Modern English Books of Power | Page 9

spent in tutoring, hack writing for the
publishers and translation from the German. His first remunerative
work was the translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, a version which
still remains the best in English. After his marriage to Jane Welsh he
was driven by poverty to take refuge on his wife's lonely farm at
Craigenputtock, where he did much reading and wrote the early essays
which contain some of his best work. The EDINBURGH REVIEW and
FRASER'S were opened to him.

Finally, in 1833, when he was nearly forty years old, he made his first
literary hit with Sartor Resartus which called out a storm of caustic
criticism. The Germanic style, the elephantine humor, the strange
conceits and the sledge-hammer blows at all which the smug English
public regarded with reverence--all these features aroused irritation.
Four years later came The French Revolution, which established
Carlyle's fame as one of the greatest of English writers. From this time
on he was freed from the fear of poverty, but it was only in his last
years, when he needed little, that he enjoyed an income worthy of his
labors.
Carlyle's great books, beside those I have mentioned, are the lives of
Cromwell and of Frederick the Great. These are too long for general
reading, but a single volume condensation of the Frederick gives a
good idea of Carlyle's method of combining biography and history.
Carlyle outlived all his contemporaries--a lonely old man, full of bitter
remorse over imaginary neglect of his wife, and full also of despair
over the democratic tendencies of the age, which he regarded as the
outward signs of national degeneracy.
Carlyle's fame was clouded thirty years ago by the unwise publication
of reminiscences and letters which he never intended for print. Froude
was chosen as his biographer. One of the great masters of English,
Froude was a bachelor who idealized Mrs. Carlyle and who regarded as
the simple truth an old man's bitter regrets over opportunities neglected
to make his wife happier. Everyone who has studied Carlyle's life
knows that he was dogmatic, dyspeptic, irritable, and given to sharp
speech even against those he loved the best. But over against these
failings must be placed his tenderness, his unfaltering affection, his
self-denial, his tremendous labors, his small rewards.
When separated from his wife Carlyle wrote her letters that are like
those of a young lover, an infinite tenderness in every line. One of her
great crosses was the belief that her husband was in love with the
brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jealousy was absurd, as this great lady
invited Carlyle to her dinners because he was the most brilliant talker in
all England, and he accepted because the opportunity to indulge in

monologue to appreciative hearers was a keener pleasure to him than to
write eloquent warnings to his day and generation. Froude's unhappy
book, with a small library of commentary that it called forth, is
practically forgotten, but Carlyle's fame and his books endure because
they are real and not founded on illusion.
Carlyle opens a new world to the college student or the ambitious youth
who may be gaining an education by his own efforts. He sounds a note
that is found in no other author of our time. Doubtless some of this
attraction is due to his singular style, formed on a long study of the
German, but most of it is due to the tremendous earnestness of the man,
which lays hold of the young reader. Never shall I forget when in
college preparatory days I devoured Past and Present and was stirred to
extra effort by its trumpet calls that work is worship and that the night
soon cometh when no man can work.
His fine chapter on Labor with its splendid version of the Mason's Song
of Goethe has stimulated thousands to take up heavy burdens and go on
with the struggle for that culture of the mind and the soul which is the
more precious the harder the fight to secure it. I remember copying in a
commonplace book some of Carlyle's sonorous passages that stir the
blood of the young like a bugle call to arms. Reading them over years
after, I am glad to say that they still appealed to me, for it seems to me
that the saddest thing in this world is to lose one's youthful enthusiasms.
When you can keep these fresh and strong, after years of contact with a
selfish world, age cannot touch you.
[Illustration: ARCHHOUSE, ECCLEFECHAN, DUMFRIESSHIRE
THE BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS CARLYLE--FROM A
PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF ALEXANDER
CARLYLE, M.A. ON WHICH CARLYLE HAS WRITTEN A
MEMORANDUM TO SHOW IN WHICH ROOM HE WAS BORN]
In this appeal to all that is best and noblest in youth, Carlyle stands
unrivaled. He has far more heart,