everything that defeats the hero's efforts to redress the universal confusion, and his overcharged pictures of that confusion. He does not assail individuals for single acts-that would have a narrow and rancorous effect. When an offender crosses his path, he denounces him not personally, but as one of "the Devil's Regiment," as adding his little contribution to the "bellowing chaos,' 'the wide weltering confusion." Most of his stormy warfare of words is directed against the evils of this life gathered up under abstractions familiar to the most incidental reader of his books— Shams, Unveracities, Speciosities, Phantasms, and suchlike. We must be content for examples with fragments already quoted. (See pp. 140, 153).

(3.) He describes with fearful power the grand operations of Nature in her terrible aspects. He is not insensible to beneficent grandeurs, but his temperament inclines him more to the gloomy side to the "tropical tornado more than to the "rainbow and orient colours." At times he represents that a God, an Order, a Justice, presides over the "wild incoherent waste;" that to a man understanding the Sphinx riddle (another variety for the "eternal regulations of the Universe"), Nature is "of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness;" that "Nature, Universe, Destiny, Existence, however we name this grand unnameable fact in the midst of which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave." But on this aspect of Nature he dwells less than on the opposite. More often "the wild Universe storms in on Man infinite, vague-menacing." It is on this aspect of the Universe that he has accumulated his "Titanic" grandeurs of expression.

As an example of his luxurious revelling in "sulphur, smoke, and flame," may be quoted the following from his 'Chartism':

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"It is in Glasgow among that class of operatives that Number 60,' in his dark room, pays down the price of blood. Be it with reason or with unreason, too surely they do in verity find the time all out of joint; this world for them no home, but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation against themselves and against all men. it a green flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas-fumes, cotton-fuz, gin- riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon, governed by a Demon? The sum of their wretchedness, merited and unmerited, welters, huge, dark, and baleful, like a Dantean Hell, visible there in the statistics of Gin; Gin, justly named the most authentic incarnation of the Infernal Principle in our times, too indisputably an incarnation; Gin, the black throat into which wretchedness of every sort, consummating itself by calling on Delirium to help it, whirls down; abdication of the power to think or resolve, as too painful now, on the part of men whose lot of all others would require thought and resolution: fiquid Madness sold at tenpence the quartern, all the products of which are and must be, like its origin, mad, miserable, ruinous, and that only! If from this black, unluminous, unheeded inferno, and prison-house of souls in pain, there do

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flash up from time to time some dismal widespread glare of Chartism or the like, notable to all, claiming remedy from all," &c.

Pathos.

Carlyle's writings are not without gleams of pathos, all the more touching from the surrounding ruggedness. A man of strong special affections, he dwells with most moving tenderness on the life and character of his friends Edward Irving and John Sterling. To his heroes-Mirabeau, Cromwell, Friedrich, Burns-he seems to have been bound by something of the same personal attachment; and he records their death as with the deep sorrow of a surviving friend.

He often waxes wroth with "puking and sprawling Sentimentalism;" and the thought of human misery seems usually to rouse his indignation against idleness as the cause of misery, and to excite him to a more vehement enforcement of his panacea, the gospel of Work. Yet sometimes the thought of human misery does unnerve him, and throw him into the melting mood. Thus, when he stands with Teufelsdroeckh in the porch of the "Sanctuary of Sorrow," he cries:

"Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden? and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother! why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes?"

His most characteristic pathos is his subdued sorrow at the irresistible progress of time. The tired labourer mourns wearily that he can do so little, that time is so short. This weary feeling often crosses his page. Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks." Jocelin of Brakelond is "one other of those vanished existences whose work is not yet vanished; almost a pathetic phenomenon, were not the whole world full of such!" So (to give one more example) he moralises as follows on the glimpse of Cromwell's cousin in one of the Letters :

"Mrs St John came down to breakfast every morning in that summer visit of the year 1638, and Sir William said grave grace, and they spake polite devout things to one another; and they are vanished, they and their things and speeches,-all silent, like the echoes of the old nightingales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old roses. O Death! O Time!"

The Ludicrous.

His sense of the ludicrous runs riot; it may be said to be present everywhere in his writings. When not absolutely predominant, it makes itself felt as a condiment, adding a grotesque

flavour even to his serious declamations. A few modes of the quality may be specified :

(1.) His cyncism.—While he often dilates on the grandeurs of human destiny, he not unfrequently sneers at mankind with dry contempt. It is not the fierce cynicism of Timon; he is too magnanimous for that. He surveys mankind from an Olympian height, and is tickled by their doings. See the "little spitfires" and "manikins" in the passage on duels, p. 160. Compare also this godlike cynicism with the despondency of Hamlet. To Hamlet the world is “a sterile promontory," "a pestilent congregation of vapours;" to Teufelsdroeckh in certain moments the world seems "a paltry dog's cage."

(2.) His derision is, however, usually more boisterous, less notably dry. He is not personal and rancorous; he does not rail against individuals. His favourite butts are certain abstractions, institutions, and opinions; a whole pandemonium of Shams,sham Authorities, sham secretaries of the Pedant species, &c."vile age of Pinchbeck," "wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship;" the Church, Parliament, Downing Street, galvanised Catholicism, Kings, Aristocracy; Reform movements, Exeter Hall Philanthropic movements, Puseyism, Logic, Political Economy, Benthamee Radicalism, Leading Articles. In truth, he seems to dislike all existing institutions and all existing opinions, with the exception of one set. He has thus absolutely unlimited scope for his riotous derisive humour; his field is the world. And it cannot be denied that he turns his position to the best account.

One of his most characteristic proceedings is to heap contemptuous nicknames upon the object of his dislike. His command of language here stands him in good stead. See his " Nigger Question," "The Dismal Science," "Pig-Philosophy," "Horsehair and Bombazeen Procedure." Any page of his declamations on modern society will give abundance of examples. Another favourite device is to set up representative men with ridiculous names, as M'Croudy, the Right Honourable Zero, the Hon. Hickory Buckskin, the Duke of Trumps, and many others, not to mention the unquenchable Dryasdust.

It is to be observed that whether his ridicule be quiet or boisterous, the absence of personal spleen makes it essentially humorous, not vindictive, bitter, rancorous. The man places himself at such a height above other mortals, and is so sublimely confident in his views, that difference of opinion rather amuses than provokes him, and leaves him free to turn his opponent into ridicule "without any ill feeling."

(3.) In his apostrophes we have seen what humorous liberties he takes with individuals. In all these ludicrous degradations there is a redeeming touch of kindness. The kindness is always

there, whatever be the form of it. - whether grim, grotesque, whimsical, or playfully affectionate. Even towards scoundrels of easy morality, like Wilhelmus Sacrista in 'Past and Present,' he shows some relenting when they come before him in their personality as individuals. Poor William, given to "libations and tacenda," is deposed by Abbot Samson, and, in spite of all his idleness, gets from our author the following kindly parting:

"Whether the poor Wilhelmus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,-now grown, in a manner, indispensable to the poor man?- -Jocelin hints not; one knows not how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his only true course."

His nicknames for individuals are moderated to the same kindly tone of humour. Karl August is very objectionable in the abstract; yet Carlyle gives him no harder nickname than "August the Physically Strong;" and in his older days, "August the Dilapidated-Strong."

(4.) In his 'Sartor Resartus,' and elsewhere, he shows himself capable of the humour of driving fun at himself. The chapter on Editorial Difficulties is a sample. The humour is much more self-asserting than De Quincey's; it amounts in substance to this, that he fathers his most extravagant eccentricities upon a feigned name, and criticises them from an ordinary point of view device for stating, without the appearance of extravagance, opinions that the general public might think bombastic were they delivered in the author's own person.

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(5.) In a writer of such brilliant execution as Carlyle, the quality of the humour is much enhanced by the pleasure arising from the freshness of the language. When the ludicrous overthrow of dignitaries would otherwise be apt to raise serious feelings, the enjoyment of the language is conciliating, and disposes the reader to laugh rather than be angry.

Melody-Harmony-Taste.

As respects the melodious combination of words, Carlyle, though not below average, is by no means a model. He despises all study to avoid harsh successions; he considers such art to be mere

trifling in the present age. In his own attempts to "sing "that is, to write verses before he fully discovered that his strength lay in prose-the rhythm is conspicuously bad.

Still his prose has a peculiar strain-a characteristic movement. From such passages as have been given, the reader with an ear for cadence will have no difficulty in making it out. It corresponds to the emphatic sing-song intonation of his voice; a stately sort of rhythm, after a fashion of stateliness that differs from De Quincey's

in the rugged unmelodious flow, and the frequent recurrence of emphasis.

As regards Harmony between the rhythm and the sense, with Carlyle, as with other impassioned writers, the agreement is most perfect when he is writing at full swing in his favourite mood.

He has an ostensible and paraded contempt for the idea of art, or of composition intended to please. Himself nothing if not artistical, he insists on being supposed to wear no garb but the mantle of the prophet. Though thus formally disavowing art, he really does, consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice even truth to be artistical. Not to review him as an artist, is to do him an injustice. As an artist, he errs chiefly in carrying his favourite effects to excess.

In the pursuit of strength, he sometimes intrudes expressions that approach the confines of rant. Thus, in the following extract he ruins a passage of real pathos with one of his extravagantly sensational mannerisms :—

"For twenty generations here was the earthly arena where powerful living men worked out their life-wrestle,-looked at by Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted vespers, matins ;-and round the little islet of their life rolled for ever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with its eternal hues and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now! all departed, clean gone. The World Dramaturgist has written, Exeunt. The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all: and in its stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse, offensive universal dust-clouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from dry rubbish shot here.'

From this passage, which opens with such beauty, common taste would probably banish the World-Dramaturgist and the TimeDemons; and the concluding expression would generally be regarded as the unseasonable mirth of excitement gone beyond control. One class of his offences, then, may be set down to the temporary dulling of the artistic sense by over-excitement.

Farther, his humour betrays him into violations of taste. This is done deliberately, in cold blood, not from over-excitement. A humorous turn is given to a declamation on a grave subject— such a subject as overwhelms the ordinary mind with seriousness. The conclusion of the passage on duelling is an example. If an explanation of this is sought, probably none will be found except the pleasure, natural to strong nerves, of treating with levity what weaker brethren cannot help treating with gravity. Partly to the same motive may be referred his humorous treatment of the more serious outbreaks of the elder Friedrich. On this have been passed some of the severest comments that our author has received in the course of his career as a writer. His humour causes him to offend on another side. Some of his fun is quite as broad as the