I had the great advantage of having often had very severe differences
with my father, who was, I believe, as much Carlyled by Nature as Carlyle
himself, if not more so, whereas it is morally impossible that the Sage
of Chelsea could ever have found any one like himself to train under. But
to Carlyle people in conversation requires constant practice with a
master--_consuetudine quotidiana cum aliquo congredi_--and he had for so
long a time knocked everybody down without meeting the least resistance,
that victory had palled upon him, and he had, so to speak, "vinegared" on
himself. With somebody to "sass him back," Carlyle would have been cured
of the dyspepsia, and have lived twenty years longer.

Carlyle's was and ever will be one of the greatest names in English
literature, and it is very amusing to observe how the gossip-makers, who
judge of genius by tittle-tattle and petty personal defects, have
condemned him _in toto_ because he was not an angel to a dame who was
certainly a bit of a _diablesse_. Thus I find in a late very popular
collection the remark that--

"It is curious to note in the 'Life and Correspondence of Lord Houghton'
the high estimation in which Carlyle was held by him. His regard and
admiration cannot but seem exaggerated, now that we know so much of the
Chelsea philosopher's real character."

This is _quite_ the moral old lady, who used to think that Raphael was a
good painter "till she read all about that nasty Fornarina."

There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted in
those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him, exercised
in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature. This was
George Borrow. I was in the habit of reading a great deal in the British
Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to him.

He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish and made the
remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living who could
read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was "fished" out
of Sir W. Betham). We discussed several gypsy words and phrases. I met
him in the same place several times. He was a tall, large, fine-looking
man, who must have been handsome in his youth. I knew at the time in
London a Mr. Kerrison, who had been as a very young man, probably in the
Twenties, very intimate with Borrow. He told me that one night Borrow
acted very wildly, whooping and vociferating so as to cause