me in these
my last solitary and infirm years." It was natural that he should
think of her, and should contemplate leaving her more than the five
hundred pounds specified in his original will. But this particular
request was so startling that Froude ought to have made further
inquiries. The papers had been given to him, and he might have
destroyed them. They had been, without his knowledge, left in the
will to John Carlyle, who was then dead. Carlyle's mind was not
clear about the fate of his manuscripts. Froude, however,
acquiesced, and did not even ask that Carlyle should put his
intentions on paper. At this time, while he was writing the first
volume of the Life, Froude made up his mind to keep back Mrs.
Carlyle's letters, with her husband's sketch of her, to suppress the
fact that there had been any disagreement between them, but to
publish in a single volume Carlyle's reminiscences of his father, of
Edward Irving, of Francis Jeffrey, and of Robert Southey. To this
separate publication Carlyle at once assented. But in November,
1880, when he was eighty-five, and Mrs. Carlyle had been fourteen
years in her grave, he asked what Froude really meant to do with the
letters and the memoir. Forced to make up his mind at once, and
believing that publication was Carlyle's own wish, he replied that
he meant to publish them. The old man seemed to be satisfied, and no
more was said. Froude drew the inference that most people would, in
the circumstances, have drawn. He concluded that Carlyle wished to
relieve himself of responsibility, to get the matter off his mind,
to have no disclosure in his lifetime, but to die with the assurance
that after his death the whole story of his wife's heroism would be
told.

On the 4th of February, 1881, Carlyle died. Froude, Tyndall, and
Lecky attended his quiet funeral in the kirkyard of Ecclefechan,
where he lies with his father and mother. Dean Stanley had offered
Westminster Abbey, but the family had refused. Carlyle was buried
among his own people, who best understood him, and whom he best
understood. The two volumes of reminiscences at once appeared,
including sketches of Irving and Jeffrey, with the memoir of Mrs.
Carlyle. But even before the publication of these volumes, which
came out early in March, a question, which was ominous of future
trouble, arose out of copyright and title to profits. A fortnight
after Carlyle's death Froude's co-executor, Mr. Justice Stephen, had
a personal