Thomas Carlyle

 

By George Stewart

 

[Published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in Transactions, New Series, No. 15 (1881)]

 

In these generous words, Thomas Carlyle summed up his splendid estimate of Burns: “In pitying admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets or traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye; For this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines.” And now it is Thomas Carlyle himself who has passed away, and to him and to his great career in the mighty world of thought, those burning words of his may fittingly be applied. They do not express all that one might say of him. They do not quite reveal the greatness of his own character, the splendour of his mind, or the magnificent grasp of his intellect, but they furnish an estimate which we can all accept, even if they do not go to the length we would wish. After a lingering illness of many weeks' duration, the grand old man breathed his last on Saturday morning, the 5th of February, in the little room in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where so many years of his life had been spent. Up to within a few days of his dissolution he had been able to recognize his friends, and in some instances he had conversed with them, but as the fatal moment drew nigh, he became unconscious, and in a sort of peaceful sleep his life went out, and the great heart of English literature ceased to beat forever. The great heart of English literature I may say, for in the death of Thomas Carlyle, we lose one who upheld its brightest star for sixty years, and whose name will forever be classed as the leading prose writer of his time. He is linked closely with the splendid achievements in letters which have been made by the authors who have enriched the intellectual activity of the nineteenth century. In history he has surpassed many of them, in criticism he has had no superior, and in miscellaneous essay writing, he has distanced all his contemporaries. A century hence and Carlyle's master-work will be even more highly appreciated than it is now, influential and vigorous as it is considered to-day by thinkers and critics. It is cast into a certain mould which must ensure it long life, it has a tendency to grow into men's minds, it is composed of that stern, unyielding stuff which leads and controls thought, and never gives way. What would appear to be dogmatisms in some writers, are only zeal and earnestness and enthusiasm in Carlyle. He must remain, for many years to come, the typical writer of his age, the robust thinker and strong mind of a day which gave him as companion authors, such brilliant men and women as George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer, Emerson, Lewes, Clifford, Huxley, Darwin, Shairp and the Dean of St. Paul's. One might compare him, almost, to that pious Pagan Plato, of whom traces may be seen in many chapters of his writings, though the German element as represented by Goethe and Schiller and Fichte, has exerted a still more profound influence on his thought and morality. Indeed, it is the strong meat of German metaphysics that early entered into the blood of Carlyle, which always prevented him from appreciating the light touch and spirituelle manner of thought possessed by the French writers, and notably by Voltaire, whom our grim Scotch hero heartily despised, and sneered at. He never could bring his mind down to that light and airy touch which we all admire so much in the better class of French letters, and which is always charming and full of motif and grace. He thought that for the most part, French authors were frivolous and careless, too gay indeed for solid work, and he saw, or professed to see, nothing in their literature that he could approve or praise. He was wont to deal with the French character in literature, as if he thought it were a sham, and not worthy of his time or attention. We know how sadly astray Carlyle has been in his estimate of the author of Candide, but M. Henri Taine, the other day made as serious a mistake in the estimate which he formed of Carlyle's work, and which he described in that best of his books, the History of English Literature, as “magnificence and mud.” The “magnificence,” we will grant, but never the "mud." Taine does not understand the rugged philosopher, whose intense Germanism no Frenchman, in any case, would care to applaud, and without his Germanism Carlyle's strongest force would lose its impressiveness and power—tremendous adjuncts both of them to his vitality and heartiness as a thinker and “writer of books.” Our French critic, whose estimates of English letters, are generally so apt and clear and skilful, and whose knowledge of our literature is, after all, so thorough and wonderful, confesses that he read Carlyle with very strange emotions, and that he contradicted every morning, the opinion which he had formed of his work the night before. He calls this nineteenth century prophet of ours, an “extraordinary animal, a relic of a lost family, a sort of mastodon, lost in a world not made for him.” The History of the French Revolution, which in perfect good faith he tries very hard to understand, he calls a “delirium,”—a meaningless and superficial criticism to say the least. But while Carlyle has made some wrong conclusions in what he has said about some French writers, he has made no mistakes in his portraitures of the men who made the French Revolution possible. His history of that wonderful and bloody epoch in European civilization, stands to-day as one of the most able contributions to historical literature ever written, and beside which the work of Michelet, of Thiers, of Louis Blanc, of Lamartine and even of Edmund Burke, occupies scarcely a second place. The world will long continue to take its impressions of that gory revolution from the pages of Thomas Carlyle, and his fearful painting of the horrors of the Bastile, which is full of intense dramatic power, and rich warm coloring, his story of the struggles and triumphs of the male and female actors, and his sketches of Robespierre, of Marat, “whose bleared soul looks forth through his bleared, dull-acrid, woe-stricken face,” of Mirabeau, whom he eulogizes, of Danton and the rest of them, are all types of character which his pencil has made indelible for all time to come. The book is a panorama of a great national event in history, and it will always remain as an enduring monument to his genius and skill as an historian of the broad and philosophical school of historical writing. Curtis called it “a vast and splendid phantasmagoria,—a prodigious picture which burned into the memory of the reader, and left a singularly clear and accurate conception of the character, the movement, and the scope of that great event.” And Landor, who seldom gave way to impulse, hailed it as the best book published in his time, and prophesied a brilliant future for the author,—a prophecy which the world has since seen fulfilled.

 

His Frederic the Great is another masterpiece of the age, and a work which exhibits Carlyle in one of his greater moods, and in which his genius has full scope and play. The portrait of the great commander stands out in relief as the grandest hero of his time, the most perfect type of the king and the general and the conqueror of nations. In Carlyle's hands the character grows in stature, and though some have refused to take his estimate of Frederic, on account of the excessive warmth of the coloring, and because the warrior is so universally bepraised and glorified, still the portrait must stand as a finished work, and as the greatness of the man becomes better known, and the brutality of his nature, and the littlenesses which now and then clouded the general splendour of his character as a whole, are considered on their merits, his biographer's portraiture will be found not so untruthfully drawn as some may today suppose. With all his faults Frederic must ever remain a prominent figure in history, and in describing him and the wars in which he engaged, the age in which he lived, should not be forgotten. He must be considered by his lights, and the influence of his surroundings must not be misunderstood or unappreciated. Carlyle never forgot time, in his descriptions of men and of events. Great events and great men call for great historians, and in Carlyle, the world found a great historian and teacher. His account of the battle of Leuthen has never been surpassed in the way of impassioned descriptive writing, and this is saying a great deal when we remember what Macaulay did in his story of Marlborough's campaign, what Napier accomplished with his Peninsular war history, what Motley did in his “Netherlands,” what Kinglake did in his “Invasion of the Crimea,” and so on through the long list of worthy books descriptive of military achievement and daring. The wonderful skill of grouping, the brilliancy of the pigments employed, and the masterly management of the whole marvellous scene, impress every reader of the Leuthen fight in a manner which cannot be forgotten. It must rank with Carlyle's best work.

 

But splendid as these writings are, the world will be content to have his fame rest on the Miscellaneous Essays, and the brilliant characterization of Oliver Cromwell—a great work, and the first of the true portraits which have been made of the Protector. Before Carlyle's time, Cromwell was but imperfectly understood. None of the writers of the day seemed capable of grasping the subject in its entirety. The founder of the Commonwealth was a man to be despised and belittled. The grandeur and nobility, and greatness of the Conqueror were unknown, until Thomas Carlyle wrote his book and revealed the man Cromwell in the full light of his greatness. The historian's mother early formed his impressions concerning her stalwart hero, and years after, those lessons learned at her knee, found expression in the masterpiece which he gave to the world in 1845. The Cromwell, whom we regard to-day as a great type of character, as a giant among men, in morality, in generalship, and in statesmanship, is the Cromwell as described by Thomas Carlyle, and he has helped us to an estimate which none of us had fashioned before his time. In biographical writing we can find little to equal this great portrait of a manly man and leader of men.

 

But while these things may, in all fairness, be said of Cromwell, and of the grand stand which he made for the enduring principles of freedom and of liberty, it would be manifestly unfair, in the interests of truth and of justice, for me not to record in this place, and at this time, my utter horror and detestation of the fiend-like course which the great soldier thought fit to pursue in Ireland. He went through that country like a devastating demon, slaughtering the people on every side, and parcelling out the lands among his unpaid followers. The Cromwellian settlement is one of the black and dire pages of Irish history, and while we say generous things of Cromwell's greatness, we should not forget that he has done nothing to earn the gratitude or esteem of Irishmen, and that humankind generally, must forever condemn unsparingly, his Irish Conquest, when the grandeur of the man was for the time submerged in the mere butcher and pillager. Carlyle softens down some of the atrocities perpetrated, and doubtless many of the stories circulated at the time, and since those bloody days, are to an extent exaggerated, but enough was done by Cromwell's orders to justify the execration in which his name is held even in our time, by many right-thinking persons. But let us speak now more particularly of the man whose name has been sufficient to induce you to assemble here to-night, and in whose life, I believe many of you take a deep and warm interest.

 

Carlyle himself has had a career, of which literary history contains few prototypes. He has earned the proud position in letters, and in the thoughtful activity of the day, which he occupied at the time of his death, by his own honest endeavours. He was born on the fourth of December, 1795, in the neighborhood of Ecclefechan, a charming little village in Annandale, Dumfriesshire. His father James Carlyle was at first, a stone-mason and afterwards a well to-do farmer, and his mother was a woman of high activity and much originality of mind. Both his parents were educated far beyond the common for persons in their station of life. His mother particularly was a most extraordinary woman, and Thomas inherited much of her ability and force of character. In his youthhood he was accustomed to hear frequent discussions on abstruse theological questions between his parents, and he early imbibed a taste for the branch of thought which these talks suggested. He describes his father as “quite the remarkablest man whom he had ever known.” He had great energy, a strong will and good natural abilities. His short, pithy and sharp sayings—often pungent and keen—were known the country round, and many of his peculiarities of mind, afterwards found expression in the writings of the philosopher, who seems to have directly inherited them from his father. His favorite books were the Bible and an old Puritan Divine which he read often and with much affection. Mrs. Carlyle, as has been remarked before, had peculiar ideas on Cromwell, and young Thomas was not long in drawing her into conversation with him on the subject. Her wide reading and extensive range of thought, influenced greatly his opinions and completely formed the impressions, which in after years found vent in his book on the Letters and Life of the Lord Protector. The conversation at Carlyle's home was philosophic and deep, and Thomas being the elder of the somewhat large family, in common with a custom which prevails in some parts of Scotland, it was decided that he, as the elder son, should study for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. With this end in view he set about his studies with great vigor. As a child he evinced extraordinary aptitude, and in one night, it is said, he mastered the alphabet while sitting at his mother's feet. Mrs. Carlyle was as good a talker in her day, as Margaret Fuller became later on, and she attended to the elementary, education of her son herself. She as well as her husband, was deeply religious, and both were exceedingly desirous of having the first fruit of their marriage, become a minister of their chosen church. At the age of seven Thomas Carlyle entered the parish school at Ecclefechan, and after some years had passed, he went for a time to an advanced public school at Annan. In his fifteenth year, he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he met as a class-mate the brilliant but erratic Edward Irving, who in after years exerted considerable influence on his mind. An intimacy at once sprang up between these two young men, and the nervous force of Irving acted as a foil for the hard thoughtfulness of his friend. Both had much in common, and both loved each other very dearly, even after Irving's career became blighted and old friends had forsaken him, Carlyle never forgot the brave soul, the “best man I have ever found in this world,” as he called him in those latter days of his friend's decline. He has left us these notes of his old schoolfellow, in a batch of reminiscences, which are full of tenderness and kindly regard. “The memory of Irving,” he says, “is still clear and vivid with me in all points : that of his first and only visit to us in this house, in this room, just before leaving for Glasgow (October, 1834), which was the last we saw of him, is still fresh as if it had been yesterday, and he has a solemn, massive, sad, even pitiable, though not much blamable, or in heart even blamable, and to me always dear and most friendly aspect, in those vacant kingdoms of the past. He was scornfully forgotten at the time of his death, having, indeed, sunk a good while before out of the notice of the more intelligent classes. There has since been and now is, in the new theological generation, a kind of revival of him, on rather weak and questionable terms, sentimental mainly, and grounded on no really correct knowledge or insight, which, however, seems to bespeak some continuance of by-gone remembrances for a good while yet, by that class of people and the many that hang by them." Thus, he speaks of the famous preacher, who loved to walk with his face towards the sky, his big broad hat in his hand, and “his fleece of copious coal black hair flowing in the wind.”

 

But we must return to Carlyle. At this time mathematics formed his principal study though he by no means neglected the other branches, and his reading took a wide and miscellaneous turn. He used to take for exercise long walks and strolls over the hills and moors, and it was while engaged in one of those pedestrian tours, one day, that he reviewed mentally his past and present life, and began to think of the yet unfolded future. He doubted his fitness for the career which had been proposed to him before he had entered upon college life. His severe studies had injured his digestion, and the pains of dyspepsia did not add much in the way of assisting him to decide as to his future course. Of his mental and physical condition at this period of his existence, he writes:—“I had been destined by my father and my father's minister to be myself a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. But now that I had gained man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the doctrines of my father's Kirk, and it was needful that I should now settle it. And so I entered my chamber and closed the door, and round me there cams a trooping throng of phantasms dire from the abysmal depth of nethermost perdition. Doubt, fear, unbelief, mockery and scoffing were there, and I wrestled with them in agony of spirit. Thus it was for weeks. Whether I ate I know not; whether I drank I know not; whether I slept I know not. But I know that when I came forth again it was with the direful persuasion that I was the miserable owner of a diabolical arrangement called a stomach.” After this discovery he took a vacation, and with Irving opened a small school at Kirkcaldy, his department being mathematics. But teaching school was too irksome an occupation for a soaring soul such as his, and he soon resigned his position and returned to Edinburgh, where he busied himself in writing a series of sixteen articles for the “Edinburgh Encyclopædia,” then being edited by Sir David Brewster. His companion-writers on this work were Thomas Campbell, the poet, John Gibson Lockhart, the son-in-law and biographer of Scott. James Grahame, Dionysius Lardner, Dr. Thomas Chalmers, Robert Stevenson and other men of good reputation. Carlyle's papers were on Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Montfaucon, Dr. John Moore, Sir John Moore, Necker, the father of Madame de Stael, and the most brilliant financier who ever administered the affairs of France, Nelson, Netherlands, New Foundland, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberlandshire, Mungo Park, Lord Chatham and William Pitt. This work concluded, he went for a tour on the continent, and ultimately found himself in Germany at an age when the mind is most impressionable. He studied the German language and literature with all the earnestness, of which he was capable, and soon mastered the idioms and pronunciation of the tongue. He went the whole round of German literature and scholarship, and his meeting with Goethe, which was mutually agreeable to both, gave him a supreme idea of Germany's superiority in letters and in thought, over any other country in the world, save perhaps, his own. A life-long intimacy grew up between these two great thinkers, and Carlyle's mind became thoroughly imbued with the teachings of his friend. He returned home, and published a translation which he had made of Legendre's Geometry, with a chapter of his own on “Proportion,” of which he was very proud. The work appeared under the editorship of Sir David Brewster. It scarcely paid him, however, in a pecuniary way, though it certainly added at the time to his reputation as a mathematician and scholar. He is next heard of as private tutor to Charles Buller, who was then seventeen years of age. This was the Charles Buller who afterwards became famous as a writer and member of Parliament, and whose death in 1848 drew from his old teacher a touching obituary in the Examiner. Carlyle gave up his tutorship at the expiration of the second year, and settled in Edinburgh as a man of letters.

 

The life of Schiller was his first strong book. It was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-4, and occupied some half-a-dozen numbers or so. A year later it appeared in book-form considerably enlarged. About this time Carlyle's translation of Goethe's “Wihelm Meister's Apprenticeship” appeared, and it at once established his fame as a translator and editor of the German language. Though some of the great Reviews found fault with what they regarded as its “inelegance,” the public approved of it, and its readers were soon numbered by hundreds. Carlyle cared little for public opinion, or even for the dicta of the critics.

 

De Quincey attacked “Wilhelm Meister” very violently in a famous review in Blackwood's Magazine, which attracted considerable attention at the time. It did not discomfit Carlyle much however, if we may judge from the account which he gives us of the circumstance. “Jemmy Belcher,” he says, “was a smirking little dumpy Unitarian bookseller, in the Bull Ring, regarded as a kind of curiosity and favorite among these people, and had seen me. One showery day I took shelter in his shop ; picked up a new magazine, found in it a cleverish and completely hostile criticism of my “Wilhelm Meister,” of my Goethe, and self, &c., read it faithfully to the end, and have never set eye on it since. On stepping out of my bad spirits did not feel much elevated by the dose just swallowed, but I thought with myself, This man is perhaps right on some points; if so, let him be admonitory ! And he was so on a Scotticism, (or perhaps two) ; and I did reasonably soon (in not above a couple of hours) dismiss him to the devil, or to Jericho, as an illgiven, unserviceable kind of entity in my course through this world. It was DeQuincey as I often enough heard afterwards from foolish-talking persons. What matter who, ye foolish-talking persons, would have been my silent answer, as it generally pretty much was. I recollect how, in Edinburgh, poor DeQuincey, whom I wished to know, was reported to tremble at the thought of such a thing, and did fly, pale as ashes, poor little soul, the first time we actually met. He was a pretty little creature, full of wire-drawn ingenuity, bankrupt enthusiasm, bankrupt pride with the finest silver-toned low voice, and most elaborate gently winding courtesies and ingenuities in conversation. What wouldn't one give to have him in a box and take him out to talk? That was her criticism of him, and it was right good. A bright, ready, and melodious talker, but in the end inconclusive and long-winded. One of the smallest man figures I ever saw; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in all. When he sate, you would have taken him by candle-light, for the beautifulest little child,—blue-eyed, sparkling face, had there not been a something too, which said, 'Eccovi—this child has been in hell.'

 

Carlyle allowed his book to take care of itself while he looked about for a wife. He found her in 1826, and she proved to be the witty and clever daughter of Dr. Welsh, of Haddington, and a lineal descendant of sturdy John Knox. She was a lady of high intelligence and culture. Dickens often spoke of her sweet and noble nature, and John Forster, his biographer, once wrote these kindly words about her :—“With the highest gifts of intellect, and the charm of a most varied knowledge of men and things, there was something beyond. No one who knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss when she passed away.” She was the subject of a little poem which some of you may remember, for Guernsey has told the story of Leigh Hunt and “Jenny Kissed me,” to very many readers. One day, this writer says, Hunt rushed into the home of the Carlyles in his impatient and impetuous way, bearing glad tidings of some rare good fortune which had just happened to them, when Mrs. Carlyle—the “Jenny” of the screed, sprang from her chair, threw her arms about the astonished, and bewildered poet's neck, and gave him a resounding congratulatory smack. This was the result :          

 

“Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in :

Time, you thief ! who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;   

Say that health and wealth have missed me :

Say I'm growing old, but add—

Jenny kissed me.”

 

 

Mary Jane Welsh became a most exemplary wife, and having a small estate of her own at Craigenputtock, she and her husband forsook Edinburgh for this cosy retreat in the wilds of Dumfriesshire. They lived here very happily for six years, and it was at this place that Carlyle received Ralph Waldo Emerson, after the famous Transcendentalist had resigned his charge in Boston. The interview between these two masters in thought and morals was very impressive. Emerson describes the philosopher as a tall gaunt man with “cliff-like brow,” and self-possessed, and he found him “nourishing his mighty heart,” in this quiet home.

 

Of his model wife and of this moorland retreat, Carlyle himself says:—

 

“Perfection of housekeeping was her clear and speedy attainment in that new scene. Strange how she made the desert blossom for herself and me there ; what a fairy palace she had made of that wild moorland home of the poor man ! In my life I have seen no human intelligence that so genuinely pervaded every fibre of the human existence it belonged to. From the baking of a loaf or the darning of a stocking up to comporting herself in the highest scenes and most intricate emergencies, all was insight, veracity, graceful success (if you could judge it), fidelity to insight of the fact given.

 

Beautiful queenlike woman, I did admire her complete perfection on this head of the actual 'dowry' she had now (1842) brought, £200 yearly or so, which to us was a highly considerable sum, and how she absolutely ignored it, and as it were had not done it at all. Once or so I can dimly remember telling her as much (thank God I did so), to which she answered scarcely by a look, and certainly without word, except, perhaps, 'Tut !'”

 

And in his well-known and oft-quoted letter to Goethe he says again of this little home which his well-beloved wife, so beautified and glorified:—“Our residence is not in the town itself, but fifteen miles to the North-West of it, among the gaunt hills and black morasses which stretch west-ward through Galloway to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and bog, our estate stands forth as a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed and planted ground, where corn ripens and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling. Here, in the absence of a professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the roses and flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air are the best medicine for weak nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, is my only recreation, for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain—six miles removed from any one likely to visit me.”

 

In 1827 Carlyle appeared again in type, as the translator of a number of bright stories from Tieck, Hoffman, Jean Paul Richter and others. Besides magazine and review writing, our author also finished while at Craigenputtock, his famous “Sartor Resartus”—the Patched Tailor—one of the cheerfullest and most humorous of all his books. It failed to find a publisher, however, and it went the rounds of some half dozen or so of the book-makers, John Murray oddly enough, among the rest. Fraser's Magazine accepted it at last, and it was published serially. In America it had a better fate. Alexander Everett, the editor of the North American Review, was much impressed by its genius, as he read it in the numbers of Fraser, which came over the sea, and he put it into book-form on its completion. It became a great success, and the speculations of Herr Teufelsdrockh remain to-day one of the cleverest bits of satire known to readers of that class of literature. This book gave Carlyle a fine reputation with the American people, and he was soon flooded with invitations to visit the United States, which, however, his engagements at home never permitted him to accept. His next great book was the French Revolution. After he had completed the first volume, Mr. John Stuart Mill borrowed it, in manuscript, to read. Through unexampled carelessness on the part of the eminent Political Economist, the precious sheets were left in such an exposed situation, that Mr. Mill's cook, thinking them of little use, turned the papers to account in baking some cakes, partly as lining for the cake-tins and partly as fuel. When this was discovered the unfortunate Mill became wild with excitement and terror; there was no help for it, however, and he sought his friend and told him the story. Carlyle says of this interview :—

 

“How well do I still remember that night when he came to tell us, pale as Hector's ghost, that my unfortunate first volume was burnt. It was like half sentence of death to us both, and we had to pretend to take it lightly, so dismal and ghastly was his horror at it, and try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal hours or so; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the burst of sympathy my poor darling then gave me, flinging her arms around my neck, and openly lamenting, condoling, and encouraging like a nobler second self ! Under heaven is nothing beautifuler. We sat talking till late ; 'shall be written again,' my fixed word and resolution to her. Which proved to be such a task as I never tried before or since. I wrote out 'Feast of Pikes' (vol. II.), and then went fairly at it. Found it fairly impossible for about a fortnight ; passed three weeks (reading Marryatt's novels), tried, cautions-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin, once more; and, in short, had a job more like breaking my heart than any other in my experience. Jenny, alone of beings, burnt like a steady lamp beside me. I forget how much of money we still had. I think there was at first something like £300, perhaps £280, to front London with. Nor can I in the least remember where we had gathered such a sum, except that it was our own, no part of it borrowed or given us by anybody. “Fit to last till “French Revolution” is ready ! and she had no misgivings at all. Mill was penitently liberal; sent me £200 (in a day or two), of which I kept £100 (actual cost of house while I had written burnt volume); upon which he bought me 'Biographie Universelle,' which I got bound, and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the new much macerated, changed and fanatieized, 'John Stuart Mill' to take that £100 back; but I fear there is no way.”

 

The work was published in three large volumes in 1837 complete, and Carlyle was never known to lend a manuscript again under any circumstances. In this same year he appeared as a lecturer on German literature in Willis' rooms, London, and though his appearance on the platform was ungainly and uncouth, the subject-matter of his paper disarmed all personal criticism, and the audience were delighted and charmed with every word which fell from the brilliant writer's lips. His eloquence was simple and earnest.

 

“Heroes and Hero-Worship” followed in course, and was succeeded in 1839 by a small book on “Chartism,” which attracted a good deal of attention. In 1843 “Past and Present” came out. It is a book of admirable essays, showing Carlyle's habits of thought to great advantage, and dealing with a variety of subjects in a homely, practical way. Oliver Cromwell's “Letters and Speeches” were given to the world in 1845, and five years later the Latter Day Pamphlets were printed. These essays aroused a good deal of indignation among the anti-slavery agitators, and John G. Whittier, the gentle Quaker poet of New England, wrote a very caustic article against Carlyle for the stand he had taken on the slavery question. The little book deals altogether with social topics, and does not always show Carlyle at his best. The Life of John Sterling—a fine piece of biographical writing—was given to the public in 1851, and in 1865 the concluding volume of The History of Frederic the Great, which was begun in 1858, was published.

 

In 1864, the students of the University of Edinburgh elected Mr. Carlyle Lord Rector over Mr. Disraeli. After being installed in his office, he remained in the Scottish capital for more than a fortnight. In the midst of the enjoyment of his honors, he received a blow, which had a distressing influence on his life ever afterwards. News of his wife's death reached him, and crazed almost to distraction, he hastened home to find the partner of his life for forty years, beyond hope of recall. Her death had occurred under most painful and shocking circumstances, on the afternoon of the 21st of April.

 

She had been out driving, as was her custom, on fine days, in Hyde Park. A little spaniel, for which she had much affection and to which she was greatly attached, was running by the side of the carriage, when suddenly the wheel passed over it. The dog uttered a shrill, piercing cry, but, curiously enough, was not at all hurt. The brougham was stopped, and the spaniel placed on the seat by the side of its mistress. The driver drove about for an hour or so, and receiving, at the expiration of that time, no directions from his mistress, he turned to her for instructions as to what course he should take next. To his horror he found her pale and speechless. He drove at once to St. George's Hospital, which was near at hand. She was quite dead, however, before she reached it, death having been, probably, instantaneous, and the result of heart disease, accelerated by the excitement caused by the accident to the spaniel. Word was sent at once to her husband, and the message broke his heart. “Ah,” said the old man in the very midst of his Edinburgh triumphs “the light of my life has clean gone out.” In his diary, he wrote down these words:—'

 

“She lived nineteen days after that Edinburgh Monday; on the nineteenth (April 21, 1866, between 3 and 4 p. m., as near as I can gather and sift), suddenly, as by a thunderbolt from skies all blue, she was snatched from me; a 'death from the gods,' the old Romans would have called it,—the kind of death she many a time expressed a wish for; and in all my life (and as I feel ever since) there fell on me no misfortune like it; which has smitten my whole world into universal wreck (unless I can repair it in some small measure), and extinguish whatever light of cheerfulness and loving hopefulness life still had in it to me.

 

“O my dear one, sad is my soul for the loss of thee, and will to the end be as I compute. Lonelier creature there is not henceforth in this world; neither person, work, nor thing going on in it that is of any value in comparison, or even at all. Death I feel almost daily in express fact, death is the one haven; and have occasionally a kind of kingship, sorrowful, but sublime, almost god-like, in the feeling that that is nigh. Sometimes the image of her, gone in her car of victory (in that beautiful death), and as if nodding to me, with a smile, 'I am gone, loved one; work a little longer, if thou still carest; if not, follow. There is no baseness, and no misery here. Courage, courage to the last ! ' that some times, as in this moment, is inexpressibly beautiful to me, and comes nearer to bringing tears than it once did - Not all the Sands and Eliots and babbling cohue of 'celebrated scribbling women' that have strutted over the world in my time could, it seems to me, if all boiled down and distilled to essence, make one such woman.”

 

She was buried on the 25th of April, in the choir of the Cathedral of Haddington, her native town, and her husband caused this epitaph to be placed upon her tombstone :—

 

Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Haddington, 14th July 1801; only child of the above John Welsh and Grace Welsh, Caplegell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright existence, she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a capacity of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart, which are rare. For 40 years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him, as none else could, in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died in London, 21st April, 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.

 

Carlyle accepted, in 1873, on the death of Manzoni, the civil class of the Prussian Royal Order “for merit.” He refused, however, all honors which had been tendered him by his own country. The Queen offered him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, but he declined it, and when it was proposed to knight him and Mr. Tennyson he again refused the distinction. He was offered even higher honors, but he declined these also. In 1867, he published “Shooting Niagara; and After?” and a few years later he printed “The Early Kings of Norway.” and “John Knox.” On the 4th of December, 1875, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, he was the recipient of numerous congratulations from people in all parts of the world, and was at the same time presented with an address and a gold medal, which had been struck off in honor of the day.

 

Carlyle was a wonderful reader, rapid, nervous and exhaustive. He seemed to read by whole pages instead of by mere words, and for fifty years of his life, and more, he devoured books, on almost every conceivable subject, reading fully six or eight hours a day, and often sitting up for the purpose until two or three o'clock in the morning.; It is said he went through Gibbon at the rate of one volume per diem, delighted at the “winged sarcasms, so quiet and yet so conclusively transpiercing and killing dead,” and finding the “colors” “strong but coarse, and set off by lights from the side scenes.” A story is told of him which exhibits very clearly his marvellous grasp on the inside of books. Once, having gone to spend an afternoon and to dine with a new acquaintance, and arriving several hours before his host, he entered the library, upon which the gentleman prided himself, as it contained very many volumes of great variety and literary value. The host came at last, and dinner eaten, the author was asked if he would not like to go into the library and see the books. “I've read 'em,” was the laconic reply; and it proved that Carlyle had actually absorbed in the time before dinner all that was of use to him in that well-selected collection.

 

It is, as a talker, however, that the grand old man, appeared to the better advantage. Less polished than Alcott or Emerson, he was, if anything, more earnest. Margaret Fuller, herself one of the best talkers who ever lived, wrote of him in 1846:—

 

“His talk is still an amazement and splendour, scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not, in the least, from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulses as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. - He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full. - He puts out his chin till it looks like the beak of a bird of prey, and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird.”

 

Carlyle's appearance at that time has been carefully noted by Dr. Cuyler, who visited him in his garret after he had seen Dickens and Montgomery and Wordsworth. Cuyler was a raw college lad then, and impressionable. He had read “Sartor Resartus,” and “Heroes and Hero Worship,” and he felt that he ought to thank their author, in person, for the pleasure he had experienced in perusing them. He found the object of his search, and was received cordially in that famous front room on the second floor of that modest house in Cheyne Row. A renowned locality for literary men, this quaint suburb of Chelsea which can boast of such residents, at different times, as Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Swift, Addison and Dick Steele of classic memory, of Boyle, Locke, the logician, Arbuthnot, Noll Goldsmith, Smollett and the Walpoles, besides such worthies of a later day as Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt and Maclise, the great painter. In this redbrick unpretending house, Cuyler feasted his eyes on Thomas Carlyle, who was then, in his prime. “He was hale and athletic,” says this observant youth of thirty and odd years ago, “with a clear blue eye, strong lower jaw, stiff iron-gray hair brushed up from a capacious forehead, and with the look of a sturdy country deacon, dressed up for church.” In 1872, Theodore Cuyler, then a D.D. and with a reputation which penetrated even as far as England, visited the Scottish sage again. “We found,” he says, “the same old brick dwelling, No. 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, without the slightest change, outside or in. But during those 30 years, the kind, good wife, whom I had met in 1842, had departed, and a sad change had come over the once hale, stalwart man. After we had waited some time, a feeble and stooping figure, attired in a blue flannel gown, moved slowly into the room. His gray hair was unkempt, his blue eye was still keen and piercing, and a bright hectic spot of red appeared in each of his hollow cheeks. His hands were tremulous and his voice was deep and husky.- Much of his extraordinary harangue was like the eruption of Vesuvius; but the sly laugh he occasionally gave showed that he was 'mandating' about as much for his own amusement as for ours. He was terribly severe on Parliament, which he described as an 'endless babblement o' windy talk, and a grinding o' hurdy-gurdies, grinding out lies and inanities.' And in this strain the thin and weird-looking old iconoclast went on for an hour, until he wound up by declaring that 'England has joost gane clean down into an abominable cesspool of lies and shoddies and shams—down to an utter and bottomless domnation. Ye may gie whatever meaning to that word that ye like.'”

 

This was Carlyle in old age. With his infirmities fast coming upon him, we prefer not to linger. With his life-work we will deal now, that work by which the world will long continue to know him, that work which he has left behind, and which speaks to his fellow-men in trumpet-tones. The future will understand him better than have those of his own generation understood him. He was a many-sided man, a true type of the noble-hearted thinker and philosopher, whose life was dedicated to his fellows, whose broad humanity, high morality, observation and insight were never expended in an unworthy cause. He was a good man, and his teachings have made the world better for his coming. We know that he did not believe in a structural creed, and that the thirty-nine articles, or the confession of faith, had no charms or terrors, it may be, for him, but he did believe in God and honest labour. He hated shams of all sorts, he loathed from his inmost soul, hypocrisy and cant, and double dealing. He worshipped force and might and honesty of purpose. He was an iconoclast and a pessimist of the most uncompromising type. Even the bright, glorious starlight, which Leigh Hunt, in his delicious way, used to think was all joy and gladness, and contained voices which sang an eternal song of hope in the soul of man, Carlyle considered a sad sight. The brilliant stars would yet become gaunt graves, for all living things must die and have an end. But, despite all this, despite the gloomy view of things which the philosopher persisted in stamping on his life-work, may we not learn enduring lessons, to aid us in our journey through life, from these same teachings from the master mind of this masterful century of ours, so prolific in thought, in poetry and in scientific advancement? The impress of Carlyle's mind may be found in all the thought which is worth having in our day. Unconsciously, as well as consciously, he has influenced public opinion, and from the pulpit and the platform, from the press and from the schoolmaster, from the very heart of the thinking people, the mind of that Scottish stone-mason's son speaks with terrific force and volume, and the prescience of the seer, and tells us how we may live lives of usefulness and purity and of honorable purpose. The Carlyle idea is marching on with irresistible strength and vigor. He has left us a vast store-house of treasures, a heritage of priceless pearls. Ought we not to gather these riches up, and ponder well, the lessons which they reveal to us ?