Like yourself I have gone through _Spedding_, seven long long volumes, not skipping except where I had got the sense with me, and generally reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy work I have ever met with in this generation. Bacon is washed clean down to the natural skin; and truly he is not nor ever was unlovely to me; a man of no culpability to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the 'melodies eternal' to be traced in him. Spedding's Book will last as long as there is any earnest memory held of Bacon, or of the age of James VI., upon whom as upon every stirring man in his epoch Spedding has shed new veritable illumination; in almost the whole of which I perfectly coincided with Spedding. In effect I walked up to the worthy man's house, whom I see but little, to tell him all this; and that being a miss, I drove up, Spedding having by request called here and missed me, but hitherto we have not met; and Spedding I doubt not could contrive to dispense with my eulogy. There is a grim strength in Spedding, quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate the indefatigably patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding. Adieu, dear F. I wish you a right quiet and healthy winter, and beg to be kept in memory as now probably your oldest friend. Ever faithfully yours, dear F., T. CARLYLE. _To W. H. Thompson_. [9 _Nov._ 1874.] MY DEAR MASTER, I think there can be no criminal breach of Confidence in your taking a Copy, if you will, of C[arlyle]'s Letter. Indeed, you are welcome to keep it:--there was but one Person else I wished to show it to, and she (a _She_) can do very well without it. I sent it to you directly I got it, because I thought you would be as pleased as I was with C.'s encomium on Spedding, which will console him (if he needs Consolation) for the obduracy of the World at large, myself among the number. I can indeed fully assent to Carlyle's Admiration of Spedding's History of the _Times_, as well as of the Hero who lived in them. But the Question still remains--was it worth forty years of such a Life as Spedding's to write even so good an Account of a few, not the most critical, Years of English History, and to leave Bacon (I think) a little less well off than when S. began washing him: I mean in the eyes of candid and sensible men, who simply supposed before that Bacon was no better than the Men of his Time, and now J. S. has proved it. I have no doubt that Carlyle takes up the Cudgels because he thinks the World is now going the other way. If Spedding's Book had been praised by the Critics--Oh Lord!