内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m CARLYLE'S REMINISCENCESl 1881 There can be no doubt as to the permanent vitality of this book, or of the careless genius which produced it after this random fashion, at an age when Carlyle was looking back upon a long and laborious life. But there may be, I think, much doubt as to the manner in which Mr. Froude has exercised the absolute discretion entrusted to him by Carlyle as to the use he should make of these reminiscences. I do not think that Carlyle, with his great pride and his deep reserve, would ever have approved of the inclusion in this book of all the constant references to his wife, and to his love for her, poured out with the freedom of a diarist, though of a diarist who has formed for himself that semi-artificial manner which suggests a consciousness of audience. The rhapsodies on his " noblest," " queenliest," " beautifullest," and so forth, natural enough to the old man in his desolation, should not, I think, have been given to the world as they were written. What is the proper sphere of privacy, if the half-remorseful self-reproaches 1 Jteminiscences by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by James Anthony Froude. Two vols. 1881. London: Longmans. of the tenderest love, accusing itself of inadequacy, are to be made public to all the world ? However, I shall deal here only with the pleasanter and more brilliant characteristics of the book. And nothing contained in it is so affecting as the few pages devoted to the memory of James Carlyle. Carlyle speaks of himself, with a certain dignified pride, as " the humble James Carlyle's work "; and no doubt, there was much of the father in the son, though the stern, taciturn conciseness of the father was blended in the son with the artistic restlessness and discontent, which seek relief in words and cannot hold the mou...