Froude rightly felt that Carlyle's petty grumbles, often most amusing, throw into bright and strong relief his splendid generosity to his kinsfolk, his manly pride in writing what was good instead of what was lucrative, his anxiety that Mill should not perceive what he lost in the first volume of The French Revolution.

Whenever a crisis came, Carlyle stood the test.

The greater the occasion, the better he behaved.

One thing Froude did not give, and perhaps no biographer could.

Carlyle was essentially a humourist.