courteous, full of old-fashioned politeness, he would totter to his feet to greet his visitor, even in that last languor. This time he was not uncheerful. It was inevitable that he should repeat that prevailing sentiment always in his mind about the death for which he was waiting; but he soon turned to a very different subject. In this old house, never before brightened by the sight of children, a baby had been born, a new Thomas Carlyle, the child of his niece and nephew, as near to him as it was possible for any living thing in the third generation to be. He spoke of it with tender amusement and wonder. It was "a bonnie little manikin,' a perfectly good and well-conditioned child, taking life sweetly, and making no more than the inevitable commotion in the tranquil house. There had been fears as to how he would take this innocent intruder, whether its advent might disturb or annoy him; on the contrary, it gave him a half-amused and genial pleasure, tinged with his prevailing sentiment, yet full of natural satisfaction in the continuance of his name and race. This little life coming unconscious across the still scene in which he attended the slow arrival of death, awoke in its most intimate and touching form the self-reference and comparison which was habitual to him. It was curious, he said, very curious! thus to contrast the newcomer with "the parting guest." It was a new view to him, bringing together the exit and the entrance with a force both humorous and solemn. The "bonnie little manikin," one would imagine, pushed him softly, tenderly, with baby hands not much less serviceable than his own, towards the verge. The old man looked on with a half-incredulous, and wondering mixture of pain and pleasure, bursting into one of those convulsions of broken laughter, sudden and strange, which were part of his habitual utterance. Thus I left him, scarcely restrained by his weakness from his old habit of accompanying me to the door. For he was courtly in those little traditions of politeness, and had often conducted me down stairs upon his arm, when I was fain to support him instead of accepting his tremulous guidance.

And that was my last sight of Thomas Carlyle. I had parted with his wife at

day or two before her death, at the railway, after a little visit she had paid me, in an agony of apprehension lest something should happen to her on the brief journey, so utterly spent was she, like a dying woman, but always indomitable, suffering no one to accompany or take care of her. Her clear and expressive face, in ivory-paleness, the hair still dark, untouched by age, upon her capacious forehead, the eloquent mouth, scarcely owning the least curve of a smile at the bright wit and humorous brilliant touches which kept all her hearers amused and delighted, seem still before me. She was full of his Edinburgh Rectorship, of the excitement and pleasure of it, and profound heartfelt yet half-disdainful satisfaction in that, as she thought, late recognition of what he was. To this public proof of the honor in which his country held him, both he and she seemed to attach more importance than it deserved; as if his country had only then learned to prize and honor him But the reader must not suppose that this gallant woman who had protected and fought for him through all his struggles, showed her intense sympathy and anxiety now in any sentimental way of tenderness. She had arranged everything for him to the minutest detail, charging her deputy with the very spoonful of stimulant that was to be given him the moment before he made his speech-but all the same shot a hundred little jibes at him as she talked, and felt the humor of the great man's dependence upon these little cares, forestalling all less tender laughter by her own. I remember one of these jibes (strange! when so many brighter and better utterances cannot be recalled) during one of the long drives we took together, when she had held me in breathless interest by a variety of sketches of their contemporaries-the immediate chapter being one which might be called the "Loves of the Philosophers"-I interrupted her by a foolish remark that Mr. Carlyle alone, of all his peers, seemed to have trodden the straight way. She turned upon me with swift rejoinder and just an amused quiver of her upper lip. My dear," she said, "if Mr. Carlyle's digestion. had been better there is no telling what he might have done!" Thus she would

44

ONE can hardly help feeling that undue haste has been used in the publication of these volumes. Exception has already been taken at the little care shown to avoid giving unmerited and unnecessary pain to many persons whose names are here mentioned, and set round with remarks and epithets which cannot fail to be unpleasant and even wounding. The editor has executed his task with a too filial scrupulosity and piety. He has not omitted a name, or a word, or a letter of manuscripts which he admits were probably not intended for publication. Carlyle knew a great number of people, and many of them, or their near relatives, are still alive. It was, to say the least, inconsiderate to allow a book of his to appear full of personal allusions, which are well fitted to arouse a certain anger towards his memory Either the work should have been kept back for at least another decade or so, or blanks and asterisks should have been unsparingly used.

However, the evil is done, and it is no fault of Carlyle's. It will also, in time, disappear. Posterity will not resent it, as many now with justice do. There is a graver question beyond, and it is no less than this-whether Carlyle himself is not a sufferer, and a permanent sufferer, by this publication? All the four essays were written in conditions of great gloom and depression, in consequence of recent bitter bereavement. The first on James Carlyle was begun apparently the instant the author had news of his father's death. In the middle of it he interrupts his narrative to insert the remark," Friday night. My father is now in his grave," showing he had not waited for the funeral to commence his memoir. The pathos and beauty of the piece cannot be surpassed, written in star-fire and immortal tears, to use his own words on a similar occasion. But the grief, though poignant, is not overpowering, on the contrary, lofty and calm, and therefore

* " Reminiscences," by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by James Anthony Froude, M.A.

But

touching in the extreme. The three other essays were composed some thirtyfour years later, in the decline of life and health, when choked by anguish at the loss of his wife, and the result is, perhaps, more painful than beautiful. We had no need to wait for these Reminiscences to know that Carlyle took a sad and gloomy view of the world and its prospects in his later years. Perhaps he always did so, more or less. these papers were composed when his gloom was deepest and blackest. This was not a good standpoint from which to pass in review a long and checkered life, when the heart was sick, and the nerves unstrung, and the years la heavy and numerous on the venerable head bowed down in passionate grief. The pious reverence and self-effacement of Mr. Froude are complete when he says: " The Reminiscences appeared to me to be far too valuable to be broken up and employed in any composition of my own. But it may be questioned whether he did the wisest thing for his friend's memory in sending forth these sombre sketches unrelieved by any color or contrast derived from less melancholy periods of his long life. was no particular need of hurry for anything that appears. The promised biography, comprising a large selection of his letters, as full of matter as the richest of his published works," would surely have been well worth waiting for a little. Then we should have had a picture of Carlyle's life seen through a less sad and depressing medium than the present. Bright lights, and still brighter laughter, we may be sure would have relieved the shadows, and the sage and hero, for whom a whole generation of disciples has felt the deepest reverence and gratitude, would not have appeared, as he now does, in a manner which has already given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. Carlyle's morose acerbities, harsh judgments of his contemporaries, morbid self-watchings, and very often quite unheroic fastidious delicacies and shrinkings, are naturally enough, with the text of this book be

46

There

fore them, affording rare and congenial matter for mockery to some who, for obvious reasons, have no love for either the author or his work. True admirers will believe that another face will be put upon the subject when the whole record is produced. They will hope, until the contrary is proved, that mutatis mutandis something similar occurred to Carlyle as to his own Goethe in reference to this autobiography. Mr. Lewes, explaining why he used the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" only as a subsidiary source in his life of the poet, remarks:

"The main reason of this was the abiding inaccuracy of tone which, far more misleading than the many inaccuracies of fact, gives to the whole youthful period as narrated by him an aspect so directly contrary to what is given by contemporary evidence, especially his own letters, that an attempt to reconcile the contradiction is impossible."-Life of Goethe,

Preface.

Let us have whatever biographical material there may be behind, especially the letters, before we venture on a final judgment. If the letters confirm the tone of the present pieces there is nothing more to be said. The great preacher and prophet of heroes was not himself the hero we thought him. The fact when it is proven will not be a welcome one at all; but it will not be the first of its kind and we must bear with it as we can. In the meanwhile the best thing to do is without shrinking advance to a close scrutiny of the facts as we have them and cast up some sort of balancesheet which will show how we stand. How far have these Reminiscences added to or altered our appreciation of Carlyle ?

By far their most unpleasant trait, by reason of its unamiability and persistence, is the constant depreciation of contemporaries, even acquaintances and friends. Name after name is mentioned, only to be dismissed with a contemptuous epithet, often very skilfully chosen it must be owned; but Carlyle was ever a master of nicknames, and he dabs almost every one he meets with colors from his vigorous brush, which, as he said, "stick to one." But how cheaply he held his contemporarieswith the fewest exceptions-is known to all. His opinion of Coleridge, Bentham, Keats, Byron, even Scott, has been long on record. That he seemed,

from some strange reason, incapable of doing justice to contemporary merit, has been obvious to all men for wellnigh forty years. The question has an interest, irrespective of the minor morals of social intercourse, by reason of its connection with his general view of life and history, his worship of the past, and his hatred of the present, about which a few words will be said presently.

But, as a matter of fact, he does not show himself more unjust (if so much) in this book than he had often before, especially to his literary contemporaries. There is nothing equal to the famous grunt against, Keat's "maudlin weakeyed sensibility," or to the deliberate ridicule of Coleridge in the "Life of Sterling." The uncharitable tone he adopts seems, on this occasion, more offensive than heretofore; first, because there is so much of it; secondly, because it is used with regard to persons with whom he was on more or less friendly terms, and he appears not only as the harsh and mistaken literary critic, but as the ill-natured social neighbor, sneering at people behind their backs. Still there is nothing new in all this. The evil tendency is stronger than one knew, and far stronger than one could wish; but it does not alter the elements of our judgment, it only affects their proportions.

Again, the terms in which he refers to Dr. Darwin seem hardly rational, and are wholly indecent. But we were prepared even for this in a measure. The way in which he had already treated Laplace and Leibnitz showed that no scientific eminence was sufficient to save a man from his mockeries, and it is abundantly clear, from all sides, that Carlyle felt towards science like a monk of the sixteenth century felt towards the revival of learning.

"That progress of science which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favor

with Teufelsdröckh. The man who cannot wonder, were he president of innumerable royal societies and carried the whole Mécanique Céleste in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye."

He had a perfect horror of any thing being explained, accounted for. To do this was logic-chopping," scrannel-piping," and the rest. In