e of Schiller_, instead
of evidencing affectation in the later work, only proves constraint in
the earlier. At the same time, except for what may be called
side-illustration of the works, and completion of the biography for
those who want it, there is not very much in Carlyle's letters which
would be a serious loss.

With his wife the case is different. Without her "Letters and Memorials"
we might (it is rather improbable that we _should_, owing to the
misdemeanours of more persons than one and the blow-fly appetite of a
part of the public for sore places) have escaped a good deal of the
ignoble wrangling above referred to. But we should not only have failed
to appreciate a very remarkable character, but have missed some of the
very best of our now existing contributions to epistolary literature.
Personally Mrs. Carlyle was by no means a general favourite. She had a
fearfully sharp tongue, and a still sharper wit in directing it upon her
victims; her experiences were not very likely to edulcorate her acids
and mollify her asperities. The letters show that, as so often happens,
there was plenty of sweetness within the sharp exterior, and that her
strength was the strength of passion, not of obduracy. But this is not
all. There might have been biographical whitewashing of this kind
without much gain to pure literature. But the letters showed likewise a
power of expression, both lighter and more serious, which is hardly
inferior to that found in any correspondence of man or woman, genuine or
fictitious. Some people, not given to rash superlatives and pretty
extensively acquainted with literature, have held that the letter
describing her visit after many years to Haddington, and the
reminiscences it called forth, has no superior in the vast range of our
subject for pure pathos perfectly expressed, without constraint on
nature yet without loss of dignity.[47] On the other hand, the half
comic accounts of her domestic troubles etc. are worthy of Fielding or
Thackeray. The fact is that Mrs. Carlyle possessed what is rare in
women--humour. And she exemplified, as few other women and not so very
many men have done, Anne Evans's matchless definition of it as "thinking
in jest while feeling in earnest." Moreover while, as all true
humourists can, she could drop the jest altogether when necessary, she
could, as is the case with them likewise, never quite discard the
earnest.

[Sidenote: MACAULAY AND DICKENS]

Some of the most d