{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32626/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32626","id":"gutenberg_32626","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32626","summary":null,"tags":["Authors, Scottish -- 19th century -- Biography","Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881","Category: Biographies","Category: British Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Famous Scots Series","Historians -- Great Britain -- Biography"],"text":"E-text prepared by Susan Skinner and the Project Gutenberg Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFAMOUS SCOTS SERIES\n\n\n_The following Volumes are now ready_:--\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson.\nALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton.\nHUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask.\nJOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes.\nROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun.\nTHE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie.\nRICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless.\nSIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson.\nTHOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie.\nJAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask.\nTOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton.\nFLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond.\nTHE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas.\nNORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood.\nSIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury.\nKIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By Louis A. Barbe.\nROBERT FERGUSSON. By A. B. Grosart.\nJAMES THOMSON. By William Bayne.\nMUNGO PARK. By T. Banks Maclachlan.\nDAVID HUME. By Professor Calderwood.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE\n\nby\n\nHECTOR C MACPHERSON\n\nFamous Scots Series\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPublished by Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier\nEdinburgh and London\n\nThe designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr Joseph Brown, and the\nprinting from the press of Messrs Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.\n\nSecond Edition completing Seventh Thousand.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION\n\n\nOf the writing of books on Carlyle there is no end. Why, then, it may\npertinently be asked, add another stone to the Carlylean cairn? The\nreply is obvious. In a series dealing with famous Scotsmen, Carlyle has\na rightful claim to a niche in the temple of Fame. While prominence has\nbeen given in the book to the Scottish side of Carlyle's life, the fact\nhas not been lost sight of that Carlyle owed much to Germany; indeed, if\nwe could imagine the spirit of a German philosopher inhabiting the body\nof a Covenanter of dyspeptic and sceptical tendencies, a good idea would\nbe had of Thomas Carlyle. Needless to say, I have been largely indebted\nto the biography by Mr Froude, and to Carlyle's _Reminiscences_. After\nall has been said, the fact remains that Froude's portrait, though\ntruthful in the main, is somewhat deficient in light and\nshade--qualities which the student will find admirably supplied in\nProfessor Masson's charming little book, \"Carlyle Personally, and in his\nWritings.\" To the Professor I am under deep obligation for the interest\nhe has shown in the book. In the course of his perusal of the proofs,\nProfessor Masson made valuable corrections and suggestions, which\ndeserve more than a formal acknowledgment. To Mr Haldane, M.P., my\nthanks are also due for his suggestive criticism of the chapter on\nGerman thought, upon which he is an acknowledged authority.\n\nI have also to express my deep obligations to Mr John Morley, who, in\nthe midst of pressing engagements, kindly found time to read the proof\nsheets. In a private note Mr Morley has been good enough to express his\ngeneral sympathy and concurrence with my estimate of Carlyle.\n\n_EDINBURGH, October 1897._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\nCHAPTER I\n\nEARLY LIFE                                                             9\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCRAIGENPUTTOCK--LITERARY EFFORTS                                      29\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nCARLYLE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT                                          42\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nLIFE IN LONDON                                                        65\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nHOLIDAY JOURNEYINGS--LITERARY WORK                                    79\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nRECTORIAL ADDRESS--DEATH OF MRS CARLYLE                              112\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nLAST YEARS AND DEATH OF CARLYLE                                      129\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nCARLYLE AS A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THINKER                            138\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nCARLYLE AS AN INSPIRATIONAL FORCE                                    152\n\n\n\n\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nEARLY LIFE\n\n\n'A great man,' says Hegel, 'condemns the world to the task of explaining\nhim.' Emphatically does the remark apply to Thomas Carlyle. When he\nbegan to leave his impress in literature, he was treated as a confusing\nand inexplicable element. Opinion oscillated between the view of James\nMill, that Carlyle was an insane rhapsodist, and that of Jeffrey, that\nhe was afflicted with a chronic craze for singularity. Jeffrey's verdict\nsums up pretty effectively the attitude of the critics of the time to\nthe new writer:--'I suppose that you will treat me as something worse\nthan an ass, when I say that I am firmly persuaded the great source of\nyour extravagance, and all that makes your writings intolerable to many\nand ridiculous to not a few, is not so much any real peculiarity of\nopinion, as an unlucky ambition to appear more original than you are.'\nThe blunder made by Jeffrey in regard both to Carlyle and Wordsworth\nemphasises the truth which critics seem reluctant to bear in mind, that,\nbefore the great man can be explained, he must be appreciated.\nEmphatically true of Carlyle it is that he creates the standard by which\nhe is judged. Carlyle resembles those products of the natural world\nwhich biologists call 'sports'--products which, springing up in a\nspontaneous and apparently erratic way, for a time defy classification.\nThe time is appropriate for an attempt to classify the great thinker,\nwhose birth took place one hundred years ago.\n\nTowards the close of the last century a stone-mason, named James\nCarlyle, started business on his own account in the village of\nEcclefechan, Dumfriesshire. He was an excellent tradesman, and frugal\nwithal; and in the year 1791 he married a distant kinswoman of his own,\nJanet Carlyle, who died after giving birth to a son. In the beginning of\n1795 he married one Margaret Aitken, a worthy, intelligent woman; and on\nthe 4th of December following a son was born, whom they called Thomas,\nafter his paternal grandfather. This child was destined to be the most\noriginal writer of his time.\n\nLittle Thomas was early taught to read by his mother, and at the age of\nfive he learnt to 'count' from his father. He was then sent to the\nvillage school; and in his seventh year he was reported to be 'complete'\nin English. As the schoolmaster was weak in the classics, Tom was\ntaught the rudiments of Latin by the burgher minister, of which strict\nsect James Carlyle was a zealous member. One summer morning, in 1806,\nhis father took him to Annan Academy. 'It was a bright morning,' he\nwrote long years thereafter, 'and to me full of moment, of fluttering\nboundless Hopes, saddened by parting with Mother, with Home, and which\nafterwards were cruelly disappointed.' At that 'doleful and hateful\nAcademy,' to use his own words, Thomas Carlyle spent three years,\nlearning to read French and Latin, and the Greek alphabet, as well as\nacquiring a smattering of geometry and algebra.\n\nIt was in the Academy that he got his first glimpse of Edward\nIrving--probably in April or May 1808--who had called to pay his\nrespects to his old teacher, Mr Hope. Thomas's impression of him was\nthat of a 'flourishing slip of a youth, with coal-black hair, swarthy\nclear complexion, very straight on his feet, and except for the glaring\nsquint alone, decidedly handsome.' Years passed before young Carlyle saw\nIrving's face again.\n\nJames Carlyle, although an austere man, and the reverse of\ndemonstrative, was bound up in his son, sparing no expense upon the\nyouth's education. On one occasion he exclaimed, with an unwonted\noutburst of glee, 'Tom, I do not grudge thy schooling, now when thy\nUncle Frank owns thee to be a better Arithmetician than himself.' Early\nrecognising the natural talent and aptitude of his son, he determined\nto send him to the nearest university, with a view to Thomas studying\nfor the ministry. One crisp winter's morning, in 1809, found Thomas\nCarlyle on his way to Edinburgh, trudging the entire distance--one\nhundred miles or so.\n\nHe went through the usual university course, attended the divinity\nclasses, and delivered the customary discourses in English and Latin.\nBut Tom was not destined to 'wag his head in a pulpit,' for he had\nconscientious objections which parental control in no way interfered\nwith. Referring to this vital period of his life, Carlyle wrote: 'His\n[father's] tolerance for me, his trust in me, was great. When I declined\ngoing forward into the Church (though his heart was set upon it), he\nrespected my scruples, my volition, and patiently let me have my way.'\nCarlyle never looked back to his university life with satisfaction. In\nhis interesting recollections Mr Moncure Conway represents Carlyle,\ndescribing his experiences as follows:--'Very little help did I get from\nanybody in those years, and, as I may say, no sympathy at all in all\nthis old town. And if there was any difference, it was found least where\nI might most have hoped for it. There was Professor ----. For years I\nattended his lectures, in all weathers and all hours. Many and many a\ntime, when the class was called together, it was found to consist of one\nindividual--to wit, of him now speaking; and still oftener, when others\nwere present, the only person who had at all looked into the lesson\nassigned was the same humble individual. I remember no instance in which\nthese facts elicited any note or comment from that instructor. He once\nrequested me to translate a mathematical paper, and I worked through it\nthe whole of one Sunday, and it was laid before him, and it was received\nwithout remark or thanks. After such long years, I came to part with\nhim, and to get my certificate. Without a word, he wrote on a bit of\npaper: \"I certify that Mr Thomas Carlyle has been in my class during his\ncollege course, and has made good progress in his studies.\" Then he rang\na bell, and ordered a servant to open the front door for me. Not the\nslightest sign that I was a person whom he could have distinguished in\nany crowd. And so I parted from old ----.'\n\nProfessor Masson, who in loving, painstaking style has ferreted all the\nfacts about Carlyle's university life, sums up in these words: 'Without\nassuming that he meant the university described in _Sartor Resartus_ to\nstand literally for Edinburgh University, of his own experience, we have\nseen enough to show that any specific training of much value he\nconsidered himself to owe to his four years in the Arts classes in\nEdinburgh University, was the culture of his mathematical faculty under\nLeslie, and that for the rest he acknowledged merely a certain benefit\nfrom being in so many class-rooms where matters intellectual were\nprofessedly in the atmosphere, and where he learned to take advantage\nof books.' As Carlyle put it in his Rectorial Address of 1866, 'What I\nhave found the university did for me is that it taught me to read in\nvarious languages, in various sciences, so that I go into the books\nwhich treated of these things, and gradually penetrate into any\ndepartment I wanted to make myself master of, as I found it suit me.'\n\nIn 1814, Carlyle obtained the mathematical tutorship at Annan. Out of\nhis slender salary of L60 or L70 he was able to save something, so that\nhe was practically independent. By and by James Carlyle gave up his\ntrade, and settled on a small farm at Mainhill, about two miles from\nEcclefechan. Thither Thomas hied with unfeigned delight at holiday time,\nfor he led the life of a recluse at Annan, his books being his sole\ncompanions.\n\nEdward Irving, to whom Carlyle was introduced in college days, was now\nsettled as a dominie in Kirkcaldy. His teaching was not favourably\nviewed by some of the parents, who started a rival school, and resolved\nto import a second master, with the result that Carlyle was selected.\nIrving, with great magnanimity, gave him a cordial welcome to the 'Lang\nToon,' and the two Annandale natives became fast friends. The elder\nplaced his well-selected library at the disposal of the younger, and\ntogether they explored the whole countryside. Short visits to Edinburgh\nhad a special attraction for both, where they met with a few kindred\nspirits. On one of those visits, Carlyle, who had not cut off his\nconnection with the university, called at the Divinity Hall to put down\nhis name formally on the annual register. In his own words: 'Old Dr\nRitchie \"not at home\" when I called to enter myself. \"Good!\" answered I;\n\"_let the omen be fulfilled_.\"' Carlyle's studies in Kirkcaldy made him\neager to contribute to the fulfilment of the omen. Among the authors\nwhich he read out of the Edinburgh University library was Gibbon, who\npushed Carlyle's sceptical questionings to a definite point. In a\nconversation with Professor Masson, Carlyle stated that to his reading\nof Gibbon he dated the extirpation from his mind of the last remnant\nthat had been left in it of the orthodox belief in miracles.\n\nIn the space of two years, Carlyle and Irving 'got tired of\nschoolmastering and its mean contradictions and poor results.' They bade\nKirkcaldy farewell and made for Edinburgh,--Irving to lodge in Bristo\nStreet, 'more expensive rooms than mine,' naively remarks Carlyle, where\nhe gave breakfasts to 'Intellectualities he fell in with, I often a\nguest with them. They were but stupid Intellectualities, etc.' As for\ntheir prospects, this is what Carlyle says: 'Irving's outlooks in\nEdinburgh were not of the best, considerably checkered with dubiety,\nopposition, or even flat disfavour in some quarters; but at least they\nwere far superior to mine, and indeed, I was beginning my four or five\nmost miserable, dark, sick, and heavy-laden years; Irving, after some\nstaggerings aback, his seven or eight healthiest and brightest. He had,\nI should guess, as one item several good hundreds of money to wait upon.\nMy _peculium_ I don't recollect, but it could not have exceeded L100. I\nwas without friends, experience, or connection in the sphere of human\nbusiness, was of shy humour, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my\nlong curriculum of _dyspepsia_ which has never ended since!'[1]\nCarlyle's intention was to study for the Bar, if perchance he could eke\nout a livelihood by private teaching. He obtained one or two pupils,\nwrote a stray article or so for the 'Encyclopaedias'; but as he barely\nmanaged to pay his way, he speedily gave up his law studies. He was at\nthis time--the winter of 1819--'advancing,' as he phrases it, 'towards\nhuge instalments of bodily and spiritual wretchedness in this my\nEdinburgh purgatory.' It was about a couple of years thereafter ere\nCarlyle went through what he has described as his 'spiritual new birth.'\n\nWhen Carlyle was in diligent search for congenial employment, a certain\nCaptain Basil Hall crossed his path, to whom Edward Irving had given\nlessons in mathematics. The 'small lion,' as he calls the captain, came\nto Carlyle, and wished the latter to go out with him 'to Dunglas,' and\nthere do 'lunars' in his name, he looking on and learning of Carlyle\n'what would come of its own will.' The said 'lunars' meanwhile were to\ngo to the Admiralty, 'testifying there what a careful studious Captain\nhe was, and help to get him promotion, so the little wretch smilingly\ntold me.' Carlyle adds: 'I remember the figure of him in my dim lodging\nas a gay, crackling, sniggering spectre, one dusk, endeavouring to\nseduce me by affability in lieu of liberal wages into this adventure.\nWages, I think, were to be smallish (\"so poor are we\"), but then the\ngreat Playfair is coming on visit. \"You will see Professor Playfair.\" I\nhad not the least notion of such an enterprise on these shining terms,\nand Captain Basil with his great Playfair _in posse_ vanished for me\ninto the shades of dusk for good.'[2] When private teaching would not\ncome Carlyle's way, he timorously aimed towards 'literature.' He had\ntaken to the study of German, and conscious of his own powers in that\ndirection, he applied in vain to more than one London bookseller,\nproposing a complete translation of Schiller. Irving not only did his\nutmost to comfort Carlyle in his spiritual wrestlings, but he tried to\nfind him employment. The two friends continued to make pleasant\nexcursions, and in June 1821 Irving brought Carlyle to Haddington, an\nevent which was destined to colour all his subsequent life; for it was\nthen and there he first saw Jane Welsh, a sight, he acknowledged, for\never memorable to him.\n\n'In the ancient County Town of Haddington, July 14, 1801, there was\nborn,' wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1869, 'to a lately wedded pair, not\nnatives of the place but already reckoned among the best class of people\nthere, a little Daughter whom they named _Jane Baillie Welsh_, and whose\nsubsequent and final name (her own common signature for many years) was\n_Jane Welsh Carlyle_, and now so stands, now that she is mine in death\nonly, on her and her Father's Tombstone in the Abbey Kirk of that Town.\nJuly 14th, 1801; I was then in my sixth year, far away in every sense,\nnow near and infinitely concerned, trying doubtfully after some three\nyears' sad cunctation, if there is anything that I can profitably put on\nrecord of her altogether bright, beneficent and modest little Life, and\nHer, as my final task in this world.'[3] The picture was never completed\nby the master-hand; the 'effort was too distressing'; so all his notes\nand letters were handed over to a literary executor.\n\nAt the time of Carlyle's introduction to Miss Welsh, she was living with\nher widowed mother. Her father, Dr John Welsh, came of a good family,\nand was a popular country physician. Her mother was Grace Welsh of\nCapelgill, and was reckoned a beautiful, but haughty woman. Their\nmarriage took place in 1800, and their only child, Jane, was born, as we\nhave seen, the year following. Her most intimate friend, Miss Geraldine\nJewsbury, tells us that Miss Welsh had 'a graceful and beautifully-formed\nfigure, upright and supple, a delicate complexion of creamy white, with\na pale rose tint in the cheeks, lovely eyes full of fire and softness,\nand with great depths of meaning.' She had a musical voice, was a good\ntalker, extremely witty, and so fascinating in every way that a relative\nof hers told Miss Jewsbury that every man who spoke to her for five\nminutes felt impelled to make her an offer of marriage. Be that as it\nmay, it _is_ certain that Miss Jane Welsh had troops of suitors in and\naround the quiet country town. She always spoke of her mother with deep\naffection and great admiration. Her father she reverenced, and he was\nthe only person during her girlhood who had any real influence over her.\nThis, then, was the young lady of whom Thomas Carlyle carried back to\nEdinburgh a sweet and lasting impression. They corresponded at\nintervals, and Thomas was permitted to send her books occasionally.\n\nEdward Irving used to live in Dr Welsh's house when he taught in the\nlocal school, and he led Jeannie--a winsome, wilful lass--to take an\ninterest in the classics. She entertained a girlish passion for the\nhandsome youth, and there can be little doubt that they would have\nultimately been married, were it not that the eldest daughter of a\nKirkcaldy parson, Miss Martin, had 'managed to charm Irving for the time\nbeing,' and an engagement followed.\n\nBefore Carlyle had drifted into Edinburgh he had, of course, heard of\nthe fame of Francis Jeffrey. He heard him once speaking in the General\nAssembly 'on some poor cause.' Jeffrey's pleading seemed to Carlyle\n'abundantly clear, full of liveliness, free flowing ingenuity.' 'My\nadmiration,' he adds, 'went frankly with that of others, but I think it\nwas hardly of very deep character.' When Carlyle was in the 'slough of\ndespond,' he bethought him of Jeffrey, this time as editor of the\n_Edinburgh Review_. He resolved to try the 'great man' with an actual\ncontribution. The subject was a condemnation of a new French book, in\nwhich a mechanical theory of gravitation was elaborately worked out by\nthe author. He got 'a certain feeble but enquiring quasi-disciple' of\nhis own to act as amanuensis, from whom he kept his ulterior purpose\nquite secret. Looking back through the dim vista of seven-and-forty\nyears, this is what Carlyle says of that anxious time: 'Well do I\nremember those dreary evenings in Bristo Street; oh, what ghastly\npassages and dismal successive spasms of attempt at \"literary\nenterprise\"!... My \"Review of Pictet\" all fairly written out in George\nDalgliesh's good clerk hand, I penned some brief polite Note to the\ngreat Editor, and walked off with the small Parcel one night to his\naddress in George Street. I very well remember leaving it with his valet\nthere, and disappearing in the night with various thoughts and doubts!\nMy hopes had never risen high, or in fact risen at all; but for a\nfortnight or so they did not quite die out, and then it was in absolute\nzero; no answer, no return of MS., absolutely no notice taken, which was\na form of catastrophe more complete than even I had anticipated! There\nrose in my head a pungent little Note which might be written to the\ngreat man, with neatly cutting considerations offered him from the small\nunknown ditto; but I wisely judged it was still more dignified to let\nthe matter lie as it was, and take what I had got for my own benefit\nonly. Nor did I ever mention it to almost anybody, least of all to\nJeffrey in subsequent changed times, when at anyrate it was fallen\nextinct.'[4]\n\nCarlyle's star was, however, in the ascendant, for in 1822 he became\ntutor to the two sons of a wealthy lady, Mrs Charles Buller, at a salary\nof L200 a year. It was through Irving that this appointment came. The\nyoung lads boarded with 'a good old Dr Fleming' in George Square,\nwhither Carlyle went daily from his lodgings at[5]3 Moray Street,\nPilrig Street. The Bullers finally returned to London, Carlyle staying\nat his father's little homestead of Mainhill to finish a translation of\n'Wilhelm Meister.' He followed the Bullers to London, where he resigned\nthe tutorship in the hope of getting some literary work.\n\nIrving introduced him to the proprietor of the _London Magazine_, who\noffered Carlyle sixteen guineas a sheet for a series of 'Portraits of\nMen of Genius and Character.' The first was to be a life of Schiller,\nwhich appeared in that periodical in 1823-4. Mr Boyd, the Edinburgh\npublisher, accepted the translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' 'Two years\nbefore,' wrote Carlyle in his _Reminiscences_, 'I had at length, after\nsome repulsions, got into the heart of \"Wilhelm Meister,\" and eagerly\nread it through; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant streets\nof Edinburgh, (a windless, Scotch-misty Saturday night), is still vivid\nto me. \"Grand, surely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, wise,\nand true: when, for many years, or almost in my life before, have I read\nsuch a book?\"' A short letter from Goethe in Weimar, in acknowledgment\nof a copy of his 'Wilhelm Meister,' was peculiarly gratifying to\nCarlyle.\n\nCarlyle was not happy in London; dyspepsia and 'the noises' sorely\ntroubled him. He was anxious to be gone. To the surprise of Irving--who\nwas now settled in the metropolis--and everybody else, he resolutely\ndecided to return to Annandale, where his father had leased for him a\ncompact little farm at Hoddam Hill, three miles from Mainhill, and\nvisible from the fields at the back of it. 'Perhaps it was the very day\nbefore my departure,' wrote Carlyle, 'at least it is the last I\nrecollect of him [Irving], we were walking in the streets multifariously\ndiscoursing; a dim grey day, but dry and airy;--at the corner of\nCockspur Street we paused for a moment, meeting Sir John Sinclair\n(\"Statistical Account of Scotland\" etc.), whom I had never seen before\nand never saw again. A lean old man, tall but stooping, in tartan cloak,\nface very wrinkly, nose blue, physiognomy vague and with distinction as\none might have expected it to be. He spoke to Irving with benignant\nrespect, whether to me at all I don't recollect.'\n\nCarlyle shook the dust of London from off his feet, and by easy stages\nmade his way northwards. Arrived at Ecclefechan, within two miles of his\nfather's house, while the coach was changing horses, Carlyle noticed\nthrough the window his little sister Jean earnestly looking up for him.\nShe, with Jenny, the youngest of the family, was at school in the\nvillage, and had come out daily to inspect the coach in hope of seeing\nhim. 'Her bonny little blush and radiancy of look when I let down the\nwindow and suddenly disclosed myself,' wrote Carlyle in 1867, 'are still\npresent to me.' On the 26th of May 1825, he established himself at\nHoddam Hill, and set about 'German Romance.' His brother Alick managed\nthe farm, and his mother, with one of the girls, was generally there to\nlook after his comforts.\n\nDuring the intervening years, Carlyle's intimacy with Miss Jane Welsh\ngradually increased, with occasional differences. She had promised to\nmarry him if he could 'achieve independence.' Carlyle's idea was that\nafter their marriage they should settle upon the farm of Craigenputtock,\nwhich had been in the possession of the Welsh family for generations,\nand devote himself to literary work. By and by Miss Welsh accepted his\noffer of marriage, but not until she had acquainted him of the Irving\nincident. The wedding took place on the 17th of October 1825, and the\nyoung couple took up housekeeping in a quiet cottage at Comely Bank,\nEdinburgh. Of his life at this period, the best description is given by\nCarlyle himself, in a letter to Mrs Basil Montague, dated Christmas Day\n1826:--\n\n'In spite of ill-health I reckon myself moderately happy here, much\nhappier than men usually are, or than such a fool as I deserve to be. My\ngood wife exceeds all my hopes, and is, in truth, I believe, among the\nbest women that the world contains. The philosophy of the heart is far\nbetter than that of the understanding. She loves me with her whole soul,\nand this one sentiment has taught her much that I have long been vainly\nat the schools to learn.... On the whole, what I chiefly want is\noccupation; which, when the times grow better, or my own genius gets\nmore alert and thorough-going, will not fail, I suppose, to present\nitself.... Some day--oh, that the day were here!--I shall surely speak\nout those things that are lying in me, and give me no sleep till they\nare spoken! Or else, if the Fates would be so kind as to shew me--that I\nhad nothing to say! This, perhaps, is the real secret of it after all;\na hard result, yet not intolerable, were it once clear and certain.\nLiterature, it seems, is to be my trade, but the present aspects of it\namong us seem to me peculiarly perplexed and uninviting.'[6]Here, as in\nundertone, we discover what Professor Masson calls the constitutional\nsadness of Carlyle--a sadness which, along with indifferent health, led\nhim to be impatient at trifles, morbid, proud, and at times needlessly\naggressive in speech and demeanour. These traits, however, in the early\nyears of married life were not specially visible; and on the whole the\nComely Bank period may be described as one of calm happiness. Carlyle's\nforecast was correct. Literature was to be his trade.\n\nIn the following spring came a letter to Carlyle from Procter (Barry\nCornwall), whom he had met in London, offering to introduce him formally\nto Jeffrey, whom he certified to be a 'very fine fellow.' One evening\nCarlyle sallied forth from Comely Bank for Jeffrey's house in George\nStreet, armed with Procter's letter. He was shown into the study. 'Fire,\npair of candles,' he relates, 'were cheerfully burning, in the light of\nwhich sate my famous little gentleman; laid aside his work, cheerfully\ninvited me to sit, and began talking in a perfectly human manner.' The\ninterview lasted for about twenty minutes, during which time Jeffrey had\nmade kind enquiries what his visitor was doing and what he had\npublished; adding, 'We must give you a lift,' an offer, Carlyle says,\nwhich in 'some complimentary way' he managed to Jeffrey's satisfaction\nto decline. Jeffrey returned Carlyle's call, when he was captivated by\nMrs Carlyle. The intimacy rapidly increased, and a short paper by\nCarlyle on Jean Paul appeared in the very next issue of the _Edinburgh\nReview_. 'It made,' says the author, 'what they call a sensation among\nthe Edinburgh buckrams; which was greatly heightened next Number by the\nmore elaborate and grave article on \"German Literature\" generally, which\nset many tongues wagging, and some few brains considering, _what_ this\nstrange monster could be that was come to disturb their quiescence and\nthe established order of Nature! Some Newspapers or Newspaper took to\ndenouncing \"the Mystic School,\" which my bright little Woman declared to\nconsist of me alone, or of her and me, and for a long while after\nmerrily used to designate us by that title.'\n\nMrs Carlyle proved an admirable hostess; Jeffrey became a frequent\nvisitor at Comely Bank, and they discovered 'mutual old cousinships' by\nthe maternal side. Jeffrey's friendship was an immense acquisition to\nCarlyle, and everybody regarded it as his highest good fortune. The\n_literati_ of Edinburgh came to see her, and 'listen to her husband's\nastonishing monologues.' To Carlyle's regret, Jeffrey would not talk in\ntheir frequent rambles of his experiences in the world, 'nor of things\nconcrete and current,' but was 'theoretic generally'; and seemed bent\non converting Carlyle from his 'German mysticism,' back merely, as the\nlatter could perceive, into 'dead Edinburgh Whiggism, scepticism, and\nmaterialism'; 'what I felt,' says Carlyle, 'to be a forever impossible\nenterprise.' They had long discussions, 'parryings, and thrustings,'\nwhich 'I have known continue night after night,' relates Carlyle, 'till\ntwo or three in the morning (when I was his guest at Craigcrook, as once\nor twice happened in coming years); there he went on in brisk logical\nexercise with all the rest of the house asleep, and parted usually in\ngood humour, though after a game which was hardly worth the candle. I\nfound him infinitely witty, ingenious, sharp of fence, but not in any\nsense deep; and used without difficulty to hold my own with him.'\nJeffrey did everything in his power to further Carlyle's prospects and\nprojects. He tried to obtain for him the professorship of Moral\nPhilosophy at St Andrews University, vacated by Dr Chalmers.\nTestimonials were given by Irving, Brewster, Buller, Wilson, Jeffrey,\nand Goethe. They failed, however, in consequence of the opposition of\nthe Principal, Dr Nicol.\n\nTo Carlyle, doubtless, the most memorable incidents of the Edinburgh\nperiod was his correspondence with Goethe. The magnetic spell thrown\nover Carlyle by Goethe will ever remain a mystery. Between the two men\nthere was no intellectual affinity. One would have expected Goethe the\nPagan to have repelled Carlyle the Puritan, unless we have recourse to\nthe philosophy of opposites, and conclude that the tumultuous soul of\nCarlyle found congenial repose in the Greek-like restfulness of Goethe.\nThe great German had been deeply impressed by the profound grasp which\nCarlyle was displaying of German literature. After reading a letter\nwhich he had received from Walter Scott, Goethe remarked to Eckermann:\n'I almost wonder that Walter Scott does not say a word about Carlyle,\nwho has so decided a German tendency that he must certainly be known to\nhim. It is admirable in Carlyle, that, in his judgment of our German\nauthors, he has especially in view the _mental and moral core_ as that\nwhich is really influential. Carlyle is a _moral force of great\nimportance_; there is in him much for the future and we cannot foresee\nwhat he will produce and effect.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 141.\n\n[2] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 142.\n\n[3] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 69.\n\n[4] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 18, 19.\n\n[5] Now 2 Spey Street.\n\n[6] Masson's 'Edinburgh Sketches and Memories,' pp. 329-30.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCRAIGENPUTTOCK--LITERARY EFFORTS\n\n\nCarlyle was feeling the force of Scott's remark that literature was a\nbad crutch--his prospects being far from bright. The Carlyles had been a\nlittle over eighteen months at Comely Bank, when their extensive circle\nof friends were surprised to hear of their intended withdrawal to\nCraigenputtock. Efforts were made to dissuade Carlyle from pursuing what\nat the time appeared a suicidal course. He was the intimate associate of\nthe brilliant Jeffrey; he was within the charmed circle of Edinburgh\nReviewers; he had laid the foundation of a literary reputation.\nOutwardly all seemed well with Carlyle; but 'the step,' himself says,\n'had been well meditated, saw itself to be founded on irrefragable\nconsiderations of health, _finance_, &c., &c., unknown to bystanders,\nand could not be forborne or altered.' Next to his marriage with Miss\nWelsh, Carlyle's retirement to the howling wilds of Craigenputtock at\nthat juncture was the most momentous step in his long life. He was\nconscious of his own powers, and he clearly discerned how those powers\ncould best be utilised and developed. Hence his determination to bid\nadieu to Edinburgh. And in that resolve he was fortified by the loyal\nsupport of his wife.\n\nJeffrey promised to visit the Carlyles at Craigenputtock as soon as they\ngot settled. Meanwhile, they stayed a week at his own house in Moray\nPlace, after their furniture was on the road, and they were waiting till\nit should arrive and 'render a new home possible amid the moors and the\nmountains.' 'Of our history at Craigenputtock,' says Carlyle, 'there\nmight a great deal be written which might amuse the curious; for it was\nin fact a very singular scene and arena for such a pair as my Darling\nand me, with such a Life ahead.... It is a History I by no means intend\nto write, with such or with any object. To me there is a _sacredness_ of\ninterest in it consistent only with _silence_. It was the field of\nendless nobleness and beautiful talent and virtue in Her who is now\ngone; also of good industry, and many loving and blessed thoughts in\nmyself, while living there by her side. Poverty and mean Obstruction had\ngiven origin to it, and continued to preside over it, but were\ntransformed by human valour of various sorts into a kind of victory and\nroyalty: something of high and great dwelt in it, though nothing could\nbe smaller and lower than very many of the details.'[7]\n\nThe Jeffreys were not slow in appearing at Craigenputtock. Their 'big\nCarriage,' narrates the humorous host, 'climbed our rugged Hill-roads,\nlanded the Three Guests--young Charlotte (\"Sharlie\"), with Pa and\nMa--and the clever old Valet maid that waited on them; ... but I\nremember nothing so well as the consummate art with which my Dear One\nplayed the domestic field-marshal, and spread out our exiguous\nresources, without fuss or bustle; to cover everything with a coat of\nhospitality and even elegance and abundance. I have been in houses ten\ntimes, nay, a hundred times, as rich, where things went not so well.\nThough never bred to this, but brought up in opulent plenty by a mother\nthat could bear no partnership in housekeeping, she, finding it become\nnecessary, loyally applied herself to it, and soon surpassed in it all\nthe women I have ever seen.'[8] Of Mrs Carlyle's frankness her husband\ngives this amusing glimpse: 'One day at dinner, I remember, Jeffrey\nadmired the fritters or bits of pancake he was eating, and she let him\nknow, not without some vestige of shock to him, that she had made them.\n\"What, you! twirl up the frying-pan, and catch them in the air?\" Even\nso, my high friend, and you may turn it over in your mind!' When the\nJeffreys were leaving, 'I remarked,' says Carlyle, that they 'carried\noff our little temporary paradise; ... to which bit of pathos Jeffrey\nanswered by a friendly little sniff of quasi-mockery or laughter\nthrough the nose, and rolled prosperously away.'\n\nThe Carlyles in course of time visited the Jeffreys at Craigcrook, the\nlast occasion being for about a fortnight. Carlyle says it was 'a\nshining sort of affair, but did not in effect accomplish much for any of\nus. Perhaps, for one thing, we stayed too long, Jeffrey was beginning to\nbe seriously incommoded in health, had bad sleep, cared not how late he\nsat, and we had now more than ever a series of sharp fencing bouts,\nnight after night, which could decide nothing for either of us, except\nour radical incompatibility in respect of World Theory, and the\nincurable divergence of our opinions on the most important matters. \"You\nare so dreadfully in earnest!\" said he to me once or oftener. Besides, I\nown now I was deficient in reverence to him, and had not then, nor,\nalas! have ever acquired, in my solitary and mostly silent existence,\nthe art of gently saying strong things, or of insinuating my dissent,\ninstead of uttering it right out at the risk of offence or otherwise.'\nThen he adds: 'These \"stormy sittings,\" as Mrs Jeffrey laughingly called\nthem, did not improve our relation to one another. But these were the\nlast we had of that nature. In other respects Edinburgh had been barren;\neffulgences of \"Edinburgh Society,\" big dinners, parties, we in due\nmeasure had; but nothing there was very interesting either to _Her_ or\nto me, and all of it passed away as an obliging pageant merely. Well do\nI remember our return to Craigenputtock, after nightfall, amid the\nclammy yellow leaves and desolate rains with the clink of Alick's stithy\nalone audible of human.'[9]\n\nIt was during his first two years' residence at Craigenputtock that\nCarlyle wrote his famous essay on Burns; but his principal work was upon\nGerman literature, especially upon Goethe. His magazine writings being\nhis only means of support, and as he devoted much time to them, it is\nnot surprising that financial matters worried him. About this time\nJeffrey, to whom doubtless he confided his trouble, generously offered\nto confer upon him an annuity of L100, which Carlyle declined to accept.\nJeffrey repeated the offer on two subsequent occasions, with a like\nresult. Carlyle in his _Reminiscences_ says that he could not doubt but\nJeffrey had intended an act of real generosity; and yet Carlyle penned\nthe ungracious remark, that 'perhaps there was something in the manner\nof it that savoured of consciousness and of screwing one's self up to\nthe point; less of god-like pity for a fine fellow and his struggles,\nthan of human determination to do a fine action of one's own, which\nmight add to the promptitude of my refusal.' It is not surprising,\ntherefore, to find Carlyle suspecting that Jeffrey's feelings were\ncooling towards him. Jeffrey had powers of penetration as well as the\nfriend whom he was anxious to assist.\n\nBy the month of February 1831, Carlyle's finances fell so low that he\nhad only L5 in his possession, and expected no more for months. Then he\nborrowed L100 from Jeffrey, as his 'pitiful bits of periodical\nliterature incomings,' as he puts it, 'having gone awry (as they were\nliable to do), but was able, I still remember with what satisfaction, to\nrepay punctually within a few weeks'; adding, 'and this was all of\npecuniary chivalry _we_ two ever had between us.' The chivalry was all\non the one side--of Jeffrey. The outcome of his labours at\nCraigenputtock, in addition to the fragmentary articles already referred\nto, was the essays which form the first three volumes of the\n'Miscellanies.' They appeared chiefly in the _Edinburgh Review_, the\n_Foreign Review_, and _Fraser's Magazine_. Jeffrey's resignation of the\neditorship of the 'Review' was a great disappointment to Carlyle,\nbecause it stopped a regular source of income.\n\nGerman literature, of which Carlyle had begun a history, not being a\n'marketable commodity,' he cut it up into articles. 'My last\nconsiderable bit of _Writing_ at Craigenputtock,' says Carlyle, 'was\n\"Sartor Resartus\"; done, I think, between January and August 1830; (my\nsister Margaret had died while it was going on). I well remember where\nand how (at Templand one morning) the _germ_ of it rose above ground.\n\"Nine months,\" I used to say, \"it had cost me in writing.\" Had the\nperpetual fluctuation, the uncertainty and unintelligible whimsicality\nof Review Editors not proved so intolerable, we might have lingered\nlonger at Craigenputtock, perfectly left alone, and able to do _more_\nwork, beyond doubt, than elsewhere. But a Book did seem to promise some\n_respite_ from that, and perhaps further advantages. Teufelsdroeckh was\nready; and (first days of August) I decided to make for London. Night\nbefore going, how I still remember it! I was lying on my back on the\nsofa in the drawing-room; she sitting by the table (late at night,\npacking all done, I suppose); her words had a guise of sport, but were\nprofoundly plaintive in meaning. \"About to part, who knows for how long;\nand what may have come in the interim!\" this was her thought, and she\nwas evidently much out of spirits. \"Courage, Dearie, only for a month!\"\nI would say to her in some form or other. I went next morning\nearly.'[10]\n\nJeffrey, who was by that time Lord Advocate, Carlyle found much\npreoccupied in London, but willing to assist him with Murray, the\nbookseller. Jeffrey, with his wife and daughter, lived in Jermyn Street\nin lodgings, 'in melancholy contrast to the beautiful tenements and\nperfect equipments they had left in the north.' 'If,' says Carlyle, 'I\ncalled in the morning, in quest perhaps of Letters (though I don't\nrecollect much troubling _him_ in that way), I would find the family\nstill at breakfast, ten A.M. or later; and have seen poor Jeffrey\nemerge in flowered dressing-gown, with a most boiled and suffering\nexpression of face, like one who had slept miserably, and now awoke\nmainly to paltry misery and bother; poor Official man! \"I am made a mere\nPost-Office of!\" I heard him once grumble, after tearing open several\nPackets, not one of which was internally for himself.'[11]\n\nMrs Carlyle joined her husband on the 1st of October 1831, and they took\nlodgings at 4 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Lane, with a family of the name\nof Miles, belonging to Irving's congregation. Jeffrey was a frequent\nvisitor there, and sometimes the Carlyles called at Jermyn Street.\nCarlyle says that they were at first rather surprised that Jeffrey did\nnot introduce him to some of his 'grand literary figures,' or try in\nsome way to be of help to one for whom he evidently had a value. The\nexplanation, Carlyle thinks, was that he himself 'expressed no trace of\naspiration that way'; that Jeffrey's 'grand literary or other figures'\nwere clearly by no means 'so adorable to the rustic hopelessly\nGermanised soul as an introducer of one might have wished.' Besides,\nJeffrey was so 'heartily miserable,' as to think Carlyle and his other\nfellow-creatures happy in comparison, and to have no care left to bestow\nupon them.\n\nHere is a characteristic outburst in the 'Reminiscences': 'The beggarly\nhistory of poor \"Sartor\" _among the blockheadisms_ is not worth my\nrecording or remembering--least of all here! In short, finding that\nwhereas I had got L100 (if memory serve) for \"Schiller\" six or seven\nyears before, and for \"Sartor,\" at least _thrice_ as good, I could not\nonly _not_ get L200, but even get no Murray, or the like, to publish it\non half-profits (Murray, a most stupendous object to me; tumbling about,\neyeless, with the evidently strong wish to say \"yes and no\"; my first\nsignal experience of that sad human predicament); I said, \"We will make\nit No, then; wrap up our MS.; wait till this Reform Bill uproar\nabate.\"'[12]\n\nOn Tuesday, January 26th, 1832, Carlyle received tidings of the death of\nhis father. He departed on the Sunday morning previous 'almost without a\nstruggle,' wrote his favourite sister Jane. It was a heavy stroke for\nCarlyle. 'Natural tears,' he exclaimed shortly afterwards, 'have come to\nmy relief. I can look at my dear Father, and that section of the Past\nwhich he has made alive for me, in a certain sacred, sanctified light,\nand give way to what thoughts rise in me without feeling that they are\nweak and useless.' Carlyle determined that the time till the funeral was\npast (Friday) should be spent with his wife only. All others were\nexcluded. He walked 'far and much,' chiefly in the Regent's Park, and\nconsidered about many things, his object being to see clearly what his\ncalamity meant--what he lost, and what lesson that loss was to teach\nhim. Carlyle considered his father as one of the most interesting men he\nhad known. 'Were you to ask me,' he said, 'which had the greater natural\nfaculty,' Robert Burns or my father, 'I might, perhaps, actually pause\nbefore replying. Burns had an infinitely wider Education, my Father a\nfar wholesomer. Besides, the one was a man of Musical Utterance; the\nother wholly a man of Action, even with Speech subservient thereto.\nNever, of all the men I have seen, has one come personally in my way in\nwhom the endowment from Nature and the Arena from Fortune were so\nutterly out of all proportion. I have said this often, and partly _know_\nit. As a man of Speculation--had Culture ever unfolded him--he must have\ngone wild and desperate as Burns; but he was a man of Conduct, and Work\nkeeps all right. What strange shapeable creatures we are!'[13] Nothing\nthat the elder Carlyle undertook to do but he did it faithfully, and\nlike a true man. 'I shall look,' said his distinguished son, 'on the\nhouses he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound\nto the heart all over his little district. No one that comes after him\nwill ever say, \"Here was the finger of a hollow eye-servant.\" They are\nlittle texts for me of the gospel of man's free will. Nor will his deeds\nand sayings in any case be found unworthy--not false and barren, but\ngenuine and fit. Nay, am not I also the humble James Carlyle's work? I\nowe him much more than existence; I owe him a noble inspiring example\n(now that I can read it in that rustic character). It was he\n_exclusively_ that determined on _educating_ me; that from his small\nhard-earned funds sent me to school and college, and made me whatever I\nam or may become. Let me not mourn for my father, let me do worthily of\nhim. So shall he still live even here in me, and his worth plant itself\nhonourably forth into new generations.'[14] One of the wise men about\nEcclefechan told James Carlyle: 'Educate a boy, and he grows up to\ndespise his ignorant parents.' His father once told Carlyle this, and\nadded: 'Thou hast not done so; God be thanked for it.' When James\nCarlyle first entered his son's house at Craigenputtock, Mrs Carlyle was\ngreatly struck with him, 'and still farther,' says her husband, 'opened\nmy eyes to the treasure I possessed in a father.'\n\nThe last time Carlyle saw his father was a few days before leaving for\nLondon. 'He was very kind,' wrote Carlyle, 'seemed prouder of me than\never. What he had never done the like of before, he said, on hearing me\nexpress something which he admired, \"Man, it's surely a pity that thou\nshould sit yonder with nothing but the eye of Omniscience to see thee,\nand thou with such a gift to speak.\"' In closing his affectionate\ntribute, Carlyle exclaims: 'Thank Heaven, I know and have known what it\nis to be a _son_; to _love_ a father, as spirit can love spirit.'\n\nThe last days of March 1832 found the Carlyles back at Craigenputtock. A\nnew tenant occupied the farm, and their days were lonelier than ever.\nMeanwhile 'Sartor Resartus' was appearing in _Fraser's Magazine_. The\nEditor reported that it 'excited the most unqualified disapprobation.'\nNothing daunted, Carlyle pursued the 'noiseless tenor of his way,'\nthrowing off articles on various subjects. Finding that Mrs Carlyle's\nhealth suffered from the gloom and solitude of Craigenputtock, they\nremoved to Edinburgh in January 1833. Jeffrey was absent in 'official\nregions,' and Carlyle notes that they found a 'most dreary contemptible\nkind of element' in Edinburgh. But their stay there was not without its\nuses, for in the Advocates' Library Carlyle found books which had a\ngreat effect upon his line of study. He collected materials for his\narticles upon 'Cagliostro' and the 'Diamond Necklace.' At the end of\nfour months, the Carlyles were back again at Craigenputtock.\n\nAugust was a bright month for Thomas Carlyle, for it was then that Ralph\nWaldo Emerson visited him at his rural retreat. The Carlyles thought him\n'one of the most lovable creatures' they had ever seen, and an unbroken\nfriendship of nearly fifty years was begun. As winter approached,\nCarlyle's prospects were not very bright, and he once more turned his\neyes towards London, where the remainder of his life was to be spent.\nBefore following him thither, it may be well to turn from the outer to\nthe inner side of Carlyle's life, and study the forces which went to the\nmaking of his unique personality.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[7] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 30.\n\n[8] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 31.\n\n[9] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41.\n\n[10] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 161, 162.\n\n[11] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 47.\n\n[12] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 162.\n\n[13] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 19.\n\n[14] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 6.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nCARLYLE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT\n\n\nThrough all the material struggles Carlyle's mind at Craigenputtock was\ngradually shaping itself round a theory of the Universe and Man, from\nwhich he drew inspiration in his future life work. Through his\ncontributions to Magazines and Reviews there is traceable an original\nvein of thought and feeling which had its origin in the study of German\nliterature. Carlyle's studies and musings took coherent, or, as some\nwould say incoherent, shape in _Sartor Resartus_,--a book which\nappropriately was written in the stern solitude of Craigenputtock.\n\nIn order to acquire an adequate understanding of Carlyle as a thinker,\nattention has to be paid to the two dominating influences of his mental\nlife--his early home training and German literature. In regard to the\nformer, ancestry with Carlyle counts for much. He came of a sturdy\nCovenanting stock. Carlyle himself has left a graphic description of the\nreligious environment of the Burghers, to which sect his father\nbelonged. The congregation, under the ministry of a certain John\nJohnston, who taught Carlyle his first Latin, worshipped in a little\nhouse thatched with heath. Of the simple faith, the stern piety and the\nrugged heroism of the old Seceders, Carlyle himself has left a\nphotograph: 'Very venerable are those old Seceder clergy to me now when\nI look back.... Most figures of them in my time were hoary old men; men\nso like evangelists in modern vesture and poor scholars and gentlemen of\nChrist I have nowhere met with among Protestant or Papal clergy in any\ncountry in the world.... Strangely vivid are some twelve or twenty of\nthose old faces whom I used to see every Sunday, whose names,\nemployments or precise dwellingplaces I never knew, but whose portraits\nare yet clear to me as in a mirror. Their heavy-laden, patient,\never-attentive faces, fallen solitary most of them, children all away,\nwife away for ever, or, it might be, wife still there and constant like\na shadow and grown very like the old man, the thrifty cleanly poverty of\nthese good people, their well-saved coarse old clothes, tailed\nwaistcoats down to mid-thigh--all this I occasionally see as with eyes\nsixty or sixty-five years off, and hear the very voice of my mother upon\nit, whom sometimes I would be questioning about these persons of the\ndrama and endeavouring to describe and identify them.' And what a\nglimpse we have into the inmost heart of the primitive Covenanting\nreligion in the portrait drawn by Carlyle of old David Hope, the farmer\nwho refused to postpone family worship in order to take in his grain.\nDavid was putting on his spectacles when somebody rushed in with the\nwords: 'Such a raging wind risen will drive the stooks into the sea if\nlet alone.' 'Wind!' answered David, 'wind canna get ae straw that has\nbeen appointed mine. Sit down and let us worship God.' Far away from the\nsimple Covenanting creed of his father and mother Carlyle wandered, but\nto the last the feeling of life's mystery and solemnity remained vivid\nwith him, though fed from quite other sources than the Bible and the\n_Shorter Catechism_.\n\nMuch has been said of Carlyle's father, but it is highly probable that\nto his mother he owed most during his early years. The temperament of\nthe Covenanter was of the non-conductor type. Men like James Carlyle\nwere essentially stern, self-centred, unemotional. Fighting like the\nJews, with sword in one hand and trowel in the other, they had no time\nfor cultivating the softer side of human nature. Ready to go to the\nstake on behalf of religious liberty, they exercised a repressive, not\nto say despotic, influence in their own households. With them education\nmeant not the unfolding of the individual powers of the children, but\nthe ruthless crushing of them into a theological mould. Religion in such\nan atmosphere became loveless rather than lovely, and might have had\nserious influences of a reactionary nature but for the caressing\ntenderness of the mother. With a heart which overflowed the ordinary\ntheological boundaries, the mother in many sweet and hidden ways\nsupplied the emotional element, which had been crushed out of the father\nby a narrow conception of life and duty. Carlyle's experience may be\njudged from his references to his parents. He always speaks of his\nfather with profound respect and admiration; towards his mother his\nheart goes forth with a devotion which became stronger as the years\nrolled on. Carlyle's love of his mother was as beautiful as it was\nsacred. Long after Carlyle had parted with the creed of his childhood,\nhis heart tremulously responded to the old symbols. His system of\nthought, indeed, might well be defined as Calvinism minus Christianity.\nHad Carlyle not come into contact with German thought, he would probably\nhave jogged along the path of literature in more or less conventional\nfashion. In fact, nothing is more remarkable than the comparatively\ncommonplace nature of Carlyle's early contributions to literature.\nGermany touched the deepest chords of his nature. With German ideas and\nemotions his mind was saturated, and _Sartor Resartus_ was the outcome.\nTo that book students must go for a glance into Carlyle's mind while he\nwas wrestling with the great mysteries of Existence. In June 1821, as Mr\nFroude tells us, took place what may be called Carlyle's conversion--his\ntriumph over his doubts, and the beginning of a new life. To understand\nthis phase of Carlyle's life, we must pause for a little to consider\nGerman literature, whence Carlyle derived spiritual relief and\nconsolation.\n\nWhat, then, was the nature of the message of peace which Germany,\nthrough Kant, Fichte, and Goethe, brought to the storm-tossed soul of\nCarlyle? When Carlyle began to think seriously, two antagonistic\nconceptions of life, the orthodox and the rationalist, were struggling\nfor mastery in the field of thought. The orthodox conception, into which\nhe had been born, and with which his father and mother had fronted the\nEternities, had given way under the solvent of modern thought. Carlyle's\nbelief in Christianity as a revelation seems to have dropped from him\nwithout much of a struggle, somewhat after the style of George Eliot.\nHis mental tortures appear to have arisen from spiritual hunger, from an\ninability to fill the place vacated by the old beliefs. Had he lived\nfifty years earlier, Carlyle would have been invited to find salvation\nin the easy-going, drawing-room rationalism of Hume and Gibbon, or to\ncontent himself with the ecclesiastical placidity known as Moderatism.\n\nMuch had occurred since the arm-chair philosophers of Edinburgh taught\nthat this was the best possible world, and that the highest wisdom\nconsisted in frowning upon enthusiasm and cultivating the comfortable.\nThe French Revolution had revolutionised men's thoughts and feelings.\nThere had been revealed to man the inadequacy of the old Deistical or\nMechanical philosophy, which, spreading from England to France, had\ndone so much to hasten the revolutionary epoch. Carlyle could find no\nspiritual sustenance in the purely mechanical theory of life which was\noffered as the substitute for the theory of the Churches. There was\nanother theory, which had its rise in Germany, and to which Carlyle\nclung when he could no longer keep hold of the Supernatural. In\nTranscendentalism, Carlyle found salvation.\n\nWhat are the leading conceptions of the German form of salvation? The\nanswer to this will give the key to _Sartor Resartus_, and to Carlyle's\nwhole mental outlook. In the eyes of thinkers like Carlyle, the great\nobjection to Christianity was the breach it made between the natural and\nthe supernatural. Between them there was a great gulf which could only\nfitfully and temporarily be bridged by the miraculous. Students who were\nbeing inoculated with scientific ideas of law and order, were bewildered\nby a theory of life which had no organic relation to the great germinal\nideas of the day. In their desire to abolish the supernatural, the\nFrench thinkers constructed a theory of Nature in which everything, from\nthe movements of solar masses to the movements of the soul, were\ninterpreted in terms of matter. By adopting a mechanical view of the\nUniverse, the French thinkers robbed Nature of much of its charm, and\nstunted the emotions on the side of wonder and admiration. The world was\nreduced to a vast machine, man himself being simply a temporary\nembodiment of material particles in a highly complex and unique form.\nInstead of being what it was to the Greeks, a temple of beauty, the\nUniverse to the materialist resembled a prison in which the walls\ngradually closed upon the poor wretch till he was crushed under the\nruins. Goethe has left on record the impression made upon him by the\nmaterialistic view of life. As he says, 'The materialistic theory, which\nreduces all things to matter and motion, appeared to me so grey, so\nCimmerian, and so dead that we shuddered at it as at a ghost.'\n\n_Sartor Resartus_ is studded with vigorous protests against the\nmechanical view of Nature and Man. Just as distasteful to Carlyle, and\nequally mechanical in spirit, was the Deistical conception of Nature as\na huge clock, under the superintendence of a Divine clock-maker, whose\nduty consisted in seeing that the clock kept good time and was in all\nrespects thoroughly reliable. The Germans attacked the problem from the\nother side. They did not abolish the supernatural with the materialists,\nor seek it in another world with the theologians; they found the\nsupernatural in the natural. To the materialists, Kant, Fichte,\nSchelling, Hegel and Goethe had one reply:--Reduce matter to its\nconstituent atoms, they argued, and you never seize the principle of\nlife; it evades you like a spirit; in this principle everything lives\nand moves and has its being. German philosophy from Kant has been\noccupied in attempts to trace the spiritual principle in the great\nprocess of cosmic evolution. In poetry, Goethe attempted to represent\nthis as the energising principle of life and duty. The spiritual cannot\nbe weighed in the scales of logic; it refuses to be put upon the\ndissecting-table. As a consequence, the truth of things is best seen by\nthe poet. The owl-like logic-chopper, from his mechanical and\nutilitarian standpoint, sees not the Divine vision. This has been called\nPantheism. Call it what we please, it is contradictory to Deism and\nMaterialism, and is the root thought of _Sartor Resartus_, which may be\ntaken as Carlyle's Confession of Faith. A few extracts will justify the\nforegoing analysis. The transcendental view of Nature is expressed by\nCarlyle thus:--'Atheistic science babbles poorly of it with scientific\nnomenclature, experiments and what not, as if it were a poor dead thing,\nto be bottled up in Leyden jars, and sold over counter; but the native\nsense of man in all times, if he will himself apply his sense, proclaims\nit to be a living thing--ah, an unspeakable, God-like thing, towards\nwhich the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe,\ndevout prostration and humility of soul, worship, if not in words, then\nin silence.' Here, again, is a passage quite Hegelian in its tone: 'For\nMatter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit; the manifestation of\nSpirit, were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible,\nnay, the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible,\nwhat is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher celestial Invisible,\nunimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright.'\n\nThe defects of Carlyle, and they are many, take their root in his\nspeculative view of the Universe--a view which demands careful analysis\nif the student hopes to understand Carlyle's strength and weakness. It\nis not meant that Carlyle's mind remained anchored to the philosophic\nidealism of _Sartor_. In later days he professed contempt for\ntranscendental moonshine, but his contempt was for the form and jargon\nof the schools, not for the spirit, which dominated Carlyle to the end.\nAfter Carlyle passed the early poetic stage, his views took more and\nmore an anthropomorphic mould, till in many of his writings he seems\npractically a Theist. But at root Carlyle's thought was more\nPantheistical than Deistical. What, then, is the German conception of\nthe Ultimate Reality? The German answer grew out of an attempt to get\nrid of the difficulties propounded by Hume. Hume, the father of all the\nEmpiricists, in giving logical effect to Berkeleyism, concluded that\njust as we know nothing of the outer world beyond sense impressions, so\nof the inner world of mind we know nothing beyond mental impressions. We\ncan combine and recombine these impressions as we choose, but from them\nwe cannot deduce any ultimate laws, either of the world or of mind.\nHume would not sanction belief in causation as a universal law. All that\ncould be said was that certain things happened in a certain manner so\nfrequently as to give rise to a law of expectation. But this is not to\nsolve, but to evade the problem? We are still driven to ask, What is\nmatter? What is motion? What is force? How do we get our knowledge of\nthe material world, and is that knowledge reliable? These are wide\nquestions that cannot be adequately handled here. It was a favourite\nargument of Comte and his followers, that man's first conceptions of\nNature were necessarily erroneous, because they were anthropomorphic.\nTheology was, therefore, dethroned without ceremony. But science is as\nanthropomorphic as theology. We have no guarantee that the great facts\nof Nature are as we think them. We talk of Force, but our idea of Force\nis taken from experiences which may have no counterpart in Nature. It is\nwell known, for example, that the secondary qualities of objects,\ncolour, &c., do not exist in Nature. Our personality is so inextricably\nmixed with the material universe that it is impossible to formulate a\nphilosophy like Naturalism, which makes mind a product of Nature, and\nwhich sharply defines the provinces of the two.\n\nBut what Naturalism fails to do, Idealism or Transcendentalism promises\nto perform. Idealism is simply Materialism turned upside down. The only\ndifference between the evolution of Spencer and of Hegel is that the\none puts matter, the other mind, first. For all practical purposes, it\nsignifies little whether mind is the temporary embodiment of an idea, or\nthe temporary product of a highly specialised form of matter. In either\ncase, man has no more freedom than the bubble upon the surface of the\nstream. We may discourse of the bubble as poetically or as practically\nas we please, the result is the same--absorption in the universal.\nHegelianism as much as Naturalism leaves man a prisoner in the hands of\nFate. The only difference is, that while Naturalism puts round the\nprisoner's neck a plain, unpretentious noose, Hegelianism adds fringes\nand embroidery. If there is no appeal from Nature's dread sentence, the\nless poetry and embroidery there is about the doleful business the\nbetter.\n\nIn _Sartor Resartus_, Carlyle talks finely but vaguely, of the peace\nwhich came over his soul when he discovered that the universe was not\nmechanical but Divine. The peace was not of long duration. What\nconsolation Carlyle derived from Idealism did not appear in his life.\nWhat a contrast between the poetic optimism of _Sartor_ and the\nheavily-charged pessimism of old age, when Carlyle, with wailing pathos,\nexclaims that God does nothing. Carlyle's life abundantly illustrates\nthe fact that whenever it leaves cloudland, Idealism sinks into\nscepticism more bitter and gloomy than the unbelief of Naturalism.\nCarlyle approached the question of the Ultimate Reality from the wrong\nstandpoint. He had no reasoned philosophic creed. A poet, he had the\npoetic dread of analysis, and his spirit revolted at the spectacle of\nNature on the dissecting-table. He waged a life-long warfare against\nscience. As the present writer has elsewhere remarked:--'Carlyle never\ncould tolerate the evolution theory. He always spoke with the utmost\ncontempt of Darwin, and everything pertaining to the development\ndoctrines. It is somewhat startling to find that Carlyle was an\nevolutionist without knowing it. The antagonism between Carlyle and\nSpencer disappears on closer inspection. When Carlyle speaks of the\nuniverse as in very truth the star-domed city of God, and reminds us\nthat through every crystal and through every grass blade, but most\nthrough every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams, he is\nsimply saying in the language of poetry what Spencer says in the\nlanguage of science, that the world of phenomena is sustained and\nenergised by an infinite Eternal Power. Evolution is as emphatic as\nCarlyle on the absolute distinction between right and wrong. Carlyle and\nall the German school confront the evolutionary ethics with the Kantian\ncategorical imperative. Surely the Evolutionists in the matter of an\nimperative out-rival the Intuitionalists, when, in addition to the\ndictates of conscience, they can call as a witness and sanction to\nmorality the testimony of all-embracing experience. In his famous\nsaying, Might is Right, Carlyle was unconsciously formulating one aspect\nof evolutionary ethics. Carlyle did not mean anything so silly as that\nbrute force and ethical sanctions are identical; what he meant was that\nin the long run Righteousness will prove the mightiest force in the\nuniverse. What is this but another version of the Spencerian doctrine of\nthe survival of the fittest, which, in the most highly evolved state of\nsociety, will mean the survival of the best? In the highest social state\nthe only Might that will survive will be the Might which is rooted in\nRight. Carlyle's contemptuous attitude towards science is deeply to be\ndeplored. He waged bitter warfare against the evolution theory, quite\noblivious of the fact that by means of it there was revealed a deeper\ninsight into the Power behind Nature, and into the ethical constitution\nof the universe, than ever entered into the minds of transcendental\nphilosophers.'\n\nIt is taken for granted that Carlyle's thoughts have no organic unity.\nHe is looked upon as a stimulating, but confused, writer, as a thinker\nof original, but incoherent, power. True, he has not a logical mind, and\npays no deference to the canons of the schools or the market-place. But\nthere is a method in Carlyle's apparent caprice. When analysed, his\nthoughts are discovered to have unity. His transcendentalism embraces\nthe ethic as well as the cosmic side of life. In the sphere of morals,\nas of science, his writings are one long tumultuous protest against the\nmechanical philosophy and the utilitarian theory of morals. From his\nessay on Voltaire we take the following:--'It is contended by many that\nour mere love of personal Pleasure or Happiness, as it is called, acting\nin every individual with such clearness as he may easily have, will of\nitself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his\nown.... Without some belief in the necessary eternal, or, which is the\nsame thing, in the supra mundane divine nature of Virtue existing in\neach individual, could the moral judgment of a thousand or a thousand\nthousand individuals avail us'? More picturesquely, Carlyle denounces\nthe utilitarian system in these words: 'What then? Is the heroic\ninspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood,\nbubbling in the direction others profit by? I know not; only this I\nknow. If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all\nastray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion, man may front much. But what\nin these dull, unimaginative days are the terrors of conscience to the\ndiseases of the Liver? Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our\nstronghold: there, brandishing our frying-pan as censer, let us offer\nsweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things _he_ has\nprovided for his Elect'! The exponent of such a theory of ethics will\nhave a natural distaste for the rational or calculating side of conduct.\nHe will depreciate the mechanical, and give undue emphasis to the\ninspirational. His heroes will be not men of placid temperament,\nmethodical habits, and utilitarian aims, but men of mystical and\npassionate natures, spasmodic in action, and guided by ideas not easily\njustified at the bar of utility.\n\nJust as in the sphere of speculative thought, he has profound contempt\nfor the Diderots and Voltaires, with their mechanical views of the\nUniverse, so in practical affairs Carlyle has contempt for the men who\nendeavour to further their aims by appealing to commonplace motives by\nmeans of commonplace methods. Specially opposed is he to the tendency of\nthe age to rely for progress, not upon appeals to the great elemental\nforces of human nature, but upon organisations, committees, and all\nkinds of mechanism. In his remarkable essay, 'Signs of the Times,' we\nhave ample verification of our exposition. After talking depreciatingly\nof the mechanical tendency of the prevailing philosophies, Carlyle\ncomments upon the mechanical nature of the reforming agencies of\ncivilisation. The intense Egoism of his nature rebels against any kind\nof Socialism or Collectivism. He says: 'Were we required to characterise\nthis age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it,\nnot a Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Heroic Age, but, above\nall, the Mechanical Age. It is the age of machinery in every outward and\ninward sense of that word.... Men are grown mechanical in head and\nheart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour,\nand in natural force of any kind.... We may trace this tendency in all\nthe great manifestations of our time: in its intellectual aspect, the\nstudies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its\npractical aspects, its politics, art, religious work; in the whole\nsources, and throughout the whole current of its spiritual, no less than\nits material, activity.' With Carlyle the secrets of Nature and Life\nwere discoverable, not so much by the intellect as by the heart. The man\nwith the large heart, rather than the clear head, saw furthest into the\nnature of things. The history of German thought is strewn with the wreck\nof systems based upon the Carlylian doctrine of intuition. Schelling and\nHegel showed the puerility to which great men are driven when they\nstarted to construct science out of their own intuitions, instead of\npatiently and humbly sitting down to study Nature. Tyndall has left on\nrecord his gratitude to Carlyle. Tyndall had grip of the scientific\nmethod, and was able to allow Carlyle's inspiration to play upon his\nmind without fear of harm; but how many waverers has Carlyle driven from\nthe path of reason into the bogs of mysticism?\n\nCarlyle's impatience with reasoning and his determination to follow the\npromptings of _a priori_ conceptions gave his system of ethics a\none-sided cast, and made him needlessly aggressive towards what in his\nday was called Utilitarianism, but what has now come to be known as\nEvolutionary Ethics. What is the chief end of man considered as a moral\nagent? The answer of the Christian religion is as intelligible as it is\ncomprehensive. Man's duty consists in obeying the laws of God revealed\nin Nature and in the Bible. But apart from revelation, where is the\nbasis of ethical authority? Debarred from accepting the Christian view,\nand instinctively repelled from Utilitarianism, Carlyle found refuge in\nthe Fichtean and similar systems of ethics. By substituting Blessedness\nfor Happiness as the aim of ethical endeavour, Carlyle endeavoured to\npreserve the heroic attitude which was associated with Supernaturalism.\nIn his view, it was more consistent with human dignity to trust for\ninspiration to a light within than painfully to piece together fragments\nof human experience and ponder the inferences to be drawn therefrom.\n\nIn his 'Data of Ethics,' Herbert Spencer shows the hollowness of\nCarlyle's distinction between Blessedness and Happiness. As Spencer puts\nit: 'Obviously the implication is that Blessedness is not a kind of\nHappiness, and this implication at once suggests the question, What mode\nof feeling is this? If it is a state of consciousness at all, it is\nnecessarily one of three states--painful, indifferent, or\npleasurable.... If the pleasurable states are in excess, then the\nblessed life can be distinguished from any other pleasurable life only\nby the relative amount or the quality of its pleasures. It is a life\nwhich makes happiness of a certain kind and degree its end, and the\nassumption that blessedness is not a form of happiness lapses.... In\nbrief, blessedness has for its necessary condition of existence\nincreased happiness, positive or negative in some consciousness or\nother; and disappears utterly if we assume that the actions called\nblessed are known to cause decrease of happiness in others as well as in\nthe actor.'\n\nTo German philosophy and literature Carlyle owed his critical method, by\nwhich he all but revolutionised criticism as understood by his Edinburgh\nand London contemporaries. Carlyle began his apprenticeship with the\nEdinburgh Reviewers, in whose hand criticism never lost its political\nbias. Apart from that, criticism up till the time of Carlyle was mainly\nstatical. The critic was a kind of literary book-keeper who went upon\nthe double-entry system. On one page were noted excellences, on the\nother defects, and when the two columns were _totalled_ the debtor and\ncreditor side of the transaction was set forth. Where, as in the cases\nof Burns and Byron, genius was complicated with moral aberration,\nanything like a correct estimate was impossible. The result was that in\nScotland criticism oscillated between the ethical severity of the pulpit\nand the daring laxity of free thought. As the Edinburgh Reviewers could\nnot afford to set the clergy at defiance, they had to pay due respect to\nconventional tastes and standards. Carlyle faced the question from a\ndifferent standpoint. He introduced into criticism the dynamic principle\nwhich he found in the Germans, particularly in Goethe. In contemplating\na work of Art, the Germans talk much of the importance of seizing upon\nthe creative spirit, what Hegel called the Idea. The thought of Goethe\nand Hegel, though differently expressed, resolves itself into the\nconception of a life principle which shapes materials into harmony with\ninnate forms. In the sphere of life the determining factors are the\ninner vitalities, which, however, are susceptible to the environment.\nThe critic who would realise his ideal does not go about with literary\nand ethical tape-lines: he seeks to understand the spirit which animated\nthe author as shewn in his works and his life, and then studies the\ninfluence of his environment. That this is a correct description of\nCarlyle's critical method is evidenced by his own remarks in his essay\non Burns. He says: 'If an individual is really of consequence enough to\nhave his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have\nalways been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with\nall the springs and relations of his character. How did the world and\nman's life from his particular position represent themselves to his\nmind? How did co-existing circumstances modify him from without: how\ndid he modify these from within?'\n\nThis attention to the inner springs of character gives the key to\nCarlyle's critical work. How fruitful this was is seen in his essay on\nBurns. He steered an even course between the stern moralists, whose\nindignation at the sins of Burns the man blinded them to the genius of\nBurns the poet, and the flippant Bohemians, who thought that by bidding\ndefiance to the conventionalities and moralities Burns proved his title\nto the name of genius, and whose voices are yet unduly with us in much\nspirituous devotion and rhymeless doggerel at the return of each 25th of\nJanuary. While laying bare the springs of Burns' genius, Carlyle, with\nunerring precision, also puts his finger on the weak point in the poet's\nmoral nature. So faithfully did Carlyle apply his critical method that\nhe may be considered to have said the final word about Burns.\n\nWhen Goethe spoke of Carlyle as a great moral force he must have had in\nhis mind the ethical tone of Carlyle's critical writing--a tone which\nhad its roots in the idea that judgment upon a man should be determined,\nnot by isolated deviations from conventional or even ethical standards,\nbut by consideration of the deep springs of character from which flow\naspirations and ideals. In his _Heroes and Hero-Worship_ Carlyle\nelaborates his critical theory thus: 'On the whole, we make too much of\nfaults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults?\nThe greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.\nReaders of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who\nis called there \"the man according to God's own heart?\" David, the\nHebrew King, had fallen into sins enough--blackest crimes--there was no\nwant of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask: Is this your\nman according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a\nshallow one. What are faults? What are the outward details of a life, if\nthe inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled,\nnever-ended struggle of it, be forgotten?... The deadliest sin, I say,\nwere that same supercilious consciousness of no sin: that is death....\nDavid's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I\nconsider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress\nand warfare here below.'\n\nThis canon faithfully applied enabled Carlyle to invest with a new and\nliving interest large sections of literary criticism. Burns, Johnson,\nCromwell and others of like calibre, were rescued by Carlyle from the\nhands of Pedants and Pharisees. To readers wearied with the facile\ncriticism of conventional reviewers, it was a revelation to come into\ncontact with a writer like Carlyle, who not only gave to the mind great\ninspirational impetus, but also a larger critical outlook; it was like\nstepping out of a museum, or a dissecting-room into the free, fresh,\nbreezy air of Nature.\n\nMoreover, Carlyle's interest in the soul is not of an antiquarian\nnature; he studies his heroes as if they were ancestors of the Carlyle\nfamily. He broods over their letters as if they were the letters of his\nown flesh and blood, and his comments resemble the soliloquisings of a\npathos stricken kinsman rather than the conscious reflections of a\nliterary man. It is noteworthy that Carlyle's critical powers are\nlimited by his sympathies. His method, though suggestive of scientific\ncriticism, is largely influenced by the personal equation. Face to face\nwith writers like Scott and Voltaire, he flounders in helpless\nincompetency. He tries Scott, the writer of novels, by purely Puritan\nstandards. Because there is in Scott no signs of soul-struggles, no\nconscious devotion to heroic ends, no introspective torturings, Carlyle\nsets himself to a process of belittling. So with Voltaire. Carlyle's\nfailure in this sphere was due to the fact that he overdid the ethical\nside of criticism and became a pulpiteer; he was false to his own\nprinciple of endeavouring to seize the dominant idea. Because Scott and\nVoltaire were not dominated by the Covenanting idea, Carlyle dealt with\nthem in a tone of disparagement. Carlyle admired Goethe, but he\ncertainly made no attempt to cultivate Goethe's catholicity. Let us not\nfall into Carlyle's mistake, and condemn him for qualities which were\nincompatible with his temperament. After all has been said, English\nliterature stands largely indebted to Carlyle the critic.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nLIFE IN LONDON\n\n\nMrs Carlyle entered heartily into her husband's proposal to remove to\nLondon. 'Burn our ships!' she gaily said to him one day (_i.e._,\ndismantle our house); 'carry all our furniture with us'; which they\naccordingly did. 'At sight of London,' Carlyle wrote, 'I remember\nhumming to myself a ballad-stanza of \"Johnnie o' Braidislea,\" which my\ndear old mother used to sing,\n\n    \"For there's seven foresters in yon forest;\n      And them I want to see, see,\n    And them I want to _see_ (and shoot down)!\"\n\nCarlyle lodged at Ampton Street again; but presently did 'immense\nstretches of walking in search of houses.' He found his way to Chelsea\nand there secured a small old-fashioned house at 5 (now numbered 24)\nCheyne Row, at a rent of L35 a year. Mrs Carlyle followed in a short\ntime and approved of his choice. They took possession on the 10th June\n1834, and Carlyle recounts the 'cheerful gipsy life' they had there\n'among the litter and carpenters for three incipient days.' Leigh Hunt\nwas in the next street 'sending kind, _un_practical messages,' dropping\nin to see them in the evenings.\n\nWhen in London on a former occasion, Carlyle became acquainted with John\nStuart Mill, and the intimacy was kept alive by correspondence to and\nfrom Craigenputtock. It was through Mill's letters that Carlyle's\nthoughts were turned towards the French Revolution. When he returned to\nLondon, Mill was very useful to him, lending him a fine collection of\nbooks on that subject. Mill's evenings in Cheyne Row were 'sensibly\nagreeable for most part,' remarks Carlyle. 'Talk rather wintry\n(\"sawdustish,\" as old Sterling once called it), but always well-informed\nand sincere.' Carlyle was making rapid progress with the first volume of\nhis _French Revolution_. Stern necessity gave a spurt to his pen, for in\nFebruary 1835 he notes that 'some twenty-three months' had passed since\nhe earned a single penny by the 'craft of literature.' The volume was\ncompleted and he lent the only copy to Mill. The MS. was unfortunately\nburnt by a servant-maid. 'How well do I still remember,' writes Carlyle\nin his _Reminiscences_, 'that night when he came to tell us, pale as\nHector's ghost.... It was like _half_ sentence of death to us both, and\nwe had to pretend to take it lightly, so dismal and ghastly was _his_\nhorror at it, and try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal\nhours or so; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the burst of\nsympathy my poor darling then gave me, flinging her arms round my neck,\nand openly lamenting, condoling, and encouraging like a nobler second\nself! Under heaven is nothing beautifuller. We sat talking till late;\n'_shall_ be written again,' my fixed word and resolution to her. Which\nproved to be such a task as I never tried before or since. I wrote out\n\"Feast of Pikes\" (Vol. II.), and then went at it. Found it fairly\n_impossible_ for about a fortnight; passed three weeks (reading\nMarryat's novels), tried, cautious-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin,\nonce more; and in short had a job more like breaking my heart than any\nother in my experience. Jeannie, alone of beings, burnt like a steady\nlamp beside me. I forget how much of money we still had. I think there\nwas at first something like L300, perhaps L280, to front London with.\nNor can I in the least remember where we had gathered such a sum, except\nthat it was our own, no part of it borrowed or _given us_ by anybody.\n\"Fit to last till _French Revolution_ is ready!\" and she had no\nmisgivings at all. Mill was penitently liberal; sent me L200 (in a day\nor two), of which I kept L100 (actual cost of house while I had written\nburnt volume); upon which he bought me \"Biographie Universelle,\" which I\ngot bound, and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the now\nmuch macerated, changed, and fanaticised John Stuart Mill to take that\nL100 back; but I fear there is no way.'[15]\n\nCarlyle went diligently to work at the _French Revolution_. Some\nconviction he had that the book was worth something. Once or twice among\nthe flood of equipages at Hyde Park Corner, when taking his afternoon\nstroll, he thought to himself, 'Perhaps none of _you_ could do what I am\nat!' But generally his feeling was, 'I will finish this book, throw it\nat your feet, buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the Transatlantic\nWildernesses, far from human beggaries and basenesses!' 'This,' he says,\n'had a kind of comfort to me; yet I always knew too, in the background,\nthat this would not practically do. In short, my nervous system had got\ndreadfully irritated and inflamed before I quite ended, and my desire\nwas _intense_, beyond words, to have done with it.' Then he adds: 'The\n_last_ paragraph I well remember writing upstairs in the drawing-room\nthat now is, which was then my writing-room; beside _her_ there in a\ngrey evening (summer, I suppose), soon after tea (perhaps); and\nthereupon, with her dear blessing on me, going out to walk. I had said\nbefore going out, \"What they will do with this book, none knows, my\nJeannie, lass; but they have not had, for a two hundred years, any book\nthat came more truly from a man's very heart, and so let them trample it\nunder foot and hoof as _they_ see best!\" \"Pooh, pooh! they cannot\ntrample that!\" she would cheerily answer; for her own approval (I think\nshe had read always regularly behind me) especially in Vol. III., was\nstrong and decided.' Mrs Carlyle was right. No critic or clique of\ncritics could trample the _French Revolution_.\n\nA month before the completion of the first book of the _French\nRevolution_, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'My first friend Edward\nIrving is dead. I am friendless here or as good as that.' In a week or\ntwo thereafter he met Southey, whom he describes as a 'lean,\ngrey-white-headed man of dusky complexion, unexpectedly tall when he\nrises and still leaner then--the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed\nRoman nose, small carelined brow, huge brush of white-grey-hair on high\ncrown and projecting on all sides, the most vehement pair of faint hazel\neyes I have ever seen--a well-read, honest, limited (straitlaced even),\nkindly-hearted, most irritable man. We parted kindly, with no great\npurpose on either side, I imagine, to meet again.'[16] Later on Carlyle\nadmits to his brother John that his prospects in London were not\nbrightening; which fact left him gloomy and morose.\n\nDuring his enforced leisure after the destruction of the first book of\nthe _French Revolution_, Carlyle saw more of his friends, among whom he\nnumbered John Sterling, fresh from Cambridge and newly ordained a\nclergyman. Sterling was of a 'vehement but most noble nature,' and he\nwas one of the few who had studied _Sartor Resartus_ seriously. He had\nbeen also caught by the Radical epidemic on the spiritual side.\nAlthough dissenting from much of what Carlyle taught, Sterling\nrecognised in him 'a man not only brilliantly gifted, but differing from\nthe common run of people in this, that he would not lie, that he would\nnot equivocate, that he would say always what he actually thought,\ncareless whether he pleased or offended.' He introduced Carlyle to his\nfather, who was then the 'guiding genius' of the _Times_, and who\noffered Carlyle work there on the usual conditions. 'Carlyle,' says\nFroude, 'though with poverty at his door, and entire penury visible in\nthe near future, turned away from a proposal which might have tempted\nmen who had less excuse for yielding to it. He was already the sworn\nsoldier of another chief. His allegiance from first to last was to\n_truth_, truth as it presented itself to his own intellect and his own\nconscience.'\n\nOn the 16th of February 1835 Carlyle wrote to his brother John: 'I\npositively do not care that periodical literature shuts her fist against\nme in these months. Let her keep it shut for ever, and go to the devil,\nwhich she mostly belongs to. The matter had better be brought to a\ncrisis. There is perhaps a finger of Providence in it.... My only new\nscheme, since last letter, is a hypothesis--little more yet--about\nNational Education. The newspapers had an advertisement about a Glasgow\n\"Educational Association\" which wants a man that would found a Normal\nSchool, first going over England and into Germany to get light on that\nmatter. I wrote to that Glasgow Association afar off, enquiring who they\nwere, what manner of man they expected, testifying myself very friendly\nto their project, and so forth--no answer as yet. It is likely they will\nwant, as Jane says, a \"Chalmers and Welsh\" kind of character, in which\ncase _Va ben, felice notte_. If otherwise, and they (almost by miracle)\nhad the heart, I am the man for them. Perhaps my name is so heterodox in\nthat circle, I shall not hear at all.'[17] Carlyle also remarks, in the\nsame letter, that John Stuart Mill is very friendly: 'He is the nearest\napproach to a real man that I find here--nay, as far as negativeness\ngoes, he _is_ that man, but unhappily not very satisfactory much\nfarther.'\n\nNot long thereafter Carlyle met Wordsworth. 'I did not expect much,' he\nsaid in a letter, 'but got mostly what I expected. The old man has a\nfine shrewdness and naturalness in his expression of face, a long\nCumberland figure; one finds also a kind of _sincerity_ in his speech.\nBut for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution, it excels all the other\nspeech I had heard from mortals. A genuine man, which is much, but also\nessentially a small, genuine man.'\n\nEarly in October 1835 Carlyle started for his old home. His\nmother-in-law had arrived on a visit at Cheyne Row, and remained there\nwith her daughter during Carlyle's absence in Scotland. He returned\nimproved in health and spirits. Nothing came of the National Education\nscheme. Carlyle was not a person to push himself into notice, remarks\nFroude; and his friends did not exert themselves for him, or they tried\nand failed; 'governments, in fact, do not look out for servants among\nmen who are speculating about the nature of the Universe. Then, as\nalways, the doors leading into regular employment remained closed.'\nShortly after his return from the North, he was offered the editorship\nof a newspaper at Lichfield. This was unaccepted for the same reason\nthat weighed with him when he refused a post on the _Times_. In the\nfollowing summer money matters had become so pressing that Carlyle wrote\nthe article on Mirabeau, now printed among the _Miscellanies_, for\nMill's review, which brought him L50. Mrs Carlyle's health began to\nsuffer, and a visit to Annandale became imperative. She returned 'mended\nin spirits.' Writing of her arrival in London, she said: 'I had my\nluggage put on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside,\nwhen I presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By-and-bye the omnibus\nstopped, and amid cries of \"No room, sir; can't get in,\" Carlyle's face,\nbeautifully set off by a broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the door\nlike the peri \"who, at the gate of heaven, stood disconsolate.\" In\nhurrying along the Strand, his eye had lighted on my trunk packed on the\ntop of the omnibus, and had recognised it. This seems to me one of the\nmost indubitable proofs of genius which he ever manifested.'\n\nOn the 22nd of January 1837 Carlyle wrote to his mother: 'The book\n[_French Revolution_] is actually done; all written to the last line;\nand now, after much higgling and maffling, the printers have got fairly\nafloat, and we are to go on with the wind and the sea.' But no money\ncould be expected from the book for a considerable time. Meanwhile, Miss\nHarriet Martineau (who had introduced herself into Cheyne Row), and Miss\nWilson, another accomplished friend, thought that Carlyle should begin a\ncourse of lectures in London, and thereby raise a little money. Carlyle,\nit seems, gave 'a grumbling consent.' Nothing daunted, the ladies found\ntwo hundred persons ready each to subscribe a guinea to hear a course of\nlectures from him. The end of it was that he delivered six discourses on\nGerman literature, which were 'excellent in themselves, and delivered\nwith strange impressiveness,' and L135 went into his purse.\n\nIn the summer the _French Revolution_ appeared. The sale at first was\nslow, almost nothing, for it was not 'subscribed for' among the\nbooksellers. Alluding to the criticisms which appeared, Carlyle said:\n'Some condemn me, as is very natural, for affectation; others are\nhearty, even passionate, in their estimation; on the whole, it strikes\nme as not unlikely that the book may take some hold of the English\npeople, and do them and itself a little good.' He was right. Other\nhistorians have described the Revolution: Carlyle reproduces the\nRevolution. He approaches history like a dramatist. Give him, as in the\nFrench Revolution, a weird, tragic, awe-inspiring theme, and he will\nutilise his characters, scenes, and circumstances in artistic\nsubordination to the central idea. Carlyle might be called a subjective\ndramatist--that is to say, his own spirit, thoughts, and reflections get\nso mixed up with the history that it is difficult to imagine the one\nwithout the other. Every now and then the dramatist interrupts the\ntragedy to interject his own reflections; in the history the Carlylean\nphilosophy plays the part of a Greek chorus. As an example of Carlyle's\ngenius for a dramatic situation, take his opening of the great drama\nwith the death scene of Louis XV. Who does not feel, in reading that\nscene, as if the Furies were not far off? who does not detect in the\ngrotesque jostling of the comedy and tragedy of life premonitions of the\ncoming storm?\n\n'But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own\nheart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has\nfound thee. No palace walls or lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt\nbuckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here\nat thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole\nexistence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a\nreality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void\nImmensity: Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked\nwith hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there\nmust thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed\nthee!... There are nods and sagacious glances, go-betweens, silk\ndowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs\nfor that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts.\nThere is the pale, grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along\nby another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette; at intervals the growl of\nChapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of\nhorrid diabolic horse-laughter, _Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!_'\n\nAt every stage in the narrative, the reader is impressed with the\ndramatic texture of Carlyle's mind. No dramatic writer surpasses him in\nthe art of producing effects by contrasts. In the midst of a vigorous\ndescription of the storming of the Bastille, he rings down the curtain\nfor a moment in order to introduce the following scene of idyllic\nbeauty: 'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant\non reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in\ncottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie\nof Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now\ndancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;--and also on this roaring\nHell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!'\n\nEqually effective is Carlyle in rendering vivid the doings of the\nindividual actors in the drama. For photographic minuteness and\nstartling realism what can equal the following:--'But see Camille\nDesmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his\nhair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police\nsatellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive\nhim alive. This time he speaks without stammering:--Friends! shall we\ndie like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating\nfor mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is\ncome, the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try\nconclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance\nforever. Let such hour be _well_-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits:\nTo Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of\nthe whirlwind, sound only: To arms!--\"To arms!\" yell responsive the\ninnumerable voices; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the\nair: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In\nsuch, or fitter words does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this\ngreat moment--\"Friends,\" continues Camille, \"some rallying-sign!\nCockades; green ones--the colour of Hope!\"--As with the flight of\nlocusts, these green tree-leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring\nshops: all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille\ndescends from his table; \"stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;\" has\na bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to\nCurtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds, and\nrest not till France be on fire!'\n\nAs a historical work, the _French Revolution_ is unique. It is precisely\nthe kind of book Isaiah would have written had there been a like\nRevolution in the Jewish kingdom; and just as we go to Isaiah, not for\nsociological guidance, but for ethical inspiration, so we turn to the\n_French Revolution_ when the mind and heart are in a state of torpor in\norder to get a series of shocks from the Carlylean electric battery.\nFrom a historian a student expects light as well as heat, guidance as\nwell as inspiration. It is not enough to have the great French explosion\nvividly photographed before his eyes; it is equally necessary to know\nthe causes which led to the catastrophe. Here, as a historian, Carlyle\nis conspicuously weak. His habit of looking for dramatic situations, his\npassion for making commonplace incidents and commonplace men merely the\nsatellites of commanding personalities, in a word, his theory that\nhistory should deal with the doings of great men, prevents Carlyle from\ndwelling upon the politico-economic side of national life. So absorbed\nis he in painting the Revolution, that he forgets to explain the\nRevolution. We have abundance of vague declamations against shams in\nhigh places, plenty of talk about God's judgments, in the style of the\nHebrew prophets, but of patient diagnosis, there is none. As Mr Morley\nputs it in his luminous essay on Carlyle: 'To the question whether\nmankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Carlyle nowhere gives a\nclear answer; indeed, on this subject more than any other, he clings\nclosely to his favourite method of simple presentation, streaked with\ndramatic irony.... He draws its general moral lesson from the\nRevolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns from\nKing to Church that imposture must come to an end. But for the precise\namount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the\npolitical meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic\nsignificance, we seek in vain, finding no word on the subject, nor even\nevidence of consciousness that such word is needed.' Had Carlyle, in\naddition to his genius as a historical dramatist, possessed the patient\ndiagnosing power of the writers and thinkers whom he derided, his\n_French Revolution_ would have taken its place in historical literature\nas an epoch-making book. As it stands, the reader who desires to have an\nintelligible knowledge of the subject, is compelled to shake himself\nfree of the Carlylean mesmerism, and have recourse to those writers whom\nCarlyle, under the opprobrious names of 'logic-choppers' and\n'dry-as-dusts,' held up to public ridicule.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[15] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 178-79.\n\n[16] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 20.\n\n[17] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 24.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nHOLIDAY JOURNEYINGS--LITERARY WORK\n\n\nCarlyle was so broken down with his efforts upon the _French Revolution_\nthat a trip to Annandale became necessary. He stayed at Scotsbrig two\nmonths, 'wholly idle, reading novels, smoking pipes in the garden with\nhis mother, hearing notices of his book from a distance, but not looking\nfor them or caring about them.' Autumn brought Carlyle back to Cheyne\nRow, when he found his wife in better health, delighted to have him\nagain at her side. She knew, as Froude points out, though Carlyle, so\nlittle vain was he, had failed as yet to understand it, that he had\nreturned to a changed position, that he was no longer lonely and\nneglected, but had taken his natural place among the great writers of\nhis day. He sent bright accounts of himself to Scotsbrig. 'I find John\nSterling here, and many friends, all kinder each than the other to me.\nWith talk and locomotion the days pass cheerfully till I rest and gird\nmyself together again. They make a great talk about the book, which\nseems to have succeeded in a far higher degree than I looked for.\nEverybody is astonished at every other body's being pleased with this\nwonderful performance.'[18]\n\nCarlyle did nothing all the winter except to write his essay on Sir\nWalter Scott. His next task was to prepare for a second course of\nlectures in the spring on 'Heroes.' The course ended with 'a blaze of\nfire-works--people weeping at the passionately earnest tone in which for\nonce they heard themselves addressed.' The effort brought Carlyle L300\nafter all expenses had been paid. 'A great blessing,' he remarked, 'to a\nman that had been haunted by the squalid spectre of beggary.'\n\nCarlyle had no intention of visiting Scotland that autumn, but having\nreceived a pressing invitation from old friends at Kirkcaldy, he took\nsteamer to Leith in August. While at Kirkcaldy he crossed to Edinburgh\nand called on Jeffrey. 'He sat,' says Carlyle, 'waiting for me at Moray\nPlace. We talked long in the style of literary and philosophic\nclitter-clatter. Finally it was settled that I should go out to dinner\nwith him at Craigcrook, and not return to Fife till the morrow.' They\ndined and abstained from contradicting each other, Carlyle admitting\nthat Jeffrey was becoming an amiable old fribble, 'very cheerful, very\nheartless, very forgettable and tolerable.'\n\nOn his return to London, equal to work again, Carlyle found all well. He\nwas gratified to hear that the eighth edition of the _French\nRevolution_ was almost sold, and that another would be called for, while\nthere were numerous applications from review editors for articles if he\nwould please to supply them. Mill about this time asked him to\ncontribute a paper on Cromwell to the _London and Westminster Review_.\nCarlyle agreed, and was preparing to begin when the negotiations were\nbroken off. Mill had gone abroad, leaving a Mr Robertson to manage the\n_Review_. Robertson coolly wrote to say that he need not go on with the\narticle, 'for he meant to do Cromwell himself.' Carlyle was wroth, and\nthat incident determined him to 'throw himself seriously into the\nhistory of the Commonwealth, and to expose himself no more to cavalier\ntreatment from \"able editors.\"' But for that task he required books.\nThen it was that the idea of founding a London library occurred to him.\nMen of position took up the matter warmly, and Carlyle's object was\naccomplished. 'Let the tens of thousands,' says Mr Froude, 'who, it is\nto be hoped, \"are made better and wiser\" by the books collected there,\nremember that they owe the privilege entirely to Carlyle.'\n\nOne of Carlyle's new acquaintances was Monckton Milnes, who asked him to\nbreakfast. Carlyle used to say that if Christ were again on earth Milnes\nwould ask Him to breakfast, and the clubs would all be talking of the\n'good things' that Christ had said. He also became familiar with Mr\nBaring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and his accomplished wife, who in\ncourse of time exercised a disturbing influence over the Carlyle\nhousehold. It would not tend to edification to dwell upon the domestic\nmisunderstandings at Cheyne Row; besides, are not they to be found\ndetailed at great length in Froude's _Life_, the _Reminiscences_, and\n_Letters and Memorials_? Although Carlyle was taking life somewhat easy,\nhe was making preparations for his third course of lectures, his subject\nbeing the 'Revolutions of Modern Europe.' They did not please the\nlecturer, but the audiences were as enthusiastic as ever, and he made a\nclear gain of L200.\n\nAbout this time Emerson was pressing him to go to Boston on a lecturing\ntour. But Carlyle thought better of it. More important work awaited him\nin London. 'All his life,' says Froude, 'he had been meditating on the\nproblem of the working-man's existence in this country at the present\nepoch.... He had seen the Glasgow riots in 1819. He had heard his father\ntalk of the poor masons, dining silently upon water and water-cresses.\nHis letters are full of reflections on such things, sad or indignant, as\nthe humour might be. He was himself a working-man's son. He had been\nbred in a peasant home, and all his sympathies were with his own class.\nHe was not a revolutionist; he knew well that violence would be no\nremedy; that there lay only madness and deeper misery. But the fact\nremained, portending frightful issues. The Reform Bill was to have\nmended matters but the Reform Bill had gone by and the poor were none\nthe happier. The power of the State had been shifted from the\naristocracy to the mill-owners, and merchants, and shopkeepers. That was\nall. The handicraftsman remained where he was, or was sinking, rather,\ninto an unowned Arab, to whom \"freedom\" meant freedom to work if the\nemployer had work to offer him conveniently to himself, or else freedom\nto starve. The fruit of such a state of society as this was the\nSansculottism on which he had been lecturing, and he felt that he must\nput his thoughts upon it in a permanent form. He had no faith in\npolitical remedies, in extended suffrages, recognition of \"the rights of\nman,\" etc.--absolutely none. That was the road on which the French had\ngone; and, if tried in England, it would end as it ended with them--in\nanarchy, and hunger, and fury. The root of the mischief was the\nforgetfulness on the part of the upper classes, increasing now to flat\ndenial, that they owed any duty to those under them beyond the payment\nof contract wages at the market price. The Liberal theory, as formulated\nin Political Economy, was that every one should attend exclusively to\nhis own interests, and that the best of all possible worlds would be the\ncertain result. His own conviction was that the result would be the\nworst of all possible worlds, a world in which human life, such a life\nas _human_ beings ought to live, would become impossible.'[19]\n\nHe wrote to his brother when his lectures were over: \"Guess what\nimmediate project I am on; that of writing an article on the\nworking-classes for the \"Quarterly.\" It is verily so. I offered to do\nthe thing for Mill about a year ago. He durst not. I felt a kind of call\nand monition of duty to do it, wrote to Lockhart accordingly, was\naltogether invitingly answered, had a long interview with the man\nyesterday, found him a person of sense, good-breeding, even kindness,\nand great consentaneity of opinion with myself on the matter. Am to get\nbooks from him to-morrow, and so shall forthwith set about telling the\nConservatives a thing or two about the claims, condition, rights, and\nmights of the working order of men.\"\n\nWhen the annual exodus from London came, the Carlyles went north for a\nholiday. They returned much refreshed at the end of two months. His\npresence, moreover, was required in London, as _Wilhelm Meister_ was now\nto be republished. He set about finishing his article for the\n\"Quarterly,\" but as he progressed he felt some misgiving as to its ever\nappearing in that magazine. \"I have finished,\" he wrote on November 8,\n1839, \"a long review article, thick pamphlet, or little volume, entitled\n\"Chartism.\" Lockhart has it, for it was partly promised to him; at\nleast the refusal of it was, and that, I conjecture, will be all he\nwill enjoy of it.\" Lockhart sent it back, 'seemingly not without\nreluctance,' saying he dared not. Mill was shown the pamphlet and was\n'unexpectedly delighted with it.' He was willing to publish it, but\nCarlyle's wife and brother insisted that the thing was too good for a\nmagazine article. Fraser undertook to print it, and before the close of\nthe year _Chartism_ was in the hands of the public.\n\nThe sale was rapid, an edition of a thousand copies being sold\nimmediately. 'Chartism,' Froude narrates, was loudly noticed:\n\"considerable reviewing, but very daft reviewing.\" Men wondered; how\ncould they choose but wonder, when a writer of evident power stripped\nbare the social disease, told them that their remedies were quack\nremedies, and their progress was progress to dissolution? The Liberal\njournals, finding their \"formulas\" disbelieved in, clamoured that\nCarlyle was unorthodox; no Radical, but a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet\nwhat he said was true, and could not be denied to be true. \"They approve\ngenerally,\" he said, \"but regret very much that I am a Tory. Stranger\nTory, in my opinion, has not been fallen in with in these later\ngenerations.\" Again a few weeks later (February 11): \"The people are\nbeginning to discover that I am not a Tory. Ah, no! but one of the\ndeepest, though perhaps the quietest, of all the Radicals now extant in\nthe world--a thing productive of small comfort to several persons. They\nhave said, and they will say, and let them say.\"\n\nHis final course of lectures now confronted him, and these he entitled\n_Heroes and Hero Worship_. He tells his mother (May 26, 1840): 'The\nlecturing business went off with sufficient _eclat_. The course was\ngenerally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the bad _best_\nI have yet given. On the last day--Friday last--I went to speak of\nCromwell with a head _full of air_; you know that wretched physical\nfeeling; I had been concerned with drugs, had awakened at five, etc. It\nis absolute martyrdom. My tongue would hardly wag at all when I got\ndone. Yet the good people sate breathless, or broke out into all kinds\nof testimonies of goodwill.... In a word, we got right handsomely\nthrough.' That was Carlyle's last appearance as a public lecturer. He\nwas now the observed of all observers in London society; but he was\nweary of lionising and junketings. 'What,' he notes in his journal on\nJune 15, 1840, 'are lords coming to call on one and fill one's head with\nwhims? They ask you to go among champagne, bright glitter,\nsemi-poisonous excitements which you do not like even for the moment,\nand you are sick for a week after. As old Tom White said of whisky,\n\"Keep it--Deevil a ever I'se better than when there's no a drop on't i'\nmy weam.\" So say I of dinner popularity, lords and lionism--Keep it;\ngive it to those that like it.'\n\nCarlyle was much refreshed at this period by visits from Tennyson. Here\nis what he says of the poet: 'A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed,\nbronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is Alfred; dusty, smoky, free and\neasy, who swims outwardly and inwardly with great composure in an\ninarticulate element of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke. Great now and\nthen when he does emerge--a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man.'\n\nIn a note to his brother John on September 11, 1840, he says: 'I have\nagain some notions towards writing a book--let us see what comes of\nthat. It is the one use of living, for me. Enough to-day.' The book he\nhad in view was _Cromwell_. Journalising on the day after Christmas he\nlaments--'Oliver Cromwell will not prosper with me at all. I began\nreading about that subject some four months ago. I learn almost nothing\nby reading, yet cannot as yet heartily begin to write. Nothing on paper\nyet. I know not where to begin.'\n\nAt the end of the year Mrs Carlyle wrote: 'Carlyle is reading\nvoraciously, preparatory to writing a new book. For the rest, he growls\naway much in the old style. But one gets to feel a certain indifference\nto his growling; if one did not, it would be the worse for one.' A month\nor two later, Carlyle writes: 'Think not hardly of me, dear Jeannie. In\nthe mutual misery we often are in, we do not know how dear we are to one\nanother. By the help of Heaven, I shall get a little better, and\nsomewhat of it shall abate. Last night, at dinner, Richard Milnes made\nthem all laugh with a saying of yours. \"When the wife has influenza, it\nis _a slight cold_--when the man has it, it is, &c., &c.\"' Writing to\nSterling he exclaims, 'I shall verily fly to Craigenputtock again before\nlong. Yet I know what solitude is, and imprisonment among black cattle\nand peat bogs. The truth is, we are never right as we are. \"Oh, the\ndevil burn it\"! said the Irish drummer flogging his countryman; \"there's\nno pleasing of you, strike where one will.\"'\n\nMilnes prevailed on Carlyle, instead of flying to the bleak expanse of\nCraigenputtock, to accompany him to his father's house at Fryston, in\nYorkshire, whence he sent a series of affectionate and graphic letters\nto Mrs Carlyle. Being so far north, he took a run to Dumfriesshire to\nsee his mother, who had been slightly ailing. He was back in London,\nhowever, in May, but not improved in mind or body. It was a hot summer,\nand the Carlyles went to Scotsbrig, and took a cottage at Newby, close\nto Annan. By the end of September, Carlyle was back in Cheyne Row. His\nlatest hero still troubled him. 'Ought I,' he asks, 'to write now of\nOliver Cromwell?... I cannot yet see clearly.'\n\nCarlyle at one time had a hankering after a Scottish professorship, but\nthe 'door had been shut in his face,' sometimes contemptuously. He was\nnow famous, and the young Edinburgh students, having looked into his\nlectures on Heroes, began to think that, whatever might be the opinions\nof the authorities and patrons, they for their part must consider\nlectures such as these a good exchange for what was provided for them. A\n'History Chair' was about to be established. A party of them,\nrepresented by a Mr Dunipace, presented a requisition to the Faculty of\nAdvocates to appoint Carlyle. When asked his consent to be nominated,\nCarlyle replied: 'Accept my kind thanks, you and all your associates,\nfor your zeal to serve me.... Ten years ago such an invitation might\nperhaps have been decisive of much for me, but it is too late now; too\nlate for many reasons, which I need not trouble you with at present.'\n\nA very severe blow now fell upon Mrs Carlyle, who received news from\nTempland that her mother had been struck by apoplexy, and was\ndangerously ill. Although unfit for travelling, she caught the first\ntrain from Euston Square to Liverpool, but at her uncle's house there\nshe learnt that all was over. Mrs Carlyle lay ill in Liverpool, unable\nto stir. After a while she was able to go back to London, where Carlyle\njoined her in the month of May. It was on his return journey that he\npaid a visit to Dr Arnold at Rugby, when he had an opportunity, under\nhis host's genial guidance, to explore the field of Naseby.\n\nHis sad occupations in Scotland, and the sad thoughts they suggested,\nmade Carlyle disinclined for society. He had a room arranged for him at\nthe top of his house, and there he sate and smoked, and read books on\nCromwell, 'the sight of Naseby having brought the subject back out of\n\"the abysses.\"' Meanwhile he had a pleasant trip to Ostend with Mr\nStephen Spring Rice, Commissioner of Customs, of which he wrote vivid\ndescriptions.\n\nOn October 25, 1842, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'For many months\nthere has been no writing here. Alas! what was there to write? About\nmyself, nothing; or less, if that was possible. I have not got one word\nto stand upon paper in regard to Oliver. The beginnings of work are even\nmore formidable than the executing of it.' But another subject was to\nengross his attention for a little while. The distress of the poor\nbecame intense; less in London, however, than in other large towns. 'I\ndeclare,' he wrote to his mother early in January 1843, 'I declare I\nbegin to feel as if I should not hold my peace any longer, as if I\nshould perhaps open my mouth in a way that some of them are not\nexpecting--we shall see if this book were done.' On the 20th he wrote:\n'I hope it will be a rather useful kind of book.' He could not go on\nwith Cromwell till he had unburdened his soul. 'The look of the world,'\nhe said, 'is really quite oppressive to me. Eleven thousand souls in\nPaisley alone living on threehalfpence a day, and the governors of the\nland all busy shooting partridges and passing corn-laws the while! It\nis a thing no man with a speaking tongue in his head is entitled to be\nsilent about.' The outcome of all his soul-burnings and cogitations was\n_Past and Present_, which appeared at the beginning of April. The\nreviewers set to work, 'wondering, admiring, blaming, chiefly the last.'\n\nCarlyle then undertook several journeys, chiefly in order to visit\nCromwellian battlefields, the sight of which made the Oliver enterprise\nno longer impossible. He found a renovated house on his return, and Mrs\nCarlyle writing on November 28th, describes him as 'over head and ears\nin Cromwell,' and 'lost to humanity for the time being.' Six months\nlater, he makes this admission in his journal--'My progress in\n\"Cromwell\" is frightful. I am no day absolutely idle, but the confusions\nthat lie in my way require far more fire of energy than I can muster on\nmost days, and I sit not so much working as painfully looking on work.'\nFour months later, when _Cromwell_ was progressing slowly, Carlyle\nsuffered a severe personal loss by the death of John Sterling.\n'Sterling,' says Froude, 'had been his spiritual pupil, his first, and\nalso his noblest and best. Consumption had set its fatal mark upon him.'\nCarlyle drowned his sorrow in hard work, and in July 1845 the end of\n_Cromwell_ was coming definitely in sight. In his journal under date\nAugust 26th, is to be found this entry: 'I have this moment _ended_\nOliver; hang it! He is ended, thrums and all. I have nothing more to\nwrite on the subject, only mountains of wreck to burn. Not (any more) up\nto the chin in paper clippings and chaotic litter, hatefuller to me than\nmost. I _am_ to have a swept floor now again.' And thus the herculean\nlabours of five years were ended. His desire was to be in Scotland, and\nhe made his way northwards by the usual sea route to Annan and\nScotsbrig. He did not remain long away, and upon his return _Cromwell_\nwas just issuing from the press. It was received with great favour, the\nsale was rapid, and additional materials came from unexpected quarters.\nIn February 1846 a new edition was needed in order to insert fresh\nletters of Oliver according to date; a process, Carlyle said 'requiring\none's most excellent talent, as of shoe-cobbling, really that kind of\ntalent carried to a high pitch.' When completed, Carlyle presented a\ncopy of it to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, a step he never took\nbefore or after with any of his writings,--a compliment which Peel\ngracefully acknowledged.\n\nCarlyle's plans for the summer of 1846 were, a visit to his mother and a\nrun across to Ireland. Charles Gavan Duffy of the _Nation_ newspaper saw\nhim in London in consequence of what he had written in _Chartism_ about\nmisgovernment in Ireland. He had promised to go over and see what the\n'Young Ireland' movement was doing. On the 31st of August he left\nScotsbrig, and landed in due course at Belfast, where he was to have\nbeen met by John Mitchel and Gavan Duffy and driven to Drogheda. He\nmissed his two friends through a mistake at the post-office, and hurried\non by railway to Dublin. He met them at Dundrum, and was there\nentertained at a large dinner-party. Next day he dined at Mitchel's. His\nstay was remarkably short. He took steamer at Kingstown, and in the\nearly morning of September 10th 'he was sitting smoking a cigar before\nthe door of his wife's uncle's house in Liverpool till the household\nshould awake and let him in.'\n\nIn June 1847 Carlyle relates that they had a flying visit from Jeffrey.\n'A much more interesting visitor than Jeffrey was old Dr Chalmers, who\ncame down to us also last week, whom I had not seen before for, I think,\nfive-and-twenty years. It was a pathetic meeting. The good old man is\ngrown white-headed, but is otherwise wonderfully little altered--grave,\ndeliberate, very gentle in his deportment, but with plenty too of soft\nenergy; full of interest still for all serious things, full of real\nkindliness, and sensible even to honest mirth in a fair measure. He sate\nwith us an hour and a half, went away with our blessings and affections.\nIt is long since I have spoken to so _good_ and really pious-hearted and\nbeautiful old man.' In a week or two Chalmers was suddenly called away.\n'I believe,' wrote Carlyle to his mother, 'there is not in all Scotland,\nor all Europe, any such Christian priest left. It will long be memorable\nto us, the little visit we had from him.'\n\nEarly in 1848, the Jew Bill was before Parliament, and the fate of it\ndoubtful, narrates Mr Froude. Baron Rothschild wrote to ask Carlyle to\nwrite a pamphlet in its favour, and intimated that he might name any sum\nwhich he liked to ask as payment. Froude enquired how he answered.\n'Well,' he said, 'I had to tell him it couldn't be; but I observed, too,\nthat I could not conceive why he and his friends, who were supposed to\nbe looking out for the coming of Shiloh, should be seeking seats in a\nGentile legislature.' Froude asked what the Baron said to that. 'Why,'\nsaid Carlyle, 'he seemed to think the coming of Shiloh was a dubious\nbusiness, and that meanwhile, etc., etc.'\n\nOn February 9, 1848, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'Chapman's money\n[Chapman & Hall were his publishers] all paid, lodged now in the\nDumfries Bank. New edition of \"Sartor\" to be wanted soon. My poor books\nof late have yielded me a certain fluctuating annual income; at all\nevents, I am quite at my ease as to money, and that on such low terms. I\noften wonder at the luxurious ways of the age. Some L1500, I think, is\nwhat has accumulated in the bank. Of fixed income (from Craigenputtock)\nL150 a year. Perhaps as much from my books may lie fixed amid the huge\nfluctuation (last year, for instance, it was L800: the year before,\nL100; the year before that, about L700; this year, again, it is like to\nbe L100; the next perhaps nothing--very fluctuating indeed)--some L300\nin all, and that amply suffices me. For my wife is the best of\nhousewives; noble, too, in reference to the property, which is _hers_,\nwhich she has never once in the most distant way seemed to know to be\nhers. Be this noted and remembered; my thrifty little lady--every inch a\nlady--ah me! In short, I authentically feel indifferent to money; would\nnot go this way or that to gain more money.'[20]\n\nThe Revolution of February 24th at Paris surprised Carlyle less than\nmost of his contemporaries, as it confirmed what he had been saying for\nyears. He did not believe, we are told, in immediate convulsion in\nEngland; but he did believe that, unless England took warning and mended\nher ways, her turn would come. The excitement in London was intense, and\nleading men expressed themselves freely, but Carlyle's general thoughts\nwere uttered in a lengthy letter to Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, for\nwhom he entertained a warm regard. On March 14 he met Macaulay at Lord\nMahon's at breakfast; 'Niagara of eloquent commonplace talk,' he says,\n'from Macaulay. \"Very good-natured man\"; man cased in official mail of\nproof; stood my impatient fire-explosions with much patience, merely\nhissing a little steam up, and continued his Niagara--supply and demand;\npower ruinous to powerful himself; _im_possibility of Government doing\nmore than keep the peace; suicidal distraction of new French Republic,\netc. Essentially irremediable, commonplace nature of the man; all that\nwas in him now gone to the tongue; a squat, thickset, low-browed, short,\ngrizzled little man of fifty.'\n\nOne of the few men Carlyle was anxious to see was Sir Robert Peel. He\nwas introduced by the Barings at a dinner at Bath House. Carlyle sat\nnext to Peel, whom he describes as 'a finely-made man of strong, not\nheavy, rather of elegant, stature; stands straight, head slightly thrown\nback, and eyelids modestly drooping; every way mild and gentle, yet with\nless of that fixed smile than the portraits give him. He is towards\nsixty, and, though not broken at all, carries, especially in his\ncomplexion, when you are _near_ him, marks of that age; clear, strong\nblue eyes which kindle on occasion, voice extremely good, low-toned,\nsomething of _cooing_ in it, rustic, affectionate, honest, mildly\npersuasive. Spoke about French Revolutions new and old; well read in all\nthat; had seen General Dumouriez; reserved seemingly by nature, obtrudes\nnothing of _diplomatic_ reserve. On the contrary, a vein of mild _fun_\nin him, real sensibility to the ludicrous, which feature I liked best of\nall.... I consider him by far our first public man--which, indeed, is\nsaying little--and hope that England in these frightful times may still\nget some good of him. N.B.--This night with Peel was the night in which\nBerlin city executed its last terrible battle, (19th of March to Sunday\nmorning the 20th, five o'clock.) While we sate there the streets of\nBerlin city were all blazing with grape-shot and the war of enraged men.\nWhat is to become of all that? I have a book to write about it. Alas! We\nhear of a great Chartist petition to be presented by 200,000 men. People\nhere keep up their foolish levity in speaking of these things; but\nconsiderate persons find them to be very grave; and indeed all, even the\nlaughers, are in considerable secret alarm.'[21]\n\nAt such a time Carlyle knew that he, the author of _Chartism_, ought to\nsay something. Foolish people, too, came pressing for his opinions. Not\nseeing his way to a book upon 'Democracy,' he wrote a good many\nnewspaper articles, chiefly in the _Examiner_ and the _Spectator_, to\ndeliver his soul. Even Fonblanque and Rintoul (the editors), remarks\nFroude, friendly though they were to him, could not allow him his full\nswing. 'There is no established journal,' complained Carlyle, 'that can\nstand my articles, no single one they would not blow the bottom out of.'\n\nOn July 12 occurs this entry in his journal: 'Chartist concern, and\nIrish Repeal concern, and French Republic concern have all gone a bad\nway since the March entry--April 20 (immortal day already dead), day of\nChartist monster petition; 200,000 special constables swore themselves\nin, etc., and Chartism came to nothing. Riots since, but the leaders\nall lodged in gaol, tried, imprisoned for two years, etc., and so ends\nChartism for the present. Irish Mitchel, poor fellow! is now in Bermuda\nas a felon; letter from him, letter to him, letter to and from Lord\nClarendon--was really sorry for poor Mitchel. But what help? French\nRepublic _cannonaded_ by General Cavaignac; a sad outlook there.'[22]\n\nCarlyle's _Cromwell_ had created a set of enthusiastic admirers who were\nbent on having a statue of the great Protector set up. Carlyle was asked\nto give his sanction to the proposal. Writing to his mother, he said:\n'The people having subscribed L25,000 for a memorial to an ugly bullock\nof a Hudson, who did not even pretend to have any merit except that of\nbeing suddenly rich, and who is now discovered to be little other than\nat heart a horse-coper and dishonest fellow, I think they ought to leave\nCromwell alone of their memorials, and try to honour him in some more\nprofitable way--by learning to be honest men like him, for example. But\nwe shall see what comes of all this Cromwell work--a thing not without\nvalue either.'[23]\n\n'Ireland,' says Froude, 'of all the topics on which Carlyle had\nmeditated writing, remained painfully fascinating. He had looked at the\nbeggarly scene, he had seen the blighted fields, the ragged misery of\nthe wretched race who were suffering for other's sins as well as for\ntheir own. Since that brief visit of his, the famine had been followed\nby the famine-fever, and the flight of millions from a land which was\nsmitten with a curse. Those ardent young men with whom he had dined at\nDundrum were working as felons in the docks at Bermuda. Gavan Duffy,\nafter a near escape from the same fate, had been a guest in Cheyne Row;\nand the story which he had to tell of cabins torn down by crowbars, and\nshivering families, turned out of their miserable homes, dying in the\nditches by the roadside, had touched Carlyle to the very heart. He was\nfurious at the economical commonplaces with which England was consoling\nitself. He regarded Ireland as \"the breaking-point of the huge\nsuppuration which all British and all European society then was.\"'[24]\nCarlyle paid a second visit to Ireland. He was anxious to write a book\non the subject. He noted down what he had seen, and 'then dismissed the\nunhappy subject from his mind,' giving his manuscript to a friend, which\nwas published after his death.\n\nThe 7th of August found Carlyle among his 'ain folk' at Scotsbrig, and\nthis was his soliloquy: 'Thank Heaven for the sight of real human\nindustry, with human fruits from it, once more. The sight of fenced\nfields, weeded crops, and human creatures with whole clothes on their\nback--it was as if one had got into spring water out of dunghill\npuddles.' Mrs Carlyle had also gone to Scotland, and 'wandered like a\nreturned spirit about the home of her childhood.' Of her numerous lively\nletters, room must be found for a characteristic epistle to her\nbrother-in-law, John Carlyle. His translation of Dante's _Inferno_ was\njust out, and her uncle's family at Auchtertool Manse, in Fife, where\nshe was staying, were busy reading and discussing it. 'We had been\ntalking about you,' she says, 'and had sunk silent. Suddenly my uncle\nturned his head to me and said, shaking it gravely, \"He has made an\nawesome plooster o' that place.\" \"Who? What place, uncle?\" \"Whew! the\nplace ye'll maybe gang to, if ye dinna tak' care.\" I really believe he\nconsiders all those circles of your invention. Walter [a cousin, just\nordained] performed the marriage service over a couple of colliers the\nday after I came. I happened to be in his study when they came in, and\nasked leave to remain. The man was a good-looking man enough, dreadfully\nagitated, partly with the business he was come on, partly with drink. He\nhad evidently taken a glass too much to keep his heart up. The girl had\none very large inflamed eye and one little one, which looked perfectly\ncomposed, while the large eye stared wildly, and had a tear in it.\nWalter married them very well indeed; and his affecting words, together\nwith the bridegroom's pale, excited face, and the bride's ugliness, and\nthe poverty, penury, and want imprinted on the whole business, and above\nall fellow-feeling with the poor wretches then rushing on their\nfate--all that so overcame me that I fell crying as desperately as if I\nhad been getting married to the collier myself, and, when the ceremony\nwas over, extended my hand to the unfortunates, and actually (in such an\nenthusiasm of pity did I find myself) I presented the new husband with a\nsnuff-box which I happened to have in my hand, being just about\npresenting it to Walter when the creatures came in. This unexpected\n_Himmelsendung_ finished turning the man's head; he wrung my hand over\nand over, leaving his mark for some hours after, and ended his grateful\nspeeches with, \"Oh, Miss! Oh, Liddy! may ye hae mair comfort and\npleasure in your life than ever you have had yet!\" which might easily\nbe.'\n\nCarlyle was full of wrath at what he considered the cant about the\ncondition of the wage-earners in Manchester and elsewhere, and his\nindignation found vent in the _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Froude once asked\nhim if he had ever thought of going into Parliament, for the former knew\nthat the opportunity must have been offered him. 'Well,' he said, 'I did\nthink of it at the time of the \"Latter-day Pamphlets.\" I felt that\nnothing could prevent me from getting up in the House and saying all\nthat.' 'He was powerful,' adds Froude, 'but he was not powerful _enough_\nto have discharged with his single voice the vast volume of conventional\nelectricity with which the collective wisdom of the nation was, and\nremains charged. It is better that his thoughts should have been\ncommitted to enduring print, where they remain to be reviewed hereafter\nby the light of fact.'[25]\n\nThe printing of the _Pamphlets_ commenced at the beginning of 1850, and\nwent on month after month, each separately published, no magazine daring\nto become responsible for them. When the _Pamphlets_ appeared, they were\nreceived with 'astonished indignation.' 'Carlyle taken to whisky,' was\nthe popular impression--or perhaps he had gone mad. '_Punch_,' says\nFroude, 'the most friendly to him of all the London periodicals,\nprotested affectionately. The delinquent was brought up for trial before\nhim, I think for injuring his reputation. He was admonished, but stood\nimpenitent, and even \"called the worthy magistrate a windbag and a\nsham.\" I suppose it was Thackeray who wrote this; or some other kind\nfriend, who feared, like Emerson, \"that the world would turn its back on\nhim.\" He was under no illusion himself as to the effect which he was\nproducing.'[26]\n\nAmid the general storm, Carlyle was 'agreeably surprised' to receive an\ninvitation to dine with Peel at Whitehall Gardens, where he met a select\ncompany. 'After all the servants but the butler were gone,' narrates\nCarlyle, 'we began to hear a little of Peel's quiet talk across the\ntable, unimportant, distinguished by its sense of the ludicrous shining\nthrough a strong official _rationality_ and even seriousness of temper.\nDistracted _address_ of a letter from somebody to Queen Victoria; \"The\nmost noble George Victoria, Queen of England, Knight and Baronet,\" or\nsomething like that. A man had once written to Peel himself, while\nsecretary, \"that he was weary of life, that if any gentleman wanted for\nhis park-woods a hermit, he, etc.\", all of which was very pretty and\nhuman as Peel gave it us.'[27] Carlyle was driven home by the Bishop of\nOxford, 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce, whom he had probably met before at the\nAshburton's. The Bishop once told Froude that he considered Carlyle a\nmost eminently religious man. 'Ah, Sam,' said Carlyle to Froude one day,\n'he is a very clever fellow; I do not hate him near as much as I fear I\nought to do.' Carlyle and Peel met once more, at Bath House, and there,\ntoo, he was first introduced to the Duke of Wellington. Writing at the\ntime, Carlyle said: 'I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what\nan expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is\nabout the old hero when you see him close at hand.... Except for Dr\nChalmers, I have not for many years seen so beautiful an old man.'\n\nCarlyle intended, some time or other, writing a 'Life of Sterling,' but\nmeanwhile he accepted an invitation to visit South Wales. Thence he\nmade his way to Scotsbrig. On the 27th September 1850, he 'parted\nsorrowfully with his mother.' When he reached London, the autumn\nquarterlies were reviewing the _Pamphlets_, and the 'shrieking tone was\nconsiderably modified.' 'A review of them,' says Froude, 'by Masson in\nthe _North British_ distinctly pleased Carlyle. A review in the _Dublin_\nhe found \"excellently serious,\" and conjectured that it came from some\nAnglican pervert or convert. It was written, I believe, by Dr Ward.'\n\nAfter a few more wanderings, Carlyle set about the _Life of Sterling_,\nand on April 5, 1851, he informs his mother: 'I told the Doctor about\n\"John Sterling's Life,\" a small, insignificant book or pamphlet I have\nbeen writing. The booksellers got it away from me the other morning, to\nsee how much there is of it, in the first place. I know not altogether\nmyself whether it is worth printing or not, but rather think it will be\nthe end of it whether or not. It has cost little trouble, and need not\ndo much ill, if it do no great amount of good.' Another visit had to be\npaid to Scotsbrig, where he read the \"Life of Chalmers.\" 'An excellent\nChristian man,' he said. 'About as great a contrast to himself in all\nways as could be found in these epochs under the same sky.'\n\nWhen he got back to Cheyne Row, he took to reading the \"Seven Years'\nWar,\" with a view to another book. He determined to go to Germany, and\non August 30, 1852, Carlyle embarked 'on board the greasy little wretch\nof a Leith steamer, laden to the water's edge with pig-iron and\nherrings.' The journey over, he set to work on 'Frederick,' but was\ndriven almost to despair by the cock-crowing in his neighbourhood.\nWriting to Mrs Carlyle, he says: 'I foresee in general these cocks will\nrequire to be abolished, entirely silenced, whether we build the new\nroom or not. I would cheerfully shoot them, and pay the price if\ndiscovered, but I have no gun, should be unsafe for hitting, and indeed\nseldom see the wretched animals.'\n\nHe took refuge at the Ashburton's house, the Grange, but on the 20th of\nDecember, news came that his mother was seriously ill, and could not\nlast long. He hurried off to Scotsbrig, and reached there in time to see\nher once more alive. In his journal, this passage is to be found under\ndate January 8, 1854: 'The stroke has fallen. My dear old mother is gone\nfrom me, and in the winter of the year, confusedly under darkness of\nweather and of mind, the stern final epoch--_epoch of old age_--is\nbeginning to unfold itself for me.... It is matter of perennial\nthankfulness to me, and beyond my desert in that matter very far, that I\nfound my dear old mother still alive; able to recognise me with a faint\njoy; her former _self_ still strangely visible there in all its\nlineaments, though worn to the uttermost thread. The brave old mother\nand the good, whom to lose had been my fear ever since intelligence\nawoke in me in this world, arrived now at the final bourn.... She was\nabout 84 years of age, and could not with advantage to any side remain\nwith us longer. Surely it was a good Power that gave us such a mother;\nand good though stern that took her away from amid such grief and labour\nby a death beautiful to one's thoughts. \"All the days of my appointed\ntime will I wait till my change come.\" This they heard her muttering,\nand many other less frequent pious texts and passages. Amen, Amen!\nSunday, December 25, 1853--a day henceforth for ever memorable to me....\nTo live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple\nbravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone: that would be a right\nlearning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory. But alas\nall is yet _frozen_ within me; even as it is without me at present, and\nI have made little or no way. God be helpful to me! I myself am very\nweak, confused, fatigued, entangled in poor _worldlinesses_ too.\nNewspaper paragraphs, even as this sacred and peculiar thing, are not\nindifferent to me. Weak soul! and I am fifty-eight years old, and the\ntasks I have on hand, Frederick, &c., are most ungainly, incongruous\nwith my mood--and the night cometh, for me too is not distant, which for\nher is come. I must try, I must try. Poor brother Jack! Will he do his\nDante now? For him also I am sad; and surely he has deserved gratitude\nin these last years from us all.'[28]\n\nWhen he returned to London, Carlyle lived in strict seclusion, making\nrepeated efforts at work on what he called 'the unexecutable book,'\n_Frederick_. In the spring of 1854, tidings reached Carlyle of the death\nof Professor Wilson. Between them there had never been any cordial\nrelation, says Froude. 'They had met in Edinburgh in the old days; on\nCarlyle's part there had been no backwardness, and Wilson was not\nunconscious of Carlyle's extraordinary powers. But he had been shy of\nCarlyle, and Carlyle had resented it, and now this April the news came\nthat Wilson was gone, and Carlyle had to write his epitaph. 'I knew his\nfigure well,' wrote Carlyle in his journal on April 29; 'remember well\nfirst seeing him in Princes Street on a bright April afternoon--probably\n1814--exactly forty years ago.... A tall ruddy figure, with plenteous\nblonde hair, with bright blue eyes, fixed, as if in haste towards some\ndistant object, strode rapidly along, clearing the press to the left of\nus, close by the railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. Westward\nhe in haste; we slowly eastward. Campbell whispered me, \"That is Wilson\nof the _Isle of Palms_,\" which poem I had not read, being then quite\nmathematical, scientific, &c., for extraneous reasons, as I now see them\nto have been. The broad-shouldered stately bulk of the man struck me;\nhis flashing eye, copious, dishevelled head of hair, and rapid,\nunconcerned progress, like that of a plough through stubble. I really\nliked him, but only from the distance, and thought no more of him. It\nmust have been fourteen years later before I once saw his figure again,\nand began to have some distant straggling acquaintance of a personal\nkind with him. Glad could I have been to be better and more familiarly\nacquainted; but though I liked much in him, and he somewhat in me, it\nwould not do. He was always very kind to me, but seemed to have a\nfeeling I should--could--not become wholly his, in which he was right,\nand that on other terms he could not have me; so we let it so remain,\nand for many years--indeed, even after quitting Edinburgh--I had no\nacquaintance with him; occasionally got symptoms of his ill-humour with\nme--ink-spurts in _Blackwood_, read or heard of, which I, in a surly,\nsilent manner, strove to consider _flattering_ rather.... So far as I\ncan recollect, he was once in my house (Comely Bank, with a testimonial,\npoor fellow!), and I once in his, De Quincey, &c., a little while one\nafternoon.'[29]\n\nOn September 16, 1854, Carlyle breaks out in his journal: '\"The harvest\nis past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.\"' What a fearful\nword! I cannot find how to take up that miserable \"Frederick,\" or what\non earth to do with it.' He worked hard at it, nevertheless, for\neighteen months, and by the end of May 1858, the first instalment was\nall in type. Froude remarks that a fine critic once said to him that\nCarlyle's Friedrich Wilhelm was as peculiar and original as Sterne's\nTristram Shandy; certainly as distinct a personality as exists in\nEnglish fiction. Carlyle made a second journey to Germany. Shortly after\nhis return, the already finished volumes of _Frederick_ appeared, and\nthey met with an immediate welcome. The success was great; 2000 copies\nwere sold at the first issue, and a second 2000 were disposed of almost\nas rapidly, and a third 2000 followed. Mrs Carlyle's health being\nunsatisfactory, Carlyle took a house for the summer at Humbie, near\nAberdour in Fife. They returned to Cheyne Row in October, neither of\nthem benefited by their holiday in the north.\n\nWhile many of Carlyle's intimate friends were passing away, he formed\nRuskin's acquaintance, which turned out mutually satisfactory. On the\n23rd April 1861, Carlyle writes to his brother John: 'Friday last I was\npersuaded--in fact had unwarily compelled myself, as it were--to a\nlecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street. Lecture on\nTree Leaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A\ncrammed house, but tolerable to me even in the gallery. The lecture was\nthought to \"break down,\" and indeed it quite did \"_as a lecture_\"; but\nonly did from _embarras des richesses_--a rare case. Ruskin did blow\nasunder as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were\nmanifold, curious, genial; and, in fact, I do not recollect to have\nheard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic\none.'[30]\n\n_Frederick_ was progressing, though slowly, as he found the ore in the\nGerman material at his disposal \"nowhere smelted out of it.\" The third\nvolume was finished and published in the summer of 1862; the fourth\nvolume was getting into type; and the fifth and last was finished in\nJanuary 1865. 'It nearly killed me,' Carlyle writes in his journal, 'it,\nand my poor Jane's dreadful illness, now happily over. No sympathy could\nbe found on earth for those horrid struggles of twelve years, nor\nhappily was any needed. On Sunday evening in the end of January (1865) I\nwalked out, with the multiplex feeling--joy not very prominent in it,\nbut a kind of solemn thankfulness traceable, that I had written the last\nsentence of that unutterable book, and, contrary to many forebodings in\nbad hours, had actually got done with it for ever.'\n\nIn England it was at once admitted, says Froude, that a splendid\naddition had been made to the national literature. 'The book contained,\nif nothing else, a gallery of historical figures executed with a skill\nwhich placed Carlyle at the head of literary portrait painters.... No\ncritic, after the completion of _Frederick_, challenged Carlyle's right\nto a place beside the greatest of English authors, past or present.' The\nwork was translated instantly into German, calling forth the warmest\nappreciation.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[18] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 115.\n\n[19] Froude's \"Life in London,\" vol. i. pp. 161-62.\n\n[20] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 420.\n\n[21] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. pp. 433-4.\n\n[22] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 441.\n\n[23] Ibid., vol. i. p. 451.\n\n[24] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 456.\n\n[25] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 26.\n\n[26] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 36.\n\n[27] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 43.\n\n[28] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 142-45.\n\n[29] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 156-7.\n\n[30] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 245.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nRECTORIAL ADDRESS--DEATH OF MRS CARLYLE\n\n\nAfter a round of holiday visits, including one to Annandale, the\nCarlyles settled down once more at Cheyne Row in the summer of 1865.\n'The great outward event of Carlyle's own life,' observes Froude,\n'Scotland's public recognition of him, was now lying close ahead. This\nhis wife was to live to witness as her final happiness in this world.'\nHere is an eloquent passage from the same pen: 'I had been at\nEdinburgh,' writes Froude, 'and had heard Gladstone make his great\noration on Homer there, on retiring from office as Rector. It was a\ngrand display. I never recognised before what oratory could do; the\naudience being kept for three hours in a state of electric tension,\nbursting every moment into applause. Nothing was said which seemed of\nmoment when read deliberately afterwards; but the voice was like\nenchantment, and the street, when we left the building, was ringing with\na prolongation of cheers. Perhaps in all Britain there was not a man\nwhose views on all subjects, in heaven and earth, less resembled\nGladstone's than those of the man whom this same applauding multitude\nelected to take his place. The students too, perhaps, were ignorant how\nwide the contradiction was; but if they had been aware of it they need\nnot have acted differently. Carlyle had been one of themselves. He had\nrisen from among them--not by birth or favour, not on the ladder of any\nestablished profession, but only by the internal force that was in\nhim--to the highest place as a modern man of letters. In _Frederick_ he\nhad given the finish to his reputation; he stood now at the summit of\nhis fame; and the Edinburgh students desired to mark their admiration in\nsome signal way. He had been mentioned before, but he had declined to be\nnominated, for a party only were then in his favour. On this occasion,\nthe students were unanimous, or nearly so. His own consent was all that\nwas wanting.'[31] This consent was obtained, and Carlyle was chosen\nRector of Edinburgh University. But the Address troubled him. He\nresolved, however, as his father used to say, to 'gar himself go through\nwith the thing,' or at least to try. Froude says he was very miserable,\nbut that Mrs Carlyle 'kept up his spirits, made fun of his fears,\nbantered him, encouraged him, herself at heart as much alarmed as he\nwas, but conscious, too, of the ridiculous side of it.' She thought of\naccompanying him, but her health would not permit of the effort. Both\nHuxley and Tyndall were going down, and Tyndall promised Mrs Carlyle to\ntake care of her husband.\n\nOn Monday morning, the 29th of March, 1866, Carlyle and his wife parted.\n'The last I saw of her,' he said, 'was as she stood with her back to the\nparlour door to bid me good-bye. She kissed me twice, she me once, I her\na second time.' They parted for ever.\n\nEdinburgh was reached in due course, and what happened there had best be\ntold by an eye-witness, Professor Masson. 'On the night following\nCarlyle's arrival in town,' he says, 'after he had settled himself in Mr\nErskine of Linlathen's house, where he was to stay during his visit, he\nand his brother John came to my house in Rosebery Crescent, that they\nmight have a quiet smoke and talk over matters. They sat with me an hour\nor more, Carlyle as placid and hearty as could be, talking most\npleasantly, a little dubious, indeed, as to how he might get through his\nAddress, but for the rest unperturbed. As to the Address itself, when\nthe old man stood up in the Music Hall before the assembled crowd, and\nthrew off his Rectorial robes, and proceeded to speak, slowly,\nconnectedly, and nobly raising his left hand at the end of each section\nor paragraph to stroke the back of his head as he cogitated what he was\nto say next, the crowd listening as they had never listened to a speaker\nbefore, and reverent even in those parts of the hall where he was least\naudible,--who that was present will ever forget that sight? That day,\nand on the subsequent days of his stay, there were, of course, dinners\nand other gatherings in Carlyle's honour. One such dinner, followed by a\nlarger evening gathering, was in my house. Then, too, he was in the best\nof possible spirits, courteous in manner and in speech to all, and\nthrowing himself heartily into whatever turned up. At the dinner-table,\nI remember, Lord Neaves favoured us with one or two of his humorous\nsongs or recitatives, including his clever quiz called \"Stuart Mill on\nMind and Matter,\" written to the tune of \"Roy's wife of Aldivalloch.\" No\none enjoyed the thing more than Carlyle; and he surprised me by doing\nwhat I had never heard him do before,--actually joining with his own\nvoice in the chorus. \"Stuart Mill on Mind and Matter, Stuart Mill on\nMind and Matter,\" he chaunted laughingly along with Lord Neaves every\ntime the chorus came round, beating time in the air emphatically with\nhis fist. It was hardly otherwise, or only otherwise inasmuch as the\naffair was more ceremonious and stately, at the dinner given to him in\nthe Douglas Hotel by the Senatus Academicus, and in which his old friend\nSir David Brewster presided. There, too, while dignified and serene,\nCarlyle was thoroughly sympathetic and convivial. Especially I remember\nhow he relished and applauded the songs of our academic laureate and\nmatchless chief in such things, Professor Douglas Maclagan, and how,\nbefore we broke up, he expressly complimented Professor Maclagan on\nhaving \"contributed so greatly to the hilarity of the evening.\"'[32]\n\nThe most graphic account of Carlyle's installation as Lord Rector is\nthat by Alexander Smith, the author of 'A Life Drama,' 'Summer in Skye,'\n&c., &c., whose lamented death took place a few months after that event.\n'Curious stories,' he wrote, 'are told of the eagerness on every side\nmanifested to hear Mr Carlyle. Country clergymen from beyond Aberdeen\ncame to Edinburgh for the sole purpose of hearing and seeing. Gentlemen\ncame down from London by train the night before, and returned to London\nby train the night after. Nay, it was even said that an enthusiast,\ndwelling in the remote west of Ireland, intimated to the officials who\nhad charge of the distribution, that if a ticket should be reserved for\nhim, he would gladly come the whole way to Edinburgh. Let us hope a\nticket _was_ reserved. On the day of the address, the doors of the Music\nHall were besieged long before the hour of opening had arrived; and\nloitering about there on the outskirts of the crowd, one could not help\nglancing curiously down Pitt Street, towards the \"lang toun of\nKirkcaldy,\" dimly seen beyond the Forth; for on the sands there, in the\nearly years of the century, Edward Irving was accustomed to pace up and\ndown solitarily, and \"as if the sands were his own,\" people say, who\nremember, when they were boys, seeing the tall, ardent, black-haired,\nswift-gestured, squinting man, often enough. And to Kirkcaldy, too, ...\ncame young Carlyle from Edinburgh College, wildly in love with German\nand mathematics; and the schoolroom in which these men taught, although\nincorporated in Provost Swan's manufactory, is yet kept sacred and\nintact, and but little changed these fifty years--an act of hero-worship\nfor which the present and other generations may be thankful. It seemed\nto me that so glancing Fife-wards, and thinking of that noble\nfriendship--of the David and Jonathan of so many years agone--was the\nbest preparation for the man I was to see, and the speech I was to hear.\nDavid and Jonathan! Jonathan stumbled and fell on the dark hills, not of\nGilboa, but of Vanity; and David sang his funeral song: \"But for him I\nhad never known what the communion of man with man means. His was the\nfreest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with.\nI call him, on the whole, the best man I have ever, after trial enough,\nfound in this world, or now hope to find.\"\n\n'In a very few minutes after the doors were opened, the large hall was\nfilled in every part; and when up the central passage the Principal, the\nLord Rector, the Members of the Senate, and other gentlemen advanced\ntowards the platform, the cheering was vociferous and hearty. The\nPrincipal occupied the chair, of course; the Lord Rector on his right,\nthe Lord Provost on his left. When the platform gentlemen had taken\ntheir seats, every eye was fixed on the Rector. To all appearance, as he\nsat, time and labour had dealt tenderly with him. His face had not yet\nlost the country bronze which he brought up with him from Dumfriesshire\nas a student, fifty-six years ago. His long residence in London had not\ntouched his Annandale look, nor had it--as we soon learned--touched his\nAnnandale accent. His countenance was striking, homely, sincere,\ntruthful--the countenance of a man on whom \"the burden of the\nunintelligible world\" had weighed more heavily than on most. His hair\nwas yet almost dark; his moustache and short beard were iron-grey. His\neyes were wide, melancholy, sorrowful; and seemed as if they had been at\ntimes a-weary of the sun. Altogether, in his aspect there was something\naboriginal, as of a piece of unhewn granite, which had never been\npolished to any approved pattern, whose natural and original vitality\nhad never been tampered with. In a word, there seemed no passivity about\nMr Carlyle; he was the diamond, and the world was his pane of glass; he\nwas a graving tool, rather than a thing graven upon--a man to set his\nmark on the world--a man on whom the world could not set _its_ mark....\nThe proceedings began by the conferring of the degree of LL.D. on Mr\nErskine of Linlathen--an old friend of Mr Carlyle's--on Professors\nHuxley, Tyndall, and Ramsay, and on Dr Rae, the Arctic explorer. That\ndone, amid a tempest of cheering and hats enthusiastically waved, Mr\nCarlyle, slipping off his Rectorial robe--which must have been a very\nshirt of Nessus to him--advanced to the table, and began to speak in\nlow, wavering, melancholy tones, which were in accordance with the\nmelancholy eyes, and in the Annandale accent with which his play-fellows\nmust have been familiar long ago. So self-centred was he, so impregnable\nto outward influences, that all his years of Edinburgh and London life\ncould not impair, even in the slightest degree, _that_. The opening\nsentences were lost in the applause, and when it subsided, the low,\nplaintive, quavering voice was heard going on: \"Your enthusiasm towards\nme is very beautiful in itself, however undeserved it may be in regard\nto the object of it. It is a feeling honourable to all men, and one well\nknown to myself when in a position analogous to your own.\" And then came\nthe Carlylean utterance, with its far-reaching reminiscence and sigh\nover old graves--Father's and Mother's, Edward Irving's, John\nSterling's, Charles Buller's, and all the noble known in past time--and\nwith its flash of melancholy scorn. \"There are now fifty-six years gone,\nlast November, since I first entered your city, a boy of not quite\nfourteen--fifty-six years ago--to attend classes here, and gain\nknowledge of all kinds, I knew not what--with feelings of wonder and\nawe-struck expectation; and now, after a long, long course, this is what\nwe have come to.... There is something touching and tragic, and yet at\nthe same time beautiful, to see the third generation, as it were, of my\ndear old native land, rising up, and saying: Well, you are not\naltogether an unworthy labourer in the vineyard. You have toiled through\na great variety of fortunes, and have had many judges.\" And thereafter,\nwithout aid of notes, or paper preparation of any kind, in the same\nwistful, earnest, hesitating voice, and with many a touch of quaint\nhumour by the way, which came in upon his subject like glimpses of\npleasant sunshine, the old man talked to his vast audience about the\norigin and function of Universities, the Old Greeks and Romans, Oliver\nCromwell, John Knox, the excellence of silence as compared with speech,\nthe value of courage and truthfulness, and the supreme importance of\ntaking care of one's health. \"There is no kind of achievement you could\nmake in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to it are\nnuggets and millions? The French financier said, 'Alas! why is there no\nsleep to be sold?' Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.\" But\nwhat need of quoting a speech which by this time has been read by\neverybody? Appraise it as you please, it was a thing _per se_. Just as,\nif you wish a purple dye, you must fish up the Murex; if you wish ivory,\nyou must go to the East; so if you desire an address such as Edinburgh\nlistened to the other day, you must go to Chelsea for it. It may not be\nquite to your taste, but, in any case, there is no other intellectual\nwarehouse in which that kind of article is kept in stock.'[33]\n\nAnother eye-witness, Mr Moncure D. Conway, says: 'When Carlyle sat down\nthere was an audible sound, as of breath long held, by all present; then\na cry from the students, an exultation; they rose up, all arose, waving\ntheir arms excitedly; some pressed forward, as if wishing to embrace\nhim, or to clasp his knees; others were weeping; what had been heard\nthat day was more than could be reported; it was the ineffable spirit\nthat went forth from the deeps of a great heart and from the ages stored\nup in it, and deep answered unto deep.'\n\nImmediately after the delivery of the address, Tyndall telegraphed to\nMrs Carlyle this brief message, 'A perfect triumph.' That evening she\ndined at Forster's, where she met Dickens and Wilkie Collins. They drank\nCarlyle's health, and to her it was 'a good joy.' It was Carlyle's\nintention to have returned at once to London, but he changed his mind,\nand went for a few quiet days at Scotsbrig. When Tyndall was back in\nLondon Mrs Carlyle got all the particulars of the rectorial address from\nhim, and was made perfectly happy about it.\n\nNumberless congratulations poured in upon Mrs Carlyle, and for Saturday,\nApril 21st, she had arranged a small tea-party. In the morning she wrote\nher daily letter to Carlyle, and in the afternoon she went out in her\nbrougham for a drive, taking her little dog with her. When near Victoria\nGate, Hyde Park, she put the dog out to run. 'A passing carriage,' says\nFroude, 'went over its foot.... She sprang out, caught the dog in her\narms, took it with her into the brougham, and was never more seen alive.\nThe coachman went twice round the drive, by Marble Arch down to Stanhope\nGate, along the Serpentine and round again. Coming a second time near to\nthe Achilles statue, and surprised to receive no directions, he turned\nround, saw indistinctly that something was wrong, and asked a gentleman\nnear to look into the carriage. The gentleman told him briefly to take\nthe lady to St. George's Hospital, which was not 200 yards distant. She\nwas sitting with her hands folded in her lap _dead_.'[34]\n\nAt the hour she died Carlyle was enjoying the 'green solitudes and fresh\nspring breezes' of Annandale, 'quietly but far from happily.' About nine\no'clock the same night his brother-in-law, Mr Aitken, broke the news to\nhim. 'I was sitting in sister Jean's at Dumfries,' Carlyle wrote a\nfortnight after, 'thinking of my railway journey to Chelsea on Monday,\nand perhaps of a sprained ankle I had got at Scotsbrig two weeks or so\nbefore, when the fatal telegrams, two of them in succession, came. It\nhad a kind of _stunning_ effect upon me. Not for above two days could I\nestimate the immeasurable depths of it, or the infinite sorrow which had\npeeled my life all bare, and in a moment shattered my poor world to\nuniversal ruin. They took me out next day to wander, as was medically\nneedful, in the green sunny Sabbath fields, and ever and anon there rose\nfrom my sick heart the ejaculation, \"My poor little woman!\" but no full\ngust of tears came to my relief, nor has yet come. Will it ever? A stony\n\"Woe's me, woe's me!\" sometimes with infinite tenderness and pity, not\nfor myself, is my habitual mood hitherto.'[35]\n\nOn Monday morning Carlyle and his brother John set off for London. On\nthe Wednesday he was on his way to Haddington with the remains, his\nbrother and John Forster accompanying him. At 1 P.M. on Thursday the\nfuneral took place. 'In the nave of the old Abbey Kirk,' wrote her\ndisconsolate husband, 'long a ruin, now being saved from further decay,\nwith the skies looking down on her, there sleeps my little Jeannie, and\nthe light of her face will never shine on me more.' When Mr Conway saw\nhim on his return to Cheyne Row, Carlyle said, 'Whatever triumph there\nmay have been in that now so darkly overcast day, was indeed _hers_.\nLong, long years ago, she took her place by the side of a poor man of\nhumblest condition, against all other provisions for her, undertook to\nshare his lot for weal or woe; and in that office what she has been to\nhim and done for him, how she has placed, as it were, velvet between him\nand all the sharp angularities of existence, remains now only in the\nknowledge of one man, and will presently be finally hid in his grave.'\nAs he touchingly expressed it in the beautiful epitaph he wrote, the\n'light of his life' had assuredly 'gone out.' Universal sympathy was\nfelt for the bereaved husband, and he was very much affected by 'a\ndelicate, graceful, and even affectionate' message from the Queen,\nconveyed by Lady Augusta Stanley through his brother John.\n\nOne who knew Mrs Carlyle intimately thus speaks of her: 'Her intellect\nwas as clear and incisive as his, yet altogether womanly in character;\nher heart was as truthful, and her courage as unswerving. She was a wife\nin the noblest sense of that sacred name. She had a gift of literary\nexpression as unique as his; as tender a sympathy with human sorrow and\nneed; as clear an eye for all conventional hypocrisies and folly; as\nvivid powers of description and illustration; and also, it must be\nconfessed, when the spirit of mockery was strong upon her, as keen an\nedge to her flashing wit and humour, and as scornful a disregard of the\nconventional proprieties. But she was no literary hermaphrodite. She\nnever intellectually strode forth before the world upon masculine\nstilts; nor, in private life, did she frowardly push to the front, in\nthe vanity of showing she was as clever and considerable as her\nhusband. She longed, with a true woman's longing heart, to be\nappreciated by him, and by those she loved; and, for her, all extraneous\napplause might whistle with the wind. But if her husband was a king in\nliterature, so might she have been a queen. Her influence with him for\ngood cannot be questioned by any one having eyes to discern. And if she\nsacrificed her own vanity for personal distinction, in order to make his\nwork possible for him, who shall say she did not choose the nobler and\nbetter part?'[36]\n\nOn the other hand, Carlyle was too exacting, and when domestic\ndifferences arose he abstained from paying those little attentions which\na delicate and sensitive woman might naturally expect from a husband who\nwas so lavish of terms of endearment in the letters he wrote to her when\naway from her side. 'Even with that mother whom he so dearly loved,'\nobserves Mrs Ireland, 'the intercourse was mainly composed of a silent\nsitting by the fireside of an evening in the old \"houseplace,\" with a\ntranquillising pipe of tobacco, or of his returning from his long\nrambles to a simple meal, partaken of in comparative silence; and now\nand then, at meeting or parting, some pious and earnest words from the\ngood soul to her son.'[37] And it never occurred to Carlyle to act\ndifferently with his wife, who was pining for his society. In addition\nto all that, we have Froude's brief but accurate diagnosis of Carlyle's\ncharacter. 'If,' he wrote, 'matters went well with himself, it never\noccurred to him that they could be going ill with any one else; and, on\nthe other hand, if he was uncomfortable, he required everybody to be\nuncomfortable along with him.'\n\nThere was a strong element of selfishness in that phase of Carlyle's\nnature; and throughout his letters and journal he appears wholly wrapt\nup in himself and in his literary projects, without even a passing\nallusion to the courageous woman who had shared his lot. Now and again\nwe alight upon a passage where special mention is made of her efforts,\nbut these have all a direct or indirect bearing upon _his_ work, _his_\nplans, _his_ comforts.[38]\n\nCarlyle never fully realised what his wife had been to him until she was\nsuddenly snatched from his side. And this was his testimony: 'I say\ndeliberately, her part in the stern battle, and except myself none\nknows how stern, was brighter and braver than my own.' In one of those\nterrible moments of self-upbraiding the grief-stricken husband exclaims:\n'Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living,\nwait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust-clouds and idle\ndissonances of the moment, and all be at last so mournfully clear and\nbeautiful, _when it is too late_!'\n\nIn a pamphlet quoted by Mrs Ireland we have a pathetic picture of\nCarlyle in his lonely old age. A Mr Swinton, an American gentleman on a\nvisit to this country, went to see the grave of Mrs Carlyle.\n\nIn conversation the grave-digger said: 'Mr Carlyle comes here from\nLondon now and then to see this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind\nof old man, looking very old the last time he was here.' 'He is\neighty-six now,' said I. 'Ay,' he repeated, 'eighty-six, and comes here\nto this grave all the way from London.' And I told him that Carlyle was\na great man, the greatest man of the age in books, and that his name was\nknown all over the world; but he thought there were other great men\nlying near at hand, though I told him their fame did not reach beyond\nthe graveyard, and brought him back to talk of Carlyle. 'Mr Carlyle\nhimself,' said the gravedigger softly, 'is to be brought here to be\nburied with his wife. Ay, he comes here lonesome and alone,' continued\nthe gravedigger, 'when he visits the wife's grave. His niece keeps him\ncompany to the gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for\nhim. The last time he was here I got a sight of him, and he was bowed\ndown under his white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall\nof the old cathedral, and round there and in here by the gateway, and he\ntottered up here to this spot.' Softly spake the gravedigger, and\npaused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the Lothians, he\nproceeded:--\"And he stood here awhile in the grass, and then he kneeled\ndown and stayed on his knees at the grave; then he bent over and I saw\nhim kiss the ground--ay, he kissed it again and again, and he kept\nkneeling, and it was a long time before he rose and tottered out of the\ncathedral, and wandered through the graveyard to the gate, where his\nniece was waiting for him.\" This is the epitaph composed by Carlyle, and\nengraved on the tombstone of Dr John Welsh in the chancel of Haddington\nChurch:--\n\n     'HERE LIKEWISE NOW RESTS JANE WELSH CARLYLE, SPOUSE OF THOMAS\n     CARLYLE, CHELSEA, LONDON. SHE WAS BORN AT HADDINGTON, 14TH JULY\n     1801, ONLY DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOHN WELSH, AND OF GRACE\n     WELSH, CAPELGILL, DUMFRIESSHIRE, HIS WIFE. IN HER BRIGHT\n     EXISTENCE SHE HAD MORE SORROWS THAN ARE COMMON; BUT ALSO A SOFT\n     INVINCIBILITY, A CLEARNESS OF DISCERNMENT, AND A NOBLE LOYALTY\n     OF HEART WHICH ARE RARE. FOR FORTY YEARS SHE WAS THE TRUE AND\n     EVER-LOVING HELPMATE OF HER HUSBAND, AND, BY ACT AND WORD,\n     UNWEARIEDLY FORWARDED HIM AS NONE ELSE COULD, IN ALL OF WORTHY\n     THAT HE DID OR ATTEMPTED. SHE DIED AT LONDON, 21ST APRIL 1866,\n     SUDDENLY SNATCHED AWAY FROM HIM, AND THE LIGHT OF HIS LIFE AS\n     IF GONE OUT.'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[31] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 295.\n\n[32] Masson's 'Carlyle Personally and in his Writings,' pp. 27-9.\n\n[33] Alexander Smith's 'Sketches and Criticisms,' pp. 101-8.\n\n[34] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 312.\n\n[35] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 314.\n\n[36] Larkin's 'Carlyle and the Open Secret of his Life,' pp. 334-5.\n\n[37] 'Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle,' pp. 191-2.\n\n[38] After reading the above estimate in the proof sheets, Professor\nMasson writes to me as follows:--\n\n     'May I hint that, in the passage about his character and\n     domestic relations, you seem hardly to do justice to the depths\n     of real kindness and tenderness in him, and the actual\n     _couthiness_ of his manner and fireside conversation in his\n     most genial hours? He was delightful and loveable at such\n     hours, with a fund of the raciest Scottish humour.'\n\nThis is a side of Carlyle's nature which would naturally be hidden from\nthe general reader, and from Mr Froude. It is easy to imagine how\nCarlyle's genial humour, frozen at its source in the company of the\nsolemnly pessimistic Froude, should be thawed by the presence of 'a\nbrither Scot.'\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nLAST YEARS AND DEATH OF CARLYLE\n\n\nIn presence of the pathetically tragic spectacle of Carlyle in his old\nage, who can have the heart to enter into his domestic life and weigh\nwith pedantic scales the old man's blameworthiness? Carlyle survived his\nwife fifteen years. His brother John, himself a widower, was anxious\nthat they should live together, but it was otherwise arranged. John\nreturned to Scotland, and Carlyle remained alone in Cheyne Row. He was\nprevailed on to visit Ripple Court, near Walmer, and on his return to\nLondon he wrote, 'My home is very gaunt and lonesome; but such is my\nallotment henceforth in this world. I have taken loyally to my vacant\ncircumstances, and will try to do my best with them.'\n\nCarlyle's first public appearance after his sore bereavement was as\nchairman of the Eyre Committee as a protest against Governor Eyre's\nrecall. 'Poor Eyre!' he wrote to a correspondent, 'I am heartily sorry\nfor him, and for the English nation, which makes such a dismal fool of\nitself. Eyre, it seems, has fallen suddenly from L6000 a year into\nalmost zero, and has a large family and needy kindred dependent on him.\nSuch his reward for saving the West Indies, and hanging one incendiary\nmulatto, well worth the gallows, if I can judge.'\n\nCarlyle accepted a pressing invitation to stay with the Ashburtons at\nMentone, and on the 22nd of December he started thither with Professor\nTyndall. He was greatly benefited in health, and at intervals made some\nprogress with his _Reminiscences_. He returned to London in March, and\non the 4th of April 1867 he writes in his journal: 'Idle! Idle! My\nemployments mere trifles of business, and that of dwelling on the days\nthat culminated on the 21st of last year.' About this time his thoughts\nwere directed to the estate of Craigenputtock, of which he became\nabsolute owner at his wife's death. All her relations on the father's\nside were dead, and as Carlyle thought that it ought not to lapse to his\nown family, he determined to leave it to the University of Edinburgh,\n'the rents of it to be laid out in supporting poor and meritorious\nstudents there, under the title of \"the John Welsh Bursaries.\" Her name\nhe could not give, because she had taken his own. Therefore he gave her\nfather's.'\n\nOn June 22nd, he writes in his journal: 'Finished off on Thursday last,\nat three p.m. 20th of June, my poor _bequest_ of Craigenputtock to\nEdinburgh University for bursaries. All quite ready there, Forster and\nFroude as witnesses; the good Professor Masson, who had taken endless\npains, alike friendly and wise, being at the very last objected to in\nthe character of \"witness,\" as \"a party interested,\" said the Edinburgh\nlawyer. I a little regretted this circumstance; so I think did Masson\nsecretly. He read us the deed with sonorous emphasis, bringing every\nword and note of it home to us. Then I signed; then they two--Masson\nwitnessing only with his eyes and mind. I was deeply moved, as I well\nmight be, but held my peace and shed no tears. _Tears_ I think I have\ndone with; never, except for moments together, have I wept for that\ncatastrophe of April 21, to which whole days of weeping would have been\nin other times a blessed relief.... This is my poor \"Sweetheart Abbey,\"\n\"Cor Dulce,\" or New Abbey, a sacred casket and _tomb_ for the sweetest\n\"heart\" which, in this bad, bitter world, was all my own. Darling,\ndarling! and in a little while we shall _both_ be at rest, and the Great\nGod will have done with us what was His will.'[39]\n\nWhen the Tories were preparing to 'dish the Whigs' over the Reform Bill,\nCarlyle felt impelled to write a pamphlet, which he called _Shooting\nNiagara, and After_. It was his final utterance on British politics.\nProof sheets and revisions for new editions of his works engrossed his\nattention for some time. He went annually to Scotland, and devoted a\ngreat deal of time on his return to Chelsea to the sorting and\nannotating of his wife's letters.\n\nEarly in 1869 the Queen expressed a wish, through Dean Stanley, to\nbecome personally acquainted with Carlyle. The meeting took place at\nWestminster Deanery: 'The Queen,' Carlyle said, 'was really very\ngracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my\nesteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The\ninterview was quietly very mournful to me; the one point of real\ninterest, a sombre thought: \"Alas! how would it have cheered her, bright\nsoul, for my sake, had she been there!\"'\n\nWhen Carlyle was in constant expectation of his end, he--in June\n1871--brought to Mr Froude's house a large parcel of papers. 'He put it\nin my hands,' says Froude. 'He told me to take it simply and absolutely\nas my own, without reference to any other person or persons, and to do\nwith it as I pleased after he was gone. He explained, when he saw me\nsurprised, that it was an account of his wife's history, that it was\nincomplete, that he could himself form no opinion whether it ought to be\npublished or not, that he could do no more to it, and must pass it over\nto me. He wished never to hear of it again. I must judge. I must publish\nit, the whole, or part--or else destroy it all, if I thought that this\nwould be the wiser thing to do.'[40]\n\nThree years later Carlyle sent to Froude his own and his wife's private\npapers, journals, correspondence, reminiscences, and other documents.\n'Take them,' he said to Froude, 'and do what you can with them. All I\ncan say to you is, Burn freely. If you have any affection for me, the\nmore you burn the better.' Mr Froude burnt nothing, and it was well, he\nsays, that he did not, for a year before his death he desired him, when\nhe had done with the MSS., to give them to his niece. 'The new task\nwhich had been laid upon me,' writes Froude in his biography of Carlyle,\n'complicated the problem of the \"Letters and Memorials.\" My first hope\nwas, that, in the absence of further definite instructions from himself,\nI might interweave parts of Mrs Carlyle's letters with his own\ncorrespondence in an ordinary narrative, passing lightly over the rest,\nand touching the dangerous places only so far as was unavoidable. In\nthis view I wrote at leisure the greatest part of \"the first forty\nyears\" of his life. The evasion of the difficulty was perhaps cowardly,\nbut it was not unnatural. I was forced back, however, into the\nstraighter and better course.' The outcome of it all is too well-known\nto call for recapitulation here.\n\nIn February 1874, the Emperor of Germany conferred upon Carlyle the\nOrder of Merit which the great Frederick had himself founded. He could\nnot refuse it, but he remarked, 'Were it ever so well meant, it can be\nof no value to me whatever. Do thee neither ill na gude.' Ten months\nlater, Mr Disraeli, then Premier, offered him the Grand Cross of the\nBath along with a pension. Carlyle gracefully declined both.\n\nUpon his 80th birthday, Carlyle was presented with a gold medal from\nScottish friends and admirers, and with a letter from Prince Bismarck,\nboth of which he valued highly. His last public act was to write a\nletter of three or four lines to the _Times_, which he explains to his\nbrother in this fashion: 'After much urgency and with a dead-lift\neffort, I have this day [5th May 1877] got issued through the _Times_ a\nsmall indispensable deliverance on the Turk and Dizzy question. Dizzy,\nit appears, to the horror of those who have any interest in him and his\nproceedings, has decided to have a new war for the Turk against all\nmankind; and this letter hopes to drive a nail through his mad and\nmaddest speculations on that side.'\n\nFroude tells us that Carlyle continued to read the Bible, 'the\nsignificance of which' he found 'deep and wonderful almost as much as it\never used to be.' The Bible and Shakespeare remained 'the best books' to\nhim that were ever written.\n\nThe death of his brother John was a severe shock to Carlyle, for they\nwere deeply attached to each other. When he bequeathed Craigenputtock to\nthe University of Edinburgh, John Carlyle settled a handsome sum for\nmedical bursaries there, to encourage poor students. 'These two\nbrothers,' Froude remarks, 'born in a peasant's home in Annandale,\nowing little themselves to an Alma Mater which had missed discovering\ntheir merits, were doing for Scotland's chief University what Scotland's\npeers and merchants, with their palaces and deer forests and social\nsplendour, had, for some cause, too imperfectly supplied.'\n\nIn the autumn of 1880, Carlyle became very infirm; in January he was\nvisibly sinking; and on the 5th of February 1881, he passed away in his\neighty-fifth year. In accordance with his expressed wishes, they buried\nhim in the old kirkyard of Ecclefechan with his own people.\n\nAt his death Carlyle's fame was at its zenith. A revulsion of feeling\nwas caused by the publication of Froude's _Life of Carlyle_ and the\n_Reminiscences_. In regard to the former, great dissatisfaction was\ncreated by the somewhat unflattering portrait painted by Froude. Was\nFroude justified in presenting to the public Carlyle in all grim\nrealism? The answer to this depends upon one's notions of literary\nethics. The view of the average biographer is that he must suppress\nfaults and give prominence to virtues. The result is that the majority\nof biographies are simply expanded funeral sermons; instead of a\nlife-like portrait we have a glorified mummy. Boswell's _Johnson_ stands\nat the head of biographies; but, if Boswell had followed the\nconventional method, his book would long since have passed into\nobscurity. It is open to dispute whether Froude has not overdone the\nsombre elements in Carlyle's life. Readers of Professor Masson's little\nbook, which shows Carlyle in a more genially human mood, have good\nreason to suspect that Froude has given too much emphasis to the\nRembrandtesque element in Carlyle's life. In the main, however, Froude's\nconception of biography was more correct than that of his critics. In\ndealing with the reputation of a great man it is not enough to consider\nthe feelings of contemporaries; regard should be had to the rights of\nposterity. In his usual forcible manner Johnson goes to the heart of\nthis question when he says in the _Rambler_:--'If the biographer writes\nfrom personal knowledge, and makes haste to gratify the public\ncuriosity, there is danger lest his interest, his fear, his gratitude,\nor his tenderness overpower his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if\nnot to invent. There are many who think it an act of piety to hide the\nfaults or failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer\nby their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters adorned\nwith uniform panegyric and not to be known from one another, but by\nextrinsic and casual circumstances. If we have regard to the memory of\nthe dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue,\nand to truth.' When Johnson's own biography came to be written, Boswell,\nin spite of the expostulation of friends, resolved to be guided closely\nby the literary ethics of his great hero. In reply to Hannah More who\nbegged that he would mitigate some of the asperities of Johnson, Boswell\nsaid, 'he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat, to please\nanybody.'\n\nSome critics have insinuated that Froude took a curious kind of pleasure\nin smirching the idol. The insinuation is as unworthy as it is false.\nFroude had resolved to paint Carlyle as he was, warts and all, and all\nthat can be said is that in his anxiety to avoid the charge of idealism\nhe has given the warts undue prominence.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[39] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 346.\n\n[40] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 408-9.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nCARLYLE AS A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THINKER\n\n\nIn his essay on Carlyle, Mr John Morley utters a protest against the\nhabit of labelling great men with names. After making every allowance\nfor the waywardness of the men of intuitive and poetic insight, it\nremains true that between the speculative and the practical sides of a\ngreat thinker's mind there is a potent, though subtle, connection. For\nthose who take the trouble of searching, there is discoverable such a\nconnection between the speculative ideas of Carlyle and his practical\noutlook upon civilisation. Given a thinker who lays stress upon the\nemotional side of progress, and we have a thinker who will take for\nheroes men of mystical tendencies, of strong dominating passions, a\nthinker who will value progress not by the increase of worldly comfort,\nbut by the increase in the number of magnetic, epoch-making\npersonalities. Naturally, we hear Carlyle remark that the history of the\nworld is at bottom the history of its great men.\n\nCarlyle's fanatical adoption of intuitionalism has told banefully upon\nhis work in sociology. Trusting to his inner light, to what we might\ncall Mystical Quakerism, Carlyle has dispensed with a rational theory of\nprogress. Before a sociological problem, his attitude is not that of the\npatient thinker, but of the hysterical prophet, whose emotions find\noutlet in declamatory denunciation. Like the prophets of old, Carlyle\ntends towards Pessimism. His golden age is in the past. When _Past and\nPresent_ appeared, many earnest-minded men, captivated by the style and\nspirit of the book, hailed Carlyle as a social reformer. As an attempt\nto solve the social problem, _Past and Present_ is not a success.\nCarlyle could do no more than tell the modern to return to the spirit of\nthe feudal period, when the people were led by the aristocracy. It\nshowed considerable audacity on Carlyle's part to come to the\ninterpretation of history with no theory of progress, no message to the\nworld beyond the vaguely declamatory one that those nations will be\nturned into hell which forget God. Of what value is such writing as\nthis, taken from the introduction to his _Cromwell_?:--'Here of our own\nland and lineage in English shape were heroes on the earth once more,\nwho knew in every fibre and with heroic daring laid to heart that an\nAlmighty Justice does verily rule this world, that it is good to fight\non God's side, and bad to fight on the Devil's side! The essence of all\nheroism and veracities that have been or will be.' This is simply a\nreproduction of Jewish theocratic ideas; indeed, except for the details,\nCarlyle might as readily have written a life of Moses as of Cromwell.\nIn the eyes of Carlyle, human life was what it was to Bunyan, a kind of\npilgrim's progress; only in the Carlylean creed it is all battle and no\nvictory, all Valley of Humiliation and no Delectable Mountain.\nNaturally, where no stress is laid upon collective action, where\nindividual reason is depreciated, progress is associated with the rise\nof abnormal individualities, men of strong wills like Cromwell and\nFrederick. With Rousseau, Carlyle appears to look upon civilisation as a\ndisease. In one of his essays, _Characteristics_, he goes near the\nRoussean idea when he declaims against self-consciousness, and\ndeliberately gives a preference to instinct. The uses of great men are\nto lead humanity away from introspection back to energetic, rude,\ninstinctive action. When humanity will not listen to the voice of the\nprophets, it must be treated to whip and scorpion. It never dawned upon\nCarlyle that the highest life, individual and collective, has roots in\nphysical laws, that politico-economic forces must be reckoned with\nbefore social harmony can be reached.\n\nJust as Carlyle's Idealism drove him into opposition to the utilitarian\ntheory of morals, so it drove him into opposition to the utilitarian\ntheory of society. Out of his idealistic way of looking upon life there\nflowed a curious result. As early as _Sartor Resartus_ we find Carlyle\nanticipating the evolutionary conception of society. Spencer has\nfamiliarised us with the idea that society is an organism. The idea\nwhich he received from the Germans that Nature is not a mere mechanical\ncollection of atoms, but the materialised expression of a spiritual\nunity--that idea Carlyle extended to society. As he puts it in _Sartor\nResartus_: 'Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible\nwhole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature,\nwithout which Nature were not.... Noteworthy also, and serviceable for\nthe progress of this same individual, wilt thou find his subdivisions\ninto Generations. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind; Death\nand Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Mankind to\nsleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the Father has\nmade, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed\nhim. Thus all things wax and roll onwards.... Find mankind where thou\nwilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower;\nthe Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth\nwith her music; or as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song\nimmolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the\nclearer.'\n\nPhilosophies of civilisation have a tendency to beget Fatalism. Bent\nupon watching the resistless play of general laws, philosophers, in\ntheir admiration of the products, are apt to ignore the frightful\nsuffering and waste involved in the process. Society being an organism,\na thing of development, the duty of thinkers is to demonstrate the\nnature of sociological laws, and allow them free scope for operation. To\nthis is due much of the apparent hardness of Eighteenth Century\npolitical speculation, which, beginning with the French Physiocratic\nSchool, culminated in the works of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bentham, and the\ntwo Mills. With those thinkers, the one palpable lesson of the past was\nthe duty of abstaining from interference with the general process of\nsocial development. Give man liberty, said the Utilitarian Radicals, and\nhe will work out his own salvation: from the play of individual\nself-interest, social harmony will result.\n\nCarlyle is frequently thought of as a Conservative force in politics. In\nsome respects he was more Radical than the Benthams and the Mills. His\ndeeper ideal conception of society intensified his dissatisfaction with\nsociety as it existed. In fact, to Carlyle's attack upon those\ninstitutions, beliefs and ceremonies which had no better basis than mere\nunreasoning authority, most of the Radicalism of the early 'forties' was\ndue. Conceive what effect language like this must have had upon\nthoughtful, high-souled young men: 'Call ye that a Society, where there\nis no longer any Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common\nHome, but only of a common overcrowded Lodging-house? Where each,\nisolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour,\nclutches what he can get, and cries \"Mine!\" and calls it Peace because,\nin the cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a\nfar cunninger sort, can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has\nbecome an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a\nsmoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has\nno tongue but for plate-licking; and your high Guides and Governors\ncannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _Laissez\nfaire_; leave us alone of your guidance, such light is darker than\ndarkness; eat your wages and sleep. Thus, too, must an observant eye\ndiscern everywhere that saddest spectacle: the Poor perishing, like\nneglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich,\nstill more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest\nin rank, at length, without honour from the Lowest; scarcely, with a\nlittle mouth-honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the\nbill. Once sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men\ngrudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the\nCHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken\ninto a Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!'\n\nIt was when suggesting a remedy that Carlyle's Idealistic Radicalism\nparted company with Utilitarian Radicalism. Failing to see that society\nwas in a transition period, a period so well described by Herbert\nSpencer as the movement from Militarism to Industrialism, in which there\nwas a severe conflict of ideals, opinions, and interests, Carlyle sought\nfor the remedy in a return to a form of society which had been outgrown.\nThere was surely something pathetically absurd in the spectacle of a\ngreat teacher endeavouring to cure social and political diseases by\npreaching the resuscitation of Puritanism at a time when the intellect\nof the day was parting company with theocratic conceptions. Equally\nabsurd was it to offer as a remedy for social anarchy the despotism of\nambitious rulers at a time when society was suffering from the effects\nof previous despotism. Equally irrelevant was the attempt in _Past and\nPresent_ to get reformers to model modern institutions on those of the\nMiddle Ages. Carlyle's remedy for the evils of liberty was a return to\nthe apron-strings of despotism. Carlyle, in fact, forgot his conception\nof society as a developing organism; he endeavoured to arrest progress\nat the autocratic stage, because of his ignorance of the laws of\nprogress and his lack of sympathy with democratic ideas. Still, the\nvalue of Carlyle's political writings should not be overlooked. The\nUtilitarian Radicals laid themselves open to the charge of intellectual\nsuperstition. They worshipped human nature as a fetish. Lacking clear\nviews of social evolution, they overlooked the relativity of political\nterms. Ignorant of the conception of human nature to which Spencer has\naccustomed us, the old Radicals treated it as a constant quantity which\nonly needed liberty for its proper development. In their eagerness to\ndiscard theology, they discarded the truth of man's depravity which\nfinds expression in the creed of the Churches. We have changed all that.\nWe now realise the fact that political institutions are good or bad, not\nas they stand or fall when tested by the first principles of a\nrationalistic philosophy, but as they harmonise or conflict with\nexisting phases of human nature.\n\nIf in the sphere of industrialism Carlyle as a guide is untrustworthy,\ngreat is his merit as an inspirer. His influence was needed to\ncounteract the cold prosaic narrowness of the Utilitarian teaching. He\ncalled attention to an aspect of the economic question which the\nUtilitarian Radicals ignored, namely, the inadequacy of self-interest as\na social bond. To Carlyle is largely due the higher ethical conceptions\nand quickened sympathies which now exist in the spheres of social and\nindustrial relationships. Unhappily his implicit faith in intuitionalism\nled him to deride political economy and everything pertaining to man's\nmaterial life. Much there was in the writings of the economists to call\nfor severe criticism, and if Carlyle had treated the subject with\ndiscrimination he would have been a power for good; but he chose to pour\nthe vials of his contempt upon political economy as a science, and upon\nmodern industrial arrangements, with the result that many of the most\nintelligent students of sociology have been repelled from his writings.\nIn this respect he contrasts very unfavourably with Mill, who,\nnotwithstanding the temptations to intellectual arrogance from his\none-sided training, with quite a chivalrous regard for truth, was ever\nready to accept light and leading from thinkers who differed from him in\ntemperament and methods. There may be conflicting opinions as to which\nof the two men was intellectually the greater, but there can be no doubt\nthat Mill dwelt in an atmosphere of intellectual serenity and nobility\nfar removed from the foggy turbulence in which Carlyle lived, moved, and\nhad his being. Between the saintly apostle of Progress and the barbaric\nrepresentative of Reaction there was a great gulf fixed.\n\nAs was natural, the _Latter-day Pamphlets_ were treated as a series of\npolitical ravings. For that estimate Carlyle himself was largely\nresponsible. He deprived himself of the sympathy of intelligent readers\nby the violence of his invective and the lack of discrimination in his\nabuse. Much of what Carlyle said is to be found in Mill's\n_Representative Government_, said, too, in a quiet, rational style,\nwhich commands attention and respect. Mill, no more than Carlyle, was a\nbeliever in mob rule. He did not think that the highest wisdom was to\nbe had by the counting of heads. Thinkers like Mill and Spencer did not\ndeem it necessary to pour contempt on modern tendencies. They suggested\nremedies on the lines of these tendencies. They did not try to put back\nthe hands on the clock of time; they sought to remove perturbing\ninfluences. Much of the evil has arisen from men trying to do by\npolitical methods what should not be done by these methods. Carlyle's\nidea that Government should do this, that, and the other thing has\nwrought mischief, inasmuch as it has led to an undue belief in the\nvirtues of Government interference. His writings are largely responsible\nfor the evils he predicted.\n\nIt is curious to notice how, with all his belief in individualism,\nCarlyle, in political matters, was unconsciously driven in the direction\nof socialism. Get your great man, worship him, and render him\nobedience--such was the Carlylean recipe for modern diseases. Suppose\nthe great man found, how is he to proceed? In these democratic days, he\ncan only proceed by ruling despotically with the popular consent; in\nother words, there will follow a regime of paternalism and fraternalism,\nthe practical outcome of which would be Socialism. Carlyle himself never\nsuspected how childish was his conception of national life. He wrote of\nhis Great Man theory as if it was a discovery, whereas the most advanced\nraces had long since passed through it, and those which were not\nadvanced were precisely those which had not been able to shake\nthemselves free of paternal despotism. On this point the criticism of\nthe late Professor Minto goes to the heart of the matter: 'Carlyle's\ndoctrines are the first suggestions of an earnest man, adhered to with\nunreasoning tenacity. As a rule, with no exception, that is worth\nnaming, they take account mainly of one side of a case. He was too\nimpatient of difficulties, and had too little respect for the wisdom and\nexperience of others to submit to be corrected: opposition rather\nconfirmed him in his own opinion. Most of his practical suggestions had\nalready been made before, and judged impracticable upon grounds which he\ncould not, or would not, understand. His modes of dealing with pauperism\nand crime were in full operation under the despotism of Henry VII. and\nHenry VIII. His theory of a hero-king, which means in practice an\naccidentally good and able man in a series of indifferent or bad\ndespots, had been more frequently tried than any other political system;\nAsia at this moment contains no government that is not despotic. His\nviews in other departments of knowledge are also chiefly determined by\nthe strength of his unreasoning impulses.'\n\nIn his interesting _Recollections_ Mr Espinasse states that during the\ntime that Carlyle was writing on the labour question, not a single\nblue-book was visible on his table! To Carlyle's influence must be\ntraced much of the sentimental treatment of social and industrial\nquestions which has followed the unpopularity of political economy. It\nis only fair to Carlyle to note, that at times he had qualms as to the\nsuperiority of his paternal theory of government over Laissez Faire. In\none place he admits that even Frederick could not have superintended the\ngreat emigration movement to such good effect as was done by the\nspontaneous efforts of nature. In the social sphere Carlyle was false to\nhis doctrine of spontaneity. In his early essays he was perpetually\ncondemning mechanical interference with society, and contending that\nfree play should be given to the dynamic agencies. Untrue to himself and\nhis creed, Carlyle in his later books was constantly denouncing\nGovernment for neglecting to apply mechanical remedies for social\ndiseases. In his view, the duty of a ruler was not to work in harmony\nwith social impulses, but to cut and carve institutions in harmony with\nthe ideas of great men. Puritanism under Cromwell failed because it was\nforgotten that society is an organism, not a piece of clay, to be\nmoulded according to the notions of heroic potters. Strictly speaking,\n_Frederick_ and _Cromwell_ should be classed with the _Latter Day\nPamphlets_. In the _Pamphlets_ Carlyle declaims against democratic\nmethods, and in _Frederick_ and _Cromwell_ we are presented with\nincarnations of autocratic methods.\n\nOf all the critics of Carlyle, no one has surpassed Mr Morley in\nindicating the mischievous effects which flow from the elevation of\nmere will power and emotional force into guides in social and political\nquestions. As Mr Morley says: 'The dictates of a kind heart are of\nsuperior force to the maxims of political economy; swift and peremptory\nresolution is a safer guide than a balancing judgment. If the will works\neasily and surely, we may assume the rectitude of the moving impulse.\nAll this is no caricature of a system which sets sentiment, sometimes\nhard sentiment, above reason and method. In other words, the writer who\nin these days has done more than anybody else to fire men's hearts with\na feeling for right, and an eager desire for social activity, has, with\ndeliberate contempt, thrust away from him the only instruments by which\nwe can make sure what right is, and that our social action is effective.\nA born poet, only wanting perhaps a clearer feeling for form and a more\ndelicate spiritual self-possession to have added another name to the\nillustrious band of English singers, he has been driven by the\nimpetuosity of his sympathies to attack the scientific side of social\nquestions in an imaginative and highly emotional manner.'\n\nHad Carlyle confined himself to description of social, industrial, and\npolitical diseases, he would have had an unsullied reputation in the\nsphere of spiritual dynamics, but flaws immediately appeared when he\nendeavoured to prescribe remedies. Many of his remedies were too vague\nto be of use; where they were specific, they were so Quixotic as to be\nuseless. His proposals for dealing with labour and pauperism never\nimposed on any sensible man on this side of cloud-land.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nCARLYLE AS AN INSPIRATIONAL FORCE\n\n\nIt is the misfortune of the critic, the historian, and the sociologist\nto be superseded. In the march of events the specialist is fated to be\nleft behind. The influence of the inspirationalist is ever-enduring. As\nthe present writer has elsewhere said:--Carlyle has been called a\nprophet. The word in these days has only a vague meaning. Probably\nCarlyle earned the name in consequence of the oracular and denunciatory\nelements in his later writings. Then, again, the word prophet has come\nto be associated with the thought of a foreteller of future events. A\nprophet in the true sense of the word is not one who foretells the\nfuture, but one who revives and keeps alive in the minds of his\ncontemporaries a vivid sense of the great elemental facts of life. Why\nis it that the Bible attracts to its pages men of all kinds of\ntemperament and all degrees of culture? Because in it, especially in the\nPsalms, Job, and the writings of Isaiah and his brother prophets,\nserious people are brought face to face with the great mysteries, God,\nNature, Man, Death, etc.--mysteries, however, which only rush in upon\nthe soul of man in full force on special occasions, in hours of lonely\nmeditation, or by the side of an open grave. In the hurly-burly of life\nthe sense of what Carlyle calls the Immensities, Eternities, and\nSilences, become so weak that even good men have sorrowfully to admit\nthat they live lives of practical materialism. As Arnold puts it:\n\n    \"Each day brings its petty dust\n      Our soon-choked souls to fill,\n    And we forget because we must,\n      And not because we will.\"\n\nThe mission of the Hebrew prophet was by passionate utterance to keep\nalive in the minds of his countrymen a deep, abiding sense of life's\nmystery, sacredness, and solemnity. What Isaiah did for his day, Carlyle\ndid for the moderns. In the whole range of modern literature, it is\nimpossible to match Carlyle's magnificent passages in _Sartor Resartus_,\nin which, under a biographical guise, he deals with the great primal\nemotions, wonder, awe, admiration, love, which form the warp and woof of\nhuman life.\n\nNothing can be finer than the following rebuke to those mechanical\nscientists who imagine that Nature can be measured by tape-lines, and\nduly labelled in museums:--\n\n'System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature\nremains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all\nExperience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and\nmeasured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little\nfraction of a Planet, is partially known to us; but who knows what\ndeeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes)\nour little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble,\nand quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become\nfamiliar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic\nCurrents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's eclipses; by all\nwhich the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time\n(_un_miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow\nis Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his\nMonsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence\nthrough Aeons of Aeons. We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a\nVolume it is,--whose Author and Writer is God.'\n\nAgree or disagree with Carlyle's views of the Ultimate Reality as we\nmay, there can be nothing but harmony with the spirit which breathes in\nthe following:--\n\n'Nature? Ha! Why do I not name thee God? Art not thou the \"Living\nGarment of God\"? O Heavens, is it in very deed, He, then, that ever\nspeaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves\nin me?\n\n'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and\nBeginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than\nDayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah! like the mother's voice\nto her little child that strays bewildered, weeping in unknown tumults;\nlike soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart,\ncame that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a\ncharnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!'\n\nThe mystery and fleetingness of life with its awful counterpart death,\nare the commonplaces of every hour, but who but Carlyle has rendered\nthem with such inspirational power?\n\n'Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a Body; and\nforth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What\nForce and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of\nIndustry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science;\none madly dashed to pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his\nfellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls\naway, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some\nwild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this\nmysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding\ngrandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created,\nfire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully\nacross the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's\nmountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage; can the\nEarth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality\nand are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped\nin; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But\nwhence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that\nit is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.\n\n                  'We _are such stuff_\n    As Dreams are made of, and our little Life\n    Is rounded with a sleep?'\n\nA fervid perception of the evanescence and sorrows of life is the root\nof Carlyle's pathos, which is unsurpassed in literature. It leads him to\nsome beautiful contrasts between childhood and manhood, positively\nidyllic in their charm.\n\n'Happy season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdroeckh: 'Kind Nature, that\nart to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with\nauroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft swathing of\nLove and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round\n(_umgaeukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us\nin, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet,\npriest and king, and an Obedience that makes us Free. The young spirit\nhas awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet\nTime is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to\nthe child are as ages; ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or\nquicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric,\nfrom the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in\na motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling\nUniverse is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair\nChild, for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou\ntoo shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles;\nthou too, with old Arnauld, must say in stern patience: \"Rest? Rest?\nShall I not have all Eternity to rest in?\" Celestial Nepenthe! though a\nPyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee\nnot; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the\neyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For, as yet, sleep and\nwaking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and\neverywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if\nin youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no\nfruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone fruit, of which the fewest can\nfind the kernel.'\n\nCarlyle's pathos touches its most sombre mood when he is dwelling upon\nthe common incidents of daily life as painted on the background of\nEternity. In his '_Cromwell_,' he breaks forth in a beautiful meditation\nwhile dealing with a commonplace reference in one of the letters of\nCromwell:--'Mrs St John came down to breakfast every morning in that\nsummer visit of the year 1638, and Sir William said grave grace, and\nthey spake polite devout things to one another, and they are vanished,\nthey and their things and speeches,--all silent like the echoes of the\nold nightingales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old\nroses. O Death! O Time!'\n\nSevere comment has been made upon Carlyle's attitude towards science.\nThere was this excuse for his contemptuous attitude--science in its\nearly days fell into the hands of Dryasdusts. So absorbed were these men\nin analysing Nature, that they missed the sense of mystery and beauty\nwhich is the essence of all poetry and all religion. In the hands of the\nDryasdusts, Nature was converted into a museum in which everything was\nduly labelled. During the mania for analysis, it was forgotten that\nthere is a great difference between the description and the explanation\nof phenomena. In _Sartor Resartus_ Carlyle rescues science from the grip\nof the pedant and restores it to the poet. 'Wonder, is the basis of\nWorship; the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only\nat certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a\nreign _in partibus infidelium_.' That progress of Science, which is to\ndestroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration,\nfinds small favour with Teufelsdroeckh, much as he otherwise venerates\nthese two latter processes.\n\n'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted,\nor even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind\nbecome an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere\nTables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you\ncall Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which\nthe scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's\nin the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute\nwithout shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial\nhandicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too\nnoble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps\npoisonous; at best, dies like Cookery with the day that called it forth;\ndoes not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading\nharvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and\nworship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried\nthe whole _Mecanique Celeste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitome\nof all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single\nhead,--is but a pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let\nthose who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.'\n\nIn the sphere of ethics, Carlyle's influence has been inspirational in\nthe highest sense. To a generation which had to choose between the\nethics of a conventional theology and the ethics of a cold, prosaic\nutilitarianism, Carlyle's treatment of the whole subject of duty came as\na revelation. If in the sphere of social relationships he did not\ncontribute to the settlement of the theoretic side of complex problems,\nhe did what was equally important--he roused earnest minds to a sense of\nthe urgency and magnitude of the problem, awakened the feeling of\nindividual responsibility, and quickened the sense of social duty which\nhad grown weak during the reign of _laissez faire_. If Carlyle had no\nfinal message for mankind, if he brought no gospel of glad tidings, he\nnevertheless did a work which was as important as it was pressing. In\nthe form of a modern John the Baptist, the Chelsea Prophet with not a\nlittle of the wilderness atmosphere about him, preached in grimly\ndefiant mood to a pleasure-loving generation the great doctrines which\nlie at the root of all religions--the doctrines of Repentance,\nRighteousness, and Retribution.","title":"Thomas Carlyle","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":36422}