ARNOLD'S VIEW OF EMERSON AND CAELYLB 139 



these forms with, a spirit and a suggestiveness far 

 more needful and helpful to us in these times than 

 the mere spirit of perfection in letters, — the classic 

 spirit, which Mr. Arnold himself so assiduously cul- 

 tivates. 



To say that Carlyle is not a great writer, or, more 

 than that, a supreme literary artist, is to me like 

 denying that Angelo and Eembrandt were great 

 painters, or that the sea is a great body of water. 

 His life of herculean labor was entirely given to 

 letters, and he undoubtedly brought to his tasks the 

 greatest single equipment of pure literary talent Eng- 

 lish prose has ever received. Beside some of the 

 men named by the lecturer, his illuminating power 

 is like the electric light beside a tallow dip. Not a 

 perfect writer certainly, nor always an agreeable one ; 

 but he exhibited at all times the traits which the 

 world has consented to call great. He bequeathed 

 to mankind an enormous intellectual force and weight 

 of character, embodied in enduring literary forms. 



I know it has become the fashion to disparage Car- 

 lyle's histories; it is said he has been superseded 

 by the more scientific historians. When the scien-" 

 tific artist supersedes Michael Angelo, and the sci- 

 entific poet supersedes Shakespeare, then probably 

 the scientific historian will supersede Carlyle. The 

 scientific spirit, when applied to historical problems, 

 is — like chemistry applied to agriculture — valuable, 

 but great results have been achieved in quite another 

 spirit. Scientific method can exhume the past, but 

 cannot breathe the breath of life into it, as Carlyle 



