perance, honesty, the novel task of dwell. ing on them has such attraction for us, that we are content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his personal friends, and to stern, unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates and the World newspaper. * To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism, almost meriting a pension; still it is quite possible for the candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater than Johnson he most certainly was not. There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who, whilst asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in a lucky moment for her pocket, as 'an old struggler.' Johnson, his biographer tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck to his memory, and was frequently applied to himself. I too,' so he would say, 'am an old struggler.' So too, in all conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are interested in both. To be indifferent would be in "The late Mr. Carlyle was a brute and a boor.". The World, October 29th, 1884. | human. What Both men had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight their way. they took they took by storm. But- and here is a difference indeed, - Johnson came off victorious, Carlyle did not. Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his place with those 'Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will never cease to shed tender but regretful tears. We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are wanting? Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries; endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melan choly almost to madness, 'radically wretched,' indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all these things had this 'old struggler' to contend; over all these things did this 'old struggler' prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of this 'intellectual being,' which had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should. Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, 'The more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;' but then if the devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting one's way through the stormtossed pages of Froude's Carlyle - in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks crow - with what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself: 'On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed, and, in a short time, waked and sat up, as has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He would spare my understanding. . . . Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection, in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal organs I took two drams. . . . I then went to bed, and, strange as it may seem, I think, slept. When I saw light it was time I should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, He left me my hand. I en joyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me, as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands. . . . How this will be received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathise with me; but perhaps ""My mistress, gracious, mild, and good, Cries Is he dumb? 'T is time he shou'd." 'I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to my throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, and those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on my own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn, which I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can be done is done |