THOMAS CARLYLE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 405, 20 September 1856, Page 5

THOMAS CARLYLE.

The following is from the work of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 4i At Home and Abroad or Things and Thoughts in America and Europe."

I have not yet spoken of one of our benefactors, 'Mr. Carlyle, whom I saw several times. I approached him with more reverence after a little experience of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he more than any man, or a thousand men—indeed he almost

alone—has begun to throw down. Wherever there was fresh thought, generous hope, the thought of Carlyle has begun the work. He has torn off the veils from hideous facts; lie has burnt away foolish illusions ; he has awakened thousands to know what it Is to be p. man: that we must live,and not merely pretend to others that we live. He has touched the rocks, and they have given foiUi musical answer; little more was wanling to begin to construct the city. But that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to those that come after him: nay, all attempts of the kind he is the readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than the old, unable to trust the general action of thought, and finding no heroic man no natural king to represent it, and challenge his confidence. _ Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendour scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable) that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus meet the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to \ need from the experience of the humblest. 1 Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down ail opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary., no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey., and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlvle, indeed, "is arrogant and overbearing, but in "his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love ; it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror—it is his nature and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere, and perhaps, also, he would only lau°-h at you if you did: but you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried melting all the old iron in his furnace, till it glows to a sunset red, and bums you if you .senselessly go to hear it. He seemed to me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet .never was a man more fitted to prize a man," could he find one to match his mood. He finds such, but only in tae past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his son<* is lull, or with which as with a knitting-needle h3 catches up the siich.es, if he has chanced now ana then to let-fell a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurdhe sometimes stops a minute to laugh at him«elf then begins anew with fresh vigour; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as ± ata ugly masks in fact, if he can but make them turn about, but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out ms chin sometimes till it looks like the beak o/a bird, and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle. He is more l^e the falccai,and y et not of gentle blood enough or thai eitntr. lie Ls not exactly like anything but ,u'.a a -elf, and therefore you cannot see him V'"^ U me- mo? fc. hea*y refreshment and ,'oodwilJ iorhe is original, rich and.strong enough CO afford a thousand faults; one'expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. His talk, like his boo^is fml of pictures, his critical strokes ipajterjy; allow for bis point of view, and Ids survey is admirable. He is a large sublet ■ I earaoi speak more or wiselier of him now nor neeos it; lua works are true, to blame and praise him, tlie Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a infeht ratner to destroy evil, than legislate for-good. At a3l events, he seems to be what DeHiny intended, and represent* fuUy a ra l*i n -'side •ho we make-no-remonstrance ts to his bein« and proceeding for himself; though we sometime must ior us, :