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THE AGE OF TENNYSON
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THE AGE OF TENNYSON
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THE AGE OF TENNYSON
by HUGH WALKER, M.A.
Professor of English Literature at St. David's College
Lampeter
London
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.
1921
First Published, September, 1897.
Reprinted, December, 1897; 1900, 1904, 1908, 1909, 1921.
PREFACE.
The age of Tennyson is defined, for the purpose of the present volume, as
extending from 1830 to 1870. The date selected as the beginning of the
period needs no explanation; but perhaps the question may be asked why the
age of Tennyson should be supposed to end more than twenty years before
Tennyson died. The answer is twofold. First, I may plead the strong law of
necessity. Sixty years, among the most fertile and varied in our literary
history, could be compressed within the limits of a volume like the
present only by completely changing the scale of treatment; and this again
would have put it out of harmony with the other volumes of the series.
But, secondly, about the year 1870 or before it there took place a change
in the _personnel_ of literature, less complete perhaps than that which
marked the beginning of the epoch, but still sufficiently remarkable.
Among the historians, Macaulay was dead and Carlyle had done his work.
Among the novelists, Dickens died in 1870, Thackeray seven years before,
and Charlotte Bronte still earlier; while, though George Eliot survived
till 1880, the only great work of hers which lies beyond the limits of the
period is _Middlemarch_. Mill, who had been so long the dominant power in
philosophy, died in 1873. The poets, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold
and Rossetti, survived. In poetry however Arnold's voice was by this time
almost dumb. Browning continued to produce copiously; but after _The Ring
and the Book_ his style changed, and changed decidedly for the worse.
Tennyson changed too, but in his case there was some gain to balance what
was lost. The best of the younger poets, like William Morris and
Swinburne, clearly show the influence of new ideals. The old order was
changing, and new ambitions were beginning to sway men's minds. In short,
if by the age of Tennyson we mean the period during which the influences
which formed Tennyson and his contemporaries were dominant, we find that
it came to an end long before Tennyson's life closed.
Tennyson and Browning, Arnold and Ruskin, therefore, have to be treated as
survivors into a new period. But it is obviously undesirable to split a
man's work in two; and consequently, though my period ends at 1870, I have
included a sketch of the later work of these men as well. I have very
rarely treated only a part of a man's work. I have preferred to leave
wholly to my successor those writers who, though they had begun to write
before 1870, seem on the whole to belong rather to the period still
current.
In the plan of this book I have tried to follow out as faithfully as
possible the general idea of the series to which it belongs; and thus I
have been led rather to emphasise the thought of the greater men than to
concern myself about including notices of a great number of minor writers.
In a period so prolific it has therefore been necessary to enforce a
somewhat rigid law of exclusion. The law has been made especially rigid in
the case of fiction; because there is nothing that bears the test of time
so ill as bad or mediocre fiction.
Variety is, after copiousness, the most striking feature of the period
under review; and this variety somewhat obscures the operation of ruling
principles and ideas. I have taken as my guide the conviction that the key
to the period is to be found in its search for truth and its resolve to
understand. We see this everywhere, in the development of science, in the
inquiry into the causes of the growth and decay of nations, in the
intellectual quality of the best poetry, in the analytical psychology of
so much prose fiction. It is the reaction against the extreme romanticism
of the revolutionary period. The writers of the Revolution sought to grasp
truth by an act of faith. In the Victorian period emotion plays a less and
logic a greater part. Or we may describe the change as a partial reversion
to the spirit of the eighteenth century. The imaginative glamour of the
romantic movement is not lost, but there is conjoined with it a juster
appreciation of the clearness and precision and the logical coherency of
the age of Pope. Next to the eighteenth century the age of Tennyson has
been the most critical in our literature.
I owe thanks to Professor Hales for his uniform courtesy and kindness in
reading and considering my proofs, and for many valuable and helpful
suggestions.
H. W.
LAMPETER,
_July, 1897_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
Depression after the Napoleonic struggle--Social
problems--Spread of democracy--Popular education--Rise of
periodical literature--Physical science--Tractarianism--
Pre-Raphaelitism.
CHAPTER I. THOMAS CARLYLE 12
CHAPTER II. POETRY FROM 1830 TO 1850. THE GREATER POETS:
TENNYSON AND BROWNING 36
Introduction--Tennyson's first period--Browning's first
period
CHAPTER III. THE MINOR POETS, 1830 TO 1850 52
Mrs. Hemans and L. E. Landon--Charles Tennyson Turner--
Thomas Hood--Laman Blanchard--Praed--Lord Houghton--R. H.
Barham--Hartley Coleridge--Sara Coleridge--William
Motherwell--Henry Taylor--Philip James Bailey--R. H.
Horne--William Barnes--Mangan--Whitehead--Wade--Ebenezer
Jones.
CHAPTER IV. THE EARLIER FICTION 68
Introduction--Maginn--Lord Lytton--Disraeli--Ainsworth--G.
P. R. James--Marryat--Michael Scott--Warren.
CHAPTER V. FICTION: THE INTERMEDIATE PERIOD 82
Dickens--Thackeray--The Brontes--Mrs. Gaskell.
CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS 109
Introduction--Macaulay--Thomas Arnold--Thirlwall--Grote--
Milman--Finlay--Neale--Merivale--Froude--Kinglake--
Buckle--Maine--Lockhart--Stanley--Minor Historians and
Biographers.
CHAPTER VII. THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 144
Keble--Newman--Pusey--Wilberforce--Maurice--F. W.
Robertson--Mark Pattison--Jowett--Mill--N. W. Senior--
J. E. Cairnes--Whewell--Sir W. Hamilton--Ferrier--Mansel--
Harriet Martineau--G. H. Lewes--Sir G. Cornewall Lewis--
Herbert Spencer.
CHAPTER VIII. SCIENCE 175
Introduction--Lyell--Hugh Miller--Robert Chambers--Darwin--
A. R. Wallace.
CHAPTER IX. CRITICISM, SCHOLARSHIP, AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 191
Introduction--J. P. Collier--Mrs. Jameson--J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps--Helps--Ruskin--Matthew Arnold--Dr. John
Brown--Rands--George Borrow.
CHAPTER X. POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE INTELLECTUAL
MOVEMENT 213
Introduction--Matthew Arnold--Clough--Tennyson--Robert
Browning--E. B. Browning--Edward FitzGerald.
CHAPTER XI. POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE PRE-RAPHAELITES;
THE SPASMODIC SCHOOL; MINOR POETS 240
D. G. Rossetti--Christina Rossetti--W. E. Aytoun--Dobell--
Alexander Smith--Coventry Patmore--'Owen Meredith'--Lord de
Tabley--William Morris--Minor Poets.
CHAPTER XII. THE LATER FICTION 262
Introduction--George Eliot--Mrs. Henry Wood--D. M. Craik--
Charles Kingsley--Anthony Trollope--James Grant--
Whyte-Melville--Wilkie Collins--G. A. Lawrence--Charles
Reade--Conclusion.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 279
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS 289
INDEX 295
THE AGE OF TENNYSON.
INTRODUCTION.
The epoch of literature which opened about the year 1830 is perhaps best
described, in the first place, by negatives. It is distinguished from the
previous period, when the spirit which gave rise to the French Revolution
was dominant, by the absence of certain characteristics then conspicuous.
First and chiefly, it is distinguished by the failure of the hopes which
at once produced and were produced by the Revolution. On the border-land
between the two centuries literature was marked by buoyant and often
extravagant expectation. Even pessimists like Byron were somewhat
superficial in their pessimism. Byron looked upon the evils from which he
and others suffered as due largely to the perversity of society. But this
perversity might be cured, and if it were cured an earthly Elysium seemed
a thing not wholly unreasonable to expect. To all who were animated by the
spirit of Rousseau the problem, how to secure happiness, appeared almost
identical with the comparatively simple one, how to remove obstructions.
Nature unimpeded was perfect: it was the vain imaginings and evil
contrivances of man that did the mischief. There were not wanting, even in
the Revolutionary period, men who thought more deeply and who saw more
clearly. The speculations of Malthus, destined afterwards, both directly,
and still more through the impulse they gave to Darwin, to prove among the
most influential of the century, showed that some, at least, of the roots
of evil reached far deeper than the orthodox Revolutionists and
speculators of the type of Godwin had imagined. The exhaustion of Europe
after the great struggle with Napoleon brought dimly home to multitudes
who knew nothing about and cared nothing for abstruse speculation a sense
of the difficulty and complexity of social problems. Exaggerated
expectations bring their own Nemesis in the shape of proportionate
depression and gloom; and the men of the new era set themselves somewhat
wearily and with little elasticity of spirit to climb the toilsome steep
of progress. The way seemed all the rougher because they had hoped to win
the summit by a rush. Failure left them in the mood of Cleopatra on the
death of Antony,--
'There is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.'
Hence in the beginning of the period there is on the part of all but the
greatest a tendency to trifle. Sometimes even the greatest are not quite
free from it; and in the early poetry of Tennyson we may detect evidence
that the writer was as yet unmoved by any great interest.
But, though it was not clear at the moment, sixty years of subsequent
history make it manifest that the generation then beginning had great work
to do. In the first place, it had to work out, not the ideal of the
Revolution as conceived by the Revolutionists, but that in it which was
vital, and which had given it the power to move Europe. Modern democracy,
though its roots stretch farther into the past, has been, as a realised
political system, the work of the Age of Tennyson. The process whereby
democracy has become dominant in the West of Europe has been marked by no
great political convulsion comparable to the French Revolution. Even on
the Continent the movement which in 1848 shook so many thrones was
trifling in comparison with it; and in England the agitations of the
Reform Bill, of the Anti-Corn Law League, and even of the Chartists,
either kept within the limits of the law or merely rippled the surface of
social order. Nevertheless, the work done has been momentous. At the
opening of the period we see political power placed by the first Reform
Bill in the hands of the middle class; at its close, this power is by the
operation of the second Reform Bill, logically completed by the third,
transferred to the working class. If we believe at all in the influence of
social circumstances upon literature, we must believe that great changes
such as these have left their stamp upon it; and there is ample evidence
that they have done so. Though Carlyle had little faith in popular
government, his writings are everywhere influenced by the democratic
movement. John Stuart Mill's works, and the whole literature of sociology,
indicate how pressing the problem of the structure of society has been
felt to be. Hood's _Song of the Shirt_, Mrs. Browning's _Cry of the
Children_, Ebenezer Elliott's _Corn Law Rhymes_ and Kingsley's _Alton
Locke_, are a few examples of the way in which the social, political and
economic condition of the poor pressed upon the imaginative writers of the
time. Others in earlier days had been interested too. No reader of the
_Canterbury Tales_ can doubt that Chaucer was keenly alive to the state of
all the grades of society. Shakespeare by a few vivid words in _King Lear_
proves himself a humanitarian before humanitarianism became fashionable.
Crabbe was the stern, and perhaps, after all, only half-truthful painter
of humble life in the generation which had just closed. Burns gave to the
peasant a citizenship in literature more sure than that conferred by
Crabbe, because he knew from personal experience that the life hardest
pressed by poverty need not be wholly sordid. The interest is not new, but
it has become more universal and has grown in importance, and the
proportion it bears to other things is changed. The political revolution
brought this in its train. He who possesses power is sure of consideration
and respect; and the classes which, to the Elizabethans, were the 'rascal
multitude,' have for sixty years been struggling towards mastership, and
have at last attained it.
Among other results incident to this process, there has been a great
change in the character of the audience appealed to by literature. That
audience is now far wider than it ever before was. The spread of education
through all classes has vastly increased the number of those who must and
will read something. It was not till the year 1870 that the State took the
great step which brought primary education fully under its control; but
for many years before that date the elementary schools had been partially
supervised by the State, and from the year 1851 one of the greatest men of
letters of the time, Matthew Arnold, had laboured as an inspector in the
cause of popular education. The movement for the education of women and
for political equality between the sexes, if it has not added a new class
of readers, has certainly tended to widen the range of interest among
female readers.
It would be rash to assert that this increase in the number of readers has
been an unmixed benefit to literature. The proportion of those who have
neither the culture nor the time and inclination to study serious books is
probably greater now than at any former period. The taste of such persons
is gratified by the mass of fiction and of periodicals which has grown and
is still growing year by year, not only in absolute, but in relative
quantity; and it cannot be considered satisfactory that growth is most
vigorous just in those forms of literature which are least able to stand
the test of time. It may be freely conceded that much of this growth would
have taken place apart from any democratic movement or any extension of
popular education; but nevertheless it has been stimulated by these
causes.
In respect of periodicals the change, as compared with even the generation
immediately preceding 1830, has been very great. The _Edinburgh Review_
was for some years the only great critical periodical in Britain. The
_Quarterly Review_ was established to redress the political balance,
shaken by the organ of the Whigs. A little later, _Blackwood's Magazine_
gave scope to the fun and humour for which there was no place in the
graver pages of its contemporaries. The _London Magazine_ and the
_Westminster Review_ likewise did valuable service to literature and
thought. But the great development of the magazines and critical journals
has taken place during the last sixty years. In the course of it two
tendencies have become manifest: first, a tendency to shorten the
intervals of publication; and secondly, a tendency to multiply the organs
of this periodical literature. The old quarterly has almost given place to
the monthly magazine; the latter in its turn has had to abandon no small
share of its province to the weekly journal; and recently the daily
newspaper has been encroaching more and more upon the sphere of the
weekly. Partly, no doubt, the change has been due to differentiation of
function; partly too it has been brought about by impatience, and
necessarily implies greater hurry and less mature consideration. The
multiplication of organs has been equally remarkable. In early days a few
magazines held the field alone; now their name is legion. One result is
that there will probably never again be concentrated on a single paper as
much talent and genius as we find in the early numbers of _Fraser's
Magazine_. Another is that in ever growing ratio the literary talent of
the age finds its outlet in the periodical. If Horace was right in his
celebrated maxim, the change is not one to rejoice over.
The increase of the magazines has influenced all literature, but
especially fiction. It has greatly stimulated the demand, and it has
changed the manner of publication. In earlier days a book was as a matter
of course finished before the publication began. Chiefly by reason of the
example of Dickens it became common to publish in parts; and the magazines
have made this the normal rather than the exceptional form of publication,
at least for authors of sufficient reputation to command an audience first
in the periodical and afterwards when the parts are gathered into a
volume. Lately there have been indications that this may come to be the
mode of publication, not of fiction only, but of serious historical and
biographical works as well.
We see then that a large popular audience, the majority with little time,
little money and little culture, is the environment in which the man of
letters in these days has to live. For purposes of art it is neither the
best nor the worst possible. It is not so good as that of the Elizabethan
dramatists; for while many of the drawbacks are common to the two, there
is wanting in this later time that living contact between author and
public which invigorated almost every page written then. Still less is it
equal to that of the golden age of Athens, when, as the commonest remains
of art still indicate, the mere journey-work of the ordinary artisan
proved the existence of culture in the man himself, and of culture
generally diffused among those to whom his work appealed. In a less
degree, but for similar reasons, it is inferior to the environment of the
Italian Renaissance. On the other hand, it is better than patronage,
whether individual or political, and better than the terrible struggle out
of patronage through which Johnson passed. It is, in fact, the logical
development of that freedom which Johnson's struggle won. But the kind of
'natural selection' it implies is rough in its process and crude in its
results. The popular audience nourishes and feeds fat a few classes who
minister to its wants, but there are many others, in a literary sense
nobler and more valuable, whom it barely enables to live. Darwin himself,
though he made earthworms far more fascinating than many novelists can
make the most romantic tale of love, could not have lived if he had been
really subject to this competition. As late as the year 1870 Matthew
Arnold was assessed for L1,000 a year; but the evidence satisfied the
Commissioners that the assessment must be cut down to L200; and the author
said that he must write more articles to prevent his being a loser even on
the smaller sum. Browning's _Paracelsus_, _Sordello_ and _Bells and
Pomegranates_ were all published at his father's expense and brought no
return whatever. Edward FitzGerald, one of the greatest poets of the age,
lived and died almost unknown, and is even now known to comparatively few.
Tennyson alone among the greater poets of the time was really successful
in the financial sense. Even in fiction there has been but little
proportion between merit and remuneration. Dickens and George Eliot
deserved and won success; Thackeray's reward was comparatively inadequate;
and it is hardly probable that Mr. George Meredith ever received anything
approaching the sums paid to not a few of the favourites of a day. Evils
such as these--the accumulation of material rewards upon one class of
writers, want of discrimination even within that class, and neglect, more
or less complete, of others--must necessarily tend to cramp and fetter
literature. They are not new; perhaps they have been as bad in former
times; but at best we have done little or nothing towards finding a
remedy.
The development of physical science is another feature of the time plainly
visible in its literature. It is needless to discuss its effect upon the
material conditions of life; for that has been not only fully recognised,
but its importance, for the present purpose, has been greatly exaggerated.
Besides this however, the direct contributions of science to literature
have been considerable, and some of them possess literary qualities rarely
equalled among the scientific writings of past times. Moreover, science
has so filled the minds and possessed the imagination of men that its
indirect has been far greater than its direct influence. Whatever its
ultimate creed may prove to be, science has certainly been in part
responsible for the growth of a spirit of materialism, and has caused
those who do not share that spirit to examine themselves and to remould
their arguments. Science has therefore tended to depress and to give a
tone of stoic resignation if not of pessimism to many who, without
accepting materialistic opinions, have been affected by them.
But in another way science has been an elevating and inspiring power. Its
discoveries have stimulated men's minds, and have done more than anything
else to rouse them from the lethargy consequent upon the apparent failure
of the Revolution. They have profoundly influenced literature, both
directly, and also through those philosophical and theological
speculations which inevitably colour all poetry and all imaginative prose.
The new facts of astronomy and geology have shaken many old theories and
suggested many new ones; and the results of biological discovery have
been still more striking. The transforming power upon thought of the
theory of evolution may be measured by the fact that the majority even of
those who dislike and deny Darwinian evolution still believe that there
has been evolution of some kind. For thoughtful men, unless they are
heavily fettered by preconceptions, the old view has become impossible;
and no other except an evolutionary one has hitherto been even imagined.
Here therefore there is a great unsettlement of popular ideas, and no
little energy has been expended in fitting men's minds to the new
conditions. Tractarianism, Pre-Raphaelitism, the satire, tempered with
mysticism, of Carlyle, the idealistic optimism of Browning, and the
creedless Christianity of Matthew Arnold, are all attempts to satisfy
either the intellectual or the moral and artistic needs of modern times,
and all show the influence of the scientific thought of the age.
Some of these forces however have been in the main reactionary. Side by
side with the movement of science, which has on the whole tended to
positivism, agnosticism, and in a word to negative views of things
spiritual, there has gone on a remarkable revival of conceptions
diametrically opposed to these. The old narrow Protestantism of England
was powerful enough to struggle against Catholic Emancipation until the
delay became a danger to the state. Yet hardly was this act of justice
done when the great reaction known as the Oxford Movement began. It was,
as its consummate literary expression, the _Apologia_ of Newman, proves,
the product of a double discontent,--a discontent, on the one hand, with
that movement of science just spoken of; and a discontent, on the other
hand, with what was felt to be the 'creed outworn' of English
Protestantism. As against the latter it has achieved, among those who
hungered for a more emotional religion, a wonderful success. As against
the former its utter failure has been veiled only by that success.
Kindred in spirit and almost contemporaneous in origin was the movement of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. On the surface, this seems quite unrelated
to Tractarianism; for while the Tractarians were all for dogma, the
Pre-Raphaelites were indifferent to it. But both movements were in essence
protests on behalf of the imaginative and aesthetic in human nature against
the exclusive nourishment of the intellectual element; and they proved
their kinship by each in its own way seeking to bring about a revival of
Mediaevalism. In this fact moreover we see wherein their value consisted.
They fought a battle on behalf of aspects of the truth temporarily
threatened with neglect. In so far as they asserted or implied the
incompleteness of the scientific view of life they were almost wholly
right. In so far as they asserted its positive falsity they were almost
wholly wrong. The latter was however the error principally of the
religious movement. The Pre-Raphaelites may have been wrong in many
respects in their conceptions of art; but at least they generally confined
themselves within their own domain.
Both of these schools, though they differ in degree of guilt, are
chargeable with the sin of 'rending the seamless garment of thought.' The
Pre-Raphaelite, implicitly if not in words, teaches that there is an
intellectual world _and_ an aesthetic world. The Tractarians not merely
implied but insisted that there is a domain of reason _and_ a domain of
authority.[1] Because of this fundamental error we must look for the main
current of modern thought elsewhere; for if there is any one thing that
modern philosophy unequivocally teaches, it is that all such divisions
are unsound. And we find that all the greatest men of letters of the
period are on this point in agreement with the philosophers. Carlyle,
Browning, Matthew Arnold, Thackeray and George Eliot, all in various ways
teach that art must not ignore the intellectual problem. Tennyson seemed
for a time to hold aloof and to live in a lotos-land of artistic beauty,
but he soon became restless, and all his greater works are charged with an
intellectual as well as an artistic meaning. These men are not in all
respects self-consistent. Browning in particular turned his back in his
old age upon the principle which inspired his more youthful work. But in
spite of inconsistencies he and the rest must all be classed as teaching,
with the philosophers, the unity of intellectual and spiritual life, and
the impossibility of ministering to the one without satisfying the other;
and for this reason it is to them rather than to writers of more limited
view that we must look for guidance in the labyrinth of contemporary
life.
CHAPTER I.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
Poetry is so clearly the head and front of literature that in most periods
the first and chief attention must be paid to the poets. The Victorian age
is an exception, at least as regards the order in which prose and poetry
claim notice, and perhaps partly as regards their relative prominence. The
man who first gives us a key to the significance of the age of Tennyson is
not Tennyson himself, nor Browning, nor any writer of verse, but one who
believed that the day of poetry was past,--Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).
Considerably older than the poets, he had, notwithstanding his early
difficulties, notwithstanding too the slow ripening of his own genius,
made a name in literature and stamped his mark on his generation before
either of them was widely known.
Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl of _Sartor Resartus_) in
Dumfriesshire. He was educated first at the local schools, and afterwards
at the University of Edinburgh, to which he refers in _Sartor_ as 'the
worst of all hitherto discovered universities.' The purpose he had in view
was to take the divinity course and enter the ministry of the Scottish
Church. But this was rather the design of his parents than his own; as
time went on 'grave prohibitive doubts' accumulated; and about the year
1817 Carlyle definitely abandoned his purpose. He was already supporting
himself by school-mastering, an occupation which grew more and more
irksome, and which in turn was thrown up in December, 1818. For some time
he drifted, oppressed by doubts and dyspepsia, until in 1821 occurred the
one fact recorded in _Sartor Resartus_, the incident in the Rue St. Thomas
de l'Enfer (Leith Walk), wherein Carlyle, shaking off his doubts, stands
up and confronts the Everlasting No and its claim, 'Behold, thou art
fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's),' with the
answer, '_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee.' This he ranks
as his 'spiritual new birth;' and as such it ought to receive attention in
any account, however brief, of a life which was mainly inward and
spiritual.
But spiritual regeneration could not supply the need of daily bread.
Carlyle supported himself partly by the tutorship of private pupils, a
form of teaching less distasteful to him than his school work had been. He
was at the same time studying hard and reading widely, in French, Italian,
Spanish, and afterwards in German, as well as in English, and was slowly
gravitating towards the profession of literature. He contributed articles
to Brewster's _Encyclopaedia_. Through Edward Irving, who had been for
several years a generous friend, he was introduced to Taylor, the
proprietor of the _London Magazine_, who published for him the _Life of
Schiller_. About the same time the translation of _Wilhelm Meister_ was
issued through the agency of an Edinburgh publisher.
Carlyle's marriage occurred in 1826, and he was for a short time happy.
But there still remained difficulties of finance as well as difficulties
of temper. Literary occupation did not prove either as easy to get or as
remunerative as Carlyle had hoped. His _German Romance_ was financially a
failure, and publishers were on that account the less disposed to
consider his books. He made unsuccessful attempts to find employment as a
professor, first in the London University, and again at St. Andrews. He
had lived since his marriage at Comely Bank, but had cherished more or
less all the time the purpose of retiring to his wife's farm of
Craigenputtock, a solitary moorland place in Dumfriesshire. Moved probably
by these disappointments, he carried out his purpose in 1828. 'Hinaus ins
freie Feld,' to escape that necessity which 'makes blue-stockings of
women, magazine hacks of men,'--this had been the impulse which drove him
thither. In less than four months it was 'this Devil's den,
Craigenputtock.' But 'this Devil's den' was his home from 1828 to 1834,
and, whatever doubts may be entertained as to the wisdom and kindness of
Carlyle in taking his wife there, if we judge by the result, we must
pronounce that he did what was best for his own literary development. It
was during those years that Carlyle grew to his full intellectual stature.
There and then were composed a great number of his essays; notably, among
the literary class, the essay on Burns, written at the beginning of the
Craigenputtock period, and, among the historical class, _The Diamond
Necklace_, written near the end. There too was written that autobiography
of 'symbolical myth' which, after being hawked in vain from one publisher
to another, at last appeared piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_. There too
the _French Revolution_ was, not indeed written, but planned and brooded
over; and it was with a mind already full of the subject that Carlyle in
1834 made his migration to London, his home for the rest of his life. His
character, moral and literary, was now formed; all the influences
subsequently brought to bear upon it were of subordinate importance; and
though in length of years the future period exceeded the period past, it
may be briefly dismissed.
The _History of the French Revolution_, delayed though it was by the
accidental burning of the manuscript of the first volume, was finished in
January, 1837, and published shortly afterwards. It was the turning point
in Carlyle's literary life. Hitherto it had been a long, hard, almost
fierce struggle; but the _History_ at once established him as one of the
foremost men of letters of his day. Success came none too soon. His
resources were all but exhausted, and, like his countryman Burns, so close
to him in some of the circumstances of his early life, he contemplated
emigration to America. From this he was saved by the project, devised by
Harriet Martineau, which produced his lectures on German literature. The
popularity of the _History_ reacted on his earlier works; publishers
sought him instead of waiting to be approached; a proposal was made for
republishing even _Sartor_; and for the future Carlyle was sure, at any
rate, of a competence. His next work of moment was _Chartism_ (1839),
written with a view to publication in the _Quarterly Review_. It was
declined by Lockhart, but in such a way that the author and the editor
retained for the future a strong mutual regard. In the year following
Carlyle delivered the last of his courses of lectures, afterwards (1841)
printed as _Heroes and Hero-Worship_. He was already deep in study for his
_Cromwell_, and finding, as usual, great difficulty in beginning. Very
different was his experience with _Past and Present_. This book, inspired
by the same sense of social evils to which we owe _Chartism_, 'was written
off with singular ease in the first seven weeks of 1843.' _Cromwell_ was
not finished till 1845. It was no sooner out than Carlyle began to think
of _Frederick_; but of all the long 'valleys of the shadow' of his
literary life, that was the longest. Before it took shape there appeared
his _Latter-Day Pamphlets_ (1850), of which the celebrated paper on _The
Nigger Question_ was the precursor. The _Life of Sterling_ (1851) is a
strange contrast in tone and temper; for while the _Pamphlets_ are among
the most violent of Carlyle's writings, the _Life of Sterling_ is one of
the calmest. It was not until after the publication of _Sterling_ that he
seriously took to _Frederick the Great_, which had hitherto been only a
project floating in his mind with many others. He visited Germany to see
the scenes with which he had to deal and to gather materials. The first
and second volumes were published in 1858, and the third followed in 1862.
In the interval Carlyle had visited Germany a second time. _Frederick_,
finished in January, 1865, set the seal on Carlyle's reputation as the
head of the literature, at least the prose literature, of his time. It was
also practically the end of his literary career. The world was ready to
shower honours upon him. He was chosen Rector of the University of
Edinburgh; but the triumph of his great inaugural speech was dashed almost
immediately by the news of the sudden death of his wife. He wrote one or
two minor articles, such as _Shooting Niagara_, and left the vivid and
interesting, but frequently uncharitable, _Reminiscences_. With such
exceptions, he lived henceforth, till his death on the 5th of February,
1881, the quiet, retired life of a man whose work was done.
This man, so long neglected, was during a considerable part of his life,
and especially in the years between the publication of the _Frederick the
Great_ and his death, the greatest literary force in England. The reasons
which ultimately secured for him this power are in part just the reasons
which so long stood in the way of his advancement. He was eminently
original in his matter, and perhaps even more in his style. But there is
always some difficulty in appraising the value of originality; and the
difficulty is all the greater when the originality is defiant and even
borders on eccentricity. To a great extent Carlyle's early struggles were
necessary because no party, creed or faction could attach him to itself or
claim him as its champion. Every party in turn found it possible to assent
to his negations, yet each in turn had to disapprove of what he affirmed.
In politics, how could such an explosive force work in harmony with
orthodox Toryism? He was constantly ridiculing and denouncing a mere
fox-hunting and partridge-shooting aristocracy. 'Si monumentum quaeris,
fimetum adspice.' On the other hand, if the Radicals thought they had his
sympathy, they soon found that the gulf between him and them was even
wider, if possible, than that which separated him from their opponents. It
was the disclosure of this gulf which led to the breach with their best
man, and one of his best friends, Mill. They believed almost wholly in the
machinery of government, and he believed in it not at all. They were
economists, and he denounced economics as a mere pretended science. They
believed in government by majorities, and he considered it 'the most
absurd superstition which had ever bewitched the human imagination--at
least, outside Africa.' Again, he would admit no accepted theological
creed, and was consequently looked on askance by the accredited leaders of
religion. Anything like superstition he abominated. Newman, he thought,
had 'not the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit.' On the other hand, he
had no sympathy with the liberal party of the Church of England. He
condemned the writers of _Essays and Reviews_. He respected Thirlwall, but
wished him anywhere but where he was. 'There goes Stanley,' said he of a
man whom he personally liked, 'boring holes in the bottom of the Church of
England.' He thought Arnold of Rugby fortunate in being taken away before
he was forced to choose between an honest abandonment of an untenable
position and a trifling with his own conscience. He liked best the
clergymen who could still honestly and literally and without misgiving
accept the Prayer Book, but he did not respect their intellect. Again, if
he did not like the 'liberals' within the Church, he liked still less the
liberals outside it. However much he dissented from the champions of
belief, he dissented still more from the apostles of unbelief. He had a
faith, though not a creed. Separated thus from the orthodox by what he did
not believe, and from the heterodox by what he believed, from one
political party because he saw it would be fatal to remain inactive and
leave _ill_ alone, and from the other because he was convinced that
movement in the direction they desired would be futile or worse, Carlyle
stood alone. He had to create his own party, and the process was
necessarily a slow one. But the very cause which made the work slow made
it also great when it was accomplished.
One aspect of Carlyle's work not always duly recognised is its
concentration of purpose. Superficially viewed, it has the appearance of a
heterogeneous miscellany. Essays, literary, historical and mixed,
biographies and mythical autobiography, histories drawn from different
centuries and different peoples, idealised pictures of the past, and
fierce pamphlets, not at all idealised, on questions emphatically of the
present, succeed each other in his volumes. The very records of his
literary life help to confirm this impression. No sooner has he finished
one important work than he casts about to discover a subject for another.
He makes no nation and no century specially his own, as it is the custom
of the modern historian to do. In his longer works he jumps from the
French Revolution to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Frederick the Great.
He seems to have been turned to the second subject almost by accident. He
had been asked by Mill to write on Cromwell in the _London and
Westminster Review_. 'There is nothing,' says his biographer, 'in his
journals or letters to show that Cromwell had been hitherto an interesting
figure to him.' The projected magazine article was turned into a book
through the impertinence of Mill's substitute, who in the absence of his
superior wrote to Carlyle that he 'need not go on, for "he meant to do
Cromwell himself."' The choice of Frederick seems to have been hardly less
fortuitous, and in itself it was more surprising than the choice of
Cromwell.
Yet under this diversity it is always possible to detect a unity both of
purpose and of effect. In the first place, there is the unity of Carlyle's
own character. Everything he wrote was self-revealing; and it is scarcely
too much to say that his whole works are an expansion and, as
circumstances demanded, a modification, of the autobiographic _Sartor
Resartus_. We see this in many ways. Carlyle is best when the conditions
under which he works are such as to allow himself to appear freely,
naturally, spontaneously, without fierce invectives and exaggeration.
This, in his case, generally implies similarity without personal contact,
or with contact from which the aspect of possible competition is removed.
He is worst of all where there is a partial similarity without sympathy.
Thus, the best perhaps of Carlyle's literary essays is that on Burns; and
the reason why it is best is that Burns was in some ways so like himself.
Both sprang from the Scottish peasantry, and the minds of both were deeply
coloured by the experiences of their early youth. In writing of Burns and
his father, Carlyle never forgets himself and his own father. On the other
hand, the essay on Scott is certainly among the worst of his essays, just
because Scott is at once too near to him and too far from him. Scott
belonged to a different class in society, pursued different aims, and had
a widely different literary history from Carlyle. Yet both were Scotch,
and in the blood which they inherited as well as in the mental and moral
food on which they were nourished there was much to bring them together.
The same contrast is illustrated by the _Reminiscences_. There, every
reference to his own family is distinguished by clear comprehension and
profound sympathy; while, unfortunately, nearly every reference to
contemporaries not related to him by blood is disfigured by acrimony and
depreciation. In the _Life of Sterling_ friendship performs the function
which blood-relationship performs in the _Reminiscences_. The essays on
foreign writers, both French and German, deal with men much farther
removed from Carlyle than Scott was; and if they have not that depth of
sympathy and that fineness of perception which are the charm of the essay
on Burns, they are free from the bitterness and ungenerous depreciation
which mar the essay on Scott. Take, for example, Carlyle's treatment of
Goethe. In many ways the great German was almost as far removed as it was
possible to be from his Scotch disciple. Yet Carlyle's comprehension is
clear, his appreciation ready, his criticism wise. We see himself in it
all, but just because of their wide differences his own image never blurs
that of Goethe.
It will be found that the principle underlying Carlyle's choice of
historical themes was similar. He was bound to reveal _himself_; but
Carlyle's _self_ was a particular view of the universe. His subject
therefore must illustrate this. He was naturally attracted to the French
Revolution. It is the greatest movement of recent history; and Carlyle
invariably sought for lessons for the present. It dealt the death-blow to
many shams and hypocrisies; and Carlyle waged a life-long war against
these. While its creed was the equality of men, no great movement has
ever more vividly illustrated their great and inevitable inequality; and
Carlyle rejoiced to see the truth assert itself in spite of the
prepossessions of a victorious mob, and rejoiced to point to the
confirmation of his own favourite doctrine. Again, though Cromwell seems
to have been brought to his mind almost by chance, the points of contact
between the hero and his historian are sufficiently obvious. Cromwell's
strength, his thoroughness, his roughness, his veracity, his piety, all
contributed to endear him to Carlyle. The 'Calvinist without the theology'
was fundamentally in sympathy with the great English Puritan. His boyhood
and early training fitted him, better perhaps than any other training of
the nineteenth century could possibly have done, to sympathise with the
opinions of the Puritan of the seventeenth. It was the instinct which
draws like to like that made him welcome the first suggestion of Cromwell
as a subject; just as the same instinct made him afterwards ponder upon
Knox as another possible subject.
The choice of Frederick is certainly that which requires most explanation,
for in many ways his character seems strangely foreign to anything likely,
_a priori_, to attract Carlyle. Complete explanation is perhaps not
possible, but partial explanation certainly is. We must remember Carlyle's
worship of force. He had been preaching all his life a form of the
doctrine, might is right; and, as was usual with him, the doctrine had
grown more extreme under contradiction and opposition. Thus we have the
_Nigger Question_ and the _Iliad in a Nutshell_. There is an element of
truth in the doctrine, and under Carlyle's original application of it
there had been a well-marked moral foundation, so that it could have been
in many cases altered to read, 'right is might.' He meant not merely that
'Providence is on the side of the heaviest battalion,' but quite as much
that the battalion is heaviest because Providence is on its side. In
other words, he believed that the forces of the universe are moral forces
and that true and permanent success mean being in harmony with them. As
time went on however the qualifications were gradually stripped off, and
latterly what Carlyle worshipped was little better than naked force. Now,
in all the eighteenth century he could hardly have found a better example
of successful force than Frederick. Destitute as he was of the piety of
Carlyle's previous hero, he was at least an eminently successful governor,
and Carlyle respected nothing so much as the faculty for the genuine
government of men, not what he would have called sham government, the kind
of government which follows while it seems to lead. If Frederick had not
created a state, he had raised it from a position bordering on
insignificance to one not far from the front in the European system.
Moreover, this state was peculiarly interesting to Carlyle, for he saw in
Prussia the future head of Germany, and in Germany a possible leader of
Europe. These reasons induced him to turn to Frederick, and perhaps
tempted him to clothe Frederick with attributes which were not all his.
For the method of hero-worship has its dangers, and only prejudice would
assert that the great hero-worshipper, keen as was his insight into
character, has wholly escaped those dangers.
It was through these barriers, the barriers of an original and not
infrequently eccentric genius, and of a personality strange and uncouth to
the majority of his readers, that Carlyle had to fight his way to fame. It
is true that at first the uncouthness and eccentricity were less
prominent. The style of his earliest writings--the _Life of Schiller_ for
example--is simple and almost limpid; the arrangement is orderly, the
development obeys the rules of a logic easily comprehended. But Carlyle
speedily worked his way out of this style, and seldom used it afterwards.
_Sartor Resartus_, the great product of the Craigenputtock period,
presents all his peculiarities in their most aggressive form. Partly in
fact, but still more in appearance, it is lawless and chaotic. Its style,
difficult even now to a generation accustomed to and partly formed by
Carlyle, was then unparalleled and, except after serious study, almost
incomprehensible. It is full of evidences of German studies, German
sympathies, and the influence of German thought. Carlyle has done more
than anyone else to make these familiar in England; but before _Sartor_
was published almost the only interpreters of Germany to England were men
like Coleridge and De Quincey, who not only made the form English, but
gave an English stamp to the matter as well. _Sartor_, moreover, was full
of a humour deep and genuine but unfamiliar in kind, and, as regards the
first impression produced, almost sardonic in character. Its subject was
not calculated to arrest immediate attention. It was not the history of a
nation or of a national hero. What it actually was could not be
immediately perceived; but after bestowing some attention the reader
discovered it to be the spiritual biography of a man then unknown, and his
thoughts on human life and human society, presented humorously,
whimsically, often enigmatically. It is not therefore altogether matter
for wonder that this strange book with difficulty found a publisher, nor
even that it threatened with ruin the magazine which at last received it.
America, more tolerant of novelties, to her honour welcomed it; but in
England the current opinion seems to have been expressed by the 'oldest
subscriber,' who said to Fraser, 'If there is any more of that d----d
stuff, I will, etc., etc.' We frequently boast of our progress. Is it
certain that even now a phenomenon as strange as _Sartor_ would meet with
any better reception? John Stuart Mill, a man as open-minded as he was
intelligent, for a long time saw nothing in Carlyle's early essays but
'insane rhapsody;' and, though he was afterwards one of the warmest
panegyrists of _Sartor_, which he thought Carlyle's greatest work, he read
the manuscript unmoved. Not once nor twice, either in this island's story
or in the history of the world, has the prophet been rejected by the
generation he was sent to serve. Rather, rejection has been the general
fate of prophets ever since the time when the children of Israel rebelled
against Moses in the wilderness.
What redeemed _Sartor_ in the eyes of those who had the patience to study
it, was the discovery that the inner history of this unknown man had, in
the first place, the interest which always belongs to human experiences
told with absolute sincerity. For though _Sartor_ contains little or no
truth of fact, it is wholly true in idea. Carlyle, now as always, was
intolerant of the very shadow of falsehood; and it was to his unswerving
truth that he ultimately owed the greater part of his influence.
In the second place, the small band of careful readers discovered that
_Sartor_ was not only true and sincere, but that its truth was capable of
an immediate and practical application. It was not something applicable
only to a distant past or to another state of existence; its sphere was
here and now. This is characteristic of Carlyle in all his works. He was
always in intention, and generally in effect, the teacher first of his own
generation, and secondly of the future. His interest in ancient history
and literature was comparatively feeble, because he saw not how to bring
them to bear so directly on the present. It was modern England, France and
Germany, rather than ancient Greece and Rome, that nourished his mind. And
for this reason, though his influence was of slow growth, it was deep
rooted when it did spring.
_Sartor Resartus_ is peculiarly important because of its chronological
position. We have seen in the Introduction that the failure of the
revolutionary ideal gives to the new period its most prominent
characteristic. 'The gospel according to Jean Jacques' was accepted no
longer. _Sartor_ may be called a grim sort of gospel according to Thomas
Carlyle. Carlyle himself had written before this; Macaulay had begun his
brilliant career; among the poets, Tennyson, Browning and Elizabeth
Barrett had published their earlier works; but _Sartor_ is the first great
book which faces the difficulties, and, in a way, embodies the aspirations
of the new period. Its grimness no one will dispute. It is also a gospel,
because the Everlasting No is routed, and under all the enigmas there is
the promise of success and, if not Happiness, Blessedness, in work. It
deals with quite a surprising range of modern problems. All the principal
social, political and religious questions of the century are treated in
greater or less detail. Carlyle's attitude towards economic and other
science, his views on religion, the outline of his opinions as to the
position and proper treatment of the poor, his conviction of the need of a
better and stronger government, may all be seen in _Sartor_. He expanded
greatly and illustrated in his later writings, but he did not add much.
_Sartor_ is his most original and probably his greatest work. It is
peculiarly interesting to notice that in it the central point of his creed
is the need of reconstruction. Religion must be reconstructed: the 'Hebrew
old-clothes' have had their day and will serve for human garments no
longer. But this is equally true of the tailoring of the French
Revolution: society itself has to be reconstructed. And the
reconstruction, in Carlyle's view, is a complex task. The salvation of
mankind must be sought by the positive, not by the negative method. The
way will be long and difficult, not short and simple as the
Revolutionists supposed. Neither will any amount of political machinery
suffice. Not by majorities, however numerous, nor by ballot-boxes, however
ingenious, can sound government be carried on, but only by something which
goes to the root of character. Carlyle, writing in the midst of a great
agitation for improvement in political machinery, merely looks on in
contemptuous indifference, convinced that at least the true solution lies
not there. He was too contemptuous, for the true solution lies not in any
one thing but in the union of many, and of these political machinery is
one.
Carlyle was not the only writer of this period who gave thought to such
problems, nor the only one who appreciated their complexity, but it was he
who first adequately expressed them; and it is _Sartor Resartus_, written
in solitude on the Dumfriesshire moors, that summons the crowds of modern
cities to face and solve them. If the voice is the voice of one crying in
the wilderness, it is addressed to the multitudes of human society
wherever they are gathered together.
The principle at the root of all Carlyle's other works is the same. It has
been already pointed out how his own character forms, as it were, a
background even to his histories. As that character had been built up in
the struggle with, and continued to be absorbed in the contemplation of,
those problems, it follows that the histories are just the presentation of
the same problems under the wider and more varied conditions of national
existence. There was artistic gain to Carlyle in the new conditions. A
longer dwelling in the regions of _Sartor_ would have fed the morbid blood
in him. History, without smothering his own personality, took him
sufficiently out of it to check this tendency. The _History of the French
Revolution_ is much purer as an artistic conception than _Sartor_. It is
more orderly in development, it has more artistic unity. Indeed, with the
exception of one or two of Carlyle's smaller works, like the _Life of
Sterling_, it is in this respect the best he ever wrote. Among histories
it is quite singular for its coherence. Few histories have the unity of
works of imaginative art. Among early works we may find one or two, like
the history of Herodotus, which simulate the character and rival the
proportions of a national epic. Among later works we may find one or two,
like Gibbon's, which derive an impressive unity from the stately march of
events to a great far-off catastrophe. But probably nowhere is there a
history which in every chapter, and almost in every sentence, breathes the
artistic purpose as Carlyle's _History of the French Revolution_ does. It
has been frequently called the 'epic' of the Revolution. In point of fact,
as Froude justly says, the conception is rather dramatic, and the best
comparison is to Aeschylus.
Carlyle had an infinite respect for facts, and as far as he could by
industry and care, he assured himself that all he wrote as history was
exactly true. It is of small moment that, like all the historians who have
ever lived or ever will live, he has been proved to have made mistakes.
But it is well to notice that, much as he revered facts, no one is farther
removed than he from the school of Dryasdust. Few were so bold in making
selection of their facts. The artistic principle always underlying his
work saved him from the mistake into which so many recent historians seem
prone to fall, the mistake of attempting to tell everything. To Carlyle,
the fact must be illuminative, or he cast it aside. Moreover, while he
denounced theorists, few bolder theorists than himself have ever written.
Behind almost every sentence of his _French Revolution_ there lies a
theory, of character or motive, if not of cause and effect. The difference
between him and the theorists he railed at was really that he presented
poetically what, they presented logically. He was aware of the limited
truth attainable by their method; he was not perhaps fully aware of the
dangers of his own. We see this imaginative element in the great part
which character plays in the development of the French Revolution as
Carlyle conceived it. It is in men, not in political machinery, that we
must seek the clue to it. Hence the prominence, perhaps exaggerated, given
to Mirabeau. Carlyle's facts are never left bare facts. He reverences
them, not so much in themselves, as for the insight they give into the
souls of men. This is the key-note of Carlyle's histories. They are
essentially imaginative; and the writer spends his strength less in a
narrative of events than in delineation of characters, and in the tracing
of moral forces.
Carlyle's _Cromwell_ is, more than either of the other histories, an
illustration of his own doctrine of heroes, and less than either of the
others is it a history of a nation as well as of a man. Cromwell to a
great extent speaks for himself, and Carlyle expounds and comments on his
uncouth and sometimes obsolete manner of expression. The commentary is
free and even ample, yet there is less of Carlyle himself in this than in
any other of his works. The great features of it are its delineation of
the man Cromwell and the proof it presents of Carlyle's skill in the use
of documents. Carlyle has not converted everybody to his own view of
Cromwell, but he has at least coloured the opinion of everybody who has
since studied the period.
If _Cromwell_ is narrower in its scope than the _French Revolution_,
_Frederick the Great_ is even wider. The Revolution expanded into a
European movement, but within the limits Carlyle set to himself it was
essentially French. Frederick was the centre of a movement which Carlyle
found could only be treated as a European one. He was led by the
relations, alliances and wars of his hero, to deal at greater or less
length with all the principal countries of Europe, and his book, instead
of being merely the history of a man, became the history of one of the
most momentous series of events of the eighteenth century. In this respect
therefore the history of Frederick is his most ambitious historical work;
and either to it or to the _French Revolution_ must be adjudged the palm
of excellence in its class. Various arguments might be adduced on both
sides, and it would be rash to pronounce definitely. For the earlier work
it might be pleaded that it is clearly the more perfect in artistic
conception. It is also true that, interesting as is the Seven Years' War,
and interesting as, in Carlyle's hands, the growth of the Prussian
Monarchy becomes, there is nothing in the subject-matter of _Frederick_
quite as enthralling as the volcanic scenes of the _French Revolution_. It
may also be pleaded that passages of eloquent writing are more frequent,
and individual passages probably greater in the latter. The art in it
moreover is purer, less intermixed with the grotesque, and with what can
only be set down to Carlyle's individual eccentricities. On the other
hand, _Frederick_ is even more forcible than the _French Revolution_.
Carlyle gathered power as years went on, and he never expended it more
lavishly than on this latest and most ambitious of his works. Nowhere,
except perhaps in _Sartor_, are all his peculiarities more conspicuous;
nowhere is his gospel preached with more uncompromising energy; nowhere is
his strange style more unrestrained and less amenable to the ordinary laws
of English composition. For these reasons, combined with the wide range of
the work, which tasked his power of construction as it had never been
tasked before, _Frederick the Great_ will probably always win the
suffrages of a large proportion of Carlylean devotees. For the same
reasons, those who, acknowledging Carlyle's original genius and admiring
his power, are only half reconciled to his sometimes wanton
eccentricities, will doubtless continue to prefer the more regular _French
Revolution_.
Regarding the purely historical essays as minor examples of the kind of
works just discussed, Carlyle's remaining writings may be divided into two
classes. These, in the order of their importance in his own eyes, and
probably to the world, are, (1) works dealing with or bearing directly
upon contemporary social and political problems; and (2) literary essays,
including under the latter head the translations and the two biographies
of Schiller and Sterling.
Under the first class rank such works as _Chartism_, _Past and Present_
and _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Under it too might be fairly brought some of
the essays, such, for example, as the essay on the _Corn Law Rhymes_,
which, though it deals primarily with a literary subject, was written
because that subject opened immediately into a social one. But indeed all
Carlyle's works are closely cognate to this section; for if he was not
directly treating of such themes, his thoughts were never far away from
them. Still, there is a difference between dealing directly with a subject
and illustrating it by a borrowed light. In Carlyle's case the latter was
the preferable method, and his wisest teaching on matters of immediate
practical moment is not contained in the class of works here considered.
The reason is that in discussing such questions he usually became violent
and one-sided. Carlyle, as much as any man who ever lived, had 'the
defects of his qualities.' We see in his own life how force and
directness, his greatest qualities both literary and personal, become on
occasion vices instead of virtues. He recognised the fact himself, and
once humorously warned his own people, whom he had alarmed by his
outcries, that they ought to know him too well to believe that he was
being killed merely because he cried murder. But this habit of crying
murder, trifling perhaps in itself, had no little influence for evil on
his own life and on the life of her who was most closely associated with
him. Just the same fault may be observed in all his works to some degree,
but especially in the section of them now under discussion. Carlyle
habitually saw through a magnifying glass. As he made an outcry if his own
finger ached, so he did in the case of the evils of his own time. The
'something in the state of Denmark' he could contemplate with comparative
equanimity, and the lesson he drew from that state was apt to be more just
because more temperate than that which he drew directly from the present
time itself. Compare, for instance, the 'past' with the 'present' in _Past
and Present_. The former is calm, pure, beautiful, and, we feel convinced,
true. The latter is lurid, turbid, exaggerated, repellent, only in part
true. We cannot accept as true at all the contrast between the one age and
the other; only a most enthusiastic disciple can fail to note that a
select specimen of the past is pitted against the average, or worse than
the average, of the present. But not thus is truth reached, and not thus
is conviction carried to the candid mind. Doubtless Carlyle wished to
reform, and the way to reform, it may be urged, is rather to point out
what needs amendment than to insist upon the advantages of 'our
incomparable civilisation.' This is true, but justice is the prime
requisite as a preliminary to reform. The way to win men's acquiescence is
not to paint Hyperion on the one hand and a satyr on the other. The better
way is to point out how a society faulty, troubled, but, it may be, not
hopelessly corrupt, may be made in this point and in that a little less
faulty, less troubled, less corrupt.
There is no such contrast in Carlyle's other works to drive the sense of
his error home; but the same error is present in them. It is far from
being the case that their matter is essentially bad, or that Carlyle is
essentially wrong. There is much that is wholly sound and good in
_Chartism_; but it is unrelieved and unbalanced. The same is true of the
_Latter-day Pamphlets_. Even the much-abused _Nigger Question_ is
fundamentally right. What it means is that unless we organise free labour
we had better give up boasting that we have set it free. The liberation of
the West Indian slaves had brought to the verge of bankruptcy what had
previously been the richest of British colonial possessions, robbed them
of a prosperity which they have never fully recovered, ruined the whites,
and deprived the blacks themselves of a government and discipline which
Carlyle believed to be morally necessary to them, and therefore their
right. There are several points of contact between this and the theory of
Aristotle; there is also a general resemblance between it and the bold
doctrine of Carlyle's countryman, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who,
impressed by the evil of unorganised free labour degenerating into
vagabondage, advocated the re-introduction of slavery. It does not follow
from the evils pointed out by Carlyle that slavery ought to have been
maintained; but it does seem a fair inference that the process of
liberation actually adopted was ill considered, and was no subject for
unqualified jubilation. If Carlyle had advanced such ideas in a moderate
and conciliatory way he might have made converts. Instead of that, he was
aggressive. He sowed the wind of provocation, and he reaped the whirlwind
of opposition, rejection, sometimes of vituperation. It is vain to wish
that he had done otherwise; he could only do as his character allowed him
to do; but we shall do well to recognise that violence proved to be not
strength but weakness, and that with more self-control he would probably
have produced greater practical effect.
The class of writings dealing with literature and literary men is that to
which Carlyle himself would have attached least importance. He was a man
of letters by necessity rather than by choice. He would do nothing which
did not promise him an opening into the sphere of the ideal, and
literature was the only profession within his reach which seemed to do
that. He would have preferred a life of action, provided the action had
not for its end mere money-getting; and he declared there were few
occupations for which he was not better fitted by nature than for that in
which he spent his life. There may have been some exaggeration in this. If
Carlyle had not by nature the faculty for writing, he made a marvellous
faculty for himself. In favour of his own view, however, we may call to
mind his well-known contempt for poetry, or rather verse, as it existed,
and as he conceived it could alone exist, in his own day. Probably no born
man of letters ever cherished such contempt, or ever submitted to be a
writer of prose without some regret that he could not be a poet. Carlyle's
half-dislike and more than half-disbelief in his own profession shows
itself in the fact that he escapes as soon as possible from the region of
pure literature; and, while he remains himself a man of letters, he writes
by preference about action and as little as may be about books and
authors. His literary essays therefore belong principally to the first
period of his authorship. Moreover, he betrays his tendency by his choice
of subjects. He writes with most satisfaction on authors whom he can
regard as teachers; on others he writes only of necessity and with little
sympathy.
Carlyle's creed was that a critic must first stand where his subject stood
before criticism could be other than misleading. The way to write either
fruitful criticism or true history was to read and reflect until it was
possible to think the thoughts of men of the time or of the country to be
commented on. He carried out these precepts by way of biography as well as
of critical essays. Of his two biographies, the _Life of Schiller_, though
good, is much the less interesting and valuable. The _Life of Sterling_ by
common consent ranks among the best in English literature. Carlyle's work
is, as a rule, remarkable rather for the presence of merits than for the
absence of faults, but the _Life of Sterling_ has few faults. It is
exceedingly well proportioned, both in its several parts and with
reference to its subject. Carlyle has moreover, while showing sincere
friendship everywhere, preserved a wonderful sanity of judgment. It is
impossible to rank Sterling's performances high, and his biographer, while
respecting the man and steadily believing him greater than his works,
steadily refuses to eulogise mediocre writings. An air of moderation, of
charity and of kindliness breathes over the whole, as if Carlyle still
felt the influence of his dead friend. He has written greater things, but
none perhaps equally delightful.
It is necessary to add a word about Carlyle's much-debated style. But, in
the first place, we ought in propriety to speak of Carlyle's _styles_. He
had two, practised mainly, though not exclusively, in different periods of
his life. His early style was a clear, strong, simple English, almost
wholly free from the ellipses, inversions and mannerisms associated with
his name. These gradually grew, and appeared fully developed for the first
time in _Sartor Resartus_. Carlyle retained but seldom exercised the power
of writing in his earlier style. The _Life of Sterling_ has more affinity
to it than to his later mode. But when Carlyle's style is spoken of, what
is meant is invariably the style of his later books. It is over this that
the battle has raged. There is no style more strange and unexampled in
English, or more at war with ordinary rules. It is in the highest degree
mannered, it seems to be affected, it is anything but simple. Certainly it
is the last and worst of all styles to select for imitation. No man would
ever advise another to give his days and nights to the study of Carlyle in
order to learn how to write English. In the abstract, if it were possible
to take it in the abstract, it would be described as an exceedingly bad
style; but whether it was bad for Carlyle is less clear. Though it is not
natural in the sense of being born with him, it is natural in the sense
that it seems peculiarly adapted to his turn of thought. Could Carlyle
have expressed his humour and irony otherwise? It is difficult to say; but
at least he never did it with perfect success until he developed this
style. If the style was really necessary to the complete expression of
what was in Carlyle, then that is its sufficient justification. Among the
various 'supreme virtues' which have been assigned to style, the only
genuine one is just this, that it and it alone, whether simple or ornate,
curt or periodic, best expresses the thought of the writer. Yet we are apt
to exclaim after all, 'the pity of it!' If only the humour and irony, the
intensity and passion, could have found a voice more nearly in the key of
other voices! This style will almost certainly tell against the permanence
of Carlyle's fame. The world is a busy world, and the simple, clear,
direct writer, the man whom he who runs may read, has a double chance of
the busy world's attention. Swift, whom Carlyle resembled in not a few
ways, wrote a style unsurpassed for clearness and simplicity, yet he is
not much read. How much less would he be read were _Gulliver's Travels_
written in the style of _Sartor Resartus_!