234 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



things and project them against the light of a fierce 

 and lurid imagination that makes his pages unique 

 and matchless, of their kind, in literature. He may 

 be deficient in the historical sense, the sense of de- 

 velopment, and of compensation in history ; but in 

 vividness of apprehension of men and events, and 

 power of portraiture, he is undoubtedly without a 

 rival. " Those devouring eyes and that portraying 

 hand," Emerson says. 



Those who contract their view of Carlyle till they 

 see only his faults, do a very unwise thing. Nearly 

 all his great traits have their shadows. His power 

 of characterization sometimes breaks away into cari- 

 cature ; his command of the picturesque leads him 

 into the grotesque ; his eloquent denunciation at 

 times becomes vituperation ; his marvelous power to 

 name things degenerates into outrageous nick-nam- 

 ing ; his streaming humor, which, as Emerson said, 

 floats every object he looks upon, is not free from 

 streaks of the most crabbed, hide-bound ill-humor. 

 Nearly every page has a fringe of these things, and 

 sometimes a pretty broad one, but they are by no 

 means the main matter, and often lend an additional 

 interest. The great personages, the great events, 

 are never caricatured, though painted with a bold, 

 free hand, but there is in the border of the picture 

 all manner of impish and grotesque strokes. In 

 " Frederick " there is a whole series of secondary men 

 and incidents that are touched off with the hand of 

 a master caricaturist. Some peculiarity of feature 



