CARLYLE. 119 



/ess than imagination, judgment in equal measure with 

 fancy, and the fiery rocket must be bound fast to the 

 poor wooden stick that gives it guidance if it would 

 mount and draw all eyes. There are some who think 

 that the brooding patience which a great work calls for 

 belonged exclusively to an earlier period than ours. 

 Others lay the blame on our fashion of periodical publi- 

 cation, which necessitates a sensation and a crisis in 

 every number, and forces the writer to strive for start- 

 ling effects, instead of that general lowness of tone 

 which is the last achievement of the artist. The sim- 

 plicity of antique passion, the homeliness of antique 

 pathos, seem not merely to be gone out of fashion, but 

 out of being as well. Modern poets appear rather to 

 tease their words into a fury, than to infuse them with 

 the deliberate heats of their matured conception, and 

 strive to replace the rapture of the mind with a fervid 

 intensity of phrase. Our reaction from the decorous 

 platitudes of the last century has no doubt led us to ex- 

 cuse this, and to be thankful for something like real fire, 

 though of stubble ; but our prevailing style of criticism, 

 which regards parts rather than wholes, which dwells on 

 the beauty of passages, and, above all, must have its 

 languid nerves pricked with the expected sensation at 

 whatever cost, has done all it could to confirm us in our 

 evil way. Passages are good when they lead to some- 

 thing, when they are necessary parts of the building, 

 but they are not good to dwell in. This taste for the 

 startling reminds us of something which happened once 

 at the burning of a country meeting-house. The build- 

 ing stood on a hill, and, apart from any other considera- 

 tions, the fire was as picturesque as could be desired. 

 When all was a black heap, licking itself here and there 

 with tongues of fire, there rushed up a farmer gasping 

 anxiously, "Hez the bell fell yit?" An ordinary fire 



