Past and Present | Page 4

were
possible
on the part of the humorist. Yet it must not be
forgotten that in all his
fun of castanets, or playing of tunes with a whip-lash like some
renowned charioteers,--in all this glad and needful venting of his
redundant spirits, he does yet ever and anon, as if catching the glance of
one wise man in the crowd, quit his tempestuous key, and lance at him
in clear level tone the very word, and then with new glee return to his
game. He is like a lover or an outlaw who wraps up his message in a
serenade, which is nonsense to the sentinel, but salvation to the ear for
which it is meant. He does not dodge the question, but gives sincerity
where it is due.
One word more respecting this remarkable style. We have in literature
few specimens of magnificence. Plato is the purple ancient, and Bacon
and Milton the moderns of the richest strains. Burke sometimes reaches
to that exuberant fullness, though
deficient in depth. Carlyle in his
strange, half mad way, has entered the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and
shown a vigour and wealth of resource which has no rival in the
tourney play of these times--the indubitable champion of England.
Carlyle is the first domestication of the modern system, with its infinity
of details, into style. We have been civilising very fast, building
London and Paris, and now planting New England and India, New
Holland and Oregon--and it has not appeared in literature; there has
been no analogous expansion and recomposition in books. Carlyle's
style is the first emergence of all this wealth and labour with which the
world has gone with child so long. London and Europe, tunneled,
graded corn-lawed, with trade-nobility, and East and West Indies for
dependencies, and America, with the Rocky Hills in the horizon, have
never before been conquered in literature. This is the first invasion and
conquest. How like an air-balloon or bird of Jove does he seem to float
over the continent, and stooping here and there pounce on a fact as a

symbol which was never a symbol before. This is the first
experiment,
and something of rudeness and haste must be pardoned to so great an
achievement. It will be done again and again, sharper, simpler; but
fortunate is he who did it first, though never so giant-like and fabulous.
This grandiose character pervades his wit and his imagination. We have
never had anything in literature so like earthquakes as the laughter of
Carlyle. He "shakes with his mountain mirth." It is like the laughter of
the Genii in the horizon. These jokes shake down Parliament-house and
Windsor Castle, Temple and Tower, and the future shall echo the
dangerous peals. The other particular of magnificence is in his rhymes.
Carlyle is a poet who is altogether too burly in his frame and habit to
submit to the limits of metre. Yet he is full of rhythm, not only in the
perpetual melody of his periods, but in the burdens, refrains, and
returns of his sense and music. Whatever thought or motto has once
appeared to him fraught with meaning, becomes an omen to him
henceforward, and is sure to return with deeper tones and weightier
import, now as threat, now as confirmation, in gigantic reverberation,
as if the hills, the horizon, and the next ages returned the sound.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Life of Schiller (Lond. Mag., 1823-4), 1825, 1845. (Supplement
published in the People's Edition, 1873) Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship, 1824. Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry (from
the French of Legendre), 1824. German Romance, 1827. Sartor
Resartus (Fraser's Mag., 1833-4), 1835 (Boston) 1838. French
Revolution, 1837,1839. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 1839, 1840,
1847, 1857. (In these were reprinted Articles from Edinburgh Review,
Foreign Review, Foreign Quarterly Review, Fraser's Magazine,
Westminster Review, New Monthly Magazine, London and
Westminster Review, Keepsake, Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, Times.) Chartism, 1840. Heroes,
Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History, 1841. Past and Present, 1843.
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with Elucidations, 1845.
Thirty-five Unpublished Letters of Oliver Cromwell, 1847 (Fraser).
Original Discourses on the Negro
Question (Fraser, 1849), 1853.
Latter-day Pamphlets, 1850. Life of John Sterling, 1851. History of

Friedrich II. of Prussia, 1858-65. Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, 1866.
Shooting
Niagara; and After? 1867 (from Macmillan). The Early
Kings of Norway; also an Essay on the Portraits of John Knox, 1875.
There were also contributions to Brewster's Edinburgh
Encyclopaedia,
vols. xiv. xv., and xvi.; to New Edinburgh
Review, 1821, 1822;
Fraser's Magazine, 1830, 1831; The Times, 19 June, 1844 (Mazzini);
28 November, 1876; 5 May, 1877;
Examiner, 1848; Spectator 1848.
First Collected Edition of Works, 1857-58 (16 vols.)
Reminiscences (ed. J.A. Froude), 1881; (ed. C.E. Norton, 1887, and
preprinted in Everyman's Library; 1932, with an added
article on
Professor John Wilson--"Christopher North")
Reminiscences of my
Irish journey in 1849, 1882.