The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1880-12-18
Mr.. Carlyle Impeaohed.

The worst is that Mr.. Carlyle usually
produces his effects ct the expense of
truth. I do not mean to charge him
with misutating facts. He is no doubt
as careful about correctness, particularly
in costume, as modern stage manager.
but in greater matters, particularly in
the greatest of all, in his estimates of
great events and characters, he seems to
me entirely astray. ] regard him as the
principal representative of that false
tendency in history which Macaulay
made fashionable, the tendency to sub
stitute q literary for political estimate
He makes no secret of this tencency, but
everywhere avows it as if he were intro
ducing reform and not new abuse.
And yet, as / have said, this literary
estimate positively turns history upside
down. It teaches us to admire in the
past whatever We most disapproye in
the present - bloody catastrophes.
desperate policies, revolutions.
Nothing can exceed the simplicity
with which Mr.. Carlyle avows that he
takes no interest in any wise, successful
statesman who has brought happiness to
his country, and that he feels no admi-
ration for such character. In his
Essay on Mirabeau" he ridicules the
English public for continuing to repeat
the names of Pitt and Fox when heroes
like the leaders of the French Reyoln-
ton were soliciting their homage. OF
these leaders he selects three, Mirabeau.
Danton and Nopoleon, whom he is pre-
pared to maintaion to be characters of an
altogether higher order than Pitt and
Fox. Now, on what ground? Evidently
because of the terrible events in which
were mixed up. Mr.. Carlyle means to
say that stormy scenes in the Tennis
Court or in the Paris streets. September
massacres, battles of Austerlitz. excite
his imagination, while Regency of de-
bates and the like put him to sleep. So
feels, no doubt, the literary man in
search of subject. It is little to say
that the historian judges differently. He
reyerses the Judgment. To him the
enormous disquief OF France is the
strongest presumptive evidence against
the revolutionary statesmen, and the
comparative tranquility of England the
best proof of the merit of Pitt and Fox,
These general observations upon Mr..
Carlyle as q historian have been in
tended to lead to some remarks on his
famous achievement, the rehabilitation
of Cromwell. We know what was the
old constitutional view of the great re-
bellion; on one side of politics there
was, of course, total disapproval. on the
other side vindication and admiration.
but most carefully qualified. Hallam.
the Wing, qualities his appreciation of
Pym and Hampden so far as to hint that
even at the beginning of the civil war
their case was already a bad one. As for
the military party, which in the course
of 164S became predominant with Crom-
well at its head, he condemns them alto
gether, and his estimate of Cromwell is
singularly severe, though he does JUS
tice to his ability. Hallam may be
taken to represent the purely political
view. In Macaulay the tone taken is q
degree more literary. He avoids, appar-
emily with intention, giving any deliber-
ate estimate of Cromwell, but is always
warmer and more eloquent than Hallam
in speaking of his achievements. Now
comes Mr.. Carlyle with the purely
literary view. He tells us that
he has sincerely tried to admire
the Pyms and the Hampdens, but at the
bottom ''he has found that it would not
do OF course not; we are quite pre-
pared to hear that Cromwell seems to
MN rs much superior TO Fym ana
Hampden as Mirabeau, Danton, and
Napoleon to Pitt and Fox. For he is
thinking of the subject purely as liter
ary man, and he sees that from literary
point of view there can be no comparison
between the hero of Naseby and Dunbar
and two civilians, even though those two
| civilians did set on foot civil war. Ac-
cordingly he throws aside entirely the
received opinion, and sets up the mill
tary party, rejected before by Wings and
Tories alike, for our admiration. In the
midst of this military party, like Charlie
magne among his peers or Napoleon
| among his Marshals, stands Cromwell,
set high above all the statesmen of the
rebellion, and indeed high above all En-
glish statesmen, as genius of the same
order in politics as Shakespeare in liter
ature.--t Prof. Seeley, in Macmillan s
Magazine