CARLYLE. 175 



shouting, in a hearty abuse of human nature, which, at the 

 long last, is always to blame. 



Since &quot;Sartor Resartus&quot; Mr. Carlyle has done little but 

 repeat himself with increasing emphasis and heightened 

 shrillness. Warning has steadily heaten toward denuncia 

 tion, 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 

 himself. The same phrase comes round and round, only 

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

 performer 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 con 

 viction 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 com 

 binations, or by application to new times and circumstances. 

 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 borrow 

 ing 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. 



The cynicism, however, which has now become the pre 

 vailing temper of his mind, has gone on expanding with 

 unhappy vigour. In Mr. Carlyle it is not, certainly, as in 

 Swift, the result of personal disappointment, and of the 

 fatal eye of an accomplice for the mean qualities by which 

 power could be attained that it might be used for purposes 

 as mean. It seems rather the natural corruption of his 



