CARLYLE. Ill 



history. Mr. Carlyle s passion for truth is intense, as befits 

 his temper, but it is that of a lover for his mistress. He 

 would have her all to himself, and has a lover s conviction 

 that no one is able, or even fit, to appreciate her but himself. 

 He does well to despise the tittle-tattle of vulgar minds, but 

 surely should not ignore all testimony on the other side. 

 For ourselves, we think it not unimportant that Goethe s 

 friend Knebel, a man not incapable of admiration, and who 

 had served a dozen years or so as an officer of Friedrich s 

 guard, should have bluntly called him the tyrant. 



Mr. Carlyle s history traces the family of his hero down 

 from its beginnings in the picturesque chiaro-scuro of the 

 Middle Ages. It was an able and above all a canny house, 

 a Scotch version of the word able, which implies thrift and 

 an eye to the main chance, the said main chance or chief 

 end of man being altogether of this world. Friedrich, in 

 heriting this family faculty in full measure, was driven, partly 

 by ambition, partly by necessity, to apply it to war. He did 

 so. with the success to be expected where a man of many 

 expedients has the good luck to be opposed by men with 

 few. He adds another to the many proofs that it is possible 

 to be a great general without a spark of that divine fire which 

 we call genius, and that good fortune in war results from the 

 same prompt talent and unbending temper which lead to the 

 same result in the peaceful professions. Friedrich had cer 

 tainly more of the temperament of genius than Marlborough 

 or Wellington ; but not to go beyond modern instances, he 

 does not impress us with the massive breadth of Napoleon, 

 nor attract us with the climbing ardour of Turenne. To 

 compare him with Alexander or Caesar were absurd. The 

 kingship that was in him, and which won Mr. Carlyle to be 

 his biographer, is that of will merely, of rapid and relentless 

 command. For organisation he had a masterly talent ; but 

 he could not apply it to the arts of peace, both because he 

 wanted experience and because the rash decision of the 

 battle-field will not serve in matters which are governed by 

 natural laws of growth. He seems, indeed, to have had a 

 coarse, soldier s contempt for all civil distinction, altogether 

 unworthy of a wise king, or even of a prudent one. He con 

 fers the title of Hofrath on the husband of a woman with 

 whom his General Walrave is living in what Mr. Carlyle 

 justly calls i brutish polygamy/ and this at Walrave s request, 



