* April 30th, 1855.
--

Froude's Republicanism did not last. His opinion of Louis Napoleon
never altered.


CHAPTER IV

THE HISTORY

"It has not yet become superfluous to insist," said the Regius
Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge on the
26th of January, 1903, "that history is a science, no less and no
more." If this view is correct and exhaustive, Froude was no
historian. He must remain outside the pale in the company of
Thucydides, Tacitus, Gibbon, Macaulay, and Mommsen. Among literary
historians, the special detestation of the pseudo-scientific school,
Froude was pre-eminent. Few things excite more suspicion than a good
style, and no theory is more plausible than that which associates
clearness of expression with shallowness of thought. Froude,
however, was no fine writer, no coiner of phrases for phrases' sake.
A mere chronicler of events he would hardly have cared to be. He had
a doctrine to propound, a gospel to preach. "The Reformation," he
said, "was the hinge on which all modern history turned,"* and he
regarded the Reformation as a revolt of the laity against the
clergy, rather than a contest between two sets of rival dogmas for
supremacy over the human mind. That is the key of the historical
position which he took up from the first, and always defended. He
held the Church of Rome to have been the enemy of human freedom, and