In reviewing Lockhart's Life of Scott, Carlyle emptied the vials of his scorn, which were ample and capacious, upon "English biography, bless its mealy mouth." The censure of Lockhart for "personalities, indiscretion," violating the "sanctities of private life," was, he said, better than a good many praises.

A biographer should speak the truth, having the fear of God before his eyes, and no other fear whatever.

That Lockhart had done, and in the eyes Carlyle, who admired him as he admired few it was a supreme merit.
For the hypothesis Lockhart "at heart had a dislike to Scott, had done his best in an underhand, treacherous manner to dis-hero him," he expressed, as he well might, unbounded contempt.

It seems incredible now that such a theory should ever, in or out of Bedlam, have been held.

Perhaps it will be equally incredible some day that a similar view should have been taken of the relations between Froude and Carlyle.
It is no disparagement of Lockhart's great book to say that in this respect of telling the truth he had an easy task.