258 FRESH FIELDS 



IV 



Carlyle had an enormous egoism, but to do the 

 work he felt called on to do, to offset and withstand 

 the huge, roaring, on-rushing modern world as he 

 did, required an enormous egoism. In more senses 

 than one do the words applied to the old prophet 

 apply to him: "For, behold, I have made thee this 

 day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen 

 walls against the whole land, against the kings of 

 Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests 

 thereof, and against the people of the land." He 

 was a defenced city, an iron pillar, and brazen wall, 

 in the extent to which he was riveted and clinched 

 in his own purpose and aim, as well as in his atti- 

 tude of opposition or hostility to the times in which 

 he lived. 



Froude, whose life of Carlyle in its just com- 

 pleted form, let me say here, has no equal in inter- 

 est or literary value among biographies since his 

 master's life of Sterling, presents his hero to us 

 a prophet in the literal and utilitarian sense, as a 

 foreteller of the course of events, and says that an 

 adequate estimate of his work is not yet jDOssible. 

 We must wait and see if he was right about demo- 

 cracy, about America, universal suffrage, progress 

 of the species, etc. "Whether his message was a 

 true message remains to be seen." "If he was 

 wrong he has misused his powers. The principles 

 of his teaching are false. He has offered himself 

 as a guide upon a road of which he had no know- 



