122 CAELYLE. 



In the earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle we find some 

 not obscure hints of the future man. Nearly fifty years 

 ago he contributed a few literary and critical articles to 

 the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. The outward fashion of 

 them is that of the period ; but they are distinguished 

 by a certain security of judgment remarkable at any 

 time, remarkable especially in one so young. British 

 criticism has been always more or less parochial; has 

 never, indeed, quite freed itself from sectarian cant, and 

 planted itself honestly on the aesthetic point of view. 

 It cannot quite persuade itself that truth is of immortal 

 essence, totally independent of all assistance from quar- 

 terly journals or the British army and navy. Carlyle, 

 in these first essays, already shows the influence of his 

 master, Goethe, the most widely receptive of critics. In 

 a compact notice of Montaigne, there is not a word as to 

 his religious scepticism. The character is looked at 

 purely from its human and literary sides. As illustrat- 

 ing the bent of the author's mind, the following passage 

 is most to our purpose : "A modern reader will not 

 easily cavil at the patient and good-natured, though ex- 

 uberant egotism which brings back to our view 'the 

 form and pressure ' of a time long past. The habits and 

 humors, the mode of acting and thinking, which character- 

 ized a Gascon gentleman in the sixteenth century, cannot 

 fail to amuse an inquirer of the nineteenth; while the 

 faithful delineation of human feelings, in all their strength 

 and weakness, will serve as a mirror to every mind capable 

 of self-examination" We find here no uncertain indica- 

 tion of that eye for the moral picturesque, and that 

 sympathetic appreciation of character, which within the 

 next few years were to make Carlyle the first in insight 

 of English critics and the most vivid of English histo- 

 rians. In all his earlier writing he never loses sight of 

 his master's great rule, Den Gegenstand fest zu halten. 



