nected, it embraces all the facts in its vast, undivided, and unbroken woof. Developed, abundant, it enlightens obscure facts, and opens to the most ignorant the most complicated questions. Interesting, varied, it attracts and preserves the attention. It has life, clearness, unity, qualities which appear to be wholly French. It seems as if the author were a populariser like Thiers, a philosopher like Guizot, an artist like Thierry. The truth is, that he is an orator, and that after the fashion of his country; but, as he possesses in the highest degree the oratorical faculties, and possesses them with a national tendency and instincts, he seems to supplement through them the faculties which he has not. He is not genuinely philosophical: the mediocrity of his earlier chapters on the ancient history of England proves this sufficiently; but his force of reasoning, his habits of classification and order, bestow unity upon his History. He is not a genuine artist: when he draws a picture, he is always thinking of proving something; he inserts dissertations in the most interesting and touching places; he has neither grace, lightness, vivacity, nor refinement, but' a marvellous memory, vast knowledge, an ardent political passion, a great legal talent for expounding and pleading every cause, a precise knowledge of precise and petty facts which rivet the attention, charm, diversify, animate, and warm a narrative. He is not simply a' popu lariser; he is too ardent, too eager to prove, to conquer belief, to beat down his foes, to have only the limpid talent of a man who explains and expounds, with no other end than to explain and expound, which spreads light throughout, and never spreads heat; but he is so well provided with details and reasons, so anxious to convince, so rich in developments, that he cannot fail to be popular. By this breadth of knowledge, this power of reasoning and passion, he has produced one of the finest books of the age, whilst manifesting the genius of his nation. This solidity, this energy, this deep political passion, these moral prejudices, these oratorical habits, this limited philosophical power, this partially uniform style, without flexibility or sweetness, this eternal gravity, this geometrical progress to a settled end, announce in him the English mind. But if he is English to the French, he is not so to his nation. The animation, interest, clearness, unity of his narrative, astonish them. They think him brilliant, rapid, bold; it is, they say, a French mind. Doubtless he is so in many respects: if he understands Racine badly, he admires Pascal and Bossuet; his friends say that he used daily to read Madame de Sévigné. Nay more, by the structure of his mind, by his eloquence and rhetoric, he is Latin; so that the inner structure of his talent places him amongst the classics: it is only by his lively appreciation of special, complex, and sensible facts, by his energy and rudeness, by the rather heavy richness of his imagination, by the depth of his colouring, that he belongs to his race. Addison and Burke, he resembles a strange graft, fed and transformed by the sap of the national stock. At all events, this judgment is VOL. II. 2 E Like the strongest mark of the difference between the two nations. To reach the English intellect, a Frenchman must make two voyages. When he has crossed the first interval, which is wide, he comes upon Macaulay. Let him re-embark; he must accomplish a second passage, just as long, to arrive at Carlyle for instance,-a mind fundamentally Germanic, on the genuine English soil. CHAPTER IV. Philosophy and History.-Carlyle. § 1.-STYLE AND MIND. ECCENTRIC AND IMPORTANT POSITION OF CARLYLE IN ENGLAND. I. His strangenesses, obscurities, violence-Fancy and enthusiasm-Rudeness and buffooneries. II. Humour-Wherein it consists-It is Germanic-Grotesque and tragic pictures — Dandies and Poor Slaves - The Pigs' Catechism-Extreme tension of his mind and nerves. III. Barriers which hold and direct him-Perception of the real and of the sublime. IV. His passion for exact and demonstrated fact-His search after extinguished feelings Vehemence of his emotion and sympathy-Intensity of belief and vision-Past and Present-Cromwell's Letters and Speeches-Historical mysticism-Grandeur and sadness of his visions-How he represents the world after his own mind. V. Every object is a group, and every employment of human thought is the reproduction of a group-Two principal modes of reproducing it, and two principal modes of mind-Classification-Intuition-Inconvenience of the second process-It is obscure, hazardous, destitute of proofsIt tends to affectation and exaggeration - Hardness and presumption which it provokes-Advantages of this kind of mind-Alone capable of reproducing the object-Most favourable to original invention-The use made of it by Carlyle. § 2. VOCATION. INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN IDEAS IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND-GERMAN STUDIES OF CARLYLE. I. Appearance of original forms of mind-How they act and result-Artistic genius of the Renaissance-Oratorical genius of the classic age-Philcsophical genius of the modern age-Probable analogy of the three ages. II. Wherein consists the modern and German form of mind-How the aptitude for universal ideas has renewed the science of language, mythology, æsthetics, history, exegesis, theology, and metaphysics-How the metaphysical bent has transformed poetry. III. Capital idea derived thence-Conception of essential and complementary parts-New conception of nature and man. IV. Inconvenience of this aptitude-Gratuitous hypothesis and vague abstraction -Transient discredit of German speculations. V. How each nation may re-forge them-Ancient examples: Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-The Puritans and Jansenists in the seventeenth century-France in the eighteenth century-By what roads these ideas may enter France-Positivism-Criticism. VI. By what roads these ideas may enter England-Exact and positive mindImpassioned and poetic inspiration-Road followed by Carlyle. § 3.-PHILOSOPHY, MORALITY, AND CRITICISM. HIS METHOD IS MORAL, NOT SCIENTIFIC-WHEREIN HE RESEMBLES THE PURITANS -SARTOR RESARTUS. I. Sensible things are but appearances-Divine and mysterious character of existence-His metaphysics. II. How we may form into one another, positive, poetic, spiritualistic, and mystical ideas-How in Carlyle German metaphysics are altered into English Puritanism. III. Moral character of this mysticism-Conception of duty-Conception of God. IV. Conception of Christianity-Genuine and conventional Christianity-Other religions-Limit and scope of doctrine. V. Criticism-What weight it gives to writers-What class of writers it exalts -What class of writers it depreciates-His æsthetics-His judgment of Voltaire. VI. Future of criticism—Wherein it is contrary to the prejudices of the age and of its vocation-Taste has but a relative authority. § 4.-CONCEPTION OF HISTORY. I. Supreme importance of great men - They are revealers-They must be venerated. II. Connection between this and the German conception-Wherein Carlyle is imitative-Wherein he is original-Scope of his conception. III. How genuine history is that of heroic sentiments-Genuine historians are artists and psychologists. IV. His history of Cromwell-Why it is only composed of texts connected by a commentary-Its novelty and worth-How we should consider Cromwell and the Puritans-Importance of Puritanism in modern civilisation-Carlyle admires it unreservedly. V. His history of the French Revolution—Severity of his judgment-Wherein he has sight of the truth, and wherein he is unjust. VI. His judgment of modern England—Against the taste for comfort and the lukewarmness of convictions-Gloomy forebodings for the future of modern democracy—Against the authority of votes-Monarchical theory. VII. Criticism of these theories-Dangers of enthusiasm-Comparison of Carlyle and Macaulay. WH HEN you ask Englishmen, especially those under forty, who amongst them are the thinking men, they first mention Carlyle; but at the same time they advise you not to read him, warning you that you will not understand him at all. Then, of course, we hasten to get the twenty volumes of Carlyle-criticism, history, pamphlets, fantasies, philosophy; we read them with very strange emotions, contradicting every morning our opinion of the night before. We discover at last that we are in presence of an extraordinary animal, a relic of a lost family, a sort of mastodon, lost in a world, not made for him. We rejoice in this zoological good luck, and dissect him with minute curiosity, telling ourselves that we shall probably never find another animal like him. § 1.-STYLE AND MIND. We are at first put out. All is new here-ideas, style, tone, the shape of the phrases, and the very vocabulary. He takes everything in a contrary meaning, does violence to everything, expressions and things. With him paradoxes are set down for principles; common sense takes the form of absurdity. We are, as it were, carried into an unknown world, whose inhabitants walk head downwards, feet in the air, dressed in motley, as great lords and maniacs, with contortions, jerks, and cries; we are grievously stunned by these extravagant and discordant sounds; we want to stop our ears, we have a headache, we are obliged to decipher a new language. We see upon the table volumes which ought to be as clear as possible-The History of the French Revolution, for instance; and there we read these headings to the chapters: 'Realised Ideals-Viaticum-Astræa Redux-Petition in Hieroglyphs-Windbags-Mercury de Brézé-Broglie the War-God.' We ask ourselves what connection there can be between these riddles and such simple events as we all know. We then perceive that Carlyle always speaks in riddles. 'Logic-choppers' is the name he gives to the analysts of the eighteenth century; 'Beaver science' is his word for the catalogues and classifications of our modern men of science. Transcendental moonshine' signifies the philosophical and sentimental dreams imported from Germany. The religion of the 'rotatory calabash' means external and mechanical religion. He cannot be contented with a simple expression; he employs figures at every step; he embodies all his ideas; he must touch forms. We see that he is besieged and haunted by sparkling or gloomy visions; every thought with him is a shock; a stream of misty passion comes bubbling into his overflowing brain, and the torrent of images breaks forth and rolls on amidst every kind of mud and magnificence. He cannot reason, he must paint. If he wants to explain the embarrassment of a young man obliged to choose a career amongst the lusts and doubts of the age, in which we live, he tells you of: 6 1 'A world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full; the abysses, and subterranean and supernal deluges, plainly broken loose; in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any man; the pestiferous fogs and foul exhalations grown continual, have, except on the highest mountain-tops, blotted Because the Kalmucks put written prayers into a calabash turned by the wind, which in their opinion produces a perpetual adoration. In the same way are the prayer-mills of Thibet used. |