“October 14th, 1884.—­Carlyle in London comes out this week.  I loved and honoured him above all living men, and with this feeling I have done my best to produce a faithful likeness of him.  This is a consolation to me, if the only one I am likely to have.  We shall see.  I am very anxious about South Africa.  I have written twice at length to Lord Derby.  Unfortunately my view is the exact opposite to that which is generally taken.  Lord D. is evidently being driven into active measures against his will.  My fear is that there will be some half-action insufficient to crush the Dutch, and sufficient to exasperate them.  He relies on the promised support of the Colonial Ministry.  They may promise, but I will believe only when I see it that a Cape Ministry and Legislature will oppose the Boers in earnest.  They will encourage us to entangle ourselves, as they did with the Diamond Fields, and then leave us to get out of the mess as we can.  South Africa cannot be self-governed in connection with this country, except with the good-will of the Dutch population.  Enough may have been done, however, to quiet Parliament (which knows nothing about the matter) in the approaching Session—­and that, I suppose, is the chief consideration.  Carnarvon writes to me preliminary, I suppose, to some attack when Government meets.  I have told him exactly what I have told Lord D. I hope I may turn out mistaken, but the course of things so far has generally confirmed my opinion whenever I have seen my way to forming one.  I shall be glad to hear what you think about the book.  From you I shall get the friendliest judgment that the circumstances admit of, and if you are dissatisfied I shall know what to look for from others.  The last two hundred pages are the most interesting.  The drift of the whole is that Carlyle was by far the most remarkable man of his time—­that five hundred years hence he will be the only one of us all whose name will be so much as remembered, while perhaps he may be one who will have reshaped in a permanent form the religious belief of mankind.  Therefore he ought to be known exactly as he was.  The argument will not be felt by those who disbelieve in his greatness, and the idolaters—­those who pretend to worship without believing-will be savagest of all.  Idols must be draped in fine clothes, and are reduced to nothing by mere human garments.”

Perhaps the fullest, and certainly the least reserved, account of Froude’s own feelings about the book is contained in a letter to Mrs. Charles Kingsley: 

“I tell Longmans to-day to send you the book.  If you can find time, I shall like to hear the independent impression it makes upon you.  Only remember this:  that it was Carlyle’s own determination (or at least desire) to do justice to his wife, and to do public penance himself—­a desire which I think so noble as to obliterate in my own mind the occasion there was for it.  I have long known the worst, and Charles knew it generally.  We all