That Froude’s ideas of a biographer’s duty were the same as his own Carlyle had good reason to know.  Froude had stated them plainly enough in Fraser’s Magazine, which Carlyle always saw, for June, 1876.  He prefaced an article on the present Sir George Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, a daring attack upon that historian for the very faults that were attributed to himself, with the following sentences:  “Every man who has played a distinguished part in life, and has largely influenced either the fortunes or the opinions of his contemporaries, becomes the property of the public.  We desire to know, and we have a right to know, the inner history of the person who has obtained our confidence.”  This doctrine would not have been universally accepted.  Tennyson, for instance, would have vehemently denied it.  But it is at least frankly expressed, and Carlyle must have known very well what sort of biography Froude would write.

If Froude dwelt on Carlyle’s failings, it was because he knew that his reputation would bear the strain.  He has been justified by the result, for Carlyle’s fame stands higher to-day than it ever stood before.  That man, be he prince or peasant, is not to be envied who can read Froude’s account of Carlyle’s early life without feeling the better for it.  It is by no means a cheerful story.  The first forty years of Carlyle’s existence, when the French Revolution had not been published, were an apparently hopeless struggle against poverty and obscurity.  Sartor Resartus was scarcely understood by any one, and though his wife saw that it was a work of genius, it seemed to most people unintelligible mysticism.  With the splendid exception of Goethe, hardly any one saw at that time what Carlyle was.  He was too transcendental for The Edinburgh Review, to which he had occasionally contributed, and the payment for Sartor in Fraser’s Magazine was beggarly.* For some years after his marriage in 1826 Carlyle was within measurable distance of starvation.  Jeffrey had to explain to him, or did explain to him, that he was unfit for any public employment.  He could not dig.  To beg he was ashamed.  When his father died in 1832 he refused to touch a penny of what the old man left, lest there should not be enough for his brothers and sisters.  His personal dignity made it impossible for any stranger to assist him, except by giving him work.  He worked incessantly, devouring books of all sorts, especially French and German, translating Wilhelm Meister so superbly well as to make it almost an English book.  There was no greater intellect then in the British Islands than Carlyle’s and very few with which it could be compared.  Yet it was difficult for him to earn a bare subsistence for his wife and himself.  Froude has brought out with wonderful power and beauty the character which in Carlyle was above and beyond all the gifts of his mind.  If he was a severe critic of others, he was a still sterner judge of himself.  It would have been easy for him to make money by writing what people wanted to read.  He was determined that if they read anything of his, they should read what would do them good.  His isolation was complete.  His wife encouraged him and believed in him.  Nobody could help him.