countless
admirers find it hard to forgive. Mrs. Procter, widow of Barry
Cornwall, the poet, and herself a most remarkable woman, was so much
annoyed by the description of her mother, Mrs. Basil Montagu, and
her step-father, the editor of Bacon,* that she published some early
and rather obsequious letters written to them by Carlyle himself.
But the chief outcry was raised by the revelation of Carlyle's most
intimate feelings about his wife, and about his own behaviour to
her. There was nothing very bad. He was driven to accuse himself of
the crime that, when he was writing Frederick and she lay ill on the
sofa, he used to talk to her about the battle of Mollwitz. Froude
was naturally astonished at the effect produced, but then Froude
knew Carlyle, and the public did not.

--
* Carlyle's Miscellanies, i. 223-230.
--

Trouble, however, awaited him of a very different kind. After the
publication of the Reminiscences, on the 3rd of May, 1881, he
returned to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle the manuscript note-book which
contained the memoir of her aunt, as Carlyle had requested him to
do. At the end of it, on separate and wafered paper, following
rather vague surmise that, though he meant to burn the book, it
would probably survive him and be read by his friends, were these
words:

"In which event, I solemnly forbid them, each and all, to publish
this Bit of Writing as it stands here; and warn them that without
fit editing no part of it should be printed (nor so far as I can
order, shall ever be); and that the 'fit editing' of perhaps nine-
tenths of it will, after I am gone, have become impossible.

"T. C. (Saturday, July 28th, 1866)."

Mary Carlyle at once wrote to The Times, and accused Froude of
having violated her uncle's express directions. It would have been
better if Froude had himself quoted this passage, and explained the
subsequent events which made it obsolete. But he never suspected any
one, and believed at the time of publication in the entire
friendliness of the Carlyle family. His answer to the charge of
betraying a trust was simple and satisfactory. Carlyle had changed
his mind. This is clear from the fact that he gave Froude the memoir
in 1871, five years after it was written, to do as he pleased with;
and still clearer from the conversation in 1880, when Froude told
him that he meant to publish, and Carlyle said "Very well."
Moreover, the will, a formal and legal document, expressly gave
Froude entire di