224 LITEEAET TALUES 



to hear music, to breathe perfume, or to walk in a 

 spring twilight when the evening star throbs above 

 the hill. 



One winter night I tried to re-read Carlyle's " Past 

 and Present " and certain of his " Latter-Day Pam- 

 phlets ; " but I found I could not, and thanked my 

 stars that I did not have to. It was like riding a 

 spirited but bony horse bareback. There was tre- 

 mendous " go " in the beast ; but oh, the bruises 

 from those knotty and knuckle-like sentences ! But 

 the " Life of Sterling " I have found I can re-read 

 with delight ; it has a noble music. Certain of the es- 

 says, also, such as the ones on Scott, Burns, and John- 

 son, have a perennial quality. Parts of " Frederick " 

 I mean to read again, and the " Eeminiscences." I 

 have re-read " Sartor Eesartus," but it was a task, 

 hardly a pleasure. Nearly four fifths of the book, I 

 should say, is chaff ; but the other fifth is real wheat, 

 if you are not choked in getting it. Yet I have just 

 read the story of an educated tramp who carried the 

 book in his blanket thousands of miles and knew it 

 nearly by heart. Carlyle wrote as he talked ; his 

 "Latter-Day Pamphlets" are harangues that it 

 would have been a delight to hear, but in the printed 

 page we miss the guiding tone and emphasis, and 

 above all do we miss the laugh that mollified the 

 bitter words. One can stand, or even welcome, in 

 life what may be intolerable in print ; put the same 

 thing in a book, and it is the pudding without the 

 sauce, and cold at that. The colloquial style is good, 

 or the best, if perfectly easy and simple. In reading 



