136 CAELYLE. 



we cannot help feeling all the while that he is so) of this 

 mischievous genius had been put upon the theatre before 

 us by some perfect mimic like Foote, who had studied 

 his habitual gait, gestures, tones, turn of thought, 

 costume, trick of feature, and rendered them with the 

 slight dash of caricature needful to make the whole 

 composition tell. It is in such things that Mr. Carlyle 

 is beyond all rivalry, and that we must go back to Shake- 

 speare for a comparison. But the mastery of Shake- 

 speare is shown perhaps more strikingly in his treatment 

 of the ordinary than of the exceptional. His is the 

 gracious equality of Nature herself. Mr. CarLyle's gift 

 is rather in the representation than in the evolution of 

 character ; and it is a necessity of his art, therefore, to 

 exaggerate slightly his heroic, and to caricature in like 

 manner his comic parts. His appreciation is less psy- 

 chological than physical and external. Grimm relates 

 that Garrick, riding once with PreVille, proposed to him 

 that they should counterfeit drunkenness. They rode 

 through Passy accordingly, deceiving all who saw them. 

 When beyond the town Pre\ille asked how he had suc- 

 ceeded. "Excellently," said Garrick, "as to your body; 

 but your legs were not tipsy.'' Mr. Carlyle would be as 

 exact in his observation of nature as the great actor, and 

 would make us see a drunken man as well ; but we 

 doubt whether he could have conceived that unmatch- 

 able scene in Antony and Cleopatra, where the tipsiness 

 of Lepidus pervades the whole metaphysical no less 

 than the physical part of the triumvir. If his sym- 

 pathies bore any proportion to his instinct for catching 

 those traits which are the expression of character, but 

 not character itself, we might have had a great historian 

 in him instead of a history-painter. But that which is 

 a main element in Mr. Carlyle's talent, and does perhaps 

 more than anything else to make it effective, is a defect 



