justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But
when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he
not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily
forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular
frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:"
talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the
reflection beloved of local historians--"If these grey old walls could
speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive
such a note as this:--

"Sir John Suckling was incapable of understanding Carew in his
final days of sickness and depression, as he had been (and this
is conceding much) in their earlier days of reckless gallantry.
His vile address 'to T---- C----,' etc., 'Troth, _Tom_, I must
confess I much admire ...' is nothing more than coarse badinage
without foundation; in any case not necessarily addressed to
Carew, although they were of close acquaintance; but many other
Toms were open to a similar expression, since 'T.C.' might apply
to Thomas Carey, to Thomas Crosse, and other T.C. poets."

It is not pleasant to rake up any man's faults; but when an editor
begins to suggest some new man against whom nothing is known (except
that he wrote indifferent verse)--who is not even known to have been
on speaking terms with Suckling--as the proper target of Suckling's
coarse raillery, we have a right not only to protest, but to point out
that even Clarendon, who liked Carew, wrote of him that, "after fifty
years of his life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought
to have been, he died with great remorse for that license, and with
the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could
desire." If Carew thought fit to feel remorse for that license, it