Carlyle had originally intended that this memoir, or sketch, as it rather is, should be preserved, but not printed.  Afterwards, however, he gave it to Froude, and added an express permission to do as he liked with it.  Froude was not content with his own opinion.  He consulted John Forster, the biographer of Goldsmith and of Dickens, a common friend of Carlyle and himself.  Forster read the documents, and promised that he would speak to Carlyle about them, giving no opinion to Froude, but intimating that he should impress upon Carlyle the need for making things clear in his will.  This most sensible advice was duly taken, and Carlyle’s will, signed on the 6th of February, 1873, which nominated Forster and his own brother John as executors, contained the following passage: 

“My manuscript entitled ’Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle’ is to me in my now bereaved state, of endless value, though of what value to others I cannot in the least clearly judge; and indeed for the last four years am imperatively forbidden to write farther on it, or even to look farther into it.  Of that manuscript my kind, considerate, and ever faithful friend, James Anthony Froude (as he has lovingly promised me) takes precious charge in my stead.  To him therefore I give it with whatever other fartherances and elucidations may be possible, and I solemnly request of him to do his best and wisest in the matter, as I feel assured he will.  There is incidentally a quantity of autobiographic record in my notes to this manuscript; but except as subsidiary and elucidative of the text I put no value on such.  Express biography of me I had really rather that there should be none.  James Anthony Froude, John Forster, and my brother John, will make earnest survey of the manuscript and its subsidiaries there or elsewhere in respect to this as well as to its other bearings; their united utmost candour and impartiality, taking always James Anthony Froude’s practicality along with it, will evidently furnish a better judgment than mine can be.  The manuscript is by no means ready for publication; nay, the questions how, when (after what delay, seven, ten years) it, or any portion of it, should be published are still dark to me; but on all such points James Anthony Froude’s practical summing up and decision is to be taken as mine.”  No expression of confidence could well be stronger, no discretion could well be more absolute.  So far as one man can substitute another for himself, Carlyle substituted Froude.

Froude was under the impression that Carlyle had given him the letters because he wanted them to be published, and did not want to publish them.  Embarrassing as the position was, he accepted it in tranquil ignorance of what was to come.  Two years after the receipt of the memoirs and letters there arrived at his house a box of more letters, more memoirs, dimes, odds and ends, put together without much arrangement in the course of a long life.  He was told that they