The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1894-10-23
James Anthony Froude.

It In noteworthy coincidence that
FRoUDE should have passed away just after
the publication of his life of ERASMUS, who,
among all the lights of the Renaissance, was
the prototype of the broad, incisive, and
resuscitative rather than infinitely accurate
scholarship Of which his biographer has
been in our own day leading representative.
Not only to discern the truth in its i'm
portant features, but to set It forth In such
wise as not merely TO persuade the intellect
but TO arouse emotion: to combine, in other
words, the artist with the man of learn
ing was the answering purpose and
fruitful labor of FROUDEs life. Asa mas
ter of English prose, at once correct, uncon-
ventional, and eloquent, he will be placed
ungrudgingly on the plane still occupied by
RUsKIs, while among the workers in the
field Of historical research he belongs to the
school which in the teeth of criticism re-
mains illustrious, the pictorial and impress
sionist school of historical writing which
HERoDoTUs founded. and in which HUME,
Prescott, and MACAULAY were FRoUDE's
immediate precursors.
Although FREEMAN could never be made
TO sec It, style must play mighty part in
every work Of exposition, and, above all, in
history which deals with human beings,
who, though dead, have not lost their right
10 justice and sympathy. 1t is acknowledged
on all hands, even by those who have found
most fault with him a. q transcriber Of
facts, that FRoUDE, partly through a nat
ural aptitude, partly through a patient
study of the finest models, and partly
through unerring taste, used our English
speech with almost Incompatible grace and
felicity for the two-fold purpose of convinc-
ing and pleasing, of swaying the rea-
son and Of touching the heart. Even his
narrative diction, though limpid as a
mountain brook, II nevertheless tinged
or fiecked with soft color, as il the moon
light played on IL; his argument, not hard
snd cold like the logic OF the dialectician,
comes to US fired and fused in the heat of
the imagination; his portraiture, when at
its best, speaks with the very accents and
CLOVIS with the lineaments of life. II one
tries TO discover how it is that in the I'M
promising province of descriptive and didac-
tic writing. such effects have been produced
by men like JEREMY TAYLOR, ADDISON,
STEREE, and FRoUDE, one finds, in the first
place. that in them something of the
preacher and the poet was blended with the
student and the philosopher. II, then, by
an analysis Of the mechanism of their
language, We seek 10 detect the secret
Of its seemingly untutored and inimitabls
charm, We perceive that this is due in at
least some measure to the happy and intui-
tive admixture of colloquial and academic
speech. All the authors just mentioned
wrote-and therein lay the spell they cast
over their contempOraries-not as college
lecturers or pulpiteers ratiocinate and per-
crate. but as well-bred and highly cultivated
men may talk in drawing rooms. In a
word, FRoUDE gave US in English counter
part of what REEAE, according TO Partisan
experts, used TO produce in French, capti-
waiting compound Of the chat OF the Salon
and the phrase Of the Academy.
Even FREEMAN would have admitted that
nobody could tell story better than
FRoUDE, only he persisted in asserting that
the story was untrue. But punctilious &C
euracy in every detail is not the only form
of truth. The exactitude of the photogra-
pher is one thing; the deep veracity attained
by the great portrait painter is another. Il
did not follow that FROUDE could not write
history; that he could not bring out in right