CARLYLE. 121 



Mr. Carlyle is an author who has now been so long 

 before the world, that we may feel toward him some 

 thing of the unprejudice of posterity. It has long been 

 evident that he had no more ideas to bestow upon 

 us, and that no new turn of his kaleidoscope would give 

 us anything but some variation of arrangement in the 

 brilliant colors of his style. It is perhaps possible, then, 

 to arrive at some not wholly inadequate estimate of his 

 place as a writer, and especially of the value of the ideas 

 whose advocate he makes himself, with a bitterness and 

 violence that increase, as it seems to us, in proportion as 

 his inward conviction of their truth diminishes. 



The leading characteristics of an author who is in any 

 sense original, that is to say, who does not merely repro 

 duce, but modifies the influence of tradition, culture, and 

 contemporary thought upon himself by some admixture 

 of his own, may commonly be traced more or less clearly 

 in his earliest works. This is more strictly true, no 

 doubt, of poets, because the imagination is a fixed quan 

 tity, not to be increased by any amount of study and 

 reflection. Skill, wisdom, and even wit are cumulative ; 

 but that diviner faculty, which is the spiritual eye, 

 though it may be trained and sharpened, cannot be 

 added to by taking thought. This has always been 

 something innate, unaccountable, to be laid to a happy 

 conjunction of the stars. Goethe, the last of the great 

 poets, accordingly takes pains to tell us under what 

 planets he was born ; and in him it is curious how 

 uniform the imaginative quality is from the beginning 

 to the end of his long literary activity. His early poems 

 show maturity, his mature ones a youthful freshness. 

 The apple already lies potentially in the blossom, as 

 that may be traced also in the ripened fruit. With 

 a mere change of emphasis, Goethe might be called an 

 old boy at both ends of his career. 

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