130 INDOOE STUDIES 



eyelids, and sights you down his big nose — draws 

 off, as it were, and gives you his chin. It is the 

 critical attitude, not the sympathetic. Yet he does 

 not impress one as cold and haughty, hut quite the 

 contrary. " 



He was not an entertaining speaker; his voice 

 was too thick and foggy. One would rather read 

 his discourse than hear it. 



To one who knows Arnold's devotion to the 

 classic standards, the calm and moderation of Greek 

 art, his verdict upon such writers as Emerson and 

 Carlyle will not be much of a surprise. Tried by 

 the classic standards, both these illustrious men are 

 undoubtedly barbarians. Emerson has indeed the 

 lofty serenity of ifireek art, but his fragmentary 

 character, his mysticism, his exaggeration, his cease- 

 less effort to surprise, are anything but classical. 

 The distinctive features of classic literature, its re- 

 pose, its measure, its subordination of parts, and 

 hence its wholeness, he probably cared little for. 

 Speaking in one of his essays of how Greek sculp- 

 ture has melted away like ice and snow in the spring, 

 he says : " The Greek letters last a little longer, but 

 are always passing under the same sentence, and 

 tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation 

 of new thought opens for all that is old." Carlyle 

 is a barbarian in his style, his uncouthness, his ve- 

 hemence, his despair, his prejudices, and in the open 

 conflict and incongruity between his inherited and 

 his acquired traits, — between his German culture, 

 which was from without, and his Scotch Presbyteri- 



