202 INDOOR STUDIES 



o'clock in the morning, but does not seem ever to 

 have been able to keep the resolution. "What takes 

 one in Johnson is his serious self-reproof and the 

 perfect good faith in which he accuses himself of 

 idleness, forbidden thoughts, a liking for strong 

 liquors, a shirking of church-going, and kindred 

 sins. His sense of duty, and in particular of his 

 duty, never slumbered for a moment. On the 21st 

 of April, 1764, he got up at three in the morning 

 to accuse himself thus: "My indolence since my 

 last reception of the Sacrament has sunk into grosser 

 sluggishness, and my dissipation spread into wider 

 negligence. My thoughts have been clouded with 

 sensuality, and, except that from the beginning of 

 this year I have in some measure forborne excess of 

 strong drink, my appetites have predominated over 

 my reason. A kind of strange oblivion has over- 

 spread me, so that I know not what has become of 

 the last year," etc. This earthiness, these frailties 

 of Johnson through which his pious hopes and 

 resolutions shine so clearly, is a touch of nature 

 which makes him kin to all the world. Carlyle 

 does not touch us in just this way, because his ills 

 are more imaginary and his language more exag- 

 gerated. What takes one in Carlyle is the courage 

 and helpfulness that underlie his despair, the hu- 

 mility that underlies his arrogance, the love and 

 sympathy that lie back of his violent objurgations 

 and in a way prompt them. He was a man of sor- 

 row, and felt the "burthen and the mystery of all 

 this unintelligible world " as Johnson never felt it, 

 nor ever could feel it. 



