100 CARLYLE* 



getting themselves under a good driver who shall not spare 

 the lash. And yet, unhappily for us, these drivers are provi 

 dential births not to be contrived by any cunning of ours, 

 and Friedrich II. is hitherto the last of them. Meanwhile 

 the world s wheels have got fairly stalled in mire and other 

 matter of every vilest consistency and most disgustful smell. 

 What are we to do ? Mr. Carlyle will not let us make a lever 

 with a rail from the next fence, or call in the neighbours. 

 That would be too commonplace and cowardly, too anar 

 chical. No; he would have us sit down beside him in the 

 slough, and shout lustily for Hercules. If that indispensable 

 demigod will not or cannot come, we can find a useful and 

 instructive solace, during the intervals of shouting, in a hearty 

 abuse of human nature, which, at the long last, is always to 

 blame. 



Since Sartor Resartus Mr. Carlyle has done little but 

 repeat himself with increasing emphasis and heightened 

 shrillness. Warning has steadily heated toward denunciation, 

 and remonstrance soured toward scolding. The image of 

 the Tartar prayer-mill, which he borrowed from Richter and 

 turned to such humorous purpose, might be applied to him 

 self. The same phrase comes round and round, only the 

 machine, being a little crankier, rattles more, and the per 

 former is called on for a more visible exertion. If there be 

 not something very like cant in Mr. Carlyle s later writings, 

 then cant is not the repetition of a creed after it has become 

 a phrase by the cooling of that white-hot conviction which 

 once made it both the light and warmth of the soul. We do 

 not mean intentional and deliberate cant, but neither is that 

 which Mr. Carlyle denounces so energetically in his fellow- 

 men of that conscious kind. We do not mean to blame him 

 for it, but mention it rather as an interesting phenomenon 

 of human nature. The stock of ideas which mankind has 

 to work with is very limited, like the alphabet, and can at 

 best have an air of freshness given it by new arrangements 

 and combinations, or by application to new times and cir 

 cumstances. Montaigne is but Ecclesiastes writing in the 

 sixteenth century, Voltaire but Lucian in the eighteenth. 

 Yet both are original, and so certainly is Mr. Carlyle, whose 

 borrowing is mainly from his own former works. But he 

 does this so often and so openly that we may at least be 

 sure that he ceased growing a number of years ago, and is a 

 remarkable example of arrested development. 



