The Press.
London, England, 1856-02-02 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

the house. My mother called again, but the child stood
still, laughing and tapping his hoop, which was in his
hand. He was too far off to hear what she had said, and
too daring to care about the thunder. Another drop of
the heavy rain fell, lead-like, among the roses. She ran
out into the garden, across the lawn, over the gravel walk,
and among the shrubs, where the little fellow, seeing her
coming, had flown, with a merry scream of pleasure, to
hide himself; and soon reappeared, bearing him in her
arms, kissing his laughing cheeks and pressing the little
struggling limbs to her bosom.
Thus burdened, with bare head and flowing hair, she
came running towards the house, the nearest way, over
the grass again, and under the frowning boughs of the
dark cedar tree. I could see it 111 without moving. Then
there was a blind light, and a great shock of sound, and
in the midst of the light I saw my father spring forward,
and I heard his scream above the noise of that terrible
thunder-clap;—then all was dark, and I saw nothing, and
the rolling sound pressed upon my brain like mountains ;
and then my sight came back, and I was standing at the
open door, and the great cedar before me was cleft in two
and smoking ; and under it
I was there in an instant ; yet my father was already
kneeling beneath the black, smouldering boughs, with the
head of his dead wife upon his knee, and his dead child
upon the grass beside him.
To free the father from his chain becomes
henceforth the great object of the daughter's
life. She has a miserly uncle enormously
rich, and she anticipates his death with eager-
ness. She visits him, obtains his favour, and,
as the relation between them is in reality
much slighter than the term uncle implies,
he proposes that she should become his wife.
She considers whether she shall not accept
his proposal, when an end is put fp it by an
accident. He is waylaid and hurt. She ob-
tains his pocket-book, finds a cheque there
for a thousand pounds, which she gets cashed
secretly, and has the money torn from her by
her brother. She is accused of the robbery,
but gets off through the address of a young
barrister who is staying with the magistrate.
A new phase of her life now commences. She
writes, and her works become popular. She
is thrown much into the young barrister's
society. He is rich. She becomes passion-
ately attached to him. He makes her an offer
of his hand, but tells her that his heart is too
dead for love. Now her prospects brighten.
She thinks her father's deliverance is near at

hand. But still darker clouds gather about
her, and the book closes in a tumult of horror,
which we must think quite foreign to the pur-
poses of genuine fiction.

It may be supposed even from this slight
sketch that the character of the heroine is
exceptional, and that her emotions are, as

judged by the ordinary standard of humanity,
exaggerated. At the commencement of the
book, when she hears the words delivered by
her father, " He that loveth," &c., she writes :
They are graven on my heart, and burned into my
brain, and chained like hellhounds to my memory. I have
made them my tempters here, and they will be my accusers
in the great hereafter.
When she sees her miserly uncle :

I could have poisoned but God spares us many
temptations I felt a swelling grief and anger at the
thought that so many times the price of my father's
ransom from daily misery was ready to fall into his lap,
and was yet unreachable because the life stood between
them I knew that at that moment I was a mur•
derer in my heart.

When she is with her uncle (her uncle nomi-
nally), and she thinks of his proposal to her,

My own feelings gathered up into a central loathing,
which alternately scorched and chilled me.

But, with all this violence of sentiment and

style, there are in the book some of the
shrewdest sketches of character we ever met
with. Her father gets a curate to relieve him
from duties which are irksome to him, and
Mr. Philip is one of the sternest of Calvin-
ists :

He was a man with rigid lips and deep black brows, one
who could imperturbably stare at you like a tiger as long
as sou continued speaking, and then answer with a mono-
syllable. At the first moment, and ever afterwards, he
seemed to tne like a limb of the dark old cedar, with light-
ning glaring out of its knotty eyes.
He had a fine forehead, and was clever. His sermons
soon made a commotion in our parish : the good people
had been used to receive manna and the dews of Hermon
from my father's lips ; they got hailstones and fire from his
curate's. Mankind, in his conception, were put upon the
earth and yoked together expressly to drag certain tons of
Duty up to Paradise, and the gospel was the cart-whip to
stir them up with when they got tired or lazy
Mr. I'hillip's faith in the whip, however, was sublime in its
intensity. The only pity was, that it never seemed heavy
enough for him. He preached the glad tidings of damna-
tion with the zest of a vampire. He caught the sinner in
the clutch of his strong hand, and Hogged him till he fell;
Iyheit the
_terrified soul lay sickening fur some sign of

SATUhDAY,

pity, the same hand unsparingly struck down the up.
raised agonised head and the beseeching arms, the blows
coming in measured merciless succession, till they fell
only on broken bones.

The description of his room is in the sauce
spirit :
He had his meals in his own room, where he also wrote
his sermons. He bad put on the walls an old engraving
of the " Last Judgment," another of the " Expulsion from
Paradise," a third of ," Peter's Crucifixion," a fourth of
the " Rich Man in Torments," horribly putting out his
tongue. His inkstand was a little bronze Satan, hall prostrate,
whom his pen transfixed between the shoulders every time
he dipped it in the fluid. He had a statuette of Sampson
tearing a lion in two, and another of Prometheus bound—
the only peace of paganism in his possession, except, per-
haps, his own Christianity.

In quite an opposite manner is the account of
her rich uncle's farm :

She took me through a stone passage, up an uncarpeted
staircase, into a good-sized bedroom, where two or three
knobs of coal were playing at glowworms in a grate about
the size of a mousetrap.

It was a largo grazing farm of waving land, with a broad
stream running through one of its hollows, and the owner's
character was written in its very hedge-rows. Everything
that would pay for growing was fair and flourishing; every-
thing without a prcfit among its elements was pinched and
neglected. The fences were all sound at the bottom, but no
labour was lost in pruning them, for the cattle liked the shade,
and the grans grew rank under it; the land was thoroughly
drained, but there were holes and puddles in the footpaths,
the outhouses were well roofed, and their woodwork well
painted, but not a penny was spent in cleaning their old
brick walls.
The man himself is most amusingly described.
Had Dickens and Miss Austen laid their
heads together, and corrected each other's con-
ceptions, they could not have produced a more
natural character than that of old Mr. Bannis-
ter. Probably Tennyson suggested the
passage in which Lilian describes her walk
after listening to the miser's suit :

T sprang up with tears of anger in my eyes. Was tho
world merry because I had another grief to hear ? I
walked with irritable feet through the copse among the
underwood and nettles. The brake bent sarcastically and
pointed at me with his leaves. The foxglove held up her
head in scorn ; the fungus puffed his cheeks at me even
the white stellaria stretched her white neck between the
brambles and stared contempt. What had I done that
they should treat me so ?
Some of the sentiments are acute, as fur ex-
ample the following :

There is a force of gravitation in the thoughts of men
which seems denied to their affections. In the great
systems which unite us into powerful societies we are held
together, for the most part, by some coincidence of intel-
lectual knowledge. There is no greatness, and little power,
in those small homely groups whose impulse of attraction
is only the oneness of the heart's desires. And yet our
knowledge is finite always, while our loves may be as
infinite as God.

The first view of the Alps is introduced in a
burst of descriptive power :

Deep down, seen as from the eagle's nest, the broad
Bernese plains spread out their shades and colours, and
beyond them in a vast chain of peaks and precipices was
the great outline of the mountains. Wild, lawles forms,
flinging their savage masses iu reckless strength out of the
earth ; shapes of force, and daring, and defiance, swung
headlong and uncontrollable from side to side ; upstretching
cones, vast plunging chasms, and jagged summits; they
stood there like Will and Passion made manifest in stone.
Tho conclusion of this singular story is
shocking, though perhaps, considering the
peculiar nature of Lilian and the violence
of her emotions, it is the most appropriate
that could be imagined. The book no
doubt proceeds from a female pen. It resem
bles in many points the fictions of Miss Bronto
and her sisters, and reveals the passion and
energy which may lurk under the soft exterior
of a woman's form.

If we suppose the story to be the work of an
artist, the leading character to be imagined,
and her whole career from first to last to be
shaped by design, wo must regard it as a won-
derful work of creative genius. But we rather
surmise that it is, in great part at least, the
reflection of the writer's own temperament,
and that another fiction from the same hand
would be in a similar manner. The main blots
are the passages which fasten on Lilian
a degree of shameful culpability inconsistent
with her general character. All that relates
to the thousand-pound cheque is improbable
in itself, and unnecessarily degrading. But,
notwithstanding its faults of exaggeration, the
tale is so instinct with the nerve and eloquence
of passion, as to possess a kind of fascinating
effect, which compels the reader who once
takes it up to read on as under the influence of
a spell, and while reading to involuntarily
pity, sympathise, and admire.

JANUARY 2, 1856•

Passages Selected from the Writings of Thomas
Carlyle. With a Biographical Memoir by
Thomas Ballantyne. London : Chapman
and Hall.

WHEN an author has arrived at that popularity
which justifies his " beauties " being selected,
it augurs success of a particular kind. To
books, indeed, of this sort, made of fragments
from a writer's extended pieces, we have a
great objection. They are only patchwork,
without a pattern. We may, however, seize
this opportunity for commenting on the
author whose shreds are before us in this
volume.

Mr. Carlyle, whatever may become of him
afterwards, is now one of the literary cele-
brities of England. His works are widely
read, and he finds many to extol his fame.
On the subject of no personal reputation
within our experience (with the exception of
the later pictures of Turner) have we seen
such violent contrasts of opinion between
disputants as in the claims of Mr. Car-
lyle to being honoured as a great genius.
Panegyrics and invectives have been equally
intense in the case of this affected writer. We
have ourselves been present when professed
philosophers reduced themselves to the
common level while debating the pros and
eons. of Mr. Carlyle. The last subject that we
should like to moot for a friendly critical in-
terchange of thought over the convivial board
is the question of Mr. Carlyle's merits. Some
rationalists of a low school have supposed
that " fanaticism " and "prejudice" bud their
roots in religion. Any one conversant with
human nature must know that the violence of
sympathies, properly called fanaticism, is a
morbid action of the mind, to which it is
prone upon all subjects when the feelings are
engaged. Colloquies on Carlyle exhibit that
truth plainly to any calm auditor.

For our own part, we think that there is
nothing extraordinarily difficult in criticising
Mr. Carlyle. He is a degenerate Scotch
Puritan, Germanised after Jean Paul Richter.
In psychology Scotch, he is by education of
Berlin and Leipsie Fair. He had strong
moral qualities, perseverance, industry, and
self-reliance. He worked hard at German
literature in days when its exponents in this
country were a clique of critical hierophants,
secluded from the public eye. His writings
►lid not depend entirely on his own words ; his
grotesque mannerisms had the effect of
novelty, and were accepted as representative
of German thinkers; and the strong appeals to
feeling in all his writings were a relief after the
sparkling and shallow " criticism " of Lord
Jeffrey. Benthamism was then taken as the
profoundest exposition of modern philosophy.
It seems now like recalling a dream to think
of the idolatry once paid to Jeremy Bentham.
Reviews and newspapers were devoted to the
honour of "the sage of Queen's-square." Sir
Samuel Romilly, Lord Brougham, and other
men of no small mark, paid homage to that
amiable but strangely conceited recluse. The
law has been largely altered since his days,
but only in a few instances (and those of
doubtful utility) has his advice been deferen-
tially followed. Some of his multitudinous
suggestions are worthy of being studied ; but
"Benthamism " as a creed has long since
passed away. And, let Carlylists rave as they
please, why should not Carlylism also?

" The Life of Schiller" was not Mr. Carlyle's
first real introduction to the English pt.nlic.
We date it ourselves from his essay on
"Characteristics," where his whole " No-sys-
tem" may be found. Put into plain homely
English, he meant to say, that literature, and
the morals of life, should always aim at in-
wardness. In ethics and religion we met with
his precursors long ago in the propounders of
Quietism, under its various forms. " The light
within" has been touchingly written of by
Pension, and strangely disserted on by George
Fox. Classical readers do not require being
reminded, also, of the spiritus intus, which runs
through so many of the heathen systems of
reli;ion. Mr. Carlyle's text in all his "earnest"
and uncouth literature has been that " inward-
tae a." From first to last it is the cue on
which ha has written, and upon which he
strove to bo accepted as a prophet.

THE PRESS.

Whenever we hear Mr. Carlyle's name men-
tioned, we think of the dictum upon his merits,
or demerits, attributed to a distinguished
leader of fashion. " Mr. Carlyle," said
the fair critic, "always seems like a clever
" mad Quaker, who wishes to pass for a pro-
" phet." Lady mot pleasantly de-
scribed the convulsive, spasmodic strain which
runs through all Mr. Carlyle's writings. He
is fierce in attack ; he rails, as George Fox
and others, against all the authorities ; he
gives the whole world a great scolding, but—
he does nothing perfect. He writes no drama
appealing to the universal heart, and fit for
translation into the tongues ; he invents no
characters, no new types of unrecognised
human nature ; he produces no beautiful
poetry ; in oratory, his gasping, stuttering
words, and agonised throes, imploring the
obstetric aid of scientific rhetoric, would render
him impotent in the Senate. What would
Mirabeau, Danton, or the Girondins have done
with his choking, ineffectual speech ? What
would he have been at any time before those
strong natures, with harmonious utterances,
who have ruled the haughty Senate of England
without the help of Mr. Macaulay's " model
Titan" ?

We can speak with some degree of authority
on this point, for we took the trouble to
attend a whole course of Mr. Carlyle's lec-
tures on " Hero-Worship." The impression
left on our minds was that he was a counter-
feit genius, and that " he had the contortions
" of the Sybil, with little of the inspiration."
He left upon us the impression that he was a
man of secondary power, struggling with the
sublimities of a lofty theme. He stood on
tiptoe, and tried to prophecy, but he could
not do so; and he revealed in the flesh his
gaspings to the audience. Ho tried to talk
about the whole problem of life, its intuitions,
mysteries, and aspirations ; and his words
tumbled out like those of a half-educated pupil
in neology attempting to repeat backwards a
lecture from the late Mr. Coleridge. We
often heard his admirers compare him to a
rhetorical Rembrandt, but the compliment is
too flattering , for Mr. Carlyle scouts all
artistic analogies. He hates critics ; he
makes a wry face when we talk of " style."
So did George Fox, and Whitfield, and Ed-
ward Irving; and what those preachers were
to true devotion, the same is Mr. Carlyle to
genuine thinking on genius, poetry, and that
" oversoul " under which he reels. Indeed,
we cannot but think that Whitfield is a
singularly close type of Mr. Carlyle. Crowds
were astonished and much moved by his pas-
sionate language ; his theme was sublime,
his words intense, his manner rivetting, and
he spoke to an age of formalists tranced in
stupifying custom. At first he produced a
sensation by his eccentricity and his enthu-
siasm, by his apostrophes to his audiences,
and by his aspirations after an indefinite per-
fectibility. So also with Mr. Carlyle. In
1820 logic was enthroned with great pomp at
Oxford by Dr. Whateley and his contempora-
ries. Political economy, and churlatanic
schemes of Parliamentary Reform, were be-
lieved in by " Whigs, and something more ;"
and Bentham and the Mills (senior and
junior) were believed in by the Radicals at
large. Those were what has been wittily
called " the days of the Screw anti Lever
Magazine, edited by Young First Principles,
the cleverest man of the age, all whose contri-
butors were under two-and-twenty years of age ;
while Old First Principles was perpetually
canvassing for places in the lobbies of the
Lords and Commons."

In such times Mr. Carlyle had great oppor-
tunities. He saw, as hundreds of others did,
that the Liberals had taken to a Holloway's-
ointment school of moral philosophy. He
divined that they would get sick of it, and while
they were suffering from their mental nausea
he offered them his own new Germanised
invention of " Carlyle's Earnest Grotesque
Inwardness Elixir," a spiritual compound,
warranted to cure all psychological maladies.
He vilified all other practitioners in philo-
sophy, and was not sparing of hard words.
He got up a cant of calling orators " parlia-
mentary logic•mills." and another favorite
phrase of his was " half-men." Against sncli

113

he cried "no quarter," though in some things
he was not even a half-man himself.

For there are two terrible charges which
posterity with deadly effect will urge against
Mr. Carlyle—he has neither a system nor a
style. He upsets the English tongue into
chaotic sentences, and produces effects
singular, not original ; in running after the
great, he tumbles into the grotesque—for
there is always bathos in the Carlylian sub-
lime. Mr Carlyle has no fine appreciation of
moral harmony. Strangeness he confounds
with novelty ; vehement words he mistakes for
fiery eloquence. His style is a convulsive pro-
test against sense and grammar, and it makes
us think that Edward Irvin g had been his tutor.
We recollect such sentences of poor Irving
as " abolishing pulses," " evacuating the uses
" of a law," " the quietus of torment," " erect-
" ing the platform of our being upon the new
" condition of probation "—sentences of as
good Babel as if they were in the Carlylese
language. We should like to see some parallel
passages from Mr. Irving printed side by side
with " beauties " from Mr. Carlyle.
A man's mind may be a quarry of materials
for art, and yet he may never become an
artist ; he may have voice, appearance, words,
and argument, and yet never be an orator.
So with an author like Mr. Carlyle, he may
have topic, knowledge, purpose, and popular
effect, and yet he may never become a classic.
We believe that Mr. Carlyle's vogue is destined
to pass away. There is no calm catholic
beauty in his writing, no soothing utterances
of serenely wholesome philosophy. His lan-
guage, like his thinking, is, as the actors say of
ill-written dialogue, " breaky " ; its irregular
fitful jets of thought flare up in the reader's
face with the coarse flashy effects of gaslight
on a windy night. His mannerism, iu short,
is just as fatally hard and artificial as that of
the class of writers against whom ho has

His tautology, also, is enormous. We do
not think that any one of his contemporaries
has so often repeated himself. An author
appealing to wide sympathies ought to be
various.

Horatio—Dorax—Falsldf—still was Quin,
wrote Churchill in the " Rosciad ;" and
Mr. Carlyle is unable to discuss any sub-
ject without perpetually elbowing his reader,
and bawling into his ears " I am Thomas Car-
" lyle." He ever hectors the reader, and rails
at his tastes and habits, and intimates
that Thomas Carlyle thinks him " a re-
" spectable goose ;" and in the Carlylese tongue
" respectable " means something terrible. It
always brings down the stereotyped story of
Thurtell's trial, and the man who was
" respectable, for he kept a gig ;" and then Mr.
Carlyle mounts upon " gigmanity," ties the
reader to his Pegasus, and soars into " cloud-
land."

We do not think, therefore, that Mr. Carlyle
will last. Sciolists in philosophy, strong-
minded women who are not yet up "in Ger-
man, and pretentious undisciplined young
men, are his chief admirers. We do not
believe that he has any genuine inspiration,
and he certainly has not attained to any pm-
found moral creed. Stripped of his oddity,
his Jean-Paulism, and his infinite number of
harsh, rough words, what is left ? We suspect
that he is little better after all than a clever
criticaster, disguised under travestied grammar
and burlesqued rhetoric. His " Life of Ster-
ling " shows that his obscure esotericism
completely decei►ed the simple dupes who
beheld in him a profound Christian sage, with
some novel conceptions on Christianity. Mr.
Carlyle is little more than a perplexed
Pantheist, half stunned with his own whirl-
wind of cacophony. The " Revelation " of
Richter is all that he has to urge, and whoever
follows his iynus fatuus will soon be lost in a
mirage of metaphorical phrasemaking, which
persons unskilled in words would mistake for
symbolism of an unapprehended inspiration
which the prophet of Chelsea has yet to
reveal. The worst effect of his example in
scorning all rules of language is, that young
persons imitate Mr. Carlyle with perfect suc-
cess, and without the least difficulty. There
is a great brood of writers abroad in the land
wildly defiant of grammar in their slipshod
sentences, owl the parentlige of all the-.c

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