and Carlyle’s own personal injunction would have been disobeyed.  Carlyle’s memory would also have suffered parable injury.  It is said, and it squares with the facts, that Mary Carlyle and her friends, whose literary judgment was not quite equal to Carlyle’s own, desired to substitute as his biographer some learned professor in Scotland.* If that were their object, they are to be congratulated upon their failure.  For the offer was not carried out.  As a bare promise without consideration it was not of course valid in law, and since no one had acted upon it, its withdrawal did no one any harm.  There were also legal difficulties which made its fulfilment impossible.  According to counsel’s opinion, dated the 13th of May, 1881, Carlyle’s request that the papers should be restored was “an attempted verbal testamentary disposition, which had no legal authority.”  The documents belonged not to Froude personally, but to himself and Fitz-james Stephen, as joint executors, and Stephen has left it on record that he would not have consented to their return until Froude’s task was accomplished.

—­ * David Masson, the editor of Milton, I have been told, but I do not know. —­

Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s view was not shared by other and older members of her uncle’s family.  During the summer of 1881 Froude received from Carlyle’s surviving brother, James, and his surviving sister, Mrs. Austin, a letter dated the 8th of August, and written from Ecclefechan, in which he was implored not to give up his task of writing the Life, and assured of their perfect reliance upon him.  This assurance is the more significant because it was given after the publication of the Reminiscences.  It was renewed on James Carlyle’ s part through his son after the appearance of Mrs. Carlyle’s letters in 1883, and by Mrs. Austin through her daughter upon receiving the final volumes of the biography in 1884.  Miss Austin wrote at her mother’s request on the 25th of October, 1884, “My uncle at all times placed implicit confidence in you, and that confidence has not, I am sure, in any way been abused.  He always spoke of you as his best and truest friend.”  Time has amply vindicated Carlyle’s opinion, and his discretion in the choice of a biographer.

As Mrs. Alexander Carlyle considered the publication of the memoir, which is by far the most interesting part of the Reminiscences, to be an impropriety, and a breach of faith, it might have been supposed that she would repudiate the idea of deriving any profit from the book.  On the contrary, she attempted to secure the whole, and refused to take a part, declaring that Froude had promised to give her all.  Froude’s recollection was that, thinking Carlyle’s provision for his niece insufficient,* he had promised her the American income, which he had been told would be large, though it turned out to be very small indeed, in acknowledgment of her services as a copyist.  Ultimately he made her the generous offer of fifteen hundred pounds,