178 CARLYLE. 



impatient of whatever will not serve for one of his clever 

 sketches, or group well in a more elaborate figure-piece. 

 He sees history, as it were, by flashes of lightning. A 

 single scene, whether a landscape or an interior, a single 

 figure or a wild mob of men, whatever may be snatched 

 by the eye in that instant of intense illumination, is 

 minutely photographed upon the memory. Every tree and 

 stone, almost every blade of grass ; every article of furniture 

 in a room ; the attitude or expression, nay, the very buttons 

 and shoe-ties of a principal figure ; the gestures of moment 

 ary passion in a wild throng, everything leaps into vision 

 under that sudden glare with a painful distinctness that 

 leaves the retina quivering. The intervals are absolute 

 darkness. Mr. Carlyle makes us acquainted with the 

 isolated spot where we happen to be when the flash comes, 

 as if by actual eyesight, but there is no possibility of a 

 comprehensive view. No other writer compares with him 

 for vividness. He is himself a witness, and makes us 

 witnesses of whatever he describes. This is genius beyond 

 a question, and of a very rare quality, but it is not history. 

 He has not the cold-blooded impartiality of the historian ; 

 and while he entertains us, moves us to tears or laughter, 

 makes us the unconscious captives of his ever-changeful 

 mood, we find that he has taught us comparatively little. 

 His imagination is so powerful that it makes him the con 

 temporary of his characters, and thus his history seems to 

 be the memoirs of a cynical humorist, with hearty likes 

 and dislikes, with something of acridity in his partialities 

 whether for or against, more keenly sensitive to the 

 grotesque than the simply natural, and who enters in his 

 diary, even of what comes within the range of his own 

 observation, only so much as amuses his fancy, is congenial 

 with his humour, or feeds his prejudice. Mr. Carlyle s 

 method is accordingly altogether pictorial, his hasty temper 

 making narrative wearisome to him. In his Friedrich, for 

 example, we get very little notion of the civil administra 

 tion of Prussia ; and when he comes, in the last volume, to 

 his hero s dealings with civil reforms, he confesses candidly 



