uld have altered
the whole character of the book. Froude in this and the later
publications held that he was giving effect to Carlyle's wish to imitate
Johnson's "penance." No one, said Boswell, should persuade him to make
his lion into a cat. Froude intended, in the same spirit, to give the
shades as well as the lights in the portrait of his hero. His admiration
for Carlyle probably led him to assume too early that his readers would
approach the story from the same point of view, that is, with an
admiration too warm to be repelled by the admissions. Moreover, Froude's
characteristic desire for picturesque effect, unchecked by any
painstaking accuracy, led to his reading preconceived impressions into
his documents. The result was that Carlyle was too often judged by his
defects, and regarded as a selfish and eccentric misanthrope with
flashes of genius, rather than as a man with many of the highest
qualities of mind and character clouded by constitutional infirmities.
Yet it would be difficult to speak too strongly of the great qualities
which underlay the superficial defects. Through long years of poverty
and obscurity Carlyle showed unsurpassed fidelity to his vocation and
superiority to the lower temptations which have ruined so many literary
careers, His ambition might be interpreted as selfishness, but certainly
showed no coldness of heart. His unstinted generosity to his brothers
during his worst times is only one proof of the singular strength of his
family affections. No one was more devoted to such congenial friends as
Irving and Sterling. He is not the only man whom absorption in work and
infirmity of temper have made into a provoking husband, though few wives
have had Mrs Carlyle's capacity for expressing the sense of injustice.
The knowledge that the deepest devotion underlies misunderstandings is
often a very imperfect consolation; but such devotion clearly existed
all through, and proves the defect to have been relatively superficial.

The harsh judgments of individuals in the _Reminiscences_ had no
parallel in his own writings. He scarcely ever mentions a contemporary,
and was never involved in a personal controversy. But the harshness
certainly reflects a characteristic attitude of mind. Carlyle was
throughout a pessimist or a prophet denouncing a backsliding world. His
most popular contemporaries seemed to him to be false guides, and
charlatans had ousted the heroes. The general condemnation of "shams"