Froude's History of England

There appeared a few years since a 'Comic History of England, ' duly caricaturing and falsifying all our great national events, and representing the English people, for many centuries back, as a mob of fools and knaves, led by the nose in each generation by a few arch-fools and arch-knaves. Some thoughtful persons regarded the book with utter contempt and indignation; it seemed to them a crime to have written it; a proof of 'banausia, ' as Aristotle would have called it, only to be outdone by the writing a 'Comic Bible.