r>;?K?S0n Heroes and Hero-worship. Introduction ......... 158 The Hero as Poet 170 The Hero as Man of Letters 204 Notes ., ... 247 V SELECTIONS FROM CARLYLE. BURNS. [Edinburgh Bevieic, Xo. 96. 1828.^ Ix the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncom- mon thing that a man of genius must, like 13utler, 'ask for bread and receive a stone ; ' for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the high- est excellence that men are most forward to recognize. The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day ; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggra- vation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthu- mous retribution. Eobert Burns, in the course of ISTature, might yet have been living ; but his short life was spent in toil and penury ; and he died, in the prime of his man- hood, miserable and neglected : and yet already a brave mausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one splen- did monument has been reared in other places to his fame ; the street where he languished in poverty is called by his name ; the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and admirers; and here is the sixth narrative of his Life that has been given to the world ! Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologize for this new attempt on such a subject : but his readers, we believe, will readily acquit him ; or, at worst, will censure only 2 /c^ ^ c^c; ^^•'\ c' Sehctipm from Carlyle. the performance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or exhausted ; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet ; and this is probably true ; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain that to the vulgar eye few things are wonder- ful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay, perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jos- tlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbor of John a Combe's, had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his game, and written us a Life of Shakspeare ! What dissertations should we not have had, — not on Hamlet and The Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws; and how the Poacher became a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities ! In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the companions of his pilgrimage, the Honorable Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, and the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from /ii's juxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard, or to estimate what he really Avas and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It will be difficult, we say ; but still a fair problem for literary historians ; and repeated attempts will give us repeated approximations. His former Biographers have done something, no doubt, Burns. 3 but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie and Mr. AValker, the principal of these writers, have both, we think, mistaken one essentially important thing: Their own and the world's true relation to their author, and the style in which it became such men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly ; more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself ; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain patronizing, apologetic air; as if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such honor to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith ; and regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's biogra- phers should not have seen farther, or believed more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more deeply in the same kind : and both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes, virtues and vices, instead of a delineation of the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, is not painting a portrait; but gauging the length and breadth of the several features, and jotting down their dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, it is not so much as that: for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mind could be so measured and gauged. Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced him to be : and in delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate generalities, and rather sought for characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior biography : though, being written on 4 Selections from Carlyle. the very popular and condensed scheme of an article for ConstabJe\s Miscellany, it has less dej)th than we could have wished and expected from a writer of such power ; and con- tains rather more, and more multifarious quotations than belong of right to an original production. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally so good, so clear, direct, and nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making place for another man's. However, the spirit of the work is through- out candid, tolerant, and anxiously conciliating; compli- ments and praises are liberally distributed, on all hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. Morris Birkbeck observes of the society in the backwoods of America, 'the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight of for a moment.' But there are better things than these in the volume; and we can safely testify, not only that it is easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be without difficulty read again. Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents, — though of these we are still every day receiving some fresh accession, — as to the limited and imperfect applica- tion of them to the great end of Biography. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant ; but if an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from ^is particular position, represent themselves to his mind ? How did coexisting circumstances modify him from with- out ; how did he modify these from within ? With what endeavors and what efficacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on I him; what and how produced was his effect on society? Burns. 5 He who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfec- tion in Biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study ; and many lives will be written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are not in this sense hiograpliies. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals ; and such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble ; but we offer them with good-will, and trust they may meet with acceptance from those they are intended for. Burns first came upon the world a^ a prodigy ; and, was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect ; till his early and most mournfid death again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, espe- cially as there was now nothing to be done, and much to be sx)oken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the ' nine days ' have long since elapsed ; and the very con- tinuance of this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to rest more and more exclu- sively on his own intrinsic merits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did little. He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert, where no eye but his had guessed its existence ; and we may almost say that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without help, 6 Selections from Carlyle. without instruction, without model ; or with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man^s skill has been able to devise from the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain forever shut against him! His means are the commonest and rudest; the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam-engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with a pickaxe : and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad Avith his arms. It.is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments : through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his lynx eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life ; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the expansive movement of his own irrepressible soul, he struggles forward into the general view ; and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labor, a gift which Time has now pro- nounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome drudging childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year : and then ask, If it be strange that his poems are im- perfect, and of small extent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its art ? Alas, his Sun shone as through a tropi- Burns, 7 cal tornado; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it at> noon ! Shrouded in such baleful vapors, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure splendor, enlightening the world: but some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through ; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colors, into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears ! We are anxious not to exaggerate ; for it is exposition rather than admiration that our readers require of us here ; and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him ; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business ; we are not so sure of this ; but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not ex- clusively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy : time and means were not lent him for this ; but through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene ; whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, ^ amid the melancholy main,' presented to the reflecting mind such a 'spectacle of pity and fear' as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler, and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer round him, till only death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class of men with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense; nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness, and high but selfish enthusiasm of such persons inspire us in general with any affection ; at best it may excite amazement ; and their fall, like that of a joyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. But a true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some effluence of Wisdom, some tone of the ' Eternal Mel- 8 Selections from Carlyle. oclies,' is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a generation: we see in him a freer, pnrer development of — whatever is noblest in ourselves ; his life is a rich lesson to us ; and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us. Such a gift had IN'ature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in Robert Burns ; but witli queenlike indifference she cast it from her hand, like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we rec- ognized it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guid- ing his own life was not given. Destiny, — for so in our ignorance we must speak, — his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him ; and that spirit which might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul ; so full of inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things ! How his heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature ; and in her bleakest prov- inces discerns a beauty and a meaning ! The ' Daisy ' falls not unheeded under his ploughshare ; nor the ruined nest of that 'wee, cowering, timorous beastie,' cast forth, after all its provident pains, to ' thole the sleety dribble and cran- reuch cauld.' The ' hoar visage ' of Winter delights him ; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation ; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding Avoods, for 'it raises his thoughts to Him that ivalJceth on the icings of the ivincL' A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields wdli be music ! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feel- ing; what trustful, boundless love; what generous exagger- ation of the object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown Burns. 9 maiden, are no longer mean and homely, bnt a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arca- dian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him : Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and Cour- age ; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his heart : and thus over the loAvest provinces of man's existence he pours the glory of his own soul ; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride ; yet it is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence ; no cold suspicious feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears himself, we might say, like a King in exile : he is cast among the low, and feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue ; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him ; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the ^insolence of condescension' cannot thrive. In his abase- ment, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he Avanders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay, throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is moving to see how, in his darkest despond- ency, this proud being still seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the unworthy ; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was ' quick to learn ; ' a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His understanding saw through the hol- lowness even of accomplished deceivers ; but there was a 10 Selections from Carlyle. generous credulity in his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us; 'a soul like an ^olian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody.' And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrel- ing with smugglers and vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale-barrels ! In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass on, before another such is given us to waste. All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him ; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete ; that wanted all things for completeness : culture, leisure, true effort, nay, even length of life. His poems are, with scarcely any ex- ception, mere occasional effusions ; poured forth with little meditation ; expressing, by such means as offered, the pas- sion, opinion, or humor of the hour. Never in one instance Avas it permitted him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofit- able and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have: for after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue to be read ; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively ; and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes oper- ate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard, unlettered, and truly natural class, who read little, and espe- cially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which extends^ Burris. 11 in a literal sense, from the palace to the hnt, and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence ? To answer this question will not lead us far. The excel- lence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry , or prose ; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recog- ; nized: his Sincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. Here; are no fabulous woes or joys ; no hollow fantastic sentimen-1 talities ; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feel- ing: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience ; it is the scenes that he has lived and labored amidst, that he describes : those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves ; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it with such mel- ody and modulation as he can ; ' in homely rustic jingle ; ' but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them : let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere, is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To ev/ery poet, to every ^writer, we might say: Be true, if you would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart ; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In cult- ure, in extent of view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him ; but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find some response within us ; for in spite 12 Selections from Carlyle. of all casual varieties in outward rank or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart of man to man. This may appear a very simple principle, and one which Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery is easy enough : but the practical appliance is not easy ; is indeed the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from the false ; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With either, or, as more commonly hap- pens, with both of these deficiencies, combine a love of dis- tinction, a wish to be original, which is seldom wanting ; and we have Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in life ! Great poets themselves are not always free of this vice ; nay, it is precisely on a cer- tain sort and degree of greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of success ; he who has much to unfold, will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. By- ron, for instance, was no common man : yet if we examine his poetry with this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. Generally speaking, we should say that it is not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men ; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature ? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with Burns. 13 so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry- tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and^ ten years. To our minds there is a taint of this sort, some- thing which we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to a sincere work, he ever wrote ; the only work where he showed himself, in any measure, as he 'was ; and seemed so intent on his subject as, for moments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this vice-, we believe, heartily detested it : nay, he had declared formal war against it in words. So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this primary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all; to read its own consciousness without mistaJies, without errors ' involuntary or wilful ! We recollect no poet of Burns's^ susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides '^T.th us to the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and an honest writer. In his suc- cesses and his failures, in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, and glitters with no lustre but his own. We reckon this to be a great virtue ; to be, in fact, the root of most other virtues, literary as well as moral. Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry of Burns that we now allude ; to those writings which he had time to meditate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or obstruct his endeavor to fulfil it. Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of prose composition, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there is not the same natural truth of style ; but on the contrary, some- thing not only stiff, but strained and twisted ; a certain high- flown inflated tone ; the stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poor- est verses. Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether 14 " Selections from Carlyle. f unaffected. Does not Shakspeare himself sometimes pre- meditate the sheerest bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was his comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for most part he writes with singular force, and even gracefulness, is not master of Eng- glish prose, as he is of Scottish verse ; not master of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehemence of his matter. These Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing. But a second and weightier excuse is to be found in the peculiarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascertained; whom therefore he is either forearming him- self against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style he thinks will please them. At all events, we should remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever wish to do, to trusted friends and on real interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beautiful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent. But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sincerity, it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing : this displays itself in ^his choice of subjects; or rather in his indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of making all subjects inter- esting. The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is forever seeking in external circumstances the help which can be found only in himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or comeliness : home is not poetical, but prosaic; it is in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, that poetry resides for him ; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumerable host of rose-colored Novels and iron- Burns. 15 mailed Epics, with their locality not on the earth, but some- where nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and our I^ights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, and so many other truculent figures from the heroic times or the heroic cli- mates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace be with them ! But yet, as a great moralist proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to the poets, 'a sermon on the duty of staying at home.' Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because it is different ; and even this attraction must be of the most tran- sient sort. For will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one ; and have as quaint a costume as the rest ; not con- trasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness ? Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and two centuries before he was born ; or because he wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries ? Let our poets look to this: is their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men, — they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject; is it not so, — they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral favor, even from the highest. The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a subject: the elements of his art are in him, and around him on every hand ; for him the Ideal world is not remote from the Actual, but under it and within it : nay, he is a poet, pre- cisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his place ; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite long- ings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors ; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes 16 Selections from Carlyle. that wander through Eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of a Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's, and a bed of heath? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can be Comedy no longer? Or are men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's life and nature is as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand them ; or they come and pass away before him in vain. He is a vates, a seer; a gift of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him which another cannot equally decipher ; then he is no poet, and Delphi itself will not make him one. In this respect. Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength kept the whole Minerva Press going, to the end of his literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's own making; and Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets. We often hear of this and the other external condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. Some- times it is a certain sort of training ; he must have studied certain things, studied for instance 'the elder dramatists,' and so learned a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, not in the heart. At other times we are told he must be bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confiden- tial footing with the higher classes ; because, above all things, he must see the world. As to seeing the world, we apxDrehend this will cause him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. Without eyesight, indeed, the 'task might be hard. The blind or the purblind man ' tra- vels from Dan to Beersheba, and finds it all barren.' But happily every poet is born in the Avorld ; and sees it, with Burns. 17 or against his will, every day and every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Kay, do not the elements of all human virtues and all human vices ; the passions at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, in stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom that has practised honest self-examina- tion ? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in Crockford's, or the Tuileries itself. But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should have been horn two centuries ago ; inasmuch as poetry, about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by men ! Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, overhung the field of literature ; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there : the Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously, and merely as he walks on- ward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he appear ? Why do we call him new and original, if ive saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? It is not the material, ; but the workman that is wanting. It is not the dark ■place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it ; found it a man's life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battle-fields remain unsung ; but the Wounded Hare has not perished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy jet breathes on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our Halloween had passed and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the Druids ; but no Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl; 18 Selections from Carlyle. neither was the Holy Fair any Council of Trent or Eoman Jubilee; but nevertheless Superstition and Hypocrisy and Fun having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic Jife. -Let but the true poet be given us, we repeat it, place him where and how you will ; and true poetry will not be wanting. Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as we ihave now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written ; a virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry ; it is redolent of natural life and hardy natural men. There is a decisive strength in him, and yet a sweet native graceful- ness : he is tender, he is vehement, yet without constraint or too visible effort ; he melts the heart, or inflames it, with a power which seems habitual and familiar to him. We see that in this man there was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and pas- sionate ardor of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire ; as lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a resonance in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; the high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns to his ' lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit.' And observe with what a fierce prompt force he grasps his subject, be it what it may ! How he fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in his eye ; full and clear in every lineament ; and catches the real type and essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of which misleads him ! Is it of reason ; some truth to be discovered ? No sophistry, no vain surface-logic detains him ; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierces through into the marrow of the question ; and speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of description ; some visual object to be represented ? No -^poet of any age or nation is more graphic than Burns : the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance ; Burns. 19 three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. And, in j that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear and definite a likeness! It seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick ; and yet the burin of a Eetzsch is not more expressive or exact. Of this last excellence, the plainest and most comprehen- sive of all, being indeed the root and foundation of every sort of talent, poetical or intellectual, we could produce innumerable instances from the writings of Burns. Take these glimpses of a snow-storm from his Winter Night (the italics are ours) : When biting Boreas, fell and dour, Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r, And Phoebus gies a short-livhl glowr Far south the lift, Dim-darTc' ning thro' the flaky show'r Or whirling drift : 'Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, Poor labor sweet in sleep was lock'd. While burns lof S7iawy wreeths upchok'd Wild-eddying swirl, Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd Down headlong hurl. Are there not 'descriptive touches' here? The describer saw this thing; the essential feature and true likeness of every circumstance in it ; saw, and not with the eye only. 'Poor labor locked in sweet sleep;' the dead stillness of man, unconscious, vanquished, yet not unprotected, while such strife of the material elements rages, and seems to reign supreme in loneliness : this is of the heart as well as of the eye ! — Look also at his image of a thaw, and prophe- sied fall of the Auld Brig : When heavy, dark, continued, a' -day rains Wi' deepening deluges o'erliow the plains ; When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 20 Selections from Carlyle. Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, Or haunted Garpal* draws his feeble source, Aroused by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes, In many a torrent down his snaio-hroo rowes ; While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat, Sweeps dams and mills and brigs a' to the gate ; And from Glenbuck down to the Rottonkey, Auld Ayr is just one lengthen' d tumbling sea ; Then down ye' 11 hurl, Deil nor ye never rise ! And dash the giimliejaiips up to the pouring skies. The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture of that Deluge ! The welkin has, as it were, bent down with its weight ; the ^gumlie jaups' and the 'pouring skies' are mingled together ; it is a world of rain and ruin. — In respect of mere clear- ness and minute fidelity, the Farmers commendation of his Auld Mare, in plough or in cart, may vie with Homer's Smithy of the Cyclops, or yoking of Priam's Chariot. Nor have Ave forgotten stout Burn-the-wind and his brawny cus- tomers, inspired by Scotch Drink: but it is needless to multiply examples. One other trait of a much finer sort we select from multitudes of such among his Songs. It gives, in a single line, to the saddest feeling the saddest environ- ment and local habitation : The pale Moon is setting beyond the white imve. And Time is setting wV me, ; Earewell, false friends ! false lover, farewell ! I'll nae mair trouble them nor thee, O, This clearness of sight we have called the foundation of all talent; for in fact, unless we see our object, how shall we know how to place or prize it, in our understanding, our imagination, our affections? Yet it is not in itself, perhaps, a very high excellence; but capable of being united indifferently with the strongest, or with ordinary power. Homer surpasses all men in this quality: but - strangely enough, at no great distance below him are Rich- * Fahalosas Hydaspes! Burns. 21 arc! son and Defoe. It belongs, in trntli, to what is called a lively mind; and gives no snre indication of the higher endowments that may exist along with it. In all the three cases w^e have mentioned, it is combined with great gar- rulity; their descriptions are detailed, ample and lovingly exact; Homer's fire bursts through, from time to time, as if by accident; but Defoe and Richardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more distinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous force of his conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of expression may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who ever uttered sharper sayings than his ; words more memorable, now by their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigor and laconic pith? A single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole scene. We hear of *a gentleman that derived his patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.' Our Scottish forefathers in the battle-field struggled forward, he says, 'red-ivat-sJwd : ' giving in this one word, a full vision of horror and carnage ; perhaps too frightfully accurate for Art! In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute force is ever visible in his judgments, and in his feelings and volitions. Professor Stewart says of him, with some surprise: 'All the faculties of Burns's mind were, as far as I could judge, equally vigorous; and his predilection for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species of composition. From his conversation I should have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities.' But this, if we mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical endowment. Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in extreme sensibility, and a certain vague. 22 Selections from Carlyle. pervading tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from them ; but rather the result of their general harmony and completion. The feelings, the gifts, that exist in the Poet are those that exist, with more or less development, in every human soul : the imagination which shudders at the Hell of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in degree, which called that picture into being. How does the Poet speak to men, with power, but by being still more a man than they? Shakspeare, it has been well observed, in the plan- ning and completing of his tragedies, has shown an Under- standing, were it nothing more, which might have governed states, or indited a Novum Organum. What Burns's force of understanding may have been, we have less means of judging : it had to dwell among the humblest objects ; never saw Philosophy ; never rose, except by natural effort and for short intervals, into the region of great ideas. Never- theless, sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works : we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic though untutored strength ; and can understand how, in conversation, his quick sure insight into men and things may, as much as aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and country. But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the senate and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay, perhaps the highest Truth is that which will the most cer- tainly elude it. Por this logic works by words, and 'the highest,' it has been said, 'cannot be expressed in words.' We are not without tokens of an openness for this higher truth also, of a keen though uncultivated sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr. Stewart, it will be remem- bered, 'wonders,' in the passage above quoted, that Burns Burns. 23 had formed some distinct conception of the 'doctrine of association. ' We rather think that far subtler things than the doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him. Here for instance: 'We know nothing,' thus writes he, 'or next to nothing, of the structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no ex- traordinary impression. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild- brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing ? Are we a piece of ma- chinery, which, like the JEolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident ; or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities : a God that made all things, man's im- material and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.' Force and fineness of understanding are often spoken of as something different from general force and fineness of nature, as something partly independent of them. The necessities of language so require it; but in truth these qualities are not distinct and independent : except in special cases, and from special causes, they ever go together. A man of strong understanding is generally a man of strong character; neither is delicacy in the one kind often divided from delicacy in the other. No one, at all events, is igno- rant that in the Poetry of Burns keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of feeling; that his light is not more pervading than his warmth. He is a man of the most impassioned temper; with passions not strong only, but noble, and of the sort in which great virtues and great poems take their rise. It is reverence, it is love towards 24 Selections from Carlyle. all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise. There is a true old saying, that 'Love furthers knowledge: ' but above all, it is the living essence of that knowledge which makes poets; the first principle of its existence, increase, activity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his gener- ^ ous all-embracing Love, we have spoken already, as of the grand distinction of his nature, seen equally in word and deed, in his Life and in his Writings. It were easy to multiply examples. Not man only, but all that environs man in the material and moral universe, is lovely in his sight: 'the hoary hawthorn,' the 'troop of gray plover,' the 'solitary curlew,' all are dear to him; all live in this Earth along with him, and to all he is knit as in mysterious brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance, that, amidst the gloom of personal misery, brooding over the wintry desolation without him and within him, he thinks of the ' ourie cattle ' and ' silly sheep,' and their sufferings in the pitiless storm! I thought me on the ourie cattle, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle O' wintry war, Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle, Beneath a scaur. Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, That in the merry months o' spring Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee ? Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, And close thy ee ? The tenant of the mean hut, with its 'ragged roof and chinky wall,' has a heart to pity even these ! This is worth several homilies on Mercy; for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his soul rushes forth into all realms of being; nothing that has existence Burns. 25 can be indifferent to him. The very Devil he cannot hate with right orthodoxy : But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben ; O, wad ye tak a thought and men' ! Ye aiblins might, — I dinna ken, — Still hae a stake ; I'm wae to think upo' yon den, Even for your sake ! He did not know, probably, that Sterne had been before- ■ hand with him. '"He is the father of curses and lies," said Dr. Slop; ''and is cursed and damned already." — "I am sorry for it," quoth my uncle Toby! ' — A Poet without Love were a ]ohysical and metaphysical impossibility. But has it not been said, in contradiction to this prin- ciple, that 'Indignation makes verses'? It has been so said, and is true enough : but the contradiction is apparent, not real. The Indignation which makes verses is, properly speaking, an inverted Love ; the love of some right, some worth, some goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has been injured, and which this tempestuous feel- ing issues forth to defend and avenge. No selfish fury of heart, existing there as a primary feeling, and without its opposite, ever produced much Poetry: otherwise, we sup- pose, the Tiger were the most musical of all our choristers. Johnson said he loved a good hater; by which he must have meant, not so much one that hated violently, as one that hated wisely ; hated baseness from love of nobleness. However, in spite of Johnson's paradox, tolerable enough for once in speech, but which need not have been so often adopted in print since then, we rather believe that good men deal sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise : nay, that a 'good ' hater is still a desideratum in this world. The Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of that class, is said to be nowise an amiable character. Of the verses which Indignation makes, Burns has also 26 Selections from Carlyle. given lis specimens: and among the best that were ever given. Who will forget his 'Diveller in yon Dungeon dark; ' a piece that might have been chanted by the Furies of ^schylus? The secrets of the infernal Pit are laid bare; a boundless, baleful 'darkness visible;' and streaks of hell- fire quivering madly in its black haggard bosom ! Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, Hangman of Creation, mark ! Wtio in widow's weeds appears, Laden with unbonored years, Noosing with care a bursting purse. Baited with many a deadly curse ! Why should we speak of 'Scots wha hae loV Wallace hied; ' since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his subjects? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback; in riding in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Gallo- way moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, who, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak, — judiciously enough, for a man composing Bruce^s Address might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the soul of Burns: but to the external ear, it should be sung with the throat of the whirl- wind. So long as there is warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will move in fierce thrills under this war-ode; the best, we believe, that was ever written by any pen. Another wild stormful Song, that dwells in our ear and mind with a strange tenacity, is Macpherson's Fareivell. Perhaps there is something in the tradition itself that cooperates. Por was not this grim Celt, this shaggy Northland Cacus, that 'lived a life of sturt and strife, and died by treacherie, ' — was not he too one of the Nimrods and Napoleons of the earth, in the arena of his own remote misty glens, for want of a clearer and wider one? Nay, was there not a touch of grace given him? A fibre of love Bi(rns. 27 and softness, of poetry itself, mast have lived in his savage heart: for he composed that air the night before his exe- cution; on the wings of that poor melody his better soul would soar away above oblivion, pain, and all the ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurling him to the abyss! Here also, as at Thebes, and in Pelops' line, was material Fate matched against man's Free-will; matched in bitterest though obscure duel; and the ethe- real soul sank not, even in its blindness, without a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, could have given words to such a soul ; words that we never listen to without a strange half -barbarous, half -poetic fellow-feeling? Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, . Sae dauntingly gaed he; He play'' d a spring, and danced it round. Below the gallows-tree. Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, which we have recognized as the great characteristic of Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself in the shape of Humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through the mind of Burns; he rises to the high, and stoo|)S to the low, and is brother and playmate to all Nature. We speak not of his bold and often irresistible faculty of caricature; for this is Drollery rather than Humor: but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him; and comes forth here and there, in evanescent and beautiful touches; as in his Address to the Mouse, or the Farmer^ s Mare, or in his Elegy on 2^oor Mailie, which last may be reckoned his happiest effort of this kind. In these pieces there are traits of a Humor as fine as that of Sterne; yet altogether different, original, peculiar, — the Humor of Burns. Of the tenderness, the ^^layful pathos, and many other kindred qualities of Buriis's Poetry, much more might be said; but now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we 28 Selections from Carlyle. must prepare to quit tliis part of our subject. To speak of his individual Writings, adequately and with any detail, would lead us far beyond our limits. As already hinted, ^we can look on but few of these pieces as, in strict critical language, deserving the name of Poems : they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense; yet seldom essentially melodious, aerial, poetical. Tarn o' Shanter itself, which enjoys so high a favor, does not appear to us at all decisively to come under this last category. It is not so much a poem, as a piece of sparkling rhetoric; the heart and body of the story still lies hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less carried us back, into that dark, earnest, woncl^ering age, when the tradition was believed, and. when it took its rise ; he does not attempt, by any new-modeling of his supernatural ware, to strike anew that deep, mysterious chord of human nature, which once responded to such things ; and which lives in us too, and will forever live, though silent now, or vibrating with far other notes, and to far different issues. Our German readers will understand us, when we say that he is not the Tieck but the Musaus of this tale. Externally it is all green and living; yet look closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy on a rock. The piece does not properly cohere : ^ the strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous imagina- tions between the Ayr public-house and the gate of Tophet, is nowhere bridged over, nay, the idea of such a bridge is laughed at ; and thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere drunken phantasmagoria, or many-colored spectrum painted on ale-vapors, and the Farce alone has any reality. We do not say that Burns should have made much more of this tradition; we rather think that, for strictly poetical purposes, not much ivas to be made of it. Neither are we blind to the deep, varied, genial power displayed in what he has actually accomplished; but we find far more ^Shakspearean ' qualities, as these of Tarn o' Shanter have Burns. 29 been fondly named, in many of his other pieces ; nay, we incline to believe that this latter might have been written, all but quite as well, by a man who, in place of genius, had only possessed talent. Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly poetical of all his 'poems ' is one which does not appear in Currie's Edition; but has been often printed before and since, under the humble title of TJie Jolly Beggars. The subject truly is among the lowest in Nature; but it only the more shows our Poet's gift in raising it into the domain of Art. To our minds, this piece seems thoroughly com- pacted; melted together, refined; and poured forth in one flood of true liquid harmony. It is light, airy, soft of movement; yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait : that raiide carlin, that tcee Apollo, that Son of Mars, are Scottish, yet ideal; the scene is at once a dream, and the very Eagcastle of 'Poosie-ISTansie. ' Farther, it seems in a considerable degree complete, a real self- supporting Whole, which is the highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night is drawn asunder for a moment; in full, ruddy, flaming light, these rough tatterdemalions are seen in their boisterous revel; for the strong pulse of Life vindicates its right to gladness even here; and when the curtain closes, we prolong the action, without effort; the next day as the last, our Caird and our Balladmonger are singing and soldiering; their 'brats and callets ' are hawking, begging, cheating; and some other night, in new combinations, they will wring from Pate another hour of wassail and good cheer. Apart from the universal sym- pathy with man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a genuine inspiration and no inconsiderable technical talent are manifested here. There is the fidelity, humor, warm life, and accurate painting and grouping of some Teniers, for whom hostlers and carousing peasants are not without significance. It would be strange, doubtless, to call this 30 Selectioyis from Carlyle. the best of Burns's writings: we mean to say only that it seems to us the most perfect of its kind, as a piece of poetical composition, strictly so called. In the Beggars'' Opera, in the Beggars^ Bush, as other critics have already remarked, there is nothing which, in real poetic vigor, equals this Cantata; nothing, as we think, which comes within many degrees of it. But by far the most finished, complete, and truly inspired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found among vhis Songs. It is here that, although through a small aper- ture, his light shines with least obstruction; in its highest beauty and pure sunny clearness. The reason may be, that Song is a brief, simple species of composition; and requires nothing so much for its perfection as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of heart. Yet the Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy; rules which in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases are not so mach as felt. We might write a long essay on the Songs of Burns; which we reckon by far the best that Britain has yet pro- duced: for indeed, since the era of Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, aught truly worth atten- tion has been accomplished in this department. True, we have songs enough 'by persons of quality; ' we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred madrigals ; many a rhymed speech 'in the flowing and watery vein of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop, ' rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, dashed perhaps with some tint of a sentimental sensuality; all which many persons cease not from endeavoring to sing; though for most part, we fear, the music is but from the throat out- wards, or at best from some region far enough short of the Soul; not in which, but in a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or even in some vaporous debatable-land on the out- skirts of the Xervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed speeches seem to have originated. Burns. 31 With the Songs of Burns we must not name these things. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest in another point of view : in form, as well as in spirit. They do not affect to be set to music, but they actually and in themselves are music; they have received their life, and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of Harmony, as Venus rose from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but suggested; not said, or spouted, in rhetor- ical completeness and coherence ; but sung, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in icarblings not of the voice only, but of the whole mind. We consider this to be the essence of a song ; and that no songs since the little careless catches, and as it were drops of song, which Shak- speare has here and there sprinkled over his Plays, fulfill this condition in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace and truth of external movement, too, pre- supposes in general a corresponding force and truth of senti- ment and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more perfect in the former quality than in the latter. With what tenderness he sings, yet with what vehemence and entireness ! There is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy ; he burns with the sternest ire, or laughs Avith the loudest or sliest mirth ; and j^et he is sweet and soft, ' sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear.' If we farther take into account the immense variety of his subjects ; how, from the loud flowing revel in 'Willie brewed a Peck o' Maiit,^ to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for Mary in Heaven; from the glad kind greeting of Auld Langsyne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, to the fire-eyed fury of 'Scots wha hae wV Wcdlace bled,' he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's heart, — it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the first of all our Song- writers ; for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him. 32 Selections from Carlyle. It is oil liis Songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief influ- ence as an author will ultimately be found to depend : nor, if our Eletcher's ax^horisni is true, shall we account this a small influence. ' Let me make the songs of a people/ said he, ' and you shall make its laws.' Surely, if ever any Poet might have equaled himself with Legislators on this ground, it was Burns. His Songs are already part of the mother- tongue, not of Scotland only but of Britain, and of the mil- lions that in all ends of the earth speak a British language. In hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-colored joy and woe of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that woe, is the name and voice which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men, as this solitary and altogether private individual, with means apparently the humblest. In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think that Burns's influence may have been considerable: we mean, as exerted specially on the Literature of his country, at least on the Literature of Scotland. Among the great -changes which British, particularly Scottish, literature has undergone since that period, one of the greatest will be found to consist in its remarkable increase of nationality. Even the English writers, most popular in Burns's time, were little distinguished for their literary patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain attenuated cosmopolitan- ism had, in good measure, taken place of the old insular home-feeling; literature was, as it were, without any local environment ; was not nourished by the affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays and Glovers seemed to write almost as if in vamo ; the thing written bears no mark of place ; it is not written so much for Englishmen, as for men ; or rather, which is the inevitable result of this, for certain Generalizations which i3hilosophy termed men. Goldsmith is an exception: not so Johnson; the scene of 4-1^ r.4- r^f ^^'^„ T>^^r.^l^r, Burns. 33 But if such was, in some degree, the case with England, it was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In fact, our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very singu- lar aspect ; unexampled, so far as we know, except perhaps at Geneva, where the same state of matters appears still to continue. For a long period after Scotland became British, we had no literature : at the date Avhen Addison and Steele were writing their Spectators, our good John Boston was writing, with the noblest intent, but alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his Fourfold State of Man. Then came the schisms in our National Church, and the fiercer schisms in our Body Politic: Theologic ink, and Jacobite blood, with gall enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the intellect of the country : however, it was only obscured, not obliterated. Lord Kames made nearly the first attempt, and a tolerably clumsy one, at writing English; and ere long, Hume, Robertson, Smith, and a whole host of followers, attracted hither the eyes of all Eiu'ope. And yet in this brilliant resuscitation of our ^fervid genius,' there was nothing truly Scottish, nothing indigenous ; except, perhaps, the natural impetuosity of intellect, which we sometimes claim, and are sometimes upbraided with, as a characteristic of our nation. It is curious to remark that Scotland, so full of writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any English ; our culture was almost exclusively French. It was by studying Racine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, that Kames had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher ; it was the light of Montesquieu and Mably that guided Robertson in his polit- ical speculations ; Quesnay's lamp that kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich a man to borrow ; and perhaps he reacted on the French more than he was acted on by them : but neither had he aught to do with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally with La Fleche, was but the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much morally Uced, as meta- 34 Select t07is from Carlyle. physically investigated. Never, perhaps, was there a class of writers so clear and well-ordered, yet so totally destitute, to all appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay, of any human affection whatever. The French wits of the period were as unpatriotic : but their general deficiency in moral principle, not to say their avowed sensuality and unbelief in all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable enough. We hope there is a patriotism founded on some- thing better than prejudice ; that our country may be dear to us, without injury to our philosophy ; that in loving and justly prizing all other lands, we may prize justly, and yet love before all others, our own stern Motherland, and the venerable Structure of social and moral Life, which Mind has through long ages been building up for us there. Surely there is nourishment for the better part of man's heart in all this : surely the roots that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's being, may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, but into roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages have no such propensities : the field of their life shows neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, continuous thrashing-floor for Logic, whereon all questions, from the 'Doctrine of Rent' to the 'Natural History of Religion,' are thrashed and sifted with the same mechanical impartiality ! With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, it cannot be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly passing away : our chief literary men, whatever other faults they may have, no longer live among us like a French Colony, or some knot of Propaganda Missionaries ; but like natural-born subjects of the soil, partaking and sympathizing in all our attachments, humors, and habits. Our literature no longer grows in water but in mould, and with the true racy virtues of the soil and climate. How much of this change may be due to Burns, or to any other individual, it might be difficult to estimate. Direct literary imitation of Burns. 35 Burns was not to be looked for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of domestic subjects, could not but operate from afar ; and certainly in no heart did the love of country ever burn with a warmer glow than in that of Burns : ' a tide of Scottish prejudice,' as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling, ' had been poured along his veins ; and he felt that it would boil there till the flood-gates shut in eternal rest.' It seemed to him, as if he could do so little^ for his country, and yet would so gladly have done all. \ One small province stood open for him, — that of Scottish | Song ; and how eagerly he entered on it, how devotedly he labored there ! In his toilsome journeyings, this object never quits him; it is the little happy-valley of his care- worn heart. In the gloom of his own affliction, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion that was cov- ering it ! These were early feelings, and they abode with him to the end : ... A wish (I mind its power), A wish, that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast, — That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough bur-thistle, spreading wide Amang the bearded bear, I turn'd my weeding-clips aside, And spared the symbol dear. But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, which has already detained us too long. Far more interesting than any of his written works, as it appears to us, are his acted ones : the Life he willed and was fated to lead among his fellow-men. These Poems are but like little rhymed fragments scattered here and there in the grand unrhymed Eomance of his earthly existence ; and it is only when in- 36 Selections from Carlyle. tercalated in this at their proper places, that they attain their full measure of significance. And this too; alas, was but a fragment ! The plan of a mighty edifice had been sketched; some columns, porticos, firm masses of building, stand completed; the rest more or less clearly indicated; with many a far-stretching tendency, which only studious and friendly eyes can now trace towards the purposed ter- mination. For the work is broken off in the middle, almost in the beginning ; and rises among us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished and a ruin ! If charitable judgment was necessary in estimating his Poems, and justice required that the aim and the manifest power to fulfil it must often be accepted for the fulfilment ; much more is this the case in regard to his Life, the sum and result of all his endeav- ors, where his difficulties came upon him not in detail only, but in mass ; and so much has been left unaccomplished, nay, was mistaken, and altogether marred. Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of Burns, and that the earliest. We have not youth and man- hood, but only youth: for, to the end, we discern no de- cisive change in the complexion of his character; in his thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were, in youth. With all that resoluteness of judgment, that penetrating insight, and singular maturity of intellectual power, exhibited in his writings, he never attains to any clearness regarding himself; to the last, he never ascertains his peculiar aim, even with such distinctness as is common among ordinary men; and therefore never can pursue it with that single- ness of will, which insures success and some contentment to such men. To the last, he wavers between two pur- poses : glorying in his talent, like a true poet, he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and sole glory, and to follow it as the one thing needful, through poverty or riches, through good or evil report. Another far meaner ambition still cleaves to him; he must dream and struggle about a Burns, 37 certain ' Eock of Independence ; ' which, natural and even admirable as it might be, was still but a warring with the world, on the comparatively insignificant ground of his being more completely or less completely supplied with money than others; of his standing at a higher or at a lower altitude in general estimation than others. For the world still appears to him, as to the young, in borrowed colors : he expects from it what it cannot give to any man ; seeks for contentment, not within himself, in action and wise effort, but from without, in the kindness of circum stances, in love, friendship, honor, pecuniary ease. He would be happy, not actively and in himself, but passively and from some ideal cornucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by his own labor, but showered on him by the beneficence of Destiny. Thus, like a young man, he cannot gird him- self up for any worthy well-calculated goal, but swerves to and fro, between passionate hope and remorseful disap- pointment : rushing onwards with a deep tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder many a barrier; travels, nay, advances far, but advancing only under uncertain guid- ance, is ever and anon turned from his i)ath; and to the last cannot reach the only true happiness of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the sphere for which, by nature and circumstances, he has been fitted and appointed. We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns ; nay, perhaps, they but interest us the more in his favor. This blessing is not given soonest to the best; but rather, it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it; for where most is to be developed, most time may be re- quired to develop it. A complex condition had been as- signed him from without; as complex a condition from within: no ^ preestablished harmony' existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel and the empyrean soul of Kobert Burns; it was not wonderful that the adjustment between them should have been long postponed, and his arm long 38 Selections from Carlyle. cumbered, and his siglit confused, in so vast and discordant an economy as he had been appointed steward over. Byron was, at his death, but a year younger than Burns ; and through life, as it might have appeared, far more simply situated : yet in him too we can trace no such adjustment, no such moral manhood ; but at best, and only a little before his end, the beginning of what seemed such. By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is his journey to Edinburgh ; but perhaps a still more important one is his residence at Irvine, so early as in his twenty-third year. Hitherto his life had been poor and toilworn ; but otherwise not ungenial, and, with all its distresses, by no means unhappy. In his parentage, deducting outward cir- cumstances, he had every reason to reckon himself fortunate. His father was a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest char- acter, as the best of our peasants are ; valuing knowledge, possessing some, and, what is far better and rarer, open- minded for more: a man with a keen insight and devout heart ; reverent towards God, friendly therefore at once and fearless, towards all that God has made : in one word, though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete and fully unfolded Man. Such a father is seldom found in any rank in society ; and was worth descending far in society to seek. Unfor- tunately, he was very poor ; had he been even a little richer, almost never so little, the whole might have issued far other- wise. Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world. Had this "William Burns's small seven acres of nursery-ground anywise pros- pered, the boy Eobert had been sent to school ; had strug- gled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university ; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well- trained intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British Literature, — for it lay in him to have done this ! But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank his whole family below the help of even our cheap school-system: Burns. 39 Burns remained a hard-worked x^loughboy, and British literature took its own course. Nevertheless, even in this rugged scene there is much to nourish him. If he drudges, it is with his brother, and for his father and mother, whom he loves, and would fain shield from want. Wisdom is not banished from their poor hearth, nor the balm of natural feeling : the solemn words, ' Let us ivorsliip God,'' are heard there from a priest-like father; if threatenings of imjust men throw mother and children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but of holiest affection; every heart in that humble group feels itself the closer knit to every other ; in their hard warfare they are there together, a ' little band of brethren.' IN'either are such tears, and the deep beauty that dwells in them, their only portion. Light visits the hearts as it does the eyes of all living : there is a force, too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on misfor- tune ; nay, to bind it under his feet to make him sport. For a bold, warm, buoyant humor of character has been given him ; and so the thick-coming shapes of evil are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and in their closest pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. Vague yearnings of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; dreamy fancies hang like cloud- cities around him ; the curtain of Existence is slowly rising, in many-colored splendor and gloom : and the auroral light of first love is gilding his horizon, and the music of song is on his path ; and so he walks in glory and in joy, Behind his plough, upon the mountain side. We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to this date Burns was happy ; nay, that he was the gayest, brightest, most fantastic, fascinating being to be found in the world ; more so even than he ever afterwards appeared. But now, at this early age, he quits the paternal roof ; goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting society ; and becomes 40 Selections from Carlyle. initiated in those dissipations, those vices, which a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a natural prepara- tive for entering on active life ; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we sup- pose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not dispute much with this class of x^hilosophers ; we hope they are mistaken : for Sin and Ke- morse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives in this Devil's service, but only our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly Action. We become men, not after we have been dissipated, -. and disappointed in the chase of false pleasure ; but after we have ascertained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in through this life ; how mad it is to hope for con- tentment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely finite world ; that a man must be sufficient for himself ; and that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy but striv- ing and doing. Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity ; begins even when we have sur- rendered to Necessity, as the most part only do ; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled our- selves to Necessity ; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free. Surely, such lessons as this last, which, in one shape or other, is the grand lesson for every mortal man, are better learned from the lips of a devout mother, in the looks and actions of a devout father, while the heart is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp adamant of Fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, when the heart is grown hard, and may be broken before it will become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as he was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he Burns. 41 -would have learned it fully, wliicli he never did ; and been saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour and year of remorseful sorrow. It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in Burns 's history, that at this time too he became involved in the religious quarrels of his district; that he was enlisted and feasted, as the fighting man of the New-Light Priest- hood, in their highly unprofitable warfare. At the tables of these free-minded clergy he learned much more than was needful for him. Such liberal ridicule of fanaticism awakened in his mind scruples about Religion itself; and a whole world of Doubts, which it required quite another set of conjurors than these men to exorcise. We do not say that such an intellect as his could have escaped similar doubts at some period of his history ; or even that he could, at a later period, have come through them altogether vic- torious and unharmed: but it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above all others, should have been fixed for the encounter. For now, with principles assailed by evil example from without, by 'passions raging like demons' from within, he had little need of sceptical misgivings to whisper treason in the heat of the battle, or to cut off his retreat if he were already defeated. He loses his feeling of innocence; his mind is at variance with itself; the old divinity no longer presides there; but wild Desires and wild Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long, too, he has committed himself before the world; his character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted worldlings can even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of men; and his only refuge consists in trying to disbelieve his guiltiness, and is but a refuge of lies. The blackest desperation now gathers over him, broken only by red lightnings of remorse. The whole fat)ric of his life is blasted asunder; for now not only his chp-^acter, but his personal liberty, is to be lost ; men and Fortune are leagued 42 Selections from Carlyle. for his hurt; 'hungry Ruin has him in the wind.' He sees no escape but the saddest of all : exile from his loved country, to a country in every sense inhospitable and abhorrent to him. While the 'gloomy night is gathering fast, ' in mental storm and solitude, as well as in physical, he sings his wild farewell to Scotland : Farewell, my friends ; farewell, my foes ! My peace with these, my love with those : The bursting tears my heart declare ; Adieu, my native banks of Ayr ! Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods; but still a false transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is invited to Edinburgh; hastens thither with anticipating heart; is welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal blandish- ment and acclamation; whatever is wisest, whatever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to gaze on his face, to show him honor, sympathy, affection. Burns 's appearance among the sages and nobles of Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the most singular phenomena in modern Literature; almost like the appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sovereigns of modern Poli- tics. For it is nowise as a 'mockery king,' set there by favor, transiently and for a purpose, that he will let him- self be treated; still less is he a mad Rienzi, whose sudden elevation turns his too weak head : but he stands there on his own basis; cool, unastonished, holding his equal rank from Nature herself; putting forth no claim which there is not strength in him, as well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has some forcible observations on this point : 'It needs no effort of imagination,' says he, 'to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all either clergymen or professors) must liave been in the presence of this big-boned, black- browed, brawny stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearins; and conversation a most Burns. 43 thorough conviction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional symptom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns calmly measured himself against the most cultivated understandings of his time in discussion ; overpowered the bonsmots of the most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of mer- riment, impregnated with all the burning life of genius ; astounded bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve, by compelling them to tremble, — nay, to tremble visibly, — beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos ; and all this without indicating the smallest willingness to be ranked among those professional ministers of excitement, who are content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their own persons, even if they had the power of doing it ; and last, and probably worst of all, who was known to be in the habit of en- livening societies which they would have scorned to approach, still more frequently than their own, with eloquence no less magnificent ; with wit, in all likelihood still more daring ; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted without alarm might have guessed from the beginning, and had ere long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves.' The farther we remove from this scene, the more smgii- lar will it seem to us : details of the exterior aspect of it are already full of interest. Most readers recollect Mr. Walker's personal interviews with Burns as among the best x^assages of his Narrative: a time will come when this reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will also be precious : 'As for Burns,' writes Sir Walter, 'I may truly say, Virg ilium vidi tantum. I w^as a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much inter- ested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him : but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country ; the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner ; but had no opportunity to keep his word ; otherwise I might have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one 44 Selections from Carlyle, day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where there were sev- eral gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened. The only thing I remember which was remark- able in Burns's manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : " Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, — The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery, baptized in tears," Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were ; and it chanced that nobody but myself remem- bered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's called by the unpromising title of " The Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a friend present; he mentioned it to Burns, who re- warded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received and still recollect with very great pleasure. His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, not clown- ish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school, i.e., none of your modern agriculturists who kept laborers for their drudg- ery, but the douce gudeman who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though T have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, Burns. 45 but without the leastlntrusive forwardness ; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his conversation dis- tinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he did not recognize me, as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : but (considering what literary emoluments have been since his day) the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling. I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns' s acquaint- ance with English poetry was rather limited; and also that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his models : there was doubtless national predilection in his estimate. This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in malam partem, when I say, I never saw a man in company with his superiors in sta- tion or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these recollections of forty years since.' The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of favor; the calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he not only bore it, but estimated its value, has justly been regarded as the best proof that could be given of his real vigor and integrity of mind. A little natural vanity, some touches of hypocritical modesty, some glimmerings of affectation, at least some fear of being thought affected, we could have pardoned in almost any man; but no such indication is to be traced here. In his unexampled situation the young peasant is not a moment perplexed; so many strange lights do not confuse him, do not lead him astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that this winter did him great and lasting injury. A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters, it did afford him; but 46 Selections from Carlyle. a sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him.' He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts; nay, had himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this; it was clear also that he willed something far different, and there- fore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one, and reject the other; but must halt forever between two opinions, two objects; making hampered advancement towards either. But so is it with many men: we 'long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price ; ' and so stand chaffering with Fate, in vexa- tious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over! The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general more noted for clearness of head than for warmth of heart : with the exception of the good old Blacklock, whose help was too ineffectual, scarcely one among them seems to have looked at Burns with any true sympathy, or indeed much otherwise than as at a highly curious thing. By the great also he is treated in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables and dismissed : certain modica of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence; which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each party goes his several way. At the end of this strange season, Burns gloomily sums up his gains and losses, and meditates on the chaotic future. In mone}^ he is somewhat richer; in fame and the show of ha])piness, infinitely richer; but in the substance of it, as Burns. 47 poor as ever. Nay, poorer ; for his heart is now maddened still more with the fever of worldly Ambition ; and through long years the disease will rack him with unprofitable suf- ferings, and weaken his strength for all true and nobler aims. What Burns was next to do or to avoid; how a man so circumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true advantage, might at this point of time have been a question for the wisest. It was a question, too, which apparently he was left altogether to answer for himself: of his learned or rich patrons it had not struck any individual to turn a thought on this so trivial matter. Without claiming for Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must say that his Excise and Farm scheme does not seem to us a very unreasonable one; that we should be at a loss, even now, to suggest one decidedly better. Certain of his admirers have felt scandalized at his ever resolving to gauge; and would have had him lie at the pool, till the spirit of Pat- ronage stirred the waters, that so, with one friendly plunge, all his sorrows might be healed. Unwise counsellors! They know not the manner of this spirit; and how, in the lap of most golden dreams, a man might have happiness, were it not that in the interim he must die of hunger ! It reflects credit on the manliness and sound sense of Burns, that he felt so early on what ground he was standing; and preferred self-help, on the humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with hope of far more splendid possi- bilities. But even these possibilities were not rejected in his scheme : he might expect, if it chanced that he had any friend, to rise, in no long period, into something even like opulence and leisure; while again, if it chanced that he had no friend, he could still live in security; and for the rest, he 'did not intend to borrow honor from any profes- sion.' We think, then, that his plan vv^as honest and well- calculated : all turned on the execution of it. Doubtless it 48 Selections from Carlyle, failed; yet not, we believe, from any vice inherent in itself. Xay, after all, it was no failure of external means, but of internal, that overtook Burns. His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no man anything. Meanwhile he begins well: with two good and wise actions. His donation to his mother, munificent from a man whose income had lately been seven pounds a-year, was worthy of him, and not more than worthy. Generous also, and worthy of him, was his treatment of the woman whose life's welfare now depended on his pleasure. A friendly observer might have hoped serene days for him : his mind is on the true road to 23eace with itself: what clearness he still wants will be given as he proceeds ; for the best teacher of duties that still lie dim to us, is the Practice of those we see and have at hand. Had the 'patrons of genius,' who could give him nothing, but taken nothing from him, at least nothing more ! The wounds of his heart would have healed; vulgar ambition would have died away. Toil and Frugality would have been welcome, since Virtue dwelt with them; and Poetry would have shone through them as of old: and in her clear ethereal light, which was his own by birthright, he might have looked down on his earthly destiny and all its obstruc- tions, not with patience only, but with love. But the patrons of genius would not have it so. Pictur- esque tourists,* all manner of fashionable danglers after * There is one little sketch by certain ' English gentlemen ' of this class, which, though adopted in Currie's Narrative, and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary : ' On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of fox skin on his head, a loose greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns.' Now, we rather think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap, the loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we to make of this ' enormous Highland broad-sword ' depending from him ? More espe- Burns. 49 literature, and, far worse, all manner of convivial Maece- nases, hovered round him in his retreat; and his good as well as his weak qualities secured them influence over him. He was flattered by their notice; and his warm social nature made it impossible for him to shake them off, and hold on his way apart from them. These men, as we believe, were proximately the means of his ruin. Xot that they meant him any ill; they only meant themselves a little good; if he suffered harm, let him look to it! But they wasted his precious time and his precious talent; they disturbed his composure, broke down his returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented exertion. Their pampering was baneful to him; their cruelty, which soon followed, was equally baneful. The old grudge against Fortune's inequality awoke with new bitterness in their neighborhood; and Burns had no retreat but to 'the Kock of Independence,' which is but an air-castle after all, that looks well at a distance, but will screen no one from real wind and wet. Flushed with irregular excitement, exas- perated alternately by contempt of others and contempt of himself. Burns was no longer regaining his peace of mind, but fast losing it forever. There was a hollowness at the heart of his life, for his conscience did not now approve what he was doing. Amid the vapors of unwise enjoyment, of bootless re- morse, and angry discontent with Fate, his true loadstar, a life of Poetry, with Poverty, nay, with Famine if it must be so, was too often altogether hidden from his eyes. And yet he sailed a sea where without some such loadstar there was no right steering. Meteors of French Politics rise daily, as there is no word of parish constables on the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff or that of the pub- lic ! Burns, of all men, had the least need, and the least tendency, to seek for distinction either in his own eyes or those of others, by such poor mummeries. E 50 Selections fi^om Carlyle. before liim, but these were not Ms stars. An accident this, which hastened, but did not originate, his worst distresses. In the mad contentions of that time, he comes in col- lision with certain official Superiors; is wounded by them; cruelly lacerated, we should say, could a dead mechanical implement, in any case, be called cruel: and shrinks, in indignant pain, into deeper self-seclusion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His life has now lost its unity : it is a life of fragments ; led with little aim, beyond the melan- choly one of securing its own continuance, — in fits of wild false joy when such offered, and of black despondency when they passed away. His character before the world begins to suffer : calumny is busy with him ; for a miserable man makes more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen into, and a thousand misfortunes; but deep crimi- nality is what he stands accused of, and they that are not without sin cast the first stone at him! For is he not a well-wisher to the French Revolution, a Jacobin, and therefore in that one act guilty of all? These accusations, political and moral, it has since appeared, were false enough: but the world hesitated little to credit them. Nay, his convivial Maecenases themselves were not the last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his later years, the Dumfries Aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as from a tainted person no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the outmost breastwork of Gen- tility, there to stand siege and do battle against the in- trusions of G-rocerdom and Grazierdom, had actually seen dishonor in the society of Burns, and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly say, cut him! AVe find one passage in this Work of Mr. Lockhart's, which will not out of our thoughts : ' A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me that he was seldom Burns. 51 more grieved than when, riding into Dumfries one fine summer even- ing about this time to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted, and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street said: "Xay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now;" and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's pathetic ballad : " His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new ; But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing. And casts himsel dowie upon the coru-bing. 0, were we young as we ance hae been, We suld hae been galloping down on yon green, And linking it ower the lily-white lea ! And icerena my heart light, I wad die.'''' It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after reciting these verses, assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner; and taking his young friend home with him, entertained him very agreeably till the hour of the ball arrived.' Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps 'where bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart/* and that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite thrown down, — who would not sigh over the thin delu- sions and foolish toys that divide heart from heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother ! It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what har- mony was in him, what music even in his discords ! How * Uhi sseua indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit. Swift's Epitaph. 52 Selectio7is from Carlyle. the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew that here also was one of the Gifted! 'If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled ! ' Some brief pure moments of poetic life were yet appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. AVe can understand how he grasped at this employment; and how too, he spurned all other reward for it but what the labor itself brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and marred, was yet living in its full moral strength, though sharply conscious of its errors and abasement: and here, in his destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming nobleness and self-devotedness left even for him to per- form. He felt too, that with all the ^thoughtless follies ' that had 'laid him low,' the world was unjust and cruel to him; and he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his country: so he cast from him the poor six- pence a-day, and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him this last luxury of his existence; let him not have appealed to us in vain! The money was not necessary to him; he struggled through without it: long since, these guineas would have been gone ; and now the high-mindedness of refusing them will plead for him in all hearts forever. We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for matters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked for. Nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. We are not medically informed whether any continuance of years was, at this period, probable for Burns; whether his death is to be looked on as in some sense an accidental Burns. 63 event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to be the likelier oi^inion; and yet it is by no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said, some change could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, it seems to us, were open for Burns : clear poetical activity; madness; or death. The first, with longer life, was still possible, though not probable; for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it : and yet Burns had an iron resolu- tion; could he but have seen and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was opened for him : and he passed, not softly, yet speedily, into that still country where the hail-storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load! Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank unaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, generous minds have sometimes figured to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might have been done for him; that by counsel, true affection, and friendly minis- trations, he might have been saved to himself and the world. We question whether there is not more tenderness of heart than soundness of judgment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent individual could have lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, which seldom profits any one, he did not need; in his understanding, he knew the right from the wrong, as well perhaps as any man ever did; but the per- suasion which would have availed him, lies not so much in the head as in the heart, where no argument or expostula- tion could have assisted much to implant it. As to money again, we do not believe that this was his essential want; 54 Selections from Carlyle. or well see how any private man could, even presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an independent tor- tune, with much prospect of decisive advantage. It is a mortifying truth, that two men, in any rank of society, could hardly be found virtuous enough to give money, and ' to take it as a necessary gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or both. But so stands the fact : Friend- ship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists 5 except in the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality no longer expected, or recognized as a virtue among men. A close observer of manners has pronounced 'Patronage,' that is, pecuniary or other economic further- ance, to be 'twice cursed;' cursing him that gives, and him that takes ! And thus, in regard to outward matters also it has become the rule, as in regard to inward it always was and must be the rule, that no one shall look for effectual help to another; but that each shall rest contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, we say, is the principle of modern Honor; naturally enough growing out of that sentiment of Pride, which we inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole social morality. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns; but no one was ever prouder: we may question whether, without great precau- tions, even a pension from Eoyalty would not have galled and encumbered, more than actually assisted him. Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We have already stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall readily admit, however, tliat much was to be done for Burns; that many a poisoned arrow might have been warded from his bosom; many an entanglement in his path, cut asunder by the hand of the powerful; and liglit Burns. 55 and heat, shed on him from high places, would have made his humble atmosphere more genial; and the softest heart then breathing might have lived and died with some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for Burns it is granting much, that, with all his pride, he would have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any one who had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted: it was his own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be of service. All this it might have been a luxury, nay, it was a duty, for our nobility to have done. No part of all this, however, did any of them do; or apparently attempt, or wish to do : so much is granted against them. But what then is the amount of their blame? Simply that they were men of the world, and walked by the principles of such men; that they treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had done other poets; as the English did Shakspeare; as King Charles and his Cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip and his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men gather grapes of thorns; or shall we cut down our thorns for yielding only a fence and haws? How, indeed, could the 'nobility and gentry of his native land' hold out any help to this 'Scot- tish Bard, proud of his name and country'? Were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly to help them- selves? Had they not their game to preserve; their borough interests to strengthen; dinners, therefore, of various kinds to eat and give? Were their means more than adequate to all this business, or less than adequate? Less than adequate, in general; few of them in reality were richer than Burns; many of them were poorer; for some- times they had to wring their supplies, as with thumb- screws, from the hard hand, and, in their need of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy: which Burns was never 56 Selections from Carlyle. reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, the little Babylons they severally builded by the glory of their might, are all melted or melting back into the primeval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are fated to do : and here was an action, extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may say, through all time ; in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself; this action was offered them to do, and light was not given them to do it. Let us pity and forgive them. But better than pity, let us go and do otherwise. Human suffering did not end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate, 'Love one another, bear one another's burdens,' given to the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity; but celestial natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, Ave shall still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has rendered voiceless and tuneless, is not the least wretched, but the most. Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more, rather than with less, kindness than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to its Teachers: hunger and nakedness, perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice, have, in most times and countries, been the market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify. Homer and Socrates, and the Christian Apostles, belong to old days; but the world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and Galileo languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse; Camoens dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so ^persecuted they the Prophets,' not in Judea only, but in all Burns. 57 places where men have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age ; that he has no right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound to do it great kindness ; that Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual proportion of the world's goodness; and that the blame of his failure, as we have said, lies not chiefly with the world. Where, then, does it lie? We are forced to answer: - With himself; it is his inward, not his outward, misfor- tunes that bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it otherwise ; seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want less of good fortune than of good guidance. Nature fash- ions no creature without implanting in it the strength needful for its action and duration; least of all does she so neglect her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. Neither can we believe that it is in the power of any exter- nal circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man ; nay, if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to affect its essential health and beauty. The sternest sum-total of all worldly misfortunes is Death; nothing more can lie in the cup of human woe : yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed over Death, and led it captive; converting its physical victory into a moral victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal consecration for all that their past life had achieved. What has been done, may be done again : nay, it is but the degree and not the kind of such heroism that differs in different seasons; for without some portion of this spirit, not of boisterous daring, but of silent fearless- ness, of Self-denial in all its forms, no good man, in anyy scene or time, has ever attained to be good. We have already stated the error of Burns ; and mourned over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want of unity in his purposes, of consistency in his aims ; the hapless attempt to mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world 58 Selections from Carlyle. with the spirit of poetry, which is of a far different and alto- gether irreconcilable nature. Burns was nothing wholly; and Burns could be nothing, no man formed as he was can be anything, by halves. The heart, not of a mere hot-blooded, popular Versemonger, or poetical Restaurateur, but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the old religious heroic times, had been given him : and he fell in an age, not of heroism and .religion, but of scepticism, selfishness, and triviality, when true Nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful prin ciple of Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to cast aside, or rightly subordinate ; the better spirit that was within him ever sternly demanded its rights, its suprem- acy : he spent his life in endeavoring to reconcile these two ; and lost it, as he must lose it, without reconciling them. Burns was born poor ; and born also to continue poor, for he Avould not endeavor to be otherwise : this it had been well could he have once for all admitted, and considered as finally settled. He was poor, truly ; but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have been poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it : nay, his own Father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was ; and he did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral intents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means, had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation; but. so much the more precious was what little he had. In all these external respects his case Avas hard ; but very far from the hardest. Poverty, inces- sant drudgery, and much worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise men to strive with, and their ^\oyj to conquer. Locke was banished as a traitor ; and wrote his Essay on the Human Understanding sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when he com- Burns. 59 posed Paradise Lost? Not only low, but fallen .from a height ; not only poor, but impoverished ; in darkness and with dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, and found fit audience, though few. Did not Cervantes fin- ish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison ? Nay, was not the Araucana. which Spain acknowledges as its Epic, writ- ten without even the aid of a paper ; on scraps of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any moment from that wild warfare ? And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted ? Two things ; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such men. They had a true, religious principle of mor- ■ als ; and a single, not a double aim in their activity. They were not self-seekers and self-worshipers ; but seekers and worshipers of something far better than Self. Not personal enjoyment was their object ; but a high, heroic idea of Keli- gion, of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other form, ever hovered before them ; in which cause they neither shrank from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful ; but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so to spend and be spent. Thus the ' golden-calf of Self-love,' however curiously carved, was not their Deity ; but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's reasonable service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinated and made subservient; and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks ; but its edge must be sharp and single : if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces, and will rend nothing. Part of this superiority these men owed to their age ; in which heroism and devotedness were still practised, or at least not yet disbelieved in; but much of it likewise they owed to themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. His 60 Selections from Carlyle. morality, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he longs and strives for. A noble instinct some- times raises him above this ; but an instinct only, and acting only for moments. He has no Eeligion ; in the shallow age wherein his days were cast, Eeligion was not discriminated from the New and Old Light forms of Religion ; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like that of Rabelais, ' a great Perhaps.' He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart ; could he but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion; is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not be extin- guished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns to be rich ; to be, or to seem, ^ indepen- dent : ' but it was necessary for him to be at one with his own heart ; to place what was highest in his nature highest also in his life : ' to seek within himself for that consistency and sequence, which external events would forever refuse him.' He was born a poet ; poetry was the celestial ele- ment of his being, and should have been the soul of his whole endeavors. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have needed no other elevation : poverty, neglect, and all evil save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a small matter to him ; the pride and the passions of the world lay far beneath his feet ; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, Burns. 61 with pity. Nay, we question whether, for his culture as a Poet, poverty and much suffering for a season were not abso- hitely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect. ^ I would not for much,' says Jean Paul, 'that I had been born richer.' And yet Paul's birth was poor enough ; for, in another place, he adds : ^The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I had often only the latter.' But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he has himself expressed it, ' the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.' A man like Burns might have divided his hours between poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all true feel- ing sanctions, nay, prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones : but to divide his hours betAveen poetry and rich men's banquets was an ill- starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such banquets ? What had he to do there, mingling his music with the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices ; brightening the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven ? Was it his aim to enjoy life ? Tomorrow he must go drudge as an Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of society ; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and run amuck against them all. How could a man, so falsely placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment or peaceable diligence for an hour ? What he did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his character. Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness ; but not in others ; only in himself ; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly ' respectability.' We hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another '62 Selections from Carlyle. instance of it in these very days ? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer : the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance ; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him ? Is he happy, is he good, is he true ? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal ; and soon feels that all this is but mount- ing to the house-top to reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; might, like him, have ^ purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan ; ' for Satan also is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently of his conduct. As in Burns's case, too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth ; both poet and man of the world he must not be ; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration ; he cannot serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay, he is the most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged : the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a world ; but it is the mad fire of a volcano ; and now — we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which ere long will fill itself with snow ! Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth ; they had a message to deliver, which left them no rest till it was accomplished ; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay smouldering within them ; for they knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation ; and they had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the camp of the Unconverted; yet not as high messengers of rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleasant felloAvship, will they live there : they are first adulated, then persecuted; they accomplish little for Burns. 63 others ; tliey find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history, — twice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of deep, impressive significance. Surely it, would become such a man, furnished for the highest of all\ enterprises, that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider i well what it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he ' attempts it. For the words of Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in this : ' He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem.' If he cannot first so make his life, .then let him hasten from this arena ; for neither its lofty glories, nor its fearful perils, are for him. Let him dwindle into a modish balladmonger ; let him worship and besing the idols of the time, and the time will not fail to reward him. If, indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of their own hearts consumed them ; and better it was for them that they could not. For it is not in the favor of the great or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how to reverence him. Beautiful is the union of wealth with favor and furtherance for literature; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation be mistaken. A true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional verses, their purveyor of table-wit ; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties, let no such union be attempted ! AVill a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray- 64 Selections from Carlyle. horse ? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands ; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites from door to door ? But we must stop short in these considerations, which would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something to say on the public moral character of Burns ; but this also we must forbear. We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average; nay, from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thousand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the Ple- biscita of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the substance : It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes ; and not positively but neg- atively, less on what is done right, than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be a city hippo- drome ; nay, the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured : and it is assumed that the diameter of the gin- horse, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared with them ! Here lies the root of many a blind, _ cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Eousseaus, which one never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy ; he has not been all-wise and all- powerful : but to know hoio blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Bamsgate and the Isle of Dogs. Biirns. 65 With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pity- ing admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves ; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye: for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day ; and often will the traveler turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines! ON HISTOKY. [Fraser's Magazine, No. 10. 1830.'\ Clio was figured by the ancients as tlie eldest daughter of Memory, and cliief of the Muses ; wliich dignity, whether we regard the essential qualities of her art, or its practice and acceptance among men, we shall still find to have been fitly bestowed. History, as.it lies at the root of all science^ is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature ; his earliest expression of what can be called Thought. It is a looking both before and after ; as, indeed, the _comiii^ Time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, predeter- mined and inevitable, in the Time come; andjDnly by the combination of both is the meaning of either completed. The Sibylline Books, though old, are not the oldest. Some nations have prophecy, some have not : but of all mankind there is no tribe so rude that it has not attempted History, though several have not arithmetic enough to count Five. History has been written with quipo-threads, with feather- pictures, with wampum-belts ; still oftener with earth-mounds and monumental stone-heaps, whether as pyramid or cairn ; for the Celt and the Copt, the Eed man as well as the White, lives between two eternities, and, warring against Oblivion, he would fain unite himself in clear conscious relation, as in dim unconscious relation he is already united, with the whole Future and the whole Past. A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are histo- GG On History. 67 rians. Is not every memory written quite full with Annals, wherein joy and mourning, conquest and loss, manifoldly alternate ; and, with or without philosophy, the whole for- tunes of one little inward Kingdom, and all its politics, for- eign and domestic, stand ineffaceably recorded ? Our very ^s peech is curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, S£eak_onlxJ:o narrate ; not in imparting what they have thought, which indeed were often a very small matter, but in~exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Xar- rative7how woiiTd the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handf uls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate ! Thus, as we do nothing but en- actffistory,.we say little but recite it: nay, rather, in that widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon. For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge tog but recorded Experience, and a product of History ; of which, therefore, ;6eBBoniGg and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials ? Under a limited, and the only practicable shape. History proper, that part of History Avhich treats of remarkable action, has, in all modern as well as ancient times, ranked among the highest arts ; and perhaps never stood higher than in these times of ours. For whereas, of old, the charm of History lay chiefly in gratifying our common appetite for the wonderful, for the unknown, and her office was but as that of a Minstrel and Story-teller, she has now farther become a Schoolmistress, and professes to instruct in grati- fying. Whether, with the stateliness of that venerable character, 'she may not have taken up something of its austerity and frigidity ; whether, in the logical terse- ness of a Hume or Kobertson, the graceful ease and gay pictorial heartiness of a Herodotus or Froissart may not be wanting, is not the question for us here. Enough that all learners, all inquiring minds of every order, are gathered 68 Selections from Carlyle. round her footstool, and reverently pondering her lessons, as the true basis of Wisdom. Poetry, Divinity, Politics, Physics, have each their adherents and adversaries ; each little guild supx^orting a defensive and offensive war for its own special domain; while the domain of History is as a Free Emporium, where all these belligerents peace- ably meet and furnish themselves ; and Sentimentalist and Utilitarian, Sceptic and Theologian, with one voice advise us : Examine History, for it is ' Philosophy teaching by Experience.' Far be it from us to disparage such teaching, the very attempt at which must be precious. Neither shall we too rigidly inquire : How much it has hitherto profited ? Whether most of what little practical wisdom men have, has come from study of professed History, or from other less boasted sources ; whereby, as matters now stand, a Marl- borough may become great in the world's business, with no History save what he derives from Shakspeare's Plays ? Nay, whether in that same teaching by Experience, histori- cal Philosophy has yet properly deciphered the-first element of all science in this kind : What the aim and significance of that wondrous changeful Life it investigates and paints may be ? Whence the course of man's destinies in this Earth originated, and whither they are tending? Or, indeed, if they have any course and tendency, are really guided forward by an unseen mysterious Wisdom, or only circle in blind mazes without recognizable guidance ? Which questions, altogether fundamental, one might think, in any Philosophy of History, have, since the era when Monkish Annalists were wont to answer them by the long-ago extinguished light of their Missal and Brevi- ary, been by most philosophical Historians only glanced at dubiously and from afar ; by many, not so much as glanced at. The truth is, two difficulties, never wholly surmountable. On History, 69 lie in the way. Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, _the^JiilosoplLyIiias--to be in readiness, the Experience must ^be g athered and,, intelligibly recorded. ISTow, overlooking the former consideration, and with regard only to the latter, let any one who has examined the current of human affairs, ^and^^TCwjntricate, perplexed, unfathomable, even Avhen seen into with our own eyes, are their thousandfold blending movements, say whether the true representing of it is easy ^oFinrpossible. Social Life is the aggregate of all- the indi- vidual men's Lives who constitute society ; fHistory is the j- essence of innumerable Biographies. But if one Biography, nay, our orwlTBiography, study and recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us, how much more must these million; the very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know ! f Neither will it adequately avail us to assert that the general inward condition of Life is the same in all ages; and that only the remarkable deviations from the common endowment and common lot, and the more important varia- tions which the outward figure of Life has from time to time undergone, deserve memory and record. The inward condition of Life, it may rather be affirmed, the conscious* or Traif =corrScTbus~aim of mankind, so far as men are not mere digesting-machines, is the same in no two ages ;" ^eitheFafFTh^e more important outward variations easy to fix on, or always well capable of representation. Which was the greatest innovator, which was the more important personage in man's history, he who first led armies over the Alps, and gained the victories of Cannae and Thrasymene ; or the nameless boor who first hammered out for himself an iron spade ? When the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din every ear, and with joy or terror intoxicate TO Selections from Carlyle. every heart, pass away like tavern-brawls ; and, except some few Marathons and Morgartens, are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws themselves, political Consti- tutions, are not our Life, but only the house wherein our Life is led : nay, they are but the bare walls of the house ; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and traditions and daily habits that regulate and support our existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phoenician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists, of philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and all the long-forgotten train of artists and artisans ; who from the first have been jointly teaching us how to think and how to act, hdw to rule over spiritual and over physical Nature. Well may we say that of our History the more important part is lost without recovery ; and, — as thanksgivings were once wont to be offered 'for unrecognized mercies,' — look with reverence into the dark untenanted places of the Past, where, in form- less oblivion, our chief benefactors, with all their sedulous endeavors, but not Avith the fruit of these, lie entombed. So imperfect is that same Experience, by which Philoso- phy is to teach. Nay, even Avith regard to those occurrences which do stand recorded, which at their origin have seemed worthy of record, and the summary of which constitutes what we now call History, is not our understanding of them altogether incomplete ; is it even possible to represent them as they were ? The old story of Sir Walter Raleigh's looking from his prison-window on some street tumult, which afterwards three witnesses reported in three different ways, himself differing from them all, is still a true lesson for us. Consider how it is that historical documents and records originate ; even honest records, where the reporters were unbiased by personal regard ; a case which, were noth- ing more wanted, must ever be among the rarest. The real leading features of a historical Transaction, those movements that essentially characterize it, and alone deserve to be On History. 71 recorded, are nowise the foremost to be noted. At first, "aSTongthe various witnesses, who are also parties interested, there is only vague wonder, and fear or hope, and the noise of Eumor's thousand tongues ; till, after a season, the con- flict of testimonies has subsided into some general issue ; and then it is settled, by majority of votes, that such and such a ^ Crossing of the Eubicon,' an ' Impeachment of Strafford,' a ^ Convocation of the Notables,' are epochs in the world's history, cardinal points on which grand world- revolutions have hinged. Suppose, however, that the major- l?Ey^f votes was all wrong ; that the real cardinal points lay far deeper ; and had been passed over unnoticed, because no Seer, but only mere Onlookers, chanced to be there ! Our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour ; but no hammer in the Horologe of Time peals through the univer se whe n there is a change from Era to Era. Men understand not what is among their hands : as calmness is the characteristic of strength, so the weightiest causes may be most silent. It is, in no case, the real historical Trans- action, but only some more or less plausible scheme and theory of the Transaction,, or the harmonized result of many such schemes, each varying from the other and all varying from truth, that we can ever hope to behold. Nay, were our faculty of insight into passing things never SQ-jcoinplejte?, there is still a fatal discrepancy between our manner of observing these, and their manner of occurring. The most gifted man can observe, still more can record, only the .smes of his own impressions : his observation, therefore, to say nothing of its other imperfections, must be successive, while the things done were often siimt Itan eousj the thin gs done were not a series, but a group. It is not j.n_acted. as it is injwi'itten History: actual events are nowise so simply related to -each other as parent and offspring are; every single event is the offspring not of one, but of all other event"s7pi^iorl)Fcohtemporaneous, and will in its turn com- 72 Selections from Carlyle, bine with all others to gi-ve birth to new: it is an ever-liv- mg, ever-working Chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable elements. And this Chaos, boundless as the habitation and duration of man, unfathomable as the soul and destiny of man, is what the historian will depict, and scientifically gauge, we may say, by threading it with single lines of a few ells in length! For as all Action is, by its nature, to be figured as extended in breadth and in depth, as well as in length ; that is to say, is based on Passion and Mystery, if we investigate its origin ; and spreads abroad on all hands, modifying and modified ; as well as advances toward completion, — so all Narrative is, by its nature, of only one dimension; only travels for- ward towards one, or towards successive jpoints : Narrative is linear, Action is solid. Alas for our ' chains,' or chain- lets, of * causes and effects,' which we so assiduously track through certain handbreadths of years and square miles, when the whole is a broad, deep Immensity, and each atom is ' chained ' and complected with all ! Truly, if History is 'Philosophy teaching by Experience,' the writer fitted to compose History is hitherto an unknown man. The Experi- ence itself would require All-knowledge to record it, — were the All-wisdom needful for such Philosophy as would inter- pret it, to be had for asking. Better were^ it that mere earthly Historians should lower such pretensions, more suit- able for Omniscience than for human science; and, aiming only at some picture of the things acted, which picture itself will at best be a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged secret; or at most, in reverent Eaith, far different from that teaching of Philos- ophy, pause over the mysterious vestiges of Him whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom History indeed reveals, but only all History, and in Eternity, will clearly reveal. Such considerations truly were of small profit, did they, instead of teaching us vigilance and reverent humility in On History. 73 our inquiries into History, abate our esteem for them, or discourage us from unweariedly prosecuting them. Let us search more and more into the Past ; let all men explore it, as the true fountain of knowledge ; by whose light alone, consciously or unconsciously employed, can the Present and the Future be interpreted or guessed at. For though the whole meaning lies far beyond our ken; yet in that com- plex Manuscript, covered over with formless, inextricably- entangled, unknown characters, — nay, which is a Palimpsest, and had once prophetic writing, still dimly legible there, — some letters, some words, may be deciphered; and, if no complete Philosophy, here and there an intelligible precept, available in practice, be gathered : well understanding, in the mean while, that it is only a little portion we have deciphered ; that much still remains to be interpreted ; that History is a real Prophetic Manuscript, and can be fully interpreted by no man. But the Artist in History may be distinguished from the Artisan in History ; for here, as in all other provinces, there are Artists and Artisans ; men who labor mechanically in a department, without eye for the Whole, not feeling that there is a Whole; and men who inform and ennoble the humblest department with an Idea of the Whole, and habit- ually know that only in the Whole is the Partial to be truly disc^erned. The proceedings and the duties of these two, in reg'ard to History, must be altogether different. ISTot, indeed, that each has not a real worth, in his several degree. The simple husbandman can till his field, and, by knowledge he has gained of its soil, sow it with the fit grain, though the deep rocks and central fires are unknown to him : his little crop hangs under and over the firmament of stars, and sails through whole untracked celestial spaces, between Aries and Libra ; nevertheless it ripens for him in due season, and he gathers it safe into his barn. As a husbandman, he is blameless in disregarding those higher wonders ; but as a 74 Selections from Carlyle. thinker, and faithful inquirer into Nature, he were AVTong. So likewise is it with the Historian, who examines some special aspect of History ; and from this or that combina- tion of circumstances, political, moral, economical, andihe issues it has led to, infers that such and such properties belong to human society, and that the like circumstances will produce the like issue ; which inference, if other trials confirm it, must be held true and practically valuable. He is wrong only, and an artisan, when he fancies that these properties, discovered or discoverable, exhaust the matter ; and sees not, at every step, that it is inexhaustible. However, that class of cause-and-effect speculators, with whom no wonder woidd remain wonderful, but all things in Heaven and Earth must be computed and ^accounted for ; ' and even the Unknown, the Infinite in man's Life, had under the words Enthusiasm, Superstition, Spirit of the Age, and so forth, obtained, as it were, an algebraical sym- bol and given value, — have now wellnigh played their part in European culture; and may be considered as, in most countries, even in England itself where they linger the latest, verging towards extinction. He who reads the ^in- scrutable Book of Nature as if it were a Merchant's Ledger, is justly suspected of having never seen that Book, but only some school Synopsis thereof ; from which, if taken for the real Book, more error than insight is to be derived. Doubtless also, it is with a growing feeling of the infinite nature of History, that in these times the old principle, division of labor, has been so widely applied to it. The Political Historian, once almost the sole cultivator of His- tory, has now found various associates, who strive to eluci- date other phases of human Life ; of which, as hinted above, the political conditions it is passed under are but one, and, though the primary, perhaps not the most important of the many outward arrangements. Of this Historian himself, moreover, in his own special department, new and higher On Hhtory. 75 things are beginningL-iQ^i)e- expected. From of old, it was too often to be reproachfully observed of him, that he dwelt with disproportionate fondness in Senate-houses, in Battle- fields, nay even in Kings' Antechambers ; forgetting that far away from such scenes, the mighty tide of Thought and Action was still rolling on its wondrous course, in gloom and brightness : and in its thousand remote valleys, a whole world of Existence, with or without an earthly sun of Hap- piness to warm it, with or without a heavenly sun of Holi- ness to purify and sanctify it, was blossoming and fading, whether the '■ famous victory ' were won or lost. The time seems coming when much of this must be amended ; and he who sees no world but that of courts and camps ; and writes only how soldiers were drilled and shot, and how this min- isterial conjuror out-conjured that other, and then guided, or at least held, something which he called the rudder of Government, but which was rather the spigot of Taxation, wherewith, in place of steering, he could tap, and the more cunningly the nearer the lees, — will pass for a more or less instructive Gazetteer, but will no longer be called a Historian. However, the Political Historian, were his work per- formed with all conceivable perfection, can accomplish but a part, and still leaves room for numerous fellow-laborers. Foremost among these comes the Ecclesiastical Historian ; endeavoring, with catholic or sectarian view, to trace the progress of the Church ; of that portion of the social estab- lishment, which respects our religious condition; as the other portion does our civil, or rather, in the long-run, our economical condition. Rightly conducted, this department were undoubtedly the more important of the two ; inasmuch as it concerns us more to understand how man's moral well- being had been and might be promoted, than to understand in the like sort his physical well-beini; ; which latter is ultimately the aim of all Political arrangements. For the T6 Selections from Carlyle. physically happiest is simply the safest, the strongest ; and, in all conditions of Government, Power (whether of wealth as in these days, or of arms and adherents as in old daysj" is the only outward emblem and purchase-money of Good. True Good, however, unless we reckon Pleasure synonymous with it, is said to be rarely, or rather never, offered for sale in the market where that coin passes current. So that, for man's true advantage, not the outward condition of his life, but the inward and spiritual, is of prime influence ; not the form of Government he lives under, and the power he can accumulate there, but the Church he is a member of, and the degree of moral elevation he can acquire by means of its instruction. Church History, then, did it speak wisely, would have momentous secrets to teach us : nay, in its highest degree, it were a sort of continued Holy Writ ; our Sacred Books being, indeed, only a History of the primeval Church, as it first arose in man's soul, and symbolically embodied itself in his external life. How far our actual Church Historians fall below such unattainable standards, nay, below quite attainable approximations thereto, we need not point out. Of the Ecclesiastical Historian we have to complain, as we did of his Political fellow-craftsman, that his inquiries turn rather on the outward mechanism, the mere hulls and superficial accidents of the object, than on the object itself : as if the Church lay in Bishops' Chapter- houses, and Ecumenic Council-halls, and Cardinals' Con- claves, and not far more in the hearts of Believing Men ; in whose walk and conversation, as influenced thereby, its chief manifestations were to be looked for, and its progress or decline ascertained. The History of the Church is a History of the Invisible as well as of the Visible Church ; which latter, if disjoined from the former, is but a vacant edifice ; gilded, it may be, and overhung with old votive gifts, yet useless, nay, pestilentially unclean ; to write whose history is less important than to forward its downfall. On History. 11 Of a less ambitious character are tlie Histories that relate to special separate provinces of human Action ; to Sciences, --^racti'cal Arts, Institutions, and the like ; matters which do nonmpTy an epitome of man's ^vhole interest and form of life ; but wherein, though each is still connected with all, the spirit of each, at least its material results, may be in some degree evolved without so strict a reference to that of the others. Highest in dignity and difficulty, under this head, would-be our histories of Philosophy, of man's opin- ions^and theories respecting the nature of his Being, and relations to the Universe Visible and Invisible : Avhich His- tory, indeed, were it fitly treated, or fit for right treatment, would be a province of Church History ; the logical or dog- matical province thereof ; for Philosophy, in its true sense, is or should be the soul, of which Keligion, Worship, is the bocl}^ 7 ill the healthy state of things the Philosopher and Priest were one and the same. But Philosophy itself is far enough from wearing this character ; neither have its His- torians been men, generally speaking, that could in the smallest degree approximate it thereto. Scarcely since the rude era of the Magi and Druids has that same healthy identification of Priest and Philosopher had place in any country : but rather the worship of divine things, and the scientific investigation of divine things, have been in quite different hands : their relations not friendly, but hostile. Neither have the Bruckers and Buhles, to say nothing of the many unhappy Enfields who have treated of that latter department, been more than barren reporters, often unintel- ligent and unintelligible reporters, of the doctrine uttered ; without force to discover how the doctrine originated, or what reference it bore to its time and country, to the spirit- ual position of mankind there and then. Xay, such a task did not perhaps lie before them, as a thing to be attempted. Art also and Literature are intimately blended with Reli- outworks and abutments, by which that 78 SeIecfio7is from Oarlyle. highest pinnacle in our inward world gradually connects itself with the general level, and becomes accessible there- from. He who should write a proper History of Poetry, would depict for us the successive Eevelations which man had obtained of the Spirit of Nature ; under what aspects he had caught and endeavored to body forth some glimpse^ of that unspeakable Beauty, which in its highest clearness is Religion, is the inspiration of a Prophet, yet in one or the other degree must inspire every true Singer, Avere his theme never so humble. We should see by what steps men had ascended to the Temple ; how near they had approached; by what ill hap they had, for long periods, turned a^vay from it, and groveled on the plain with no music in the air, or blindly struggled towards other heights. That among all our Eichhorns and Wartons there is no such Historian, must be too clear to every one. Nevertheless, let us not despair of far nearer approaches to that excellence. Above all, let us keep the Ideal of it ever in our eye ; for thereby alone have we even a chance to reach it. Our histories of Laws and Constitutions, wherein many a Montesquieu and Hallam has labored with acceptance, are of a much simpler nature ; yet deep enough if thoroughly investigated; and useful, when authentic, even with little depth. Then we have Histories of Medicine, of Mathema- tics, of Astronomy, Commerce, Chivalry, Monkery ; and Goguets and Beckmanns have come forward with what might be the most bountiful contribution of all, a History of Inventions. Of all which sorts, and many more not here enumerated, not yet devised and put in practice, the merit and the proper scheme may, in our present limits, require no exposition. In this manner, though, as above remarked, all Action is extended three Avays, and the general sum of human Action is a whole Universe, with all limits of it unknown, does History strive by running path after path, througli the On History. 79 Jmpassable, iii manifold directions and intersections, to secure for us some oversight of the Whole; in Avhich endeavor^ if each Historian look well around him from his path, tracking it out Avith the eye,— not, as is more com- mon, with the nose, — she may at last prove not altogether unsuccessful. Praying only that increased division of labor do not here, as elsewhere, aggravate our already strong Mechanical tendencies ; so that in the manual dex- terity ior parts we lose all command over the whole, and the hope of any Philosophy of History be farther off than ever, — let us all wish her great and greater sxiccess. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. [Fraser's diagazine, iYo. 2S. 1832.'] Ji^sop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming : ' What a dust I do raise ! ' Yet which of us, in his way, has not sometimes been guilty of the like ? Nay, so foolish are men, they often, stand- ing at ease and as sx^ectators on the highway, will volun- teer to exclaim of the Fly (not being tempted to it, as he was) exactly to the same purport : ' What a dust thou dost raise ! ' Smallest of mortals, when mounted aloft by cir- cumstances, come to seem great; smallest of phenomena connected with them are treated as important, and must be sedulously scanned, and commented upon with loud emphasis. That Mr. Croker should undertake to edit BosivelVs Life of Johnson, was a praiseworthy but no miraculous procedure : neither could the accomplishment of such undertaking be, in an e^^och like ours, anywise regarded as an event in Universal History ; the right or the wrong accomplishment thereof was, in very truth, one of the most insignificant of things. However, it sat in a great environment, on the axle of a high, fast-rolling, parliamentary chariot ; and all the world has exclaimed over it, and the author of it: ' What a dust thou dost raise ! ' List to the Keviews, and Organs of Public Opinion, from the Natioyial Omnibus upwards : criticisms, vituperative and laudatory, stream from their thousand throats of brass and of leather ; here chanting lo-jxeans; there grating harsh thunder or vehe- BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 81 ment shrewmouse squeaklets ; till the general ear is filled, and nigh, deafened. Boswell's Book had a noiseless birth, compared with this Edition of Boswell's Book. On the other hand, consider with what degree of tumult Paradise Lost and the Iliad were ushered in ! To swell such clamor, or prolong it beyond the time, seems nowise our vocation here. At most, perhaps, we are bound to inform simple readers, with all possible brevity, what manner of performance and Edition this is ; especially, whether, in our poor judgment, it is worth laying out three pounds sterling upon, yea or not. The whole business belongs distinctly to the lower ranks of the trivial class. Let us admit, then, with great readiness, that as John- son once said, and the Editor repeats, 'all works which describe manners require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less ; ' that, accordingly, a new Edition of Boswell was desirable; and that Mr. Croker has given one. Eor this task he had various qualifications : his own voluntary resolu- tion to do it ; his high place in society, unlocking all manner of archives to him ; not less, perhaps, a certain anecdotico- biographic turn of mind, natural or acquired ; we mean, a love for the minuter events of History, and talent for investigating these. Let us admit too, that he has been very diligent ; seems to have made inquiries perseveringly far and near ; as well as drawn freely from his own ample stores ; and so tells us, to appearance quite accurately, much that he has not found lying on the highways, but has had to seek and dig for. Numerous persons, chiefly of quality, rise to view in these ISTotes ; when, and also where, they came into this world, received office or pro- motion, died and were buried (only what they did, except digest, remaining often too mysterious), — is faithfully enough set down. Whereby all that their various and doubtless widelv-scattered Tombstones could have taught 82 Selections from Carh/Ie. us, is here presented, at once, in a bound Book. Thus is an indubitable conquest, though a small one, gained over our great enemy, the all-destroyer Time; and as such shall have welcome. Nay, let us say that the spirit of Diligence, exhibited in this department, seems to attend the Editor honestly throughout : he keeps everywhere a watchful outlook on his Text; reconciling the distant with the present, or at least indicating and regretting their irreconcilability ; elu- cidating, smoothing down ; in all ways exercising, accord- ing to ability, a strict editorial superintendency. Any little Latin or even Greek phrase is rendered into English, in general with perfect accuracy; citations are verified, or else corrected. On all hands, moreover, there is a cer- tain spirit of Decency maintained and insisted on : if not good morals, yet good manners, are rigidly inculcated ; if not Keligion, and a devout Christian heart, yet Ortho- doxy, and a cleanly Shovel-hatted look, — which, as com- pared with flat Nothing, is something very considerable. Grant too, as no contemptible triumph of this latter spirit, that though the Editor is known as a decided Politician and Party-man, he has carefully subdued all temptations to transgress in that way : except by quite involuntary indications, and rather as it were the pervading temper of the whole, you could not discover on which side of the Political Warfare he is enlisted and fights. This, as we said, is a great triumph of the Decency-principle : for this, and for these other graces and performances, let the Editor have all praise. Herewith, however, must the praise unfortunately termin- ate. Diligence, Fidelity, Decency, are good and indispensa- ble : yet, without Faculty, without Light, they will not do the work. Along with that Tombstone-information, perhaps even without much of it, we could have liked to gain some answer, in one way or other, to this wide question : ' What BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 83 and how was English Life in Johnson's time ; wherein has ours grown to differ therefrom ? ' In other words : ' What things have we to forget, what to fancy and remember, before we, from such distance, can put ourselves in John- son's 'place ; and so, in the full sense of the term, understand him, his sayings, and his doings ? ' This was indeed spe- cially the problem which a Commentator and Editor had to solve : a complete solution of it should have lain in him, his whole mind should have been filled and prepared with per- fect insight into it; then, whether in the way of express Dissertation, of incidental Exposition and Indication, op- portunities enough would have occurred of bringing out the same : what was dark in the figure of the Past had thereby been enlightened ; Boswell had, not in show and word only, but in very fact, been made new again, readable to us who are divided from him, even as he was to those close at hand. Of all which very little has been attempted here; accomplished, we should say, next to nothing, or altogether nothing. Excuse, no doubt, is in readiness for such omission ; and, indeed, for innumerable other failings ; — as where, for ex- ample, the Editor will punctually explain what is already sun-clear; and then anon, not without frankness, declare frequently enough that 'the Editor does not understand,' that 'the Editor cannot guess,' — while, for most part, the Reader cannot help both guessing and seeing. Thus, if Johnson say, in one sentence, that 'English names should not be used in Latin verses ; ' and then, in the next sen- tence, speak blamingly of ' Carteret being used as a dactyl,' will the generality of mortals detect any puzzle there ? Or again, where poor Boswell Avrites : ' I always remember a remark made to me by a Turkish lady, educated in France : "Mafoi, monsieur, notre bonheur depend de lafagon que notre sang circule; " ' — though the Turkish lady here speaks Eng- lish-French, where is the call for a ^STote like this : ' Mr. Bos- 84 Selectio7is from Carlyle. well no doubt fancied these words had some meaning, or he would hardly have quoted them : but what that meaning is, the Editor cannot guess ' ? The Editor is clearly no witch at a riddle. — For these and all kindred deficiencies the excuse, as we said, is at hand; but the fact of their exist- ence is not the less certain and regrettable. Indeed it, from a very early stage of the business, becomes afflictively apparent, how much the Editor, so well furnished with all external appliances and means, is from within un- furnished with means for forming to himself any just notion of Johnson, or of Johnson's Life ; and therefore of speaking on that subject with much hope of edifying. Too lightly is it from the first taken for granted that Hunger, the great basis of our life, is also its apex and ultimate perfection ; that as ' Neediness and Greediness and Vainglory ' are the chief qualities of most men, so no man, not even a Johnson, acts or can think of acting on any other principle. Whatso- ever, therefore, cannot be referred to the two former catego- ries (jSTeed and Greed), is without scruple ranged under the latter. It is here properly that our Editor becomes burden- some ; and, to the weaker sort, even a nuisance. '^ What good is it," will such cry, "when we had still some faint shadow of belief that man was better than a selfish Digest- ing-machine, what good is it to poke-in, at every turn, and explain how this and that which we thought noble in old Samuel, was vulgar, base; that for him too there was no reality but in the Stomach ; and except Pudding, and the finer species of pudding which is named Praise, life had no pabulum ? Why, for instance, when we know that Johnson loved his good Wife, and says expressly that their marriage was ' a love-match on both sides,' — should two closed li^DS open to tell us only this : ' Is it not possible that the obvi- ous advantage of having a woman of experience to superin- tend an establishment of this kind (the Edial School) may have contributed to a match so disproportionate in point of BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 85 age ? — Ed.' ? Or again when, in tlie Text, the honest cynic speaks freely of his former poverty, and it is known that he once lived on fourpence-half penny a-day, — need a Commen- tator advance, and comment thus : • When we find Dr. John- son tell unpleasant truths to, or of, other men, let us recollect that he does not appear to have spared himself, on occasions in which he might be forgiven for doing so ' ? Why, in short," continues the exasperated Eeader, '-'should Xotes of this species stand affronting me, when there might have been no ^ote at all ? " — Gentle Eeader, we answer, Be not wroth. AA^iat other could an honest Commentator do, than give thee the best he had ? Such was the picture and theo- rem he had fashioned for himself of the world and of man's doings therein: take it, and draw wise inferences from it. If there did exist a Leader of Public Opinion, and Cham- pion of Orthodoxy in the Church of Jesus of Xazareth, who reckoned that man's glory consisted in not being poor ; and that a Sage, and Prophet of his time, must needs blush be- cause the world had paid him at that easy rate of fourpence- half penny per diem, — was not the fact of such existence worth knowing, worth considering ? Of a much milder hue, yet to us practically of an all- defacing, and for the present enterprise quite ruinous char- acter, — is another grand fundamental failing; the last we shall feel ourselves obliged to take the pain of specifying here. It is, that our Editor has fatally, and almost sur- prisingly, mistaken the limits of an Editor's function; and so, instead of working on the margin with his Pen, to elucidate as best might be, strikes boldly into the body of the page with his Scissors, and there clips at discretion! Four Books Mr. C. had by him, wherefrom to gather light for the fifth, which Avas Bos well's. What does he do but now, in the placidest manner, — slit the whole five into slips, and sew these together into a sextiim quid, exactly at his own convenience; giving Boswell the credit of the 86 Selections from Carlyle.^ whole ! By what art-magic, our readers ask, has he united them? By the simplest of all: by Brackets. Never before was the full virtue of the Bracket made manifest. You begin a sentence under Boswell's guidance, thinking to be carried happily through it by the same: but no; in the middle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some consequent 'for,' — starts up one of these Bracket-ligatures, and stitches you in from half a page to twenty or thirty pages of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; so that often one must make the old sad reflection, 'Where we are, we know; whither we are going, no man knoweth! ' It is truly said also, 'There is much between the cup and the lip; ' but here the case is still sadder : for not till after consideration can you ascertain, now when the cup is at the lip, what liquor it is you are imbibing; whether Boswell's French wine which you began with, or some Piozzi's ginger-beer, or Hawkins's entire, or perhaps some other great Brewer's penny-swipes or even alegar, which has been surreptitiously substituted instead thereof. A situation almost original; not to be tried a second time! But, in fine, what ideas Mr. Croker entertains of a literary ivliole, and the thing called Book; and how the very Printer's Devils did not rise in mutiny against such a conglomeration as this, and refuse to print it, — may remain a problem. And now happily our say is said. All faults, the Moral- ists tell us, are properly shortcomings ; crimes themselves are nothing other than a not doiyig enough; 2^. fighting, but with defective vigor. How much more a mere insuffi- ciency, and this after good efforts, in handicraft practice ! Mr. Croker says: 'The worst that can happen is that all the present Editor has contributed may, if the reader so pleases, be rejected as surplusage.' It is our pleasant duty to take with liearty welcome what he has given; and ren- der thanks even for what he meant to give. Next and finally, it is our painful duty to declare, aloud if that be BosweU's Life of Johnson. 87 necessary, that his gift, as weighed against the hard money which the Booksellers demand for giving it you, is (in our judgment) very greatly the lighter. Xo portion, accord- ingly, of our small floating capital has been embarked in the business, or shall ever be ; indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there is simply no Edition of Boswell to which this last would seem preferable. And now enough, and more than enough! We have next a word to say of James Boswell. Boswell has already been much commented upon ; but rather in the way of censure and vituperation than of true recognition. He was a man that brought himself much before the world; confessed that he eagerly coveted fame, or, if that were not possible, notoriety: of which latter as he gained far more than seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by their natural love of scandal, but by a special ground of envy, to say whatever ill of him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any other individual at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves ; perhaps has done us a greater service than can be specially attributed to more than two or three : yet, ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere exists; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; and as for the empty praise, it has altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do not know the hand that feeds them. Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the general eye; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, again, belonged not to the Time he lived in; were far from common then; indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled; not recognizable there- fore by every one; nay, apt even (so strange had they 88 Selections from Carlyle. grown) to be confounded with the very vices they lay con- tiguous to, and had sprung out of. That he was a wine- bibber and gross liver; gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb ; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he aj)peared at the Shakspeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted 'Corsica Boswell,' round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying more than one pretentious ineptitude : all this unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker fellow- creatures, partly to snuff-up the smell of coming pleasure, and scent it from afar ; in those bag-cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more; in that coarsely protruded shelf -mouth, that fat dewlapped chin; in all this, who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility enough; much that could not have been orna- mental in the temper of a great man's overfed great man (what the Scotch name flunky), though it had been more natural there? The under part of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish character. Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and genu- ine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. That Bos- well was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and crawled, to be near them; that he first (in old Touchwood Auchinleck^s phrase- ology) 'took on with Paoli; ' and then being off with 'the Corsican landlouper,' took on with a schoolmaster, 'ane that keeped a schule, and ca'd it an academy: ' that he did all this, and could not help doing it, we account a very sin- BostvelVs Life of Johnson. 89 gnlar merit. The man, once for all, had an 'open sense,' an open loving heart, which so few have : where Excellence existed, he was compelled to acknowledge it; was drawn towards it, and (let the old sulphur-brand of a Laird say what he liked) could not hut walk with it, — if not as supe- rior, if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey ; better so than not at all. If we reflect now that this love of Excel- lence had not only such an evil nature to triumph over; but also what an education and social position withstood it and weighed it down, its innate strength, victorious over all these things, may astonish us. Consider what an inward impulse there must have been, how many moun- tains of impediment hurled aside, before the Scottish Laird could, as humble servant, embrace the knees (the bosom was not permitted him) of the English Dominie! 'Your Scottish Laird,' says an English naturalist of these days, 'may be defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Boswell too was a Tory; of quite peculiarly feudal, genealogical, pragmatical temper; had been nur- tured in an atmosphere of Heraldry, at the feet of a very Gamaliel in that kind; within bare walls, adorned only with pedigrees ; amid serving-men in threadbare livery : all things teaching him, from birth upwards, to remember that a Laird was a Laird. Perhaps there was a special vanity in his very blood: old Auchinleck had, if not the gay, tail-spreading, peacock vanity of his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious, hissing vanity of the gander; a still more fatal species. Scottish Advocates will yet tell you how the ancient man, having chanced to be the first sheriff appointed (after the abolition of 'hereditary juris- diction ') by royal authority, was wont, in dull-snuffling, pompous tone, to preface many a deliverance from the bench with these words: "I, the first King's Sheriff in Scotland,— " And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so prepossessed and 90 Selections from Carlyle. held back by nature and by art, fly nevertheless like iron to its magnet, whither his better genius called! You may surround the iron and the magnet with what enclosures and encumbrances you please, — with wood, with rubbish, with brass : it matters not, the two feel each other, they struggle restlessly towards each other, they imll be together. The iron may be a Scottish squirelet, full of gulosity and 'gig- manity ; ' * the magnet an English plebeian, and moving rag-and-dust mountain, coarse, proud, irascible, imperious: nevertheless, behold how they embrace, and inseparably cleave to one another! It is one of the strangest phenom- ena of the past century, that at a time when the old rever- ent feeling of Discipleship (such as brought men from far countries, with rich gifts and prostrate soul, to the feet of the Prophets) had passed utterly away from men's prac- tical experience, and was no longer surmised to exist (as it does), perennial, indestructible, in man's inmost heart, — James Boswell should have been the individual, of all others, jDredestined to recall it, in such singular guise, to the wondering, and, for a long while, laughing and unrec- ognizing world. It has been commonly said, 'The man's vulgar vanity was all that attached him to Johnson; he delighted to be seen near him, to be thought connected with him.' Now let it be at once granted that no con- sideration springing out of vulgar vanity could well be absent from the mind of James Boswell, in this his inter- course with Johnson, or in any considerable transaction of his life. At the same time, ask yourself: Whether such vanity, and nothing else, actuated him therein; whether this was the true essence and moving principle of the phe- nomenon, or not rather its outward vesture, and the acci- * * Q. What do you mean by " respectable " ? — A. He always kept a gig-.' (Thurtell's Trial.) — 'Thus,' it has been said, 'does society natur- ally divide itself into four classes : Noblemen, Gentlemen, Gigmen, and Men.' BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 91 dental environment (and defacement) in which it came to light? The man was, by nature and habit, vain; a syco- phant-coxcomb, be it granted : but had there been nothing more than vanit}'' in him, Avas Samuel Johnson the man of men to whom he must attach himself? At the date when Johnson was a poor rusty-coated 'scholar,' dwelling in Temple-lane, and indeed throughout their whole inter- course afterwards, were there not chancellors and prime ministers enough; graceful gentlemen, the glass of fashion; honor-giving noblemen; dinner-giving rich men; renowned fire-eaters, swordsmen, gownsmen; Quacks and Eealities of all hues, — any one of whom bulked much larger in the world's eye than Johnson ever did? To any one of whom, by half that submissiveness and assiduity, our Bozzy might have recommended himself; and sat there, the envy of surrounding lickspittles; pocketing now solid emolument, swallowing now well-cooked viands and wines of rich vintage; in each case, also, shone-on by some glittering reflex of Eenown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of innumerable observers. To no one of whom, however, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar courtierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure amusement; the worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, voluntary business. Does not the frothy-hearted, yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate 's-wig, regularly take post, and hurry up to Lon- don, for the sake of his Sage chiefly; as to a Feast of Tab- ernacles, the Sabbath of his whole year? The plate-licker and wine-bibber dives into Bolt Court, to sip muddy coffee with a cynical old man, and a sour-tempered blind old woman (feeling the cups, whether they are full, with her finger); and patiently endures contradictions without end; too happy so he may but be allowed to listen and live. Nay, it does not appear that vulgar vanity could ever have been much flattered by Boswell's relation to Johnson. 92 Selections fro7n Carlyle. Mr. Croker says, Johnson was to the last little regarded by the great world; from which, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, as from its fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among John- son's friends and special admirers, seems rather to have been laughed at than envied : his officious, whisking, con- sequential ways, the daily reproofs and rebuffs he under- went, could gain from the world no golden, but only leaden opinions. His devout Discipleship seemed nothing more than a mean Spanielship, in the general eye. His mighty 'constellation,' or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observ- antly gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge ill- snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, circling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland dinners and toasts, as henchman to a new sort of chieftain, Henry Erskine, in the domestic 'Outer-House,' could hand him a shilling 'for the sight of his Bear.' Doubtless the man was laughed at, and often heard himself laughed at for his Johnsonism. To be envied is the grand and sole aim of vulgar vanity ; to be filled with good things is that of sensuality : for John- son perhaps no man living envied poor Bozzy ; and of good things (except himself paid for them) there was no vestige in that acquaintanceship. Had nothing other or better than vanity and sensuality been there, Johnson and Bos- well had never come together, or had soon and finally sepa- rated again. In fact, the so copious terrestrial dross that welters cha- otically, as the outer sphere of this man's character, does but render for us more remarkable, more touching, the celestial spark of goodness, of light, and Eeverence for Wisdom, which dwelt in the interior, and could struggle through such encumbrances, and in some degree illuminate and beautify them. There is much lying yet undeveloped in the love of Boswell for Johnson. A cheering proof, in a time which else utterly wanted (and still wants) such, BoswelVs Life of Johnsori. 93 that living Wisdom is quite infinitely precious to man, is the symbol of the Godlike to him, which even weak eyes may discern ; that Loyalty, Discipleship, all that was ever meant by Hero-iuorship, lives perennially in the human bosom, and lyaits, even in these dead days, only for occa- sions to unfold it, and inspire all men with it, and again make the world alive! James Boswell we can regard as a practical witness, or real martyr, to this high everlasting truth. A wonderful martyr, if you will; and in a time which made such martyrdom doubly wonderful: yet the time and its martyr perhaps suited each other. For a decrepit, death-sick Era, when Caxt had first decisively opened her poison-breathing lips to proclaim that God- worship and Mammon-worship were one and the same, that Life was a Lie, and the Earth Beelzebub's, which the Supreme Quack should inherit; and so all things were fallen into the yellow leaf, and fast hastening to noisome corruption: for such an Era, perhaps no better Prophet than a parti-colored Zany-Prophet, concealing, from him- self and others, his prophetic significance in such unex- pected vestures, — was deserved, or would have been in place. A precious medicine lay hidden in floods of coars- est, most composite treacle: the world swallowed the treacle, for it suited the world's palate; and now, after half a century, may the medicine also begin to show itself! James Bos well belonged, in his corruptible part, to the lowest classes of mankind; a foolish, inflated creature, swimming in an element of self-conceit: but in his corrup- tible there dwelt an incorruptible, all the more impressive and indubitable for the strange lodging it had taken. Consider too, with what force, diligence, and vivacity he has rendered back all this which, in Johnson's neighbor- hood, his 'open sense' had so eagerly and freely taken in. That loose-flowing, careless-looking Work of his is as a picture by one of Nature's own Artists; the best possible 94 Selections from Carlyle. resemblance of a Reality ; like the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was : let but the mirror be dear, this is the great point; the picture must and will be ■genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love, and the recognition and vision which love can lend, epi- tomizes nightly the words of Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by little and little, uncon- sciously works together for us a whole Jolinsoniad ; a more free, perfect, sunlit, and spirit-speaking likeness than for many centuries had been drawn by man of man ! Scarcely since the days of Homer has the feat been equaled ; indeed, in many senses, this also is a kind of Heroic Poem. The fit Odyssey of our unheroic age was to be written, not sung; of a Thinker, not of a Fighter; and (for want of a Homer) by the first open soul that might offer, — looked such even through the organs of a Boswell. AVe do the man's intel- lectual endowment great wrong, if we measure it by its mere logical outcome ; though here too, there is not want- ing a light ingenuity, a figurativeness, and fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far deeper than the common. But Boswell's grand intellectual talent was, as such ever is, an unconscious one, of far higher reach and significance than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in parts. Here again we have that old saying verified, 'The heart sees farther than the head.' Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, glaring mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, indeed, is man's life generally but a kind of beast-godhood; the god in us triumphing more and more over the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under his feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennially-significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pax, as a portentous commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The union of melodious. BosicelVs Life of Johnson. 95 celestial Freewill and Reason with foul Irrationality and Lust; in which, nevertheless, dwelt mysterious unspeak- able Fear and half -mad panic Awe; as for mortals there well might! And is not a man a microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same Universe; or rather, is not that Uni- verse even Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and won- derful being, 'the waste fantasy of his own dream'? Xo wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the others, should resemble it ! The peculiarity in his case was the unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination : the highest lay side by side with the lowest; not morally combined w^ith it and spiritually transfiguring it, but tum- bling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with it, and from time to time, as the mad alternation chanced, irradiating it, or eclipsed by it. The world, as we said, has been but unjust to him ; dis- cerning only the outer terrestrial and often sordid mass; without eye, as it generally is, for his inner divine secret; and thus figuring him nowise as a god Pan, but simply of the bestial species, like the cattle on a thousand hills. Nay, sometimes a strange enough hypothesis has been started of him; as if it were in virtue even of these same bad qualities that he did his good Avork ; as if it were the very fact of his being among the worst men in this world that had enabled him to write one of the best books therein! :alser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose in human soul. Bad is by its nature negative, and can do nothing; whatsoever enables us to do anything is by its very nature good. Alas, that there should be teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom this world-ancient fact is still problematical, or even deniable ! Boswell wrote a good Book because he had a heart and an eye to discern AVisdom, and an utterance to render it forth ; because of his free insight, his lively talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open-mindedness. His sneaking sycophancies, 96 Selections from Carlyle. his greediness and forwardness, Avhatever was bestial and earthy in him, are so many blemishes in his Book, which still disturb us in its clearness: wholly hindrances, not helps. Towards Johnson, however, his feeling was not Sycophancy, which is the lowest, but Reverence, which is the highest of human feelings. None but a reverent man (which so unspeakably few are) could have found his way from Boswell's environment to Johnson's: if such worship for real God-made superiors showed itself also as worship for apparent Tailor-made superiors, even as hollow inter- ested mouth-worship for such,— the case, in this composite human nature of ours, was not miraculous, the more was the pity ! But for ourselves, let every one of us cling to this last article of Faith, and know it as the beginning of all knowledge worth the name: That neither James Bos- well's good Book, nor any other good thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness, but always and solely in spite thereof. As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth century: all Johnson's own Writings, laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level to it; already, indeed, they are becoming obsolete for this generation; and for some future generation may be valuable chiefly as Prolegomena and expository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of Boswell. Which of us but remembers, as one of the sunny spots in his existence, the day when he opened these airy volumes, fascinating him by a true natural magic ! It was as if the curtains of the past were drawn aside, and we looked mysteriously into a kindred country, where dwelt our Fathers; inexpressibly dear to us, but which had seemed forever hidden from our eyes. For the dead Night had engulfed it; all was gone, vanished as if it had not been. Nevertheless, wondrously given BostvelVs Life of Johnson. 97 back to uSj there once more it lay; all bright, lucid, bloom- ing-, a little island of Creation amid the circumambient Void. There it still lies ; like a thing stationary, imperish- able, over which changeful Time were now accumulating itself in vain, and could not any longer harm it, or hide it. If we examine by what charm it is that men are still held to this Life of Johnson, now when so much else has been forgotten, the main part of the answer will perhaps be found in that speculation 'on the import of Reality,^ communicated to the world, last month, in this Magazine. The Johnsoniad of Boswell turns on objects that in very deed existed; it is all true. So far other in melodiousness of tone, it vies with the Odyssey, or surpasses it, in this one point: to us these read pages, as those chanted hexa- meters were to the first Greek hearers, are, in the fullest, deepest sense, wholly credible. All the wit and wisdom lying embalmed in Boswell's Book, plenteous as these are, could not have saved it. Far more scientific instruction (mere excitement and enlightenment of the thinking power) can be found in twenty other works of that time, which make but a quite secondary impression on us. The other works of that time, however, fall under one of two classes : Either they are professedly Didactic; and, in that way, mere Abstractions, Philosophic Diagrams, incapable of interesting us much otherwise than SiS Euclid^ s Elements may do : Or else, with all their vivacity, and pictorial rich- ness of color, they are Fictions and not Realities. Deep truly, as Herr Sauerteig urges, is the force of this con- sideration: the thing here stated is a fact ; those figures, that local habitation, are not shadow but substance. In virtue of such advantages, see how a very Boswell may become Poetical! Critics insist much on the Poet that he should commu- nicate an 'Infinitude' to his delineation; that by intensity of conception, by that gift of 'transcendental Thought," 98 Selections from Carlyle. which is fitly named genius, and inspiration, he should inform the Finite with a certain Infinitude of significance ; or as they sometimes say, ennoble the Actual into Ideal- ness. They are right in their precept; they mean rightly. But in cases like this of the Johnsoniad, such is the dark grandeur of that 'Time element,' wherein man's soul here below lives imprisoned, — the Poet's task is, as it were, done to his hand : Time itself, which is the outer veil of Eternity, invests, of its own accord, with an authentic felt 'infinitude,' whatsoever it has once embraced in its myste- rious folds. Consider all that lies in that one word Past! What a pathetic, sacred, in every sense j)oetic, meaning is implied in it; a meaning growing ever the clearer, the farther we recede in Time, — the more of that same Past we have to look through! — On which ground indeed must Sauerteig have built, and not without plausibility, in that strange thesis of his: 'That History, after all, is the true Poetry; that Eeality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than Fiction; nay, that even in the right interpretation of Reality and History does genuine Poetry consist.' Thus for BoswelVs Life of Johnson has Time done, is Time still doing, what no ornament of Art or Artifice could have done for it. Rough Samuel and sleek wheedling James were, and are not. Their Life and whole personal Environment has melted into air. The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street: but where now is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale loving, cocked-hatted, pot-bellied Landlord; its rosy -faced, assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass-pans, waxed tables, well-filled larder-shelves ; her cooks, and bootjacks, and errand-boys, and watery- mouthed hangers-on? Gone! Gone! The becking Waiter who, with Avreathed smiles, was wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their supper of the gods, has long since pocketed his last sixpence; and vanished, sixpences and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing. The Bottles they drank out of are BosiveIVs Life of Johnson, 99 all broken, the Chairs they sat on all rotted and burnt; the very Knives and Forks they ate with have rusted to the heart, and become brown oxide of iron, and mingled with the indiscriminate clay. All, all has vanished, in very deed and truth; like that baseless fabric of Prospero's air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare walls remain there: of London, of England, of the World, nothing but the bare walls remain; and these also decaying (were they of adamant), only slower. The mysterious Kiver of Exist- ence rushes on: a new Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes wildly as ever round the old embankments ; but the former Billow with its loud, mad eddyings, where is it? — Where! — Now this Book of Bos well's, this is precisely a revocation of the edict of Destiny; so that Time shall not utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha-lamps, with its line of Naphtha-light, burns clear and holy through the dead Night of the Past : they who are gone are still here ; though hidden, they are revealed, though dead, they yet speak. There it shines, that little miraculously lamplit Pathway; shedding its feebler and feebler twilight into the boundless dark Oblivion, — for all that our Johnson touched has become illuminated for us: on which miraculously little Pathway we can still travel, and see wonders. It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Bos well's will give us more real insight into the History of England during those days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special aim. What good is it to me though innumerable Smolletts and Belshams keep dinning in my ears that a man named G-eorge the Third was born and bred up, and a man named George the Second died; that Walpole, and the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rockingham, and Shelburne, and North, with their Coalition or their Separation Ministries, all 100 Selections from Carlyle. ousted one another; and vehemently scrambled for 'the thing they called the Rudder of Government, but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxation'? That debates were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning took place; and road-bills and enclosure-bills, and game-bills and India- bills, and Laws which no man can number, which happily few men needed to trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? That he who sat in Chancery, and rayed-out speculation from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, now a man that did not squint? — To the hungry and thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength or by specific levity, as apples or as horse-dung, on the top of the current : but is it by painfully noting the courses, edclyings and bobbings hither and thither of such drift-articles, that you will unfold to me the nature of the current itself; of that mighty-rolling, loud-roaring Life- current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe, mysterious as its Author? The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Max in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward environ- ment, its inward principle ; liow and what it was ; whence it proceeded, whither it was tending. Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the business called 'History,' in these so enlightened and illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to that great question: How men lived and had their being; were it but economically, as, what wages they got, and what they bought with these? Unhappily you cannot. History will throw no light on any such matter. At the point where living memory fails, it is all darkness; Mr. BoswelVs Life of Johnson. '101 Senior and Mr. Sadler must still debate' tiiis simplest! of -ail elements in the condition of the Past : Whether men were better off, in their mere larders and pantries, or were worse off than now! History, as it stands all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instructive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon-board. How my Prime IMinister was appointed is of less moment to me than How my House Servant was hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of Kiiigs and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers. Por example, I would fain know the History of Scotland : who can tell it me? ^Eobertson,' say innumerable voices; 'Robertson against the world.' I open Robertson; and find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented in the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to this ques- tion: 'By whom, and by what means, when and how, was this fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National Character, created, and made arable, verdant, peculiar, great, here as I can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (like some Bacchus-tamed Lion), from the Castle- hill of Edinburgh ? ' — but to this other question : 'How did the King keep himself alive in those old days; and re.strain so many Butcher-Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating one another, so that killing Avent on in some sort of moderation ? ' In the one little Letter of ^neas Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of His- tory than in all this. — At length, however, we come to a luminous age, interesting enough; to the age of the Refor- mation. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life: the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, agitates every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude. 102' '' ' ' 'iSel'ec'tioiis> from Carlyle. iietitTi-iliatclied workshop, among liis rude guild-brethren; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen : in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungovernable tongues ; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: 'How was it; how went it on? Let us understand it, let us see it, and know it ! ' — In reply, is handed us a really graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Jour- nal of Fashion) of two persons : Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over light-headed; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder : this, and not the History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of other Books have been written to prove that it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all being so effec- tually done, concerns us little. To know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable increase of knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and see him with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is History written. Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' Avill tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, plea- santly and of its own accord! The time is approaching when History will be attempted on quite other principles ; when the Court, the Senate, and the Battlefield, receding more and more into the background, the Temple, the Work- shop, and Social Hearth will advance more and more into the foreground ; and History will not content itself with shap- ing some answer to that question: 'How were men taxed and hept quiet then?' but will seek to answer this other BosivelVs Life of Johnson. . 103 infinitely wider and higher question : ' How and what were men then ? ' Not our Government only, or the House where- in our life was led, but the Life itself we led there, will be inquired into. Of which latter it may be found that Gov- ernment, in any modern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary condition : in the mere sense of Taxation and Keejnug quiet, a small, almost a pitiful one. — Meanwhile let us welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, as bring us any genuine contribution, were it never so inadequate, so inconsiderable. An exception was early taken against this Life of John- son, and all similar enterprises, which we here recommend; and has been transmitted from critic to critic, and repeated in their several dialects, uninterruptedly, ever since: That such jottings-down of careless conversation are an infringe- ment of social privacy; a crime against our highest Free- dom, the Freedom of man's intercourse with man. To this accusation, which we have read and heard oftener than enough, might it not be well for once to offer the flattest contradiction, and plea of Not at all guilty 9 Not that con- versation is noted down, but that conversation should not deserve noting down, is the evil. Doubtless, if conversa- tion be falsely recorded, then is it simply a Lie ; and worthy of being swept, with all despatch, to the Father of Lies. But if, on the other hand, conversation can be authentically recorded, and any one is ready for the task, let him by all means proceed with it ; let conversation be kept in remem- brance to the latest date possible. Nay, should the con- sciousness that a man may be among us ' taking notes ' tend, in any measure, to restrict those floods of idle insincere speech, with which the thought of mankind is wellnigh drowned, — were it other than the most indubitable benefit ? He who speaks honestly cares not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to remotest time : for him who speaks c7/shonestly, the fittest of all punishments seems to 104 Selections from Carlyle. be this same, which the nature of the case provides. The dishonest speaker, not he only who purposely utters false- hoods, but he who does not purposely, and with sincere heart, utter Truth, and Truth alone ; who babbles he knows not what, and has clapped no bridle on his tongue, but lets it run racket, ejecting chatter and futility, — is among the most indisputable malefactors omitted, or inserted, in the Criminal Calendar. To him that will well consider it, i41e speakino: is p recisely the beginning of all Hollowness, Half- ness, Infidelity (want of Faithfulness); the genial atmos- phere in which rank weeds of every kind attain the mastery over noble fruits in man's life, and utterly choke them out: one of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost withstood. Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, was that old precept: Watch thy tongue; out of it are the issues of Life ! ^Man is properly an incarnated icord;^ the 'word that he speaks is the man himself. Were eyes put into our head, that we might see; or only that we might fancy, and plaus- ibly pretend, we had seen f Was the tongue suspended there, that it might tell truly what we had seen, and make man the soul' s-br other of man ; or only that it might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and so divide man, as by enchanted walls of Darkness, from union with man ? Thou who wearest that cunning, heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy thought hath silently matured itself, till thou have other than mad and mad-looking noises to emit: hold thy tongue (thou hast it a-hol ding) -till some meaning lie behind, to set it wagging. Consider the significance of Silexce: it is boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted ; unspeak- ably profitable to thee ! Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor: out of Silence comes thy strength. ^Speech is silvern. Silence is golden; Speech is human, Silence is BoswelVs Life of Johnson, 105 divine.' Fool ! thiukest thou that because no Bos\7ell is there with ass-skin and blacklead to note thy jargon, it there- fore dies and is harmless ? Nothing dies, nothing can die. No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed cast into Time, and grows through all Eternity ! The Eecording Angel, con- sider it well, is no fable, but the truest of truths : the paper tablets thou canst burn ; of the ' iron leaf ' there is no burn- ing. Truly, if we can permit God Almighty to note down our conversation, thinking it good enough for Him, — any poor Boswell need not scruple to work his will of it. Leaving now this our English Odyssey, with its Singer and Scholiast, let us come to the Ulysses; that great Samuel Johnson himself, the far-experienced, 'much-enduring man,' whose labors and pilgrimage are here sung. A full-length image of his Existence has been preserved for us : and he, perhaps of all living Englishmen, was the one who best deserved that honor. For if it is true, and now almost pro- verbial, that 'the Life of the lowest mortal, if faithfully recorded, would be interesting to the highest ; ' how much more when the mortal in question was already distinguished in fortune and natural quality, so that his thinkings and doings were not significant of himself only, but of large masses of mankind ! ' There is not a man whom I meet on the streets,' says one, ' but I could like, were it otherwise convenient, to know his Biography : ' nevertheless, could an enlightened curiosity be so far gratified, it must be owned the Biography of most ought to be, in an extreme degree, summary. In this world, there is so wonderfully little self- subsistence among men ; next to no originality (though never absolutely 7ione) : one Life is too servilely the copy of another ; and so in whole thousands of them you find little that is properly new; nothing but the old song sung by a new voice, with better or worse execution, here and there an ornamental quaver, and false notes enough : but the fuuda- 106 Selections from Carlyle. mental tune is ever the same ; and for the tcords, — these, all that they meant stands written generally on the Church- yard-stone : Natussum; esurieham, qumrebam ; nunc repletiis requiesco. Mankind sail their Life- voyage in huge fleets, following some single whale-fishing or herring-fishing Com- modore : the log-book of each differs not, in essential purport, from that of any other : nay, the most have no legible log-book (reflection, observation not being among their talents) ; keep no reckoning, only keep in sight of the flagship, — and fish. Read the Commodore's Papers (know his Life) ; and even your lover of that street Biography will have learned the most of what he sought after. Or, the servile imitancy, and yet also a nobler relationship and mysterious union to one another which lies in such imi- tancy of Mankind, might be illustrated under the different figure, itself nowise original, of a Flock of Sheep. Sheep go in flocks for three reasons. First, because they are of a gre- garious temper, and love to be together : Secondly, because of their cowardice ; they are afraid to be left alone : Thirdly, because the common run of them are dull of sight, to a pro- verb, and can have no choice in roads ; sheep can in fact see nothing ; in a celestial Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tank- ard, would discern only that both dazzled them, and were of unspeakable glory. How like their fellow-creatures of the human species ! Men too, as was from the first maintained here, are gregarious; then surely faint-hearted enough, trembling to be left by themselves ; above all, dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are we seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at all ; and after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistaking them for Suns ! Foolish Turnip-lanterns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures lie : solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it ; also when grass is bitter BostveWs Life of Johnson. 107 and scant, we know it, — and bleat and butt : these last two facts we know of a truth and in very deed. Thus do Men and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth ; wander- ing restlessly in large masses, they know not whither ; for most part, each following his neighbor, and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always ; look better, you shall find certain that do, in some small degree, know whither. Sheep have their Bell-wether ; some ram of the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision than other sheep ; he leads them through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender ; courageously marching, and if need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van : him they courage- ously and with assured heart follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these woolly Hosts adhere to their Wether ; and rush after him, through good report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye : ' If you hold a stick before the Wether, so that he, by necessity, leaps in passing you, and then withdraw your stick, the Flock will nevertheless all leap as he did ; and the thousandth sheep shall be found impetuously vault- ing over air, as the first did over an otherwise impassable barrier.' Eeader, wouldst thou understand Society, ponder well those ovine proceedings ; thou wilt find them all curiously significant. Now if sheep always, how much more must men always, have their Chief, their Guide ! Man too is by nature quite thoroughly gregarious : nay, ever he struggles to be some- thing more, to be social; not even when Society has become impossible, does that deep-seated tendency and effort for- sake him. Man, as if by miraculous magic, imparts his Thoughts, his Mood of mind to man ; an unspeakable com- 108 Selections from Carlyle. mnnion binds all past, present, and future men into one indissoluble whole, almost into one living individual. Of which high, mysterious Truth, this disposition to imitate, to lead and be led, this impossibility not to imitate, is the most constant, and one of the simplest, of manifestations. To 'imitate ' ! which of us all can measure the significance that lies in- that one word ? By virtue of which the infant Man, born at Woolsthorpe, grows up not to be a hairy Savage, and chewer of Acorns, but an Isaac Newton and Discoverer of Solar Systems ! — Thus both in a celestial and terrestrial sense are we a Flock, such as there is no other : nay, looking away from the base and ludicrous to the sublime and sacred side of the matter (since in every matter there are two sides), have not we also a Shepherd, 'if we will but hear his voice ' ? Of those stupid multitudes there is no one but has an immortal Soul within him ; a reflex and living image of God's whole Universe : strangely, from its dim environment, the light of the Highest looks through him; — for which reason, indeed, it is that we claim a brotherhood with him, and so love to know his History, and come into clearer and clearer union with all that he feels, and says, and does. However, the chief thing to be noted was this: Amid those dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll hither and thither, whithersoever they are led ; and seem all sightless and slavish, accomplishing, attempting little save what the animal instinct in its somewhat higher kind might teach. To keep themselves and their young ones alive, — are scattered here and there superior natures, whose eye is not destitute of free vision, nor their heart of free volition. These latter, therefore, examine and determine, not what others do, but what it is right to do ; towards which, and which only, will they, with such force as is given them, resolutely endeavor : for if the Machine, living or inanimate, is merely fed, or desires to be fed, and so icorks ; the Person can will, and so do. These are proj^erly our Men, our Great BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 109 Men ; the guides of the dull host, — which follows them as by an irrevocable decree. They are the chosen of the world : they had this rare faculty not only of ' supposing ' and ' in- clining to think/ but of knowing and believing ; the nature of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay, but by clear Vision ; while others hovered and swam along, in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded by the mere Shows of things, these saw into the Things themselves, and could walk as men having an eternal loadstar, and with their feet on sure paths. Thus was there a Reality in their existence ; ■-^ something of a perennial character ; in virtue of which indeed it is that the memory of them is i^erennial. Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumboj umbos, must needs die with it : though he have been crowned seven times in the Capitol, or seventy-and-seven times, and Rumor have blown his praises to all the four winds, deafening every ear there- with, — it avails not ; there was nothing universal, nothing eternal in him ; he must fade away, even as the Popinjay- gildings and Scarecrow-apparel, which he could not see through. The great man does, in good truth, belong to his ' own age ; nay, more so than any other man ; being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age with its interests and influences : but belongs likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory in him passes away ; and . an immortal part remains, the significance of which is inl strict speech inexhaustible, — as that of every real object is. 1 Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene, unaltering ; silently addresses to every new genera- I tion a new lesson and monition. Well is his Life worth ' writing, worth interpreting ; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of re-writing and re-interpreting. , Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not ranking among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly admitted into that sacred band ; whose existence Avas no idle Dream, 110 Selections from Carlyle. but a Reality which he transacted awake; nowise a Clothes- horse and Patent Digester, but a genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for the noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priest- hood, and Guidance of mankind ; by destiny, moreover, he was appointed to this task, and did actually, according to strength, fulfil the same : so that always the question. How ; in ivhat spirit; under what sliape ? remains for us to be asked and answered concerning him. For, as the highest Gospel was ^ Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubitable Gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that Devils even must believe, and tremble, these gladdest tidings : " Man is heaven-born ; not the thrall of Circumstances, of Necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof: behold how he can become the 'Announcer of himself and of his Freedom ; ' and is ever what the Thinker has named him, ' the Messias of Nature.' " — Yes, E-eader, all this that thou hast so often heard about ' force of circum- stances,' ' the creature of the time,' ' balancing of motives,' and who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest paralyzed, and hast no force left, — was in very truth, if Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little other than a hag-ridden vision of death-sleep, some /ia//-fact, more fatal at times than a whole falsehood. Shake it off ; awake ; up and be doing, even as it is given thee ! The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life to reconcile, was in Johnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for any man, has the contrast between the ethereal heavenward side of things, and the dark sordid earthward, been more glaring : whether we look at Nature's work wdth him or Fortune's, from first to last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is on all hands manifest. AVhereby indeed, only this was declared. That much Life had been given him ; many things to triumph over, a great work to do. Happily also he did it ; better than the most. BosivelVs Life of Johnson. Ill Nature had given him a high, keen-visionecl, almost poetic soul ; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, unsightly body : he that could never rest had not limbs that would move with him, but only roll and waddle : the inward eye, all- penetrating, all-embracing, must look through bodily win- dows that were dim, half-blinded; he so loved men, and ' never once saw the human face divine ' ! Not less did he prize the love of men ; he was eminently social ; the appro- bation of his fellows was dear to him, 'valuable,' as he owned, ' if from the meanest of human beings : ' yet the first impression he produced on every man was to be one of aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature it was farther ordered that the imperious Johnson should be born poor : the ruler-soul, strong in its native royalty, generous, un- controllable, like the lion of the woods, was to be housed then in such a dwelling-place : of Disfigurement, Disease, and lastly of a Poverty which itself made him the servant of servants. Thus was the born king likewise a born slave : the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned amid dull-croaking universal Discords ; the Ariel finds himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is it more or less, we know (and thou, Reader, knowest and feelest even now), with all men : yet with the fewest men in any such degree as with Johnson. Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first appear- ance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or turn the other way, but works unweariedly in the same spirit, while he is journeying through the world. What such a mind, stamped of Nature's noblest metal, though in so ungainly a die, was specially and best of all fitted for, might still be a question. To none of the world's few Incorporated Guilds could he have adjusted himself without difficulty, without distortion; in none been a Guild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we look to the strictly practical nature of his faculty, to the strength, decision, method that manifests itself in him, we 112 Selections from Oarlyle. may say that his calling was rather towards Active than Speculative life ; that as Statesman (in the higher, now obsolete sense), Lawgiver, Ruler, in short as Doer of the AVork, he had shone even more than as Speaker of the Word. His honesty of heart, his courageous temper, the value he set on things outward and material, might have made him a King among Kings. Had the golden age of those new French Prophets, when it shall be a cliacun selon sa capacite, d, chaque capacite selon ses oeiwres, but arrived ! Indeed, even in our brazen and Birmingham-lacquer age, he himself regretted that he had not become a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, which he might well have done. However, it was otherwise appointed. To no man does Fortune throw open all the kingdoms of this world, and say : ' It is thine ; choose where thou wilt dwell ! ' To the most she opens hardly the smallest cranny or dog-hutch, and says, not without asperity : ' There, that is thine while thou canst keep it ; nestle thyself there, and bless Heaven ! ' Alas, men must fit themselves into many things : some forty years ago, for instance, the noblest and ablest Man in all the British lands might be seen, not sway- ing the royal sceptre, or the pontiff's censer, on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale-tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries ! Johnson came a little nearer the mark than Burns : but with him too ' Strength was mournfully denied its arena ; ' he too had to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long. Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so ordered it) is well seen in early boyhood. ^His favorites,' says Bos- well, ' used to receive very liberal assistance from him 5 and such was the submission and deference with which he was treated, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat upon his back, and one on each side supported him ; and thus was he borne triumphant.' The BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 113 purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with, bis open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, irresistible ! Not in the ' King's-chair ' (of human arms), as we see, do his three satellites carry him along : rather on the Tyranfs-saclcUe, the back of his fellow-creature, must he ride prosperous ! — The child is father of the man. He who had seen fifty years into coming Time, would have felt that little spectacle of mischievous schoolboys to be a great one. For us, who look back on it, and what followed it, now from afar, there arise questions enough : How looked these urchins ? What jackets and galligaskins had they ; felt headgear, or of dogskin leather ? What was old Lich- field doing then ; what thinking ? — and so on, through the whole series of Corporal Trim's 'auxiliary verbs.' A picture of it all fashions itself together ; — only unhappily we have no brush and no fingers. Boyhood is now past; the ferula of Pedagogue waves harmless, in the distance : Samuel has struggled up to un- couth bulk and youthhood, wrestling with Disease and Poverty, all the way ; which two continue still his compan- ions. At College we see little of him ; yet thus much, that things went not well. A rugged Wild-man of the desert, awakened to the feeling of himself ; proud as the proudest, poor as the poorest ; stoically shut up, silently enduring the incurable : what a world of blackest gloom, with sun-gleams and pale tearful moon-gleams, and flickerings of a celestial and an infernal splendor, was this that now opened for him ! But the weather is wintry ; and the toes of the man are looking through his shoes. His muddy features grow of a purple and sea-green color; a flood of black indignation mantling beneath. A truculent, raw-boned figure ! Meat he has probably little ; hope he has less : his feet, as we said, have come into brotherhood with the cold mire. ' Shall I be particular,' inquires Sir John Hawkins, 'and relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to him as an effect 114 Selections from Carlyle. of his own extravagance or irregularity, and consequently reflects no disgrace on his memory ? He had scarce any change of raiment, and in a short time after Corhet left him, "but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen through them : a gentleman of his college, the father of an eminent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber ; who, seeing them upon his first going out, so far forgot himself and the spirit which must have actuated his unknown benefactor, that, with all the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away. ' How exceedingly surprising ! — The Eev. Dr. Hall re- marks : 'As far as we can judge from a cursory view of tlie weekly account in the butter^^-books, Johnson appears to have lived as well as other commoners and scholars.' Alas ! such ' cursory view of the buttery -books/ now from the safe distance of a century, in the safe chair of a College Mas- tership, is one thing ; the continual view of the empty or locked buttery itself was quite a different thing. But hear our Knight, how he farther discourses. ' Johnson,' quoth Sir John, ' could not at this early period of his life divest himself of an idea that poverty was disgraceful ; and was very severe in his censures of that economy in both our Universities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the several denominations of Servitors in the one, and Sizars in the other : he thought that the scholar's, like the Christian life, leveled all distinctions of rank and worldly preeminence; but in this he was mistaken: civil polity ' &c. &c. — Too true ! It is man's lot to err. However, Destiny, in all ways, means to prove the mis- taken Samuel, and see what stuff is in him. He must leave these butteries of Oxford, Want like an armed man compel- ling him ; retreat into his father's mean home ; and there abandon himself for a season to inaction, disappointment, shame, and nervous melancholy nigh run mad : he is prob- ably the wretchedest man in wide England. In all ways he too must ' become jDerfect through suffering.^ — High thoughts have visited him ; his College Exercises have been praised BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 115 beyond the walls of College; Pope himself has seen that Translation, and approved of it : Samuel had whispered to himself: I too am 'one and somewhat.' False thoughts; that leave only misery behind ! The fever-fire of Ambition is too painfully extinguished (but not cured) in the frost- bath of Poverty. Johnson has knocked at the gate, as one having a right ; but there was no opening : the world lies all encircled as with brass ; nowhere can he find or force the smallest entrance. An ushership at Market Bosworth, and 'a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school,' yields him bread of affliction and water of affliction ; but so bitter, that unassisted human nature can- not swallow them. Young Samson will grind no more in the Philistine mill of Bosworth ; quits hold of Sir Wolstan, and the ' domestic chaplaincy, so far at least as to say grace at table,' and also to be ' treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness ;' and so, after ' some months of such complicated misery,' feeling doubtless that there are worse things in the world than quick death by Famine, 'relin- quishes a situation which all his life afterwards he recol- lected with the strongest aversion, and even horror.' Men like Johnson are properly called the Forlorn Hope of the World : judge whether his hope was forlorn or not, by this Letter to a dull oily Printer, who called himself Sylvanus Urban : ' Sir, — As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defect of your poetical article, you will not be displeased if (in order to the improvement of it) I communicate to you the sentiments of a person who will undertake, on reasonable terms, sometimes to fill a column. 'His opinion is, that the public would' &c. &c, ' If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts, what i:he conditions are on which you shall expect it. Your late offer (for a Prize Poem) gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects be- sides this paper, I have other designs to impart.' 116 Selections from Carlyle. Reader, the generous person to whom this letter goes ad- dressed, is ' Mr. Edmund Cave, at St. John's Gate, London ; ' the addressor of it is Samuel Johnson, in Birmingham, War- wickshire. Nevertheless, Life rallies in the man ; reasserts its right to be lived, even to be enjoyed. ' Better a small bush,' say the Scotch, ' than no shelter : ' Johnson learns to be con- tented with humble human things ; and is there not already an actual realized human Existence, all stirring and living on every hand of him ? Go thou and do likewise ! In Birmingham itself, with his own purchased goose-quill, he can earn '■ five guineas ; ' nay, finally, the choicest terrestrial good : a Eriend, who will be Wife to him ! Johnson's mar- riage with the good Widow Porter has been treated with ridi- cule by many mortals, who apparently had no understanding thereof. That the purblind, seamy-faced Wild-man, stalk- ing lonely, woe-stricken, like some Irish Gallowglass with peeled club, whose speech no man knew, whose look all men both laughed at and shuddered at, should find any brave fe- male heart to acknowledge, at first sight and hearing of him, ' This is the most sensible man I ever met with ; ' and then, with generous courage, to take him to itself, and say, ' Be thou mine ; be thou warmed here, and thawed to life ! ' — in all this, in the kind Widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's love and gratitude, there is actually no matter for ridicule. Their wedded life, as is the common lot, was made up of drizzle and dry weather ; but innocence and worth dwelt in it ; and, wheh death had ended it, a certain sacredness : Johnson's deathless affection for his Tetty was always venerable and noble. However, be all this as it might, Johnson is now minded to wed ; and will live by the trade of Pedagogy, for by this also may life be kept-in. Let the world therefore take notice : ' At Edial near Lichfield , in Staffordshire, yoking gentlemen are hoarded, and taught the Latin and Greek BosiuelVs Life of Johnson. 117 languages, by — Samuel Johnsox.' Had this Eclial enter- prise prospered, how different might the issue have been ! Johnson had lived a life of unnoticed nobleness, or, swoln into some amorphous Dr. Parr, of no avail to us; Bozzy Avould have dwindled into official insignificance, or risen by some other elevation; old Auchinleck had never been afflicted with 'ane that keeped a schule,' or obliged to violate hospitality by a " Cromwell do ? God, sir, he gart kings ken that there was a litli in their neck ! " — But the Edial enterprise did not prosper ; Destiny had other work appointed for Samuel J ohnson ; and young gentlemen got board where they could elsewhere find it. This man was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in the most sur- prising Avay ; a Man of Letters, and Ruler of the British Nation for some time, — not of their bodies merely, but of their minds ; not over them, but in them. The career of Literature could not, in Johnson's day any more than now, be said to lie along the shores of a Pactolus : whatever else might be gathered there, gold-dust was nowise the chief produce. The w^orld, from the times of Socrates, St. Paul, and far earlier, has always had its Teachers ; and always treated them in a peculiar way. A shrewd Town- clerk (not of Ephesus), once, in founding a Burgh-Seminary, when the question came. How the Schoolmasters should be maintained? delivered this brief counsel: "D — n them, keep them poor!^^ Considerable wisdom may lie in this aphorism. At all events, we see, the world has acted on it long, and indeed improved on it, — putting many a School- master of its great Burgh-Seminary to a death which even cost it something. The world, it is true, had for some time been too busy to go out of its w^ay, and put any Author to death ; however, the old sentence pronounced against them w-as found to be pretty sufficient. The first Writers, being Monks, w^ere sworn to a vow of Poverty; the modern 118 Seleetio7is from Carlyle. Authors had no need to swear to it. This was the epoch when an Otway coukl still die of hunger ; not to speak of your innumerable Scrog'ginses, whom 'the Muse found stretched beneath a rug/ with 'rusty grate unconscious of a lire/ stocking-nightcap, sanded floor, and all the other escutcheons of the craft, time out of mind the heirlooms of Authorship. Scroggins, however, seems to have been but an idler ; not at all so diligent as worthy Mr. Boyce, whom we might have seen sitting-up in bed, with his wearing- apparel of Blanket about him, and a hole slit in the same, that his hand might be at liberty to work in its vocation. The worst was, that too frequently a blackguard recklessness of temper ensued, incapable of turning to account what good the gods even here had provided : your Boyces acted on some stoico-epicurean principle of carpe diem, as men do in bom- barded towns, and seasons of raging pestilence ; — and so had lost not only their life, and presence of mind, but their status as persons of respectability. The trade of Author was at about one of its lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it. Accordingly we find no mention of Illuminations in the city of London, when this same Ruler of the British Nation arrived in it: no cannon-salvos are fired; no flourish of drums and trumpets greets his appearance on the scene. He enters quite quietly, with some copper halfpence in his pocket ; creeps into lodgings in Exeter Street, Strand ; and has a Coronation Pontiff also, of not less peculiar equipment, whom, with all submissiveness, he must wait upon in his Vatican of St. John's Gate. This is the dull oily Printer alluded to above. 'Cave's temper,' says our Knight Hawkins, 'was phlegmatic: though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he once put to an author: "Mr. , I hear you have just published a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it upon the subject of music : did you write that yourself ? " His discernment was also slow ; and as BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 119 lie had already at his command some writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of Booksellers, are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, or courting an intimacy with John- son. Upon the first approach of a stranger, his practice was to con- tinue sitting ; a posture in which he was ever to be found, and for a few minutes to continue silent : if at any time he was inclined to be- gin the discourse, it was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it. * * * He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that, mean- ing at one time to dazzle him with the splendor of some of those luminaries in Literature who favored him with their correspondence, he told him that if he would, in the evening, be at a certain alehouse in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of see- ing Mr. Browne and another or two of those illustrious contributors : Johnson accepted the invitation; and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified.' * In fact, if we look seriously into the condition of Author- ship at that period, we shall find that Johnson had under- taken one of the ruggedest of all possible enterprises ; that here as elsewhere Fortune had given him unspeakable Con- tradictions to reconcile. For a man of Johnson's stamp, the Problem was twofokl: First, not only as the humble but indispensable condition of all else, to keep himself, if so might be, alive; but secondly, to keep himself alive by speaking forth the Truth that was in him, and speaking it truly, that is, in the clearest and fittest utterance the Heav- ens had enabled him to give it, let the Earth say to this what she liked. Of which twofold Problem if it be hard to solve either member separately, how incalculably more so to solve it, when both are conjoined, and work -with end- less complication into one another ! He that finds himself already l^ept alive can sometimes (unhappily not always) * Hawkins, pp. 46-50. 120 Selections from Carlyle. speak a little truth ; he that finds himself able and willing, to all lengths, to speak lies, may, by watching how the wind sits, scrape together a livelihood, sometimes of great splen- dor : he, again, who finds himself provided with neither en- dowment, has but a ticklish game to play, and shall have praises if he win it. Let us look a little at both faces of the matter ; and see what front they then offered^ our Advent- urer, what front he offered them. At the time of Johnson's appearance on the field. Litera- ture, in many senses, was in a transitional state ; chiefly in this sense, as respects the pecuniary subsistence of its culti- vators. It was in the very act of passing from the protec- tion of Patrons into that of the Public ; no longer to supply its necessities by laudatory Dedications to the Great, but by judicious Bargains with the Booksellers. This happy change has been much sung and celebrated ; many a ' lord of the lion heart and eagle eye' looking back with scorn enough on the bygone system of Dependency : so that now it were perhaps well to consider, for a moment, what good might also be in it, what gratitude we owe it. That a good was in it, admits not of doubt. Whatsoever has existed has had its value : without some truth and worth lying in it, the thing could not have hung together, and been the organ and sustenance, and method of action, for men that reasoned and were alive. Translate a Falsehood which is wholly false into Practice, the result comes out zero; there is no fruit or issue to be derived from it. That in an age when a Nobleman was still noble, still with his wealth the protector of worthy and humane things, and still venerated as such, a poor Man of Genius, his brother in nobleness, should, with unfeigned reverence, address him and say : " I have found Wisdom here, and would fain proclaim it abroad ; wilt thou, of thy abundance, afford me the means ? " — in all this there was no baseness ; it was wholly an honest proposal, which a free man might make, and a free man BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 121 listen to. So miglit a Tasso, with a Gerusalemme in his hand or in his head, speak to a Duke of Ferrara ; so might a Shakspeare to his Southampton; and Continental Art- ists generally to their rich Protectors, — in some countries, down almost to these days. It was only when the reverence became feigned that baseness entered into the transaction on both sides ; and, indeed, flourished there mtli rapid luxuriance, till th'at became disgraceful for a Dryden, which a Shakspeare could once practise without offence. Neither, it is very true, was the new way of Bookseller Msecenasship w^orthless ; which opened itself at this junc- ture, for the most important of all transport-trades, now when the old way had become too miry and impassable. Eemark, moreover, how this second sort of Msecenasship, after carrying us through nearly a century of Literary Time, appears now to have wellnigh discharged its function also ; and to be working pretty rapidly toward some third method, the exact conditions of which are yet nowise visible. Thus all things have their end ; and we should part Avitli them all, not in anger, but in peace. The Bookseller-System, during its peculiar century, the whole of the eighteenth, did carry us handsomely along, and many good Works it has left us ; and many good Men it maintained : if it is now expiring by Puffery, as the Patronage-System did by Flattery (for Lying is ever the forerunner of Death, nay is itself Death), let us not forget its benefits; how it nursed Literature through boyhood and school-years, as Patronage had wrapped it in soft swaddling-bands ; — till now we see it about to i3ut on the toga virilis, could it but find any such ! There is tolerable traveling on the beaten road, run how it may ; only on the new road not yet leveled and paved, and on the old road all broken into ruts and quagmires, is the traveling bad or impracticable. The difficulty lies always in the transition from one method to another. In which state it was that Johnson now found Literature ; and 122 Selections ,/Vom Caj^lyle. out of which, let us also say, he manfully carried it. What remarkable mortal first paid copyright in England Ave have not ascertained ; perhaps, for almost a century before, some scarce visible or ponderable pittance of wages had occasion- ally been yielded by the Seller of Books to the Writer of them : the original Covenant, stipulating to produce Para- dise Lost on the one hand, and Five Pounds Sterling on the other, still lies (we have been told) in black-on-white, for inspection and purchase by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery-Lane. Thus had the matter gone on, in a mixed confused way, for some threescore years ; — as ever, in such things, the old system overlaps the new, by some generation or two, and only dies quite out when the new has got a com- plete organization and weather-worthy surface of its own. Among the first Authors, the very first of any significance, who lived by the day's wages of his craft, and composedly faced the world on that basis, was Samuel Johnson. At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still two ways on which an Author might attempt proceeding : there were the Maecenases proper in the West End of London; and the Msecenases virtual of St. John's Gate and Pater- noster Row. To a considerate man it might seem uncer- tain which method Avere preferable : neither had very high attractions ; the Patron's aid was now Avellnigh necessarily polluted by sycophancy, before it could come to hand ; the Bookseller's Avas deformed Avith greedy stupidity, not to say entire wooden-headedness and disgust (so that an Osborne even required to be knocked doAvn, by an author of spirit), and could barely keep the thread of life together. The one was the Avages of suffering and poverty ; the other, unless you gave strict heed to it, the Avages of sin. In time, John- son had opportunity of looking into both methods, and ascertaining AAdiat they Avere ; but found, at first trial, that the former Avould in noAvise do for him. Listen, once again, to that far-famed Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 123 Lord Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listening world, that patronage should be no more ! ' Seven years, my Lord, have novsr passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have been pushing on my Work* through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publi- cation, without one act of assistance, t one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help ? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind : but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I am known and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received ; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my Work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should con- clude it, if less be possible, with less : for I have long been awakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, Sam. Johnson. And thus must the rebellious ^ Sam. Johnson ' turn him to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos of ^Author by trade ; ' and, though ushered into it only by that dull * The English Dictionary. t Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to wash away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as ' Notes ; ' especially two : the one on this word, and on Boswell's Note to it ; the other on the para- graph which follows. Let 'Ed.' look a second time; he will find that Johnson's sacred regard for Truth is the only thing to be ' noted ' in the former case; also, in the latter, that this of ' Love's being a native of the rocks ' actually has a ' meaning.' 124 Selections from Carlyle. oily Printer, ^ with loose horseman's coat and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore/ and only as subaltern to some commanding-officer 'Browne, sitting amid tobacco- smoke at the head of a long table in the alehouse at Cler- kenwell/ — gird himself together for t^ie warfare; having no alternative ! Little less contradictory was that other branch of the twofold Problem now set before Johnson: the speaking forth of Truth. Nay, taken by itself, it had in those days become so complex as to puzzle strongest heads, with noth- ing else imposed on them for solution; and even to turn high heads of that sort into mere hollow vizards, speak- ing neither truth nor falsehood, nor anything but what the Prompter and Player (vTroKpiTrjs:) put into them. Alas ! for poor Johnson Contradiction abounded ; in spirituals and in temporals, within and without. Born with the strongest unconquerable love of just Insight, he must begin to live and learn in a scene where Prejudice flourishes with rank luxuriance. England was all confused enough, sightless and yet restless, take it where you would; but figure the best intellect in England nursed up. to manhood in the idol- cavern of a poor Tradesman's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield! ' What is Truth ? ' said jesting Pilate. 'What is Truth ? ' might earnest Johnson much more emphatically say. Truth, no longer, like the Phoenix, in rainbow plum- age, poured from her glittering beak such tones of sweetest melody as took captive every ear: the Phoenix (waxing old) had wellnigh ceased her singing; and empty wearisome Cuckoos, and doleful monotonous Owls, innumerable Jays also, and twittering Sparrows on the housetop, pretended they were repeating her. It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson; Unity existed nowhere, in its Heaven, or in its Earth. Society, through every fibre, was rent asunder: all things, it was then becoming visible, but could not then be understood, BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 125 were moving onwards, with an impulse received ages before, yet now first with a decisive rapidity, towards that great chaotic gulf, where, whether in the shape of French Eevoki- tions, Keform Bills, or what shape soever, bloody or blood- less, the descent and engulfment assume, we now see them weltering and boiling. Already Cant, as once before hinted, had begun to play its wonderful part, for the hour was come : two ghastly Apparitions, unreal simulacra both. Hypocrisy and Atheism, are already, in silence, parting the world. Opinion and Action, which should live together as wedded pair, ' one flesh, ' more properly as Soul and Body, have commenced their open quarrel, and are suing for a separate maintenance, — as if they could exist separately. To the earnest mind, in any position, firm footing and a life of Truth was becoming daily more difficult : in Johnson's posi- tion it was more difficult than in almost any other. If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indispen- sable, he looked up to Religion, as to the polestar of his voyage, already there was no fixed polestar any longer visi- ble ; but two stars, a whole constellation of stars, each pro- claiming itself as the true. There was the red portentous comet-star of Infidelity ; the dim fixed-star, burning ever dimmer, uncertain now whether not an atmospheric meteor, of Orthodoxy : which of these to choose ? The keener intellects of Europe had, almost without exception, ranged themselves under the former : for some half century, it had been the general effort of European speculation to proclaim that Destruction of Falsehood was the only Truth; daily had Denial waxed stronger and stronger. Belief sunk more and more into decay. From our Bolingbrokes and Tolands the sceptical fever had passed into France, into Scotland; and already it smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out the heart of England. Bayle had played his part ; Voltaire, on a wider theatre, was playing his, — Johnson's senior by some fifteen years : Hume and Johnson were children 1 26 Selection s from Carlyle . almost of the same year.* To this keener order of intel- lects did Johnson's indisputably belong: was he to join them ; was he to oppose them ? A complicated question : for, alas, the Church itself is no longer, even to him, wholly of true adamant, but of adamant and baked mud conjoined : the zealously Devout has to find his Church tottering ; and pause amazed to see, instead of inspired Priest, many a swine-feeding Trulliber ministering at her altar. ^ It is not the least curious of the incoherences which Johnson had to reconcile, that, though by nature contemptuous and incredu- lous, he was, at that time of day, to find his safety and glory in defending, with his whole might, the traditions of the elders. Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides hollow or questionable, was the aspect of Politics. Whigs strug- gling blindly forward, Tories holding blindly back ; each with some forecast of a half truth ; neither with any fore- cast of the whole ! Admire here this other Contradiction in the life of Johnson; that, though the most ungovernable, and in practice the most independent of men, he must be a Jacobite and worshiper of the Divine Right. In politics also there are Irreconcilables enough for him. As, indeed, how could it be otherwise ? For when Religion is torn asun- der, and the very heart of man's existence set against itself, then in all subordinate departments there must needs be hollowness, incoherence. The English Nation had rebelled against a Tyrant; and, by the hands of religious tyranni- cides, exacted stern vengeance of him : Democracy had risen iron-sinewed, and, 'like an infant Hercules, strangled ser- pents in its cradle.' But as yet none knew the meaning or extent of the phenomenon : Europe was not ripe for it ; not to be ripened for it but by the culture and various experi- ence of another century and a half. And now, when the King-killers were all swept away, and a milder second * Jolmsou, September 1709 ; Hume, April 1711. BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 127 picture was painted over the canvas of the Jirst, and betitled 'Glorious Eevolution/ who doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole business finished, and Democracy gone to its long sleep? Yet was it like a business finished and not finished ; a lingering uneasiness dwelt in all minds : the deep-lying, resistless Tendency, which had still to be obeyed, could no longer be recognized; thus was the halfness, insin- cerity, uncertainty in men's ways ; instead of heroic Puritans and heroic Cavaliers, came now a daw^lling set of argumen- tative Whigs, and a dawdling set of deaf-eared Tories ; each half-foolish, each half-false. The Whigs were false and without basis ; inasmuch as their wdiole object was Eesist- ance, Criticism, Demolition, — they knew not why, or towards what issue. In Whiggism, ever since a Charles and his Jeffries had ceased to meddle with it, and to have any Eus- sell or Sydney to meddle with, there could be no divineness of character ; not till, in these latter days, it took the figure of a thorough-going, all-defying Eadicalism, was there any solid footing for it to stand on. Of the like uncertain, half-hol- low nature had Toryism become, in Johnson's time ; preach- ing forth indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of Loyalty ; yet now, ever since the final expulsion of the Stuarts, having no Person, but only an Office to be loyal to ; no living Soul to worship, but only a dead velvet-cushioned Chair. Its attitude, therefore, was stiff-necked refusal to move ; as that of Whiggism was clamorous command to move, — let rhyme and reason, on both hands, say to it what they might. The consequence was: Immeasurable floods of contentious jargon, tending nowhither; false conviction; false resistance to con- viction ; decay (ultimately to become decease) of whatsoever was once understood by the words, Principle, or Honesty of heart ; the louder and louder triumph of Hcdfness and Plau- sibility over Wholeness and Truth ; — at last, this all-over- shadowing efflorescence of Quackery, which we now see, with all its deadening and killing fruits, in all its innumer- 128 Selections from Carlyle. able branches, down to the lowest. How, between these jarring extremes, wherein the rotten lay so inextricably intermingled with the sound, and as yet no eye could see through the ulterior meaning of the matter, was a faithful and true man to adjust himself ? That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted the Conservative side ; stationed himself as the unyielding opponent of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the form of sound words, could not but increase, in no small measure, the difficulties he had to strive with. We mean, the moral difficulties ; for in economical respects, it might be pretty equally balanced ; the Tory servant of the Public had per- haps about the same chance of promotion as the Whig : and all the promotion Johnson aimed at was the privilege to live. But for what, though unavowed, was no less indispensable, for his peace of conscience, and the clear ascertainment and feeling of his Duty as an inhabitant of God's world, the case was hereby rendered much more complex. To resist Innovation is easy enough on one condition : that you resist Inquiry. This is, and was, the common expedient of your common Conservatives ; but it would not do for Johnson : he was a zealous recommender and practiser of Inquiry ; once for all, could not and would not believe, much less speak and act, a Falsehood: the /orm of sound words, which he held fast, must have a meaning in it. Here lay the difficulty : to behold a portentous mixture of True and False, and feel that he must dwell and fight there ; yet to love and defend only the True. How worship, when you cannot and will not be an idolater ; yet cannot help discerning that the Symbol of your Divinity has half become idolatrous ? This was the question which Johnson, the man both of clear eye and devout believing heart, must answer, — at peril of his life. The Whig or Sceptic, on the other hand, had a much simpler part to play. To him only the idolatrous side of things, nowise the divine one, lay visible : not ivorshijy, therefore. BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 129 nay, in the strict sense not heart-honesty, only at most lip- ancl hand-honesty, is required of him. What spiritual force is his, he can conscientiously employ in the work of cavil- ing, of pulling-down what is False. For the rest, that there is or can be any Truth of a higher than sensual nature, has not occurred to him. The utmost, therefore, that he as man has to aim at, is Respectability, the suffrages of his fellow- men. Such suffrages he may weigh as well as count; or count only : according as he is a Burke or a Wilkes. But beyond these there lies nothing divine for him ; these attained, all is attained. Thus is his whole world distinct and rounded-in : a clear goal is set before him ; a firm path, rougher or smoother ; at worst, a firm region wherein to seek a path: let him gird-up his loins, and travel on without misgivings! For the honest Conservative, again, nothing is distinct, nothing rounded-in: Kespectability can nowise be his highest Godhead ; not one aim, but two conflicting aims to be continually reconciled by him, has he to strive after. A difficult position, as we said ; which accordingly the most did, even in those days, but half defend : by the surrender, namely, of their own too cumbersome honesty, or even under- standing ; after which the completest defence was worth little. Into this difficult x^osition Johnson, nevertheless, threw himself : found it indeed full of difficulties ; yet held it out manfully, as an honest-hearted, open-sighted man, while life was in him. Such was that same ' twofold Problem ' set before Samuel Johnson. Consider all these moral difficulties ; and add to them the fearful aggravation, which lay in that other circumstance, that he needed a continual appeal to the Pub- lic, must continually produce a certain impression and con- viction on the Public ; that, if he did not, he ceased to have ^ provision for the day that was passing over him,' he could not any longer live ! How a vulgar character, once launched into this wild element ; driven onwards by Fear and Famine ; 130 Selections from Carlyle. without other aim than to clutch what Provender (of Enjoy- ment in any kind) he coukl get, always if possible keeping quite clear of the Gallows and Pillory, that is to say, mind- ing heedf ully both ' person ' and ' character,' — would have floated hither and thither in it ; and contrived to eat some three repasts daily, and wear some three suits yearly, and then to depart and disappear, having consumed his last ration : all this might be worth knowing, but were in itself a trivial knowledge. How a noble man, resolute for the Truth, to whom Shams and Lies were once for all an abomi- nation, was to act in it : here lay the mystery. By what methods, by what gifts of eye and hand, does a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when cast forth into that waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest of things, a mingled Phlegethon and Fleetditch, with its floating lumber, and sea-krakens, and mud-spectres, — shape himself a voyage; of the transient driftwood, and the enduring iron, build him a sea-worthy Life-boat, and sail therein, undrowned, unpolluted, through the roaring 'mother of dead dogs,' onwards to an eternal Landmark, and City that hath foundations ? This high question is even the one answered in Boswell's Book ; which Book we therefore, not so falsely, have named a Heroic Poem; for in it there lies the whole argument of such. Glory to our brave Samuel ! He accomplished this wonderful Prob- lem; and now through long generations we point to him, and say : ' Here also was a Man ; let the world once more have assurance of a Man ! ' Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on that con- fusion worse confounded of grandeur and squalor, no light but an earthly outward one, he too must have made ship- wreck. With his diseased body, and vehement voracious heart, how easy for him to become a carpe-diem Philosopher, like the rest, and live and die as miserably as any Boyce of that Brotherhood ! But happily there was a higher light for him ; shining as a lamp to his path ; which, in all paths. BosivelVs Life of Johison. 131 would teach him to act and walk not as a fool, but as wise, and in those evil days too, 'redeeming the t'.me.' Under dimmer or clearer manifestations, a Truth had been revealed to him : ' I also am a Man ; even in this unutterable element of Authorship, I may live as beseems a Man ! ' That Wrong- is not only different from Right, but that it is in strict scien- tific terms infinitely different; even as the gaining of the whole world set against the losing of one's own soul, or (as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell ; that in all situations out of the Pit of Tophet, wherein a living Man has stood or can stand, there is actually a Prize of quite infinite value placed within his reach, namely a Duty for him to do : this highest Gospel, which forms the basis and worth of all other Gospels whatsoever, had been revealed to Samuel Johnson ; and the man had believed it, and laid it faithfully to heart. Such knowledge of the transcendental, immeasurable character of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, the essence of all Eeligion : he who with his whole soul knows not this, as yet knows nothing, as yet is prop- erly nothing. This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those that knew: under a certain authentic Symbol it stood forever present to his eyes : a Symbol, indeed, waxing old as doth a garment; yet which had guided forward, as their Banner and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumerable saints and wit- nesses, the fathers of our modern world; and for him also had still a sacred significance. It does not appear that at any time Johnson was what we call irreligious : but in his sorrows and isolation, when hope died away, and only a long vista of suffering and toil lay before him to the end, then first did Eeligion shine forth in its meek, everlasting clearness ; even as the stars do in black night, which in the daytime and dusk Avere hidden by inferior lights. How a true man, in the midst of errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself a sure Life-truth: and, adjusting the 132 Selections from Carlyle. transient to the eternal, amid the fragments of ruined Temples build u"j) Avith toil and pain a little Altar for him- self, and worship there ; how Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can purify and fortify his soul, and hold real communion with the Highest, ' in the Church of St. Clement Danes : ' this too stands all unfolded in his Biography, and is among the most touching and memorable things there ; a thing to be looked at with pity, admiration, awe. John- son's Heligion was as the light of life to him; without it his heart was all sick, dark, and had no guidance left. He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeakable shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel hereby that he lights under a celestial flag, and will quit him like a man. The first grand requisite, an assured heart, he there- fore has : what his outward equipments and accoutrements are, is the next question ; an important though inferior one. His intellectual stock, intrinsically viewed, is perhaps incon- siderable ; the furnishings of an English School and Eng- lish University ; good knowledge of the Latin tongue, a more uncertain one of Greek : this is a rather slender stock of Edu- cation wherewith to front the world. But then it is to be remembered that his world was England ; that such was the culture England commonly supplied and expected. Besides, Johnson has been a voracious reader, though a desultory one, and oftenest in strange, scholastic, too obsolete Libra- ries ; he has also rubbed shoulders with the press of Actual Life for some thirty years now : views or hallucinations of innumerable things are weltering to and fro in him. Above all, be his weapons what they may, he has an arm that can wield them. Nature has given him her choicest gift, — an open eye and heart. He will look on the world, where- soever he can catch a glimpse of it, with eager curiosity : to the last, we find this a striking characteristic of him ; for all human interests he has a sense ; the meanest handi- craftsman could interest him, even in extreme age, by BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 133 speaking of his craft : the ways of men are all interesting to him ; any human thing that he did not know, he wished to know. Reflection, moreover. Meditation, was what he prac- tised incessantly, with or without his will : for the mind of the man was earnest, deep as well as humane. Thus would the world, such fragments of it as he could survey, form itself, or continually tend to form itself, into a coherent Whole ; on any and on all phases of which, his vote and voice must be well worth listening to. As a speaker of the Word, he will speak real words ; no idle jargon or hollow triviality will issue from him. His aim too is clear, attain- able; that of working fo7' his wages: let him do this hon- estly, and all else will follow of its own accord. With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson go forth. A rugged hungry Kern or Gallowglass, as we called him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true spirit of a Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since such is his appointment, were it but at hewing of wood and drawing of water for old sedentary bushy-wigged Cave ; distinguishes himself by mere quantity, if there is to be no other distinc- tion. He can write all things ; frosty Latin verses, if these are the salable commodity ; Book-prefaces, Political Philip- pics, Review Articles, Parliamentary Debates : all things he does rapidly ; still more surprising, all things he does thor- oughly and well. How he sits there, in his rough-hewn, amorphous bulk, in that upper-room at St. John's Gate, and trundles-off sheet after sheet of those Senate-of-Lilliput Debates, to the clamorous Printer's Devils waiting for them with insatiable throat, down stairs ; himself perhaps im- pransus all the while ! Admire also the greatness of Litera- ture ; how a grain of mustard-seed cast into its Nile-waters, shall settle in the teeming mould, and be found one day as a Tree, in whose branches all the fowls of heaven may lodge. Was it not so with these Lilliput Debates ? In that small project and act began the stupendous Fourth Estate; 134 Selections from Carlyle. whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in ; in whose boughs are there not already fowls of strange feather lodged ? Such things, and far stranger, were done in that wondrous old Portal, even in latter times. And then figure Samuel dining ' behind the screen,' from a trencher covertly handed-in to him, at a preconcerted nod from the ' great bushy wig ; ' Samuel too ragged to show face, yet 'made a happy man of by hearing his praise spoken. If to Johnson himself, then much more to us, may that St. John's Gate be a place we can 'never pass without veneration.' * * All Johnson's places of resort and abode are venerable, and now indeed to the many as well as to the few ; for his name has become great ; and, as we mnst often with a kind of sad admiration recognize, there is, even to the rudest man, no greatness so venerable as intellectual, as spiritual greatness ; nay, properly there is no other venerable at all. For example, what soul-subduing magic, for the very clown or craftsman of our England, lies in the word * Scholar ' ! " He is a Scholar: " he is a man wiser than we; of a wisdom to us boundless, infinite: who shall speak his worth! Such things, we say, fill us with a certain pathetic admiration of defaced and obstructed, yet glorious man ; archangel though in ruins, — or rather, though in rubbish of encumbrances and mud-incrustations, which also are not to be perpetual. Nevertheless, in this mad-whirling, all-forgetting London, the haunts of the mighty that were can seldom without a strange difiiculty be dis- covered. Will any man, for instance, tell us which bricks it was in Lincoln's Inn Buildings that Ben .Jonson's hand and trowel laid? No man, it is to be feared, — and also grumbled at. With Samuel Johnson may it prove otherwise ! A Gentleman of the British Museum is said to have made drawings of all his residences : the blessing of Old Mortality be upon him! We ourselves, not without labor and risk, lately discovered GouGH Square, between Fleet Street and Holborn (adjoining both to Bolt Court and to Johnson's Court) ; and on the second day of search, the very House there, wherein the English Dictionary was composed. It is the first or corner house on the right hand, as you enter through the arched way from the North-west. The actual occupant, an elderly, well- washed, decent-looking man, invited us to enter; and courteously under- took to be cicerone ; though in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble and hallucination. It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house : " I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said the worthy Landlord : " here, you see, this Bedroom was the Doctor's study; BosweU's Life of Johnson. 135 Poverty, Distress, and as yet Obscurity, are his compan- ions : so poor is lie that his Wife must leave him, and seek shelter among other relations ; Johnson's household has accommodation for one inmate only. To all his ever-vary- ing, ever-recurring troubles, moreover, must be added this continual one of ill-health, and its concomitant depres- siveness : a galling load, which would have crushed most common mortals into desperation, is his appointed ballast and life-burden ; he ' could not remember the day he had passed free from pain.' ISTevertheless, Life, as we said before, is always Life : a healthy soul, imprison it as you will, in squalid garrets, shabby coat, bodily sickness, or whatever else, will assert its heaven-granted indefeasible Freedom, its right to conquer difficulties, to do work, even to feel gladness. ^Johnson does not whine over his existence, but manfully makes the most and best of it. ^ He said, a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence ar-week : few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, " Sir, I am to be found at such a place." By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for six- pence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a penny, and do without supper. On dean-shirt day he went abroad and paid visits.' Think by whom and of whom this was uttered, and ask then, Whether there is more joathos in it than in a whole circulatisg-library of Giaours and Harolds, or less pathos ? On another occasion, ' when Dr. Johnson, one day, read his o^vn Satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, that was the garden " (a plot of delved ground somewhat larger than a bed-quilt), " where he walked for exercise ; these three garret Bedrooms " (where his three Copyists sat and wrote) " were the place he kept his — Pupils in" \ Tempus edax rerum! Yet ferax also: for our friend now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical : " I let it all in Lodgings, to respectable gentlemen ; by the quarter or the month ; it's all one to me." — "To me also," whispered the Ghost of Samuel, as we went pensively our ways. 136 Selections from Carlyle. with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears.' These were sweet tears ; the sweet victorious remembrance lay in them of toils indeed frightful, yet never flinched from, and now triumphed over. ' One day it shall delight you also to re- member labor done ! ' — Neither, though Johnson is obscure and poor, need the highest enjoyment of existence, that of heart freely communing with heart, be denied him. Savage and he wander homeless through the streets ; without bed, yet not Avithout friendly converse ; such another conversa- tion not, it is like, producible in the proudest drawing-room of London. Nor, under the void Night, upon the hard pave- ment, are their own woes the only topic : nowise ; they ' will stand by their country,' they there, the two Backwoodsmen of the Brick Desert ! Of all outward evils Obscurity is perhaps in itself the least. To Johnson, as to a healthy-minded man, the fan- tastic article, sold or given under the title of Fame, had little or no value but its intrinsic one. He prized it as the means of getting him employment and good wages ; scarcely as anything more. His light and guidance came from a loftier source ; of which, in honest aversion to all hypocrisy or pretentious talk, he spoke not to men ; nay, perhaps, being of a healthy mind, had never spoken to himself. We reckon it a striking fact in Johnson's history, this careless- ness of his to Fame. Most authors speak of their Tame' as if it were a quite priceless matter; the grand ultimatum, and heavenly Constantine's Banner they had to follow, and conquer under. — Thy ' Fame ' ! Unhappy mortal, where will it and thou both be in some fifty years ? Shakspeare himself has lasted but two hundred ; Homer (partly by accident) three thousand : and does not already an Eter- nity encircle every 3Ie and every Thee f Cease, then, to sit feverishly hatching on that ' Fame ' of thine ; and flap- ping and shrieking with fierce hisses, like brood-goose on BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 137 her last e^g, if man shall or dare ai^proach it ! Quarrel not with me, hate me not, my Brother : make what thou canst of thy q^^, and welcome : God knows, I will not steal it ; I believe it to be addle. — Johnson, for his part, was no man to be killed by a review ; concerning which matter, it was said by a benevolent person : ^ If any author can be reviewed to death, let it be, with all convenient despatch, done.'' Johnson thankfully receives any word spoken in his favor ; is nowise disobliged by a lampoon, but will look at it, if pointed out to him, and show how it might have been done better : the lampoon itself is indeed 7iofhing, a soap-bubble that next moment will become a drop of sour suds ; but in the mean while, if it do anything, it keeps him more in the world's eye, and the next bargain will be all the richer : ' Sir, if they should cease to talk of me, I must starve.' Sound heart and understanding head : these fail no man, not even a Man of Letters ! Obscurity, however, was, in Johnson's case, whether a light or heavy evil, likely to be no lasting one. He is ani- mated by the spirit of a true ivorhman, resolute to do his work well ; and he does his work well ; all his work, that of writing, that of living. A man of this stamp is un- happily not so common in the literary or in any other department of the world, that he can continue always unnoticed. By slow degrees, Johnson emerges ; looming, at first, huge and dim in the eye of an observant few ; at last disclosed, in his real proportions, to the eye of the whole world, and encircled with a ^ light-nimbus ' of glory, so that whoso is not blind must and shall behold him. By slow degrees, we said; for this also is notable; slow but sure : as his fame waxes not by exaggerated clamor of what he seems to be, but by better and better insight of what he is, so it will last and stand wearing, being genuine. Thus indeed is it always, or nearly always, with true fame. The heavenly Luminary rises amid vapors ; stargazers enough 138 Selections from Carlyle. must scan it witli critical telescopes ; it makes no blazing, tlie world can either look at it, or forbear looking at it ; not till after a time and times does its celestial eternal nature become indubitable. Pleasant, on the other hand, is the blazing of a Tarbarrel ; the crowd dance merrily round it, with loud huzzaing, universal three-times-three, and, like Homer's peasants, '■ bless the useful light : ' but un- happily it so soon ends in darkness, foul choking smoke ; and is kicked into the gutters, a nameless imbroglio of charred staves, pitch-cinders, and vomissement du diable ! But indeed, from of old, Johnson has enjoyed all, or nearly all, that Fame can yield any man : the respect, the obedience of those that are about him and inferior to him ; of those whose opinion alone can have any forcible impres- sion on him. A little circle gathers round the Wise man ; which gradually enlarges as the report thereof spreads, and more can come to see and to believe ; for Wisdom is precious, and of irresistible attraction to all. ' An ins]3ired idiot,' Gold- smith, hangs strangely about him ; though, as Hawkins says, ' he loved not Johnson, but rather envied him for his parts ; and once entreated a friend to desist from praising him, " for in doing so," said he, " you harrow-up my very soul ! " ' Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the ' gooseberry-fool ; ' but rather much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker, sort than Johnson's ; and all the more genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it, — though unhappily never cease attempting to become so : the Author of the genuine Vicar of Wakefield, nill he, will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine Manhood; and Dr. Minor keep gyrating round Dr. Major, alternately attracted and repelled. Then there is the chivalrous Topham Beauclerk, with his sharp wit and gallant courtly ways : there is Bennet Lang- ton, an orthodox gentleman, and worthy ; though Johnson once laughed, louder almost than mortal, at his last will and testament ; and 'could not stop his merriment, but con- BoswelVs Life of Johnson, 139 tinned it all the way till he got without the Temple-gate ; then burst into such a fit of laughter that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so loud that, in the silence of the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet- ditch I ' Lastly comes his solid-thinking, solid-feeling Thrale, the well-beloved man; with Tliralia, a bright papilionaceous creature, whom the elephant loved to play with, and wave to and fro upon his trunk. Not to speak of a reverent Bozzy ; for what need is there farther ? — Or of the spiritual Luminaries, with tongue or pen, who made that age remark- able ; or of Highland Lairds drinking, in fierce usquebaugh, " Your health, Toctor Shonson ! " — Still less of many such as that poor ' Mr. F. Lewis,' older in date, of whose birth, death, and whole terrestrial res gestce, this only, and strange enough this actually, survives : " Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society ! " Stat Parvi nominis umbra. — In his fifty-third year he is beneficed, by the royal bounty, with a Pension of three-hundred pounds. Loud clamor is always more or less insane : but probably the insanest of all loud clamors in the eighteenth century was this that was raised about Johnson's Pension. Men seem to be led by the noses : but in reality, it is by the ears, — as some ancient slaves were, who had their ears bored ; or as some modern quadrupeds may be, whose ears are long. Very falsely was it said, 'iSfames do not change Things.' Names do change Things ; nay, for most part they are the only substance which mankind can discern in Things. The whole sum that Johnson, during the remaining twenty-two years of his life, drew from the public funds of England, would have supported some Supreme Priest for about half as many weeks ; it amounts very nearly to the revenue of our poorest Church-Overseer for one twelvemonth. Of secular Admin- istrators of Provinces, and Horse-subduers, and Game-de- 140 Selections from Carlyle. stroyers, we shall not so much as speak : but who were the Primates of England, and the Primates of All England, during Johnson's days ? No man has remembered. Again, is the Primate of all England something, or is he nothing ? If something, then what but the man who, in the supreme degree, teaches and spiritually edifies, and leads towards Heaven by guiding wisely through the Earth, the living souls that inhabit England ? We touch here upon deep mat- ters ; which but remotely concern us, and might lead us into still deeper: clear in the meanwhile it is, that the true Spiritual Edifier and Soul's-Father of all England was, and till very lately continued to be, the man named Samuel Johnson, — whom this scot-and-lot-paying world cackled reproachfully to see remunerated like a Supervisor of Excise ! If Destiny had beaten hard on poor Samuel, and did never cease to visit him too roughly, yet the last section of his Life might be pronounced victorious, and on the whole happy. He was not idle ; but now no longer goaded-on by want; the light which had shone irradiating the dark haunts of Poverty, now illuminates the circles of Wealth, of a certain culture and elegant intelligence ; he who had once been admitted to speak with Edmund Cave and Tobacco Browne, now admits a Eeynolds and a Burke to speak with him. Loving friends are there ; Listeners, even Answerers: the fruit of his long labors lies round him in fair legible Writings, of Philosophy, Eloquence, Morality, Philology; some excellent, all worthy and genuine Works ; for which too, a deep, earnest murmur of thanks reaches him from all ends of his Fatherland. Nay, there are works of Goodness, of undying Mercy, which even he has possessed the power to do : ' AVhat I gave I have ; what I spent I had ! ' Early friends had long sunk into the grave ; yet in his soul they ever lived, fresh and clear, with soft pious breathings towards them, not without a still hope of one day meeting them again BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 141 in purer union. Such was Johnson's Life : the victorious Battle of a free, true Man. Finally he died the death of the free and true : a dark cloud of Death, solemn and not untinged with halos of immortal Hope, 'took him away,' and our eyes could no longer behold him ; but can still behold the trace and impress of his courageous honest spirit, deep-legible in the World's Business, wheresoever he Avalked and was. To estimate the quantity of Work that Johnson performed, how much poorer the World were had it wanted him, can, as in all such cases, never be accurately done ; cannot, till after some longer space, be approximately done. All work is as seed sown ; it grows and spreads, and sows it3t ^ aiie vv j^nd so, in endless palingenesia, lives and works. To Johnson's Writings, good and solid and still profitable as they are, we have already rated his Life and Conversation as superior. By the one and by the other, who shall compute what effects have been produced, and are still, and into deep Time, producing ? So much, however, we can already see : It is now some three quarters of a century that Johnson has been the Pro- phet of the English ; the man by whose light the English people, in public and in private, more than by any other man's, have guided their existence. Higher light than that immediately practical one; higher virtue than an honest Prudexce, he could not then communicate ; nor perhaps could they have received : such light, such virtue, however, he did communicate. How to thread this labyrinthic Time, the fallen and falling Ruin of Times ; to silence vain Scru- ples, hold firm to the last the fragments of old Belief, and with earnest eye still discern some glimpses of a true path, and go forward thereon, ' in a world where there is much to be done, and little to be known : ' this is what Samuel John- son, by act and word, taught his ISTation ; what his Nation 142 Selectio7is fro7n Carlyle. received and learned of liim, more than of any other. We can view him as the preserver and transmitter of whatsoever was genuine in the spirit of Toryism ; which genuine spirit, it is now becoming manifest, must again embody itself in all new forms of Society, be what they may, that are to exist and have continuance — elsewhere than on Paper. The last in many things, Johnson was the last genuine Tory ; the last of Englishmen who, with strong voice and wholly-believing heart, x^reached the Doctrine of Standing-still ; who, without selfishness or slavishness, reverenced the existing Powers, and could assert the privileges of rank, though himself poor, neglected, and plebeian; who had heart-devoutness with heart-hatred of cant, was orthodox-religious with his eyes open ; and in all things and everywhere spoke out in plain English, from a soul wherein Jesuitism could find no harbor, and with the front and tone not of a diplomatist but of a man. The last of the Tories was Johnson: not Burke, as is often said; Burke was essentially a Whig, and only on reaching the verge of the chasm towards which Whiggism from the first was inevitably leading, recoiled ; and, like a man vehement rather than earnest, a resplendent far-sighted Ehetorician rather than a deep sure Thinker, recoiled with no measure, convulsively, and damaging what he drove back with him. In a world which exists by the balance of Antagonisms, the respective merit of the Conservator and the Innovator must ever remain debatable. Great, in the mean while, and undoubted for both sides, is the merit of him who, in a day of Change, walks wisely, honestly. Johnson's aim was in itself an impossible one : this of stemming the eternal Flood of Time ; of clutching all things, and anchoring them down, and saying, ' Move not ! ' — how could it or should it ever have success ? The strongest man can but retard the cur- rent partially and for a short hour. Yet even in such shortest retardation may not an inestimable value lie ? If BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 143 England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution ; and may yet, in virtue of this delay and of the experience it has given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new Era, let Samuel Johnson, beyond all contemporary or suc- ceeding men, have the praise for it. We said above that he was appointed to be Euler of the British Nation for a sea- son : whoso will look beyond the surface, into the heart of the world's movements, may find that all Pitt Administra- tions, and Continental Subsidies, and Waterloo victories, rested on the possibility of making England yet a little while Toryisli, Loyal to the Old; and this again on the anterior reality, that the Wise had found such Loyalty still practicable, and recomniendable. England had its Hume, as France had its Voltaires and Diderots; but the Johnson was peculiar to us. If we ask now, by what endowment it mainly was that Johnson realized such a Life for himself and others ; what quality of character the main phenomena of his Life may be most naturally deduced from, and his other qualities most naturally subordinated to, in our conception of him, perhaps the answer were : The quality of Courage, of Valor ; that Johnson was a Brave Man. The Courage that can go forth, once and away, to Chalk-Farm, and have itself shot and snuffed out with decency, is noAvise wholly what we mean here. Such courage we indeed esteem an exceeding small matter ; capable of coexisting with a life full of false- hood, feebleness, poltroonery, and despicability. Nay, oftener it is Cowardice rather that produces the result : for con- sider. Is the Chalk-Farm Pistoleer inspired with any reason- able Belief and Determination ; or is he hounded-on by hag- gard indefinable Fear, — how he will be cut at public places, and ^plucked geese of the neighborhood' will wag their tongues at him, a plucked goose ? If he go then, and be shot without shrieking or audible uproar, it is well for him : nevertheless there is nothing amazing in it. Courage to 144 Selections from Carlyle. manage all this lias not perhaps been denied to any man, or to any woman. Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through the streets of manufacturing towns, and collect ragged losels enough ; every one of whom, if once dressed in red, and trained a little, will receive lire cheerfully for the small sum of one shilling per diem, and have the soul blown out of him at last, with perfect propriety ? The Courage that dares only die is on the whole no sublime affair; necessary indeed, yet universal; pitiful Avhen it begins to parade itself. On this Globe of ours there are some thirty-six persons that manifest it, seldom with the smallest failure, during every second of time. Nay, look at Newgate : do not the offscourings of Creation, when con- demned to the gallows as if they were not men but vermin, walk thither with decency, and, even to the scowls and hootings of the whole Universe, give their stern good-night in silence ? What is to be undergone only once, we may undergo; what must be, comes almost of its own accord. Considered as Duellist, what a poor figure does the fiercest Irish Whiskerando make in comparison w^ith any English Game-cock, such as you may buy for fifteenpence ! The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully. This, when by God's grace it has been given, lies deep in the soul ; like genial heat, fosters all other virtues and gifts; without it they could not live. In spite of our innumerable Waterloos and Peter- loos, and such campaigning as there has been, this Courage we allude to, and call the only true one, is perhaps rarer in these last ages than it has been in any other since the Saxon Invasion under Hengist. Altogether extinct it can never be among men ; otherwise the species Man were no longer for this world : here and there, in all times, under various guises, men are sent hither not only to demonstrate but exhibit it, and testify, as from heart to heart, that it is still possible, still practicable. BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 145 Johnson, in tlie eighteenth century, and as Man of Letters, was one of such ; and, in good truth, ' the bravest of the brave.' Wliat mortal coukl have more to war with ? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not ; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's heart may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Ob- serve too that he never called himself brave, never felt himself to be so ; the more completely icas so. No Griant Despair, no Golgotha Death-dance or Sorcerer's-Sabbath of ^Literary Life in London,' appals this pilgrim; he works resolutely for deliverance ; in still defiance steps stoutly along. The thing that is given him to do, he can make himself do ; what is to be endured, he can endure in silence. How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily his own bitter unalleviable allotment of misery and toil, shows beside the poor flimsy little soul of young Boswell; one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarrying by the wine- cup and crying, ' Aha, the wine is red ; ' the next day deploring his downpressed, night-shaded, quite poor estate, and thinking it unkind that the whole movement of the Universe should go on, while Ids digestive-apparatus had stopped ! We reckon Johnson's ' talent of silence ' to be among his great and too rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to be done, there shall nothing farther be said : like his own poor blind Welshwoman, he accomplished some- what, and also 'endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken fortitude.' How grim was Life to him; a sick Prison-house and Doubting-castle ! ' His great business,' he would profess, 'was to escape from himself.' Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution ; can dis- miss it all 'with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear.' Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimonious ; ^ wearied of his stay, yet offended at his de- 146 Selections from Carlyle. parture : ' it is the manner of the world. ' By popular delusion/ remarks he with a gigantic calmness, 'illiterate writers will rise into renown : ' it is portion of the History of English Literature ; a perennial thing, this same popular delusion ; and will — alter the character of the Language. Closely connected with this quality of Valor, partly as springing from it, partly as protected by it, are the more recognizable qualities of Truthfulness in word and thought, and Honesty in action. There is a reciprocity of influence here : for as the realizing of Truthfulness and Honesty is the lifelight and great aim of Valor, so without Valor they cannot, in anywise, be realized. Now, in s^oite of all practi- cal short-comings, no one that sees into the significance of Johnson will say that his prime object was not Truth. In conversation doubtless you may observe him, on occasion, fighting as if for victory; — and must pardon these ebul- liences of a careless hour, which were not Avithout tempta- tion and i)i"ovocation. Eemark likewise two things: that such prize-arguings were ever on merely superficial debata- ble questions ; and then that they were argued generally by the fair laws of battle and logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If their purpose was excusable, their effect was harmless, perhaps beneficial : that of taming noisy medi- ocrity, and showing it another side of a debatable matter; to see both sides of which was, for the first time, to see the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves are errors enough, crabbed prepossessions enough; yet these also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature, nowhere a wilful shutting of the eyes to the Truth. Nay, is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, singular, almost admirable, if we con- sider through what confused conflicting lights and hallucina- tions it had to be attained, of the highest everlasting Truth, and beginning of all Truths : this namely, that man is ever, and even in the age of Wilkes and Whitefield, a Revelation of God to man; and lives, moves, and has his being, in BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 147 Truth only ; is either true, or, in strict speech, is not at all? Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in Practice, as what we have named Honesty of action. ' Clear your mind of Cant ; ' dear it, throw Cant utterly away : such was his emphatic, repeated precept ; and did not he himself faithfully conform to it ? The Life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe ; yet was there no Lie found in him. His Doings and Writings are not shows but performances : you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas ! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages : and with that grand perennial tide of ' popular delusion ' flowing by ; in whose waters he nevertheless refused to fish, to whose rich oyster- beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to others, the lowest possible view of his business, which he followed Avitli such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed never rose ; there was no ideal without him, avowing itself in his work : the nobler was that unavowed ideal which lay within him, and commanded, saying. Work out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an Artist ! They who talk loudest about the dignity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic guild-brethren, and of the Celestials, — let them consider Avell what man- ner of man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day-laborer. A laborer that was worthy of his hire ; that has labored not as an eye-servant, but as one found faith- ful ! Neither was Johnson in those days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was when, for money, you might have ware : and needed not, in all departments, in that of the Epic 148 Selections from Carlyle. Poem, in that of the Blacking-bottle, to rest content with the mere 2ie7'suasion that you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of Puffery) had not been rent open, — to whirl and grind, as in a West-Indian Tornado, all earthly trades and things into wreck, and dust, and consummation, — and regenera- tion. Be it quickly, since it must be ! — That Mercy can dwell only with Valor, is an old senti- ment or proposition ; which in Johnson again receives con- firmation. Pew men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. He was called the Bear ; and did indeed too often look, and roar, like one ; being forced to it in his own defence : yet Avithin that shaggy exterior of his there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. Nay, generally his very roaring was but the anger of affection : the rage of a Bear, if you will ; but of a Bear bereaved of her whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the Church of England, or the Divine Right ; and he was upon you ! These things were his Symbols of all that was good and precious for men ; his very Ark of the Covenant : whoso laid hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts. Not out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contra- dictory : this is an important distinction ; never to be for- gotten in our censure of his conversational outrages. But observe also with what humanity, what openness of love, he can attach himself to all things : to a blind old woman, to a Doctor Levett, to a cat ' Hodge.' ^ His thoughts in the latter part of his life were frequently employed on his deceased friends ; he often muttered these or suchlike sentences : " Poor man ! and then he died." ' How he patiently converts his poor home into a Lazaretto ; endures, for long years, the contradiction of the miserable and unreasonable ; with him unconnected, save that they had no other to yield them refuge ! Generous old man ! Worldly possession he has BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 149 little ; yet of this he gives freely ; from his own hard-earned shilling, the half-pence for the poor, that ' waited his coming out/ are not withheld : the poor ' waited the coming out ' of one not quite so poor ! A Sterne can write sentimentali- ties on Dead Asses: Johnson has a rough voice; but he finds the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the streets; carries her home on his o^vn shoulders, and like a good Samaritan gives help to the help-needing, worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that sense, to cover a multitude of sins ? Xo Penny-a-week Committee- Lady, no manager of Soup-Kitchens, dancer at Charity- Balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man : but where, in all England, could there have been found another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heavenlike bounteous as his ? The widow's mite, we know, was greater than all the other gifts. Perhaps it is this divine feeling of Affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us towards Johnson. A true brother of men is he ; and filial lover of the Earth ; who, with little bright spots of Attachment, 'where lives and works some loved one,' has beautified ' this rough solitary Earth into a peopled garden.' Lichfield, with its mostly dull and limited inhabitants, is, to the last, one of the sunny islets for him: Salve, magna parens ! Or read those Letters on his Mother's death : what a genuine solemn grief and pity lies recorded there; a looking back into the Past, unspeakably mournful, unspeakably tender. And yet calm, sublime ; for he must now act, not look : his venerated Mother has been taken from him ; but he must now write a Rasselas to defray her funeral ! Again in this little inci- dent, recorded in this Book of Devotion, are not the tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than in many a blank- verse Tragedy; — as, indeed, 'the fifth act of a Tragedy,' though unrhymed, does ' lie in every death-bed, were it a peasant's, and of straw : ' 150 Selections from Carlyle. 'Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday, at about ten in the morn- ing, I took my leave forever of my dear old friend, Catherine Cham- bers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has been but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my brother, and my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. I desired all to withdraw ; then told her that we were to part for- ever; that as Christians, we should part with prayer ; and that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire to hear me ; and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great fervor, while I prayed kneeling by her. * * * I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a bet- ter place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and great emotion of ten- derness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted ; I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more.' Tears trickling down the granite rock : a soft well of Pity springs within! — Still more tragical is this other scene: 'Johnson mentioned that he could not in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful son. "Once, indeed/' said he, " I was disobedient : I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault." ' — But by what method? — What method was now possible? Hear it; the words are again given as his own, though here evidently by a less capable reporter: ' Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure in the morning, but I was compelled to it by conscience. Fifty years ago. Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Confined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented me; I gave my father a refusal. — And now today I have been at Uttoxeter ; I went into the market at the time of busi- ness, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory. ' BoswelVs Life of Johnson, 151 Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid the 'rainy weather, and the sneers,' or wonder, 'of the by- standers'? The memory of old Michael Johnson, rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in the 'moonlight of memory: ' how he had toiled faithfully hither and thither; patiently among the lowest of the low ; been buffeted and beaten down, yet ever risen again, ever tried it anew — And oh, when the wearied old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or whatsoever it was that Fate had reduced him to, begged help of thee for one day, — how savage, dia-. bolic, Avas that mean Vanity, which answered, ' No ! ' He sleeps now; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps well: but thou, jNIerciless, how now wilt thou still the sting of that remembrance? — Tlie picture of Samuel Johnson standing bareheaded in the market there, is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. Repentance ! Repentance ! he pro- claims, as with passionate sobs: but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give him audience : the earthly ear and heart that should have heard it, are now closed, unre- sponsive forever. That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling Affectionateness, the inmost essence of his being, must have looked forth, in one form or another, through Johnson's whole character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through what singular distortions and super- stitions, moping melancholies, blind habits, whims about 'entering with the right foot,' and 'touching every post as he walked along; ' and all the other mad chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun-clear intellect, hovered forever on the verge of insanity, — must that same inmost essence have looked forth; unrecognizable to all but the most observant! Accordingly it was not recognized; Johnson passed not for a fine nature, but for a dull, almost brutal one. Might not, for example, the first-fruit of such a Lovingness, coupled with his quick Insight, have been expected to be a pecul- 152 Selections fro7n Carlyle. iarly courteous demeanor as man among men? In John- son's 'Politeness,' which he often, to the wonder of some, asserted to be great, there was indeed somewhat that needed explanation. Nevertheless, if he insisted always on hand- ing lady-visitors to their carriage; though with the cer- tainty of collecting a mob of gazers in Fleet Street, — as might well be, the beau having on, by way of court-dress, 'his rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes for slip- pers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose : ' — in all this we can see the spirit of true Politeness, only shining through a strange medium. Thus again, in his apartments, at one time, there were unfortu- nately no chairs. 'A gentleman who frequently visited him whilst writing his Idlers, constantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Johnson never forgot its defect; but would either hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure against some support; taking no notice of its imperfection to his visitor,' — who meanwhile, we suppose, sat upon folios, or in the sartorial fashion. 'It was remarkable in Johnson,' continues Miss Reynolds (Renny dear), 'that no external circumstances ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of their existence. Whether this was the effect of philosophic pride, or of some partial notion of his, respecting high-breeding, is doubtful.' That it ivas, for one thing, the effect of genuine Politeness, is nowise doubtful. Not of the Pharisaical Brummellean Politeness, which would suffer crucifixion rather than ask twice for soup: but the noble universal Politeness of a man that knows the dignity of men, and feels his own; such as may be seen in the patriarchal bear- ing of an Indian Sachem ; such as Johnson himself exhib- ited, when a sudden chance brought him into dialogue with his King. To us, with our view of the man, it nowise BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 153 appears strange that he should have boasted himself cunning in the laws of Politeness; nor, 'stranger still,' habitually attentive to practise them. More legibly is this influence of the Loving heart to be traced in his intellectual character. What, indeed, is the beginning of intellect, the first inducement to the exercise thereof, but attraction towards somewhat, affection for it? Thus too who ever saw or will see any true talent, not to speak of genius, the foundation of which is not goodness, love? From Johnson's strength of Affection, we deduce many of his intellectual peculiarities ; especially that threat- ening array of perversions, known under the name of 'John- son's Prejudices.' Looking well into the root from which these sprang, we have long ceased to view them with hos- tility, can pardon and reverently pity them. Coiisider with what force early-imbibed opinions must have clung to a soul of this Affection. Those evil-famed Prejudices of his, that Jacobitism, Church-of-Englandism, hatred of the Scotch, belief in Witclies, and suchlike, what were they but the ordinary beliefs of well-doing, well-meaning provincial Englishmen in that day? First gathered by his Father's hearth, round the kind 'country fires ' of native Stafford- shire, they grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength; they were hallowed by fondest sacred recol- lections; to part with them was parting with his heart's blood. If the man who has no strength of Affection, strength of Belief, have no strength of Prejudice, let him thank Heaven for it, but to himself take small thanks. Melancholy it was, indeed, that the noble Johnson could network himself loose from these adhesions; that he could only purify them, and wear them with some nobleness. Yet let us understand how they grew out from the very centre of his being: nay, moreover, how they came to cohere in him with what formed the business and worth of his Life, the sum of his whole Spiritual Endeavor. For 154 Selections from Carlyle. it is on the same ground that he became throughout an Edifier and Eepairer, not, as the others of his make were, a Puller-down; that in an age of universal Scepticism, England was still to produce its Believer. M^vk too his candor even here ; while a Dr. Adams, with placid surprise, asks, " Have we not evidence enough of the soul's immor- tality?" Johnson answers, "I wish for more." But the truth is, in Prejudice, as in all things, Johnson was the product of England; one of those ^ good yeomen whose limbs were made in England ' : alas, the last of such Invincibles, their day being now done! His culture is wholly English ; that not of a Thinker but of a ' Scholar : ' his interests are wholly English; he sees and knows noth- ing but England ; he is the John Bull of Spiritual Europe : let him lire, love him, as he was and could not but be! Pitiable it is, no doubt, that a Samuel Johnson must con- fute Hume's irreligious Philosophy by some 'story from a Clergyman of the Bishopric of Durham ; ' should see nothing in the great Frederick but 'Voltaire's lackey;' in Voltaire himself but a man acerrimi ingenii, paucarum liter- arum; in Rousseau but one worthy to be hanged; and in the universal, long-prepared, inevitable Tendency of Euro- pean Thought but a green-sick milkmaid's crochet of, for variety's sake, 'milking the Bull.' Our good, dear John! Observe too what it is that he sees in the city of Paris : no feeblest glimpse of those D'Alemberts and Diderots, or of the strange questionable work they did; solely some Bene- dictine Priests, to talk kitchen-Latin with them about Editiones Prindpes. " Monsheer Nongtongpaw ! " — Our dear, foolish John: yet is there a lion's heart within him! — Pitiable all these things were, we say; yet nowise inex- cusable; nay, as basis or as foil to much else that was in Johnson, almost venerable. Ought we not, indeed, to honor England, and English Institutions and Way of Life, that they could still equip such a man ; could furnish him BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 155 in heart and head to be a Samuel Johnson, and yet to love them, and unyieldingly light for them? What truth and living vigor must such Institutions once have had, when, in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, there was still enough left in them for this ! It is worthy of note that, in our little British Isle, the two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood em- bodied, under their very highest concentration, in two men produced simultaneously among ourselves. Samuel John- son and David Hume, as was observed, were children nearly of the same year: through life they were spectators of the same Life-movement; often inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast, in all things, between two great men, could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into Literature: Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it 'with the bayonet of necessity at his back.' And what a part did they sever- ally play there! As Johnson became the father of all succeeding Tories; so was Hume the father of all succeed- ing Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an accident, as worthy to be named Prejudice as any of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was exclusively English, Hume's, in Scotland, became European; — for which reason too we find his influence spread deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculation, French, German, as well as domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal; both great, among the greatest: yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has the widest, methodizing, comprehensive eye; Johnson, the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail: so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry; yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an Epic clearness and 156 Selections from Carlyle. method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars ; Johnson to many a deep Lyric tone of plaintiveness and impetuous graceful power, scattered over his fugitive com- positions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged Humor shining through their earnestness : the indication, indeed, that they zoere earnest men, and had subdued their wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit. Stoics: yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson, Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith: to Hume, it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show- booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbow ings of which, it was not worth while to quarrel ; the whole would break up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both realized the highest task of Manhood, that of living like men; each died not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one, with factitious, half- false gaiety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but a Lie: Johnson as one, with awe-struck, yet resolute and piously expectant heart," taking leave of a Eeality, to enter a Eeality still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last: whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better- gifted, may remain undecided, _ These two men now rest; tH€L.one in Westminster Abbey here; the other in the Calton-Hill Churchyard of Edin- burgh. Through Life they did not meet: as contrasts, 'like in unlike,' love each other; so might they two have loved, and communed kindly, — had not the terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them withstood! One day, their spirits, what Truth was in each, will be found working, living in harmony and free union, even here below. They were the two half -men of their time : whoso should combine the intrepid Candor and decisive scientific Bo8welVs Life of Johnson. 15T Clearness of Hume, with the Keverence, the Love and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for us, and the dis- tracted time admit of such, might the Heavens but bless poor England with half- men worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of these, resembling these even from afar! Be both atten- tively regarded, let the true Effort of both prosper; —and for the present, both take our affectionate farewell ! ON HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP. [3Iay, 1840.] mXRODUCTION. We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did; — on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and per- formance; what I call Hero-worsliip and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic; deserv- ing quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal /History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones ; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practi- cal realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world : the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the his- Vtory of these. Too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to in this place ! One comfort is that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, 158 Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 159 upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlight- ened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven : a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness; — in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighborhood for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely-distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we see tliem well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history. How happy, could I but, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the divine rela- tion (for I may well call it such) which in all times unites a Great Man to other men : and thus, as it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it ! At all events, I must make the attempt. ********* Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing, this Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life ! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity, — for truly it is not easy to understand that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That men should have worshiped their poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe : all this looks like an 160 Selections from Carlyle. incredible fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact tliat tliey did it. Sucli hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually hold by, and live at home in. This is strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence over the depths of darkness that are in man, if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such things were and are in man; in all men; in us too. ********* You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt aston.ishment, at the sight we daily witness with indifference! /^With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight; he would discern it well to be Godlike; his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness Avas in the primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato's. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes, and motions, which we npw collectively name Universe, Nature, or the ^like, — and jso with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep-lilearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preter- natural. This green, flowery, rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas ; — that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; Avhat is it? Ay, what? Heroes and Her o-wor ship. 161 At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the diffi- culty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our tvant of insight. It is by 7iot thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere luords. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud 'elec- tricity, ' and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done/ much for us ; but it is a poor science that would hide from ^ us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and more, to whosoever will think of it. That great mystery of Time, were there no other; the-^ illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are and then are not : this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, — for we have no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah me! — what could the wild man know of it; what can we yet know? That it is a Force, and thousandfold Complexity of Forces; a Force which is not ive. That is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from us. Force, Force, every- where Force ; Ave ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. 'There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?' Nay, surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it? God's creation, the religious people answer; it is the Almighty God's! 162 Selections from Carlyle. i Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments, and what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled-up in Leyden jars and sold over counters : but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration, and humility of soul; worship, if not in words, then in silence. But now I remark farther : What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the strip- ping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures, and scientific hearsays, — this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it, face to face. 'All was Godlike or G-od: ' — Jean Paul still finds it so; the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays : but there then were no hearsays. .Canopus shining down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like bright- ness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing-out on him from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner Splendor to him. Cannot we understand how these men z(;o?'s7uped Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worship- ing the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for "^^ Avhich there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. \ To these primeval men, all things and everything they saw ' exist beside them were an emblem of the Godlike, of some ' God. Heroes and Hero-ioorship. 163 And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that way now : but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a 'poetic nature,' that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty in it; how every object still verily is 'a window through which we may look into Infinitude itself ' ? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what he does, — in their own fashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit: better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse and camel did, — namely, nothing! ^ut now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an emblem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, among the Hebrews : " The true Shekinah is Man ! " Yes, it is even so: this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself "I," — ah, what words have we for' such things? — is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in manj This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? 'There is but one Temple in the Universe,' says the devout Kovalis, 'and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body ! ' This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well medi- tated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expres- sion, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, — the great 164 Selections from Carlyle. inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. Well ; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished-off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in Man and Nature; — they, without being mad, could ivorship Nature, and Man more than anything else in Nature. Worship, — that is, as I said above, admire without limit : this, in the full use of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they could do. I consider Hero-worship to be the grand modi- fying element in that ancient system of thought. What I called the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre of a root; but ■Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown. And now, if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more might that of a Hero! Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admiijable ; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher 'than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence iin man's life. Religion I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions, — all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate ►admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of Man^ — is not that the germ of Christianity itself ? The greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we do Heroes and Hero-icorship. 165 not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on earth. Or coming into lower, less ^^?ispeakable provinces, is not all Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And wliat therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an elEuence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great ? Society is founded on Hero-worship. All ' dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are ^ what we may call a ^eroarchy (Government of Heroes), — or a Hierarchy, for it is ^sacred ' enough withal! The Duke means Dux, Leader; King is Kon-ning, Kan-ning, Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not insupportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes; — reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not msupportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold; — and several of them, alas, always are forged notes. We can do with some forged, false notes; with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of them, forged! No: there have to come revolutions then ; cries of Democracy, Liberty and Equality, and I know not what : — the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for them, people take to crying in their despair that there is no gold, that there never was any! — 'Gold,' Hero-worship, is nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till man himself ceases. I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally ceased. This, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desir- ableness of great men. Show our critics a great man, a 166 Selections from Carlyle. Luther for example, they begin to what they call 'account ' for him; not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him, — and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was the 'creature of the Time,' they say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing — but what we, the little critic, could have done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth? AlaSj we have known Times call loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; Providence had not sent him ; the Time, calling its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck, because he would not come when called. Eor, if we will think of it, no Time need have gone to ruin, could it have found a man great enough, a man wise and good enough : wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, valor to lead it on the right road thither; these are the salvation of any Time. But I liken common lan- guid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circum- stances, impotently crumbling-down into ever worse dis- tress towards final ruin ; — all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise heal- ing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own. The dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him forth. They did want him greatly ; but as to calling him forth — ! — Those are critics of small vision, I think, who cry: "See, is it not the sticks that made the fire?" No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the last consummation of unbelief. In all exDOchs of Heroes and Hero-worsliip. 167 the world's history, we shall find the Great Man to havei been the indispensable saviour of his epoch; the lightning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. The His- tory of the World, I said already, is the Biography of Great Men. Such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief and universal spiritual paralysis: but happily they cannot always completely succeed. In all times it is possible for a man to rise, great enough to feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. And, what is notable, in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for Great Men; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and perverted it may be. Hero-worship endures forever while man endures. Bos well venerates his Johnson right truly, even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving French believe in their Voltaire; and burst-out round him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they 'stifle him under roses.' It has always seemed to me extremely curious, this of Vol- taire. Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, then we may find here in Voltaireism one* of the lowest ! He whose life was that of a kind of Anti- christ, does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those Trench of Voltaire. Persiflage was the character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney comes up to Paris ; an old, totter- ing, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero ; that he has spent his life in oppos- ing error and injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places ; — in short that he too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel withal that, if ^persiflage be the great thing, there never was such apersifleur. He is the realized ideal of every one of 168 Selections from Carlyle. them; the thing they are all wanting to be; of all French- men the most French. He is properly their god, — such god as they are fit for. Accordingly, all persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they not worship him? People of quality disguise them- selves as tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his Postillion, " Va hon train; thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his carriage is *the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets.' The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic. There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler. Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder of Christianity to the withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times and places, the Hero has been worshiped. It will ever be so. We all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down submissive before great men: nay, can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity, and aridity of any Time and its influences, can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant, lower than which the confused wreck of revo- lutionary things cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary ages, will get down so far ; no farther. It is an eternal corner-stone, from Heroes and Hero-ivorsliip. 169 which they can begin to buihl themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other, worships Heroes ; that we all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great Men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down whatsoever; — the one fixed point in mod- ern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE. The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are pro- ductions of okl ages; not to be repeated in the new. They j)i'esuppose a certain rudeness of conception which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a Avorld vacant, or almost vacant, of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speak- ing with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of Poet ; a character which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belong- ing to all ages ; whom all ages possess, when once he is produced; whom the newest age as the oldest may pro- duce; — and will produce always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is it other than possible that he may be shaped into a Poet. Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in dif- ferent times and places, do we give to Great Men ; accord- ing to varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in which they have disi^layed themselves ! AVe might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest, or what you will, according to the 170 Heroes and Hero-ivorsldp. 171 kind of AYorld he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.! The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philo- sopher ; — in one or the other degree, he could have been^ he is, all these. So too I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man ; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal ; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye ; there it lies : no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well : one can easily believe it ; they had done things a little harder than these ! Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau, Shakspeare, — one knoAvs not what he could not have made, in the supreme degree. True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all great men, more than all other men, in the self- same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless ; but infinitely more of circumstance ; and far oftenest it is the latter only that are looked to. But it is as with common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman ; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth, that and nothing else. And if, as 172 Selections from Carlyle. Addison complains, you sometimes see a street-porter staggering under his load on spindleslianks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth and small Whitechapel needle, — it cannot be considered that aptitude of Nature alone has been consulted here either ! — The Great Man also, to what shall he be bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet ? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him ! He will read the world and its laws ; the world with its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on this matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about the world. — Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous ; Vates means both Prophet and Poet : and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally, indeed, they are still the same ; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mys- tery of the Universe ; what Goethe calls ' the open secret.' " Which is the great secret ? " asks one. — " The open secret,'^ — open to all, seen by almost none ! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it ; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. In most times and- places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect as the realized Thought of God, is con- sidered a trivial, inert commonplace matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! It could do no good, at present, to speak Heroes and Hero-ivorsJiip. 173 much about this ; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Keally a most mournful pity ; — a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise ! But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the Vates, Avhether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it ; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message ; he is to reveal that to us, — that sacred mystery which he, more than others, lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it ; — I might say, he has been driven to know it ; without consent asked of liim, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief ; this man too could not help being a sincere man ! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man, once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far. Poet and Prophet, partici- pators in the ' open secret,' are one. With respect to their distinction again : The Vates Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohi- bition ; the Vates Poet, on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these two i:>rovinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love : how else shall he know what it is we are to do ? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, '^Consider the lilies of the field; they toil nol, neither do they spin : yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. ' The lilies of the field,' — dressed finer than earthly princes, springing-up there in the 174 Selections froyn Carlyle. humble furrow-field; a beautiful eye looking-out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty ! How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty ? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: ^The Beautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher than the Good ; the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' The true Beautiful ; which, however, I have said somewhere, ' differs from the false as Heaven does from Vauxhall ! ' So much for the distinction and identity of Poet and Prophet. — Jn ancient and also in modern periods, we find a few Poets who are accounted perfect ; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with. This is noteworthy ; this is right : yet in strictness it is only an illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet ! A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men ; no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets when we read a poem well. The ' imagina- tion that shudders at the Hell of Dante,' — is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own ? ISTo one but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it ; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neigh- bors. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for per- fect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal ; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very soon for- gotten : but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 175 can be remembered forever; — a clay comes when he too is not! Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference be- tween true Poetry and true Speech not poetical : what is the difference ? On this point many things have been written, especially by late German Critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say, for example, that the Poet has an infimtude in him; communicates an Unendliclikeit, a cer- tain character of 'infinitude,' to whatsoever he delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in it. For my own part, I find consider- able meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else : ' If your delineation be authentically musical, musical not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, not.' — Musical : how much lies in that ! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing ; de- tected the inmost mystery of it, namely, the melody that lies hidden in it ; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter themselves in Song. The meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us ? A kind of inarticulate unfath- omable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ! Nay, all speech, even the commonest speech, has some- thing of song in it : not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent ; — the rhythm or tune to which the people there sing what they have to say ! Accent is a kind of chant- ing ; all men have accent of their own, — though they only 176 Selections from Carlyle. notice that of others. Observe too how all passionate lan- guage does of itself become musical, — with a finer music than the mere accent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song ; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls ! The primal element of us ; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere- Harmonies : it was the feeling they had of the inner struc- ture of Nature ; that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bot- tom, it turns still on power of intellect ; it is a man's sincer- ity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart of Nature heing everywhere music, if you can only reach it. The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the Vates Prophet ; his function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The Hero taken as Divinity ; the Hero taken as Prophet ; then next, the Hero taken only as Poet : does it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing ? We take him first for a god, then for one god-inspired ; and now in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful verse- maker, man of genius, or suchlike ! — It looks so ; but I per- suade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the same altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was. I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man liter- ally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme un- attainable Fountain of Splendor, Wisdom, and Heroism, are ever rising higher; not altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower. Heroes and Hero-ivorsMp. 177 This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work ; and our reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic, as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men ; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, fatalest faith ; believ- ing which, one would literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery ; that is the show of liim : yet is he not obeyed, icorshiped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together could not be ? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rus- tic. Burns ; — a strange feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this ; that, on the whole, this is the man ! In the secret heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at pres- ent, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun- eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so ? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us, — as, by God's blessing, they shall one day be ; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear faith in the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant ; what a new, livelier feeling towards this Burns were it ! Nay, here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry ; really, if we will think of it, canonized, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They 178 Selections froyn Carlyle. dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude ; none equal, none second to them : in the general feeling of the world, a cer- tain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, invests these two. They are canonized, though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it ! Such, in spite of every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for heroism. — We will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the Poet Shakspeare : what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. Many volumes have been written by w^ay of commentary on Dante and his Book ; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived ; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The Book ; — and, one might add, that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face ; perhaps, of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless ; — significant of the whole history of Dante I I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality ; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gen- tle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick- ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful Heroes and Hero-icorsJiip. 179 one ; tlie lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the tiling that is eating-out his heart, — as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering bat- tle, against the world. Affection all converted into indig- nation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god ! The eye too : it looks-out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry. Why the world was of such a sort ? This is Dante : so he looks, this ' voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings us ^lis mystic unfathomable song.' The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well enough with this Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper class of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then going ; much school-divinity, Aristotelian logic, some Latin classics, — no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things : and Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned, better than most, all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; this best fruit of education he had contrived to realize from these scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies close to him ; but, in such a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what was distant : the small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular cliiarosmiro striking on what is far off. This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies ; been twice out campaign- ing as a soldier for the Florentine State ; been on embassy ; had in his thirty -fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beau- tiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up thence- forth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account 180 Selections from Carlyle, of this ; and then of their being parted ; of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in Dante's Poem ; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. She died : Dante himself was wedded ; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, Avas not altogether easy to make happy. We will not complain of Dante's miseries : had all gone right with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podesta, or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well accepted among neighbors, — and the world had Avanted one of the most notable Avords ever spoken or sung. Florence Avould have had another prosperous Lord Mayor ; and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there Avill be ten of them and more) had no Dicina Commedia to hear ! We Avill complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante; and he, struggling like a man led toAvards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give him the choice of his hap- piness ! He knew not, more than Ave do, Avhat Avas really happy, what Avas really miserable. In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some other confused disturbances rose to such a height, that Dante, A\diose party had seemed the stronger, Avas Avith his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment ; doomed thenceforth to a life of Avoe and Avandering. His property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it Avas entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried Avhat was in him to get reinstated ; tried even by Avarlike sur^^risal, Avith arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become Avorse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, doom- Heroes and Hero-ivorsliip. 181 ing this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive ; so it stands, they say : a very curious civic document. Another curious document, some considerable number of years later, is a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magis- trates, written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition of apologizing and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern pride : ''' If I cannot re- turn without calling myself guilty, I will never return, nun- quam revertar.^' For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron to patron, from place to place : prov- ing, in his own bitter words, ' How liard is the path, Coine ^ duro caUe.' The wretched are not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody humors, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Delia Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons {nehulones ac liistrioyies) making him heartily merry ; when, turning to Dante, he said : " Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so entertaining ; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse us with at all ? " Dante answered bitterly : " iSTo, not strange ; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, i?A:e to Like;'' — given the amuser, £__the amusee must also be given! Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evident to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander ; no living heart to love him now ; for his sore miseries there was no solace here. The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him ; that awful reality over which, after all, this Time-Avorld, with its Florences and banishments, only flut- 182 Selections from Carlyle. ters as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt never see : but Hell and Purgatoiy and Heaven thou shalt surely see ! AVhat is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether ? Eterxity : thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound ! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. P)odied or bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men : — but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape ; he no more doubted of that Maleholge Pool, that it all la}^ there with its gloomy circles, with its alti guai, and that he himself should see it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into ' mystic unfathomable song ; ' and this his Divirie Comechf, the most remarkable of all modern Bocks, is the result. It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, a proud thought for him at times. That he, here in exile, could do this work ; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was great ; the greatest a man could do. ' If thou follow thy star, jSe ta segui tua stella,^ — so could the Hero, in his for- sakenness, in his extreme need, still say to himself : ' Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a glorious haven ! ' The labor of Avriting, we find, and indeed could know other- wise, was great and painful for him ; he says, ' This Book, which has made me lean for many years.' Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, — not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died after finishing it ; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six ; — broken-hearted Heroes and Herp-icorship. 183 rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna : Hie claudor Dantes patriis extorris ah oris. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century after ; the Eavenna people would not give it. ' Here am I Dante laid, shut-out from my native shores.' I said, Dante's Poem was a Song : it is Tieck who ca s it ^a mystic unfathomable Song;' and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very pertinently some- where, that wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song : we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech ! All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are 5 that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines, — to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part ! What we want to get at is the tJiought the man had, if he had any : Avhy should he twist it into jingle, if he coidd speak it out plainly ? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth, and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing ; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers, — whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melan- choly, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme ! Phyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed ; — it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who can speak their thought, not to sing it ; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true song. 184 Selections from Carlyle. and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise ; a thing hollow, superfluous : altogether an insincere and offensive thing. I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divine Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much that "depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, con- centered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were •down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante. Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic representation of his Belief about this Uni- verse: — some Critic in a future age, like those Scandina- vian ones the other day, who has ceased altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 'Allegory,' perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sub- limest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge, world-wide, architectural emblems, how the Chris- tian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, on Avhich it all turns; that these two differ not by preferahility of one to the other, but by incom- patibility, absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity, — all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day, with what y^---'-^- ' Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 185 entire triitli of purpose ; how unconscious of any emblem- ing! Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems; was there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their being emblems! Were they not indubitable, awful facts ; the whole heart of man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere confirming them? So is it always in these things. Men do not believe an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who considers this of Dante to have been all got-up as an Allegory, will commit one sore mistake! — Paganism we recognized as a veracious expres- sion of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the Universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us. But mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism; one great difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes, of things and men in this world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature : a rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men, — the chief recognized virtue. Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only ! — X And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centu- ries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The Divina -^ Commedia is of Dante's writing; yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods, — how little of all he does is properly his work! All past inventive men work therewith him; — as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages ; the Thought they lived by stands here, in everlast- These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beauti- 186 Selections from CarJyle, ful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also is not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless. On the whole, is it not an utterance, tliis mj^stic Song, at once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto realized for itself ? Chris- tianism, as Dante sings it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard Christianism,' half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-hundred years before ! — The noblest idea made real hitherto among men is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode ; the outer passes away, in swift endless changes ; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if it were pre- dicted that his Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in Heroes and Rero-ivorsJiip. 187 comparison to an unfathomable heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognizable combina- tions, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopedias, creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought. Homer yet is, veri- tably present face to face with every open soul of us ; and Greece, where is it? Desolate for thousands of years; away, vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King Agamemnon! Greece Avas; Greece, except in the words it spoke, is not. The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his 'uses.' A human soul who has once got into that primal element of Song, and sung-forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the depths of our existence ; feeding through long times the life-roo^s of all excellent human things what- soever, — in a way that 'utilities ' will not succeed well in calculating ! We will not estimate the Sun by the quan- tity of gas-light it saves us ; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's effect on the world was small in comparison? jSTot so: his arena is far more restricted; but also it is far nobler, clearer; — perhaps not less, but more, important. Ma- homet speaks to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, cru- dities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does. 188 Selections from Carlyle. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages kindle themselves : he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In this way the balance may be made straight again. But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the world, — by what ice can judge of their effect there, — that a man and his work are measured. Effect? Influ- ence? Utility? Let a man do his work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its own fruit; and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian Con- quests, so that it 'fills all Morning and Evening News- papers,' and all Histories, which are a kind of distilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all; — what matters that? That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was something. If the great Cause of Man, and Man's work in God's Earth, got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no matter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed, and what uproar and blaring he made in this world, — /ie was but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he was not at all. Let us honor the great empire of Silence, once more! The boundless treasury which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men ! It is perhaps, of all things, the use- fulest for each of us to do, in these loud times. — As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life ; so Shaks- peare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humors, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still Heroes ayid Hero-worship, 189 construe Old Greece; so in Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was in Faith and in Practice will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sover- eign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far- seeing as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy pro- duced the one world-voice ; we English had the honor of producing the other. Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete, and self-sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had per- haps never heard of him as a Poet ! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough for this man ! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own accord? The 'Tree IgdrasiP buds and withers by its own laws, — too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curi- ous, I say, and not sufficiently considered : how everything does cooperate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems ; no thought, word, or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works, sooner or later, recognizably or irrecog- nizably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap 190 Selectio7is from Carlyle. and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other great- est and minutest portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven ! In some sense it may be said that this glorious Eliza- bethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flower- age of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Eeligion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice ; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shaks- peare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parlia- ment. King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening sub- scription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavoring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclama- tion, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether silently; — received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at that side of matters too. Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact. Heroes and Hero-ivorsJiip, 191 the right one ; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the con- clusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest Intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the Avay of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other 'faculties ' as they are called, an understand- ing manifested, equal to that in Bacon's Novum Organum. That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, we could fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit, — everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things, — we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this : he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye ; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, — what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it, — is the best measure you could get of what in- tellect is in the man. Which circumstancfe is vital and shall stand prominent ; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the true sequence and ending ? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is 192 Selections from Carlyle. in the man. He must understand the thing; according to the depth of his understanding will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, ^Fiat lux, Let there be light; ' and out of chaos make a world? Pre- cisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this. Or, indeed, we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspea.re is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative pe rspig acii^y of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this oFlbhat face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but see- ing the thing suiiiciently? The word that will describe the thing follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakspeare's morality, his valor, candor, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No tiuisted, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities ; a perfectly level mirror; — that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus ; sets them all forth to us in their round com- pleteness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect 3^ou will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in com- parison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Heroes and Hero-worship. 193 Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates of trausparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.' The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner har- mony of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that some- thing were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you can weep over them ; j^ou can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them ; — you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature her- self;* the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all. See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, — and name yourself a Poef; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or specu- lation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are 194 Selectiofis from Carlyle. ye sure he's not a dunce? ^^ Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function ; and consider it as the one inquiry needful : ' Are ye sure he's not a dunce?' There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet, and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 'intellectual nature,' and of his 'moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance ; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physi- ognomically related; that if we knew one of them, Ave might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another side of the one vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his cour- age, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways. Heroes and Hero-worship. 195 Without hands a man might have feet, and coukl still walk: but, consider it, — without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all ! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathize with it : that is, be virtuously related to it. If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous, forever a sealed book : what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely. — But does not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge ! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered y / too, that if the Fox had not a certain 3^iilj2ine morality, he-X could not even know where the geese werC; or ^et at the geese ! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflec- ^ tions on his own misery, his ill usage-by Nature, Fortune, and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, prompt- itude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life ! — These things are worth stating ; for the con- trary of them acts with manifold, very baleful perversion, in this time : what limitations, modifications they require, your own candor will supply. If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare 's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully 196 Selectio7is from Carhjle. remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest genera- tions of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human being; 'new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.' This well deserves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a imrt of herself. Such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accom- plish, grow up withal ?mconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him; — as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, conform- able to all Truth Avhatsoever. How much in Shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to him- self; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all: like roots, like sap and forces working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater. Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true battle, — the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows : those Sonnets of his will even testify expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life; — as what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and off- hand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 197 from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered? — And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet he is always in measure here ; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater/ But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nick- names on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot.' Even at stupidity and pretension, this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explo- sions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as Hamlet, in Wilhelm Meister, is ! A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, 198 Selections from Carlyle. which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shaks- peare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence ; it is, as Schlegel says, einc; — as, indeed, all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Sliaks- peare's. The description of the two hosts : the worn-out, jaded English ; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin ; and then that deathless valor : ' Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England ! ' There is a noble Patriotism in it, — far other than the ^indifference' you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business ; not boisterous, protrusive ; all the better for that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that ! But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full impress of him there ; even as full as we have of many men. His works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances ; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like splendor out of Heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing : you say, " That is true, spoken once and forever ; whereso- ever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognized as true ! " Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant ; that it is, in partj temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to Heroes and Hero-worship. 199 write for the Globe Playhouse : his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before us ; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were •given. Disjecta membra are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man. Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may rec- ognize that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine ; i^^speak- able, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven : ^ We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang ; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest of jMiddle-Age Cathol- icism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more melodi- ous Priest of a true Catholicism, the ' Universal Church' of the Future, and of all times ? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion : a Eevelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature ; which let all men worship as they can! We»may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too ; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony ! — I cannot call this Shakspeare a ' Sceptic,' as some do ; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No : neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism ; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such 'indifference' was the fruit of his greatness withal : his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of 200 Selections from Carlyle. worship (we may call it such) ; these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him. But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us ? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all ; a blessed heaven- sent Bringer of Light ? — And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly message ? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splen- dors, that he specially was the ' Prophet of God : ' and was he not greater than Mahomet in that ? Greater ; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more suc- cessful. It was intrinsically an error, that notion of Ma- homet's, of his supreme Prophethood ; and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day ; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity, and simu- lacrum ; no Speaker, but a Babbler ! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante, may still be young ; — while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come ! A :'\ Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even jj|7iwrth ^schylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity K |[/and universality, last like them? He is sincere as they; • reaches deep down, like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was conscious of was a mere error ; a futility and triviality, — as indeed such ever is. The truly great in him too was the Heroes and Hero-worship. 201 unconscious : that lie was a wild Arab lion of. the desert, and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which ivere great ! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not be- lieve, like him, that God wrote that ! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of jS'ature : whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up from the iViarticulate deeps. Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on ; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill ! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us ; — on which point there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat : In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has actually become among us. 'Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which mill- ion of Englishmen would we not give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant ? There is no regiment of highest Digni- taries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honor among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him ? Consider now, if they asked us, ' Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your Shakspeare, you English ; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakspeare ? ' Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubt- less in official language ; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer : ' Indian Empire or no Indian Empire, we cannot do mthout Shakspeare ! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us ; we cannot give-up our Shakspeare ! ' 202 Selections fro7n Carlyle. Nay, apart from spiritualities ; and considering him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small frac- tion of the English : in America, in New Holland, east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom cover- ing great spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brother- like intercourse, helping one another? This is justly re- garded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all man- ner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish : what is it that will accomplish this ? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it not fan- tastic, for there is much reality in it : Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance. Parliament or com- bination of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This King Shak- speare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignt}^, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs ; Widestructible ; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever ? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of English- men, a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable so- ever, English men and women are, they will say to one an- other : '' Yes, this Shakspeare is ours ; we produced him, we speak and think by him ; we are of one blood and kind with him." The most common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that. Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice ; that it produce a man who will speak-forth melodiously what the heart of it means ! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appear- ing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the noble Italy is actually one : Italy produced its Dante ; Italy can Heroes and Hero-worship. 203 speak ! The Czar of all the Eiissias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks, and cannons ; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically together ; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Eussia can be. — We must here end what we had to say of the Hero-Poet. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON; ROUSSEAU; BURNS. Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests, are forms of Hero- ism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times ; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in this world. The Hero as Man of Letters, again, of which class we are to speak to-day, is altogether a product of these new ages ; and so long as the wondrous art of Writing, or of Ready-writing which we call Printing, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is, in various respects, a very singu- lar phenomenon. He is new, I say ; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world yet. Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a Great Soul living apart in that anomalous manner ; endeavoring to speak-forth the inspira- tion that was in him hj Printed Books, and find place and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for doing that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain in the marketplace ; but the inspired wis- dom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in that naked manner.' He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid gar- ret, in his rusty coat ; ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living, — is a rather curious spectacle ! Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. 204 Heroes and Hero-worship. 205 Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes : the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world ! It seemed absnrd to ns, that men, in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him as such ; some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, ' and religiously follow his Law for twelve centuries : but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, a Eousseau, should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown him, that he might live thereby ; this perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of things ! — Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. The world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant feature of the world's general position. Looking well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we ourselves live and work. There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine ; as in every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. If Hero be taken to mean genuine, then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a function for us which is ever honorable, ever the highest ; and was once well known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such a way as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. I say inspired; for what we call 'origi- nality,' ' sincerity,' ' genius,' the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that. The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine, and Eter- nal, Avhich exists always, unseen to most, under the Tempo- rary, Trivial : his being is in that ; he declares that abroad, 206 Selections from Carlyle. by act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself abroad. His life, as we said before, is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself : all men's life is, — but the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in most times ; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Letters, like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can. Intrinsi- cally it is the same function which the old generations named a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity, for doing ; which all man- ner of Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do. Fichte, the G-erman Philosopher, delivered, some forty years ago at Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject : ' Ueher das Wesen des Gelekrten, On the Nature of the Literary Man.' Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher, declares first : That all things which we see or work with in this Earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous Appear- ance : that under all there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the 'Divine Idea of the World ; ' this is the Eeality which ' lies at the bottom of all Appearance.' To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognizable in the world ; they live merely, says Fichte, among the superficialities, practicalities, and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them. But the Man of Letters is sent hither specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this same Divine Idea : in every new generation it will manifest itself in a new dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such is Fichte's phraseology ; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way of naming what I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to name ; what there is at present no name for : The unspeakable Divine Significance, full of splendor, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being Heroes and Hero-tuorsJiip. 207 of every man, of every thing, — the Presence of the God who made every man and thing. Mahomet taught this in his dialect ; Odin in his : it is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to teach. Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continnally unfolding the Godlike to men : Men of Letters are a perpetual Priest- hood, from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still present in their life ; that all ' Appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for the ' Divine Idea of the World,' for Hhat which lies at the bottom of Appear- ance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowl- edged or not by the world, a sacredness : he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; — guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Pire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Pichte discriminates with sharp zeal the true Liter- ary Man, what we here call the Hero as Man of Letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or, living partially in it, strug- gles not, as for the one good, to live wholly in it, — he is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and pros- perities he like, no Literary Man; he is, says Pichte, a ' Bungler, Stumper J Or at best, if he belong to the prosaic provinces, he may be a ' Hodman ; ' Pichte even calls him elsewhere a ' Nonentity,' and has in short no mercy for him, no wish that he should continue happy among us ! This is Pichte's notion of the Man of Letters. It means, in its own form, precisely what we here mean. In this point of view, I consider that for the last hundred years, by far the notablest of all Literary Men is Pichte's countryman, Goethe. To that man too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call a life in the Divine Idea of the World ; vision of the inward divine mystery : and strangely, out of his Books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and temple of a God. Illumi- 208 Selections from Carlyle. nated all, not in fierce impure fire-splendor as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance ; — really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic times; to my mind, by far the greatest, though one of the quietest, among all the great things that have come to pass in them. Our chosen specimen of the Hero as Literary Man would be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant plan for me here to discourse of his heroism : for I consider him to be a true Hero ; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps still more in what he did not say and did not do ; to me a noble spectacle : a great heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping silence as an ancient Hero, in the guise of a most modern, high-bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters ! We have had no such spectacle ; no man capable of affording such, for the last hundred-and-fifty years. But at present, such is the general state of knowledge about Goethe, it were worse than useless to attempt speak- ing of him in this case. Speak as I might, Goethe, to the great majority of you, would remain problematic, vague; no impression but a false one could be realized. Him we must leave to future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circumstances, will suit us better here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century ; the conditions of their life far more resemble what those of ours still are in England, than what Goethe's in Germany were. Alas, these men did not conquer like him; they fought bravely, and fell. They were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it. They lived under galling conditions; struggling as under mountains of impediment, and could not unfold them- selves into clearness, or victorious interpretation of that ^Divine Idea.' It is rather the Tombs of three Literary Heroes that I have to show you. There are the monu- mental heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie buried. Very mournful, but also great and full of interest for us. We will linger by them for a while. Heroes and Hero-ivorsliip. 209 Complaint is often made, in these times, of wliat we call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many arranged forces of society fulfill their work; how many powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganization; — a sort of heart, from which, and to which, all other confusion circulates in the world ! Considering what Book- writers do in the world, and what the world does with Book-writers, I should say, It is the «aost anomalous thing the world at present has to show. — We should get into a sea far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of this : but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The worst element in the life of these three Literary Heroes was, that they found their business and position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is tolerable traveling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a path through the impas- sable ! Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilized world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of com- plex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that there- from a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. They felt that this was the most impor- tant thing; that without this there was no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful to behold! But now with the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total change has come over that business. The Writer of a Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the last importance tliat he do his work right, whoever do it wrong ; — that the eye report not 210 Selections from Carlyle. falsely, for then all the other members are astray! Well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, try- ing to get some money for his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; to no other man of any. Whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an accident in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the misguidance ! Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero ; Books, written words, are still miraculous Ru7ies, the latest form ! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has alto- gether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many- engined, — they are precious, great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives; can be called-up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preser- vation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen pos- session of men. Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So 'Celia' felt, so 'Clifford' acted: the foolish Theorem of Heroes and Her o-ivor ship. 211 Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any Rune in the wild- est imagination of Mythologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book,— the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, four-thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. With the art of AVriting, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a won- drous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the Present in time and place ; all times and all places with this our actual Here and Now. All things were altered for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and all else. To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose while there were yet no Books procurable ; while a man, for a single Book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circum- stances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty-thousand, w^ent to hear Abe- lard and that metaphysical theology of his. And now for any other teacher who had also something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened : so many thou- sands eager to learn were already assembled yonder ; of all places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed now that the 212 Selections from Carlyle. King took notice of this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated tlie various schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it Univer- sitas, or School of all Sciences : the University of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. The model of all sub- sequent Universities ; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities. It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the busi- ness from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Print- ing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them ! The Teacher needed not now to gather men person- ally round him, that he might S2)ea7c to them what he knew : print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it ! — Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech ; even writers of Books may still, in some circum- stances, find it convenient to speak also, — witness our present meeting here ! There is, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to Universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the University which would completely take-in that great new fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing, — teach us to read. We learn to read, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Heroes and ffero-worship. 213 Books themselves ! It depends on wliat we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection of Books. But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduc- tion of Books. The Church is the working, recognized Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing or Printing, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books ! — He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England? I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these are the real working effective Church of a modern country. Kay, not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Books? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts, — is not this essentially, if we will under- stand it, of the nature of worship? There are many in all countries who, in this confused time, have no other method .of worship. He who in any way shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the Eountain of all Beauty ; as the handivriting, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart, the noble doings, feelings, darings, and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal fro7n the altar. Perhaps there is no worship more authentic. Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an 'apocalypse of Nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret.' It may well 214 Selections from Carlyle. enough be named, in Ficlite's style, a 'continuous revela- tion ' of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Common. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there ; is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness : all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, con- sciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, may have touches of it ; nay, the withered mockery of a French sceptic, — his mockery of the False, a love and worship of the True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shaks- peare, of a Goethe ; the cathedral-music of a Milton ! They are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes of a Burns, — skylark, starting from the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genu- inely there! For all true singing is of the nature of wor- ship; as indeed all true ivorking may be said to be, — whereof such singing is but the record, and fit melodious represen- tation, to us. Fragments of a real 'Church Liturgy' and 'Body of Homilies,' strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature ! Books are our Church too. Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenage- mote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to do as a nation. But does not, though the name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying ; it is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Heroes and Hero-tvorship. 215 Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extem- pore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law- making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures : the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and- nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation : Democracy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organized; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all. Democracy virt- ually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant. — On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worth}^, are the things we call Books ! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them ; — from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are they not doing ! — For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that pro- duces a Book? It is the Thought of man; the true thau- maturgic virtue ; b}^ which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One ; — a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust. Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it ! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. — The thing we 216 , Selections from Carlyle, called 'bits of paper with traces of black ink,' is tlie purest embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest. All this, of the importance, and supreme importance, of the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the Senatus Academicus, and much else, has been admitted for a good while; and recognized often enough, in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will have to give place to the Practical. If Men of Letters are so incalcu- lably influential, actually performing such work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters will not always wander like unrecognized unregulated Ishmaelites among us ! Whatso- ever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power will cast-off its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth one day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a function which is done by quite another : there can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the making of it right, — what a business, for long times to come ! Sure enough, this that we call Organiza- tion of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, encum- bered with all manner of complexities. If you asked me what were the best possible organization for the Men of Letters in modern society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their position and of the world's position, — I should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty! It is not one man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring-out even an approximate solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, 'Which is the worst ? ' I answer : This which we now have, that Chaos Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 217 should sit umpire in it ; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there is yet a long Avay. One remark I must not omit. That royal or parliamentary grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted! To give our Men of Letters stipends, endowments, and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipo- tence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men poor, — to show whether they are genuine or not! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to heg, were instituted in the Christian Church ; a most natural and even necessary development of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degrada- tion. We may say that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go barefoot, in coarse woolen cloak with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the world, was no beautiful business; — nor an honorable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honored of some! Begging is not in our course at the present time : but for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for being poor? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any kind, is not the goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-con- ditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart, — to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made -out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows but, in that same 'best possible organization' as yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an important element? 218 Selections from Carlyle. What if our Men of Letters, men setting-up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still then, as they now are, a kind of ' invol- untary monastic order ; ' bound still to this same ugly Poverty, — till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther. Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the lit assigner of them, all settled, — how is the Burns to be recognized that merits these ? He must pass through the ordeal, and prove himself. This ordeal ; this wild welter of a chaos which is called Literary Life : this too is a kind of ordeal ! There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever con- tinue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and must constitute, what is called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle ? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one canceling the other ; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave ; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Ganger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling Prench Revolutions by his paradoxes : this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us ! And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming ; advan- cing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries : this is a prophecy one can risk. For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about ar- Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 219 ranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes, at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which he who runs may read, — and draw inferences from. " Literature will take care of itself," answered Mr. Pitt, when applied-to for some help for Burns. "Yes," adds Mr. Southey, " it will take care of itself ; and of you too^ if you do not look to it ! " The result to individual Men of Letters is not the mo- mentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body ; they can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. But it deeply concerns the whole society,whether it will set its light on high places, to walk thereby ; or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as hereto- fore ! Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best world man can make it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic Literary Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some good arrangement for that would be as the picnctum saliens of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary Class ; indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe that it is possible ; that it will have to be possible. By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which ex- cites endless curiosity even in the dim state : this namely, that they do attempt to make their Men of Letters their Governors ! It would be rash to say one understood how this was done, or with what degree of success it was done. All such things must be very it^isuccessful ; yet a small de- 220 Selections from Carlyle. gree of success is precious ; the very attempt how precious ! There does seem to be, all over China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there are for every one : a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves in the lower school are promoted into favorable stations in the higher, that they may still more distinguish themselves, — forward and forward: it appears to be out of these that the Official Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. These are they whom they try first, whether they can govern or not. And surely with the best hope : for they are the men that have already shown intellect. Try them : they have not governed or ad- ministered as yet ; perhaps they cannot ; but there is no doubt they have some Understanding, — without which no man can ! Neither is Understanding a too?, as we are too apt to figure ; ' it is a hand which can handle any tool.' Try these men : they are of all others the best worth trying. — Surely there is no kind of government, constitution, revolution, so- cial apparatus or arrangement, that I know of in this world, so promising to one's scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the top of affairs : this is the aim of all consti- tutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. For the man of true intellect, as I assert and believe always, is the noble-hearted man withal, the true, just, humane, and val- iant man. Get him for governor, all is got ; fail to get him, though you had Constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in every village, there is nothing yet got ! — These things look strange, truly ; and are not such as we commonly speculate upon. But we are fallen into strange times ; these things will require to be speculated upon ; to be rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. These, and many others. On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Rou- tine has ended : that to say a thing has long been, is no Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 221 reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and ' the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes,' the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves ! — I will now quit this of the organization of Men of Letters. Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Literary Heroes of ours was not the want of organization for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one ; out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the Literary Man and for all men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man of Letters had to travel without highway, companionless, through an inorganic chaos, — and to leave his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial contribution towards push- ing some highway through it : this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralyzed, he might have put-up with, might have considered to be but the common lot of Heroes. His fatal misery was the spiritual paralysis, so we may name it, of the Age in which his life lay ; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half-paralyzed ! The Eighteenth was a Sceptical Century ; in which little word there is a whole Pandora's Box of miseries. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt ; all sorts of nzfi- delity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of Heroism more difficult for a man. That was not an age of Faith, — an age of Heroes ! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; Triviality, For- mulism, and Commonplace were come forever. The ' age of 222 Selections from Carlyle. miracles ' had been, or perhaps had not been ; but it was not any longer. An effete world ; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could not now dwell ; — in one word, a godless world ! How mean, dwarfish, are their ways of thinking, in this time, — compared not with the Christian Shakspeares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, with any species of believing men ! The living Tree Igdrasil, with the melodi- ous prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted as Hela, has died-out into the clanking of a World-MAcnmE. <■ Tree ' and ' Machine ' : contrast these two things. I, for my share, declare the world to be no machine ! I say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion ' motives,' self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all ! _ The old Norse Heathen had a truer notion of God's- world than these poor Machine-Sceptics : the old Heathen Norse were sincere men. But for these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half-truth and hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most men, meant plausibility ; to be measured by the number of votes you could get. They had lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausibilities asking, with unaf- fected surprise and the air of offended virtue, ' What ! am not I sincere ? ' Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. For the common man, unless happily he stood beloiv his century and belonged to another prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero ; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work himself half- loose ; and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero ! Scepticism is the name we give to all this ; as the chief Heroes and Hero-ivorsTiip. 223 symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concerning which so much were to be said ! It would take many Dis- courses, not a small fraction of one Discourse, to state what one feels about that Eighteenth Century and its ways. As indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call Scepti- cism, is precisely the black malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and discoursing since man's life began has directed itself: the battle of Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle ! Neither is it in the way of crimi- nation that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new, better, and wider ways, — an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will under- stand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of ever-lasting substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end, but a beginning. ********* Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe; — indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Cer- tainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All manner of doubt, inquiry, (tk€i(/l^ as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic work- ing of the mind, on the object it is getting to know and believe. Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden roots. But now if, even on com- mon things, we require that a man keep his doubts silent, and not babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations or denials; how much more in regard to the 224 Selections from Carlyle. highest things, impossible to speak-of in words at all! That a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which means at best only the manner of telling us your thought, your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should overturn the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves, and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned-up into the air, — and no growth, only death and misery going-on! For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only ; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debat- ing and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his j^ocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest, and meanest of all ages. The world's heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases in aii departments of the world's work; dextrous Similitude of Acting begins. The world's wages are pock- eted, the world's work is not done. Heroes have gone- out; Quacks have come-in. Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra, and universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benev- olence, — the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them ! Few men were without quackery ; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down to the House, all wrapt and bandaged; he 'has crawled out in great bodily suffering,' and so on; — forgets, says Wal- pole, that he is acting the sick man; in the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically swings Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 225 and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. For indeed the world is full of dupes ; and you have to gain the loorkVs suffrage ! How the duties of the world will be done in tliat case, what quantities of error, which means failure, which means sorrow and misery to some and to many, will gradu- ally accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need not compute. It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a Scej^tical World. An insincere world; a godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, that the whole tribe of social pestilences, French Eevolutions, Chartisms, and what not, have derived their being, — their chief necessity to be. This must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable con- solation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausi- bility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with God- hood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take the spectacles off his eyes and honestly look, to know! For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Products, is already past : a new century is already come. The old unblessed Products and Perform- ances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: 'Thou art not true; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy ^vay!' — Yes, hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even 226 Selections from Carlyle. rapidly declining. An nnbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an exception, — such as now and then occurs. I pro- phesy that the world will once more become sincere; a believing world; with many Heroes in it, a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then. Or indeed, what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victori- ous, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us f orevermore ! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in the 'duty of staying at home ' ! And, on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of 'worlds ' being 'saved ' in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. Eor the saving of the world I will trust confidently to the Maker of the w^orld ; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to! — In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insin- cerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone. Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth in life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, and w^ould forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. No intima- tion ; not even any French Kevolution, — which we define to be a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in hellfire! How different was the Luther's pilgrimage, with its as- Heroes and Hero-worship. 227 sured goal, from the Jolinson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible ! Ma- homet's Formulas were of 'wood, waxed and oiled,' and could be burnt out of one's way: poor Johnson's were far more difficult to burn.— The strong man will ever find work, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out a victor}^, in those circum- stances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Xot obstruction, disorganiza- tion. Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-half penny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. Xo landmark on the Earth ; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven ! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly is the highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, the Tombs of three fallen Heroes ! They fell for us too; making a way for us. There are the moun- tains which they hurled abroad in their confused War of the Giants; under which, their strength and life spent, they now lie buried. I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or incidentally ; what I suppose is known to most of you; what need not be spoken or written a second time. They concern us here as the singular Prophets of that sin- gular age; for such they virtually were; and the aspect they and their world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us into reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine Men more or less ; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to be genuine, and plant them- selves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a degree that eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of their contemporaries ; and renders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in some measure, of the ever- 228 Selections from Carlyle. lasting truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. By Nature herself a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities, — clouds, froth, and all inanity gave- way under them : there was no footing for them but on firm earth ; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not footing- there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; once more. Original Men. As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been, — Poet, Priest, sovereign Euler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his 'element,' of his 'time,' or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it better! — Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favorablest outward circum- stances, Johnson's life could have been other than a pain- ful one. The world might have had more of profitable work out of him, or less ; but his effort against the world's work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, ' Live in an element of diseased sorrow.' Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the noble- ness were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus-shirt on him, which shoots-in on him* dull incurable misery: the Nessus-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin ! In this manner he had to live. Pigure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts ; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at : school-languages and other merely Heroes and Hero-icorship, 229 grammatical stuff, if tliere were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of 'fonrpence-half penny a day.' Yet a giant invin- cible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn-out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts, — pitches them out of window! AVet feet, mud, frost, hunger, or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Eude stubborn self- help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life, this pitching-away of the shoes. An original man; — not a secondhand, borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate! On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, if you will, but honestly on that; — on the reality and substance which Nature gives us, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us ! And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self- help, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a better proof of what I said the other day, That the sincere man was by nature the obedient man ; that only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of originality is not that it be new : Johnson believed altogether in the old ; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him ; and in a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths 230 Selections from Carlyle. and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand : but in all formulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine sub- stance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared-in, forever wonder- ful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonized his Formulas with it, how he managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing 'to be looked at with rever- ence, with pity, with awe.' That Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still tvorshiped in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place. It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of ]Srature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects 'artificial'? Artificial things are not all false; — nay, every true Product of jSTature will infallibly shape itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, true. What we call 'Formulas ' are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good. Formula is method, habitude; found wherever man is found. Formu- las fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing somewhat, — were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a poe^; he has articulated the dim- struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a 'Path.' And now see: the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer; it is the easiest method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where sucli seem good; at all Heroes and Hero-ivorsliip. 231 events with enlargements, the Path ever tvidening itself as more travel it ; — till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being full of substance; you may call them the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there : they had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the wor- shiper's heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of true Formulas; that they were, and will ever be, the indis- pensablest furniture of our habitation in this world. — Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere, — of his being particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary- hearted man, or 'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live — without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him. He does not 'engrave TrutJi on his watch-seal ; ' no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man whom iSTature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being msincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Mature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, — nay, even though he seem to forget it or deny it, — is ever present to him; fearful and wonder- ful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity ; unrecognized, because never questioned or capable of ques- 232 Selections from Carlyle. tion. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great Men I ever heard-of have this as the primary mate- rial of them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at secondhand : to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have truth ; truth which he feels to be true. How shall he stand other- wise? His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but i recognize the everlasting element of heart-smcer% in both; and see with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as chaff sown; in both of them is something which the seed-field will grow. Johnson was a Prophet to his people ; preached a Gospel to them, — as all like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence : ^in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,' see how you will do it! A thing well worth preaching. 'A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known : ' do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting Unbelief ; — you were miserable then, powerless, mad : how could you do or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught ; — coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great Gospel, 'Clear your mind of Cant! ' Have no trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it.be in your own real torn shoes: 'that will be better for you, ' as Mahomet says ! I call this, I call these two things joined together, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time. Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned by the young gener- ation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's opinions are fast Heroes and Hero-worship. 233 becoming obsolete : but liis style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in John- son's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart ; — ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are sincere words, those of his ; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style, — the best he could get-to then ; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now ; sometimes a tumid size of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it : all this you will put- up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has always some- thing ivitJiin if. So many beautiful styles and books, with nothing in them ; — a man is a ??ia/efactor to the world who writes such ! Tliey are the avoidable kind ! — Had Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight, and success- ful method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness ; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, sym- metrically complete : you judge that a true Builder did it. One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature ; and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approach- ing in such awestruck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there : it is a genuine rever- ence for Excellence ; a icorship for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain worship of them ! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that 'no man is a hero to his valet-de- chambre.' Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's : that his soul, namely, is a mean i'c(?e^soul ! He 234 Selections from Carlyle. expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sound- ing before him. It should stand rather, 'No man can be a Grmid-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre.' Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved ; — admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him ! Alas, no : it requires a kind of Hero to do that ; — and one of the world's wants, in this as in other senses, is for most part want of such. On the whole, shall we not say that Boswell's admiration was well bestowed ; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of bending down before ? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely ; led it well, like a right- valiant man ? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade ; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and life-practice ; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat : he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly without a load- star in the Eternal ; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have : with his eye set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. 'To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag.' Brave old Samuel : ultimus Romanorum ! Of Rousseau and his Heioism I cannot say so much. He is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spas- modic man ; at best, intense rather than strong. He had not ' the talent of Silence,' an invaluable talent ; which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in ! The suffering man ought really ' to consume his own smoke;' there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into Jire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, Heroes arid Hero-ivorshlp. 235 all smoke is capable of becoming ! Eousseaii has not depth or width, not calm force for difficulty ; the first characteris- tic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehe- mence and rigidity strength ! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits ; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, espe- cially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man. Poor Kousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A high, but narrow, contracted, intensity in it : bony brows ; deep, strait-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered-look- ing, — bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism against that ; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by intensity : the ,f ace of what is called a Fanatic, — a sadly contracted Hero ! We name him here because, with all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero : he is heartily in earnest. In earn- est, if ever man was ; as none of these French Philosophers were. Nay, one would say, of an earnestness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature ; and which indeed in the end drove him into the strangest incoherences, almost delirations. There had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in him : his Ideas possessed him like demons ; hurried him so about, drove him over steep places ! The fault and misery of Kousseau was what we easily name by a single word. Egoism; which is indeed the source and summary of gjl faults and miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into victory over mere Desire ; a mean Hunger, in many sorts, was still the motive principle of him. I am afraid he was a very vain man ; hungry for the praises of men. You remember Genlis's experience of him. She took Jean Jacques to the Theatre ; he bargain- 236 Selections from Carlyle. ing for a strict incognito, — ^ He would not be seen there for the world ! ' The curtain did happen nevertheless to be drawn aside : the pit recognized Jean Jacques, but took no great notice of him ! He expressed the bitterest indigna- tion ; gloomed all evening, spake no other than surly words. The glib Countess remained entirely convinced that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being applauded when seen. How the whole nature of the man is poisoned ; nothing but susi)icion, self-isolation, fierce moody ways ! He could not live with anybody. A man of some rank from the country, who visited him often, and used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and affection for him, comes one day ; finds Jean Jacques full of the sourest unintelligible humor. " Monsieur," said Jean Jacques, with flaming eyes, " I know why you come here. You come to see what a poor life I lead; how little is in my poor pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the pot ! There is half a pound of meat, one carrot, and three onions ; that is all : go and tell the whole world that, if you like, Monsieur ! " — A man of this sort was far gone. The whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes, for light laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these perversions and contortions of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not laughing or theatrical ; too real to him ! The contortions of a dying gladiator : the crowded amphitheatre looks-on with entertainment ; but the gladiator is in agonies, and dying. And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passionate ap- peals to Mothers, with his Contrat-social, with his celebra- tions of Nature, even of savage life in Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, struggle towards Reality ; was doing the function of a Prophet to his Time. As he could, and as the Time could! Strangely, through all that defacement, degradation, and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element of that withered mocking Philosophism, Heroes mid Hero-worsliip. 237 Scepticism, and Persiflage, there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this Life of ours is true; not a Scepticism, Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had made that revelation to him ; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it spoken out ; if not well and clearly, then ill and dimly, — as clearly as he could. Nay, what are all errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of ribbons, aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement and staggerings to-and-fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet find ? Men are led by strange ways. One should have tolerance for a ma'«, hope of him ; leave him to try yet what he will do. AVhile life lasts, hope lasts for every man. Of E-ousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated still among his countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, like himself, are what I call unhealthy ; not the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in Eousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a cer- tain gorgeous attractiveness : but they are not genuinely poetical. Not white sunlight : something operatic ; a kind of rosepink artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it is universal, among the French since his time. Madame de Stael has something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary ' Literature of Des- peration,' it is everywhere abundant. That same rosepink is not the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a G-oethe, even at a "Walter Scott ! He who has once seen into this, has seen the difference of the True from the Sham-True, and will discriminate them ever afterwards. We had to observe in Johnson how much good a Prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganizations, can accomplish for the world. In Eousseau we are called to look rather at the fearfid amount of evil Avhich, under such disorganiza- tion, may accompany the good. Historically it is a most 238 Selections from Carlyle. pregnant spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris garrets, in the gloomy company of his own Thoughts and Necessities there; driven from post to pillar; fretted, ex- asperated till the heart of him went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not his friend, nor the world's law. It was expedient, if anyway x^ossible, that such a man should not have been set in flat hostility with the world. He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild-beast in his cage ; — but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. The French Revolution found its Evangelist in Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilized life, the pref erability of the savage to 'the civilized, and suchlike, helped well to produce a whole delirium in France generally. True, you may well ask. What could the world, the governors of the Avorld, do with such a man ? Difficult to say what the governors of the world could do with him ! AYhat he could do with them is unhappily clear enough, — guillotine a great many of them ! Enough now of Rousseau. It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbeliev- ing, secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert Burns. Like a little well in the rocky desert places, — like a sudden splendor of Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall ! People knew not what to make of it. They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work ; alas, it let itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that ! Perhaps no man had such a false reception from his felloAV-men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. The tragedy of Burns' s life is known to all of you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse than Burns's. Among those Heroes and Hero-worship. 239 secondhand acting-figures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original Man ; one of those men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic among men : and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scot- tish Peasant. His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things ; did not succeed in any ; was involved in continual difficulties. The Steward, Factor as the Scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings. Burns says, ^ which threw us all into tears.' The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a wife ; and those children, of whom Eobert was one! In this Earth, so wide otherwise, no shelter for theui. The letters ' threw us all into tears : ' figure it. The brave Father, I say always ; — a silent Hero and Poet ; without whom the son had never been a speaking one ! Burns's Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, learnt what good society was ; but declares that in no meet- ing of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor 'seven acres of nursery-ground,' — not that, nor the miserable patch of clay- farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, would pros- per with him ; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. But he stood to it valiantly ; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man; — swallowing-down how many sore sufferings daily into silence ; fighting like an unseen Hero, — nobody pub- lishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness ; voting pieces of plate to him ! However, he was not lost : notliing is lost. Kobert is there ; the outcome of him, — and indeed of many generations of such as him. This Burns appeared under every disadvantage : unin- structed, poor, born only to hard manual toil ; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he writ- 240 Selections from Carlyle. ten, even what he did write, in the general Language of Eng- land, I doubt not he had already become universally recog- nized as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should have tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that there lay something far from common within it. He has gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so over all quar- ters of our wide Saxon world : wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be understood, by personal inspection of this and the other, that one of the most considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth Century was an Ayrshire Peasant named Eobert Burns. Yes, I will say, here too was a piece of the right Saxon stuff : strong as the Harz-rock, rooted in depths of the world ; — rock, yet with wells of living saltness in it ! A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there ; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness ; homely, rustic, honest ; true simplicity of strength ; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity ; — like the old Norse Thor, the Peas- ant-god ! — Burns' s Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Eobert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech ; a fellow of in- finite frolic, laughter, sense, and heart ; far pleasanter to hear there, stript, cutting peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth {^fond gaiUard,' as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most at- tractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him ; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside ; bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shak- ing ' dew-drops from his mane ; ' as the swift-bounding horse, that laughs at the shaking of the spear. — But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns's, are they not the out- Heroes and Hero-ivorship. 241 come properly of warm generous affection, — such as is the beginning of all to every man ? You would think it strange if I called Burns the most gifted British soul we had in all that century of his : and yet I believe the day is coming when there will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all that he did under such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. Pro- fessor Stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much, that his poetry was not any partic- ular faculty ; but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts : from the gracefulest utter- ances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech ; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech ' led them off their feet.' This is beautiful : but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more than once alluded to. How the waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak ! Waiters and ostlers : — they too were men, and here was a man ! I have heard much about his speech ; but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with him : That it was speech distinguished by always having something in it. " He spoke rather little than much," this old man told me ; " sat rather silent in those early days, as in the company of per- sons above him ; and always when he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter." I know not why any one should ever speak otherwise ! — But if we look at his gen- eral force of soul, his healthy robustness everyway, the rugged downrightness, penetration, generous valor and man- fulness that was in him,— where shall we readily find a better-gifted man ? 242 Selections from Carlyle. Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I some- times feel as if Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They diif er widely in vesture ; yet look at them intrinsically. There is the same burly thick- necked strength of body as of soul ; — built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis calls Sifond gaillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster ; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object or other : so do both these men speak. The same raging passions ; capable too in both of manifesting them- selves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, wild laugh- ter, energy, directness, sincerity : these were in both.- The types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies ; politicized, as few could. Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith ; in keeping silence over so much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible : this might have bel- lowed forth Ushers de Breze and the like ; and made itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs ! But they said to him reprov- ingly, his Official Superiors said, and wrote : ' You are to work, not think.' Of your thinking-iaGiiltj, the greatest in this land, we have no need ; you are to gauge beer there ; for that only are you wanted. Very notable; — and worth mentioning, though we know what is to be said and an- swered ! As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that was wanted. The fatal man, is he not always the w>ithinking man, the man who cannot think and see ; but only grope, and hallucinate, and missee the nature of the thing he works with ? He missees it, mis-takes it as we Heroes and Hero-worship. 243 say ; takes^ it for one thing, and it is another thing, — and leaves him standing like a Futility there ! He is the fatal man ; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men. — " Why complain of this ? " say some : " Strength is mourn- fully denied its arena ; that was true from of old." Doubt- less ; and the worse for the arena, answer I ! Complaining profits little ; stating of the truth may profit. That a Eu- rope, with its French Ee volution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for gauging beer, — is a thing I, for one, cannot rejoice at ! — Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The Song he sings is not of fantasticalities ; it is of a thing felt, really there ; the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity, — not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in all great men. Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns? Well; these Men of Let- ters too were not without a kind of Hero-worship: but what a strange condition has that got into now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, were doing unconscious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshiper. Eousseau had worshipers enough; princes calling on him in his mean garret; the great, the beautiful, doing reverence to the poor moonstruck man. For himself a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. He sits at the tables of grandees; and has to copy music for his own living. He cannot even get his music copied. " By dint of dining out," says he, "I run the risk of dying by starva- tion at home." For his worshipers too a most questionable thing! If doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of 244 Selections from Carlyle, vital wellbeing or illbeing to a generation, can we say that these generations are very first-rate? — ^And yet our heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them; intrinsically there is no pre- venting it by any means whatever. The world has to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter the manner of that ; can either have it as blessed con- tinuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado, — with unspeakable difference of profit for the world ! The manner of it is very alterable ; the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the sky. Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice. Not whether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him ; but whether we believe the word he tells us : there it all lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we shall have to do it. What name or welcome we give him or it, is a point that concerns ourselves mainly. It, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high ; and must and will have itself obeyed. — My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history, — his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanor there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. If we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man. So sudden ; all common Lionism, which ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere. Burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a plowman; he is flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined peasant, liis wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from him: next month he is in the blaze of rank and Heroes and Hero-worship. 245 beauty, handing down jeweled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes ! Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man ; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in which Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could point out was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unastonished; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation : he feels that Jie there is the man Eobert Burns; that the 'rank is but the guinea- stamp;' that the celebrity is but the candle-light which will show ichat man, not in the least make him a better or other man! Alas, it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a luorse man; a wretched inflated wnlndbag, — inflated till he burst, and become a dead lion; for whom, as some one has said, 'there is no resurrection of the body;' worse than a living dog ! — Burns is admirable here. And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion- hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him to live ! They gathered round him in his Farm; hindered his industry; no place was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lion- ism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He falls into discontents, into miseries, faults; the world get- ting ever more desolate for him; health, character, peace of mind all gone; — solitary enough now. It is tragical to think of! These men came but to see him; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a little amusement: they got their amusement; — and the Hero's life Avent for it! Kichter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of 'Light-chafers,' large Fire-flies, which people stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of condition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. Great honor to the Fire-flies! But — ! . . . NOTES. BUKisrs. Edinburgh Review, No. 96. — The Life of Robert Burns. By J. G, Lockhart, LL.B. Edinburgh, 1828. 'Lockhart has written a kind of " Life of Burns," ' wrote Carlyle to his brother in 1828, ' and men in general are making another uproar about Burns. It is this book, a trivial one enough, which I am to pretend reviewing.' The famous Edinburgh quarterly, professing by its title to deal mainly in book-reviewing, could never have been the power it was if it had held itself strictly to so narrow a field. That the rela- tion of much of its best work to contemporary literature was merely nominal is shown not only by this paper but by many of Macaulay's best biographical and historical essays, notably Hilton, Addison, and Lo7'd Clive. Jeffrey, at that time editor of the Keview, was of an easy and cultivated talent, but, like Macaulay, he was too much a man of the world, and too little a seer, to relish unconventionality in any sort. He owned, indeed, in his relationship and attachment to Mrs. Carlyle, a special motive for encouraging her husband, and had admitted to his columns, in 1827, the essays on Bichter and German Literature. These papers, as Carlyle said long after, ' excited a considerable though questionable sensation in Edinburgh;' but mainly on the score of their subject and general mode of treatment, for the young author had not yet freed himself wholly from the conventional manner of the reviewer of that day. When, however, Jeffrey came to examine the manuscript of the Burns essay, he found it so different in method and style from anything he or his friends could or would have written under the circumstances that he declined to accept it without modifica- tion. Pie talked about its diffuseness, its unevenness of diction ; stip- ulated that it be abridged one-half ; and before sending the manuscript 247 248 Selections from Carlyle. to the printer made many ' corrections,' and even insertions, with a view to mitigating the ' verbosity and exaggeration ' which he deplored. Carlyle received the proof-sheets, and saw ' the tirst part cut all into shreds — the body of a quadruped with the head of a bird ; a man shortened by catting out the thighs and fixing the knee-caps on his hips.' He wrote at once to Jeffrey, refusing to let his work appear in any such mangled form. The portions which had been cut out were replaced, and the essay now stands, we suppose, approximately as it was first written. Not more than approximately, it is clear ; the first part, in particular, still shows signs of those ' editorial blotches ' in the interest of conventional propriety, which Carlyle years later plain- tively named to Emerson as characteristic of the Edinburgh Eeview in Jeffrey's time. 'It is one of the very best of his essays,' says Froude, 'and was composed with an evidently peculiar interest, because the outward circumstances of Burns's life, his origin, his early surroundings, his situation as a man of genius born in a farmhouse not many miles distant, among the same people and the same associations as were so familiar to himself, could not fail to make him think often of himself while he was writing about his countryman.' P. 1. like Butler. The fact that Hudihras was one of Carlyle's favorite books, in his early days, accounts for the double reference to its author in the limits of a single essay (see p. 55). To most modern readers one of the dullest, though certainly in its pro- duction the most timely, of satires, Hudihras won great applause from the fickle Charles and his court ; yet Butler was suffered to die in wretched obscurity, while his "work was still in everybody's mouth. — An interesting early office of his was the stewardship of Ludlow Castle, which he held just after the Restoration, when the neighborhood must have been still fruitful in memories of the presentation of Milton's Comus. brave Mausoleum. Cf. the French hrave. Here the adjective is strongly ironical. This tomb, which stands in the Dumfries churchyard, is an unfortunate monstrosity, wdth a tin dome which literally ' shines over his dust.' sixth narrative. The sketches of Currie, "Walker, Cromek, Heron, and Peterkin, are perhaps those which Carlyle had in mind, though there were other biographies — most of them on a small scale — which preceded Lockhart's. Buryis. 249 P. 2. No man ... is a hero to his valet. This saying has been traced not only to several French sources, but even, in a modified form, to Plutarch. Here Carlyle gives it the turn of ' A prophet hath no honor in his own country.' Sir Thomas Lucy . , . John a Combe. The legend connect- ing these names with Shakespeare's are impeached by DeQuincey in his elaborate essay on Shakespeare. See Dowden's Introduction to Shakespeare, p. 12. The Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, according to Lock- hart, were ' an association of the most distinguished members of the northern aristocracy.' To them Burns dedicated the first Edinburgh edition of his poems. Ayr Writers. AValter Scott's father was a 'writer to the sig- net.' See Webster's International Dictionary, under signet. New and Old Light Clergy. The progressive 'New Lights,' with whom Burns became identified, were in open rebellion against the ' Old Lights/ the conservative element in the Scottish Church, whom Burns attacked in The Twa Herds, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Holy Fair (note on p. 18), etc. For a more gracious picture, see Barrie's Auld Licht Idylls and Window in Thrutns. P. 4. Mr. Morris Birkbeck. Author of Notes on a Journey in America (1818). backwoods of America. This from Carlyle means simply America. He repeatedly speaks to Emerson of a possible visit to Concord as a journey to 'the Western Woods.' Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear ex- travagant. — P. 5. Our own contributions . . . scanty and feeble. These and other moderate, even apologetic phrases, as well as the numerous repetitions of 'as we believe,' 'we think,' etc., which occur in the first part of this essay, are evidently the remnants of Jeffrey's ' editing.' Certainly there is nothing of the sort to be found in Carlyle's later work. P. 5. Especially as there was now nothing to be done. Do not be too ready to read in this a cynical fling at humanity. Wait at least until you are familiar with the story of Burns's life. P. 6. Ferguson or Ramsay. Allan Ramsay (1685-1758) and Robert Ferguson (1750-1774) were clever and popular writers of Scottish verse, but not men of real genius. For practical evidence of Burns's reverence for Ferguson, see Lockhart's Life, Chap. V. 250 Selections fro77i Carlyle, darksome drudging childhood^ Burns says that his early life combined ' the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the miceasing moil of a galley-slave.' Alas, his sun shone as through a tropical tornado, etc. Here follows one of those almost lyric bursts which now and then surprise ns in what Carlyle calls his 'crabbed sardonic vein.' P. 7. advised to -write a tragedy. Burns himself had seri- ous thoughts of turning to dramatic work. See Lockhart's Life, pp. 211, 317. 'amid the melancholy main.' Quoted from Thomson's Castle of Indolence, stanza oO. ' Eternal Melodies.' The influence of Carlyle's German studies is evident not only in his syntax, but in the familiar use of words and phrases translated or imitated from the German. In a let- ter to Emerson (1837) occurs the following passage : ' I rejoice much in the glad serenity with which you look out on this won- drous Dwelling-place of yours and mine, — with an ear for the Ewlgen Melodien, which pipe in the winds around us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and sights and things : not to be written-down by gamut-machinery.' P. 8. cranreuch, hoar frost. Read the poems To a Mountain Daisy and To a Mouse. (In these notes, only such Scotch words are done into English as are not to be found, for instance, in Webstei^'s International Dictionary.) ' it raises his thoughts,' etc. Burns says something like this in his Journal (1781). There is no poem which is likely to appeal more strongly to the imagination of any poet, Old Light or New, than the noble lOIth Psalm, from which Burns quotes. P. 9. for defence, not for offence. This sort of pride, which Carlyle again praises in Johnson, was one of his own marked characteristics. In 1824, when he was still without profession or favorable prospect, he wrote : ' If it were but a crust of bread and a cup of water that Heaven has given thee, rejoice that thou hast none but Heaven to thank for it. A man that is not standing on his own feet soon ceases to be a man at all.' P. 10. 'a soul like an Aeolian harp.' A favorite figure of speech with Carlyle's oft-quoted ' Jean Paul.' For a similar use, see Carlyle's first essay on Richter, p. 20. Burns. 261 P. 11. Horace's rule. Si vis me Jlere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tihi. — Ars Poetica^ 102. Freely rendered : ' If you would have me in tears, first must you yourself know sorrow.' P. 13. the only thing approaching to a sincere w^ork. For a different estimate read Matthew Arnold's essay on Byron. You will note that his final judgment is founded upon the following proposition, quoted from Swinburne : 'The power of Byron's per- sonality lies in the " splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences, and outweighs aU his defects ; the excellence of sincerity and strength." ' to read its o-wn consciousness, etc. You will need to keep this passage in mind in reading (p. 36) that Burns ' never attains to any clearness regarding himself; and to decide which of these opinions is more consistent with the final comparison of Burns and Byron, at the close of the essay. P. 14. letters to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent. Even in Carlyle's youth the fashion of British letter-writing was formal. Only in writing to men of his own station has Burns the excellence of unconscious ease. See Lockhart's Life for numerous extracts from letters of Burns to Mrs. Dunlop. He himself said of his English : ' I liave not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue ; in fact, I think my ideas are more barren in English than in Scottish.' rose-colored Novels and iron-mailed Epics. At this time Scott and Cooper were at the height of their fame ; Byron was not long dead, and Southey, in his poetry still more remote from the representation of real life, had been for fifteen years poet- laureate. P. 16. Or are men suddenly grown wise, etc. Johnson records the fact that neither Swift nor Pope ever succumbed to laughter. Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son : ' How low and un- becoming a thing laughter is ! I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh.' Johnson himself, like Carlyle, ' laughed all over,' and used to say that ' the size of a man's understanding might always be measured by his mirth.' 252 Selections from Oarlyle. The Minerva Press was largely responsible for the flood of maudlin sensationalism that debauched the taste of the English novel-reader during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. P. 17. Mossgiel and Tarbolton. See any Life of Burns. Crockford's. See the Century Cyclopedia of Names. Such cobweb speculations. Shall we include in this classi- fication Macaulay's doctrine that ' as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines'? Does he provide, in his discussion, for the occasional success of such a prodigy as Burns ? See the first part of Macaulay's essay on Milton. P. 18. Council of Trent. The last great general council of the Roman Church. It was held at Trent, in the Tyrol, shortly before Luther's death, and, with a very different object in view, brought about a final separation between the Protestants and the Papacy. The Holy Fair describes a mock conference of the Old Lights, to which the poet goes by invitation of the merry maid Fun, who promises him — and the promise is kept — much amusement at the expense of the hags Superstition and Hypocrisy. P. 19. Note that here he calls clearness of sight 'the root and foundation of every sort of talent,' while in another passage (p. 13) he has said that sincerity of expression is ' the root of most other virtues.' See if you find any tenet of Carlyle's in The Hero as Poet which reconciles these apparently incongruous statements. Pp. 19-20. bock'd, gushed; snaw-broo, slushy snow; speat, torrent; gumlie jaups, muddy jets. P. 20. Smithy of the Cyclops. See Odyssey, Bk. IX. Yoking of Priam's Chariot. See Iliad, Bk. XXIV. P. 21. 'red-wat-shod.' Xote how much of the force of this tremendous word is lost by the expansion necessary to the expres- sion of the same thought in full. Wat is simply ' wet,' too frightfully accurate for Art! This is exactly the criti- cism winch rises in the ordinary mind on the first reading of many of Carlyle's descrij)tions in Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution. P. 22. might have . . . indited a Novum Organum. Oddly enough, the modern attempt has been to prove the converse : that the author of the Novum Organum has ' shown an understanding ' which might have, or rather must have, produced the plays called Shakespeare's. Burns. 253 in the passage above quoted. Do you find anything about the ' doctrine of association ' in the passage ah-eady quoted ? Pp. 24-25. ourie, cowering ; deep-lairing, deep-wading ; sprattle, scramble ; stake, chance. P. 25. Dr. Slop . . . Uncle Toby. Characters in Sterne's Tristram Shamhj. 'Indignation makes verses.' Juvenal's Facit indignatio ver- sus. he loved a good hater. Johnson said of a friend, long dead: 'Dear Bathurst was a man to my very heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig ; he was a very good hater.' P. 26. Furies of Aeschylus. In the tragedy called The Eumen- ides, the Furies act as chorus. darkness visible. See Paradise Lost, Bk. I. 62. Dweller in yon Dungeon dark. Do the quoted verses im- press you as being of extraordinary power ? P. 27. at Thebes, and in Pelops' line. See II Penseroso, 99. What Greek tragedies had to do with the line of Pelops ? P. 28. ' To the last, Burns was of opinion that Tam o' Shanter was the best of his j)i'oductions ; and although it does not often happen that poet and public come to the same conclusion on such points, I believe the decision in question has been all but unani- mously approved of.' Lockhart, Chap. VII. Tieck . . . Musaus. Both of these satirists are represented in Carlyle's early translations from the German. Of Musaus he says : ' He does not approach the first rank of WTiters; he attempts not to deal with the deeper feelings of the heart. . . . Musaus is in fact no poet ... he is nothing, or very little of a maker.' On the con- trary, ' Tieck is no ordinary man ; he is a true poet, a poet born as well as made.' P. 29. raucle carlin, sturdy crone. Teniers. David Teniers, the younger. For a critical sketch and an example of his work, see the Century Magazine, Sept., 1895. P. 30. Beggars' Opera . . . Beggars' Bush. See the Century Cyclopedia of Xames. Ossorius, the Portugal Bishop. Geronymo Osorio, once affect- edly called the ' Cicero of Portugal.' It was Bacon who said that 'his vein was weak and waterish.' 254 Selections from Carlyle. P. 31. his Songs . . . are music. See the discussion of Song in The Hero as Poet. Burns's old schoolmaster says: 'Robert's ear was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get him to distinguish one tune from another.' Does this affect the value of Carlyle's remark ? Review what has been said of Burns's poems (p. 28). P. 32. our Fletcher. Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1653-1716). Here, as in the phrase 'our literature' (p. 34), Carlyle speaks as a Scotchman. Later in life, when he had made London his home, he ceased to identify himself with Scotland, and even made use of the phrase 'we English.' P. 33. John Boston. This should be Thomas Boston. See Chambers's Ci/clopcedia of English Literature. Lord Karnes. His Elements of Criticism was much praised, but Goldsmith said of it, 'It is easier to write that kind of book than to read it.' Hume. See the concluding portion of the Carlyle essay on Bos- ivelVs .Johnson. Robertson, Smith. William Robertson, the historian ; Adam Smith, the political economist. P. 35. 'a tide of Scottish prejudice.' It was the boyish reading of a history of Sir William Wallace which, Burns says, 'poured a tide,' etc. A wish (I mind its power), etc. See Burns's EpisUe to the Guidicife of Wauchope House. P. 36. he never attains to any clearness regarding himself. There is no more touching comment upon Burns's limitations than the following complacent passage from the Autohiography : 'It was ever my opinion that the mistakes and blunders of which we see thousands guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself has been all along my study.' P. 38. Comparison has been made between the hard-handed peasant here described, and Carlyle's own father. The senior Burns in this description lacks the characteristic of stern restraint which made it possible for Carlyle to say of his father, ' We had all to complain that we durst not freely love him.' Burns, how- ever, ascribes to his father a trait which was equally distant from the character of James Carlyle : that of ' headlong ungovernable irascibility.' Burns. 255 P. 39. a priest-like father. See The Cottar's Saturday Night. The gayest, brightest, most fantastic, fascinating being. Murdoch, the schoolmaster, whose authority Carlyle cites later, says, ' Robert's countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind.' 'At those^ years,' said Burns, of the same period, 'I was by no means a favorite with anybody.' For further particulars, which put Car- lyle's impression of the poet's boyhood somewhat in doubt, see Lockhart's Life, Chap. I. P. 40. sharp adamant of Fate. Adamant, chaos, welter, hulls, hearsays, furtherances, formulas, are among the words which you will find Carlyle using to the point of mannerism. P. 41. 'passions raging like demons.' 'My passions, once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they found vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses like a spell soothed all to quiet,' are Burns's words. P. 42. 'hungry Ruin has him in the wind.' ' I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde ; for " Hungry Rum had me in the wind." I had been for some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail. I had taken the last farewell of my few friends ; my chest was on the way to Greenock ; I had composed the last song I ever should measure in Caledonia, " The gloomy night is gathering fast," when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by open- ing new prospects to my poetic ambition.' — Burns's Autohiography. The original reading of the last verse Carlyle quotes is, ' Fare- well, the bonnie banks of Ayr.' Which is the better version ? P. 43. societies which they would have scorned. 'It was little in Burns's character,' says Lockhart, ' to submit to nice and scrupulous rules, when he knew that by crossing the street he could find society who would applaud him the more, the more heroically all such rules were disregarded.' Virgilium vidi tantum. Freely, 'I have at least a glimpse of Virgil to boast of.' Ovitb Tristia, IV. 10, 51. P. 44. Langhorne. See Chambers's Cyclopcedia of English Literature. The second verse quoted reads in the original, ' Per- haps that parent mourned her soldier slain.' Is Scott's variation an improvement ? 256 Selections from Carlyle. P. 46. Of the good old Blaoklook, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale, ' This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar, in Latin, French, and Greek. He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked upon him with reverence.' modica of pudding and praise. Contrast this with the pas- sage quoted (p. 43) to the effect that Burns did not 'rank with those professional ministers of excitement,' etc. Lockhart else- where gives an incident which illustrates the poet's independence: * A certain stately peeress sent to invite him, without, as he fancied, having sufficiently cultivated his acquaintance beforehand. " Mr. Burns," answered the bard, " will do himself the honor of waiting on the of , provided her ladyship will invite also the Learned Pig." Such an animal was then exhibiting in the Grass- market.' P. 47. Be sure you understand exciseman and ganger as they are applied to Burns. — There is no doubt that on the whole he was faithful in the discharge of his duties, but here is an anec- dote told by a Professor Gillespie, which indicates that occasionally the poet in Burns got the better of the exciseman. ' An informa- tion had been lodged against a poor widow of the name of Kate Watson, who had ventured to serve a few of her old country friends with a draught of unlicensed ale, and a lacing of whiskey. I saw him [Burns] enter her door, and anticipated nothing short of an im- mediate seizure. A nod, accompanied by a significant movement of the forefinger, brought Kate to the doorway, and I was near enough to hear the following words : " Kate, are ye mad ? D'ye no ken that the supervisor and I will be in upon you in the course of forty minutes ? Guid bye t'ye at present." ' P. 48. To his last day, he owed no man anything. Not long before his death, Burns wrote the following desperate lines to his cousin ; on the same day sending a similar appeal, in almost the same words, to a friend, Mr. Thomson : 'A rascal of a haberdasher, to whom I owe a considerable bill, taking il into his head that I am dying, has "commenced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. Will you be so good as to accommo- date me, and that by return of post, with ten pounds ? — Save me from the horrors of a jail!' Burns. 257 P. 49. Maecenases. The name of Horace's protector is used by Carlyle, as well as by Macaulay, interchangeably with ' patron.' These men . . . the means of his ruin. See the conclusion of The Hero as Man of Letters. P. 50. These accusations . . . were false enough. The fact that on one occasion Burns sent to the French Convention a num- ber of small cannon which in his official capacity he had captured from a smuggling vessel, made such charges from headquarters not unnatural. Burns's sympathy with the French, however, seems to have been far less deep-seated than his feeling for America. ' According to the tradition of the neighborhood. Burns gave great offence by demurring, in a large mixed company, to the toast, " The health of William Pitt " ; and left the room in indignation because the society rejected what he wished to substitute, namely, "The health of a greater and better man, George Washington." ' See Lockhart's Life, Chap. VII. Read also Burns's unfinished ballad on The American War. P. 51. 'entertained him very agreeably — with a bowl of his usual potation,' says Lockhart. P. 52. The ' high-mindedness of refusing them ' was rated at its full worth by Burns himself, in a bornbastic letter to his editor, which offers a fair example of his English prose at its worst : ' I swear by that honor which crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns's integrity, on the least motion of it [payment] I wiU indig- nantly spurn the by-past transaction [the unfortunate editor had sent him a draft for £5], and from that moment commence to be an entire stranger to you. Burns's character for generosity of sen- timent and independence of mind will, I trust, long outlive any of his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply ; at least I will take care that such a character he shall deserve.' P. 53. So the milder third gate was opened. Do the facts of Burns's death entirely justify the pathos of this passage? P. 54. that sentiment of Pride, which we inculcate, etc. See note on p. 9. P. 56. let us go and do otherwise. Here the preacher- element in Carlyle takes the lead, in exhortation. fardels of a weary life. See Hamlet, Act HI., Sc. 1. P. 57. The sternest sum-total. Contrast with this the former characterization of death as ' the milder third gate.' 258 Selections from Carhjle. P. 58. Restaurateur. Carlyle wrote in his Note Booh (Dec. 3, 1826) : ' It is a damnable heresy in criticism, to maintain either ex- pressly or implicitly that the ultimate object of poetry is sensation. That of cookery is such, but not that of poetry. Sir Walter Scott is the great intellectual restaurateur of Europe. What are his novels — any one of them? Are we wiser, better, holier, stronger? No. AVe have been amused.' P. 59. the Araucana. See the Century Cyclopedia of Names. P. 61. Jean Paul. Literary name of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, the German mj^stic and humorist (1763-1825). P. 62. the highest worldly honors, etc. Contrast with this Taine's account of Byron's antecedents. Eng. Lit., Bk. IV., Chap. ii. P. 61. Ramsgate. A seaport in Kent, England. Isle of Dogs. A small peninsula on the Thames. P. 65. Valclusa Fountain. The fountain of the village of Vaucluse, near Avignon, was celebrated by Petrarch, under the Latin form here given. 0^ HISTOEY. Fraser's Magazine, No. 10. 1830. Fraser^s was a monthly publication of a somewhat miscellaneous nature, which Carlyle, with that deadly playfulness of his, variously dubbed the ' dog's-meat tart of a magazine,' the 'dog's carrion cart,' and finally, the ' mud magazine.' For its proprietor, the well-meaning Eraser, he expressed a similar contempt, retaining him for some time as his publisher, however, on the ground that the known evil is better than the unknown. This essay is included here because, although it cannot be rated equal in merit to the rest of the material in the present volume of selections, it has the advantage of embodying one of the author's most important doctrines in its least extravagant form. ' His conception of what history should be is shared with Macaulay,' says Nichol (Mac- aulay's essay on the same subject had been published in 1828) . ' Both writers protest against its being made a mere record of "court and camp,"of royal intrigue and state rivalry, of pageants . . . orchivalric encounters. . . . But Carlyle differs from Macaulay in his passion for the concrete. The latter presents us with pictures to illustrate his political theory ; the former leaves his pictures to speak for themselves.' P. 66. The Sibylline Books. See Brewer's Reader's Hand- hook, or Gay ley's Classic Myths. P. 67. ' Of the romantic historians, Herodotus is the earliest and the best.' Macaulay on History. P. 68. Philosophy teaching by Experience. Carlyle grew more and more impatient of this theory of history, as of other theories. In the essay on Biography, written two years later, he says : ' What hope have we in turning over those old interminable Chron- icles, with their garrulities and their insipidities; or still worse, in patiently examining those modern narrations of the philosophic kind, where "Philosophy teaching by Experience" has to sit like owl on 259 260 Selections from Carlyle. housetop, seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with such solemnity, her perpetual most wearisome hoo-hoo : — what hope have we, except the for the most part fallacious one, of gaining some acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, yet dear to us ; how they got along in those old days, suffering and doing; to what extent, and under what circumstances, they resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or struck their colors to him, and were trodden under foot by him ; how, in short, the perennial Battle went which men name Life, which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune, have to fight, and must bequeath our sons and grandsons to go on fighting, — till the Enemy one day be quite van- quished and abolished, or else the great Night sink and part the com- batants ; and thus, either by some Millenium or some new Noah's Deluge, the Volume of Universal History wind itself up ! Other hope, in studying such books, we have none : and that it is a deceitful hope, who that has tried knows not ? ' P. 69. Neither -will it adequately avail, etc. Contrast the conclusion of this sentence with the former phrase {Burns, p. 15), 'the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries.' "Which was the greatest innovator, etc. The argument here follows Macaulaj^ very closely : ' The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of com- munities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity, — these are, for the most part, noiseless revolu- tions. They are not achieved by armies, nor enacted by senates.' — Macaulay on History. P. 70. Morgarten. A mountain in Switzerland, from which, in 1315, a small body of Swiss descended upon and utterly routed a superior force of Austrians. See the Centuj^y Cyclopedia of Names. One of Carlyle's early attempts at verse had for its theme this battle. Here is the last stanza : ' In speed they came on, but still faster they go, While ruin and horror around them are hurled. And the field of Morgarten in splendor shall grow, Like Marathon's field, to the end of the world.' P. 71. ' Impeachment of Strafford.' See Green's Short His- tory of the English People, pp. 521-526. On History. 261 ' Convocation of the Notables.' See Caiiyle's French Revo- lution, Bk. III., Chap. iii. P. 72. the -writer fitted to compose History ... an un- known man. Macaulay had written : 'History, it has been said, is philosophy teaching by examples. Unfortunately, what the philosophy gains in soundness and depth, the examples generally lose in vividness. A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque. Yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the material which he finds, and to refrain from supply- ing deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner. Yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can justly estimate these almost insuperable difficulties will not think it strange that every writer should have failed, either in the narrative or in the speculative department of history.' Boswell gives the following formulation by Johnson of the old- fashioned notion of the sphere of the historian : '"Great abilities," said he, "are not requisite for a historian ; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand ; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree." ' P. 76. the inward and spiritual is of prime influence. See note on p. 159 of this volume. P. 77. Bruckers and Buhles. Brucker and Buhle were Ger- man philosophers of the eighteenth century. Enfield, an English dissenting minister of the same period, was the translator of Brucker's History of Philosophy. P. 78. let us not despair. Compare Macaulay: ' A historian such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind powers scarcely com- patible with each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakespeare or another Homer. . . . Yet the contemplation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind. It cannot indeed produce perfection ; but it produces improvement.' BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSOK Fraser's INIagazine, Xo. 2S.— The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.; including a Tour to the Hebrides. By James Boswell, Esq. — A new Edi- tion, with numerous Additions and Notes, by John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols. London, 1831. Macaulay's review, hastily written under the spur of political and personal hostility to Croker, so far lacked the dignity of mature and dispassionate criticism as to render a more considerate treatment of so notable a publication not only possible, but imperative. Carlyle, to be sure, brought to the task as much prejudice as Macaulay, but it was the prejudice of enthusiasm, rather than of party rancor. Macau- lay's avowed intention of ' smashing ' Croker was too evident in the in- discriminate abuse and trivial accusations of inaccuracy which make up so large a part of his essay ; while his paradoxical judgment of Boswell, and his patrician inability to grasp such a character as John- son's, plainly aroused all Carlyle's instinct for fair play. In the compact opening paragraphs of his essay, which constitute all that can properly be called a review, Carlyle begins and concludes an arraignment of Croker's editorial method, on large grounds, which is as much more searching in its calm contempt, as it is less personal, than Macaulay's petulant sallies. The rest of the paper is devoted particularly to the defence, and more broadly to the clarification of the true Boswell and the true Johnson, While there is no direct refer- ence to Macaulay or his review, the connection between the two essays is obvious. Here again, as in the case of Burns, Carlyle was to speak of a great man with whom he had much in common. His relation to Burns, however, was almost purely that of nationality and outward circum- stance ; his sympathy with Johnson rested upon a much more essen- tial likeness. 'In rugged kindliness and intellectual massiveness, in physical tribulations and the circumstances of their struggle with the world, the two were so close a parallel that Carlyle's power of sympa- thetic discernment was probably never less taxed than by this noble 202 BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 263 portrait.' The essay in consequence was written with a rapidity very far from his usual experience, and has a value from its spontaneous ease of manner which is lacking in much of his more deliberate work. P. 80. National Omnibus. A third-rate popular magazine then published. throats of brass and of leather. Brazen trumpets are figured as voicing the ' vituperative ' criticisms ; bellows of leather, the ' puffery ' of the ' laudatory ' reviews. lo-paeans. From the Greek 'Iw Ilaiav, ' Hail, Apollo ! ' P. 82. reconciling the distant -with the present. That is, reconciling inconsistent or conflicting statements, of which there are as many in Johnson as in Carlyle. Shovel-hatted. Tliis to Carlyle sometimes means conservative in religious belief, sometimes merely goody-goody. Consult the dictionary for the history of the shovel hat. P. 83. " Ma f oi, monsieur," etc. ' Really, sir, our happiness depends on the way in which our blood circulates.' English-French. The objection is Croker's, and seems a trifle hypercritical. P. 84. Pudding and Praise. See Pope's Dunciad, I. 54. P. 85. The four Books on Johnson w^ere Tyer's Biographical Sketch; Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes; Sir John Hawkins's Z?/e, and Murphy's Essay. Many of Croker's insertions, however, are trace- able to still other sources. a sextum quid. ' A sixth something-or-other.' P. 86. penny-s-wipes. Small beer. P. 88. appeared at the Shakspeare Jubilee. It is true that Boswell was proud of his experiences in Corsica, and his acquaint- ance w4th Paoli. The absurdity of this tale, however, for which in its present form Macaulay is responsible, is a good deal modified by a knowledge of the facts. It w'as at a public masquerade held in connection wdth the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford, that Bos- well appeared not inappropriately dressed as an armed Corsican chief ; moreover, the inscription on his cap was not Corsica Bos- well, but ' Viva la Liberta.' The very look of Boswell. Carlyle probably had in mind here a ludicrous portrait which forms the frontispiece of the fourth volume of Croker's Boswell. 264 Selections from Carlyle. old Touchwood (or, as later, * sulphur-brand') Auchinleck (pronounced Affleck) was Boswell's father, the Lau'd of Auchin- leck, here given the title of the family estate. P. 89. a very Gamaliel. See^cfev. 34. The Boswells claimed descent from the Bruce, and kinship with English royalty. P. 90. Thurtell's Trial. For an account of this famous mur- der, see Masson's edition of De Quincey, Vol. XIII., pp. 44-45, note. After quoting the same dialogue from the trial, Masson says, 'the " gig " became from that moment Carlyle 's pet symbol for respec- tability ; and the world was never to hear the last of it from him, whether in the simple form of the mere " gig," or in the generalized forms of " gigmanity," "gigmanity disgigged," and other compounds.' P. 91. a poor rusty-coated ' scholar.' This is unfortunately a mistake. In 1763, when Johnson first became known to Boswell, it has been noted, he ' was already the leader of the literary world, had an income larger than Boswell's allowance, and numbered among his friends men of the highest rank.' to sip muddy coffee, etc. Carlyle has made too much of this story. Boswell mentions tea as their beverage, but says nothing about the quality. Miss Williams, he adds in a note, was known to have ' acquired such niceness of touch as to know by the feeling on the outside of the cup how near it was to being full.' P. 92. domestic 'Outer-House.' Why 'domestic'? The Outer House is the great hall in the Scottish Parliament House at Edinburgh. For a description of it by Carlyle as it appeared in his youth, see Froude's Life of Carlyle, Vol. I., pp. 23-24. — Henry Erskine afterwards became a patron of Burns. ' The most agreeable of companions and the most benignant of wits took him [Burns] under his wing,' says Lockhart. P. 94. a kind of Heroic Poem. This comparison between his book and the Odyssey was first made by Boswell in his Adver- tisement to the Second Edition : 'It seems to me, in my moments of self-complacency, that this ex- tensive biographical work, however inferior in its nature, may in one respect be assimilated to tlie Odyssey. Amidst a thousand entertain- ing and instructive episodes, the Hero is never long out of sight ; for they are all in some degree connected with him ; and He in the whole course of the History is exhibited by the Author for the best advantage of the readers.' BosiuelVs Life of Johnson. 265 P. 95. 'the waste fantasy of his own dream.' Carlyle else- where ascribes this phrase to the German 'Xovalis.' a strange enough hypothesis. See Macaulay on BosicelVs Johnson. Bad is by its nature negative. ' Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.' The Hero as Diviniti/. P. 97. ^on the import of Reality.' See the short essay on Biography, which was published in the preceding number of Eraser's by way of introduction to the Johnson essay. The specu- lation referred to is there quoted from one of Carlyle's fictitious authorities, the ' Herr Sauerteig ' mentioned below. 'transcendental.' A much-abused word which, as applied to thought, signifies that element in human reason which we possess through insight rather than through experience. P. 98. The Mitre Tavern still stands, etc. This is an exag- gerated instance of Carlyle's fondness for compound forms. The bootjack here is the English inn-official usually known — at least in fiction — as the ' Boots.' P. 99. Prosperous air- vision. See The Tempest, Act lY., Sc. 1. P. 100. ' the thing they called the Rudder,' etc. Where does this passage occur originally ? P. 101. Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler. Writers on political economy, who had just come freshly before the public. ^neas Silvius. Pope Pius 11. (1405-1464), who as a young man visited Scotland, and wrote certain letters, mainly descriptive, which are said to be still worth reading. P. 103. which we here recommend ; that is, recommend to the reader's consideration. This adverse criticism of Boswell comes also from Macaulay. Apart from the general moral aspect of the question, Boswell had the excuse of Johnson's full permis- sion and encouragement to record everything. The same charges of 'infringement of social privacy' were brought against Carlyle's own biographer, who could and did plead the same justification. 'taking notes.' ' If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye tent it ; A chiePs amang ye takin' notes, An' faith he'll prent it.' — Burns, Lines on Captain Grose. 266 Selections from Carlyle. P. 104. Halfness. Evidently from the German Halhheit. (thou hast it a-holding.) That is, 'thou hast the power to hold it.' Silence. Carlyle by his insistent vehemence on this point fairly challenged the gibe which he himself quotes as coming from his friend Sterling : ' " Silence ? " he would say : " Yes, truly, if they give you leave to proclaim it by cannon-salvos ! " ' Life of Sterling, p. 169. P. 105. ass-skin and blacklead = parchment and crayon = paper and pencil. ' iron leaf.' ' In Heaven's chancery also there goes on a record- ing ; things, as my Moslem friends say, are " written on the iron leaf." ' Past and Present, Bk. III., Chap. x. ' much-enduring.' The Homeric epithet of Odysseus, TroXurAas. the Life of the lowest mortal, etc. This quotation is from himself ; the one whicli follows, he elsewhere attributes to Johnson. P. 106. Natus sum, etc. 'I was born; I hungered, I sought (food) ; now, being filled, I take my rest.' P. 109. Popinjays or . . . Mumbojumbos. Look up these words. See, also, for a description of the popinjay, Scott's Old Mortality, Chaps. I. and II. P. 111. ' never once saw the human face divine.' These are reported to be Johnson's own words. P. 112. k chacun selon sa capacity, etc. 'To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works.' The new French Prophets who formulated this maxim were the Saint-Simonians, in whom at one time Carlyle was greatly interested. Mr. Hector. Edmund Hector was in later life the friend and host of Johnson, who often spoke of him with affection. P. 113. The child is father of the man. See Wordsworth's lines beginning, ' JNIy heart leaps up.' Corporal Trim's ' auxiliary verbs.' It is not Corporal Trim, but Shandy's father, w^io proposes a system of varying the simple verb by means of auxiliaries, for the purpose of questioning. Using this method of inquiry, he says, ' there is no one idea can enter a child's brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of con- ceptions and conclusions may be brought forth from it.' Sterne's Tristram Shandy. BosweIVs Life of Johnson. 267 P. 114. the continual view of the empty or locked buttery. It is hard to see why Caiiyle should dispute a matter of simple record. Boswell's best editor says that beyond a doubt all the students, rich and poor, dined at the common table. P. 115. Johnson, as a regular college exercise, translated into Latin Pope's Messiah, and won from its author the extraordinary tribute : ' The writer of this poem will leave it a question for pos- terity whether his or mine be the original.' P. 116. 'Mr. Edmund Cave.' The Christian name should be Edward. ' This is the most sensible man,' etc. These are reported to have been Mrs. Johnson's actual words on first meeting him. P. 117. Dr. Parr. A noted classical scholar and pedant of Johnson's time. gart, made ; lith, joint. Town-clerk (not of Ephesus). See Acts xix. 35. P. 118. Otway was an Elizabethan playwright who died, if not directly of hunger, at least of the results of hunger. He is said to have been choked by a piece of bread. Scrogginses. See the portrait of Scroggin in Goldsmith's frag- mentary Description of an Author's Bedchamber. carpe diem. ' Seize the day.' See Horace, Odes, I. xi. 8. Com- pare many of the seventeenth century lyi-ics, for instance Herrick's ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying ; And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying.' P. 120. 'lord of the liou heart,' etc. ' Thy spirit, Independence, let me share ; Lord of the lion-heart and eagle -eye Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.' — Smollett, Ode to Independence. P. 121. Bookseller Maecenasship. 'Andrew Millar/ said Johnson of his favorite bookseller, ' is the Maecenas of tlie age.' P. 122. Meecenases proper . . . and . . . virtual. That is, the aristocracy and the booksellers. 268 Selections froyn Carlyle, an Osborne even required to be knocked down. ' It has been confidently related, with many embellishments/ says Boswell, ' that Johnson one day knocked Osborne down, in his shop, with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. The simple truth I had from Johnson himself. " Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him." ' P. 123. The plan of the Dictionary had been addressed to Lord Chesterfield as patron, but beyond the gift of ten pounds at that time, Johnson had received no sign from him till shortly before its publication, when with a view to attracting the dedication to him- self, the earl took pains to write a favorable notice. This tardy act of favor, instead of propitiating Johnson, called forth the letter of which Carlyle quotes the conclusion. Love ... a native of the rocks. See Virgil, Eclogues, YIII. 43-45. delayed . , . till I am solitary. Mrs. Johnson had died three years before, in 1752. certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as ' Notes.' Croker considered the gift of ten pounds an ' act of assistance,' and was puzzled to reconcile the fact with Johnson's statement. As has been said, the gift was made before the actual work began, and only served to make subsequent neglect more marked. P. 124. great bushy wig. 'Mr. Carlyle writes of "bushy- wigged Cave " ; but it was Johnson whose wig is described, not Cave. On p. 327 Hawkins again mentions his " great bushy wig." ' G. B. Hill. (viroKpiTTis-) Carlyle, in using the Greek word for ' actor,' evi- dently means to suggest the anglicized form of the word, 'hypo- crite.' ' What is Truth,' said jesting Pilate. See Bacon's essay, Of Truth, the introductory paragraph. P. 125. John Toland, a deist of the early eighteenth century, attacked the authenticity of the gospels. P. 126. Parson Trulliber is a brutal farming clergyman in Fielding's Joseph Andrews. ' like an infant Hercules,' etc. This simile is adapted from a remark of Boswell's about Johnson. P. 127. Lord Jeffreys, Chief Justice under Charles H., num- bered among his crimes the judicial murder of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, for alleged complicity in the ' Rye-house Plot.' BosivelVs Life of Johnson. 269 P. 129. Wilkes. The most effective condensed comment on the great demagogue is to be found in Hogarth's satiric portrait. P. 130. both ' person ' and ' character.' That is, both bodily well-being and good-repute. Fleetditch. Once a natural stream in London, now a sewer. P. 131. Notice the Bible phrases in tliis and the foUow^ing para- graph: redeeming the time; gaining the whole world, etc.; ivaxing old as doth a garment; and so on. under a certain authentic Symbol. That is, embodied in the creed of the Church of England. P. 132. ' He carried me with him to the Church of St. Clement Danes, where he had his seat ; and his behavior w^as, as I had imaged to myself, solemnly devout.' Boswell. P. 133. impransus. ' Dinnerless.' One of Johnson's letters to Cave is signed ' Yours, impransus.' Parliamentary Debates . . . Senate-of-Lilliput Debates. In 1732 Cave had begun to publish in his Gentleman's Magazine certain papers which claimed to be genuine reports of the debates in Parliament, though the names of the speakers were thinly dis- guised. These reports were so fragmentary and inaccurate that they caused great dissatisfaction in Parliament; and finally, in 1738, shortly before Johnson became a contributor to the Magazine, a resolution of Parliament forbade their publication. It was at some personal risk, therefore, that Johnson undertook to wa-ite a series of debates purporting to come from Lilliput, but really a continuation of the former series. As Johnson himself never entered Parliament, and the debates w^ere largely fictions, in which, by his own confession, he ' took care that the Whig Dogs should not have the best of it,' their writing seems to bear little upon the subject of the Fourth Estate. See in this volume. The Hero as Man of Letters, p. 214. P. 134. the blessing of Old Mortality. See the introduction to Scott's Old Mortality. P. 13.5. 'He said a man might live ... at eighteenpence,' etc. Carlyle quotes this as if it had been said by Boswell of Johnson. The passage occurs in Boswell's Life, but it is Johnson who is reporting the words of an early Irish acquaintance of his. 'when Dr. Johnson . . . read his own satire.' The Vanity of Human Wishes. This story is told by Mrs. Piozzi. 270 Selections from Carlyle. Tempus edax rerum, '• Time, the consumer of all things.' Ovid, MetamorpJioses, XV. 234. — ferax, 'producer.' P. 186. ' One day it shall delight you also,' etc. ' Forsan et hcec olim meminisse juvaUt.' uEneid, Bk. I. 203. Constantine's Banner. The Emperor Constantine (a.d. 312) adopted for his standard a cross, and the motto ' In Jioc s'lgno vinces' (In this sign thou wilt conquer). P. 138. 'An inspired idiot.' This was said by Horace Walpole. 'gooseberry-fool.' See the dictionary; and Goldsmith's poem RetaUatlcm, in wliieh he applies the term to himself. ' could not stop his merriment,' etc. It is hard to account for this absurd seizure of Johnson's, as there was apparently nothing ludicrous in the circumstance. P. 139. Thralia. Mrs. Thrale (afterward Mrs. Piozzi), the kindest influence of Johnson's later years. He gives her name the present form in certain Latin verses addressed to her. Bozzy. The nickname is Johnson's. res gestae, ' affairs transacted.' Stat Parvi nominis umbra. An adaptation of Lucan's saying of Pompey, '■Stat magni nominis umhra.' {Pharsalia, I. 135.) ' There remains the shadow of a mighty name.' ' Stat nominis umhra' was the motto of the famous 'Letters of Junius.' the insanest of all loud clamors. This clamor was not un- natural in view of the definition of pension which had appeared in the Dictionary : 'An allowance made to anyone without an equiva- lent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.' Overseer. A literal translation of the Greek cTrto-KOTros, from which ' bishop ' is derived. — Horse-subduers is evidently a remi- niscence of the Homeric linTohajxoL. P. 140. Primate of England is the official title of the Arch- bishop of York ; Primate of All England, of the Archbishop of Canterbury. P. 143. Chalk-Farm. A favorite dueling ground near London during the early part of this century. P. 144. Peterloos. On St. Peter's Field, near Manchester, in 1819, a reform meeting was broken up by a detachment of cavalry. Tlie occurrence of the fracas so soon after Waterloo, led to its being dubbed satirically 'the Field of Peterloo.' BoswelVs Life of Johnson. 271 P. 148. It was a happier time. Contrast with this Carlyle's frequent condemnation of the eighteenth century as an age of fi'aud. Apocalyptic Bladder. The rending of the bhadder of Puffery is compared with the pouring out of the vials (Revised Version, bowls) of wrath. See Rev. xv. and xvi. Church of England. To a Scotch Presbyterian minister who talked of 'fat bishops and drowsy deans/ Johnson said testily, -u c o _ On the Reform Bill of i8';2. Chatham : „ . „ . Calhoun : On American Affairs. /-% ^.i. c-i ^ _ On the Slavery Question. Erskine: „ , , , ^ Seward : In the Stockdale Case. /^ ^.i, t -1.1 r- a- ^ On the Irrepressible Conflict. Lincoln : The Gettysburg Address. IN making this selection, the test applied to each speech was that it should be in itself memorable, attaining its distinc- tion through the essential qualities of nobility and force of ideas, and that it should be, in topic, so related to the great thoughts, memories, or problems of our own time as to have for us still an inherent and vital interest. The speeches thus chosen have been printed from the best available texts, without change, save that the spelling has been made uniform throughout, and that three of the speeches — those of Webster, Calhoun, and Seward — have been shortened somewhat by the omission of matters of merely temporal or local interest. The omitted portions have been summarized for the reader, whenever they bear upon the main argument. The Notes aim to furnish the reader with whatever help is necessary to the proper appreciation of the speeches ; to avoid bewildering him with mere subtleties and display of erudition ; and to encourage in him habits of self-help and familiarity with sources of information. A special feature of this part of the work is a sketch of the English Constitution and Government, intended as a general introduction to the English speeches. The collection includes material enough to permit of a varied selection for the use of successive classes in the schools. ENGLISH. Professor J. M. Hart, Cornell University: Bradley's Orations and Argu- ments is a good book. I am glad to have it, and shall take pleasure in recommending its use. The thought of bringing together a few of the best speeches by the best Englishmen and Americans, in a volume of moderate size, is an excellent one. The selection is judicious, and as representative as the limits permit. The annotation seems to me to be sound. I am especially pleased with the general notes on the English Constitution and Government. They ought to clear up a good many puzzles and obscurities for the students. Professor T. W. Hunt, College of New Jersey, Princeton: It is a book that will be of practical service in the sphere of argumentation and forensic address. The notes add much to its value. Professor J. H. Penniman, University of Pennsylvatiia: It seems to be an excellent book, and will prove a great aid to teachers of rhetoric and com- position. The literary side of oratory is prominently set forth by the selections chosen. Byron Groce, Boston Latin School: It is a remarkably fine book; fine in selection, in editing, in print, paper, and form. I wish I might have copies for one of my classes. I long ago publicly urged that a larger selection of orations be given in our literature courses, which, though perhaps not too literary, certainly needed the variety such selections as these you publish will give. Wilson Farrand, Newark Academy, N. J.: The book is admirable in every way — selection of speeches, annotation, and mechanical execution. The special excellence of the notes seems to me to be in their historical sugges- tiveness, and the special value of the book in its connecting literary and historical study. E. H. Lewis, University of Chicago: The principles on which these selec- tions have been made are thoroughly sound. The notes are adequate, but not too full. The book is a most available and useful one. Professor Edward E. Hale, Jr., lorva State University, Iowa City : I have read the larger part of it with great pleasure. I think it will serve its purpose very well, for the selections are excellent, and so are the notes. The book supplies good material which cannot easily be found else- where in so compact a form, and which ought to be a great help to many teachers. Professor H. N. Snyder, Wofford College, Spartanburg, S.C: These judi- cious selections, and helpful and interesting notes, make an exceedingly useful book. ENGLISH. From Milton to Tennyson Masterpieces of English Poetry. Edited by L. Du Pont Syle, Uni- versity of California. i2mO; cloth, 4S0 pages. Price, ^i.oo. IN this work the editor has endeavored to bring together within the compass of a moderate-sized volume as much narrative, descriptive, and lyric verse as a student may reasonably be re- quired to read critically for entrance to college. From the nineteen poets represented, only such masterpieces have been selected as are within the range of the understanding and the sympathy of the high school student. Each masterpiece is given complete, except for pedagogical reasons in the cases of Thomson, Cowper, Byron, and Browning. Exigencies of space have compelled the editor reluctantly to omit Scott from this volume. The copyright laws, of course, exclude American poets from the scope of this work. The low price of the book, together with its strong and attrac- tive binding, make it especially desirable for those teachers who read with their classes even a small part of the poems it contains. President D. S. Jordan, Leland Stanford., Jr., University. Cal. : I have re- ceived the copy of Mr. Syle's book," From Milton to Tennyson," and have looked it over with a great deal of interest. It seems to be an excellent work for the purpose. The selections seem well adapted to high school use, and the notes are wisely chosen and well stated. Professor Henry A. Beers, Yale University: The notes are helpful and suggestive. What is more, — and what is unusual in text-book annota- tions, — they are interesting and make very good reading ; not at all school- masterish, but really Hterary in their taste and discernment of nice points. Professor Elmer E. Wentworth, Vassar College: It is a most attractive book in appearance outward and inward, the selections satisfactory and just, the notes excellent. In schools where less time is given than in ours, no other book known to me, me Jndice, will be so good. I wish to com- mend the notes again. Wm. E. Griffis, Ithaca, N.Y. ■ The whole work shows independent research as well as refined taste and a repose of judgment tnat is admirable. The selected pieces are not overburdened with critical notes, while the sugges- tions for comparison and criticism, to be made by the student himself, are very valuable. ENGLISH. Miss Isabel Graves, lVe//es/ey College, IVellesley, Mass.: I am pleased with the appearance of the book, and find that the selection of masterpieces gives the desired variety. The notes are fortunately directed against some prejudices, and must prove suggestive. W. E. Sargent, Hebron Academy, Hebron, Me.: The book is a gem — just enough selections, and the very best ones of each author. F. A. Tupper, Principal of High School, Qtiincy, Mass.: Mr. Syle's "From Milton to Tennyson " is a most admirable book in conception and execu- tion. The selections, both of authors and of poems, evince true poetic feeling and rare taste. The sketches, notes, and bibliography everywhere bear marks of sound and scientific teaching power. The book is adapted not only to schools and colleges, but also to the library and the home. I feel indebted to the editor of this book, and in expressing my approval, I am making only a slight return for the profit derived from the volume. Professor Edward S. Parsons, Colorado College : I find the book extremely valuable for the wisdom of its selections ; for its comprehensive, yet care- fully chosen bibliography ; and for its pointed and entertaining style. The following MILTON, by the DRYDEN . . . poets are represented : POPE . . . THOMSON . JOHNSON . GRAY . . . GOLDSMITH COWPER . BURNS . . COLERIDGE BYRON . . KEATS . . SHELLEY WORDSWORTH MACAULAY . . CLOUGH . . . . ARNOLD . . BROWNING TENNYSON L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Lycidas, and a Selection from the Sonnets. Epistle to Congreve, Alexander's Feast, Character of a Good Parson. Epistles to Mr. Jervas, to Lord Burlington, and to Augustus. Winter. Vanity of Human Wishes. Eleg}' Written in a Country Churchyard, and The Bard. Deserted Village. Winter Morning's Walk. Cotter's Saturday Night, Tam O'Shanter, and a Selection from the Songs. Ancient Mariner. Isles of Greece and Selections from Childe Harold, Manfred, and the Hebrew Melodies. Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale, Sonnet on Chapman's Homer. Euganean Hills, The Cloud, The Skylark, and the Two Sonnets on the Nile. Laodaniia, The Highland Girl,Tintem Abbev, The Cuckoo, The Ode to a Skylark, The INIilton Sonnet, The ( )de to Duty, and the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. Horatius. Two Ships, the Prologue to the Mari Magno, and The Law- yer's First Tale. Scholar-Gypsy and the Forsaken Merman. Transcript from Euripides (Balaustion's Adventure). Ginone, the Morte D'Arthur, The Miller's Daughter, and a Selection from the Songs. 10 ENGLISH. Select Essays of Macaulay Edited by Samuel Thurber, Girls' High School, Boston. i2mo, 205 pages; cloth, 70 cents; boards, 50 cents. THIS selection comprises the essays on Milton, Bunyan, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Madame D'Arblay, thus giv- ing illustrations both of Macaulay's earlier and of his later style. It aims to put into the hands of high school pupils speci- mens of English prose that shall be eminently interesting to read and study in class, and which shall serve as models of clear and vigorous writing. The subjects of the essays are such as to bring them into close relation with the study of general English literature. The annotation is intended to serve as a guide and stimulus to research rather than as a substitute for research. The notes, therefore, are few in number. Only when an allusion of Macau- lay is decidedly difficult to verify does the editor give the result of his own investigations. In all other cases he leads the pupil to make investigation for himself, believing that a good method in English, as in other studies, should leave as much free play as possible to the activity of the learner. Historical Essays of Macaulay Edited by Samuel Thurber. i2mo, cloth, 394 pages. Price, 80 cents. THIS selection includes the essays on Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, and both those on the Earl of Chatham. The text in each case is given entire. A map of India, giving the location of places named in the essays, is included. The notes are intended to help the pupil to help himself. They do not attempt to take the place of dictionary, encyclo- paedia, and such histories as are within the reach of ordinary students in academies or high schools. When an allusion is not easily understood, a note briefly explains it, or at least indicates where an explanation may be found. In other cases the pupil is expected to rely on his own efforts, and on such assistance as his teacher may think wise to give. ENGLISH. 11 Select Essays of Addison With Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Edited by Samuel Thurber, i2mo, 320 pages ; cloth, So cents ; boards, 50 cents. THE purpose of this selection is to interest young students in Addison as a moral teacher, a painter of character, a hu- morist, and as a writer of elegant English. Hence the editor has aimed to bring together such papers from the Spectator, the Tilth?', the Guardian, and the FreeJiolder as will prove most readable to youth of high school age, and at the same time give something like an adequate idea of the richness of Addison's vein. The De Coverley papers are of course all included. Papers describing eighteenth-century life and manners, espe- cially such as best exhibit the writer in his mood of playful satire, have been drawn upon as peculiarly illustrating the Addisonian humor. The tales and allegories, as well as the graver moraliz- ings, have due representation, and the beautiful hymns are all given. Professor Henry S. Pancoast, Philadelphia : I am delighted to find that you are continuing the work so well begun in the Macaulay. I read the Introduction with much interest, and with a fresh sense of the importance and value of the method of teaching you are working to advance. William C. Collar, Principal of Latin School, Roxbury, Mass. : I suppose the best thing I can say is that your book will go into our list of books to be read, and that it will have a permanent place in my school. I believe with all my heart in your principles of annotation, and think you are doing a great work for the schools, Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addi= son i2mo, boards. Price, 30 cents. THESE are reprinted from Mr. Thurber*s Select Essays of iMacaietay and Select Essays of Addison, without any change- in the numbering of the pages. Strongly and attrac- tively bound, and printed on good paper, this book forms the cheapest and best edition of these two essays for school use. 12 ENGLISH. frving's Sketch=Book With notes by Professor Elmer E. Wentworth, Vassar College. i2mo, cloth, 426 pages. Price, 60 cents. THIS is the best and cheapest edition of the complete Sketch- Book now before the pubhc. The paper and press-work are excellent, and the binding is strong and handsome. In his notes the editor has endeavored to stimulate, not supersede, thought on the part of the pupil, and so to prepare him to read with profit and enjoyment other literary masterpieces. What success has been attained in this direction may be estimated from the following extracts from letters recently received from those who have examined the book. Professor Wm. Lyon Phelps, New Hav-n, Conn. : Please accept my thanks for your handsome edition of the Sketch-Book, which seems to me surprisingly cheap in price for such a book. Professor Chas. F. Richardson, Dartmouth College^ Hanover., N.H. : I thank you for sending me Mr. Wentworth's well-annotated edition of Irving's Sketch-Book, a pleasure to the eye and the hand, and sure to aid in the enjoyment of an American classic. Professor Wm. H. Brown, Johns Hopkins University : I have to thank you for a copy of your very neat edition of Irving's classic Sketch-Book. I shall call the attention of my classes to it and its exceeding cheapness. Irving H. Upton, Principal of High School, Po7'fsmonth,N.H.: I examined it with a great deal of pleasure arising from two points in particular. First, from the remarkable execution of the book mechanically and typo- graphically; and, secondly, because of the judicious absence of useless notes. Professor T. W. Hunt, Princeton College, N.J. : Thanks for Wentworth's neat and convenient edition of the Sketch-Book. Had I seen it earlier, I should have inserted it in our catalogue for 1 893-1 894. Professor Wm. E. Smyser, De Patiw Ujiiversity, Greencastle, Ind.r I am very much pleased with the book in every particular. Professor Edward A. Allen, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.: Please accept my thanks for a copy of Wentworth's Irving's Sketch- Book, which strikes me as the best school edition I have seen. Professor 0. B. Clark, Ripon College, Ripon, Wis. : Permit me to congratu- late you on the beauty of the volume, on its cheapness, and, above all, on the scholarly taste, modest reserve, and encouraging suggestiveness of the notes. Reading and study are made to beget reading and study, and the appetite will surely grow with what it feeds on. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. UtU 3U i ■^^^ 2 ms 6 9 RECEIVED '^'■'-''^n SIP 2B '66-5 P^ IUL141966 ^ j8 50 -669 28^1* H00m.9,'47(A5702sl6)476 LOAN DEPT. -^"^099 -r^. « UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY \ -^U