burnt up."
Although a refuted detractor is not formidable in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life."
The authorities of the place, or some of them, would have had him spare his pains, and colourably evade the statute by talking instead of lecturing. But Froude was too conscientious to seek relief in this way. Whatever he had to do he did thoroughly, conscientiously, and as well as he could. There is no trace of senility in his professorial utterances.
Froude sympathetically justifies the disgust and exasperation of these reputable folk at the presence and progress of the race for whose freedom and ultimate elevation Britain was so lavish of the wealth of her noblest intellects, besides paying the prodigious money-ransom of TWENTY MILLION pounds sterling.
My friendship with Froude lasted as long as he lived. He was a warm and sincere friend, always ready with word or deed to help one who needed it, and one of the men for whom I retain the warmest feeling of all I knew at this epoch of my life. In New York I had made an arrangement with Dr.
Froude does, by taking for granted that both parties may have been on the whole right; that the Parliament granted certain sums because Henry was right in asking for them; refused others because Henry was wrong; even that, in some cases, Henry may have been right in asking, the Parliament wrong in refusing; and that in such a case, under the pressure of critical times, Henry was forced to get as he could the money which he saw that the national cause required?
He read Carlyle's French revolution, and Hero Worship, and Past and Present. He read Emerson too. For Emerson and Carlyle the Church of England did not exist. Carlyle despised it. Emerson had probably not so much as given it a thought in his life. But what struck Froude most about them was that they dealt with actual phaenomena, with things and persons around them, with the world as it was.
Later on, when controversy began, it became a favourite rhetorical device to call it by the ugly name of a "conspiracy." Certainly Froude called it so, and Mr. Palmer; and Mr. Perceval wrote a narrative to answer the charge. It was a "conspiracy," as any other meeting would be of men with an object which other men dislike. Of the Oriel men, only Froude went to Hadleigh.
Meanwhile he published a volume of poetry, including the celebrated Bothie, about which Froude wrote to him: "I was for ever falling upon lines which gave me uneasy twitchings; e.g. the end of the love scene: "And he fell at her feet, and buried his face in her apron. "I daresay the head would fall there, but what an image!
Disraeli's Government had just come into office, and with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, Froude was on intimate terms. Froude had always been interested in the Colonies, and was an advocate of Federation long before it had become a popular scheme. As early as 1870 he wrote to Skelton: "Gladstone and Co. deliberately intend to shake off the Colonies.
Word Of The Day