CARLYLE. 189 



toward the close, where the reader cannot help feeling that 

 the author loses breath somewhat painfully under the effort 

 of so prolonged a course. Mr. Carlyle has evidently 

 devoted to his task a labour that may be justly called pro 

 digious. Not only has he sifted all the German histories 

 and memoirs, but has visited every battle-field, and describes 

 them with an eye for country that is without rival among 

 historians. The book is evidently an abridgment of even 

 more abundant collections, and yet as it stands the matter 

 overburdens the work. It is a bundle of lively episodes 

 rather than a continuous narrative. In this respect it con 

 trasts oddly with the concinnity of his own earlier Life of 

 Schiller. But the episodes are lively, the humour and 

 pathos spring from a profound nature, the sketches of 

 character are masterly, the seizure of every picturesque 

 incident infallible, and the literary judgments those of a 

 thorough scholar and critic. There is, of course, the usual 

 amusing objurgation of Dryasdust and his rubbish-heaps, 

 the usual assumption of omniscience, and the usual certainty 

 of the lively French lady of being always in the right ; yet 

 we cannot help thinking that a little of Dryasdust s plod 

 ding exactness would have saved Fouquet eleven years of 

 the imprisonment to which Mr. Carlyle condemns him, 

 would have referred us to St. Simon rather than to Voltaire 

 for the character of the brothers Belle-He, and would have 

 kept clear of a certain ludicrous etymology of the name 

 Antwerp, not to mention some other trifling slips of the 

 like nature. In conclusion, after saying, as honest critics 

 must, that &quot; The History of Friedrich II. called Frederick 

 the Great &quot; is a book to be read in with more satisfaction 

 than to be read through, after declaring that it is open to 

 all manner of criticism, especially in point of moral purpose 

 and tendency, we must admit with thankfulness, that it has 

 the one prime merit of being the work of a man who has 

 every quality of a great poet except that supreme one of 

 rhythm which shapes both matter and manner to harmo 

 nious proportion, and that where it is good, it is good as 

 only genius knows how to be. 



