as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were
manifold, curious, genial; and, in fact, I do not recollect to have
heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic
one.'[30]

_Frederick_ was progressing, though slowly, as he found the ore in the
German material at his disposal "nowhere smelted out of it." The third
volume was finished and published in the summer of 1862; the fourth
volume was getting into type; and the fifth and last was finished in
January 1865. 'It nearly killed me,' Carlyle writes in his journal, 'it,
and my poor Jane's dreadful illness, now happily over. No sympathy could
be found on earth for those horrid struggles of twelve years, nor
happily was any needed. On Sunday evening in the end of January (1865) I
walked out, with the multiplex feeling--joy not very prominent in it,
but a kind of solemn thankfulness traceable, that I had written the last
sentence of that unutterable book, and, contrary to many forebodings in
bad hours, had actually got done with it for ever.'

In England it was at once admitted, says Froude, that a splendid
addition had been made to the national literature. 'The book contained,
if nothing else, a gallery of historical figures executed with a skill
which placed Carlyle at the head of literary portrait painters.... No
critic, after the completion of _Frederick_, challenged Carlyle's right
to a place beside the greatest of English authors, past or present.' The
work was translated instantly into German, calling forth the warmest
appreciation.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 115.

[19] Froude's "Life in London," vol. i. pp. 161-62.

[20] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 420.

[21] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. pp. 433-4.

[22] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 441.

[23] Ibid., vol. i. p. 451.

[24] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 456.

[25] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 26.

[26] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 36.

[27] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 43.

[28] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 142-45.

[29] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 156-7.

[30] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 245.

CHAPTER VI

RECTORIAL ADDRESS--DEATH OF MRS CARLYLE

After a round of holiday visits, including one to Annandale, the
Carlyles settled down once more at Cheyne Row in the summer of 1865.
'The great outward event of Carlyle's own life,' observes Froude,
'Scotla