It was enough for Carlyle also, and to attack Froude's historical reputation is to attack Carlyle's.

"I have read," Carlyle wrote on the 20th of June, 1874, "all your book carefully over again, and continue to think of it not less but rather more favourably than ever: a few little phrases and touches you might perhaps alter with advantage; and the want of a copious, carefully weighed concluding chapter is more sensible to me than ever; but the substance of the book is genuine truth, and the utterance of it is clear, sharp, smiting, and decisive, like a shining Damascus sabre; I never doubted or doubt but its effect will be great and lasting.

No criticism have I seen since you went away that was worth notice.
Poor Lecky is weak as water--bilge-water with a drop of formic acid in it: unfortunate Lecky, he is wedded to his Irish idols; let him alone." The reference to Lecky, as unfair as it is amusing, was provoked by a review of Froude in Macmillan's Magazine.

There are worse idols than Burke, or even Grattan, and Lecky was an Irishman after all.
A very different critic from Carlyle expressed an equally favourable opinion.
"I have an interesting letter," Froude wrote to his friend Lady Derby, formerly Lady Salisbury, "from Bancroft the historian (American minister at Berlin) on the Irish book.

He, I am happy to say, accepts the view which I wished to impress on the Americans, and he has sent me some curious correspondence from the French Foreign Office illustrating and confirming one of my points.