142 INDOOR STUDIES 



smoothness." If not external smoothness, then cer- 

 tainly internal, — a fusion or blending that is like 

 good digestion. Carlyle does not always have this; 

 Emerson does not always have it; Whitman does 

 not always have it, probably does not always strive 

 for it ; Browning rarely or never has it. There is a 

 good deal in Carlyle that is difficult, not in thought 

 but in expression. To the reader it is a kind of 

 mechanical diiBculty, like walking over bowlders. 

 In his best work, like the life of Sterling, his essays 

 on Johnson and Voltaire, and the battle-pieces in 

 "Frederick," there is the least of this. 



There is a point of perfection in art," says La 

 Bruyere, "as there is of goodness and ripeness in 

 nature. He who feels and loves it has perfect taste ; 

 he who feels it not, who loves something beneath 

 or beyond it, has faulty taste. " In the life of Ster- 

 ling, more completely than in any other one of his 

 books, Carlyle attains to this goodness and ripeness 

 of nature. He is calm and mellow ; there is nothing 

 to inflame him, but everything to soften and quiet 

 him ; and his work is of unrivaled richness in all the 

 noblest literary qualities. But at other times he was 

 after something beneath or beyond the point of per- 

 fection in art. He was not primarily a critical or 

 literary force like Arnold himself, but a moral force 

 working in and through literature. He was the con- 

 science of his country and times, wrought up to an 

 almost prophetic fervor and abandonment, and to cut 

 deep was more a point with him than to cut smooth. 



Again, his defects as a writer probably arose out 



