The manuscript is by no means ready for publication; nay, the questions how, when (after what delay, seven, ten years) it, or any portion of it, should be published are still dark to me; but on all such points James Anthony Froude's practical summing up and decision is to be taken as mine." No expression of confidence could well be stronger, no discretion could well be more absolute.

So far as one man can substitute another for himself, Carlyle substituted Froude.
Froude was under the impression that Carlyle had given him the letters because he wanted them to be published, and did not want to publish them.

Embarrassing as the position was, he accepted it in tranquil ignorance of what was to come.

Two years after the receipt of the memoirs and letters there arrived at his house a box of more letters, more memoirs, dimes, odds and ends, put together without much arrangement in the course of a long life.

He was told that they were the materials for Carlyle's biography, and was begged to undertake it forthwith.