there, whatever be the form of it whether grim, grotesque, whimsical, or playfully affectionate. Even towards scoundrels of easy morality, like Wilhelmus Sacrista in 'Past and Present,' he shows some relenting when they come before him in their personality as individuals. Poor William, given to "libations and tacenda," is deposed by Abbot Samson, and, in spite of all his idleness, gets from our author the following kindly parting:

"Whether the poor Wilhelmus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,-now grown, in a manner, indispensable to the poor man?- Jocelin hints not; one knows not how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his only true course."

His nicknames for individuals are moderated to the same kindly tone of humour. Karl August is very objectionable in the ab stract; yet Carlyle gives him no harder nickname than "August the Physically Strong;" and in his older days, "August the Dilapidated-Strong."

(4.) In his Sartor Resartus,' and elsewhere, he shows himself capable of the humour of driving fun at himself. The chapter on Editorial Difficulties is a sample. The humour is much more self-asserting than De Quincey's; it amounts in substance to this, that he fathers his most extravagant eccentricities upon a feigned name, and criticises them from an ordinary point of view—a device for stating, without the appearance of extravagance, opinions that the general public might think bombastic were they delivered in the author's own person.

(5.) In a writer of such brilliant execution as Carlyle, the quality of the humour is much enhanced by the pleasure arising from the freshness of the language. When the ludicrous overthrow of dignitaries would otherwise be apt to raise serious feelings, the enjoyment of the language is conciliating, and disposes the reader to laugh rather than be angry.

Melody-Harmony-Taste.

As respects the melodious combination of words, Carlyle, though not below average, is by no means a model. He despises all study to avoid harsh successions; he considers such art to be mere trifling in the present age. In his own attempts to "sing". that is, to write verses before he fully discovered that his strength lay in prose-the rhythm is conspicuously bad.

Still his prose has a peculiar strain-a characteristic movement. From such passages as have been given, the reader with an ear for cadence will have no difficulty in making it out. It corresponds to the emphatic sing-song intonation of his voice; a stately sort of rhythm, after a fashion of stateliness that differs from De Quincey's

in the rugged unmelodious flow, and the frequent recurrence of emphasis.

As regards Harmony between the rhythm and the sense, with Carlyle, as with other impassioned writers, the agreement is most perfect when he is writing at full swing in his favourite mood.

He has an ostensible and paraded contempt for the idea of art, or of composition intended to please. Himself nothing if not artistical, he insists on being supposed to wear no garb but the mantle of the prophet. Though thus formally disavowing art, he really does, consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice even truth to be artistical. Not to review him as an artist, is to do him an injustice. As an artist, he errs chiefly in carrying his favourite

effects to excess.

In the pursuit of strength, he sometimes intrudes expressions that approach the confines of rant. Thus, in the following extract he ruins a passage of real pathos with one of his extravagantly sensational mannerisms :

66

For twenty generations here was the earthly arena where powerful living men worked out their life-wrestle,-looked at by Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted vespers, matins ;-and round the little islet of their life rolled for ever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with its eternal hues and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now! all departed, clean gone. The World Dramaturgist has written, Exeunt. The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all: and in its stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse, offensive universal dust-clouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here.'"

From this passage, which opens with such beauty, common taste would probably banish the World-Dramaturgist and the TimeDemons; and the concluding expression would generally be regarded as the unseasonable mirth of excitement gone beyond control. One class of his offences, then, may be set down to the temporary dulling of the artistic sense by over-excitement. Farther, his humour betrays him into violations of taste. This is done deliberately, in cold blood, not from over-excitement. A humorous turn is given to a declamation on a grave subject— such a subject as overwhelms the ordinary mind with seriousness. The conclusion of the passage on duelling is an example. If an explanation of this is sought, probably none will be found except the pleasure, natural to strong nerves, of treating with levity what weaker brethren cannot help treating with gravity. Partly to the same motive may be referred his humorous treatment of the more serious outbreaks of the elder Friedrich. On this have been passed some of the severest comments that our author has received in the course of his career as a writer. His humour causes him to offend on another side. Some of his fun is quite as broad as the

taste of the period will allow. In such figures as "owl-droppings," and "the ostrich turning its broad end to heaven," he goes beyond the standing limits of this century. In 'Sartor Resartus,' the name "Teufelsdroeckh" and the "Nobleman's Epitaph" would hardly be tolerated if rendered in the vernacular.

Under errors in Taste might also be reckoned his barbarisms and solecisms of language. Farther, almost universally he is charged with abusing his vast figurative resources, with carrying his figurative manner to excess. He would seem to have been conscious of his liability to this charge before it was made: in a passage already quoted from the Sartor, he speaks of labouring under figurative plethora. At the same time, it is undoubtedly to the freshness and variety of his figures that he owes a great part of his reputation.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Description.

In Carlyle's powers of description lies one of his most indisputable claims to high literary rank. He seems to have studied the art most elaborately. We can gather from his various books that all his life long he had watched human beings and natural scenery with an eye to the rendering of their peculiarities into language. Especially in his later writings he describes with incomparable felicity.

In the delineation of external nature, "his peculiarities are to bring forward in strong relief the comprehensive aspects, to impress these by iteration and by picturesque comparisons, to use the language of the associated feelings, and in the shape of harmonious groupings to introduce some of the elements of poetry." The following, from the last volume of 'Friedrich,' exemplifies his statement, repetition, and illustration of the general features of a scene:

"Torgau itself stands near Elbe; on the shoulder, eastern or Elbeward shoulder, of a big mass of Knoll, or broad Height, called of Siptitz, the main eminence of the Gau. Shoulder, I called it, of this Height of Siptitz; but more properly it is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Siptitz Height, nearly a mile from Elbe, dips down into a straggle of ponds; after which, on a second or final rise, comes Torgau dipping into Elbe. Not a shoulder strictly, but rather a cheek, with neck intervening;-neck goitry for that matter, or quaggy with ponds! The old Town stands high enough, but is enlaced on the western and southern side by a set of lakes and quagmires, some of which are still extensive and undrained. The course of the waters hereabouts, and of Elbe itself, has had its intricacies; close to north-west, Torgau is bordered, in a straggling way, by what they call Old Elbe; which is not now a fluent entity,

1 The two its with different references are awkward. In place of "I called it," he should have used some such expression as "I said," without the it.

The Hill of Siptitz

but a stagnant congeries of dirty waters and morasses. abuts in that aqueous or quaggy manner; its fore-feet being, as it were, at or in Elbe River, and its sides, to the south and to the north for some distance each way, considerably enveloped in ponds and boggy difficulties."

The following, from his article on Dr Francia, illustrates his dexterity in making a description vivid by imagining the feelings of a spectator :

"Few things in late war, according to General Miller, have been more noteworthy than this march. The long straggling line of soldiers, six thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal solitudes! For you fare along, on some narrow roadway, through stony laby. rinths; huge rock-mountains hanging over your head on this hand, and under your feet on that; the roar of mountain-cataracts, horror of bottomless chasms;-the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preternatural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind you, and around you; intricate the outgate! The roadway is narrow; footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to mind your paces; one false step, and you will need no second; in the gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the suspension-bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though they swing like see-saws: men are stationed with lassos, to gin you dexterously, and fish you up from the torrent, if you trip there."

This passage is also a good example of a description where the particulars support each other: along with towering rocks and a narrow roadway we naturally expect huge abysses and roaring waters. The mention of the hollow winds shows his sensibility to harmonious poetical effects.

"A description is more easily and fully realised when made individual—that is, presented under all the conditions of a particular moment of time." Our author fully understands this: it is one of his cardinal arts. His works abound in picturesque allusions to seasons and times, to temporary attitudes of things and persons. Thus, in his 'Life of Sterling':

'One day in the spring of 1836, I can still recollect, Sterling had proposed to me, by way of wide ramble, useful for various ends, that I should walk with him to Eltham and back, to see this Edgeworth, whom I also knew a little. We went accordingly together; walking rapidly, as was Sterling's wont, and, no doubt, talking extensively. It probably was in the end of February; I can remember leafless hedges, grey driving clouds, procession of boarding-school girls in some quiet part of the route."

Again

"At length some select friends were occasionally admitted; signs of improvement began to appear; and, in the bright twilight, Kensington Gardens were green, and sky and earth were hopeful, as one went to make inquiry. The summer brilliancy was abroad over the world before we fairly saw Sterling again sub dio."

In his account of Walter Raleigh's execution one sentence is

"A cold hoar-frosty morning." Such touches as the following are pretty frequent :

"The Scots delivered their fire with such constancy and swiftness, it was as if the whole air had become an element of fire-in the ancient summer gloaming there."

In describing the tumults after the capture of the Bastile, he suddenly breaks in

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-officers,—and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel-de-Ville!"

One of his most effective groupings is the bivouac of the army that we have just seen described in their passage over the Andes

"What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin; all steadily snoring there in the heart of the Andes under the eternal stars! Wayworn sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake; tired mules chew barley rations, or doze on three legs; the feeble watch-fire will hardly kindle a cigar; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down; and all snore steadily, begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the Constellations in that manner.

His narratives are eminently pictorial. At every step in the succession of events we are stopped to look at some posture of the actors or their surroundings. This is one of the most striking features in the 'French Revolution;' it may be called a historic word-tapestry, a series of significant word-pictures; it rather describes events in order than relates the order of events. A short example can give but a faint idea of the character of such a work ; the following specimen is taken at random. It describes the storming of the palace of Versailles by a mob :

"Woe now to all body-guards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the grand staircase, 'descending four steps to the roaring tornado. His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally from the jaws of Destruction; and slam-to their door. This also will stand few instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading serves not: fly fast, ye body-guards! rabid Insurrection, like the Hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!

"The terror-struck body-guards fly, bolting and barricading; it follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall: woe, now! towards the Queen's suite of rooms, in the furthest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five sentinels rush through that long suite; they are in the ante-room knocking loud: 'Save the Queen!' Trembling women fall at their feet with tears: are answered: Yes, we will die; save ye the Queen!'

"Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far through the outermost door, 'Save the Queen!' and the door is shut. It is brave Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across imminent death to do it; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down with pikes; his comrades hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre