The Portland daily press., 1881-02-09
Thomas Carlyle.
IN. Y. Post, 4th inst.l


No stranger figure appears in the history of
English literature than that of the old man
who is breathing his last at Chelsea. Holding
literature in a sort of contempt, Carlyle never
theless devoted his energies throughout long
life to literary work. He made himself, by
profession, "a writer of books" and labored in
that profession with astonishing assiduity and
conscientious diligence. Yet he took no pains
to fit his work, in its manner, to the taste of
his time; on the contrary he perversely
adopted cumbrous and distorted style, which
was not natural to him, as if with the purpose
OF compelling public whom he held in dis
dain, to submit to his will in the matter. One
has only to read his Life of Schiller" or even
his later "Life of John Sterling to discover
that the style in which "Sartor Resartus" and
Frederick the Great" are written was as un-
natural to Carlyle as it is distressing to a cul-
tivated ear.
The perversty shown in the matter of his
literary style appears also in his judgments,
which not infrequently seem to have been the
result simply of his determination to think
otherwise than as the world about him thought.
1t was in this spirit that he became the apos-
tie OF force in an age whose glory it is to have
dethroned force in favor of reason and liberty
and law. 1t was in this spirit that he opposed
electoral reform in England when the evils
and absurdities of an outworn system had made
electoral reform not only necessary to good
government, but necessary also to save the
whole English system from ridicule and con-
tempt.
Carlyle has himself told us how he con-
tracted that dyspepsia which may almost be
said to have furnished the inspiration of much
that he wrote. 1t having been intended that
he should be minister of the Scottish kirk, he
shut himself up in his room for the purpose of
discovering whether or not he believed in the
doctrines OF the kirk. There he remained for
weeks in a state of agitation so great that he
declares himself unable to determine whether
or not he ate or slept. He came out of this
retreat" as he says, with a direful persua-
sion that was the miserable owner of da-
bolical arrangement called stomach" He
must be a dull reader of Carlyle who does not
discover that this wretched consciousness of
his stomach remained with him throughout
life and gave direction to much OF his philoso-
ply. He had rejected the Scottish theology
OF his youth and had accepted chronic indi-
gestion instead, and the last stage of that man
was worse than the first as respects gloominess
OF view and tendency to pessimism.
That tendency to pessimism influenced all
his judgments and colored all his works. His
philosophy of human nature resolves itself ia-
to the conviction that faith is dead, and man
is an unworthy creature who needs above all
things to be governed, controlled and made to
behave himself by the direct application of
force.
To say that this philosophy is denial of all
that is fundamental in our modern system of
civilization, which everywhere recognizes the
right of self-government as the foundation of
law, is to tell only half the truth. Carlyle's
philosophy is equally in contradiction Of the
principle that underlies Christianity-the
principle upon which all great religions rest,
indeed that God alone is the Supreme Ruler,