paint.

:

simple expression; he employs figures the breadth of the field which they at every step; he embodies all his traverse. Frora the subiime to the ideas; he must touch forms. We see ignoble, from the pathetic to luegro. that he is besieged and haunted by tesque, is but a step with Carlyle. At brilliant or gloomy visions; every one and the same time he touches the thought with him is a shock; a stream two extremes. His adorations end in vi misty passion comes bubbling into sarcasms. The Universe is for him his overflowing brain, and the torrent an oracle and a temple, as well as a of images breaks forth and rolls on kitchen and a stable. He moves free. . amidst every kind of mud and mag; ly about, and is at his ease in mysticism, nificence. He cannot reason, he must as well as in brutality. Speaking of

If he wants to explain the em- the setting sun at the North Cape he barrassment of a young man obliged to writes : choose a career amongst the lusts and doubts of the age, in which we live, he

“ Silence as of death ; for Midnight, even in tells you of

the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing

but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peace “ A world all rocking and plunging, like that able gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, old Roman one when the measure of its in- over which in the utmost North the great Sun iquities was full ; the abysses, and subterranean bangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumber. ar: supernal deluges, plainly broken loose ; in ing. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream gone out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous firenow to any man; the pestiferous fogs and foul pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and exhalations grown continual, have, except on

hide itself under my feet. In such moments,

Solitude also is invaluable ; for who would the higest mountain-tops, blotted out all stars : will-o'-wisps, of various course and colour, take speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies the place of stars. Over the wild surging chaos, all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the in the leaden air, are only sudden glares of rev. watchmen ; and before him the silent Immen. olutionary lightning ; then mere darkness, with sity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our philanthropistic phosphorescences, empty me,

Sun is but a porch-lamp?” * teoric lights; here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hovering, hanging on to its old Such splendors he sees whenever he quaking fixtures, pretending still to be a Moon is face to face with nature. No one or Sun, -though visibly it is but a Chinese has contemplated with a more power: Lantern made of paper mainly, with candle-end ful emotion the silent stars which roll foully dying in the heart of it." +

eternally in the pale firmament and Imagine a volume, twenty volumes, envelop our little world. No one has made up of such pictures, united by contemplated with more of religious ex clamations and apostrophes; even awe the infinite obscurity in which our history—that of the French Revolution slender thought appears for an instant -is like a delirium. Carlyle is a Puri- like a gleam, and by our side the tan seer, before whose eyes pass scaf, gloomy abyss in which the hot frenzy folds, orgies, massacres, battles, and of life is to be extinguished. who, beset by furious or bloody phan- are habitually fixed on this vast Dark; toms, prophesies, encourages, or curses. ness, and he paints with a shudder of If we co not throw down the book veneration and hope the effort which from anger or weariness, we will be religions have made to pierce it : come dazed; our ideas leave us, nightnare seizes us, a medley of grinning

“ In the heart of the remotest mountains and ferocious figures whirl about in rises the little Kirk; the Dead all slumbering our bead; we hear the howls of in- hope of a happy resurrection,

round it, under their white memorial stones,

'-dull wert thou, surrection, cries of war; we are sick; Reader, it never in any hour (say of moar.ing we are like those hearers of the Cov- midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in the enanters, whom the preaching filled sky, and Being was as if swallowd up of Dark

ness) it spoke to thee-things unspeakable, that with disgust or enthusiasm, and who went to thy soul's soul. Strong was he that broke the head of their prophet, if had a Church, what we can call a Church : he they did not take him for their leader. stood thereby, though in the centre of ImThese violent outbursts will seem like towards God and man: the vague shorelese

His eyes

in

Vniverso had become for him a firm city, and with such buffoonery he concludes his dwelling which he knew.”.

best book, never quitting his tone of Rembrandt alone has beheld these gravity and gloom, in the midst of sombre visions drowned in shade, anathémas and prophecies. He needs traversed by mystic rays : look, for ex- these great shocks. He cannot remain ample, at the church which he has quiet, or stick to one literary province painted; glance at the mysterious at a time. He leaps in unimpeded Hoating apparition, full of radiant forms, jerks from one end of the field of ideas which he has set in the summit of the to the other; he confounds all styles, heavens, above the stormy night and jumbles all forms, heaps together pathe terror which shakes mortality.tlgan allusions, Bible reminiscences, Ger The two imaginations have the same man abstractions, technical terms. painful grandeur, the same scintilla- poetry, slang, mathematics, physiology, tions, the same agony, and both sink archaic words, neologies. There with like facility into triviality and nothing he does not tread down and crudeness. No ulcer, no filth, is re- ravage. The symmetrical constructions pulsive enough to disgust Carlyle.. On of human art and thought, dispersed occasion he will compare the politician and upset, are piled under his hands who seeks popularity to “the dog that into a vast mass of shapeless ruins, was drowned last summer, and that from the top of which he gesticulates Aoats up and down the Thames with and fights, like a conquering savage. ebb and food. . . . You get to know him by sight. . . with a painful oppres

II. sion of nose. . . Daily you may see This kind of mind produces humor, him, ... and daily the odor of him is

a word untranslatable in French, be. getting more intolerable.” | Absurdi

cause in France they have not the idea. ties, incongruities, abound in his style. Humor is a species of talent which When the frivolous Cardinal de Lo

amuses Germans, Northmen; it suits ménie proposed to convoke a Plenary their mind, as beer and brandy suit their Court, he compares him to “trained palate. For men of another race it is canary birds, that would fly cheerfully disagreeable ; they often find it too with lighted matches and fire cannon; harsh and bitter. Amongst other fire whole powder magazines.” At things, this talent embraces a taste for need, he turns to funny images. He

contrasts. Swift jokes with the seriends a dithyramb with a caricature : he

ous mien of an ecclesiastic, performing bespatters magnificence with eccentric

religious rites, and develops the most and coarse language : he couples poetry grotesque absurdities, like a convinced

Hamlet, shaken with terror and “The Genius of England no elongern soars despair, bristles with buffoonerics. Sunward, world an through the storms, 'mewing her mighty youth." as Heine mocks his own emotions, even John Milton saw her do: the Genius of Eng- whilst he displays them. These men land, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on love travesties, put a solemn garb over provender and a whole skin mainly, stands with comic ideas, a clown's jacket over grave its other extremity Sunward; with'its Ostrichhead stuck into the readiest bush, of cld Church- ones.

Another feature of humor is tippets, King-cloaks, or what other sheltering that the author forgets the public for Fallacy' there may be, and so awaits the issue. whom he writes. He tells us that he The issue

has been slow ; but it is now seen to does not care for us, tha' he needs have been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, ard sticking its head neither to be understood nos approved, into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,- that he thinks and amuses himself by in a terrible duposteriori manner if not other himself, and that if his taste and ideas wise ! "I

displease

us we have only to take our. • History of the French Revolution, bk. i. selves off. He wishes to be refined ch. ii. ; Realized Ideals. | IQ'the Adoration of the Magi.

and original at his ease; he is at home Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1850 ; Stump Ora- | in his book, and with closed doors, he tor, 35

gets into his slippers, dressing-gown, % The French Revolution, i. bk. ï. ch. vii. ; I often with his feet in the air, sometimes Internecine. | Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, iii. x. ;

without a shirt. Carlyle has a style of the end.

his own, and marks his idea in his ows

а

with puns :

man.

.

ashion; it is our business to under. pineal gland of the Body #sial: I stand it. He alludes to a saying of mean, a PURSE: Goethe, or Shakspeare, or to an anecdote which strikes him at the moment ; " what is man? An omniwrous Biped thai

“ To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, so much the worse for us if we do not wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason know it. He shouts when the fancy what is he?. A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Aptakes him; the worse for us if our ears lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garnent of

parition. Round his mysterious Me there do not like it. He writes on the ca- Flesh (or of Senses) contextured in the Loom price of his imagination, with all the of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, starts of invention ; the worse for us if and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; our mind goes at a different pace. He with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands

and sees and fashions for hiinself a Universe, catches on the wing all the shades, all of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange the oddities of his conception; the Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms w? je for us if ours cannot reach them. as it wera, swathed-in, and inextricabiy over: A last feature of humor is the irruption God." |

shrouded : yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a of violent joviality, buried under a heap of sadness. Absurd incongruity

The paradox continues, at once eccen. appears unexpected. Physical nature, tric and mystical, hiding theories under hidden and oppressed under habits of follies, mixing together fierce ironies, melancholic reflection, is laid bare for tender pastorals, love-stories, exploan instant.

We see
a grimace, a

sions of rage, and carnival pictures. He clown's gesture, then every thing re-says wel!: sumes its wonted gravity: Add lastly “ Perhaps the most remarkable incident in the unforeseen flashes of imagination. Modern History is not the Diet of Worms, still 'The humorist covers a poet; suddenly, 100, Peterloo, or any other Battle ; but an in

less the battle of Austerlitz, Wagram, Waterin the monotonous mist of prose, at the cident passed carelessly over by most Histoend of an argument, a vista opens up; rians, and treated with some degree of ridicule beautiful or ugly, it matters not; it is hy others: namely, George Fox's making to enough that it strikes our eyes. These himself a suit of Leather." ; inequalities fairly paint the solitary, For, thus clothed for the rest of his energetic, imaginative German, a lover life, lodging in a tree and eating wild of violent contrasts, based on personal berries, man could remain idle and inand gloomy reflection, with sudden up-vent Puritanism, that is, consciencewellings of physical instinct, so differ- worship, at his leisure. This is how ent from the Latin and classical races, Carlyle treats the ideas which are dearraces of orators or artists, where they est to him. He jests in connection with never write but with an eye to the public, the doctrine, which was to employ his where they relish only, consequent life and occupy his whole soul. ideas, are only happy in the spectacle Should we like an abstract of his of harmonious forms, where the fancy politics, and his opinion about his counis regulated, and voluptuousness ap- try? He proves that in the modern pears natural. Carlyle is profoundly transformation of religions two principal German, nearer to the primitive stock sects have risen, especially in England; than any of his contemporaries, strange the one of “ Poor Slaves," the other of and unexampled in his fancies and his Dandies. Of the first he says: pleasantries; he ca:ls himself “a be

“ Something Monastic there appears to be in mired aurochs or urus of the German their Constitution : we find them bound by the woods, the poor wood-ox so be two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience; mired in the forests.”* For instance, they observe with great strictness nay, as I

which Vows, especially the former, it is said, his first book Sartor Resartus, which is have understood it, they are pledged, and be it a clothes.philosophy, contains, à propos by any solemn Nazarene or.nation or not, ir of aprons and breeches, metaphysics, birth. That the third Monastic Vow, Chas

revocably consecrated thereto, even before politics, psychology, Man, according tity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find ro to him, is á dressed animal. Society ground to conjecture. has clothes to. its foundation. without Clothes, could we possess the

* Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. x. ; Pure Rea

1 lbid master-organ, soul's seat, and true

“ How,

servances.

6

“ Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Na Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle of wear. are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these ing a peculiar Costume. Their raiment they call Fashionable Novels : however, the consists of innumerable skirts, lappets, and ir- Canon is not completed, and some are canonregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; | ical, and others not." * through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown | Their chief articles of faith are : process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums, and skewers;

“1. Coats should have nothing of te te to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, ang!e about them; at the same time, wrinkles of hempen or even of straw rope, round the

behind should be carefully avoided. loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem par

“2. The collar is a very important point : it ial, and often wear it by way of sandals. :

should be low behind, and slightly rolled. One might fancy them worshippers of Her

3. No licence of fashion can allow a man tha, or the Earth : for they dig and affection of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuri ately work continually in her bosom ; or else,

ance of a Hottentot. shut up in private Oratories, meditate and man

4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. ipulate the substances derived from her ; seldom

s. The good sense of a gentleman is no looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries,

where more finely developed than in his rings. and then with comparative indifference. Like

“6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain the Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. dwellings; often even breaking their glass-win

7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight dows, where they find such, and stuffing them

across the hips. up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque sub

“ All which Propositions I, for the present, stances, till the fit obscurity is restored.

content myself with modestly but peremptorily “ In respect of diet they have also their ob

and irrevocably denying." + All Poor Slaves are Rhizophagous This premised, he draws conclusions : (or Root-eaters); a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings; other animal food “ I might call them two boundless and indeed they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the some strange inverted fragment of a Brahmin- Machinery of Society'), with batteries of opical feeling, such animals as die a natural death posite quality; Drudgism the Negative, DandyTheir universal sustenance is the root named

ism the Positive : one attracts hourly towards Potato, cooked by fire alone. In all their

it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be

of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the an indispensable requisite, and largely con- other is equally busy with the Negative (that is sumed."

to say the Hunger), which is equally potent. Of the other sect he says:

Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire

nation is in an electric state ; till your whole “ A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough : is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and

vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resem

Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and blance to that Superstition of the Athos

Monks, The stirring of a child's finger brings the two

stands there bottled-up in two World-Batteries! who by fasting from all nourishinent, and looks together; and then-What then? The Earth ing intensely for a length of time into their own

is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that navels, came to discern therein the true Apoc

Doom's-thunderpeal : the Sun misses one of alypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To

his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal

no eclipses of the Moon. Or better still, I might Sect were but a new modification, adapted to

liken "I the ew time, of that primeval superstition, Self-worship

He stops suddenly, and leaves you to l'hey affect great purity and separatism ; distinguisis themselves by a particular costume your conjectures. This bitter pleas (whereof some notices were given in the earlier antry is that of an enraged or despair. part of this Volume): likewise, so far as pos- ing man, who designedly, and simply sille, by, a particular speech Capparently some by reason of the violence of his pasboken Lingua-franca, or English-French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true sion, would restrain it and force him. Wazarene deportment, and keep themselves un- self to laugh; but whom a sudden spotted from the world.”

shudder at the end reveals just as he “ They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did,' stands in their is. In one place Carlyle says that metropolis ; and is named Almack's, a word of there is, at the bc ttom of the English uncertain etymology: They worship principally character, underneath all its habits of by night; and have their Highpriests and High- calculation and coolness, an inextin. priestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the guishable furnace : Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or

10.

tum of arrangement, traditionary method, com- duty of all Pigs, at all tmes, to diminish the posed productiveness, all built above it, vivified quantity of unattainable and increase that of at and rendered fertile by it: justice, clearness, talable. All knowledge and device and effort silence, perseverance unhasting, unresting dil- ought to be directed thither and thither only: igence, hatred of disorder, hatred of injustice, Pig science, Pig enthusiasm and Devotion which is the worst disorder, characterise this have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of people: the inward fire we say, as all such fires Pigs. would be, is hidden in the centre. Deep hid- 5. Pig Poetry ought to cor. sist of universa den, but awakenable, but immeasurable ; let no recognition of the excel.ence of Pig's-wash and man awaken it.

ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose It is a fire of extraordinary fierceness, terughois in order, and who have had enougn :

Hrumph as the rage of devoted Berserkirs, who, “6. The Pig knows the weat er ; he ought once rushing to the heat of the battle, to look out what kind of weather it will be. felt no more their wounds, and lived, perhaps the Pork-butcher.

• Who made the Pig ?' Unknown fought, and killed, pierced with strokes, .“ 8. Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom?" the least of which would have been Pigs of observation have discerned that there mortal to an ordinary man. It is this is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called destructive frenzy, this rousing of in- ment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge,

justice. Undeniably at least there is a sentiward unknown powers, this loosening etc., which, if one Pig provoke another, comes of a ferocity, enthusiasm, and imagi- out in a more or less destructive manner: hence nation disordered and not to be bridled, for quarrelling is attended with loss of blood,

laws are necessary, amazing quantities of laws. which appeared in these men at the of life, at any rate with frightful effusion of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and general stock of Hog's-wash, and ruin (tema remnant of which still endures in porary rin) to large sections of the universal Carlyle. Here is a vestige of it, in a served, that so quarrelling be avoided.

Swine's trough: wherefore let justice be obpassage almost worthy of Swift, which

9. What is justice ?' Your own share of is the abstract of his customary emo- the general Swine’s-trough, not any portion of tions, and at the same time his con- my.

. But what is 'my'share ?' Ah! there, clusion on the age in which we live :

in fact, lies the grand difficulty ; upon which • Supposing, swine (I mean four-footed Pig, science, meditating this long while, can swine), of sensibility and superior logical parts, settle absolutely

nothing. My share--hrumph! had attained such culture ; and could, after sur-my. share is, on the whole, whatever I can vey and reflection, jot down for us their notion contrive to get without being hanged or sent to of the Universe, and of their interest and duties the hulks."* there,--might it not well interest a discerning public, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a

Such is the mire in which he plunges stimulus to the languishing book-trade? The modern life, and, beyond all others, Eng: votes of all creatures, it is understood at pres, lish life; drowning at the same time, and ent, ought to be had ; that you may ' legislate for them with better insight. How can

in the same filth, the positive mind, the

you govern a thing, say many, without first asking love of comfort, industrial science, its vote?! Unless, indeed, you already chance Church, Ştate philosophy and law. This to know its vote, –and even something more, cynical catechism, thrown in amidst furi. namely, what you are to think of its vote ; what it wants by its vote; and, still more important, ous declamations, gives, I think, the what Nature wants,---which latter, at the end of dominant note of this strange mind : it the account,--the only thing that will be got !- is this mad tension which constitutes -Pig Propositions, in a rough form, are some his talent; which produces and explaing what as follows:

“1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture his images and incongruities, his laughcan go, is an immeasurable Swine's-trough, ter and his rages. There is an Eng. consisting of solid and liquid, and of other lish expression which cannot be trans contrasts and kinds ;-especially consisting of lated into French, but which depicts attainable and unattainable, the starter.in im- this condition, and illustrates the whole mensely greater quantities for most pigs.

Moral evil is unattainability of Pig's physical constitution of the race: His wash ; moral good, attainability of ditto.

blood is up.

In fact, the cold and What is Paradise, or the State of In- phlegmatic temperament covers the cocence ?' Paradise, called also State of Inrocence, Age of Geld, and other names, was surface; but when the roused blood (according to Pigs of weak judgment) unlimited has swept through the veins, the

fevered Attainability of Pigs-wash : perfect fulfilment animal can only be glutted by devasta. of one's wishes, so that the Pig's imagination tion, and be satiated by excess. could not outrun reality ; a fable and an impossibility, as Pigs of sense now see.

Define the Whole Duty of Pigs. It * Latter-Day Pamphlets 1890: Jesuitisans As the mission of universal Pighood, and the l 28.

ܪ