28 THE ROYAL SOC I El Y OF CANADA 



about whom succeeding generations would most desire to be informed. 

 That judgment about him has not been confirmed. Those who can 

 still recall the great days of his supremacy must be impressed by the 

 evidence such a case affords that the fame of the essayist, the critic, 

 the prophet, is written in sand. Curiously enough it was Froude 

 himself who gave the earliest shock to his own idol. Perhaps the 

 most severe criticism upon the biographer's action in publishing 

 Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle is to be found in that accumulation 

 of gossip, always unpleasant, and sometimes disgusting, which but 

 for him busybodies would have had no excuse for obtruding upon us. 

 Into that matter I have not entered, for it is not with any man's 

 domestic infelicities that posterity is concerned. What I have en- 

 deavoured to show is the lasting merit, once no doubt unduly exalted, 

 now no less unduly depreciated, which belongs to a teacher of rare 

 power, with a genius for literary and poetical effectiveness almost 

 unique in its kind, often enforcing one-sided truths as if they were 

 complete, often ignoring other truths that must be sought in the 

 supplementary work of other men, with the defects of his qualities — 

 great just because the qualities were great. The spirit of the prophet 

 was not always subject to the prophet, and the dazzling gift of speech 

 not seldom dazzled the speechmaker himself. But what a spirit and 

 what a gift belonged to him we cannot afford to forget, nor has the 

 slowly formed estimate by our fathers been at all improved upon in the 

 rapid, clear-cut decisions of our contemporary press. 



I cannot close without a few words about one aspect of Carlyle 

 which is too much overlooked, and which we in Canada have the best 

 possible reason to remember. It is often assumed that he had no 

 insight into the political future of Great Britain, and that he was unable 

 to deal with constructive problems of statesmanship. How does this 

 condemnation consort with what we know of his references to Canada ? 

 Sixty years ago it was the current doctrine in many quarters that a 

 "colony" was a kind of white elephant which the imperial household 

 would be far better without, that it cost far more than it was worth, 

 that in the end such dominions as our own were sure to break away, 

 and that whether Canada drifted under the control of the United 

 States or set up an independent republic for herself the mother 

 country would gain rather than lose by the change. Since our experi- 

 ence of the Great War he would be a bold man who would speak like 

 this again. But is there a Canadian whose pulse is not quickened 

 and whose blood is not stirred as he turns even yet to Carlyle's pas- 

 sages of withering scorn towards those who would have acquiesced 

 in such a breach within the British household ? At the time he wrote 

 he seemed to be arguing against what is called "the logic of events," 



