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Froude continued, was a very able man and it was absurd for Pattison to speak of him with contempt. He agreed that Oxford had not taken the lead, had not done its duty, as a factor in the intellectual energy of the age. We then spoke of style-its first aim should be to be simple and forcible: he said that for his own part he wrote what he had to write just as if he was writing a letter. I suppose, for example, that I am writing to Carlyle who abhorred all false ornament, useless epithets etc., and then I correct, writing over again and sometimes twice over what I have written. I told him the great difficulty I had in writingthat sometimes I was a day or more in writing three or four sentences. It sprang, he said, from self-consciousness-you should remember that it must all perish and what is the good of taking so much pains: that is how I comfort myself, he said. We ought to remember it is not one man in a million who is a force in literature-who will live & whose work really matters one way or the other. He thought that Carlyle was literally the only writer of our times who was a force and who would have permanent fame, though, he said, Carlyle was always saying "what is the good "-we shall all be forgotten in a hundred years. Carlyle's great mistake was his isolated and selfish life-the idea that he was a marked man—that did him, I think, great harm, in more ways than one. He thought Tennyson's fame was permanent. He said he saw no reason to be filled up, he (Pattison) supported a candidate named G. G. Perry against Rowland Michell, a brother of Richard Michell. Other reasons helped to keep the bitter feeling alive. See Mark Pattison's "Memoirs," p. 264 and following.

why a man who lived in his study and quite apart from the world of action could not write a thoroughly good history, instancing Gibbon as a pure student. I asked him what he thought of Macchiavelli and Guicciardini-he had never read them, he said he could not read Italian; he read Spanish because he had lived in Spain. He did not like modern French: the latest French he really liked was Villemain. But I have not read much French as you must know by my not knowing about those novels of Voltaire. He greatly admired Milton's prose he was unmatched in the organ note-in the management of the long rolling sentence. He greatly praised Charles Lamb's style, he thought it exquisitely beautiful and quite by itself: he was very fond of Hume, who was the clearest of writers and he smiled at Green's undertaking to explain the most lucid of writers and said how he soon gave up Green and went straight to Hume. He said the Classics were the only works which he read habitually with pleasure: and he was very fond of the eighteenth century writers, Swift and Pope-he said whatever their religion may have been they always knew where they were: their ethics were sound-that was so pre-eminently with Pope of whose poetry he spoke with great admiration. Tacitus did not strike him as false -his great fault was his utter absence of humourhe was as destitute of humour as a Jew, and of the Jewish humour, he said, where it was apparent it was always bitter and he quoted the words in Ezekiel "and of the residue thereof he maketh him a God." Macaulay he rated very low, allowing him only brilliance. His indifference to truth

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and the recklessness of his statements were simply beyond parallel, he said: and he illustrated from what Sir James Fitzjames Stephen had said about the Warren Hastings and Impey affair. He said Macaulay took mean and low views of men and of human nature-adding that he believed with Pindar that what we ought to look for was the good in men-I don't know to what passage in Pindar he was alluding and he didn't quote. How different in this respect were Shakespeare and Chaucer. Shakespeare didn't paint men mean, base and low. Iago was bad-but what courage, what intellect he possessed. We look upon him with the awe, repulsion and admiration with which we look on a rattlesnake. Of style he said that it would probably come quite naturally and easily with practice-but he praised my style very highly and said he didn't see how it could be improved and wondered that I should trouble about the question. He said that at one time in his life he had carefully analysed five passages not with the idea of imitating them but to see how the effects were performed. Imitation was very bad, he said, and I was pleased to notice that he said something I forget what it was— that certainly shewed that he thought my style was my own and not imitated from anyone. In asking him for advice about writing the "History History". I

1 Nuncomar and Impey.

At one time my father contemplated writing a History of England from the period where Macaulay left off, but nothing came of it (v. p. 38). Only a few years ago another firm of publishers asked him to write a history of the reign of Queen Anne (the very period), but he declined, feeling that he would not be able to afford the time necessary for such a work.

See also p. 131.

meditate, he said, you will have of course a clear idea of the whole period you are going to treat and arrange a distinct beginning, middle and end in the epic style, but he said nothing definite. He spoke very sadly and bitterly of human life and said that Shakespeare's and Homer's attitude was, Poor Devils, why be hard on them, they have so many miseries. When I asked him whether Goethe's remark about Homer's conception of life being a hell was correct-he didn't seem familiar with the idea but evidently liked it, & illustrated from Ulysses the man of many sorrows.

The general impression he made on me was that his vigour and spirit had been greatly impaired by time, sad experience and hard work: his memory seemed weak and sluggish and "all the wheels of being slow; that his intellect was rather fine and delicately sympathetic than vigorous and original: that his acquired knowledge -his knowledge of literature and history was limited and scanty; and that the depressing influence of our age had plainly affected him even when his powers were not declining as they now obviously are.1 The spirit of cui bono? and non est tanti appeared in all he said, in his words, in the tone of his voice, in the expression of his face. I ought to have mentioned that he spoke with great contempt of the science of historywe can understand and have a key to Lear but not to the vast and complicated drama of existence; the basis of science lies in an exhaustive deduction from certain facts and the facts of history can neither be exhaustively nor accurately ascertained. He spoke of the difficulty of understanding con1 Froude was then 68 years of age.

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temporary history and said, laughing, that M. Chamerlain had told him we were living in the midst of a revolution, but I don't know, he added, with rippling laughter. I think I discerned a certain weakness in his character, the visible sign of which was this laughter which he protracted in a rather silly-not forced, not hearty, but silly manner. But I saw in him great kindness, great apparent sympathy, and real humanity, blended with a mysterious something which belonged wholly to some corner of his nature, which was not even partially revealed; so that it reminded me of what Theocritus says of Hylas, παρέων γε μάλα σχεδόν εἴδετο πόῤῥω. He shook hands at meeting and parting in a limp way, but said very kindly, "I hope we shall often meet" he did not, as Carlyle, Browning and Swinburne always did, come with me to the door, but rang for the servant to show me out, and I left him bustling aimlessly about some papers.

This was followed by another interview in December, when my father visited him with a view to getting a written opinion from him relative to the English Literature question. Froude was quite unsympathetic though he promised to write.

My father remarks in the " commonplace "

book:

He kept his promise and sent a remarkably feeble letter, composed studiously with the object of showing that he was determined not to acquiesce