1 76 CARLYLE. 



exuberant humour. Humour in its first analysis is a per 

 ception of the incongruous, and, in its highest development, 

 of the incongruity between the actual and the ideal in men 

 and life. With so keen a sense of the ludicrous contrast 

 between what men might be, nay, wish to be, and what 

 they are, and with a vehement nature that demands the 

 instant realisation of his vision of a world altogether 

 heroic, it is no wonder that Mr. Carlyle, always hoping for 

 a thing and always disappointed, should become bitter. 

 Perhaps if he expected less he would find more. Saul 

 seeking his father s asses found himself turned suddenly 

 into a king ; but Mr. Carlyle, on the look-out for a king, 

 always seems to find the other sort of animal. He sees 

 nothing on any side of him but a procession of the Lord of 

 Misrule in gloomier moments, a Dance of Death, where 

 everything is either a parody of whatever is noble, or an 

 aimless jig that stumbles at last into the annihilation of the 

 grave, and so passes from one nothing to another. Is a 

 world, then, which buys and reads Mr. Carlyle s works 

 distinguished only for its &quot;fair, large ears?&quot; If he who 

 has read and remembered so much would only now and 

 then call to mind the old proverb, Nee deus, nee lupus, sed 

 homo ! If he would only recollect that, from the days of 

 the first grandfather, everybody has remembered a golden 

 age behind him ! 



The very qualities, it seems to us, which came so near 

 making a great poet of Mr. Carlyle, disqualify him for the 

 office of historian. The poet s concern is with the appear 

 ances of things, with their harmony in that whole which 

 the imagination demands for its satisfaction, and their 

 truth to that ideal nature which is the proper object of 

 poetry. History, unfortunately, is very far from being 

 ideal, still farther from an exclusive interest in those heroic 

 or typical figures which answer all the wants of the epic 

 and the drama and fill their utmost artistic limits. Mr. 

 Carlyle has an unequalled power and vividness in painting 

 detached scenes, in bringing out in their full relief the 

 oddities or peculiarities of character; but he has a far 



