ART. VIII.-MRS. CARLYLE'S LETTERS.

Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Prepared for

Publication by THOMAS CARLYLE.

FROUDE. 3 Vols. London, 1883.

Edited by J. A.

THE

three hundred and thirty odd letters which these volumes contain, were prepared for publication by Mr. Carlyle, and though their publication was not expressly ordered' by him, as we are assured by Mr. Froude in the preface, he anxiously desired it.' We may suppose, therefore, and the inference we think is justified, that we have here the evidence by which Carlyle desired his wife's character, and the relations existing between him and her during the greater and later part of their married life, to be judged. Had these letters stood alone, Mrs. Carlyle would have gone down to posterity as a high-spirited, indefatigable woman, a little vain and impetuous, extremely sensitive, thoroughly devoted to her husband and zealous for his welfare, somewhat given to tears and querulousness, but patient under great suffering, and not without strong claims to have her own playful words-' Perhaps I am a genius too, as well as my husband,' frankly and sincerely endorsed.

Unfortunately, however, these letters do not stand alone. Mr. Froude, in the exercise of his discretion as an editor and literary executor, has seen fit to add to them a number of extracts from her Diary. Some of these extracts, it would seem, were prepared for publication by Carlyle; Mr. Froude has considered it his duty to add a number more, which or how many, however, we are not permitted to know. The publication of these extracts seems to us to have been uncalled for and unnecessary. They explain no mystery about Carlyle, and throw no light on his real conduct or bearing towards his wife. On the other hand, the light which they throw on Mrs. Carlyle is fierce and unpleasant. They reveal elements of weakness in her character which we have all along suspected to exist, but which we did her the credit of believing she bravely suppressed

manded by that doctrine. A personal religion which fails on this pɔint may be a perfectly sincere one, but it is certainly a cold, defective one, such as may well be the offspring or twin sister of a grim, hard theology.

The bitterness of religious disputes in Scotland is proverbial; and though our memory, going back to a childish remembrance of the state of feeling in Scotland on religious questions within the first ten years after the Disruption, can bear witness to a great improvement in this respect, still the tone of many articles and letters which appear in the public papers, when any disputed religious point is in question, cannot but be painful to all peaceable lovers of their country. 'Peace on earth, goodwill towards Is the reverse of

men,' was the first message of Christianity.
the picture the special work of theology? Then—

'Oh hush your tumult, men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!'

Are we, then, justified in holding these general features of religion in Scotland to be due to the tone of Scotch theology? If so, the sooner Scotland and her theology part company the better. The religious health of the nation would not, we think, suffer severely from a good deal of heretical doctrinal belief if in its train came such a spirit as that which pervades, for instance, the introduction to Professor W. Robertson Smith's lectures on "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church.' Let mind is exercised on these points contrast that spirit with the spirit which pervades the utterances of ardent advocates of Disestablishment, or violent opposers of the introduction into Scotch Churches of organs and hymns, and then decide for himself whether he would rather be wrong with the heretics, or right with the orthodox?

anyone

whose

ART. VIII.-MRS. CARLYLE'S LETTERS.

Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Prepared for Publication by THOMAS CARLYLE. Edited by J. A. FROUDE. 3 Vols. London, 1883.

THE

three hundred and thirty odd letters which these volumes contain, were prepared for publication by Mr. Carlyle, and though their publication was not expressly ordered' by him, as we are assured by Mr. Froude in the preface, he anxiously desired it.' We may suppose, therefore, and the inference we think is justified, that we have here the evidence by which Carlyle desired his wife's character, and the relations existing between him and her during the greater and later part of their married life, to be judged. Had these letters stood alone, Mrs. Carlyle would have gone down to posterity as a high-spirited, indefatigable woman, a little vain and impetuous, extremely sensitive, thoroughly devoted to her husband and zealous for his welfare, somewhat given to tears and querulousness, but patient under great suffering, and not without strong claims to have her own playful words 'Perhaps I am a genius too, as well as my husband,' frankly and sincerely endorsed.

Unfortunately, however, these letters do not stand alone. Mr. Froude, in the exercise of his discretion as an editor and literary executor, has seen fit to add to them a number of extracts from her Diary. Some of these extracts, it would seem, were prepared for publication by Carlyle; Mr. Froude has considered it his duty to add a number more, which or how many, however, we are not permitted to know. The publication of these extracts seems to us to have been uncalled for and unnecessary. They explain no mystery about Carlyle, and throw no light on his real conduct or bearing towards his wife. On the other hand, the light which they throw on Mrs. Carlyle is fierce and unpleasant. They reveal elements of weakness in her character which we have all along suspected to exist, but which we did her the credit of believing she bravely suppressed

unworthy of serious thought. We have read few autobiographical utterances with so much pain, and none which have evoked so little of our sympathy, or left so unfavourable an impression upon us of the writer's temper at the period they were written.

In adopting the principle that he is bound to print and publish every scrap of writing which may tell either for or against Carlyle or his wife, Mr. Froude seems to us to be following a course which is entirely false. That neither Carlyle nor his wife was an angel, but a human being beset with infirmities goes without saying; and the public had no need of documentary or other evidence to prove that, like other married couples, Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle had their temporary misunderstandings, or that now and again, one or both of them thought they were neglected or not sufficiently considered by the other. All that the public desired, and all that it cared to know was, what were the ideals after which Carlyle and his wife persistently strove, what were the means they took in order to realise them, and what was the general tenor of their lives. Any desire to peer behind the curtains, and to be present with them in their worse moments, or when they were untrue to their real and ordinary or better selves, no one, we will venture to say, who has any genuine respect either for himself or for the memory of Carlyle and his wife, ever entertained. It seems to us, indeed, that in publishing these extracts, Mr. Froude has committed a grave indiscretion, and we sincerely trust that no future biographer or literary trustee will venture to imitate him.

We do not forget either the explanatory preface which Mr. Froude has prefixed to the Diary, or the words of Miss Jewsbury which he has appended to it. As for the former, it explains nothing, and fails to show that there was any real foundation either for Mrs. Carlyle's jealousy of Lady Ashburton, or for believing that Carlyle was at the period in question neglecting, or without consideration for his wife. The same remarks apply with equal force to Miss Jewsbury's statement. Miss Jewsbury, in

grounds of Mrs. Carlyle's anguish and jealousy were not in a large measure, if not wholly, imaginary. The misery,' she says, 'was a reality, no matter whether her imagination made it or not;' but whether Mrs. Carlyle's imagination had in her opinion any thing to do with its creation, she either does not, or is not allowed to say, as Mr. Froude has only favoured us with extracts from her letter. The truth is, we think, that Mrs. Carlyle's low spirits, brought on by her peculiar and long-continued and indeed life-long ailments, had for the time being got the better of her, and were compelling her, contrary to her better sense, to think unworthily of her husband. That she had no real cause for her jealousy, we have the testimony of Mr. Froude, though with a singular inconsistency he speaks of her brooding over her wrongs.' Carlyle's letters,' he says, 'during all this period, are uniformly tender and affectionate, and in them was his true self, if she could but have allowed herself to see it. "Oh," he often said to me after she was gone, "if I could but see her for five minutes, to assure her that I had really cared for her throughout all that! But she never knew it, she never knew it." In passing, we cannot help making the remark, that though this painful episode occurs soon after Miss Jewsbury is mentioned in the letters, and that notwithstanding the fact that she continued to the day of Mrs. Carlyle's death her most intimate friend and companion, not one of the letters here printed is addressed to her. What the significance of this may be we cannot, of course, tell, and we do not venture to offer any opinion. Nor have we any reason for supposing that the influence which Miss Jewsbury exercised over Mrs. Carlyle was any other than the wisest. She has indeed been called 'romantic and officious,' and her stories about his wife Carlyle has described as 'mythic jottings. We trust, however, that the absence from the present volumes of any letters addressed to her by Mrs. Carlyle does not mean that the curtain is to be raised again, and that further attempts are to be made to elucidate or expand the Diary. Sufficient injury to the memory of Mrs. Carlyle has already been

ii. 257.