Pages from a Journal with Other Papers | Page 3

came back from Mentone, the news came to me one
night he was dead."
On leaving Carlyle shook hands with us both and said he was glad to
have seen us. "It was pleasant to have friends coming out of the dark in
this way."
Perhaps a reflection or two which occurred to me after this interview
may not be out of place. Carlyle was perfectly frank, even to us of
whom he knew but little. He did not stand off or refuse to talk on any
but commonplace subjects. What was offered to us was his best. And
yet there is to be found in him a singular reserve, and those shallow
persons who taunt him with inconsistency because he makes so much
of silence, and yet talks so much, understand little or nothing of him. In
half a dozen pages one man may be guilty of shameless garrulity, and
another may be nobly reticent throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle
feels the contradictions of the universe as keenly as any man can feel
them. He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting anew the
riddles which nobody can answer; he knows how strong is the
temptation towards the insoluble. But upon these subjects he also
knows how to hold his tongue; he does not shriek in the streets, but he
bows his head. He has found no answer--he no more than the feeblest
of us, and yet in his inmost soul there is a shrine, and he worships.
Carlyle is the champion of morals, ethics, law--call it what you like-- of
that which says we must not always do a thing because it is pleasant.
There are two great ethical parties in the world, and, in the main, but
two. One of them asserts the claims of the senses. Its doctrine is
seductive because it is so right. It is necessary that we should in a
measure believe it, in order that life may be sweet. But nature has
heavily weighted the scale in its favour; its acceptance requires no
effort. It is easily perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly all
genius has gone over to it, and preaching it is rather superfluous. The
other party affirms what has been the soul of all religions worth having,
that it is by repression and self-negation that men and States live.
It has been said that Carlyle is great because he is graphic, and he is

supposed to be summed up in "mere picturesqueness," the silliest of
verdicts. A man may be graphic in two ways. He may deal with his
subject from the outside, and by dint of using strong language may
"graphically" describe an execution or a drunken row in the streets. But
he may be graphic by ability to penetrate into essence, and to express it
in words which are worthy of it. What higher virtue than this can we
imagine in poet, artist, or prophet?
Like all great men, Carlyle is infinitely tender. That was what struck
me as I sat and looked in his eyes, and the best portraits in some degree
confirm me. It is not worth while here to produce passages from his
books to prove my point, but I could easily do so, specially from the
Life of Sterling and the Cromwell. {10} Much of his fierceness is an
inverted tenderness.
His greatest book is perhaps the Frederick, the biography of a hero
reduced more than once to such extremities that apparently nothing but
some miraculous intervention could save him, and who did not yield,
but struggled on and finally emerged victorious. When we consider
Frederick's position during the last part of the Seven Years' War, we
must admit that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances or
showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the Destinies, in
order to teach us what human nature can do, had ordained that he who
had the most fortitude should also encounter the severest trial of it.
Over and over again Frederick would have been justified in
acknowledging defeat, and we should have said that he had done all
that could be expected even of such a temper as that with which he was
endowed. If the struggle of the will with the encompassing world is the
stuff of which epics are made, then no greater epic than that of
Frederick has been written in prose or verse, and it has the important
advantage of being true. It is interesting to note how attractive this
primary virtue of which Frederick is such a remarkable representative
is to Carlyle, how MORAL it is to him; and, indeed, is it not the sum
and substance of all morality? It should be noted also that it was due to
no religious motive: