Carlyle's memory would also have suffered parable injury.

It is said, and it squares with the facts, that Mary Carlyle and her friends, whose literary judgment was not quite equal to Carlyle's own, desired to substitute as his biographer some learned professor in Scotland.* If that were their object, they are to be congratulated upon their failure.

For the offer was not carried out.

As a bare promise without consideration it was not of course valid in law, and since no one had acted upon it, its withdrawal did no one any harm.

There were also legal difficulties which made its fulfilment impossible.
According to counsel's opinion, dated the 13th of May, 1881, Carlyle's request that the papers should be restored was "an attempted verbal testamentary disposition, which had no legal authority." The documents belonged not to Froude personally, but to himself and Fitz-james Stephen, as joint executors, and Stephen has left it on record that he would not have consented to their return until Froude's task was accomplished.
-- * David Masson, the editor of Milton, I have been told, but I do not know.
-- Mrs.Alexander Carlyle's view was not shared by other and older members of her uncle's family.