—­ * 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 discretion in the matter.  Froude replied at first with temper and judgment.  But when Mrs. Carlyle persisted in her insinuations, and implied a doubt of his veracity, he gave way to a very natural resentment, and made a rash offer.  He had, he said, brought out the memoir by Carlyle’s own desire.  He should do the same with Mrs. Carlyle’s letters, for the same reason.  “The remaining letters,” he went on to say, “which I was directed to return to Mrs. Carlyle so soon as I had done with them, I will restore at once to any responsible person whom she will empower to receive them from me.  I have reason to complain of the position in which I have been placed with respect to these MSS.  They were sent to me at intervals without inventory or even a memorial list.  I was told that the more I burnt of them the better, and they were for several years in my possession before I was aware that they were not my own.  Happily I have destroyed none of them, and Mrs. Carlyle may have them all when she pleases.”  Froude can hardly have reflected upon the full significance of what he was saying.  He had at this time been long engaged upon the biography of Carlyle, and a considerable part of it was finished.  If he had then given back his materials, his labour would have been wasted,