CARLYLE AND EARLY REVIEWERS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1569, 12 October 1912, Page 9

CARLYLE AND EARLY REVIEWERS.

• !A .writer has brought together in the "Sewanee R«view" contemporary criticisms of Carlyle's "French Revolution." Carlyle himself characterised it while it was going through the. press as "a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution," and this opinion was echoed by -more than one reviewer. The "Athenaeum" set the pace for one school of criticism by beginning a six-column review of the work with these orotund sentences:— "Originality of thought is unquestionably the best excuse for writing a book; originality of style is a rare and a refreshing quality; ,l>ut it is paying rather dear for one's" whistle to qualify for ob-- . taining it in the university of Bedlam. ' Originality, without justnoss of thought, : is but novelty of error; and • originality i of style, without sound taste and disere- ! tion. is sheer affectation."

"Eraser's Magazine" was in a delicate position, with respect to the book, since Fraser was the publisher of it. But lie warded off suspicion of interested motives by making tho first part of his review expository. Not until the tenth page- did he speak out his judgment of it. Then, however, he was decided enough: "And we would say that every man who fails to understand and appreciate this book (we write with a consciousness of all the difficulties that belong to'its peculiar style) gives evidence in such failure of a 'want of discipline, both intellectual and moral, without which no history of any' kind' is suitable reading for him. . . ; We.apply this book as a test, whereby his'intellectual and "moral quality shall be gauged, and its amount accurately determined." The "Westminster Review" was equally enthusiastic:— ''This is not so much a history as an epic'poem; and, notwithstanding or even in' consequence of this, ' the truest of histories. It is the history of the French Revolution, and the poetry of ft, both in ono; and, on tho whole, no work of greater genius, either historical or poetical, ha 3 been produced in this country for , many years." . 'Perhaps 'the most notable review was Thackeray's, in the "London Times." The ' future novelist was an almost unknown ; hack-writer—Carljjle, referring to tho re-' '• view, spoko of him as "one Thackeray." Thackeray was at first stumped by the etyle of the book, but praised its "learni ing, observation, humour." "Above all, it 1 has no cant." That must have pleased Carlyle. In a word, it "possesses genius, if any book ever did. It wanted no more for kf>en critics to cry fio upon it!" The "London Quarterly Pcview" could not approvo Carlylo's works, because "they make no profession of definite Christianity." The "Edinburgh Review," in which Carlyle had mado his bow as an author, ■-Sfid "Blackwood's," took no notice of it ■ Whatever. Nor do American journals seem to havo commented upon it, despite our hearty reception of Carlyle's other early writings, with tho. single exception of that eminent authority, tho "Democratic It, too, wns horrified at the style, which it aptly called "a French Involution of language." But its criticism went to tho •heart of tho matter:

"Taking the whole of materials before him a? free at his disposal, and as already equally in possession, of nimsclf nnd his render or hearer, he loloe.ts out of thn entire mass Hip nnrticiiinr fict, word, or thin? that involves most lljtmficantly t]i» essential tynn or the predominant idea he woks tn embody; Jad throws thorn together into euch^

groups nnd series of groups as iuay exhibit with, the most impressive dramatic elt'ect the true moral, as contradistinguished from the mere physical history of tho subject—touching, overv hero and there, the outlines thus rapidly struck off with an intensely luminous pencil, that flashes a world of suggested meaning."