226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



little incident of bis daily life, is liable even now to misconstruction, 

 or to interpretation out of its just proportions. 



" Take for example Mr. Froude's story of Carlyle's bebavior in tbe 

 first days of bis wife's severe illness in 1864, from the effects of a cab 

 accident in the streets of London. * The nerves and muscles,' says Mr. 

 Froude, * were completely disabled on the side on which she bad fallen, 

 and one effect was that the undcr-jaw had dropped and that she could 

 not close it. Carlyle always disliked an open mouth ; he thought it a 

 sign of foolishness. One morning, when tbe pain was at its worst, he 

 came into her room, and stood looking at her, leaning on tbe mantel- 

 piece. ' Jane,' he said presently, * ye had better shut your mouth.' She 

 tried to tell him that she could not. * Jane,' he began again, ' ye'll find 

 yourself in a more compact and pious frame of mind if ye shut your 

 mouth.' This story Mr. Froude received, he tells us, from Mrs. Car- 

 lyle herself ; and there is no doubt as to its authenticity. "What I am 

 sure of is that Mr. Froude treats it too gravely, or might lead his 

 readers to treat it too gravely, by missing that sense of the pure fun 

 of tbe thing which was present in Mrs. Carlyle's mind when she re- 

 membered it afterward, however provoking it may have been at the 

 moment. 



" Insufficient appreciation of the amount of consciously humorous, 

 and mutually admiring, give-and-take of this kind in the married life 

 of the extraordinary pair, both of them so sensitively organized, has 

 had much to do, it seems to me, with that elaborately studied contrast 

 of them and too painful picture of their relations which Mr. Froude 

 has succeeded in impressing upon the public. There were, it is true, 

 passages of discord between them, of temporary jealousy and a sense 

 of injury on one side at least, from causes too deep to be reached by 

 this explanation ; but it rubs away many a superficial roughness ; and, 

 if Mr. Froude had been more susceptible of humorous suggestions 

 from his subject, he w^ould not, I believe, have found this married life 

 of Carlyle and Jane Welsh so exceptionally a tragedy throughout in 

 comparison with other married lives, and would not have kept up such 

 a uniform strain of dolefulness in his own performance of the part of 

 the chorus. The immense seriousness of Carlyle's own mind and views 

 of things, the apparent prevalence of the dark and dismal in his own 

 action and monologue through the drama, even required, I should say, 

 an unusual power of lightsomcness in the chorus, and this not as 

 mere trick for literary relief, but actually for insight, correction, and 

 compensation." 



The lecture from which this passage is taken is full of acute insight 

 into the personality of Carlyle, and is extremely interesting as a study 

 in the interpretation of character ; but the second lecture on "Carlyle's 

 Literary Life and bis Creed " will have such a special interest for the 

 readers of the " Monthly " that we propose to make copious quotations 

 from it. 



