Both sides were right in their principal assertions, and both were prone to forget that there was another aspect of the case. On the one hand, it has been established beyond the reach of reasonable dispute that Froude was habitually and grossly inaccurate. It is indeed doubtful whether any other historian, with any title to be considered great, can be charged with so many grave errors. Froude is inaccurate first of all in his facts. He does not take the trouble to verify, he misquotes, he is not careful to weigh evidence. But moreover, he is inaccurate in what may be called his colour. He paints his picture in the light of his own emotions and prejudices, he is rather the impassioned advocate than the calm judge. He would not only have acknowledged this, but he would have defended himself; and there is something to be said for his view. Absolute impartiality is, in the first place, unattainable; and in the second place, so far as it is attained, it is not always an unmixed good. Pure disinterestedness is apt to mean absence of interest. It is certainly true that some of the greatest histories in the world are all alive with the passions of the writers. Those of Tacitus are so, and likewise those of Carlyle; and Herodotus had undoubtedly a partiality for Athens. Froude therefore is not to be wholly condemned on this score; but he ought to have remembered that the adoption of such a theory of history made it doubly incumbent on him to examine carefully the grounds upon which his opinions rested. His cardinal defect was a disregard of this precaution. Froude moreover was given to paradox. It has been repeatedly pointed out that one of the great tasks of the century has been the whitewashing of scoundrels. De Quincey undertook Judas. Carlyle in his later days performed the service for Frederick. Froude in his justification of Henry VIII. was only following a fashion. Nevertheless, the twisting of facts, the exaggeration of all that tells on the one side and the slurring or suppression of arguments on the other, are grave faults in history. And these are the almost inevitable results of the indulgence in paradox and the advocacy of weak causes. All the cleverness is unconvincing, and the detection of the sophistry brings discredit upon the whole work into which it is admitted.