1 70 CARLYLE. 



which the figures of such sons of earth as Mirabeau and 

 Danton loom gigantic and terrible as in the glare of an 

 eruption, their shadows swaying far and wide, grotesquely 

 awful. But all is painted by eruption-flashes in violent 

 light and shade. There are no half-tints, no gradations, 

 and we find it impossible to account for the continu 

 ance in power of less Titanic actors in the tragedy like 

 Robespierre, on any theory, whether of human nature or of 

 individual character, supplied by Mr. Carlyle. Of his suc 

 cess, however, in accomplishing what he aimed at, which 

 was to haunt the mind with memories of a horrible 

 political nightmare, there can be no doubt. 



Goethe says, apparently thinking of Richter, &quot; the 

 worthy Germans have persuaded themselves that the 

 essence of true humour is formlessness.&quot; Heine had not 

 yet shown that a German might combine the most airy 

 humour with a sense of form as delicate as Goethe s own, 

 and that there was no need to borrow the bow of 

 Philoctetes for all kinds of game. Mr. Carlyle s own 

 tendency was toward the lawless, and the attraction of 

 Jean Paul made it an overmastering one. Goethe, we 

 think, might have gone farther, and affirmed that nothing 

 but the highest artistic sense can prevent humour from 

 degenerating into the grotesque, and thence downwards to 

 utter anarchy. Rabelais is a striking example of it. The 

 moral purpose of his book cannot give it that unity which 

 the instinct and forethought of art only can bring forth. 

 Perhaps we owe the masterpiece of humorous literature to 

 the fact that Cervantes had been trained to authorship in a 

 school where form predominated over substance, and the 

 most convincing proof of the supremacy of art at the 

 highest period of Greek literature is to be found in 

 Aristophanes. Mr. Carlyle has no artistic sense of form or 

 rhythm, scarcely of proportion. Accordingly he looks on 

 verse with contempt as something barbarous a savage 

 ornament which a higher refinement will abolish, as it has 

 tattooing and nose-rings. With a conceptive imagination 

 vigorous beyond any in his generation, with a mastery of 



