CHAPTER XII 

 CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA 



SO much has been written and read of the two remarkable 

 people who, for the best part of half a century, were the 

 tenants of No. 5 now 24 Cheyne Row, that there is little 

 that is new and not generally known to record of them. 



It will serve some purpose, however, to collect the existing 

 memoranda of the not inconsiderable part the little garden at the 

 back of the house played in their lives. 



James Anthony Froude has been severely censured for the 

 manner in which, as Carlyle's literary executor and trusted friend, 

 he fulfilled his task. 



Some think he betrayed the confidence reposed in him, but 

 without entering far into that vexed question, we must in fairness 

 remember that, as he tells ,us in his preface to the " Life of Carlyle," 

 the philosopher himself, in reviewing Lockhart's " Life of Scott," 

 had defended Lockhart from a similar charge, insisting that every 

 biographer should be honest, and candid ; because, he says, " to 

 produce not things, but the ghosts of things, can never be the 

 duty of man . . . your true hero is not a white, stainless, imper- 

 sonal ghost-hero," by which he means, of course, that every hero 

 is a man, with human failings as well as virtues, and that it rests 

 with the biographer to give these their proper proportion. I 

 scarcely think that Froude, though sometimes he may have been 

 indiscreet and mistaken in his conclusions, failed, on the whole, 

 to do this, because, speaking for myself, I must say I rose from 

 the perusal of the " Life," and afterwards of " The Letters and 

 Memorials," with a much greater enthusiasm and admiration for 



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