THOMAS CARLYLE

[The life of Carlyle, though unusually copious documents exist on it, is almost entirely what he would himself have called a soul-history; and its external facts can be summarised very briefly. He was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, on 4th December 1795. His father, James Carlyle, was a stone-mason; his mother's name was Margaret Aitken. He was sent to school at Annan, whence in 1809 he went to the University of Edinburgh. Five years later he returned to his old school as mathematical master, leaving it in 1816 for similar work in Kirkcaldy. But neither teaching, at least school teaching, nor divinity, nor law, to all of which he turned, suited his faculties and desires. When he was about twenty-three he settled uneasily to literary hack-work in Edinburgh for some years, and was tutor in the Buller family for some more. On 17th October 1826 he married Jane Baillie Welsh, with whom he had long carried on a curious courtship. She had a small property at Craigenputtock in his native county, and there, two years after the marriage, they went, settling for six more. In 1834 Carlyle finally came to London, establishing himself very soon in the house in Cheyne Row, which was his abode for nearly fifty years, till his death on 5th February 1881. His wife had died fifteen years earlier, on 21st April 1866, during his absence at Edinburgh to be installed in the rectorship of the University. Almost all the outward details of Carlyle's life are the dates of his works, of which these are the most important-Life of Schiller (1825), Sartor Resartus (1834), The French Revolution (1837), Miscellanies (including some of his very best work, essays and reviews written for the most part at Craigenputtock) (1838), Chartism (1839), Past and Present (1843), Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845), Latterday Pamphlets (1850), Life of Sterling (1851), and Frederick the Great (1866).]

Of the difficulty which must so frequently occur in a collection like the present-the difficulty of separating the literary and the extra-literary characteristics of its subjects—few more obvious instances can have occurred than the case of Carlyle. In hardly any English writer were personal and literary character more closely and strongly blended; and in absolutely none has such a flood of light-whether it can be called white or dry light is another question-been thrown within a few years after his death. And yet it would be from the point of view of space clearly

impossible, and from the point of view of strict critical propriety very doubtfully proper, to handle the history of his life or the matter of his works very fully here. Fortunately there is a way of escape open which may carry us safe past rather than through personalities and politics. Carlyle's attitude in regard to both, though a very singular, a very striking, and in many points to some it would seem a shocking attitude, was not really very complicated or difficult to understand; and much of the endless discussion about it has arisen from an obstinate determination to stick to particulars instead of taking the matter in general. As to personality, it must be remembered that he was, like Dr. Johnson, whom he in so many ways resembled, a man of extremely strong constitution, both mentally and physically, in whom there were, notwithstanding his strength, curious twists and chronic paroxysms of mental and bodily disease. The violent personal "flings," the astonishingly inadequate personal estimates, the contrast between theoretical stoicism and practical impatience of quite small ills, the denunciation of selfishness coupled with constant adjustment of the whole conduct to more or less selfish considerations, all become plain enough when this is remembered. So too in regard to the selection and treatment of literary subjects, the gaps and inequalities, the inconsistencies and the lapses in both, will become sufficiently intelligible if it be remembered that Carlyle felt hardly any interest in anything but man's relation to the standards of right and wrong conduct as an individual, and his relation to his fellows as a political animal. For anything not at once or easily adjustable to one or other of these two points of view-if indeed they be two-he cared nothing at all; and when he said anything about such things he was quite as likely to talk nonsense as not. But as a matter of fact he very seldom did touch any such subjects except in passing flings; and from Sartor Resartus to Friedrich he is always, whatever may be his nominal theme, busied with one or other of the two things which solely interested him-ethical and religious conduct in the individual, and political history in the general.

Even if there had not been other reasons, such as his poverty, his distaste for any of the regular professions, and the character of the particular literary journey-work, which, when he took to literature, at first fell in his way, this fact would probably have prevented him from being a very precocious writer. Unless he had been a zealot with a cut-and-dried formula, or a mere

glib-tongued quack-neither of which it may be hoped even an intelligent enemy of his would call him he could not have acquired the fund of material or the special power of expression necessary to enable him to handle such subjects without a long course of study. And it is very unlikely that even then he would have "had his lips touched," in the old phrase, except in peculiarly favourable circumstances. Accordingly we do not find him doing anything that was really characteristic till he had settled in the solitude of Craigenputtock. He was thirty-three when he went there, he was nearly forty when he left it; it is historically certain that very much of his best and most characteristic work was done there in the complete form; and there can be little doubt that a great deal more was done in essence or in germ. He had thoroughly matured that "gospel" of his which no two people succeed in formulating in quite the same way, but which may at least be safely said to be antithetic and antipathetic to all the gospels, materialist, hedonist, liberal-political, commonsense, philosophical, and religious, of the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. He had also thoroughly matured and become perfectly master of the style in which to preach that gospel.

That this style, which here chiefly interests us, was not his style, at least his literary style, from the first has always been well known; the single document of the Life of Schiller, with not a little in the translations, being quite sufficient to show it. That its development was wholly or almost wholly due to his study of German and his practice in German translation, as used to be asserted, is an opinion which has long been losing ground among impartial students. That German writers, and especially Richter, had something, and even a great deal to do with it no one of course, except out of mere paradox, would deny. It is in the last degree improbable that Sartor Resartus would ever have been planned if Jean Paul had never written, and anyone can see how deep the impress must have been of the struggle to write such a book, not merely on German models, but as it were in the very phrase that a German philosopher of a Richterian type would himself use.

But there is very much in Carlyle's style in which after a good deal of reading of German, including Richter himself, it is difficult to recognise any strong Teutonic influence. Here, it seems far more traceable partly to individual genius, partly to sources the outcome of which is noticeable in not a little earlier

Scottish literature, especially that of the seventeenth century. A discussion between Carlyle and Sir Thomas Urquhart on the subject of Cromwell is rather alarming to imagine, but the language of the two disputants would have had more points than one of resemblance; and though the Presbyterian divines, of whom Sir Thomas styled himself the "lash," would certainly, if they could, have subjected Carlyle to condign punishment for heresy, the speech of judges and prisoner would have shown the same kinship. The fact, however, is that the actual idiosyncrasy and genius of Carlyle were far too strong to show more than traces of any such influence. He had, in the quotation which was such a favourite with himself, fire enough within him to digest the most rugged material that was subjected to its operation.

It is more difficult to speak briefly and positively of the merits and defects of the literary medium thus produced. If, as some hold, the excellence of a style lies wholly or almost wholly in the suitableness of it to the persons who write, and the things written about, then indeed it would be difficult to measure or qualify praise as applied to this. In Sartor Resartus it is not quite satisfactorily to be judged, for the thing avows itself as an extravaganza, and the note is therefore deliberately, almost ostentatiously, forced, as if the conflict and confluence of the personal feelings and experiences narrated and the attempt to narrate them in an external and quasi-philosophical manner, found relief in the splash and spume of words. But there is nothing of this in the French Revolution, and the Miscellanies or Essays, in which two books it can hardly be questioned that the very best and maturest work of the author as literature is to be found. Such a coincidence of style, man, and subject as is to be found throughout the first book, and in the best pieces (the Burns," the "Diderot," the "Dr. Francia," and others too many to name) of the second, is rarely to be found in any literature. And in these two books is to be found also, more perfectly perhaps than before or since, a certain manner of conceiving, conducting, and concluding a subject which is not mere style, and for which no single word exists in English, if it exists in any language. Very picturesque writers are often charged, and sometimes charged very justly, with neglecting to inform themselves thoroughly. It is notorious that this could never be said of Carlyle. The enormous pains which he took to master his materials can no more be denied than the strength and brightness of the lines and colours in which he threw the phantasma thus