Sir Henry Taylor, the most serene and dignified of men, found himself charged in Carlyle's sketch of Southey with the unpleasant attribute of "morbid vivacity," and not only with morbid vivacity simpliciter, or per se, but "in all senses of that deep-reaching word." Mr.Norton restored the true reading, which was "marked veracity," though, on the other hand, he replaced the statement, omitted by Froude, that Taylor, who had died between the two editions, was "not a well-read or wide-minded man." It must be admitted that in this instance Froude allowed a proof which made nonsense to pass, and that Mr.Norton did a public service by correcting the phrase.

Froude's occasional carelessness in revision is a common failing enough.

What made it remarkable in him was the combination of liability to these lapses with intensely laborious and methodical habits.
Although Froude's legal connection with Carlyle's family ceased with the assignment to Carlyle's niece of the copyright in the Reminiscences, the names of the two men are as inseparably associated as Boswell's and Johnson's, Lockhart's and Scott's, Macaulay's and Trevelyan's, Morley's and Gladstone's.

Some readers, such as Tennyson and Lecky, thought that Froude had revealed too much.

Others, such as John Skelton and Edward FitzGerald, believed that he had raised Carlyle to a higher eminence than he had occupied before.