184 CARLYLE. 



lanterns of his Pharos after the ship is already rolling 

 between the tongue of the sea and the grinders of the reef. 

 It is very brilliant, and its revolving flashes touch the 

 crests of the breakers with an awful picturesqueness ; but 

 in so desperate a state of things, even Dr. Syntax might be 

 pardoned for being forgetful of the picturesque. The 

 Toryism of Scott sprang from love of the past ; that of 

 Carlyle is far more dangerously infectious, for it is logically 

 deduced from a deep disdain of human nature. 



Browning has drawn a beautiful picture of an old king 

 sitting at the gate of his palace to judge his people in the 

 calm sunshine of that past which never existed outside 

 a poet s brain. T.t is the sweetest of waking dreams, this of 

 absolute power and perfect wisdom in one supreme ruler ; 

 but it is as pure a creation of human want and weakness, as 

 clear a witness of mortal limitation and incompleteness, as 

 the shoes of swiftness, the cloak of darkness, the purse of 

 Fortunatus, and the elixir vitce. It is the natural refuge of 

 imaginative temperaments impatient of our blunders and 

 shortcomings, and, given a complete man, all would submit 

 to the divine right of his despotism. But alas ! to every 

 the most fortunate human birth hobbles up that malign 

 fairy who has been forgotten with her fatal gift of 

 imperfection ! So far as our experience has gone, it has 

 been the very opposite of Mr. Carlyle s. Instead of finding 

 men disloyal to their natural leader, nothing has ever 

 seemed to us so touching as the gladness with which they 

 follow him, when they are sure they have found him 

 at last. But a natural leader of the ideal type is not to 

 be looked for nisi dignus vindice nodus. The Divine 

 Forethought had been cruel in furnishing one for every 

 petty occasion, and thus thwarting in all inferior men that 

 priceless gift of reason, to develop which, and to make it 

 one with free-will, is the highest use of our experience on 

 earth. Mr. Carlyle was hard bestead and very far gone 

 in his idolatry of mere pluck, when he was driven to choose 

 Friedrich as a hero. A poet and Mr. Carlyle is nothing 

 else is unwise who yokes Pegasus to a prosaic theme 



