The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1899-05-06

claimed by them through q still larger
variety OF the me instruments. Every
cock that crowed near their house was
clarion out of time, and the demon
fowls were euuaied by dogs OF which
elch hadsto their ears the barking power
OF CerDerus
1t does not seem IN have been
the stress of circumstance, either,
which filled Carlyle with sorrow and re-
pinipg, but these qualities were in the
man himself, and we are quite ready to
agree with MIR. Copeland, when he says:
Yet what / am disposed to contend is
that though Aladdin's lamp had lighted
him TO u success even earlier than
Sheridan's or kipling's, his books and
letters would still from time to time have
sounded the whole gamut of jeremiah
1t was In his Scotch blood that thus they
should, lin his Puritan spirit and his
Puritancal digestion. In short, Carlyle's
melancholy was from temperament.-a
spiritual habitude to which he was des-
tined and born.
Here is what Carlyle writes In March.
1922. cart is long and life is short; and
of the threescore and ten years allotted to
the liver GU how small portion is spent
in anything but vanity and vice, II not
N wretchedness and worse than unproflt-
able struggling with the adamantine law
of fate l am wac when l think of all
this, but it cannot be helped"
And In 1866 he writes to Emerson from
Annandale: ~. live in total solitude,
sauntering moodily in these thin and
check sred woods, (life to him was also
thin and cheokered. } galloping about.
once daily, by old lanes and roads, often
est latteIly on the wide expanse of Solway
shore, when the tide is out; where l see
bright, busy cottages afar of, houses over
even in Cumberland, and the benutitulest
amphitheatre of the Eternal Hills,-but
meet no living creature; and have end
less thoughts as loving and as sad and as
sombre as / like"
Again Mr.. Copeland writes of Carlyle:
| He could and did suck melancholy from
his owu successful lectures. from his own
books and the books of others, from the
state of the nation and the state Of his
| own health, from society, from solitude.
Crapenputtock, high on the moors be.
| tween Dunn frieshire and Galloway, and
| sixteen miles from the towD of Dumfries,
| has always seemed to me the right scenic
| background for Carlyle. The stone farm
| house surrounded by "a few acres of land
reclaimed from peat bog, stands in the
midst OF bleak hills, seven hundred feet
above the level of the sea. This is the
| right scenery for Carlyle, and many OF
| his letters carry with them n feeling Of
the north, November and the moors. Hac
Froude left any gaps in his biography
| they mi hit be bridged with signs.
| And yet the editor.of these letters reJoicei
the fact that Carlyle had humor, anC
that he was of too vigorous and too homes
a mind not to discuss with comparative
calmness many subjects that interested
him. 1.-The famous rat was not always
grawing ut the pit of his stomach. '
Neither does no forget the mother, wife
family and friends who figure so engross-
ingly in his correspondence. Carlyle
loved them ALL his mother first and best
his wife with disquiet and in varying
moods; his brothers and sisters with a
| fatherly care and consideration for theil
welfare. Emerson and Sterling Were
very dear to him. Love me little, =
he writes to Emerson. hut Carlyle hac
| no self-control. "Single- ant
singl hearted, true as the very truth, IL
the words of his mouth, he utters tn.
meditations of his heart Gifted will
eloqueuce, with humor, with pathos, will
eyes that see everything and memory
that loses nothing, with an energy o.
speech that is clearly superhuman. Car
lyle uses his amazing literary vehicle al
an Arabian magic carpet to transport hin
to his correspondent The letter is th'
writer; the word is the man.