"cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational "or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if "in some uneasy dream, which does not rise to the dignity of "nightmare."

In this passage, which Carlyle himself has given to the world, some of his most striking peculiarities of diction are noticed. Το give an adequate view of his verbal eccentricities, would be no small labour. He extends the admitted licences of the language in every direction, using one part of speech for another, verbs for nouns, nouns for verbs, adverbs and adjectives for nouns. coinages often take the form of new derivatives-"benthamee,' "amusee." He abuses the licence of giving plurals to abstract nouns thus "credibilities," "moralities," "theological philosophies," "transcendentalisms and theologies."

His

This excess of metaphors, new words, and grammatical licences is in favour of the reader's enjoyment, but not so much in favour of the student's instruction. It belongs to the inimitable, unreproducible part of the style; the student cannot take the same liberties without bearing the charge of copying an individual manner, instead of deriving from the common fund of the language. So far it may stimulate to do likewise in one's own independent sphere; but close imitation is little better than parody, and imitation of any kind runs some danger of ridicule.

Sentences.

In his essays, particularly in the earlier essays and in his ‘Life of Schiller,' Carlyle shows none of the irregularity of structure that appears in his matured style. He has an admirable command of ordinary English, and constructs his sentences to suit the motion of a massive and rugged, yet musical rhythm.

Even in his essays, though himself writing with great care, he speaks slightingly of painstaking in the structure of sentences. What he really objects to is making sentences after an artificial model, of a particular length, or with a particular cadence, or with a particular number of members; but he speaks as if he condemned all labour in the arrangement of words, and lays himself open to be quoted by any that would shirk the trouble of making themselves as intelligible as possible to their readers.

The sentences of his later manner we can describe in his own words. Among his editorial remarks on the style of Teufelsdroeckh is the following:

"Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered."

From this figurative description one would suppose his sentences to be extremely involved and complicated. As a matter of fact, they are extremely simple in construction-consisting, for the most part, of two or three co-ordinate statements, or of a short direct statement, eked out by explanatory clauses either in apposition or in the "nominative absolute" construction. These apposition and absolute clauses are the "tag-rags," and it is in the connection of them with the main statement that we find the "dashes and parentheses." This character of his sentences is so obvious that few examples will suffice :

"Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is ineluded all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES."

In this explanation of the Philosophy of Clothes, the sentences are free from intricacy. The second sentence exemplifies a very common form with Carlyle in his less irregular moods, although he sneers at some sentence-makers because they are very curious to have their sentence consist of three members; yet he seems to have been himself a lover of this peculiar cadence.

He very often uses the sentence of two members, one explanatory of the other-avoiding the error of joining them by a conjunction. Thus in his description of John Sterling's mother :

'The mother was a woman of many household virtues; to a warm affection for her children, she joined a degree of taste and intelligence which is of much rarer occurrence.

As examples of his practice of apposition, take the following:"Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished individuals." Speaking of John Sterling, he says:—

"To the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike, half-embarrassed shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance; curiously mingling with its ardours and audacities."

The Crown - Prince's imprisonment by his father is thus described :

:

"Poor Friedrich meanwhile has had a grim time of it these two months hack; left alone, in coarse brown prison-dress, within his four bare walls at Custrin; in uninterrupted, unfathomable colloquy with the Destinies and the Necessities there."

In the following long sentence abundant use is made both of participle and of nominative absolute :—

"Eminent swill of drinking, with the loud coarse talk supposable, on the part of Mentzel and consorts, did go on, in this manner, all afternoon; in

the evening drunk Mentzel came out for air; went strutting and staggering about; emerging finally on the platform of some rampart, face of him huge and red as that of the foggiest rising Moon ;-and stood, looking over into the Lorraine Country; belching out a storm of oaths as to his taking it, as to his doing this and that; and was even flourishing his sword by way of accompaniment; when, lo, whistling slightly through the summer air, a rifle-ball from some sentry on the French side (writers say, it was a French drummer, grown impatient, and snatching a sentry's piece) took the brain of him or the belly of him; and he rushed down at once, a totally collapsed monster, and mere heap of dead ruin, never to trouble mankind more.

We have seen that Macaulay's style may in an especial degree be called artificial, inasmuch as he makes prodigal use of special artifices of composition. Carlyle is artificial in a different sense; at least he uses artifices of a different kind. His structure of sentence is extremely loose-is an extravagant antithesis to the periodic. His studied ruggedness and careless cumulative method are incompatible with measured balance of clause or sentence. may say, with a rough approximation to truth, that Macaulay's artificiality lies in departing from ordinary colloquial structure, Carlyle's in departing from the ordinary structure of written composition.

We

In his 'Life of Schiller,' and in his earlier essays, Carlyle builds up his composition with elaborate care in the ordinary literary forms. The following periodic sentences are constructed with Johnsonian formality, and with more than Johnsonian elaboration :

"Could ambition always choose its own path, and were wil in human undertakings always synonymous with faculty, all truly ambitious men would be men of letters. Certainly, if we examine that love of power, which enters so largely into most practical calculations-nay, which our Utilitarian friends have recognised as the sole end and origin, both motive and reward, of all earthly enterprises, animating alike the philanthropist, the conqueror, the money-changer, and the missionary-we shall find that all other arenas of ambition, compared with this rich and boundless one of Literature, meaning thereby whatever respects the promulgation of Thought, are poor, limited, and ineffectual. For dull, unreflective, merely instinctive as the ordinary man may seem, he has nevertheless, as a quite indispensable appendage, a head that in some degree considers and computes; a lamp or rushlight of understanding has been given him, which, through whatever dim, besmoked, and strangely diffractive media it may shine, is the ultimate guiding light of his whole path and here as well as there, now as at all times in man's history, Opinion rules the world."

In this earlier style he sometimes also composes elaborate balanced parallels after the model of Pope's comparison between Homer and Virgil. We quote a short comparison between Alfieri and Schiller, where the imitation of Pope is very apparent :

"Alfieri and Schiller were again unconscious competitors in the history of Mary Stuart. But the works before us give a truer specimen of their comparative merits. Schiller seems to have the greater genius; Alfieri the more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern concen

tration of fiery passion, under the dominion of an adamantine will: this was his own make of mind; and he represents it with strokes in themselves devoid of charm, but in their union terrible as a prophetic scroll. Schiller's moral force is commensurate with his intellectual gifts, and nothing more. The mind of the one is like the ocean, beautiful in its strength, smiling in the radiance of summer, and washing luxuriant and romantic shores: that of the other is like some black unfathomable lake placed far amid the melancholy mountains; bleak, solitary, desolate; but girdled with grim sky-piercing cliffs, overshadowed with storms, and illuminated only by the red glare of the lightning. Schiller is magnificent in his expansion, Alfieri is overpowering in his condensed energy; the first inspires us with greater admiration, the last with greater awe.

Paragraphs.

In his more rhapsodical works, such as 'Chartism' and the 'Latter-Day Pamphlets,' he is an indifferent observer of paragraph method. The reader is bewildered by the introduction of reflections without any hint of their bearing on the theme in hand. Some pages remind us of his vivid descriptions of chaotic inundations that hide or sweep away all guiding-posts. Very seldom can we gather from the beginning of a paragraph what is to be its purport. No attempt is made to keep a main subject prominent. Whenever anything occurs to suggest one of his favourite themes of declamation, he embraces the opportunity, and lets his main business drop.

This applies to his "prophetical" utterances, where his great natural clearness both in matter and in manner seems to be abandoned. In his history the case is very different. There his arrangement is almost the perfection of clearness. He is at pains to make everything easy to the reader. When the bearing of a statement is not apparent, he is careful to make it explicit. In each paragraph the main subject is for the most part kept prominent his defiance of ordinary syntax giving him great facilities for a distinct foreground and background. He begins his paragraphs with some indication of their contents. Further, he is consecutive, and keeps rigidly to the point.

Figures of Speech.

Teufelsdroeckh is made to say, concerning style, that plain words are the skeleton, and metaphors 1 "the muscles and tissues and living integuments;" further, that his own style is "not without an apoplectic tendency."

This might be quoted against Carlyle's own dictum, that "genius is unconscious of its excellence." His profusion of figurative language is perhaps the most striking monument of his originality and power.

1 Metaphor is here probably used for “trope,” as that word is defined in the Introduction.

Figures of Similarity.-His similitudes, forcibly hunted out from every region of his knowledge of nature and of books, are not merely fanciful embellishments-most of them go to the making of his vivid powers of description. The character, or personal appearance, or action of an individual; the character of a nation, a state of society, a political situation; the relative position of two belligerents, everything, in short, that needs describing, he brings vividly before us in its leading features by some significant simile or metaphor.

This wealth of illustration is very noticeable in the description of character. For every personage of marked character he exerts himself to find a vivid similitude. "Acrid, corrosive, as the spirit of sloes and copperas, is Marat, Friend of the People." Lafayette is "a thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice, whom no Queen's heart can love." The Countess of Darlington, George I.'s fat mistress, is "a cataract of tallow, with eyebrows like a cart-wheel, and dim coaly disks for eyes." She is contrasted with the Duchess of Kendal, the lean mistress, "poor old anatomy or lean human nailrod.”

Every kind of situation, individual or social, is set forth in the same way. The French Revolution' is a blazing heap of similitudes; they meet us at every page in twos and threes. They are often very homely. The following, taken at random, are tolerably fair specimens:—

"Your Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured into shapes of Constitution, and 'consolidated' therein."

"Military France is everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour, which exhales itself fuliginously, this way or that; a whole continent of smoking flax, which, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so easily start into a blaze, into a continent of fire."

"Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously and shows teeth, Patrollotism shall suppress; or, far better, Royalty shall soothe down the anger of it by gentle pattings, and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet."

The History of Friedrich is illuminated no less effectively. speaks incidently of the French Revolution as—

He

"That whirlwind of the universe-lights obliterated-and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the Empyrean-black whirlwind which made even apes serious, and drove most of them mad."

The above is a characteristic figure. The following, along with a characteristic similitude, introduces one of his favourite personifications:

"As the History of Friedrich, in this Cüstrin epoch, and indeed in all epochs and parts, is still little other than a whirlpool of simmering confusions, dust mainly, and sibylline paper-shreds, in the pages of poor Dryasdust, perhaps we cannot do better than snatch a shred or two (of the partly legible kind, or capable of being made legible) out of that hideous caldron;