with her prosperous days; the tragic heroism of Charlotte Corday is made more touching by a fine description of her personal beauty. And in the "sports of fickle fortune" with many of the leading revolutionists, he finds the utmost scope for Rembrandt lights and shadows.

Epigram is not much in his way. He occasionally indulges in word-play, but it is hardly epigrammatic; it has more of an affinity with punning. His oft-repeated derivation of king—“Kön-ning, Can-ning, or Man that is Able"-is a mixture of philologyfanciful philology-and pun. Some of his puns are less doubtful. Thus, "Certain Heathen Physical-Force Ultra-Chartists, 'Danes as they were then called, coming into his territory with their 'five points,' or rather with their five-and-twenty thousand points and edges too-of pikes, namely, and battle-axes," &c. So he says that the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories are a monument to Richard Arkwright, a true pyramid or flame-mountain."

Minor Figures and Figures Proper. Hyperbole.-Our author's hyperboles consist partly in the use of exaggerating similitudes, partly in unrestrained torrents of extreme epithets. His exaggerations as to the confusion and dishonesty of these "latter days," the general tumble-down and degradation of the whole system of modern society, are the most familiar specimens. "Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded.” "Bankruptcy everywhere; foul ignominy, and the abomination of desolation, in all high places." Social affairs in a state of the frightfulest embroilment, and as it were of inextricable final bankruptcy, unutterable welter of tumbling ruins." "Never till now,

I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses. He is conscious of this hyperbolic turn, as, indeed, he shows himself conscious of most of his peculiarities. He speaks of Teufelsdroeckh's having "unconscionable habits of exaggeration in speech."

When strong epithets, metaphors, similes, and contrasts, put in plain forms of speech, come short of the intensity of his feelings, he avails himself to an unprecedented degree of the bolder licences of style. Much of his peculiar manner is made up of the special figures of Interrogation, Exclamation, and Apostrophe.

Interrogation is a large element in his mannerism. It is not merely an occasional means of special emphasis; it is a habitual mode of transition, used by Carlyle almost universally for the vivid introduction of new agents and new events. Thus

"But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to devise; will only have to borrow and apply. And then, as to the day, what day of all the calendar is fit, if the Bastille Anniversary be not?"

After the Queen's execution, he asks, “Whom next, O Tinville ?"

In like manner, recounting some of the proceedings in the Parliamentary war, he says—

"Basing is black ashes, then: and Langford is ours, the Garrison 'to march forth to-morrow at twelve of the clock, being the 18th instant.' And now the question is, Shall we attack Dennington or not?"

With these vivid epic interrogations, there is usually, as in the above examples, a mixture of something like the figure called. Vision. He supposes himself present at the deliberation of a scheme, the preparation of a great event, and suggests ideas as an interested spectator. Thus, after representing how Louis deliberated whether he should try to conciliate the people, or canvass for foreign assistance, he asks-"Nay, are the two hopes inconsistent?" Again, he apostrophises the National Assembly expecting a visit from the King, with

"Think therefore, Messieurs, what it may mean; especially how ye will get the Hall decorated a little. Some fraction of velvet carpet, cannot that be spread in front of the chair, where the Secretaries usually sit?" One or two instances give but a faint impression of what is so prominent in his style.

Exclamation occurs in every mood. Sometimes in wonder and elation; sometimes in derision and contempt; sometimes in pity, sometimes in fun, sometimes in real admiration-and affection. An example or two may be quoted. Thus-"How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!" Many such exclamations of wonder occur in his Sartor. His exclamations of derision are addressed, not to individuals, but to imaginary personages, as when he adresses Dryasdust,-"Surely at least you might have made an index for these books;" or to collective masses, as when he exclaims of duellists-" Deuce on it, the little spitfires!" Towards individuals he seldom if ever expresses either reverential wonder on the one hand, or contempt on the other. The scenes of the French Revolution often call forth exclamations of pity and horror. "Miserable De Launay!" "Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny!" -such expressions are frequent. At times, also, we come across such exclamations as-"Horrible, in lands that had known equal justice!" As an instance of a humorous touch, take his exclamation on one of the Kaisers-"Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty children by one wife; and felt that there was need of appanages!" His expressions of admiration for his heroes are numerous. Mirabeau he exclaims-" Rare union: this man can live self-sufficing-yet lives also in the lives of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king of men!" Of Sterling he says"A beautiful childlike soul!" Oliver and Friedrich he frequently. salutes with expressions of sympathising admiration. Sometimes,

On

as he has a habit of doing with all his strong effects-in a kind of deprecating way-he puts the exclamations into the mouths of other people—"Admirable feat of strategy! What a general, this Prince Carl!' exclaimed mankind." “Magnanimous !' exclaim Noailles and the paralysed French gentleman: Most magnanimous behaviour on his Prussian Majesty's part!' own they."

Apostrophe.The apostrophising habit is perhaps the greatest notability of his mannerism. His make of mind impels him to adopt this art of style, apart from his consciousness of the power it gives him as a literary artist. It provides one outlet among others for his deep-seated dramatic tendery. Farther, it suits his active turn of mind and favourite mode of the enjoyment of power; it gives scope for his daring familiarity with personages, whether for admiration or for humour, and meets with no check from any regard for offended conventionalities. Not so frequently does he address in tones of pity; still, in the moving scenes of the French Revolution, and elsewhere, some of his apostrophes are very touching.

His style in its final development affords innumerable examples. The French Revolution' is particularly full of dramatic apostrophes, as indeed of the irregular figures generally. The author sees everything with his own eyes, and addresses the actors in warning, exhortation, reproof, or whatever their actions call for. Usher Maillard is shown crossing the Bastille ditch on a plank, and warned-" Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry !" When De Launay is massacred, the revolutionists are reproved with— Brothers, your wrath is cruel!" "Up and be doing!" "Cour

66

age!" Quick, then!” Such ejaculations are frequent; to

every movement, in fact, he contributes the cries of an excited bystander.

As an example of his more declamatory apostrophes, take the following, which is indeed an imaginary speech :

Away, you! begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line! in the name of God and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to it to live in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree of brevity. To feed you in palaces, to hire captains, and schoolmasters, and the choicest spiritual and material artificers to expend their industries on you, —No, by the Eternal! Mark it, my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on

the backs of you," &c.

In

The following is an example of his pathetic apostrophes. the destruction of the Bastille a prisoner's letter was discovered with a passionate inquiry after his wife, to which Carlyle replies:

"Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Quéret-Démery, and hast no other history, she is dead, that dear wife of thrine, and thou art dead! 'Tis fifty

years since thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men."

His characteristic manner of drawing the attention of the hearer with an imperative, is a mode of apostrophe

"Now, therefore, judge if our patriot artists are busy; taking deep counsel how to make the scene worthy of a look from the universe."

It will have been noted that many of the above-quoted apostrophes are of the nature of the figure called Vision. Carlyle's histories are, indeed, prolonged visions; throughout he treats the past as present, and makes us, as it were, actual spectators of the events related.

His irony is a department in itself. It often turns up in such passing touches as-"Our Nell Gwyn defender-of-the-faith;" "Christ's crown soldered on Charles Stuart's;" "most Christian kingship, and most Talleyrand bishopship;" Shakspeare, "whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the treadmill." In his treatment of modern society, irony is often kept up through long passages; thus "The Nigger Question" is full of irony. It is to be noted that his irony can always be known as such. He has none of the De Foe irony that runs a danger of being mistaken for earnest. The following is a short specimen, on the New Poor-Law, from 'Chartism' :—

"To read the reports of the Poor-Law Commissioners, if one had faith enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of humanity. One sole recipe seems to have been needful for the woes of England-refusal of outdoor relief.' England lay in sick discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed, dark, nigh desperate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence, and eating care, till, like Hyperion down the eastern steeps, the Poor Law Commissioners arose, and said, Let there be workhouses, and bread of affliction and water of affliction there! It was a simple invention; as all truly great inventions And see, in any quarter, instantly as the walls of the workhouse arise, misery and necessity fly away, out of sight, out of being, as is fondly hoped, dissolve into the inane; industry, frugality, fertility, rise of wages, peace on earth and goodwill towards men do, in the Poor-Law Commissioners' reports, infallibly, rapidly or not so rapidly, to the joy of all parties, supervene."

are.

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity.

(1.) Our author, as we remarked in speaking of his vocabulary, uses a fair admixture of homely words. When hard to understand, he is so not from the use of technical and scholastic terms, but from the use of words of his own coining. A reader of Carlyle, not knowing Latin, has often to consult a dictionary, and consults it in vain. It is a jest about him that he aspires to the honour

"Down" is a small blunder; it should be up.

conferred upon Jean Paui Richter, of having a dictionary written for himself.

As regards his similitudes, we have already seen that many of them are homely and graphic, while the few stock figures connected with his fanciful conception of the universe, the action of the Destinies, Eternal Voices, and suchlike, rather perplex than render comprehension easy. It should, however, be noticed, that to those once initiated into the circle of these figures they present a really simple, because very undiscriminating, way of expressing complicated circumstances. "Loyalty to facts" becomes a very glib figure to those that have once mastered its meaning.

His sentence-structure is favourable to simplicity, being free from involution and intricacy. The want of concatenation and consecutiveness mars, as has been said, the intelligibility of his rhapsodical Pamphlets' and his French Revolution.' These drawbacks do not occur so much in the Friedrich.

(2.) His subjects are far from abstruse, being narratives and familiar questions of practice. The difficulty of the Sartor Resartus' is due, not so much to the nature of the subject, as to the intentional mystification, and the substitution of allusions and figures for plain statements. If it were stript of its gorgeous imagery and boiled down," the residuum would probably be more intelligible than interesting.

(3.) Occasionally, for the sake of effects of comprehensive strength, he uses abstract expressions; but his diction is upon the whole concrete to a degree rarely found among writers of prose. Even when he uses abstractions, he violates grammar (p. 149) to give them plurals, and thereby treat them as class names; he vivifies some of them further (p. 154) by treating them as personalities. His love of the concrete often appears in his repeating a number of suggestive particulars or circumstances instead of one general desig nation. Thus, in his 'Chartism,' when discussing the discontent of the working classes, he refers to it again and again by mentioning significant symptoms-" Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meetings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations;" or again, "Chartism with its pikes, Swing with his tinder-box." When he has to state his conviction that much misery is caused by poor Irish labourers finding no work in Ireland, and coming to England in search of it, he does so in very picturesque terms :—

"But the thing we had to state here was our inference from that mourn. ful fact of the third Sanspotatoe, coupled with this other well-known fact, that the Irish speak a partially intelligible dialect of English, and their fare across by steam is fourpence sterling! Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns. The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue: the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg."