Froude speaks in his preface of having made "requisite omissions." A few more omissions might have been made with advantage, especially a brutal passage about Charles Lamb and his sister, which Elia's countless admirers find it hard to forgive.

Mrs.Procter, widow of Barry Cornwall, the poet, and herself a most remarkable woman, was so much annoyed by the description of her mother, Mrs.Basil Montagu, and her step-father, the editor of Bacon,* that she published some early and rather obsequious letters written to them by Carlyle himself.
But the chief outcry was raised by the revelation of Carlyle's most intimate feelings about his wife, and about his own behaviour to her.

There was nothing very bad.

He was driven to accuse himself of the crime that, when he was writing Frederick and she lay ill on the sofa, he used to talk to her about the battle of Mollwitz.

Froude was naturally astonished at the effect produced, but then Froude knew Carlyle, and the public did not.
-- * Carlyle's Miscellanies, i.