Unhappy man in whom the body has gained mastery over the soul! Inverse Sensualist, not drawn into the rank of beasts by pleasure, but driven into it by pain! Hush! Hush! Perhaps this is the Truce which weary Nature has conquered for herself to re-collect her scattered strength! Perhaps like an Eagle (or a Goose) she will "mew her mighty youth" and fly against the sun, or at least fish paddocks with equanimity, like other birds of a similar feather; and no more lie among the pots, winged, maimed and plucked, doing nothing but chirp like a chicken in the coop for the livelong day. "Jook and let the jaw gae by,"1 my pretty Sir: when this solitude becomes intolerable to you, it will be time enough to quit it for the dreary blank which society and the bitterest activity have hitherto afforded you. You deserve considerable pity Mr. C.; and likewise considerable contempt. Heaven be your comforter my worthy Sir, you are in a promising condition at this present; sinking to the bottom, yet laid down to sleep; Destruction brandishing his sword above you, and you quietly desiring him to take your life but spare your rest! Gott hilf Ihnen ! Now for Tieck and his Runenberg: but first one whiff of generous narcotic! How gladly "we love to wander on the plain with the summit in our eye!" 1" Duck, and let the wave go by."

Ach Du meine Einzige, die Du mich liebst und Dich an mir anschmiegst, warum bin Ich Dir wie ein gebrochenes Rohr! - Sollst Du niemals glücklich werden! Wo bist Du heute Nacht? Mögen Friede und Liebe und Hoffnung deine Gefährten seyn! Leb' wohl!1

3d December

1826.

Comley Bank. Married!

Married! - Aber still da

von! 2- and of a thousand

other things. I am for business.3

Read Sir T. Browne's Religio Medici and Urne Burial lately; his Vulgar Errors I had already seen at Kew. The Urne Burial I think (with little C. Lamb) the best; tho' much of it is little edifying at this time of day, or perhaps rather to this sort of reader. Disquisitions on all imaginable modes of sepulture; of mummies, bones, cremation, inhumation, &c., &c., not without here and there a straggling tone of pathetic feeling, or a gleam of philosophic thought. But the conclusion of the Essay is absolutely beautiful. A still, elegiac mood; so soft, so deep,

1 "Ah, mine only one, thou that lovest me and clingest to me, why am I but as a broken reed for thee. Art thou never to be happy! Where art thou to-night? May Peace and Love and Hope be with thee! Farewell!" 2" But of that no words."

3 Carlyle's marriage had taken place on October 17; and he and his wife were established at Comley Bank, a house in the northwestern suburbs of Edinburgh, where they lived till they went to Craigenputtock, in 1828.

so solemn and tender, like the song of some departed Saint flitting faint under the everlasting canopy of Night! An echo of deepest meaning from "the great and famous nations of the Dead." Browne must have been a good man. What was his history? What the real form of his character? for as yet I see him only thro' a glass darkly. "Abit ad plures, he hath gone to the greater number." Life of him by Dr. Johnson. Qualis?

Two infants reasoning in the womb about the nature of this life might be no "unhandsome" type of two men reasoning here about the life that is to come.1

Lux Jovi, tenebrae Orco,2 one stroke up, the other stroke down.

These bones have slept quietly "beneath the drums and trampling of three conquests."3 The Quincunx I like worst: full of learning, but of a kind little to my taste, tho' I blame not the taste of it in him. The last chapter is better than all the rest. "The hunters are up in Persia "4 has been quoted

1 "A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next. Urn Burial, ch. 4.

2" Light unto Pluto is darkness unto Jupiter." Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge, ch. 4. "Lux Orco, tenebrae Jovi; tenebrae Orco, lux Jovi." Hippocrates de Dieta; S. Hevelii Selenographia. These references are from Wilkin's note on the passage in his edition of Browne's Works, iii. 436. 3 Urn Burial, ch. 5. 4" To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our

already in some Magazine. Browne stands midway between a poet and an orator.

His Religio Medici is most readable of any, and indeed contains many true and praiseworthy things; only he gives himself far too good and orthodox a character, thereby leaving us no refuge but to envy him in despair of doing so likewise; or, what will be a more common resource, to disbelieve in and reject him as a moral dandy.

I should like to know more of him; but I ought to understand his time better also. What are we to make of this old English Literature? Touches of true beauty are thickly scattered over these works; great learning, solidity of thought; but much, much that now cannot avail any longer. Certainly the spirit of that age was far better than that of ours; is the form of our literature an improvement intrinsically, or only a form better adapted to our actual condition? I often think, the latter. Difficulty of speaking on these points without affectation. We know not what to think, and would gladly think something very striking and pretty.

Sir W. Raleigh's Advice to his Son; worldlywise, solid, sharp, farseen— The motto: "Nothing like getting on!"- Of Burleigh's Advice the motto is the same; the execution, if

Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia." Garden of Cyrus, ad fin.

I rightly remember, is in a gentler and more loving spirit. Walsingham's Manual1 I did not read. These men of Elizabeth's are like so many Romans or Greeks. Were we to seek for the Cæsars, the Ciceros, the Pericles', Alcibiades' &c. of England, we should find them nowhere if not in that era. Wherefore are these things hid? Or worse than hid, presented in false tinsel colours, originating in affected ignorance and producing affected ignorance? Would I knew rightly about it, and could present it rightly to others! For hear alas! this mournful truth, nor hear it with a frown: 2 There, in that old age, lies the only true poetical literature of England. The poets of the last age took to pedagogy (see Pope and his School) and shrewd men they were; those of the present age to ground and lofty tumbling, and it will really do your heart good to see how they vault!

1 A book attributed to Elizabeth's crafty and unscrupulous minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, entitled Arcana Aulica or Walsingham's Manual of Prudential Maxims. It was not published till long after Walsingham's death.

2 Dr. Johnson's impromptu while Miss Reynolds was pouring tea:

"Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth,

Nor hear it with a frown,

Thou can'st not make the tea so fast

As I can gulp it down."

Hawkins' Life of Johnson (1787), p. 345, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), ii. 315.