full response-we cannot doubt that the world would have known Jane Welsh Carlyle as a writer. But that career was closed to her, and all connected with literature seemed interwoven with the loneliness and disappointment of her own lot.-IRELAND, ANNIE E., 1891, Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle, p. 307.

Mr. Froude has been severely censured as painting in too dark colors Carlyle's grim, savage humour, his thoughtless cruelty to his wife, and her unhappiness; but the documentary evidence he has presented fully justifies him. Mrs. Carlyle said herself, not long before her death: "I married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him; and I am miserable." Her husband, indeed, appreciated her talents and found pleasure in her society but he never seems to have experienced for her the passion of love as it is commonly understood. The pair had no children, and, as Mr. Froude tells us, when Carlyle was busy his wife rarely so much as saw him save when she would steal into his dressing-room in the morning while he was shaving. . . . Whether Mrs. Carlyle would have been happier with Irving for a husband instead of Carlyle is doubtful. That Irving would have been to her most tender, loving and considerate, his treatment of the woman he married, not from love, but from a sense of duty, compels us to believe; but whether his failure in his career, and the want of that gratification of her pride and satisfaction of her ambition which she got with Carlyle, would not have been as sore a trial to her as Carlyle's harshness is not so sure.-HITCHCOCK, THOMAS, 1891, Unhappy Loves of Men of Genius, pp. 209, 211.

Mrs. Carlyle did not, like her husband, write books, but in her own way she was, to use a favourite expression of his, as "articulate" as her husband. She was too bright and clever a talker not to enjoy practising her gift. Naturally she shone more in conversation when her husband was absent than when he was present. Sometimes, when the company in the little house at Chelsea was miscellaneous, the claims of the hostess to be heard conflicted with those of the host, and there was between her and one or other of their guests a cross-fire of conversation which sadly irritated Carlyle. It was better, at

least if they were at home, when they talked successively rather than simultaneously, but her husband did not always allow her that alternative. She once repeated to me, with quiet glee, a remark dropped by Samuel Rogers at one of his breakfast parties, at which Carlyle and she were among the guests. When Carlyle's thunder had been followed by his wife's sparkle, their sardonic host said in a halfsoliloquy which was intended to be audible: "As soon as that man's tongue stops, that woman's begins."-ESPINASSE, FRANCIS, 1893, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 205.

I do not want to speak disrespectfully of poor Carlyle; but in spirit it is somewhat hard to keep one's hand off him, as we reconstitute those scenes in the gaunt house at Craigenputtock. There is a little detail in one scene which adds a deeper horror. I have said that Mrs. Carlyle had to scrub the floors; and as she scrubbed them, Carlyle would look on smoking, drawing in from tobacco pleasant comfortableness and easy dreams-while his poor drudge panted and sighed over the hard work, which she had never done before. Do you not feel that you would like to break the pipe in his mouth, to shake him off the chair, and pitch him on to the floor, to take a share of the physical burden which his shoulders were so much better able to bear?-O'CONNOR, T. P., 1895, Some Old Love Stories, p. 290.

The most important event in his life took place in 1826, when he married Miss Jane Welsh, a young lady who traced her descent to John Knox, who had some property, who had a genius of her own, and who was also the more determined to marry a man of genius. She had hesitated between Irving and Carlyle, and whatever came of it, there can be no doubt that she was right in preferring the somewhat uncouth and extremely undeveloped tutor who had taught her several things,— whether love in the proper sense was among them or not will always be a moot point. . . . It is certain that Carlylespringing from the lower ranks of society, educated excellently as far as the intellect was concerned, but without attention to such trifles as the habit (which his future wife early remarked in him) of putting bread and butter in his tea, a martyr from very early years to dyspepsia, fostering a

retiring spirit and not too social temper, thoroughly convinced that the times were out of joint and not at all thoroughly convinced that he or any one could set them right, finally possessed of an intensely religious nature which by accident or waywardness had somehow thrown itself out of gear with religion-was not a happy man himself or likely to make any one else happy who lived with him.

But

it is certain also that both in respect to his wife and to those men, famous or not famous, of whom he has left too often unkindly record, his bark was much worse than his bite. And it is further certain that Mrs. Carlyle was no down-trodden drudge, but a woman of brains almost as alert as her husband's and a tongue almost as sharp as his, who had deliberately made her election of the vocation of being "wife to a man of genius," and who received what she had bargained for to the uttermost farthing.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, pp. 233, 235.

ESSAY ON BURNS

1828

It is one of the very best of his essays, and was composed with an evidently peculiar interest, because the outward circumstances of Burns's life, his origin, his early surroundings, his situation as a man of genius born in a farmhouse not many miles distant, among the same people and the same associations as were so familiar to himself, could not fail to make him think often of himself while he was writing about his countryman.FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 1882, Thomas Carlyle; A History of the First Forty Years of his Life, vol. II, p. 25.

Worth all that every one else has ever said about Burns put together.-MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER, 1885, Carlyle: His Works and his Wife, Some Noted Princes, Authors and Statesmen of Our Time, ed. Parton, p. 186.

The essay on Burns is the very voice of Scotland, expressive of all her passionate love and tragic sorrow for her darling son. It has paragraphs of massy gold, capable of being beaten out into volumes, as indeed they have been. Unlike some of Carlyle's essays, it is by no means open to the charge of mysticism, but is distinguished by the soundest good sense.

GARNETT, RICHARD, 1887, Thomas Carlyle (Great Writers), p. 48.

Let no student come to the reading of this little book with the purpose merely of finding certain facts in the life of the poet; for while the facts are there, they are incidental and subsidiary to the revelation of the mind and soul of the poet. To know the mind and soul of the poet,-that should be the aim of the student. Reading thus, Carlyle will be found to be the revealer of

"The light that never was, on sea nor land; The consecration and the Poet's dream." And surely that should redeem the reader from slavery to a mere literary task,a compelled service performed in slavelike fashion. It should, it must, suffuse his heart with the glow of sympathy. In such a frame, he will find Carlyle to be an inspirer, breathing into his soul many a sweet and pure suggestion, many a strong and purposeful sentiment; so helping him, as high literature ever should, to make his own life and action more noble.-WICKES, W. K., 1896, ed. Thomas Carlyle's Essay on Robert Burns, Preface, p. 3.

His first, and perhaps greatest, critical work was upon a brother Scot-Burns. By him Burns received his first sympathetic interpretation.-GEORGE, ANDREW J., 1898, From Chaucer to Arnold, Types of Literary Art, p. 654, note.

SARTOR RESARTUS

1834

The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the German language. This quality in the style, howfamiliarity with German literature, and ever, may be a mere result of a great we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite character. . . . The work before us is a sort of philosophical romance in which the author undertakes to give, in the form of a review of a German treatise on dress, and a notice of the life of the writer, his own opinions upon Matters and Things in General. The hero, Professor Teufelsdröckh, seems to be intended for a portrait of human nature as affected by the moral influences

to which, in the present state of society, a cultivated mind is naturally exposed. . Contains, under a quaint and singular form, a great deal of deep thought, sound principle, and fine writing. It is, we believe, no secret in England or here, that it is the work of a person to whom the public is indebted for a number of articles in the late British Reviews, which have attracted great attention by the singularity of their style, and the richness and depth of their matter. Among these may be mentioned particularly those on "Characteristics" and the "Life of Burns" in the Edinburgh Review, and on "Goethe" in the Foreign Quarterly. . . . We

take pleasure in introducing to the American Public a writer, whose name is yet in a great measure unknown among us, but who is destined, we think, to occupy a large space in the literary world. We have heard it intimated, that Mr. Carlyle has it in contemplation to visit this country, and we can venture to assure him, that, should he carry his intention into effect, he will meet with a cordial welcome.— EVERETT, ALEXANDER H., 1835, Thomas Carlyle, North American Review, vol. 41, pp. 459, 481, 482.

This consists of two intertwisted threads, though both spun off the same distaff, and of the same crimson wool. There is a fragmentary, though, when closely examined, a complete biography of a supposed German professor, and, along with it, portions of a supposed treatise of his on the philosophy of clothes. Of the three books, the first is preparatory, and gives a portrait of the hero and his circumstances. The second is the biographical account of him. The third under the rubric of extracts from his work, presents us with his picture of human life in the nineteenth century. How so unexampled a topic as the philosophy of clothes can be made the vehicle for a philosophy of man, those will see who read the book. But they must read with the faith that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, it is the jest which is a pretence, and that the real purport of the whole is serious, yea, serious as any religion that ever was preached, far more serious than most battles that have ever been fought since Agamemnon declared war against Priam. . . . In this book that strange style appears again before us in its highest oddity. Thunder

peals, flute-music, the laugh of Pan and the nymphs, the clear disdainful whisper of cold stoicism, and the hurly-burly of a country fair, succeed and melt into each other. Again the clamour sinks into quiet, and we hear at last the grave, mild hymn of devotion, sounding from a far sanctuary, though only in faint and dying vibrations. So from high and low, from the sublime to the most merely trivial, fluctuates the feeling of the poet.-STERLING, JOHN, 1839, Carlyle's Works, London and Westminster Review, vol. 33, pp. 52, 53.

His soul is a shrine of the brightest and purest philanthropy, kindled by the live coal of gratitude and devotion to the Author of all things. I should observe that he is not orthodox.-ELIOT, GEORGE, 1841, Letter, Dec. 16; Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, vol. II, p. 474.

We think "Sartor Resartus" the finest of Mr. Carlyle's works in conception, and as a whole. In execution he is always great; and for graphic vigour and quantity of suggestive thought, matchless: but the idea, in this book, of uncovering the world taking off all the clothesthe cloaks and outsides-is admirable. HORNE, RICHARD HENGIST, (ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING?), 1844, A New Spirit of the Age, p. 343.

"Sartor Resartus" appears to me to be at the same time the most profound and the most brilliant glance that has been thrown upon our century, upon its tendencies and its desires.-MONTÉGUT, ÉMILE, 1849, Revue des Deux Mondes, 6th S. vol. 2.

"Ah, Thomas Carlyle, you have much to answer for, in sending adrift upon the fog-banks such raw and inexperienced boys as I was when your mighty genius found me out. Many a day of miserable doubt and night of morbid wretchedness have you caused me. Yet, for all that, I owe you more and love you better than any author of the time. "Sartor Resartus' first fell in my way while I was living in Washington, and I much question if Christopher Columbus was more transported by the discovery of America, than I was in entering the new realm which this book opened to me. Everything was novel, huge, grotesque or sublime: I must have read it twenty times over, until I had it all by heart. It became a sort of touchstone with me. If a man had read 'Sartor,'

and enjoyed it, I was his friend; if not, we were strangers. I was as familiar with the everlasting 'nay,' the center of indifference, and the everlasting 'yea,' as with the sidewalk in front of my house. From Herr Teufelsdröckh I took the Teutonic fever, which came nigh costing me so dear." And happily the number is not few of those who can add, in the words of the same writer, "Years have passed since he lead me forth to the dance of ghosts, and I have learned to read him with a less feverish enthusiasm; but, I believe, with a more genuine appreciation of his rare and extraordinary powers. He did me harm, but he has helped me to far more good. With all his defects, to me he stands first among the men of this generation."-MILBURN, WILLIAM HENRY, 1859, Ten Years of Preacher-Life.

You may have the strongest conviction that you ought to like an author; you may be ashamed to confess that you don't like him; and yet you may feel that you detest him. For myself, I confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I cannot for my life see anything to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle. His style, both of thought and language, is to me insufferably irritating. I tried to read "Sartor Resartus," and could not do it. So if all people who have learned to read English were like me, Mr. Carlyle would have no readers.-BOYD, ANDREW K. H., 1862, Leisure Hours in Town, p. 84.

When Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" first appeared, as a serial in Fraser's Magazine, the publisher would have discontinued it, in despair, but for the letters of earnest appreciation received from two men, one of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson. This was in 1835; and in 1870 the same work, in a cheap popular edition, reached a sale of 40,000 copies.-TAYLOR, Bayard, 1879, Studies in German Literature, p. 395.

A work which, with all its affectations, obscurities (I do not hesitate to add, insincerities), has taken a strong hold on the imaginations of that large section of the public which does not go to the poets for its edification, but prefers the fashioners of "mystical" prose. . . . In "Sartor Resartus," the traces of literary conventionalism were kicked over altogether. The work might be called a wild hotchpotch of German mysticism, Lowland Scotch, broad caricature, and literal auto

biography. In its long-windedness, in the zeal with which the one solitary idea, or "Clothes" theory, was worked to death, it was certainly very German. But with all its defects, or rather perhaps, in consequence of its defects, -it was a work of genius.-BUCHANAN, ROBERT, 1881, Wylie's Life of Carlyle, Contemporary Review, vol. 39, pp. 797, 798.

Out of his discontent, out of his impatience with the hard circumstances which crossed, thwarted, and pressed him, there was growing in his mind "Sartor Resartus. He had thoughts fermenting in him struggling to be uttered. He had something real to say about the world, and man's position in it to which, could it but find fit expression, he knew that attention must be paid. The "Clothes Philosophy," which had perhaps been all which his first sketch contained, gave him the necessary form. His own history, inward and outward, furnished substance; some slight substance being all that was needed to disguise his literal individuality; and in the autumn of the year he set himself down passionately to work. Fast as he could throw his ideas upon paper the material grew upon him. The origin of the book is still traceable in the half fused, tumultuous condition in which the metal was poured into the mould. With all his efforts in calmer times to give it artistic harmony he could never fully succeed. "There are but a few pages in it,' he said to me, "which are rightfully done." It is well perhaps that he did not succeed. The incompleteness of the smelting shows all the more the actual condition of his mind. If defective as a work of art, "Sartor" is for that very reason a revelation of Carlyle's individuality.-FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 1882, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, vol. II, p. 104.

The most stimulating quasi-philosophical book that I ever read is "Sartor Resartus." It came into my hands before I knew much about its author, and it made me greedy for several of his subsequent works, though, after the Carlylese dialect became current among the horde of imitative sciolists, I ceased to enjoy it in its source. I must have imbibed and assimilated all that is best in "Sartor Resartus," for when I took it up anew a year or two ago, I found in it for the most part but the reflection of my