CARLYLE. 103 



or an interior, a single figure or a wild mob of men, whatever 

 may be snatched by the eye in that instant of intense illu 

 mination, is minutely photographed upon the memory. 

 Every tree and stone, almost every blade of grass ; every 

 article of furniture in a room ; the attitude or expression, 

 nay, the very buttons and shoe-ties of a principal figure ; 

 the gestures of momentary passion in a wild throng, - 

 everything leaps into vision under that sudden glare with a 

 painful distinctness that leaves the retina quivering. The 

 intervals are absolute darkness. Mr. Carlyle makes us 

 acquainted with the isolated spot where we happen to be 

 when the flash comes, as if by actual eyesight, but there is 

 no possibility of a comprehensive view. No other writer 

 compares with him for vividness. He is himself a witness, 

 and makes us witnesses of whatever he describes. This 

 is genius beyond a question, and of a very rare quality, 

 but it is not history. He has not the cold-blooded impar 

 tiality of the historian ; and while he entertains us, moves 

 us to tears or laughter, makes us the unconscious captives of 

 his ever-changeful mood, we find that he has taught us com 

 paratively little. His imagination is so powerful that it makes 

 him the contemporary of his characters, and thus his history 

 seems to be the memoirs of a cynical humorist, with hearty 

 likes and dislikes, with something of acridity in his par 

 tialities whether for or against, more keenly sensitive to the 

 grotesque than the simply natural, and who enters in his 

 diary, even of what comes within the range of his own 

 observation, only so much as amuses his fancy, is congenial 

 with his humour, or feeds his prejudice. Mr. Carlyle s 

 method is accordingly altogether pictorial, his hasty temper 

 making narrative wearisome to him. In his Friedrich, for 

 example, we get very little notion of the civil administration 

 of Prussia ; and when he comes, in the last volume, to his 

 hero s dealings with civil reforms, he confesses candidly that 

 it would tire him too much to tell us about it, even if he 

 knew anything at all satisfactory himself. 



Mr. Carlyle s historical compositions are wonderful prose 

 poems, full of picture, incident, humour, and character, where 

 we grow familiar with his conception of certain leading per 

 sonages, and even of subordinate ones, if they are necessary 

 to the scene, so that they come out living upon the stage from 

 the dreary limbo of names ; but this is no more history than 



