_Feb. 10, '81_.--And so the flame of the lamp, after long wasting and
flickering, has gone out entirely.
As a representative author, a literary figure, no man else will bequeath
to the future more significant hints of our stormy era, its fierce
paradoxes, its din, and its struggling parturition periods, than
Carlyle. He belongs to our own branch of the stock too; neither Latin
nor Greek, but altogether Gothic. Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he
was himself more a French revolution than any of his volumes. In some
respects, so far in the Nineteenth century, the best equipt, keenest
mind, even from the college point of view, of all Britain; only he had
an ailing body. Dyspepsia is to be traced in every page, and now and
then fills the page. One may include among the lessons of his life--even
though that life stretch'd to amazing length--how behind the tally of
genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote.
Two conflicting agonistic elements seem to have contended in the
man, sometimes pulling him different ways like wild horses. He was a
cautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a foetid gas-bag
much of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demanded reform,
demanded change--often terribly at odds with his scornful brain. No
author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes
palpable, oftener latent. He reminds me of that passage in Young's poems
where as death presses closer and closer for his prey, the soul rushes
hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, to escape the
general doom.
Of short-comings, even positive blur-spots, from an American point of
view, he had serious share.
Not for his merely literary merit, (though that was great)--not as
"maker of books," but as launching into the self-complacent atmosphere
of our days a rasping, questioning, dislocating agitation and shock, is
Carlyle's final value. It is time the English-speaking peoples had some
true idea about the verteber of genius, namely power. As if they must
always have it cut and bias'd to the fashion, like a lady's cloak! What
a needed service he performs! How he shakes our comfortable reading
circles with a touch of the old Hebraic anger and prophecy--and indeed
it is just the same. Not Isaiah himself more scornful, more threatening:
"The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under
feet: And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley
shall be a fading flower." (The word prophecy is much misused; it seems
narrow'd to prediction merely. That is not the main sense of the Hebrew
word translated "prophet;" it means one whose mind bubbles up and pours
forth as a fountain, from inner, divine spontaneities revealing God.
Prediction is a very minor part of prophecy. The great matter is to
reveal and outpour the God-like suggestions pressing for birth in the
soul. This is briefly the doctrine of the Friends or Quakers.)
Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strength
of this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an old
farmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foibles
fascinating. Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "Shooting
Niagara"--and "the Nigger Question,"--and didn't at all admire our
United States? (I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad words
about us as we deserve.) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of
modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one
needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and
doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with
the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to understand the
last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or
radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or
protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain--the
increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty
millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the
entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and
clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of
gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to
salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness.
The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider,
or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, the
resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _but
with Carlyle left out_. It would be like an army with no artillery. The
show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many
more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but the last
heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and that settles
fate and victory, would be lacking.
For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpses of
a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lying on
a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, never well
enough to take the open air. I have noted this news from time to time
in brief descriptions in the papers. A week ago I read such an item just
before I started out for my customary evening stroll between eight
and nine. In the fine cold night, unusually clear, (Feb. 5, '81,) as
I walk'd some open grounds adjacent, the condition of Carlyle, and his
approaching--perhaps even then actual--death, filled me with thoughts
eluding statement, and curiously blending with the scene. The planet
Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volume and lustre
recover'd, (she has been shorn and languid for nearly a year,) including
an additional sentiment I never noticed before--not merely voluptuous,
Paphian, steeping, fascinating--now with calm commanding seriousness and
hauteur--the Milo Venus now. Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and
the moon past her quarter, trailing in procession, with the Pleiades
following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran. Not a cloud
in heaven. Orion strode through the southeast, with his glittering
belt--and a trifle below hung the sun of the night, Sirius. Every star
dilated, more vitreous, nearer than usual. Not as in some clear nights
when the larger stars entirely outshine the rest. Every little star or
cluster just as distinctly visible, and just as nigh. Berenice's hair
showing every gem, and new ones. To the northeast and north the Sickle,
the Goat and kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers.
While through the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing
and bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying. (To
soothe and spiritualize, and, as far as may be, solve the mysteries of
death and genius, consider them under the stars at midnight.)
And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to
chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still?
In ways perhaps eluding all the statements, lore and speculations of ten
thousand years--eluding all possible statements to mortal sense--does he
yet exist, a definite, vital being, a spirit, an individual--perhaps
now wafted in space among those stellar systems, which, suggestive and
limitless as they are, merely edge more limitless, far more suggestive
systems? I have no doubt of it. In silence, of a fine night, such
questions are answer'd to the soul, the best answers that can be given.
With me, too, when depress'd by some specially sad event, or tearing
problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless
satisfaction.