Biographical Introduction [Carlyle] There comes a time in the career of every man of genius who has
devoted a long life to the instruction and enlightenment of his
fellow-creatures, when he receives before his death all the honours
paid by posterity. Thus when a great essayist or historian lives to
attain a classic and world-wide fame, his own biography becomes as
interesting to the public as those he himself has written, and by
which he achieved his laurels.
This is almost always the case when a man of such cosmopolitan
celebrity outlives the ordinary allotted period of threescore years
and ten; for a younger generation has then sprung up, who only hear
of his great fame, and are ignorant of the long and painful steps
by which it was achieved. These remarks are peculiarly applicable
in regard to the man whose career we are now to dwell on for a short
time: his genius was of slow growth and development, and his fame was
even more tardy in coming; but since the world some forty years ago
fairly recognised him as a great and original thinker and teacher,
few men have left so indelible an impress on the public mind, or
have influenced to so great a degree the most thoughtful of their
contemporaries.
Thomas Carlyle was born on Tuesday, December 4th, 1795, at
Ecclefechan, a small village in the district of Annandale,
Dumfriesshire. His father, a stone-mason, was noted for quickness of
mental perception, and great energy and decision of character;
his mother, as affectionate, pious, and more than ordinarily
intelligent;[A] and thus accepting his own theory, that "the history
of a man's childhood is the description of his parents' environment,"
Carlyle entered upon the "mystery of life" under happy and enviable
circumstances. After preliminary instruction, first at the parish
school, and afterwards at Annan, he went, in November, 1809, and when
he was fourteen years old, to the University of Edinburgh. Here
he remained till the summer of 1814, distinguishing himself by his
devotion to mathematical studies then taught there by Professor
Leslie. As a student, he was irregular in his application, but when he
did set to work, it was with his whole energy. He appears to have been
a great reader of general literature at this time, and the stories
that are told of the books that he got through are scarcely to be
credited. In the summer of 1814, on the resignation of Mr. Waugh,
Carlyle obtained, by competitive examination at Dumfries, the post of
mathematical master at Annan Academy. Although he had, at his parents'
desire, commenced his studies with a view to entering the Scottish
Church, the idea of becoming a minister was growingly distasteful to
him. A fellow-student describes his habits at this time as lonely and
contemplative; and we know from another source that his vacations
were principally spent among the hills and by the rivers of his
native county. In the summer of 1816 he was promoted to the post of
"classical and mathematical master" at the old Burgh or Grammar School
at Kirkcaldy. At the new school in that town Edward Irving, whose
acquaintance Carlyle first made at Edinburgh, about Christmas, 1815,
had been established since the year 1812; they were thus brought
closely together, and their intimacy soon ripened into a friendship
destined to become famous. At Kirkcaldy Carlyle remained over two
years, becoming more and more convinced that neither as minister nor
as schoolmaster was he to successfully fight his way up in the world.
It had become clear to him that literature was his true vocation,
and he would have started in the profession at once, had it been
convenient for him to do so.
[Footnote A: James Carlyle was born in August, 1758, and died January
23, 1832. His second wife (whose maiden name was Margaret Aitken), was
born in September, 1771, and died on Christmas Day, 1853. There
were nine children of this marriage, "whereof four sons and three
daughters," says the inscription en the tombstone in the burial-ground
at Ecclefechan, "survived, gratefully reverent of such a father and
such a mother."]
He had already written several articles and essays, and a few of them
had appeared in print; but they gave little promise or indication of
the power he was afterwards to exhibit. During the years 1820--1823,
he contributed a series of articles (biographical and topographical)
to Brewster's "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,"[1] viz.:--
[Footnote 1: Vols. XIV. to XVI. The fourteenth volume bears at the end
the imprint, "Edinburgh, printed by Balfour and Clarke, 1820;" and the
sixteenth volume, "Printed by A. Balfour and Co., Edinburgh, 1823."
Most of these articles are distinguished by the initials "T.C."; but
they are all attributed to Carlyle in the List of the Authors of the
Principal Articles, prefixed to the work on its completion.]
1. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
2. Montaigne
3. Montesquieu
4. Montfaucon
5. Dr. Moore
6. Sir John Moore
7. Necker
8. Nelson
9. Netherlands
10. Newfoundland
11. Norfolk
12. Northamptonshire
13. Northumberland
14. Mungo Park
15. Lord Chatham
16. William Pitt.
The following is from the article on Necker:--
"As an author, Necker displays much irregular force of imagination,
united with considerable perspicuity and compass of thought; though
his speculations are deformed by an undue attachment to certain
leading ideas, which, harmonizing with his habits of mind, had
acquired an excessive preponderance in the course of his long and
uncontroverted meditations. He possessed extensive knowledge, and
his works bespeak a philosophical spirit; but their great and
characteristic excellence proceeds from that glow of fresh and
youthful admiration for everything that is amiable or august in the
character of man, which, in Necker's heart, survived all the blighting
vicissitudes it had passed through, combining, in a singular union,
the fervour of the stripling with the experience of the sage."[A]
[Footnote A: "In the earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle," says Mr.
James Russell Lowell, alluding to these papers, "we find some not
obscure hints of the future man. The outward fashion of them is that
of the period; but they are distinguished by a certain security of
judgment, remarkable at any time, remarkable especially in one so
young. Carlyle, in these first essays, already shows the influence of
his master Goethe, the most widely receptive of critics. In a
compact notice of Montaigne there is not a word as to his religious
scepticism. The character is looked at purely from its human and
literary sides."]
Here is a passage from the article on Newfoundland, interesting as
containing perhaps the earliest germ of the later style:--
"The ships intended for the fishery on the southeast coast, arrive
early in June. Each takes her station opposite any unoccupied part of
the beach where the fish may be most conveniently cured, and retains
it till the end of the season. Formerly the master who arrived first
on any station was constituted fishing-admiral, and had by law the
power of settling disputes among the other crews. But the jurisdiction
of those admirals is now happily superseded by the regular
functionaries who reside on shore. Each captain directs his whole
attention to the collection of his own cargo, without minding the
concerns of his neighbour. Having taken down what part of the rigging
is removable, they set about their laborious calling, and must pursue
it zealously. Their mode of proceeding is thus described by Mr.
Anspach, a clerical person, who lived in the island several years,
and has since written a meagre and very confused book, which he calls
a HISTORY of it."
To the "New Edinburgh Review" (1821-22) Carlyle also contributed
two papers--one on Joanna Baillie's "Metrical Legends," and one on
Goethe's "Faust."
In the year 1822 he made a translation of "Legendre's Geometry," to
which he prefixed an Essay on Proportion; and the book appeared a
year or two afterwards under the auspices of the late Sir David
Brewster.[A] The Essay on Proportion remains to this day the most
lucid and succinct exposition of the subject hitherto published.
[Footnote A: "Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry," with Notes.
Translated from the French of A.M. Legendre. Edited by David Brewster,
LL.D. With Notes and Additions, and an Introductory Chapter on
Proportion. Edinburgh: published by Oliver and Boyd; and G. and W.B.
Whittaker, London. 1824, pp. xvi., 367. Sir David Brewster's
Preface, in which he speaks of "an Introduction on Proportion, by the
Translator," is dated Edinburgh, August 1, 1822.]
"I was already," says Carlyle in his Reminiscences, "getting my head
a little up, translating 'Legendre's Geometry' for Brewster. I still
remember a happy forenoon in which I did a Fifth Book (or complete
'doctrine of proportion') for that work, complete really and lucid,
and yet one of the briefest ever known. It was begun and done that
forenoon, and I have (except correcting the press next week) never
seen it since; but still I feel as if it were right enough and
felicitous in its kind! I only got £50 for my entire trouble in that
'Legendre;' but it was an honest job of work, honestly done."[A]
[Footnote A: Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, Edited by James
Anthony Froude. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1881, Vol. 1., pp.
198-199.]
The late Professor de Morgan--an excellent authority--pronounced a
high eulogium upon this Essay on Proportion.
In 1822 Carlyle accepted the post of tutor to Charles Buller, of whose
early death and honourable promise, two touching records remain to us,
one in verse by Thackeray, and one in prose by Carlyle.
For the next four years Carlyle devoted his attention almost
exclusively to German literature.
His Life of Schiller first appeared under the title of "Schiller's
Life and Writings," in the London Magazine.
Part I.--October, 1823.
Part II.--January, 1824.
Part III.--July, 1824.
" August, 1824.
" September, 1824.
It was enlarged, and separately published by Messrs. Taylor and
Hessey, the proprietors of the Magazine, in 1825.
The translation of "Wilhelm Meister," in 1824,[A] was the first real
introduction of Goethe to the reading world of Great Britain. It
appeared without the name of the translator, but its merits were too
palpable to be overlooked, though some critics objected to the strong
infusion of German phraseology which had been imported into the
English version. This acquired idiom never left our author, even in
his original works, although the "Life of Schiller," written but a few
months before, is almost entirely free from the peculiarity. "Wilhelm
Meister," in its English dress, was better received by the English
reading public than by English critics. De Quincey, in one of his
dyspeptic fits, fell upon the book, its author, and the translator,[B]
and Lord Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, although admitting Carlyle
to be a talented person, heaped condemnation upon the work.
[Footnote A: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. 3 Vols., Edinburgh,
1824.]
[Footnote B: Curiously enough in the very numbers of the "London
Magazine" containing the later instalments of Carlyle's Life of
Schiller.]
Carlyle's next work was a series of translations, entitled "German
Romance: Specimens of the chief Authors; with Biographical and
Critical Notices." 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1827. The Preface and
Introductions are reprinted in the second volume of Carlyle's
Collected Works: the Specimens translated from Hoffmann and La Motte
Fouqué, have not been reprinted.
"This," says Carlyle, in 1857, "was a Book of Translations, not of my
suggesting or desiring, but of my executing as honest journey-work in
defect of better. The pieces selected were the suitablest discoverable
on such terms: not quite of less than no worth (I considered) any
piece of them; nor, alas, of a very high worth any, except one only.
Four of these lots, or quotas to the adventure, Musæus's, Tieck's,
Richter's, Goethe's, will be given in the final stage of this Series;
the rest we willingly leave, afloat or stranded, as waste driftwood,
to those whom they may farther concern."
It was in 1826 that Mr. Carlyle married Miss Jane Welsh, the only
child of Dr. John Welsh, of Haddington,[A] a lineal descendant of John
Knox, and a lady fitted in every way to be the wife of such a man. For
some time after marriage he continued to reside at Edinburgh, but
in May, 1828, he took up his residence in his native county, at
Craigenputtoch--a solitary farmhouse on a small estate belonging to
his wife's mother, about fifteen miles from Dumfries, and in one of
the most secluded parts of the country. Most of his letters to Goethe
were written from this place.
[Footnote A: Her father had been dead some seven years when Carlyle
and she were married, and the life interest of her inheritance in the
farm of Craigenputtoch had been made over to her mother, who survived
until 1842, when it reverted to Carlyle.]
In one of the letters sent from Craigenputtoch to Weimar, bearing
the date of 25th September, 1828, we have a charming picture of our
author's seclusion and retired literary life at this period:--
"You inquire with such warm interest respecting our present abode and
occupations, that I feel bound to say a few words about both, while
there is still room left. Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing
about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and may be considered the centre
of the trade and judicial system of a district which possesses some
importance in the sphere of Scottish industry. Our residence is not
in the town itself, but fifteen miles to the north-west, among the
granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through
Galloway, almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and
rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed,
partly enclosed, and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees
afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled
sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat,
substantial dwelling; here, in the absence of professorial or other
office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength,
and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the rose and
flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to
further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted,
but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry
us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak
nerves. This daily exercise--to which I am much devoted--is my only
recreation: for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain--six
miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here Rousseau would
have been as happy as on his island of St. Pierre. My town friends,
indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forbode
me no good result. But I came hither solely with the design to
simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which
I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our
own; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves,
even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of
literature. Nor is the solitude of such great importance; for a
stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our
British Weimar. And have I not, too, at this moment piled up upon
the table of my little library a whole cart-load of French, German,
American, and English journals and periodicals--whatever may be their
worth? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of
our heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill
where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of
it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me.
And so one must let time work."
The above letter was printed by Goethe himself, in his Preface to
a German transition of Carlyle's "Life of Schiller," published at
Frankfort in 1830. Other pleasant records of the intercourse between
them exist in the shape of sundry graceful copies of verses addressed
by Goethe to Mrs. Carlyle, which will be found in the collection of
his poems.
Carlyle had now fairly started as an original writer. From the lonely
farm of Craigenputtoch went forth the brilliant series of Essays
contributed to the Edinburgh, Westminster, and Foreign Reviews, and to
Fraser's Magazine, which were not long in gaining for him a literary
reputation in both hemispheres. To this lonely farm came one day in
August, 1833, armed with a letter of introduction, a visitor from the
other side of the Atlantic: a young American, then unknown to fame, by
name Ralph Waldo Emerson. The meeting of these two remarkable men was
thus described by the younger of them, many years afterwards:--
"I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a
letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtoch.
It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles
distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage
from the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where
the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from
his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as
absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as
if holding on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall
and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his
extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his
northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with
a streaming humour, which floated everything he looked upon. His talk
playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once
into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very
pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few
were the objects and lonely the man, 'not a person to speak to
within sixteen miles except the minister of Dunscore; so that books
inevitably made his topics.
"He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his
discourse. 'Blackwood's' was the 'sand magazine;' 'Fraser's' nearer
approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine;' a piece of
road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave of the
last sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he
professed hugely to admire the talent shewn by his pig. He had spent
much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure
in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out
how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still
thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked
Nero's death, 'Qualis artifex pereo!' better than most history. He
worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had
inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was
mere rebellion, and that he feared was the American principle. The
best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat
for his labour. He had read in Stewart's book, that when he inquired
in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the
street, and had found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey.
"We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged
Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero.
Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his
first books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an early
favourite. Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was
not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by
the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what
he wanted.
"He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this
moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great
booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted
now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of
bankruptcy.
"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the
selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should
perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish
folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give
to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next
house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat,
and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They
burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to
attend to them.'
"We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat
down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural
disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls,
and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he
was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages
together, and saw how every event affects all the future. 'Christ died
on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me
together. Time has only a relative existence.'
"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful
only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each
keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a
fixed hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows, or wishes
to know, on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain
individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind
he knew, whom London had well served."[A]
[Footnote A: "English Traits," by R.W. Emerson. First Visit to
England.]
"Carlyle," says Emerson, "was already turning his eyes towards
London," and a few months after the interview just described he did
finally fix his residence there, in a quiet street in Chelsea, leading
down to the river-side. Here, in an old-fashioned house, built in the
reign of Queen Anne, he and his wife settled down in the early summer
of 1834; here they continued to live together until she died; and here
Carlyle afterwards lived on alone till the end of his life.
With another man, of whom he now became the neighbour--Leigh Hunt--he
had already formed a slight acquaintance, which soon ripened into
a warm friendship and affection on both sides, in spite of their
singular difference of temperament and character.
"It was on the 8th of February, 1832," says Mr. Thornton Hunt, "that
the writer of the essays named 'Characteristics' received, apparently
from Mr. Leigh Hunt, a volume entitled 'Christianism,' for which he
begged to express his thanks. By the 20th of February, Carlyle, then
lodging in London, was inviting Leigh Hunt to tea, as the means of
their first meeting; and by the 20th of November, Carlyle wrote from
Dumfries, urging Leigh Hunt to 'come hither and see us when you want
to rusticate a month. Is that for ever impossible?' The philosopher
afterwards came to live in the next street to his correspondent, in
Chelsea, and proved to be one of Leigh Hunt's kindest, most faithful,
and most considerate friends."[A]
[Footnote A: From "The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt," edited by his
eldest son. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1862. Vol. 1., p. 321.]
Mr. Horne tells a story very characteristic of both men. Soon after
the publication of "Heroes and Hero Worship," they were at a small
party, when a conversation was started between these two concerning
the heroism of man. "Leigh Hunt had said something about the islands
of the blest, or El Dorado, or the Millennium, and was flowing on his
bright and hopeful way, when Carlyle dropped some heavy tree-trunk
across Hunt's pleasant stream, and banked it up with philosophical
doubts and objections at every interval of the speaker's joyous
progress. But the unmitigated Hunt never ceased his overflowing
anticipations, nor the saturnine Carlyle his infinite demurs to those
finite flourishings. The listeners laughed and applauded by turns; and
had now fairly pitted them against each other, as the philosopher of
hopefulness and of the unhopeful. The contest continued with all that
ready wit and philosophy, that mixture of pleasantry and profundity,
that extensive knowledge of books and character, with their ready
application in argument or illustration, and that perfect ease and
good nature which distinguish both of these men. The opponents were so
well matched that it was quite clear the contest would never come to
an end. But the night was far advanced, and the party broke up. They
all sallied forth, and leaving the close room, the candles and the
arguments behind them, suddenly found themselves in presence of a most
brilliant starlight night. They all looked up. 'Now,' thought Hunt,
'Carlyle's done for! he can have no answer to that!' 'There,' shouted
Hunt, 'look up there, look at that glorious harmony, that sings with
infinite voices an eternal song of Hope in the soul of man.' Carlyle
looked up. They all remained silent to hear what he would say. They
began to think he was silenced at last--he was a mortal man. But out
of that silence came a few low-toned words, in a broad Scotch accent.
And who on earth could have anticipated what the voice said? 'Eh! it's
a sad sight!' Hunt sat down on a stone step. They all laughed--then
looked very thoughtful. Had the finite measured itself with infinity,
instead of surrendering itself up to the influence? Again they
laughed--then bade each other good night, and betook themselves
homeward with slow and serious pace."[A]
[Footnote A: "A New Spirit of the Age," by R.H. Home. London, 1844.
Vol. . p. 278.]
In 1840 Leigh Hunt left Chelsea, and went to live at Kensington, but
Carlyle never altogether lost sight of him, and on several occasions
was able to do him very serviceable acts of kindness; as, for
instance, in writing certain Memoranda concerning him with the view of
procuring from Government a small provision for Leigh Hunt's declining
years, which we may as well give in this place:--
MEMORANDA
CONCERNING MR. LEIGH HUNT.
"1. That Mr. Hunt is a man of the most indisputedly superior worth;
a Man of Genius in a very strict sense of that word, and in all
the senses which it bears or implies; of brilliant varied gifts,
of graceful fertility, of clearness, lovingness, truthfulness; of
childlike open character; also of most pure and even exemplary private
deportment; a man who can be other than loved only by those who have
not seen him, or seen him from a distance through a false medium.
"2. That, well seen into, he has done much for the world;--as every
man possessed of such qualities, and freely speaking them forth in
the abundance of his heart for thirty years long, must needs do: how
much, they that could judge best would perhaps estimate highest.
"3. That, for one thing, his services in the cause of reform, as
Founder and long as Editor of the 'Examiner' newspaper; as Poet,
Essayist, Public Teacher in all ways open to him, are great and
evident: few now living in this kingdom, perhaps, could boast of
greater.
"4. That his sufferings in that same cause have also been great; legal
prosecution and penalty (not dishonourable to him; nay, honourable,
were the whole truth known, as it will one day be): unlegal obloquy
and calumny through the Tory Press;--perhaps a greater quantity of
baseless, persevering, implacable calumny, than any other living
writer has undergone. Which long course of hostility (nearly the
cruellest conceivable, had it not been carried on in half, or almost
total misconception) may be regarded as the beginning of his other
worst distresses, and a main cause of them, down to this day.
"5. That he is heavily laden with domestic burdens, more heavily than
most men, and his economical resources are gone from him. For the last
twelve years he has toiled continually, with passionate diligence,
with the cheerfullest spirit; refusing no task; yet hardly able with
all this to provide for the day that was passing over him; and now,
after some two years of incessant effort in a new enterprise ('The
London Journal') that seemed of good promise, it also has suddenly
broken down, and he remains in ill health, age creeping on him,
without employment, means, or outlook, in a situation of the
painfullest sort. Neither do his distresses, nor did they at any time,
arise from wastefulness, or the like, on his own part (he is a man of
humble wishes, and can live with dignity on little); but from
crosses of what is called Fortune, from injustice of other men, from
inexperience of his own, and a guileless trustfulness of nature, the
thing and things that have made him unsuccessful make him in reality
more loveable, and plead for him in the minds of the candid.
"6. That such a man is rare in a Nation, and of high value there; not
to be procured for a whole Nation's revenue, or recovered when taken
from us, and some £200 a year is the price which this one, whom we
now have, is valued at: with that sum he were lifted above his
perplexities, perhaps saved from nameless wretchedness! It is believed
that, in hardly any other way could £200 abolish as much suffering,
create as much benefit, to one man, and through him to many and all.
"Were these things set fitly before an English Minister, in whom great
part of England recognises (with surprise at such a novelty) a man of
insight, fidelity and decision, is it not probable or possible that
he, though from a quite opposite point of view, might see them in
somewhat of a similar light; and, so seeing, determine to do in
consequence? Ut fiat!
"T.C."
"Some years later," says a writer in "Macmillan's Magazine,"[A] "in
the 'mellow evening' of a life that had been so stormy, Mr. Leigh
Hunt himself told the story of his struggles, his victories, and
his defeats, with so singularly graceful a frankness, that the most
supercilious of critics could not but acknowledge that here was
an autobiographer whom it was possible to like. Here is Carlyle's
estimate of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography:--
[Footnote A: July, 1862.]
"Chelsea, June 17, 1850.
"DEAR HUNT,
"I have just finished your Autobiography, which has been most
pleasantly occupying all my leisure these three days; and you must
permit me to write you a word upon it, out of the fulness of the
heart, while the impulse is still fresh to thank you. This good
book, in every sense one of the best I have read this long while, has
awakened many old thoughts which never were extinct, or even properly
asleep, but which (like so much else) have had to fall silent amid the
tempests of an evil time--Heaven mend it! A word from me once more, I
know, will not be unwelcome, while the world is talking of you.
"Well, I call this an excellent good book, by far the best of the
autobiographic kind I remember to have read in the English language;
and indeed, except it be Boswell's of Johnson, I do not know where we
have such a picture drawn of a human life, as in these three volumes.
"A pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy book; imaging, with
graceful honesty and free felicity, many interesting objects and
persons on your life-path, and imaging throughout, what is best of
all, a gifted, gentle, patient, and valiant human soul, as it buffets
its way through the billows of the time, and will not drown though
often in danger; cannot be drowned, but conquers and leaves a track
of radiance behind it: that, I think, conies out more clearly to me
than in any other of your books;--and that, I can venture to assure
you, is the best of all results to realise in a book or written
record. In fact, this book has been like an exercise of devotion to
me; I have not assisted at any sermon, liturgy or litany, this long
while, that has had so religious an effect on me. Thanks in the name
of all men. And believe, along with me, that this book will be welcome
to other generations as well as to ours. And long may you live to
write more books for us; and may the evening sun be softer on you (and
on me) than the noon sometimes was!
"Adieu, dear Hunt (you must let me use this familiarity, for I am an
old fellow too now, as well as you). I have often thought of coming up
to see you once more; and perhaps I shall, one of these days
(though horribly sick and lonely, and beset with spectral lions, go
whitherward I may): but whether I do or not believe for ever in my
regard. And so, God bless you,
"Prays heartily,
"T. CARLYLE."
On the other hand Leigh Hunt had an enthusiastic reverence for
Carlyle. There are several incidental allusions to the latter, of more
or less consequence, in Hunt's Autobiography, but the following is the
most interesting:--
"Carlyle's Paramount Humanity.--I believe that what Mr. Carlyle
loves better than his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the
face of any human creature that looks suffering, and loving, and
sincere; and I believe further, that if the fellow-creature were
suffering only, and neither loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass
of agony in this life which put him at the mercies of some good man
for some last help and consolation towards his grave, even at the risk
of loss to repute, and a sure amount of pain and vexation, that
man, if the groan reached him in its forlornness, would be Thomas
Carlyle."[A]
[Footnote A: "Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences of
friends and Contemporaries." (Lond. 1850.)]
It was in "Leigh Hunt's Journal,"--a short-lived Weekly Miscellany
(1850--1851)--that Carlyle's sketch, entitled "Two Hundred and Fifty
Years Ago,"[A] first appeared.
[Footnote A: "Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago. From a waste paper bag
of T. Carlyle." Reprinted in Carlyle's Miscellanies, Ed. 1857.]
It was during his residence at Craigenputtoch that "Sartor Resartus"
("The Tailor Done Over," the name of an old Scotch ballad) was
written, which, after being rejected by several publishers, finally
made its appearance in "Eraser's Magazine," 1833--34. The book, it
must be confessed, might well have puzzled the critical gentlemen--the
"book-tasters"--who decide for publishers what work to print among
those submitted in manuscript. It is a sort of philosophical romance,
in which the author undertakes to give, in the form of a review of a
German work on dress, and in a notice of the life of the writer, his
own opinions upon matters and things in general. The hero, Professor
Teufelsdroeckh ("Devil's Dirt"), seems to be intended for a portrait
of human nature as affected by the moral influence to which a
cultivated mind would be exposed by the transcendental philosophy of
Fichte. Mr. Carlyle works out his theory--the clothes philosophy--and
finds the world false and hollow, our institutions mere worn-out rags
or disguises, and that our only safety lies in flying from falsehood
to truth, and becoming in harmony with the "divine idea." There is
much fanciful, grotesque description in "Sartor," with deep thought
and beautiful imagery. "In this book," wrote John Sterling, "we always
feel that there is a mystic influence around us, bringing out into
sharp homely clearness what is noblest in the remote and infinite,
exalting into wonder what is commonest in the dust and toil of every
day."
"Sartor" found but few admirers; those readers, however, were firm and
enthusiastic in their applause. In 1838 the "Sartor Resartus" papers,
already republished in the United States, were issued in a collected
form here; and in 1839-1840 his various scattered articles
in periodicals, after having similarly received the honour of
republication in America, were published here, first in four and
afterwards in five volumes, under the title of "Miscellanies."
It was in the spring of 1837 that Carlyle's first great historical
work appeared, "The French Revolution:--Vol. I., The Bastile; Vol. II,
The Constitution; Vol. III., The Guillotine." The publication of this
book produced a profound impression on the public mind. A history
abounding in vivid and graphic descriptions, it was at the same time
a gorgeous "prose epic." It is perhaps the most readable of all
Carlyle's works, and indeed is one of the most remarkable books of the
age. There is no other account of the French Revolution that can be
compared with it for intensity of feeling and profoundness of thought.
A great deal of information respecting Carlyle's manner of living and
personal history during these earlier years in London may be gleaned
incidentally from his "Life of John Sterling," a book, which, from the
nature of it, is necessarily partly autobiographical.
Thomas Moore and others met him sometimes in London society at this
time. Moore thus briefly chronicles a breakfast at Lord Houghton's, at
which Carlyle was present:--
"22nd May, 1838.--Breakfasted at Milnes', and met rather a remarkable
party, consisting of Savage, Landor, and Carlyle (neither of whom
I had ever seen before), Robinson, Rogers, and Rice. A good deal of
conversation between Robinson and Carlyle about German authors, of
whom I knew nothing, nor (from what they paraded of them) felt that I
had lost much by my ignorance."[A]
[Footnote A: Diary of Thomas Moore. (Lond. 1856.) Vol. vii., p. 224]
In 1835, after the publication of "Sartor Resartus," Carlyle received
an invitation from some American admirers of his writings, to visit
their country, and he contemplated doing so, but his labours in
examining and collecting materials for his great work on "The French
Revolution," then hastening towards completion, prevented him.
We may say that, for many reasons, it is to be regretted that this
design was never carried into execution. Had Carlyle witnessed with
his own eyes the admirable working of democratic institutions in the
United States, he might have done more justice to our Transatlantic
brethren, who were always his first and foremost admirers, and he
might also have acquired more faith in the future destinies of his own
countrymen.
In December, 1837, Carlyle wrote a very remarkable letter to a
correspondent in India, which has never been printed in his works,
and which we are enabled to give here entire. It is addressed to Major
David Lester Richardson, in acknowledgment of his "Literary Leaves,
or Prose and Verse," published at Calcutta in 1836. These "Literary
Leaves" contain among other things an article on the Italian Opera
(taking much the same view of it as Carlyle does), and a sketch of
Edward Irving. These papers no doubt pleased Carlyle, and perhaps led
him to entertain a rather exaggeratedly high opinion of the rest of
the book.
THOMAS CARLYLE TO DAVID LESTER RICHARDSON.
"5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London,
"19th December, 1837.
"My DEAR SIR,
"Your courteous gift, with the letter accompanying it, reached me only
about a week ago, though dated 20th of June, almost at the opposite
point of the year. Whether there has been undue delay or not is
unknown to me, but at any rate on my side there ought to be no delay.
"I have read your volume--what little of it was known to me before,
and the much that was not known--I can say, with true pleasure. It
is written, as few volumes in these days are, with fidelity, with
successful care, with insight and conviction as to matter, with
clearness and graceful precision as to manner: in a word, it is the
impress of a mind stored with elegant accomplishments, gifted with
an eye to see, and a heart to understand; a welcome, altogether
recommendable book. More than once I have said to myself and others,
How many parlour firesides are there this winter in England, at which
this volume, could one give credible announcement of its quality,
would be right pleasant company? There are very many, could one give
the announcement: but no such announcement can be given; therefore
the parlour firesides must even put up with ---- or what other stuff
chance shovels in their way, and read, though with malediction all the
time. It is a great pity, but no man can help it. We are now arrived
seemingly pretty near the point when all criticism and proclamation
in matters literary has degenerated into an inane jargon, incredible,
unintelligible, inarticulate as the cawing of choughs and rooks; and
many things in that as in other provinces, are in a state of painful
and rapid transition. A good book has no way of recommending itself
except slowly and as it were accidentally from hand to hand. The man
that wrote it must abide his time. He needs, as indeed all men do, the
faith that this world is built not on falsehood and jargon but on
truth and reason; that no good thing done by any creature of God was,
is, or ever can be lost, but will verily do the service appointed
for it, and be found among the general sum-total and all of things
after long times, nay after all time, and through eternity itself. Let
him 'cast his bread upon the waters,' therefore, cheerful of heart;
'he will find it after many days.'
"I know not why I write all this to you; it comes very spontaneously
from me. Let it be your satisfaction, the highest a man can have in
this world, that the talent entrusted to you did not lie useless,
but was turned to account, and proved itself to be a talent; and the
'publishing world' can receive it altogether according to their own
pleasure, raise it high on the housetops, or trample it low into the
street-kennels; that is not the question at all, the thing remains
precisely what it was after never such raising and never such
depressing and trampling, there is no change whatever in it. I bid
you go on, and prosper.
"One thing grieves me: the tone of sadness, I might say of settled
melancholy that runs through all your utterances of yourself. It is
not right, it is wrong; and yet how shall I reprove you? If you knew
me, you would triumphantly[A] for any spiritual endowment bestowed
on a man, that it is accompanied, or one might say preceded as the
first origin of it, always by a delicacy of organisation which in
a world like ours is sure to have itself manifoldly afflicted,
tormented, darkened down into sorrow and disease. You feel yourself an
exile, in the East; but in the West too it is exile; I know not where
under the sun it is not exile. Here in the Fog Babylon, amid mud
and smoke, in the infinite din of 'vociferous platitude,' and quack
outbellowing quack, with truth and pity on all hands ground under the
wheels, can one call it a home, or a world? It is a waste chaos, where
we have to swim painfully for our life. The utmost a man can do is
to swim there like a man, and hold his peace. For this seems to me
a great truth, in any exile or chaos whatsoever, that sorrow was not
given us for sorrow's sake, but always and infallibly as a lesson to
us from which we are to learn somewhat: and which, the somewhat
once learned, ceases to be sorrow. I do believe this; and study
in general to 'consume my own smoke,' not indeed without very ugly
out-puffs at times! Allan Cunningham is the best, he tells me that
always as one grows older, one grows happier: a thing also which I
really can believe. But as for you, my dear sir, you have other work
to do in the East than grieve. Are there not beautiful things there,
glorious things; wanting only an eye to note them, a hand to record
them? If I had the command over you, I would say, read Paul et
Virginie, then read the Chaumière Indienne; gird yourself together
for a right effort, and go and do likewise or better! I mean what I
say. The East has its own phases, there are things there which the
West yet knows not of; and one heaven covers both. He that has an eye
let him look!
[Footnote A: There seems to be some omission or slip of the pen here.]
"I hope you forgive me this style I have got into. It seems to me on
reading your book as if we had been long acquainted in some measure;
as if one might speak to you right from the heart. I hope we shall
meet some day or other. I send you my constant respect and good
wishes; and am and remain,
"Yours very truly always,
"T. CARLYLE."
Carlyle first appeared as a lecturer in 1837. His first course was on
'German Literature,' at Willis's Rooms; a series of six lectures, of
which the first was thus noticed in the Spectator of Saturday, May
6, 1837.[A]
[Footnote A: Facsimiled in "The Autographic Mirror," July, 1865.]
"Mr. Thomas Carlyle's Lectures.
"Mr. Carlyle delivered the first of a course of lectures on German
Literature, at Willis's Rooms, on Tuesday, to a very crowded and yet
a select audience of both sexes. Mr. Carlyle may be deficient in the
mere mechanism of oratory; but this minor defect is far more than
counterbalanced by his perfect mastery of his subject, the originality
of his manner, the perspicuity of his language, his simple but genuine
eloquence, and his vigorous grasp of a large and difficult question.
No person of taste or judgment could hear him without feeling that the
lecturer is a man of genius, deeply imbued with his great argument."
"This course of lectures," says a writer already quoted, "was well
attended by the fashionables of the West End; and though they saw
in his manner something exceedingly awkward, they could not fail to
discern in his matter the impress of a mind of great originality and
superior gifts."[A]
[Footnote A: JAMES GRANT: "Portraits of Public Characters." (Lond.
1841.) Vol. ii., p. 152.]
The following year he delivered a second course on the 'History of
Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture,' at
the Literary Institution in Edwards-street, Portman-square. 'The
Revolutions of Modern Europe' was the title given to the third course,
delivered twelve months later. The fourth and last series, of six
lectures, is the best remembered, 'Heroes and Hero-worship.' This
course alone was published, and it became more immediately popular
than any of the works which had preceded it. Concerning these
lectures, Leigh Hunt remarked that it seemed "as if some Puritan
had come to life again, liberalized by German philosophy and his own
intense reflections and experience." Another critic, a Scotch writer,
could see nothing but wild impracticability in them, and exclaimed,
"Can any living man point to a single practical passage in any of
these lectures? If not, what is the real value of Mr. Carlyle's
teachings? What is Mr. Carlyle himself but a phantasm!"
The vein of Puritanism running through his writings, composed upon
the model of the German school, impressed many critics with the belief
that their author, although full of fire and energy, was perplexed and
embarrassed with his own speculations. Concerning this Puritan element
in his reflections, Mr. James Hannay remarks, "That earnestness, that
grim humour--that queer, half-sarcastic, half-sympathetic fun--is
quite Scotch. It appears in Knox and Buchanan, and it appears in
Burns. I was not surprised when a school-fellow of Carlyle's told me
that his favourite poem was, when a boy, 'Death and Doctor Hornbook.'
And if I were asked to explain this originality, I should say that he
was a covenanter coming in the wake of the eighteenth century and the
transcendental philosophy. He has gone into the hills against 'shams,'
as they did against Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives
in a quieter age, and in a literary position. So he can give play
to the humour which existed in them as well, and he overflows with
a range of reading and speculation to which they were necessarily
strangers."
'Chartism,' published in 1839, and which, to use the words of a critic
of the time, was the publication in which "he first broke ground on
the Condition of England question," appeared a short time before the
lectures on 'Heroes and Hero-worship' were delivered. If we
remember rightly, Mr. Carlyle gave forth "those grand utterances"
extemporaneously and without an abstract, notes, or a reminder of any
kind--utterances not beautiful to the flunkey-mind, or valet-soul,
occupied mainly with the fold of the hero's necktie, and the cut
of his coat. Flunkey-dom, by one of its mouthpieces, thus speaks of
them:--
"Perhaps his course for the present year, which was on Hero-worship,
was better attended than any previous one. Some of those who were
present estimated the average attendance at three hundred. They
chiefly consisted of persons of rank and wealth, as the number of
carriages which each day waited the conclusion of the lecture to
receive Mr. Carlyle's auditors, and to carry them to their homes,
conclusively testified. The locality of Mr. Carlyle's lectures has, I
believe, varied every year. The Hanover Rooms, Willis's Rooms, and
a place in the north of London, the name of which I forget, have
severally been chosen as the place whence to give utterance to his
profound and original trains of thought.
"A few words will be expected here as to Mr. Carlyle's manner as a
lecturer. In so far as his mere manner is concerned, I can scarcely
bestow on him a word of commendation. There is something in his manner
which, if I may use a rather quaint term, must seem very uncouth to
London audiences of the most respectable class, accustomed as they
are to the polished deportment[A] which is usually exhibited in
Willis's or the Hanover Rooms. When he enters the room, and proceeds
to the sort of rostrum whence he delivers his lectures, he is,
according to the usual practice in such cases, generally received
with applause; but he very rarely takes any more notice of the mark
of approbation thus bestowed upon him, than if he were altogether
unconscious of it. And the same seeming want of respect for his
audience, or, at any rate, the same disregard for what I believe
he considers the troublesome forms of politeness, is visible at the
commencement of his lecture. Having ascended his desk, he gives a
hearty rub to his hands, and plunges at once into his subject. He
reads very closely, which, indeed, must be expected, considering
the nature of the topics which he undertakes to discuss. He is not
prodigal of gesture with his arms or body; but there is something in
his eye and countenance which indicates great earnestness of purpose,
and the most intense interest in his subject. You can almost fancy,
in some of his more enthusiastic and energetic moments, that you
see his inmost soul in his face. At times, indeed very often, he so
unnaturally distorts his features, as to give to his countenance a
very unpleasant expression. On such occasions, you would imagine that
he was suddenly seized with some violent paroxysms of pain. He is
one of the most ungraceful speakers I have ever heard address a public
assemblage of persons. In addition to the awkwardness of his general
manner, he 'makes mouths,' which would of themselves be sufficient to
mar the agreeableness of his delivery. And his manner of speaking, and
the ungracefulness of his gesticulation, are greatly aggravated by
his strong Scotch accent. Even to the generality of Scotchmen his
pronunciation is harsh in no ordinary degree. Need I say, then, what
it must be to an English ear?
[Footnote A: Shade of Mr. Turveydrop senior, hear this man!]
"I was present some months ago, during the delivery of a speech by Mr.
Carlyle at a meeting held in the Freemasons' Tavern, for the purpose
of forming a metropolitan library; and though that speech did not
occupy in its delivery more than five minutes, he made use of some of
the most extraordinary phraseology I ever heard employed by a
human being. He made use of the expression 'this London,' which he
pronounced 'this Loondun,' four or five times--a phrase which grated
grievously on the ears even of those of Mr. Carlyle's own countrymen
who were present, and which must have sounded doubly harsh in the ears
of an Englishman, considering the singularly broad Scotch accent with
which he spoke.
"A good deal of uncertainty exists as to Mr. Carlyle's religious
opinions. I have heard him represented as a firm and entire believer
in revelation, and I have heard it affirmed with equal confidence that
he is a decided Deist. My own impression is," &c.[A]
[Footnote A: "Portraits of Public Characters," by the author of
"Random Recollections of the Lords and Commons." Vol. ii. pp.
152-158.]
In 1841 Carlyle superintended the publication of the English
edition of his friend Emerson's Essays,[B] to which he prefixed a
characteristic Preface of some length.
[Footnote B: Essays: by R.W. Emerson, of Concord, Massachusetts. With
Preface by Thomas Carlyle. London: James Fraser, 1841.]
"The name of Ralph Waldo Emerson," he writes, "is not entirely new
in England: distinguished travellers bring us tidings of such a man;
fractions of his writings have found their way into the hands of
the curious here; fitful hints that there is, in New England, some
spiritual notability called Emerson, glide through Reviews and
Magazines. Whether these hints were true or not true, readers are now
to judge for themselves a little better.
"Emerson's writings and speakings amount to something: and yet
hitherto, as seems to me, this Emerson is perhaps far less notable for
what he has spoken or done, than for the many things he has not spoken
and has forborne to do. With uncommon interest I have learned that
this, and in such a never-resting, locomotive country too, is one of
those rare men who have withal the invaluable talent of sitting still!
That an educated man, of good gifts and opportunities, after looking
at the public arena, and even trying, not with ill success, what its
tasks and its prizes might amount to, should retire for long years
into rustic obscurity; and, amid the all-pervading jingle of dollars
and loud chaffering of ambitions and promotions, should quietly,
with cheerful deliberateness, sit down to spend his life not in
Mammon-worship, or the hunt for reputation, influence, place, or any
outward advantage whatsoever: this, when we get a notice of it, is a
thing really worth noting."
In 1843, "Past and Present" appeared--a work without the wild power
which "Sartor Resartus" possessed over the feelings of the reader,
but containing passages which look the same way, and breathe the
same spirit. The book contrasts, in a historico-philosophical spirit,
English society in the Middle Ages, with English society in our own
day. In both this and the preceding work the great measures advised
for the amelioration of the people are education and emigration.
Another very admirable letter, addressed by Mr. Carlyle in 1843 to a
young man who had written to him desiring his advice as to a proper
choice of reading, and, it would appear also, as to his conduct in
general, we shall here bring forth from its hiding-place in an old
Scottish newspaper of a quarter of a century ago:--
"DEAR SIR,
"Some time ago your letter was delivered me; I take literally the
first free half-hour I have had since to write you a word of answer.
"It would give me true satisfaction could any advice of
mine contribute to forward you in your honourable course of
self-improvement, but a long experience has taught me that advice can
profit but little; that there is a good reason why advice is so seldom
followed; this reason namely, that it is so seldom, and can almost
never be, rightly given. No man knows the state of another; it is
always to some more or less imaginary man that the wisest and most
honest adviser is speaking.
"As to the books which you--whom I know so little of--should read,
there is hardly anything definite that can be said. For one thing, you
may be strenuously advised to keep reading. Any good book, any book
that is wiser than yourself, will teach you something--a great many
things, indirectly and directly, if your mind be open to learn.
This old counsel of Johnson's is also good, and universally
applicable:--'Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity
to read.' The very wish and curiosity indicates that you, then and
there, are the person likely to get good of it. 'Our wishes are
presentiments of our capabilities;' that is a noble saying, of deep
encouragement to all true men; applicable to our wishes and efforts in
regard to reading as to other things. Among all the objects that look
wonderful or beautiful to you, follow with fresh hope the one which
looks wonderfullest, beautifullest. You will gradually find, by
various trials (which trials see that you make honest, manful ones,
not silly, short, fitful ones), what is for you the wonderfullest,
beautifullest--what is your true element and province, and be able
to profit by that. True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be
attended to. But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between
true desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what
we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an
appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy,
desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get
good of none, and mischief of all--are not these as foolish, unhealthy
eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and
confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are
not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid
nutritive food? With these illustrations, I will recommend Johnson's
advice to you.
"Another thing, and only one other, I will say. All books are properly
the record of the history of past men--what thoughts past men had in
them--what actions past men did: the summary of all books whatsoever
lies there. It is on this ground that the class of books specifically
named History can be safely recommended as the basis of all study of
books--the preliminary to all right and full understanding of anything
we can expect to find in books. Past history, and especially the past
history of one's own native country, everybody may be advised to begin
with that. Let him study that faithfully; innumerable inquiries will
branch out from it; he has a broad-beaten highway, from which all
the country is more or less visible; there travelling, let him choose
where he will dwell.
"Neither let mistakes and wrong directions--of which every man, in
his studies and elsewhere, falls into many--discourage you. There is
precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a
man try faithfully, manfully, to be right, he will grow daily more
and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition which all men have
to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling--a
falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the
pavement!--it is emblematic of all things a man does.
"In conclusion, I will remind you that it is not by books alone, or
by books chiefly, that a man becomes in all points a man. Study to do
faithfully whatsoever thing in your actual situation, there and now,
you find either expressly or tacitly laid to your charge; that is
your post; stand in it like a true soldier. Silently devour the many
chagrins of it, as all human situations have many; and see you aim not
to quit it without doing all that it, at least, required of you.
A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading. They are a
growing kind of men that can wisely combine the two things--wisely,
valiantly, can do what is laid to their hand in their present sphere,
and prepare themselves withal for doing other wider things, if such
lie before them.
"With many good wishes and encouragements, I remain, yours sincerely,
"THOMAS CARLYLE.
"Chelsea, 13th March, 1843."
The publication of "Past and Present" elicited a paper "On the Genius
and Tendency of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle," from Mazzini, which
appeared in the "British and Foreign Review," of October, 1843.[A] It
is a candid and thoughtful piece of criticism, in which the writer,
while striving to do justice to Carlyle's genius, protests strongly
and uncompromisingly against the tendency of his teaching.
[Footnote A: Reprinted in the "Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini."
(London, 1867). Vol. iv. pp. 56-144.]
Some months afterwards, when the House of Commons was occupied with
the illegal opening of Mazzini's letters, Carlyle spontaneously
stepped forward and paid the following tribute to his character:--
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.'
"SIR,--
"In your observations in yesterday's Times on the late disgraceful
affair of Mr. Mazzini's letters and the Secretary of State, you
mention that Mr. Mazzini is entirely unknown to you, entirely
indifferent to you; and add, very justly, that if he were the most
contemptible of mankind, it would not affect your argument on the
subject.[A]
[Footnote A: "Mr. Mazzini's character and habits and society are
nothing to the point, unless connected with some certain or probable
evidence of evil intentions or treasonable plots. We know nothing,
and care nothing about him. He may be the most worthless and the most
vicious creature in the world; but this is no reason of itself why
his letters should be detained and opened."--leading article, June 17,
1844.]
"It may tend to throw farther light on this matter if I now certify
you, which I in some sort feel called upon to do, that Mr. Mazzini is
not unknown to various competent persons in this country; and that he
is very far indeed from being contemptible--none farther, or very few
of living men. I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series
of years; and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill
in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify to all men that
he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man
of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind; one of those
rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are
worthy to be called martyr-souls; who, in silence, piously in their
daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.
"Of Italian democracies and young Italy's sorrows, of extraneous
Austrian Emperors in Milan, or poor old chimerical Popes in Bologna,
I know nothing, and desire to know nothing; but this other thing I do
know, and can here declare publicly to be a fact, which fact all of
us that have occasion to comment on Mr. Mazzini and his affairs may do
well to take along with us, as a thing leading towards new clearness,
and not towards new additional darkness, regarding him and them.
"Whether the extraneous Austrian Emperor and miserable old chimera
of a Pope shall maintain themselves in Italy, or be obliged to decamp
from Italy, is not a question in the least vital to Englishmen. But
it is a question vital to us that sealed letters in an English
post-office be, as we all fancied they were, respected as things
sacred; that opening of men's letters, a practice near of kin to
picking men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataler forms
of scoundrelism be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the
very last extremity. When some new gunpowder plot may be in the
wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not
avoidable otherwise, then let us open letters--not till then.
"To all Austrian Kaisers and such like, in their time of trouble,
let us answer, as our fathers from of old have answered:--Not by such
means is help here for you. Such means, allied to picking of pockets
and viler forms of scoundrelism, are not permitted in this country for
your behoof. The right hon. Secretary does himself detest such, and
even is afraid to employ them. He dare not: it would be dangerous
for him! All British men that might chance to come in view of such
a transaction, would incline to spurn it, and trample on it, and
indignantly ask him what he meant by it?
"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
"THOMAS CARLYLE.[A]
"Chelsea, June 18."
[Footnote A: From The Times, Wednesday, June 19, 1844.]
The autumn of this year was saddened for Carlyle by the loss of
the dear friend whose biography he afterwards wrote. On the 18th of
September, 1844--after a short career of melancholy promise, only half
fulfilled--John Sterling died, in his thirty-ninth year.
The next work that appeared from Carlyle's pen--a special service
to history, and to the memory of one of England's greatest men--was
"Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations and a
Connecting Narrative," two volumes, published in 1845. If there were
any doubt remaining after the publication of the "French Revolution"
what position our author might occupy amongst the historians of the
age, it was fully removed on the appearance of "Cromwell's Letters."
The work obtained a great and an immediate popularity; and though
bulky and expensive, a very large impression was quickly sold.
These speeches and letters of Cromwell, the spelling and punctuation
corrected, and a few words added here and there for clearness' sake,
and to accommodate them to the language and style in use now, were
first made intelligible and effective by Mr. Carlyle. "The authentic
utterances of the man Oliver himself," he says, "I have gathered them
from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires
where they lay buried. I have washed, or endeavoured to wash them
clean from foreign stupidities--such a job of buckwashing as I do not
long to repeat--and the world shall now see them in their own shape."
The work was at once republished in America, and two editions were
called for here within the year.
While engaged on this work, Carlyle went down to Rugby by express
invitation, on Friday, 13th May, 1842, and on the following day
explored the field of Naseby, in company with Dr. Arnold. The meeting
of two such remarkable men--only six weeks before the death of
the latter--has in it something solemn and touching, and unusually
interesting. Carlyle left the school-house, expressing the hope that
it might "long continue to be what was to him one of the rarest sights
in the world--a temple of industrious peace."
Arnold, who, with the deep sympathy arising from kindred nobility of
soul, had long cherished a high reverence for Carlyle, was very proud
of having received such a guest under his roof, and during those few
last weeks of life was wont to be in high spirits, talking with his
several guests, and describing with much interest, his recent visit to
Naseby with Carlyle, "its position on some of the highest table-land
in England--the streams falling on the one side into the Atlantic, on
the other into the German Ocean--far away, too, from any town--Market
Harborough, the nearest, into which the cavaliers were chased late in
the long summer evening on the fourteenth of June."
Perhaps the most graphic description of Carlyle's manner and
conversation ever published, is contained in the following passage
from a letter addressed to Emerson by an accomplished American,
Margaret Fuller, who visited England in the autumn of 1846, and whose
strange, beautiful history and tragical death on her homeward voyage,
are known to most readers.
The letter is dated Paris, November 16, 1846.
"Of the people I saw in London, you will wish me to speak first of the
Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to
be passed at their house. That first time, I was delighted with him.
He was in a very sweet humour,--full of wit and pathos, without being
overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow
of his discourse, and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal
being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I
wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full
sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a narrative ballad.
He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my lungs and change my
position, so that I did not get tired. That evening, he talked of the
present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches
of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely
stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry.
"Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told, with beautiful
feeling, a story of some poor farmer, or artisan in the country, who
on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty English world,
and sits reading the Essays, and looking upon the sea.
"I left him that night, intending to go out very often to their
house. I assure you there never was anything so witty as Carlyle's
description of ---- ----. It was enough to kill one with laughing.
I, on my side, contributed a story to his fund of anecdote on this
subject, and it was fully appreciated. Carlyle is worth a thousand of
you for that;--he is not ashamed to laugh when he is amused, but goes
on in a cordial, human fashion.
"The second time Mr. C. had a dinner-party, at which was a witty,
French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy,[A]
and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit
as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told
stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a
little, of which one was glad, for that night he was in his more acrid
mood, and though much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew
wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything he
said.
[Footnote A: George Henry Lewes.]
"For a couple of hours he was talking about poetry, and the whole
harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind.
Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmasters had taught him that
it was great to do so, and had thus, unfortunately, been turned from
the true path for a man. Burns had, in like manner, been turned from
his vocation. Shakespeare had not had the good sense to see that
it would have been better to write straight on in prose;--and such
nonsense, which, though amusing enough at first, he ran to death after
a while.
"The most amusing part is always when he comes back to some refrain,
as in the French Revolution of the sea-green. In this instance, it
was Petrarch and Laura, the last word pronounced with his ineffable
sarcasm of drawl. Although he said this over fifty times, I could not
help laughing when Laura would come. Carlyle running his chin out
when he spoke it, and his eyes glancing till they looked like the eyes
and beak of a bird of prey.
Poor Laura! Luckily for her that her poet had already got her safely
canonized beyond the reach of this Teufelsdröckh vulture.
"The worst of hearing Carlyle is, that you cannot interrupt him. I
understand the habit and power of haranguing have increased very much
upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold
of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a
chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears
you down. True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable
penetration, sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not
morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it.
The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this, by a
series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of
modern French literature, not one of them, perhaps, perfectly just,
but all drawn with the finest, boldest strokes, and, from his point of
view, masterly. All were depreciating, except that of Béranger. Of him
he spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty sympathy.
"I had, afterward, some talk with Mrs. C., whom hitherto I had only
seen, for who can speak while her husband is there? I like her very
much;--she is full of grace, sweetness, and talent. Her eyes are sad
and charming.
* * * * *
"After this, they went to stay at Lord Ashburton's, and I only saw
them once more, when they came to pass an evening with us. Unluckily,
Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I enjoyed
more than any. He is a beauteous and pure music: also, he is a dear
friend of Mrs. C., but his being there gave the conversation a turn to
'progress' and ideal subjects, and C. was fluent in invectives on
all our 'rose-water imbecilities.' We all felt distant from him, and
Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs.
C. said to me,--
"'These are but opinions to Carlyle, but to Mazzini, who has given his
all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such
subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'
"All Carlyle's talk, that evening, was a defence of mere
force,--success the test of right;--if people would not behave well,
put collars round their necks;--find a hero, and let them be his
slaves, &c. It was very Titanic, and anti-celestial. I wish the last
evening had been more melodious. However, I bid Carlyle farewell with
feelings of the warmest friendship and admiration. We cannot feel
otherwise to a great and noble nature, whether it harmonise with our
own or not. I never appreciated the work he has done for his age
till I saw England. I could not. You must stand in the shadow of that
mountain of shams, to know how hard it is to cast light across it.
"Honour to Carlyle! Hoch! Although, in the wine with which we drink
this health, I, for one, must mingle the despised 'rose-water.'
"And now, having to your eye shown the defects of my own mind, in
the sketch of another, I will pass on more lowly,--more willing to be
imperfect, since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to
be only this or that. It is much if one is not only a crow or
magpie;--Carlyle is only a lion. Some time we may, all in full, be
intelligent and humanely fair."
* * * * *
"December, 1846.--Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant
richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and
a splendour scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not
converse;--only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked
men,--happily not one invariable or inevitable,--that they cannot
allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their
atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the
greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.
"Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not
only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as
so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority,--raising his
voice, and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is
not in the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others. On the
contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought.
But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own
impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in
the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing; but in his
arrogance there is no littleness,--no self-love. It is the heroic
arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror;--it is his nature, and
the untameable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons.
You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere; and perhaps, also, he would
only laugh at you if you did; but you like him heartily, and like to
see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron
in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you, if you
senselessly go too near.
"He seems, to me, quite isolated,--lonely as the desert,--yet never
was a man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one to match
his mood. He finds them, but only in the past. He sings, rather than
talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem,
with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning,
some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is
full, or with which, as with a knitting needle, he catches up the
stitches, if he has chanced, now and then, to let fall a row.
"For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that
subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a
minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigour; for
all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas,
ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs
that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books,
is full of pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his
point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I
cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it;--his works are
true, to blame and praise him,--the Siegfried of England,--great and
powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy
evil, than legislate for good."[A]
[Footnote A: "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli." (Boston, 1852.) Vol.
iii., pp. 96-104.]
In 1848 Mr. Carlyle contributed a series of articles to the Examiner
and Spectator, principally on Irish affairs, which, as he has never
yet seen fit to reprint them in his Miscellanies, are apparently quite
unknown to the general public. With the exception of the last, they
may be considered as a sort of alarum note, sounded to herald
the approach of the Latter-Day Pamphlets, which appeared shortly
afterwards.
The following is a list of these newspaper articles:--
In The Examiner, 1848.
March 4. "Louis Philippe."
April 29. "Repeal of the Union."
May 13. "Legislation for Ireland."
In The Spectator, 1848.
May 13. "Ireland and the British Chief Governor."
" "Irish Regiments (of the New Era)."
In The Examiner, 1848.
Dec. 2. "Death of Charles Buller."
The last-named paper, a tribute to the memory of his old pupil, we
shall give entire. Another man of genius,[A] now also gone to his
rest, sang sorrowfully on the same occasion:
[Footnote A: W.M. Thackeray.]
"Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blest be He who took and gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,
That's free to give, or to recall."
Carlyle's paper reads like a solemn and touching funeral oration to
the uncovered mourners as they stand round the grave before it is
closed:--
"A very beautiful soul has suddenly been summoned from among us; one
of the clearest intellects, and most aërial activities in England,
has unexpectedly been called away. Charles Buller died on Wednesday
morning last, without previous sickness, reckoned of importance, till
a day or two before. An event of unmixed sadness, which has created a
just sorrow, private and public. The light of many a social circle
is dimmer henceforth, and will miss long a presence which was always
gladdening and beneficent; in the coming storms of political trouble,
which heap themselves more and more in ominous clouds on our horizon,
one radiant element is to be wanting now.
"Mr. Buller was in his forty-third year, and had sat in Parliament
some twenty of those. A man long kept under by the peculiarities of
his endowment and position, but rising rapidly into importance of late
years; beginning to reap the fruits of long patience, and to see an
ever wider field open round him. He was what in party language is
called a 'Reformer,' from his earliest youth; and never swerved from
that faith, nor could swerve. His luminous sincere intellect laid bare
to him in all its abject incoherency the thing that was untrue, which
thenceforth became for him a thing that was not tenable, that it was
perilous and scandalous to attempt maintaining. Twenty years in
the dreary, weltering lake of parliamentary confusion, with its
disappointments and bewilderments, had not quenched this tendency, in
which, as we say, he persevered as by a law of nature itself, for the
essence of his mind was clearness, healthy purity, incompatibility
with fraud in any of its forms. What he accomplished, therefore,
whether great or little, was all to be added to the sum of good;
none of it to be deducted. There shone mildly in his whole conduct
a beautiful veracity, as if it were unconscious of itself; a perfect
spontaneous absence of all cant, hypocrisy, and hollow pretence,
not in word and act only, but in thought and instinct. To a singular
extent it can be said of him that he was a spontaneous clear man. Very
gentle, too, though full of fire; simple, brave, graceful. What he
did, and what he said, came from him as light from a luminous body,
and had thus always in it a high and rare merit, which any of the more
discerning could appreciate fully.
"To many, for a long while, Mr. Buller passed merely for a man of wit,
and certainly his beautiful natural gaiety of character, which by no
means meant levity, was commonly thought to mean it, and did for
many years, hinder the recognition of his intrinsic higher qualities.
Slowly it began to be discovered that, under all this many-coloured
radiancy and coruscation, there burnt a most steady light; a sound,
penetrating intellect, full of adroit resources, and loyal by nature
itself to all that was methodic, manful, true;--in brief, a mildly
resolute, chivalrous, and gallant character, capable of doing much
serious service.
"A man of wit he indisputably was, whatever more amongst the wittiest
of men. His speech, and manner of being, played everywhere like soft
brilliancy of lambent fire round the common objects of the hour, and
was, beyond all others that English society could show, entitled to
the name of excellent, for it was spontaneous, like all else in him,
genuine, humane,--the glittering play of the soul of a real man. To
hear him, the most serious of men might think within himself, 'How
beautiful is human gaiety too!' Alone of wits, Buller never made wit;
he could be silent, or grave enough, where better was going; often
rather liked to be silent if permissible, and always was so where
needful. His wit, moreover, was ever the ally of wisdom, not of folly,
or unkindness, or injustice; no soul was ever hurt by it; never, we
believe, never, did his wit offend justly any man, and often have we
seen his ready resource relieve one ready to be offended, and light up
a pausing circle all into harmony again. In truth, it was beautiful to
see such clear, almost childlike simplicity of heart coexisting with
the finished dexterities, and long experiences, of a man of the world.
Honour to human worth, in whatever form we find it! This man was true
to his friends, true to his convictions,--and true without effort,
as the magnet is to the north. He was ever found on the right
side; helpful to it, not obstructive of it, in all he attempted or
performed.
"Weak health; a faculty indeed brilliant, clear, prompt, not deficient
in depth either, or in any kind of active valour, but wanting the
stern energy that could long endure to continue in the deep, in the
chaotic, new, and painfully incondite--this marked out for him his
limits; which, perhaps with regrets enough, his natural veracity and
practicality would lead him quietly to admit and stand by. He was not
the man to grapple, in its dark and deadly dens, with the Lernæan coil
of social Hydras; perhaps not under any circumstances: but he did,
unassisted, what he could; faithfully himself did something--nay,
something truly considerable;--and in his patience with the much
that by him and his strength could not be done let us grant there was
something of beautiful too!
"Properly, indeed, his career as a public man was but beginning.
In the office he last held, much was silently expected of him; he
himself, too, recognised well what a fearful and immense question this
of Pauperism is; with what ominous rapidity the demand for solution
of it is pressing on; and how little the world generally is yet
aware what methods and principles, new, strange, and altogether
contradictory to the shallow maxims and idle philosophies current at
present, would be needed for dealing with it! This task he perhaps
contemplated with apprehension; but he is not now to be tried with
this, or with any task more. He has fallen, at this point of the
march, an honourable soldier; and has left us here to fight along
without him. Be his memory dear and honourable to us, as that of
one so worthy ought. What in him was true and valiant endures for
evermore--beyond all memory or record. His light, airy brilliancy has
suddenly become solemn, fixed in the earnest stillness of Eternity.
There shall we also, and our little works, all shortly be."
In 1850 appeared the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," essays suggested by the
convulsions of 1848, in which, more than in any previous publication,
the author spoke out in the character of a social and political censor
of his own age. "He seemed to be the worshipper of mere brute force,
the advocate of all harsh, coercive measures. Model prisons and
schools for the reform of criminals, poor-laws, churches as at present
constituted, the aristocracy, parliament, and other institutions, were
assailed and ridiculed in unmeasured terms, and generally, the
English public was set down as composed of sham heroes, and a valet
or 'flunkey' world." From their very nature as stern denunciations
of what the author considered contemporary fallacies, wrongs, and
hypocrisies, these pamphlets produced a storm of critical indignation
against him.
The life of John Sterling was published in the following year; and
Carlyle then began that long spell of work--the "History of Frederick
the Great"--which extended over thirteen years, the last, and perhaps
the greatest, monument of his genius.
In 1856, when we may suppose his mind to be full of the details of
battles, and overflowing with military tactics, he received from Sir
W. Napier his "History of the Administration of Scinde," and wrote the
following letter to the author:--
"THOMAS CARLYLE TO SIR WILLIAM NAPIER.
"Chelsea, May 12, 1856.
"DEAR SIR,
"I have read with attention, and with many feelings and reflections,
your record of Sir C. Napier's Administration of Scinde. You must
permit me to thank you, in the name of Britain at large, for writing
such a book; and in my own poor name to acknowledge the great
compliment and kindness implied in sending me a copy for myself.
"It is a book which every living Englishman would be the better
for reading--for studying diligently till he saw into it, till he
recognised and believed the high and tragic phenomenon set forth
there! A book which may be called 'profitable' in the old Scripture
sense; profitable for reproof, for correction and admonition, for
great sorrow, yet for 'building up in righteousness' too--in heroic,
manful endeavour to do well, and not ill, in one's time and place.
One feels it a kind of possession to know that one has had such a
fellow-citizen and contemporary in these evil days.
"The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognisable to me;
his subtle, piercing intellect turned all to the practical, giving
him just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible adroit
contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit
of an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen
for a long time.
"A singular veracity one finds in him; not in his words alone--which,
however, I like much for their fine rough naïveté--but in his
actions, judgments, aims; in all that he thinks, and does, and
says--which, indeed, I have observed is the root of all greatness or
real worth in human creatures, and properly the first (and also the
rarest) attribute of what we call genius among men.
"The path of such a man through the foul jungle of this world--the
struggle of Heaven's inspiration against the terrestrial fooleries,
cupidities, and cowardices--cannot be other than tragical: but the man
does tear out a bit of way for himself too; strives towards the good
goal, inflexibly persistent till his long rest come: the man does
leave his mark behind him, ineffaceable, beneficent to all good men,
maleficent to none: and we must not complain. The British nation of
this time, in India or elsewhere--God knows no nation ever had more
need of such men, in every region of its affairs! But also perhaps no
nation ever had a much worse chance to get hold of them, to recognise
and loyally second them, even when they are there.
"Anarchic stupidity is wide as the night; victorious wisdom is but as
a lamp in it shining here and there. Contrast a Napier even in Scinde
with, for example, a Lally at Pondicherry or on the Place de Grève;
one has to admit that it is the common lot, that it might have been
far worse!
"There is great talent in this book apart from its subject. The
narrative moves on with strong, weighty step, like a marching phalanx,
with the gleam of clear steel in it--sheers down the opponent objects
and tramples them out of sight in a very potent manner. The writer,
it is evident, had in him a lively, glowing image, complete in all its
parts, of the transaction to be told; and that is his grand secret
of giving the reader so lively a conception of it. I was surprised to
find how much I had carried away with me, even of the Hill campaign
and of Trukkee itself; though without a map the attempt to understand
such a thing seemed to me desperate at first.
"With many thanks, and gratified to have made this reflex
acquaintance, which, if it should ever chance to become a direct one,
might gratify me still more,
"I remain always yours sincerely,
"T. CARLYLE."[A]
[Footnote A: "Life of General Sir William Napier, K.C.B." Edited by
H.A. Bruce, M.P. London: Murray, 1864. Vol. ii. pp. 312-314.]
In June, 1861, a few days after the great fire in which Inspector
Braidwood perished in the discharge of his duty, Carlyle broke a long
silence with the following letter:--
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.'
"SIR,--
"There is a great deal of public sympathy, and of deeper sort than
usual, awake at present on the subject of Inspector Braidwood. It is
a beautiful emotion, and apparently a perfectly just one, and well
bestowed. Judging by whatever light one gets, Braidwood seems to have
been a man of singular worth in his department, and otherwise; such a
servant as the public seldom has. Thoroughly skilled in his function,
nobly valiant in it, and faithful to it--faithful to the death.
In rude, modest form, actually a kind of hero, who has perished in
serving us!
"Probably his sorrowing family is not left in wealthy circumstances.
Most certainly it is pity when a generous emotion, in many men, or in
any man, has to die out futile, and leave no action behind it. The
question, therefore, suggests itself--Should not there be a 'Braidwood
Testimonial,' the proper parties undertaking it, in a modest, serious
manner, the public silently testifying (to such extent, at least) what
worth its emotion has?
"I venture to throw out this hint, and, if it be acted on, will, with
great satisfaction, give my mite among other people; but must, for
good reasons, say further, that this [is] all I can do in the matter
(of which, indeed, I know nothing but what everybody knows, and a
great deal less than every reader of the newspapers knows); and that,
in particular, I cannot answer any letters on the subject, should such
happen to be sent me.
"In haste, I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
"T. CARLYLE.[A]
"5, Cheyne-row, Chelsea, June 30."
[Footnote A: (Printed in The Times, Tuesday, July 2, 1861.)]
The "History of Frederick the Great" was completed early in 1865.
Later in the same year the students of Edinburgh University elected
Carlyle as Lord Rector. We cannot do better than describe the
proceedings and the subsequent address in the words of the late
Alexander Smith:--
"Mr. Gladstone demitted office, and then it behoved the students of
the University to cast about for a worthy successor. Two candidates
were proposed, Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Disraeli; and on the election day
Mr. Carlyle was returned by a large and enthusiastic majority. This
was all very well, but a doubt lingered in the minds of many whether
Mr. Carlyle would accept the office, or if accepting it, whether he
would deliver an address--said address being the sole apple which the
Rectorial tree is capable of bearing. The hare was indeed caught, but
it was doubtful somewhat whether the hare would allow itself to be
cooked after the approved academical fashion. It was tolerably well
known that Mr. Carlyle had emerged from his long spell of work on
"Frederick," in a condition of health the reverse of robust; that
he had once or twice before declined similar honours from Scottish
Universities--from Glasgow some twelve or fourteen years ago, and from
Aberdeen some seven or eight; and that he was constitutionally opposed
to all varieties of popular displays, more especially those of the
oratorical sort.
"But all dispute was ended when it was officially announced that Mr.
Carlyle had accepted the office of Lord Rector, that he would conform
to all its requirements, and that the Rectorial address would be
delivered late in spring. And so when the days began to lengthen in
these northern latitudes, and crocuses to show their yellow and purple
heads, people began to talk about the visit of the great writer, and
to speculate on what manner and fashion of speech he would deliver.
"Edinburgh has no University Hall, and accordingly when speech-day
approached, the largest public room in the city was chartered by the
University authorities. This public room--the Music Hall in George
Street--will contain, under severe pressure, from eighteen hundred to
nineteen hundred persons, and tickets to that extent were secured by
the students and members of the General Council. Curious stories are
told of the eagerness on every side manifested to hear Mr. Carlyle.
Country clergymen from beyond Aberdeen came into Edinburgh for the
sole purpose of hearing and seeing. Gentlemen came down from London
by train the night before, and returned to London by train the night
after.
"In a very few minutes after the doors were opened the large hall was
filled in every part, and when up the central passage the Principal,
the Lord Rector, the Members of the Senate, and other gentlemen
advanced towards the platform, the cheering was vociferous and hearty.
The Principal occupied the chair of course, the Lord Rector on his
right, the Lord Provost on his left. Every eye was fixed on the
Rector. To all appearance, as he sat, time and labour had dealt
tenderly with him. His face had not yet lost the country bronze which
he brought up with him from Dumfriesshire as a student fifty-six years
ago. His long residence in London had not touched his Annandale look,
nor had it--as we soon learned--touched his Annandale accent. His
countenance was striking, homely, sincere, truthful--the countenance
of a man on whom 'the burden of the unintelligible world' had weighed
more heavily than on most. His hair was yet almost dark; his moustache
and short beard were iron grey. His eyes were wide, melancholy,
sorrowful; and seemed as if they had been at times a-weary of the
sun. Altogether in his aspect there was something aboriginal, as of
a piece, of unhewn granite, which had never been polished to any
approved pattern, whose natural and original vitality had never
been tampered with. In a word, there seemed no passivity about Mr.
Carlyle--he was the diamond, and the world was his pane of glass; he
was a graving tool rather than a thing graven upon--a man to set his
mark on the world--a man on whom the world could not set its mark.
And just as, glancing towards Fife a few minutes before, one could not
help thinking of his early connection with Edward Irving, so seeing
him sit beside the venerable Principal of the University, one could
not help thinking of his earliest connection with literature.
"Time brings men into the most unexpected relationships. When the
Principal was plain Mr. Brewster, editor of the Edinburgh Cyclopædia,
little dreaming that he should ever be Knight of Hanover and head
of the Northern Metropolitan University, Mr. Carlyle--just as little
dreaming that he should be the foremost man of letters of his day and
Lord Rector of the same University--was his contributor, writing for
said Cyclopædia biographies of Montesquieu and other notables. And so
it came about that after years of separation and of honourable labour,
the old editor and contributor were brought together again--in new
aspects.
"The proceedings began by the conferring of the degree of LL.D. on Mr.
Erskine of Linlathen--an old friend of Mr. Carlyle's--on Professors
Huxley, Tyndall, and Ramsay, and on Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer. That
done, amid a tempest of cheering and hats enthusiastically waved, Mr.
Carlyle, slipping off his Rectorial robe--which must have been a very
shirt of Nessus to him--advanced to the table and began to speak in
low, wavering, melancholy tones, which were in accordance with
the melancholy eyes, and in the Annandale accent, with which his
playfellows must have been familiar long ago. So self-contained
was he, so impregnable to outward influences, that all his years
of Edinburgh and London life could not impair even in the slightest
degree, that.
"The opening sentences were lost in the applause. What need of quoting
a speech which by this time has been read by everybody? Appraise it as
you please, it was a thing per se. Just as, if you wish a purple dye
you must fish up the Murex; if you wish ivory you must go to the east;
so if you desire an address such as Edinburgh listened to the other
day, you must go to Chelsea for it. It may not be quite to your taste,
but, in any case, there is no other intellectual warehouse in which
that kind of article is kept in stock.
"The gratitude I owe to him is--or should be--equal to that of most.
He has been to me only a voice, sometimes sad, sometimes wrathful,
sometimes scornful; and when I saw him for the first time with the
eye of flesh stand up amongst us the other day, and heard him speak
kindly, brotherly, affectionate words--his first appearance of that
kind, I suppose, since he discoursed of Heroes and Hero Worship to the
London people--I am not ashamed to confess that I felt moved towards
him, as I do not think in any possible combination of circumstances I
could have felt moved towards any other living man."[A]
[Footnote A: The Argosy, May, 1866.]
The Edinburgh correspondent to a London paper thus describes what took
place:--
"A vast interest among the intelligent public has been excited by the
prospect of Mr. Thomas Carlyle's appearance to be installed as Lord
Rector of the University of Edinburgh. With the exception of the
delivery of his lectures on Heroes and Hero-worship, he has avoided
oratory; and to many of his admirers the present occasion seemed
likely to afford their only chance of ever seeing him in the flesh,
and hearing his living voice. The result has been, that the University
authorities have been beset by applications in number altogether
unprecedented--to nearly all of which they could only give the
reluctant answer, that admission for strangers was impossible. The
students who elect Mr. Carlyle received tickets, if they applied
within the specified time, and the members of the University
council, or graduates, obtained the residue according to priority of
application. Ladies' tickets to the number of one hundred and fifty
were issued, each professor obtaining four, and the remaining thirty
being placed at the disposal of Sir David Brewster, the Principal. And
the one hundred and fifty lucky ladies were conspicuous in the front
of the gallery to-day, having been admitted before the doors for
students and other males were open.
"The hour appointed for letting them in was kept precisely--it was
half-past one P.M., but an hour before it, despite occasional
showers of rain, a crowd had begun to gather at the front door of
the music-hall, and at the opening of the door it had gathered to
proportions sufficient to half fill the building, its capacity under
severe crushing being about two thousand.
"When the door was opened, they rushed in as crowds of young men
only can and dare rush, and up the double stairs they streamed like
a torrent; which torrent, however, policemen and check-gates soon
moderated. I chanced to fall into a lucky current of the crowd, and
got in amongst the first two or three hundred, and got forward to the
fourth seat from the platform, as good a place for seeing and hearing
as any.
"The proceedings of the day were fixed to commence at two P.M., and
the half-hour of waiting was filled up by the students in throwing
occasional volleys of peas, whistling en masse various lively tunes,
and in clambering, like small escalading parties, on to and over the
platform to take advantage of the seats in the organ gallery behind.
For Edinburgh students, however, let me say that these proceedings
were singularly decorous. They did indulge in a little fun when
nothing else was doing, but they did not come for that alone. Any
student who wanted fun could have sold his ticket at a handsome
profit, for which better fun could be had elsewhere. I heard among the
crowd that some students had got so high a price as a guinea each for
their tickets, and I heard of others who had been offered no less
but had refused it. And I must say further, that they listened to Mr.
Carlyle's address with as much attention and reverence as they could
have bestowed on a prophet--only I daresay most prophets would have
elicited less applause and laughter.
"Shortly before two, the city magistrates and a few other personages
mounted the platform, and, with as much quietness as the fancy of the
students directed, took the seats which had been marked out for them
by large red pasteboard tickets. At two precisely the students in
the organ gallery started to the tops of the seats and began to cheer
vociferously, and almost instantly all the audience followed their
example. The procession was on its way through the hall, and in half
a minute Lord Provost Chambers, in his official robes, mounted the
platform stair; then Principal Sir David Brewster and Lord Rector
Carlyle, both in their gold-laced robes of office; then the Rev. Dr.
Lee, and the other professors, in their gowns; also the LL.D.'s to be,
in black gowns. Lord Neaves and Dr. Guthrie were there in an LL.D.'s
black gown and blue ribbons; Mr. Harvey, the President of the Royal
Academy, and Sir D. Baxter, Bart.--men conspicuous in their plain
clothes.
"Dr. Lee offered up a prayer of a minute and a half, at the 'Amen' of
which I could see Mr. Carlyle bow very low. Then the business of the
occasion commenced. Mr. Gibson--a tall, thin, pale-faced, beardless,
acute, composed-looking young gentleman, in an M.A.'s gown--introduced
Mr. Carlyle, 'the most distinguished son of the University,' to the
Principal, Sir David Brewster, as the Lord Rector elected by the
students. Sir David saluted him as such, thinking, perhaps, of the
time when, an unknown young man, Thomas Carlyle wrote articles for
Brewster's 'Cyclopædia,' and got Brewster's name to introduce to
public notice his translation of Legendre's 'Geometry.' Next Professor
Muirhead, for the time being the Dean of the Faculty of Laws in the
University, introduced various gentlemen to the Principal in order,
as persons whom the senate had thought worthy of the degree of LL.D.,
giving a dignified, but not always very happy, account of the merits
of each. There was Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, Mr. Carlyle's host for
the time being, and often previously, an old friend of Irving and
Chalmers, himself the writer of various elegant and sincere religious
books, and one of the best and most amiable of men. If intelligent
goodness ever entitled any one to the degree of LL.D., he certainly
deserves it; and when I say this, I do not insinuate that on grounds
of pure intellect he is not well entitled to the honour. He is now, I
should think, nearer eighty than seventy years of age--a mild-looking,
full-eyed old man, with a face somewhat of the type of Lord Derby's.
There was Professor Huxley, young in years, dark, heavy-browed, alert
and resolute, but not moulded after any high ideal; and there was
Professor Tyndall, also young, lithe of limb, and nonchalant in
manner. When his name was called he sat as if he had no concern
in what was going on, and then rose with an easy smile, partly of
modesty, but in great measure of indifference.
"Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer and first discoverer of the fate of Sir
John Franklin, who is an M.D. of Edinburgh, was now made LL.D. He is
of tall, wiry, energetic figure, slightly baldish, with greyish, curly
hair, keen, handsome face, high crown and sloping forehead, and his
bearing is that of a soldier--of a man who has both given and obeyed
commands, and been drilled to stand steady and upright. Carlyle
himself was offered the degree of LL.D., but he declined the honour,
laughing it off, in fact, in a letter, with such excuses as that he
had a brother a Dr. Carlyle (an M.D., also a man of genius, I insert
parenthetically, and known in literature as a translator of 'Dante'),
and that if two Dr. Carlyles should appear at Paradise, mistakes might
arise.
"After all the LL.D's had heard their merits enumerated, and had had
a black hood or wallet of some kind, with a blue ribbon conspicuous in
it, flung over their heads, Principal Brewster announced that the Lord
Rector would now deliver his address. Thereupon Mr. Carlyle rose at
once, shook himself out of his gold-laced rectorial gown, left it on
his chair, and stepped quietly to the table, and drawing his tall,
bony frame into a position of straight perpendicularity not possible
to one man in five hundred at seventy years of age, he began to speak
quietly and distinctly, but nervously. There was a slight flush on
his face, but he bore himself with composure and dignity, and in the
course of half an hour he was obviously beginning to feel at his ease,
so far at least as to have adequate command over the current of his
thought.
"He spoke on quite freely and easily, hardly ever repeated a word,
never looked at a note, and only once returned to finish up a topic
from which he had deviated. He apologised for not having come with
a written discourse. It was usual, and 'it would have been more
comfortable for me just at present,' but he had tried it, and could
not satisfy himself, and 'as the spoken word comes from the heart,' he
had resolved to try that method. What he said in words will be learned
otherwise than from me. I could not well describe it; but I do not
think I ever heard any address that I should be so unwilling to blot
from my memory. Not that there was much in it that cannot be found in
his writings, or inferred from them; but the manner of the man was a
key to the writings, and for naturalness and quiet power, I have never
seen anything to compare with it. He did not deal in rhetoric. He
talked--it was continuous, strong, quiet talk--like a patriarch about
to leave the world to the young lads who had chosen him and were just
entering the world. His voice is a soft, downy voice--not a tone in
it is of the shrill, fierce kind that one would expect it to be in
reading the Latter-day Pamphlets.
"There was not a trace of effort or of affectation, or even of
extravagance. Shrewd common sense there was in abundance. There was
the involved disrupted style also, but it looked so natural that
reflection was needed to recognise in it that very style which purists
find to be un-English and unintelligible. Over the angles of this
disrupted style rolled out a few cascades of humour--quite as if
by accident. He let them go, talking on in his soft, downy accents,
without a smile; occasionally for an instant looking very serious,
with his dark eyes beating like pulses, but generally looking merely
composed and kindly, and so, to speak, father-like. He concluded by
reciting his own translation of a poem of Goethe--
"'The future hides in it gladness and sorrow.'
And this he did in a style of melancholy grandeur not to be described,
but still less to be forgotten. It was then alone that the personality
of the philosopher and poet were revealed continuously in his manner
of utterance. The features of his face are familiar to all from his
portraits. But I do not think any portrait, unless, perhaps, Woolner's
medallion, gives full expression to the resolution that is visible
in his face. Besides, they all make him look sadder and older than he
appears. Although he be threescore and ten, his hair is still abundant
and tolerably black, and there is considerable colour in his cheek.
Not a man of his age on that platform to-day looked so young, and he
had done more work than any ten on it."
The correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette gives some interesting
particulars:--
"Mr. Carlyle had not spoken in public before yesterday, since those
grand utterances on Heroes and Hero-worship in the institute in
Edwards Street, Marylebone, which one can scarcely believe, whilst
reading them, to have been, in the best sense, extemporaneously
delivered. In that case Mr. Carlyle began the series, as we have
heard, by bringing a manuscript which he evidently found much in his
way, and presently abandoned. On the second evening he brought some
notes or headings; but these also tripped him until he had left them.
The remaining lectures were given like his conversation, which no
one can hear without feeling that, with all its glow and inspiration,
every sentence would be, if taken down, found faultless. It was so
in his remarkable extemporaneous address yesterday. He had no notes
whatever. 'But,' says our correspondent, in transmitting the report,
'I have never heard a speech of whose more remarkable qualities so few
can be conveyed on paper. You will read of "applause" and "laughter,"
but you will little realize the eloquent blood flaming up the
speaker's cheek, the kindling of his eye, or the inexpressible
voice and look when the drolleries were coming out. When he spoke
of clap-trap books exciting astonishment 'in the minds of foolish
persons,' the evident halting at the word 'fools,' and the smoothing
of his hair, as if he must be decorous, which preceded the change
to 'foolish persons,' were exceedingly comical. As for the flaming
bursts, they took shape in grand tones, whose impression was made
deeper, not by raising, but by lowering the voice. Your correspondent
here declares that he should hold it worth his coming all the way
from London in the rain in the Sunday night train were it only to have
heard Carlyle say, "There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all
California, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet
just now!"' In the first few minutes of the address there was some
hesitation, and much of the shrinking that one might expect in a
secluded scholar; but these very soon cleared away, and during the
larger part, and to the close of the oration, it was evident that he
was receiving a sympathetic influence from his listeners, which he
did not fail to return tenfold. The applause became less frequent;
the silence became that of a woven spell; and the recitation of
the beautiful lines from Goethe, at the end, was so masterly--so
marvellous--that one felt in it that Carlyle's real anathemas against
rhetoric were but the expression of his knowledge that there is a
rhetoric beyond all other arts."
In the Times the following leader appeared upon Mr. Carlyle's
address:--
"There is something in the return of a man to the haunts of his youth,
after he has acquired fame and a recognised position in the world,
which is of itself sufficient to arrest attention. We are interested
in the retrospect and the contrast, the juxtaposition of the old and
the new, the hopes of early years, the memory of the struggles and
contests of manhood, the repose of victory. A man may differ as much
as he pleases from the doctrines of Mr. Carlyle, he may reject his
historical teachings, and may distrust his politics, but he must be
of a very unkindly disposition not to be touched by his reception
at Edinburgh. It is fifty-four years, he told the students of the
University, since he, a boy of fourteen, came as a student, 'full of
wonder and expectation,' to the old capital of his native country, and
now he returns, having accomplished the days of man spoken of by the
Psalmist, that he may be honoured by students of this generation,
and may give them a few words of advice on the life which lies before
them.
"The discourse of the new Lord Rector squared very well with the
occasion. There was no novelty in it. New truths are not the gifts
which the old offer the young; the lesson we learn last is but the
fulness of the meaning of what was only partially apprehended at
first. Mr. Carlyle brought out things familiar enough to everyone who
has read his works; there were the old platitudes and the old truths,
and, it must be owned, mingled here and there with them the old
errors. Time has, however, its recompenses, and if the freshness of
youth seemed to be wanting in the address of the Rector, so also was
its crudity. There was a singular mellowness in Mr. Carlyle's speech,
which was reflected in the homely language in which it was couched.
The chief lessons he had to enforce were to avoid cram, and to be
painstaking, diligent, and patient in the acquisition of knowledge.
Students are not to try to make themselves acquainted with the
outsides of as many things as possible, and 'to go flourishing about'
upon the strength of their acquisitions, but to count a thing as known
only when it is stamped on their mind. The doctrine is only a new
reading of the old maxim, non multa sed multum, but it is as much
needed now as ever it was. Still more appropriate to the present day
was Mr. Carlyle's protest against the notion that a University is
the place where a man is to be fitted for the special work of a
profession. A University, as he puts it, teaches a man how to read,
or, as we may say more generally, how to learn. It is not the function
of such a place to offer particular and technical knowledge, but to
prepare a man for mastering any science by teaching him the method of
all. A child learns the use of his body, not the art of a carpenter or
smith, and the University student learns the use of his mind, not the
professional lore of a lawyer or a physician. It is pleasant to meet
with a strong reassertion of doctrines which the utilitarianism of a
commercial and manufacturing age is too apt to make us all forget.
Mr. Carlyle is essentially conservative in his notions on academic
functions. Accuracy, discrimination, judgment, are with him the be-all
and end-all of educational training. If a man has learnt to know a
thing in itself, and in its relation to surrounding phenomena, he
has got from a University what it is its proper duty to teach.
Accordingly, we find him bestowing a good word on poor old Arthur
Collins, who showed that he possessed these valuable qualities in the
humble work of compiling a Peerage.
"The new Lord Rector is, however, as conservative in his choice of the
implements of study as he is in the determination of its objects. The
languages and the history of the great nations of antiquity he puts
foremost, like any other pedagogue. The Greeks and the Romans are,
he tells the Edinburgh students, 'a pair of nations shining in the
records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the
darkness of the past ages;' and he adds that it would be well worth
their while to get an understanding of what these people were, and
what they did. It is here, however, that an old error of Mr.
Carlyle's crops up among his well-remembered truths. He quotes from
Machiavelli--evidently agreeing himself with the sentiment, though he
refrained from asking the assent of his audience to it--the statement
that the history of Rome showed that a democracy could not permanently
exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator. It is
possible that if Machiavelli had had the experience of the centuries
which have elapsed since his day, he would have seen fit to alter his
conclusion, and it is to be regretted that the admiration which Mr.
Carlyle feels for the great men of history will not allow him to
believe in the possibility of a political society where each might
find his proper sphere and duty without disturbing the order and
natural succession of the commonwealth. His judgment on this point
is like that of a man who had only known the steam-engine before
the invention of governor balls, and was ready to declare that its
mechanism would be shattered if a boy were not always at hand to
regulate the pressure of the steam.
* * * * *
"We may turn, however, from this difference to another of Mr.
Carlyle's doctrines, which mark at once his independence of thought
and his respect for experience, where he declares the necessity for
recognising the hereditary principle in government, if there is to be
'any fixity in things.' In the same way we find him almost lamenting
the fact that Oxford, once apparently so fast-anchored as to be
immovable, has begun to twist and toss on the eddy of new ideas.
"It is impossible to glance at Mr. Carlyle's Easter Monday discourse
without recalling the oration which his predecessor pronounced on
resigning office last autumn. * * * Mr. Carlyle is as simple and
practical as his predecessor was dazzling and rhetorical. An ounce of
mother wit, quotes the new Lord Rector, is worth a pound of clergy,
and while he admires Demosthenes, he prefers the eloquence of Phocion.
A little later he repeats his old doctrine on the virtue of silence,
laments the fact that 'the finest nations in the world--the English
and the American--are going all away into wind and tongue,' and
protests that a man is not to be esteemed wise because he has poured
out speech copiously. Mr. Carlyle has so often inculcated these
sentiments in his books that there can be no suspicion of an arrière
pensée in their utterance now, but the contrast between him and his
predecessor is at the least instructive. Each does, however, in some
measure, supply what is deficient in the other. No one would claim
for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the intensity of power of his
successor, but in his abundant energy, his wide sympathy with popular
movement, and his real, if vague and indiscriminating, faith in the
activity and progress of modern life, he conveys lessons of trust
in the present, and hopefulness in the future, which would be
ill-exchanged for the patient and somewhat sad stoicism of Mr.
Carlyle."
Carlyle was still in Scotland on April 21, and there the terrible and
solemn news had to be conveyed to him of the sudden death of her who
had been his true and faithful life-companion for forty years.
Mrs. Carlyle died on Saturday, April 21, under very peculiar
circumstances. She was taking her usual drive in Hyde Park about four
o'clock, when her little favourite dog--which was running by the side
of the brougham--was run over by a carriage. She was greatly alarmed,
though the dog was not seriously hurt. She lifted the dog into the
carriage, and the man drove on. Not receiving any call or direction
from his mistress, as was usual, he stopped the carriage and
discovered her, as he thought, in a fit, or ill, and drove to
St. George's Hospital, which was near at hand. When there it was
discovered that she must have been dead some little time. Mrs.
Carlyle's health had been for several months feeble, but not in a
state to excite anxiety or alarm.
On the following Wednesday her remains were conveyed from London to
Haddington for interment there, and the funeral took place on Thursday
afternoon. Mr. Carlyle was accompanied from London (whither he had
returned immediately on the receipt of that solemn message) by his
brother, Dr. Carlyle, Mr. John Forster, and the Hon. Mr. Twistleton.
The funeral cortège was followed on foot by a large number of
gentlemen who had known Mrs. Carlyle and her father, Dr. Welsh,
who was held in high estimation in the town, where he had practised
medicine till his death, in 1819. The grave, which is the same as
that occupied by Dr. Welsh's remains, lies in the centre of the ruined
choir of the old cathedral at Haddington. In accordance with the
Scottish practice, there was no service read, and Mr. Carlyle threw
a handful of earth on the coffin after it had been lowered into the
grave.
* * * * *
Carlyle wrote the following inscription to be placed on his wife's
tombstone:--
"Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of Thomas
Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Haddington 14th
July, 1801; only child of the above John Welsh and of Grace
Welsh, Caplegell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright
existence she had more sorrows than are common, but also a
soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble
loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the
true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word
unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy
that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April,
1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his
life as if gone out."
Later in the same year, weighed down as he was by his great sorrow,
Carlyle nevertheless thought it a public duty to come forward
in defence of Governor Eyre, when the quelling of the Jamaica
insurrection excited so much controversy, and seemed to divide England
into two parties. He acted as Vice-President of the Defence Fund. The
following is a letter written to Mr. Hamilton Hume, giving his views
on the subject in full:
"Ripple Court, Ringwould, Dover,
"August 23, 1866.
"SIR,
"The clamour raised against Governor Eyre appears to me to be
disgraceful to the good sense of England; and if it rested on any
depth of conviction, and were not rather (as I always flatter myself
it is) a thing of rumour and hearsay, of repetition and reverberation,
mostly from the teeth outward, I should consider it of evil omen to
the country and to its highest interests in these times. For my own
share, all the light that has yet reached me on Mr. Eyre and his
history in the world goes steadily to establish the conclusion that he
is a just, humane, and valiant man, faithful to his trusts everywhere,
and with no ordinary faculty of executing them; that his late services
in Jamaica were of great, perhaps of incalculable value, as certainly
they were of perilous and appalling difficulty--something like the
case of 'fire,' suddenly reported, 'in the ship's powder room,' in
mid-ocean where the moments mean the ages, and life and death hang
on your use or misuse of the moments; and, in short, that penalty and
clamour are not the thing this Governor merits from any of us, but
honour and thanks, and wise imitation (I will farther say), should
similar emergencies arise, on the great scale or on the small, in
whatever we are governing!
"The English nation never loved anarchy, nor was wont to spend its
sympathy on miserable mad seditions, especially of this inhuman and
half-brutish type; but always loved order, and the prompt suppression
of seditions, and reserved its tears for something worthier than
promoters of such delirious and fatal enterprises who had got their
wages for their sad industry. Has the English nation changed, then,
altogether? I flatter myself it is not, not yet quite; but only that
certain loose, superficial portions of it have become a great deal
louder, and not any wiser, than they formerly used to be.
"At any rate, though much averse, at any time, and at this time in
particular, to figure on committees, or run into public noises without
call, I do at once, and feel that as a British citizen I should, and
must, make you welcome to my name for your committee, and to whatever
good it can do you. With the hope only that many other British men, of
far more significance in such a matter, will at once or gradually do
the like; and that, in fine, by wise effort and persistence, a blind
and disgraceful act of public injustice may be prevented; and an
egregrious folly as well--not to say, for none can say or compute,
what a vital detriment throughout the British Empire, in such an
example set to all the colonies and governors the British Empire has!
"Farther service, I fear, I am not in a state to promise, but the
whole weight of my conviction and good wishes is with you; and if
other service possible to me do present itself, I shall not want for
willingness in case of need. Enclosed is my mite of contribution to
your fund."I have the honour to be yours truly,
"T. CARLYLE."
"To HAMILTON HUME, Esq.,
"Hon. Sec. 'Eyre Defence Fund.'"
In August, 1867, Carlyle broke silence again with an utterance in the
style of the Latter-Day Pamphlets, entitled "Shooting Niagara: and
After?" published anonymously (though everyone, of course, knew it to
be his) in Macmillan's Magazine. Shortly afterwards it was reprinted
as a separate pamphlet, with additions, and with the author's name on
the title-page.
In February, 1868, Carlyle wrote some Recollections of Sir William
Hamilton, as a contribution to Professor Veitch's Memoir of that
accomplished metaphysician.
In November, 1870, he addressed a long and very remarkable letter
to the Times, on the French-German war, which is reprinted in the
latest edition of his collected Miscellanies.
Two years later (November, 1872) he added a very beautiful Supplement
to the People's Edition of his "Life of Schiller," founded on Saupe's
"Schiller and his Father's Household," and other more recent books on
Schiller that had appeared in Germany.
His last literary productions were a series of papers on "The Early
Kings of Norway," and an Essay on "The Portraits of John Knox," which
appeared, in instalments, in Fraser's Magazine, in the first four
months of 1875. On the 4th December of that year, Carlyle attained
his eightieth year, and this anniversary was signalised by some of the
more distinguished of his friends and admirers by striking a medal,
the head being executed by Mr. Boehm, whose noble statue of Carlyle,
exhibited in the Royal Academy in the previous year, had won so much
merited praise from Mr. Ruskin and others. The medal was accompanied
by an address, signed by the subscribers. Carlyle seems to have been
much gratified with this honour, which took him quite by surprise, and
he expressed his acknowledgments as follows:--
"This of the medal and formal address of friends was an altogether
unexpected event, to be received as a conspicuous and peculiar honour,
without example hitherto anywhere in my life.... To you ... I address
my thankful acknowledgments, which surely are deep and sincere, and
will beg you to convey the same to all the kind friends so beautifully
concerned in it. Let no one of you be other than assured that the
beautiful transaction, in result, management, and intention, was
altogether gratifying, welcome, and honourable to me, and that I
cordially thank one and all of you for what you have been pleased
to do. Your fine and noble gift shall remain among my precious
possessions, and be the symbol to me of something still more golden
than itself, on the part of my many dear and too generous friends, so
long as I continue in this world.
"Yours and theirs, from the heart,
"T. CARLYLE."
Carlyle's last public utterances were a letter on the Eastern
Question, addressed to Mr. George Howard, and printed in the Times
of November 28, 1876, and a letter to the Editor of the Times, on
"The Crisis," printed in that journal on May 5, 1877.
He was now beginning to feel the effects of his great age. Yearly and
monthly he grew more feeble. His wonted walking exercise had to be
curtailed, and at last abandoned. He was affectionately and piously
tended during these last years by his niece, Mary Aitken, now Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle. In the autumn of 1879 he lost his brother, Dr. John
Aitken Carlyle, the translator of Dante's "Inferno."
The end came at last, after a long and gradual decay of strength. The
great writer and noble-hearted man passed away peacefully at about
half-past eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday, February 5, 1881,
in the eighty-sixth year of his age.
His remains were conveyed to Scotland, and were laid in the
burial-ground at Ecclefechan, where the ashes of his father and
mother, and of others of his kindred, repose. He had executed what is
known in Scotch law as a "deed of mortification," by virtue of
which he bequeathed to Edinburgh University the estate of
Craigenputtoch--which had come to him through his wife--for the
foundation of ten Bursaries in the Faculty of Arts, to be called the
"John Welsh Bursaries." In his Will he bequeathed the books which
he had used in writing on Cromwell and Friedrich to Harvard College,
Massachusetts.
In less than a month after his death, with a haste on many accounts
to be deplored, and which has excited much animadversion, his literary
executor, Mr. James Anthony Froude, the historian, issued two volumes
of posthumous "Reminiscences," written by Carlyle, partly in 1832,
and partly in 1866-67. The first section consists of a memorial paper,
written immediately after his father's death; the second contains
Reminiscences of his early friend, Edward Irving, commenced at Cheyne
Row in the autumn of 1866, and finished at Mentone on the 2nd January,
1867. The Reminiscences of Lord Jeffrey were begun on the following
day, and finished on January 19. The paper on Southey and Wordsworth,
relegated to the Appendix, was also written at Mentone between the
28th January and the 8th March, 1867. The Memorials of his wife, which
fill the greater part of the second volume, were written at Cheyne
Row, during the month after her death.
Of the earlier portraits of Carlyle three are specially interesting,
1. The full-length sketch by "Croquis" (Daniel Maclise) which formed
one of the Fraser Gallery portraits, and was published in the
magazine in June, 1833. (The original sketch of this is now deposited
in the Forster Collection at South Kensington.) 2. Count D'Orsay's
sketch, published by Mitchell in 1839, is highly characteristic of
the artist. It was taken when no man of position was counted a dutiful
subject who did not wear a black satin stock and a Petersham coat.
The great author's own favourite among the early portraits was 3.
the sketch by Samuel Laurence, engraved in Horne's "New Spirit of the
Age," published in 1844. Since the art of photography came into vogue,
a series of photographs of various degrees of merit and success have
been executed by Messrs. Elliott and Fry, and by Watkins. The late
Mrs. Cameron also produced a photograph of him in her peculiar style,
but it was not so successful as her fine portrait of Tennyson. An
oil-painting by Mr. Watts, exhibited some fifteen years ago, and now
also forming part of the Forster Collection at South Kensington, is
remarkable for its weird wildness; but it gave great displeasure to
the old philosopher himself! More lately we have a remarkable portrait
by Mr. Whistler, who seized the tout ensemble of his illustrious
sitter's character and costume in a very effective manner. The terra
cotta statue by Mr. Boehm, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875,
has received such merited meed of enthusiastic praise from Mr.
Ruskin that it needs no added praise of ours. It has been excellently
photographed from two points of view by Mr. Hedderly, of Riley Street,
Chelsea.
One of the best and happiest of the many likenesses of Mr. Carlyle
that appeared during the last decade of his life was a sketch by Mrs.
Allingham--a picture as well as a portrait--representing the venerable
philosopher in a long and picturesque dressing-gown, seated on a chair
and poring over a folio, in the garden at the back of the quaint old
house at Chelsea, which will henceforth, as long as it stands, be
associated with his memory. Beside him on the grass lies a long clay
pipe (a churchwarden) which he has been smoking in the sweet
morning air. So that altogether, as far as pictorial, graphic, and
photographic art can go, the features, form, and bodily semblance of
Carlyle will be as well known to future generations as they are to our
own.
* * * * *
The impression of his brilliant and eloquent talk, though it will
perhaps remain, for at least half a century to come, more or less
vivid to some of those of the new generation who were privileged to
hear it, will, of course, gradually fade away. But it seems
hardly probable that the rich legacy of his long roll of
writings--historical, biographical, critical--can be regarded as other
than a permanent one, in which each succeeding generation will find
fresh delight and instruction. The series of vivid pictures he has
left behind in his "French Revolution," in his "Cromwell," in his
"Frederick," can hardly become obsolete or cease to be attractive; nor
is such power of word-painting likely soon to be equalled or ever
to be surpassed. The salt of humour that savours nearly all he wrote
(that lambent humour that lightens and plays over the grimmest and
sternest of his pages) will also serve to keep his writings fresh and
readable. Many of his dicta and opinions will doubtless be more and
more called in question, especially in those of his works which are
more directly of a didactic than a narrative character, and in regard
to subjects which he was by habit, by mental constitution, and by that
prejudice from which the greatest can never wholly free themselves,
incapable of judging broadly or soundly,--such, for instance, as the
scope and functions of painting and the fine arts generally, the value
of modern poetry, or the working of Constitutional and Parliamentary
institutions.
Richard Herne Shepherd
Chelsea, June, 1881.Contributed by Shepherd, Richard Herne
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