88 CARLYLE. 



CARLYLE* 



A FEELING of comical sadness is likely to come over 

 the mind of any middle-aged man who sets himself to 

 recollecting the names of different authors that have been 

 famous, and the number of contemporary immortalities whose 

 end he has seen since coming to manhood. Many a light, 

 hailed by too careless observers as a fixed star, has proved 

 to be only a short-lived lantern at the tail of a newspaper 

 kite. That literary heaven which our youth saw dotted thick 

 with rival glories, we find now to have been a stage-sky 

 merely, artificially enkindled from behind; and the cynical 

 daylight which is sure to follow all theatrical enthusiasms 

 shows us ragged holes where once were luminaries, sheer 

 vacancy instead of lustre. Our earthly reputations, says a 

 great poet, are the colour of grass, and the same sun that 

 makes the green bleaches it out again. But next morning is 

 not the time to criticise the scene-painter s firmament, nor is 

 it quite fair to examine coldly a part of some general illusion 

 in the absence of that sympathetic enthusiasm, that self- 

 surrender of the fancy, which made it what it was. It would 

 not be safe for all neglected authors to comfort themselves in 

 Wordsworth s fashion, inferring genius in an inverse propor 

 tion to public favour, and a high and solitary merit from the 

 world s indifference. On the contrary, it would be more 

 just to argue from popularity a certain amount of real value, 

 though it may not be of that permanent quality which in 

 sures enduring fame. The contemporary world and Words 

 worth were both half right. He undoubtedly owned and 

 worked the richest vein of his period; but he offered to his 

 contemporaries a heap of gold-bearing quartz where the baser 

 mineral made the greater show, and the person must do his 

 own crushing and smelting, with no guaranty but the bare 

 word of the miner. It was not enough that certain bolder 

 adventurers should now and then show a nugget in proof of 

 the success of their venture. The gold of the poet must be 

 refined, moulded, stamped with the image and superscription 

 of his time, but with a beauty of design and finish that are of 

 no time. The work must surpass the material. Wordsworth 



* Apropos of his Frederick the Great. 



