116 . CARLYLE. 



though it may not be of that permanent quality which 

 insures enduring fame. The contemporary world and 

 Wordsworth were both half right. He undoubtedly 

 owned and worked the richest vein of his period ; but 

 he offered to his contemporaries a heap of gold-bearing 

 quartz where the baser mineral made the greater show, 

 and the purchaser must do his own crushing and smelt 

 ing, with no guaranty but the bare word of the miner. 

 It was not enough that certain bolder adventurers 

 should now and then show a nugget in proof of the 

 success of their venture. The gold of the poet must 

 be refined, moulded, stamped with the image and super 

 scription of his time, but with a beauty of design and 

 finish that are of no time. The work must surpass the 

 material. Wordsworth was wholly void of that shaping 

 imagination which is the highest criterion of a poet. 



Immediate popularity and lasting fame, then, would 

 seem to be the result of different qualities, and not of 

 mere difference in degree. It is safe to prophesy a 

 certain durability of recognition for any author who 

 gives evidence of intellectual force, in whatever kind, 

 above the average amount. There are names in literary 

 history which are only names ; and the works associated 

 with them, like acts of Congress already agreed on in 

 debate, are read by their titles and passed. What is it 

 that insures what may be called living fame, so that a 

 book shall be at once famous and read ] What is it 

 that relegates divine Cowley to that remote, uncivil 

 Pontus of the " British Poets," and keeps garrulous 

 Pepys within the cheery circle of the evening lamp and 

 fire 1 Originality, eloquence, sense, imagination, not 

 one of them is enough by itself, but only in some happy 

 mixture and proportion. Imagination seems to possess 

 in itself more of the antiseptic property than any other 

 single quality ; but, without less showy and more sub- 



