even of his own friends looked coldly on him.  He was a sensitive man, and he felt it deeply.  He shrank from going out unless he knew exactly whom he was to meet.  But his pride came to his rescue, and he preferred suffering injustice in silence to discussing in public, as though it admitted of doubt, the question whether he was an honest man.  He did, however, invite the opinion of his co-executor, an English judge, a close friend of Carlyle, and a man whose personal integrity was above all suspicion.  Although the calumnies which gave Froude so much distress have long sunk into an oblivion of contempt, and require no formal refutation, the conclusive verdict of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen may be fitly quoted here: 

“For about fifteen years I was the intimate friend and constant companion of both of you [Carlyle and Froude], and never in my life did I see any one man so much devoted to any other as you were to him during the whole of that period of time.  The most affectionate son could not have acted better to the most venerated father.  You cared for him, soothed him, protected him, as a guide might protect a weak old man down a steep and painful path.  The admiration you have habitually expressed for him was unqualified.  You never said to me one ill-natured word about him down to this day.  It is to me wholly incredible that anything but a severe regard for truth, learnt to a great extent from his teaching, could ever have led you to embody in your portrait of him a delineation of the faults and weaknesses which mixed with his great qualities."*

—­ * My Relations with Carlyle, p. 62. —­

Calling witnesses to the character of such a man as Froude is itself almost an insult.  But there is one judgment so valuable and so emphatic that I cannot refrain from citing it.  The fifteenth Earl of Derby held such a high position in the political world that his literary attainments have been comparatively neglected.  He was in truth an omnivorous reader and a cool, sagacious critic, who was not led astray by enthusiasm, and never said more than he felt.  Writing to Froude on the 20th of October, 1884, Lord Derby described the Life of Carlyle as the most interesting biography in the English language, and added, “I think you have finally silenced the foolish talk about indiscretion, and treachery to a friend’s memory.  It is clear that you have done only, and exactly, what Carlyle wished done:  and to me it is also apparent that he and you were right:  that his character could not have been understood without a full disclosure of what was least attractive in it:  and that those defects—­the product mainly of morbid physical conditions—­do not really take away from his greatness, while they explain much that was dark, at least to me, in his writings.”  Lord Derby’s opinions were not lightly formed, and he was as much guided by pure reason as mortal man can be.

Froude’s own judgment is given in a letter to Lady Derby, which contains also much interesting speculation on South African politics.  Lord Derby, it will be remembered, was at that time Secretary of State for the Colonies.