228 FRESH FIELDS 



come his grasp of character and his power of human 

 portraiture. It is, perhaps, not too much to say, 

 that in all literature there is not another such a 

 master portrait- painter, such a limner and inter- 

 preter of historical figures and physiognomies. That 

 power of the old artists to paint or to carve a man, 

 to hody him forth, almost re-create him, so rare in 

 the moderns, Carlyle had in a preeminent degree. 

 As an artist it is his distinguishing gift, and puts 

 him on a par with E-embrandt, Angelo, Keynolds, 

 and with the antique masters of sculpture. He 

 could put his finger upon the weak point and upon 

 the strong point of a man as unerringly as fate. 

 He knew a man as a jockey knows a horse. His 

 pictures of Johnson, of Boswell, of Voltaire, of 

 Mirabeau, what masterpieces ! His portrait of Cole- 

 ridge will doubtless survive all others, inadequate 

 as it is in many ways; one fears, also that poor 

 Lamb has been stamped to last. None of Carlyle' s 

 characterizations have excited more ill-feeling than 

 this same one of Lamb. But it was plain from the 

 outset that Carlyle could not like such a verbal 

 acrobat as Lamb. He doubtless had him or his 

 kind in view when he wrote this passage in "Past 

 and Present : " *' His poor fraction of sense has to 

 be perked into some epigrammatic shape, that it may 

 prick into me, — perhaps (this is the commonest) 

 to be topsy-turvied, left standing on its head, that 

 I may remember it the better ! Such grinning in- 

 sanity is very sad to the soul of man. Human 

 faces should not grin on one like masks; they 



