124 CARLYLE. 



keeps it from sinking on itself a shapeless heap, he 

 would crush remorselessly to come at the marrow of 

 meaning. With him the ideal sense is secondary to the 

 ethical and metaphysical, and he has but a faint con- 

 ception of their possible unity. 



By degrees the humorous element in his nature gains 

 ground, till it overmasters all the rest. Becoming al- 

 ways more boisterous and obtrusive, it ends at last, as 

 such humor must, in cynicism. In " Sartor Resartus " 

 it is still kindly, still infused with sentiment ; and the 

 book, with its mixture of indignation and farce, strikes 

 one as might the prophecies of Jeremiah, if the marginal 

 comments of the Rev. Mr. Sterne in his wildest mood 

 had by some accident been incorporated with the text. 

 In "Sartor" the marked influence of Jean Paul is un- 

 deniable, both in matter and manner. It is curious for 

 one who studies the action and reaction of national liter- 

 atures on each other, to see the humor of Swift and 

 Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, re- 

 appear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes 

 it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, 

 to the English mind. Unhappily the bit of mother from 

 Swift's "vinegar-barrel has had strength enough to sour 

 all the rest. The whimsicality of " Tristram Shandy," 

 which, even in the original, has too often the effect 

 of forethought, becomes a deliberate artifice in Richter, 

 and at last a mere mannerism in Carlyle. 



Mr. Carlyle in his critical essays had the advantage 

 of a well-defined theme, and of limits both in the 

 subject and in the space allowed for its treatment, which 

 kept his natural extravagance within bounds, and com- 

 pelled some sort of discretion and compactness. The 

 great merit of these essays lay in a criticism based on 

 wide and various study, which, careless of tradition, 

 applied its standard to the real and not the contem- 



