e and (notably in the instance specified in the
Introduction) almost consummate literature of the epistolary
kind. This instance itself is perhaps too tragic for our
little collection: indeed it might help to spread the
exaggerated idea of the writer's unhappiness which has been
too prevalent already. There is some "metal more attractive"
in her letters, which perhaps, taken all round, put her with
Madame de Sevigne and "Lady Mary" at the head of all
_published_ women letter-writers. And Carlyle's annotations
to them, when not too bilious or too penitent, show him
almost at his best. His own (given below) to FitzGerald (the
way in which epistolary literature interconnects itself has
been noted) appears to me one of his most characteristic
though least volcanic utterances. It was written while he
was in the depths of what his wife called "the Valley of the
Shadow of Frederick," (_i.e._ his vast book on that amiable
monarch) and had retired to _extra_-solitude in consequence.
"Farlingay" refers to a recent stay in Suffolk with
FitzGerald. As often with Carlyle, there may be more than
one interpretation of his inverted commas at "gentleman" as
regards Voltaire, to whom he certainly would not have
allotted the word in its best sense. The phrase about Chaos
and the Evil Genius is Carlyle shut up in narrow space like
the other genius or genie in the Arabian Nights. The "_awful
jangle_ of bells" speaks his horror of any invading sound.
The "Naseby matter" refers to a monument which he and
FitzGerald had planned, and which (with the precedent
investigation as to the battle which F. had conducted years
before for his _Cromwell_), occupies a good deal of
FitzGerald's own correspondence. Indeed, it is thanks to
Naseby that we possess this very letter. FitzGerald says
elsewhere that he kept only these Naseby letters of all
Carlyle's correspondence with him, destroying the rest, as
he did Thackeray's and Tennyson's, lest "private personal
history should fall into some unscrupulous hands." One
admires the conduct while one feels the loss. As for the
monument, it never came off: though it was talked about for
some thirty years. Mrs. Carlyle's--one of the early and,
despite complaints, cheerful time, the other later and,
despite its resignati