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 period. His studied ruggedness and careless cumulative method are incompatible with measured balance of clause or sentence. We 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.

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 will 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 concentration 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.

In

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. 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.

1

Teufelsdroeckh is made to say, concerning style, that plain words are the skeleton, and metaphors "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.

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

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

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.”

66

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.'

66

'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. He speaks incidentally of the French Revolution as—

"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 Cüstrian 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; pin them down at their proper dates; and try if the reader can, by such means, catch a glimpse of the thing with his own eyes."

His account of old Friedrich's violence to young Friedrich upon

the attempted "desertion," is a fair sample of his figurative manner at its acme :

"Friedrich Wilhelm's conduct, looked at from without, appears that of a hideous royal ogre, or blind anthropophagous Polyphemus fallen mad. Looked at from within, where the Polyphemus has his reasons, and a kind of inner rushlight to enlighten his path, and is not bent on man-eating, but on discipline in spite of difficulties, it is a wild enough piece of humanity, not so much ludicrous as tragical. Never was a royal bear so led about before by a pair of conjuring pipers in the market, or brought to such a pass in his dancing for them."

Two other things must be noticed before we have a complete idea of his employment of similitudes. One is a habit, already partially alluded to, of keeping up descriptive metaphors, and using them instead of the literal names, or along with the literal names as a kind of permanent Homeric epithet. Thus, he never mentions the Countess of Darlington without designating her as the "cataract of tallow"; or the Duchess of Kendal without some thing equivalent to "Maypole or lean human nailrod." The other noticeable thing is his frequent repetition, with or without variations, of certain favourite figures. Perhaps the most characteristic is his stock of metaphors and similes drawn from the great features of the material world to illustrate the moral; his " pole-star veiled by thick clouds," his earthquakes, mad foam-oceans, Noah's deluge, mud-deluges, cesspools of the Universe, Pythons, Megatheriums, Chimæras, Dead-Sea Apes, and suchlike.

He has also certain favourite personifications, which are made to do a great deal of service. Such are the Destinies, the Necessities, the dumb Veracities, the Eternal Voices, Fact, Nature, all which are so many synonyms for the homely phrase, "circumstances beyond our control." We have seen that when Friedrich was shut up alone at Cüstrin, he was left in "colloquy with the Destinies and the Necessities there." In another passage he is said to be "shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with the dumb Veracities, with the huge inarticulate moanings of Destiny, Necessity, and Eternity." When he submits to his father, he is said to be "loyal to Fact," which means that he yields to what he cannot overcome. In like manner, Democracy, "the grand, alarming, imminent, indisputable Reality," is "the inevitable Product of the Destinies ": whoever refuses to recognise that the world has come to this, is "disloyal to Fact." "All thinking men, and good citizens of their country," "have an ear for the small still voices and eternal intimations"; in other words, discern the best course that circumstances will admit of. "The eternal regulations of the Universe," "the monition of the gods in regard to our affairs," which, if a man know, it is well with him," are other figurative expressions to the same effect.

66

One of Carlyle's favourite inferior personages is Dryasdu‹t, whom we have already introduced. He represents any and every historian that takes an interest in what our author finds it conve

nient to pronounce “dry. He is abused sometimes for knowing Rymer's Foedera' and India Bills, sometimes for knowing Court gossip. He is one of Calvle's standing butts.

Figures of Contiguity. If we apply this designation to every case of indicating a thing, not by its literal name, but by use of expressive parts and expressive collaterals, Carlyle luxuriates in such figures as much as in figures of similarity.

To take an instance: his netonymics for Death are as numerous as Homer's. "The all-hiding earth has received him." "Low now is Jourdan the Headsman's own head." "So dies a gigantic Heathen and Titan; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down to his resí. . . . His suffering and his working are now ended." "These also roll their fated journey." Dauton " passes to his unknown home." "Our grim good-night to thee is that" (address to the German scoundrel upon his execution).

As with similitudes, so with choice circumstances, he has a way of repeating them, keeping them under the reader's notice, as often as he mentions the subject. Thus, in his pamphlet on "The Nigger Question," he is perpetually renewing the image of the "beautiful blacks sitting up to their beautiful muzzles in pumpkins." In the pamphlet on "The Present Time," he repeatedly presents the reforming Pope as "the good Pope with the New Testament in his hand." In like manner he takes hold of a title or expression that provokes his mirth, and turns it to ridicule by frequent repetition; thus he talks of Parliament as the "Collective wisdom."

Figures of Contrast are not a marked feature in his style. He has a sense of the effect of explicit contrast, and sometimes employs it as a means of strength; but his studied effects are not in the direction of sharp antithetical point.

He makes considerable use of the telling oratorical contrast, the juxtaposition of strikingly incongruous circumstances. In his Essay on Voltaire he contrasts the blazing glory of Tamerlane with the humble industry of Johannes Faust, the inventor of movable types; pointing out that the humble man's influence was in the end much the more powerful of the two. So he contrasts the loud triumphant proclamation of the Champs de Mars Federation with the signing of the Scottish Solemn League and Covenant in a dingy close of the Edinburgh High Street, and with "the frugal supper of thirteen mean-dressed men in a mean Jewish dwelling." 'French Revolution' is peculiarly rich in such contrasts. makes a fine thing of Robespierre's resigning a judgeship in his younger days because he could not bear to sentence a human creature to death. The sad end of Marie Antoinette is contrasted

The

He