knew it, and yet the more intimately I knew Carlyle, the more I loved and admired him; and some people, Lord Derby, for instance, after reading the Life, can tell me that their opinion of him is rather raised than diminished.  There is something demonic both in him and her which will never be adequately understood; but the hearts of both of them were sound and true to the last fibre.  You may guess what difficulty mine has been, and how weary the responsibility.  You may guess, too, how dreary it is to me to hear myself praised for frankness, when I find the world all fastening on C.’s faults, while the splendid qualities are ignored or forgotten.  Let them look into their own miserable souls, and ask themselves how they could bear to have their own private histories ransacked and laid bare.  I deliberately say (and I have said it in the book), that C.’s was the finest nature I have ever known.  It is a Rembrandt picture, but what a picture!  Ruskin, too, understands him, and feels too, as he should, for me, if that mattered, which it doesn’t in the least.”

A few years after publication the Reminiscences ran out of print, and Froude was anxious to bring out a corrected edition.  Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, however, wished for another editor.  The copyright was Froude’s, and no one could reprint the book in Great Britain without his consent.  At that time there was no international copyright between the United Kingdom and the United States.  A distinguished American professor, Mr. Eliot Norton, was invited by Mary Carlyle to re-edit the book beyond the Atlantic, and he undertook the task.  Froude always thought that Professor Norton should have communicated with him, and the public will probably be of the same opinion.  In the end, however, Froude voluntarily assigned the copyright to Mrs. Carlyle, who then had possession of the papers, and Mr. Norton’s edition appeared in England, published by Macmillan, six years after Carlyle’s death.  It proved to be very like the first, though some errors of the press were corrected and also some slips of the pen.  The disputed memoir was not omitted, nor was anything of the slightest interest added by Mr. Norton to the book.  In his Preface he attacked Froude for fulfilling Carlyle’s own wishes, of which he seems to have known little or nothing, and, by way of further justification for his interference, he added the following paragraph: 

“The first edition of the Reminiscences was so carelessly printed as to do grave wrong to the sense.  The punctuation, the use of capitals and italics, in the manuscript, characteristic of Carlyle’s method of expression in print, were entirely disregarded.  In the first five pages of the printed text there were more than a hundred and thirty corrections to be made of words, punctuation, capitals, quotation marks, and such like; and these pages are not exceptional.”