It was Froude’s opinion, right or wrong, that Lord Beaconsfield might have settled the Irish question if he had left the Eastern question alone.  He understood it, as some of his early speeches show, and he might have “established a just Land Court with the support of all the best land-owners in Ireland."* Why the Land Court established by Gladstone in 1881 was unjust Froude did not explain.  Some of the best landlords, if not all, supported it, and it relieved an intolerable situation.

—­ * Table Talk of Shirley, p. 180. —­

CHAPTER VIII

FROUDE AND CARLYLE

When James Spedding introduced Froude to Carlyle he made unconsciously an epoch in English literature.  For though Froude was incapable of merging himself in another man, as Spedding merged himself in Bacon, he did more for the author of Sartor Resartus than Spedding did for the author of the Novum Organum.  Spedding’s Bacon is an impossible hero of unhistorical perfection.  Froude’s Carlyle, like Boswell’s Johnson, is a great man painted as he was.  When the original head master of Uppingham described his school as Eton without its faults, there were those who felt for the first time that there was something to be said for the faults of Eton.  Carlyle without his paradoxes and prejudices, his impetuous temper and his unbridled tongue would be only half himself.  If he were known only through his books, the world would have missed acquaintance with letters of singular beauty, and with the most humourous talker of his age.  He was one of two men, Newman being the other, whose influence Froude felt through life, and the influence of Newman was chiefly upon his style.  Of Newman indeed he saw very little after he left Oxford, though his admiration and reverence for him never abated.  It was not until he came to live in London after the death of his first wife that he grew really intimate with Carlyle.  Up to that time he was no more than an occasional visitor in Cheyne Row with a profound belief in the philosophy of that incomparable poem in prose, The French Revolution.  Carlyle helped him with his own history, the earlier volumes of which show clear traces of the master, and encouraged him in his literary work.

Mrs. Carlyle was scarcely less remarkable than her husband.  Although she never wrote a line for publication, her private letters are among the best in the language, and all who knew her agree that she talked as well as she wrote.  Froude thought her the most brilliant and interesting woman he had ever met.  The attraction was purely intellectual.  Mrs. Carlyle was no longer young, and Froude’s temperament was not inflammable.  But she liked clever men, and clever men liked her.  She was an unhappy woman, without children, without religion, without any regular occupation except keeping house.  Her husband she regarded as the greatest genius of his time, and his affection for her was the deepest