Ridicule, if not a test of truth, is at all events a weapon against falsehood, and has done much to clear the air of history.

Froude's sense of humour was rather receptive than expansive, and he did not often display it in his writings.

Tristram Shandy he knew almost by heart, and he never tired of Candide, or Zadig.
Voltaire's wit and Sterne's humour have not in their own lines been surpassed.

But sure as Froude's taste was in such matters, he did not himself enter the lists as a competitor.

He was too much occupied with his narrative, or his theory, as the case might be, to spare time for such diversion by the way.