CARLYLE. 161 



CARL VLB* 



A FEELING of comical sadness is likely to come over the 

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

 ing 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 vacany 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 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 proportion 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 insures enduring fame. The con 

 temporary world and Wordsworth 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. 



* Apropos of his &quot; Frederick the Great. &quot; 



139 



