THOMAS CARLYLE. FROUDE'S LAST VOLUMES.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 85, 17 January 1885, Page 5

THOMAS CARLYLE. FROUDE'S LAST VOLUMES.

The "Scotsman," in reviewing the last volumes of Mr Carlyle's life, says :— With these volumes the task which was imposed on Mr Froude, both by the express wishes of Carlyle and his own sense of reverence and duty to the master of whom he has been so fervent a disciple, is completed. That it has been performed with conscentious care, and with conspicuous literary ability, will be acknowledged on all hands. That it is pervaded by a profound love and loyalty to him whose story it tells is equally obvious. It may even be admitted that, with his conception of a biographer's duty, Mr Froude could scarcely have treated the materials he has had at his disposal on any other principle than that wnich he has adopted. Conceding all this, and duly weighing the vigorous vindication of his method which he presents in his introductory chapter, we do not hesitate to affirm that his conception is a radically erroneous one, and that he has dealt a terrible, if not a mortal, blow to the reputation of Carlyle as a teacher and a leader of thought. He enunciates the doctrine that the M'hole truth should be unsparingly revealed about the most minute and private circumstances in the life of every eminent man "who is to become historical and belong to the immortals." It is a pernicious doctrine, because the inevitable result of its application is to give an exaggerated depth to the shadows in the picture, and because the fact is never properly borne in mind that with all of us — with great men as with small— the gap between our ideal of life and duty and that which we actually attain is a very wide one. The moral axiom that practice should square with theory commands universal assent ; only it is never realised. But when the public attention is called to the life of one who has stood forward as a great moral teacher, a proclaimer of the "eternal verities," and when it is made evident that his practice is very far from having squared with his theory, the discrepancy assumes a magnitude and prominence altogether out of proportion ; the subject of the portraiture is presented in what is essentially a false perspective, and the result is the same whether the fault is due to the want of skill of the artist, or to the point of view ot the spectator. Further, every great writer and teacher who has ever lived — unless we except the greatest Teacher of all— has led two lives, the real and the ideal ; and there is no necessary co-relaticn between them. How does the knowledge of Milton's sordid poverty and his wretched squabbles with his wives and daughters assist us in forming a judgment on "Paradise Lost?" Or, to take the most recent example, everybody has just been laughing, or sneering, or sorrowing over the revelations of Lord Lytton's drivelling folly and sickening ferocity presented in the posthumous narrative of his wife ; but though these disclosures are a fatal blow to the reputation of the man, how do they or can they dim the brilliincy, the wit, the imaginative luxuriance, and the knowledge of life revealed in his works ? Every great man gives his best to the world, and the world has no real concern with his private stains and littleness. The Thomas Carlyle of these volumes, the miserable dyspeptic who worried and wore his wife into an early grave, and whose journal is one long utterance of savage hate, envy, and contempt of almost everybody that was not connected with him by ties of blood, is not the Thomas Carlyle that proclaimed, in words of undying strength and eloquence, the noble gospel of work and duty to mankind. But Mr Froude has done his utmost to persuade us of the contrary. Nay, he expressly asserts it. "The more completely it is understood," he says, " the more his (Carlyle's) character will be seen to answer to his intellectual teaching. The one is the counter- part of the other." If this be true, then Mr Froude's anticipations of the mighty influence Carlyle is destined to exercise on future generations will never be Tea'ised. A faint perception of this fact is revealed in his assertion that Carlyle's faults " were but as the vapours which hang about a mountain." Why, in that case, has he allowed them so completely to pervade and muffle his picture ? It is not the vapour 3, but the mountain which the world has desired to see. There is one good service, at any rate, which Mr Froude has performed in his biography, though it is unconsciously done. He is the most ardent and thorough-going of all Carlyle's disciples ; and he here comes forward on frequent occasions as the exponent of the principles of his master's philosophy. The fidelity of his exposition need not be questioned any more than its eloquence, and — in spite of his own disclaimers and those of Carlyle which he introduces here and there — it supplies abundant proof that thedoctrineof eternal justice, of truth, of obedience to conscience, of the vitality of honest work, and the worthlessness and worse than worthlessness of all beside, with which Carlyle set out, became transformed and crystallised as he grew older, into what in its ultimate analysis is nothing less than the worship of pure force. Mr Froude denies this : he admits, indeed, that Carlyle believed might to be right, but he also held that might could not be might unless it were right. It is unnecessary, and would be out of place, to point out to what monstrousconclusionsthelogicalapplication of this principle would carry us. But how does it develop itself, under Mr Froude's own hand, in these volumes ? Two illustrations will suffice. As the principle led Carlyle to himself elevate Fredrick the Great to the stature of a model hero, so it has induced his disciple to refer again and again to the Germany of the present day as a model State, to draw contemptuous contrasts between the methods of Government there and amongst ourselves, and to preserve a persistently and deeply reverential attitude towards the methods of " blood and iron." But will any man who is really acquainted with the social and political conditions of Germany and of Britain to-day, and has guaged the nature of the diseases which afflict the organism of each, affirm that the peril of " eruption from the nether deep " is more remote from the former than from the latter ? Both Carlyle and his biographer perpetually pose as haters of "cant" and "shams;" and then, assuming that whatever is not in accordance with their own ideas is a sham, they set up a cant of their own that everybody who does not think as they do must of necessity be insincere, a preacher of cant and a prophet of shams. Having themselves not only no faith in, but the bitterest contempt for, representative institutions and popular self-government, they jump to the conclusion that everybody who does believe in them must of necessity be a self-deceiving quack. Thus, Mr Froude, speaks of the chiefs of British political parties, in the most matter-of-fact way, as "leaders who were either playing on the credulity of the people, or were themselves the dupes of their own phrases"; and here, as he proves by his extracts from Carlyle's journal and letter, she is faithfully acting Carlyle's

own opinions. The present Premier had the distinction of being a special object of aversion and abuse of the Chelsea seer — abuso which his biographer faithfully produces. It is apropos of the two great party loaders that Mr Froude furnishes a striking specimen of the Carlylean cant. He says :— "Of the two Parliamentary chiefs then alternately ruling, I have already said that he j (Carlyle) preferred Mr Disraeli, and continued to prefer him, even after his wild effort to make himself arbiter of Europe. Disraeli, he thought, was under no illusions about himself. To him the world was a meie stage, and he a mere actor playing a mere part on it. Ho had no serious beliefs, and made no pretences. He understood, as well as Carlyle himself, whither England was going, with its fine talk of progress ; but it would last his time ; he could make a figure in conducting its destinies, or at least amuse himself scientifically like Mephistopheles. Ho was not an Englishman, and had no care for England. . . JVlr Disraeli had, however, he admitted, some good qualities. Ho could see facts — a supreme merit in Carlyle's eyes. He was good-natured. He bore no malice. If he was without any lofty virtues, he affected no virtuous airs. Mr Gladstone, Carlylo considered to be equally incapable of high or sincere purpose, but with this difference, that he supposed hiinsel! to have what ho had not. He did not look on Mr Gladstone merely as an oratoi who, knowing nothing as it ought to be known, had flung his force into words and specious sentiments ; but, as the representative of the multitudinous cants of the agereligious, moral, political, literary— differing on this point from other leading men, that the cant seemed actually true to him ; that he believed it all, and was prepared to act upon it." Leaving aside the sublime egotism of this passage, the calm underlying assumption that there are no truths except those revealed to Thomas Carlyle, and to Mr Froude through him ; taking the two statesmen as Darlyle's own estimate of them, it appears that he had a deliberate and avowed preference for the man who acted shams snowing them to be shams, made professions snowing them to belies, and could " amuse limself scientifically, like MephistopUeles," jy presiding over the march of a great lationtodestruction, ratherthan for theman ivho at least spoke and acted from sincere jonviction, Was there ever before such in outcome of a belief in, and an inspired perception of, the "eternal verities?" The Darlylean creed, in its ultimate development, became undistinguishable from belief in the wisdom of Thomas Carlyle, and profound disbelief in the wisdom, or else in the *ood faith, of all the world beside— except, perhaps, Prince Bismarck and ex-Governor Eyre. In these two volumes Mr Froude takes up and carries forward the story of Carlyle's life from his coming to London, in 1534, to iiis death, in 1881 — a period of more than i 6 years. Of incident, in the sense in which ihat term is understood by the reader of iction, the story is almost completely devoid. It is simply a record of the circumstances under which Carlyle undertook the production of hip books — the preparation and actual composition of each )f which was a prolonged agony to himself and all who had to do A'ith him — and of the intervals of torpor and inaction between, spent chiefly with his own 'amily in Dumfrieshire, or with the few oeople whose society he could bring himself "O endure. On his methods of literary workmanship, Mr Froude supplios scarcely xny information whatever. The life he has written is much more that of Carlylo the lyspeptic, the hypochondriac, than of Unrlyle the thinker. The chief interest and ralue of the work lie- as, indeed, under iltnost any conceivable circumstance they nust have lain— in the excerpts from Darlyle's own letters and private journal, md in Mr Froude's expositions of his views >n various questions, based largely on recolections of his conversation. Glimpses :here are, only too frequent, of his peculiar narital relations— the truest definition of rt'bich appears to be that he was passionately devoted to his wife whenever they were parted, but was incapable of showing affection when they were together, and habitually and remorselessly made her the victim of his irritability. On thi3 subject more than enough has already been made public. Carlyle's judgments on his contemporaries are plentiful, and most of them in the style which has already been so amply illustrated in the "Reminiscences." Here is his report of an interview with Wordsworth: — "Have seen Wordsworth, an old, very loquacious, indeed quite prosing man, with a tint of naturalness, of sincere insight, nevertheless. He has been much spoiled ; king of his company, unrecognised, and then adulated. Worth little now. A genuine kind of man, but intrinsically and extrinsically a, small one, let them sing or say whatthey will. Thelanguid way in which he gives you a handful of ntimb, irresponsive fingers is very significant. It seems, also, rather to grieve him that you have any admiration for anybody but him." Coleridge he thus dismisses :—": — " Ido not honour the man. I pity him (with the opposite of contempt) ; see in him one glorious up-struggling ray (as it were) which perished, all but ineffectual, in a lax, languid, impotent character. This is my theory of Coleridge--very different from that of his admirers here." And here we have his " theory " of Sydney Smith :—" Smith, a mass of fat and muscularity, with massive Roman nose, piercing hazel eyes, huge cheeks, shrewdness and fun, not humoar or even wit, seemingly without soul altogether." This was written v.hile he was in the throes of his "French Revolution" — throes of which the intensity and duration were unfortunately increased by the loss of the manuscript of the first volume while it was in charge of J. S. Mill. To the same period belong many of the most mournful entries in his journal. Here is one:— "I have seen Wordsworth again. I havo seen Landor, Americans, Frenchmen — Carvaignac, the Republican. Be no words written of them. Bubble, bubble, toil 'and trouble. I find emptiness and chagrin, look for nothing else, and on the whole can reverence no existing man, and shall do well to pity all, myself first— or rather last. To work, therefore. That will still me a little if aught will." Mr Froiide'B comment on this outcry is that genius gave to Carlyle "with the intensity of insight, intensity of spiritual suffering." The question which many people will put to themselves is, whether it was his intensity of insight or his disordered digestion that prevented Carlyle from "reverencing any existing man." "Of his mood a year later, when the "French Revolution " was published, and was bringing [him praise, though indeed not much j else, the following passage from a letter to his brother John is an impressive picture :—: — ".My life is full of sadness, streaked with wild gloamings of a very strange joy, but habitually gad enough. The dead seem as much my companions as the living : death as much present with me as life. The only wise thing I can do is to hold my tongue, and see what will come of it. In regard to temporals, I believe if I had these twohealth and impudence — I might make great way here ; but having neither of them, one sees not so well how it will be ; one knowe

not which way may be best. Alas ! I trace in myself such a devilish disposition, on many sides, such abysses of self-conoeit, disgust, and instability. I think many times it were better and safer I were kept always sunk, pinched in the ice of poverty and obscurity, till death quietly received me and I were at rest. If you call this hypochondriacal, consider the unutterable discrepancy that lies in these two facts ; a man becoming notable as a light or rushlight, of his generation, and possessed of resources to serve him three or four months without an.outlook beyond." More than one of Carlyle's opinions about Frederick Denison Maurice are recorded. This is, perhaps, the most direct:— "One of the most entirely uninteresting men of genius that I can meet in society is poor Maurice ; to me all twisted, screwed, wiredrawn, with such a restless sensitiveness, the utmost inability to lot nature have fair play with him. Ido not remember that a word ever taken from him botokening clear recognition, or healthy, freo sympathy with anything. One must really let him alone till tho prayers one does offer for him {pure-hearted, earnest creature as he is] begin to take effect." lb was occasionally Carlyle'a habit with all his " intensity of insight " to like people on a h'r«>t introduction, but very soon get dreadfully weary of them. Whon ho first met Miss Martineau he announced his intention, in ono of his letters, of cultivating her acquaintance ; but a few months later he speaks in his journal of a visit from "That too happy and too noisy distinguished female " as having done nothing but made him miserable, and sums her up a3 " a formalist, limited in tho extrome, and for the present altogether triumphant in her limits." From a lettor of April, 1838, may betaken two brief word-portraits that will have interest for most readers : — " Going through tho Green Park yesterday, I saw her little Majesty taking her departure for Windsor. I had scon her another day at tlyde Park Corner, coming in from tho daily rido. She is a decidedly prettylooking creature ; health, clearness, graceful timidity looking out from her young face, "frail cockle on the black bottomless deluges." One could not help some interest in her, situated as morat seldom was. In the evening a Bollerian rout. Radical Grote was the only novelty, for I had never noticed him before— a man with straight, upper lip, large chin, and open mouth (spout mouth) ; for the rest, a tall man Avith dull thoughtful brows, and lank, dishevelled hair, greatly tho look of a prosperous Dissenting minister." Another letter of 1840, gives the following description of Dickons, to whose "Pickwick Papers" Carlylo elsewhere refers as " lowost trash." — " Pickwick, too, was of the samo dinner party, though they did not seem to heed him overmuch. He is a fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he arches amazingly, large protrusive rather loose mouth, a faco of most extreme nobility, which he shuttles about—eyebrows, eyes, mouth, and all — in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact figure, very small, end dressed a la D'Orsay, rather than well — this id Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to guess pretty well what he is and what others are." As a companion picture, painted in soft colours, such as tho artist could but seldom use, take this of Tennyson :—: — "A tine, largefeatured, dim-eyed, bi onze-colourcd, shaggyheaded man is Alfred ; dusty, smoky, tree-and-easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly with great composure in an inarticulate clement of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke. Great now and then when ho does emerge— a most restful, brotherly, solidhearted man."' Believing a review of his " Chartism " in the "Edinburgh" to be by Macaulay, Carlyle cries out to his brother, epistolarily :— " At bottom, this Macaulay is but a poor creature, with his dictionary literature aud erudition, his saloon arrogance lie has no vision within him. He will noither see nor do any great thing." On finding, however, that Macaulay was not the reviewer, he calmly observed, " Of Macaulay I have still considerable hopes." Mr Froude records these two opinions with a seeming total disregard of tho tact that they pro/c Carlyle's judgment of other people to have been regulated, in a singular degree, by other peoplo's judgment of him. But ho never, in reality, liked or respected Macaulay. After meeting him at breakfast in 1848, he observes of him, in his journal: — "Essentially irremediable, commonplace i.ature of tho man ; all that was in him now gone to the tongue." And in the next year noting the extraordinary success of Macaulay's History, he says, in a spirit which only the loyalty of his biographer could discriminate ftotn envy and distraction :—": — " Book to which 400 editions could not lend any permanent value, there being no depth of sense in it- at all, and a very great quantity of rhetorical wind and other temporary ii gredients, which are the reverse of sense." The fact is that the older Carlyle grew, the more intolerant he became of everybody except himself. In 1848, Emerson came over from America, and of course visited at Cheyne Walk. Here are Carlyle's private impressions of him, as recorded in the journal : — " Very exotic, of similar dimensions, too, and differed much from me, as a gymnosophist sitting idle on a flowery bank may do from a wearied worker and wrestler passing that way with many of his bones broken. Good of himlcould getnone, except from his friendly looks and elevated, exotic, polite ways ; and he would not let me sit silent for a minute. Solitary on that side, too, then ? Be it so, if so it mu&t be." Such utterances as this reveal a morbidity of mind amounting almost to insanity. Of the same kind is Im remark on Keats, suggested by a work of Lord Houghton's on that poet:— "The kind of man that Keats was gets ever more horrible to me. Force of hunger for pleasure of overy kind, and want of all other force— that is a combination ! Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a chosen ' vessel of hell ;' and truly for ever there is justice in that feeling." Of passages conceived in this mood many more might be cited ; but to what purpose ? Enough has been quoted to show the general character of the book, apart from those portions of it depicting, in Carlyle's own letters and in his biographer's comments and explanations, his private relations, with which the public has properly little if any concern. The feeling with which wo ' close the last of these volumes— a feeling which will probably be shared by the majority of those who read them— is one of profound regret that they and their predecessors were ever published at all. Better no biography whatever of Carlyle than a biography which unnaturally emphasises the enormous difference of level between the man and the best of his teachings, That these teachings will endure and bear good fruit in the world need not be doubted, but they will so endure rather in spite than because of Mr Froude'a revelations. It is satisfactory to know that of these revelations we are to have no more. The last chapter has now been told of a life-histary which, while recording magnificent achievements, is in many ways as painful and humiliating as any that ever was penned,