Authorities are contemporary witnesses, or original documents.

Another entry is "Beast," and yet another is "Bah!" "May I live to embowel James Anthony Froude" is the pious aspiration with which he has adorned another page.

"Can Froude understand honesty ?" asks this anxious inquirer; and again, "Supposing Master Froude were set to break stones, feed pigs, or do anything else but write paradoxes, would he not curse his day ?" Along with such graceful compliments as "You've found that out since you wrote a book against your own father," "Give him as slave to Thirlwall," there may be seen the culminating assertion, "Froude is certainly the vilest brute that ever wrote a book." Yet there was "no kind of temper in the case," and "only a strong sense of amusement." I suppose it must have amused Freeman to call another historian a vile brute.

But it is fortunate that there was no temper in the case.

For if there had, it would have been a very bad temper indeed.
In this judicial frame of mind did Freeman set himself to review successive volumes of Froude's Elizabeth.