CARLYLE. 135 



fie is himself a witness, and makes us witnesses of what 

 ever he describes. This is genius beyond a question, 

 and of a very rare quality, but it is not history. He 

 has not the cold-blooded impartiality of the historian; 

 and while he entertains us, moves us to tears or laughter, 

 makes us the unconscious captives of his ever-changeful 

 mood, we find that he has taught us comparatively little. 

 His imagination is so powerful that it makes him the 

 contemporary of his characters, and thus his history 

 seems to be the memoirs of a cynical humorist, with 

 hearty likes and dislikes, with something of acridity in 

 his partialities whether for or against, more keenly sen 

 sitive to the grotesque than the simply natural, and who 

 enters in his diary, even of what comes within the range 

 of his own observation, only so much as amuses his 

 fancy, is congenial with his humor, or feeds his prejudice. 

 Mr. Carlyle's method is accordingly altogether picto 

 rial, his hasty temper making narrative wearisome to 

 him. In his Friedrich, for example, we get very little 

 notion of the civil administration of Prussia ; and when 

 he comes, in the last volume, to his hero's dealings with 

 civil reforms, he confesses candidly that it would tire him 

 too much to tell us about it, even if he knew anything 

 at all satisfactory himself. 



Mr. Carlyle's historical compositions are wonderful 

 prose poems, full of picture, incident, humor, and char 

 acter, where we grow familiar with his conception of 

 certain leading personages, and even of subordinate ones, 

 if they are necessary to the scene, so that they come out 

 living upon the stage from the dreary limbo of names ; 

 but this is no more history than the historical plays of 

 Shakespeare. There is nothing in imaginative literature 

 superior in its own way to the episode of Voltaire in the 

 Fritziad. It is delicious in humor, masterly in minute 

 characterization. We feel as if the principal victim (for 



