RECOLLECTIONS OF CARLYLE. (By Professor Charles E. Norton, in the "New Princeton Review.")

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 176, 30 October 1886, Page 4 (Supplement)

RECOLLECTIONS OF CARLYLE. (By Professor Charles E. Norton, in the "New Princeton Review.")

Carlyle la Old Age. My personal acquaintance witb Carlyle began when he was an old man. I saw him first in 1869, and then but seldom. He epoke to me at that time of his intention to leave such of his books as related to Cromwell and Frederick the Great to some library in America ; and his final determination to bequeath them to the library of Harvard College was the occaeion of some correspondence between us in the course of the two following years, In 1872 1 returned to London for a stay of several months. During this time I saw much of Carlyle, and relation i of affectionate friendliness grew up between us. In 1872 Carlyle wa3 77 years old, a hale vigorous old man, "every organ and function of his sound," as he hiinpelf declared, except for the trembling of his hand, which made writing difficult. His mind was no leas healthy.- Age had mellowed but had not impaired him. The muscles of his strong and rugged face were still firm and under steady control, and the lineo drawn upon it by character and experienr e had suffered no deterioration. The light had not gone out of his eyes, his sight was excellent ; his glance keen, quick and penetrating. Hi? voice was full and unbroken, and hia laugh was still deep and eonorouc, his body was erect, his motions uasy, hie gait firm. The variety and depth of expression in his countenance, and the accurd of his looks with the emotion within, were such as are peldom seen in any face. There was no grimace or affectation in his look or manner. His face, when quiet, was rugged aa that of a shepherd of the hills ; grave, stern, sad as that of a Covenanter — a face fit for one of the "Scottish Worthies." 1 never saw in it anything of that aspect of semi-professional melancholy which appears in eoine of his photographs. It had the look of one who had found life a tragedy — " Alas ! is not the life of every such man a tragedy, made up of fate and one's own de8ervinge?"—but who had retained his selfpossession, and who, though worn, was not worsted by the years. Mingled with his stern aspect — nay quite indissoluble from it— was a look of tenderness that easily kindled into a smile as sympathetic and as kindly as ever lit up a human face. His laugh was net, as often with grave men, merely a smile become more or lesg vccal, but a deep-seated, cordial utterance, full of humorou* intonation and suggestion, giving significant interpretation to the words that preceded^or followed it, depriving satire of bitterness, and re-forcing the mirth oflively exaggeration, "How much," said Corlyle in •' Sartor Resartus," " lies in laughter ! the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man." He might have drawn from himself his description of " a stern face, stera fts any Hebrew, but capable withal of bursting into inextinguishable laughter on occasion ; do you understand that new and bitter form of character? Laughter if ft come from the heart is a heavenly thing."

Carlyle on His Books. His talk bad lost nothing of its raciness and vigour. In subetance and in form it was the genuine expression of his exceptionally distinct individual temperament and genius, and of the wide range of his ! interest in human concerns. Much of it ! was of the nature of reminiscences concern- | ing his early life, the men whom he hud known, the incidents he had witnessed or taken part in. In all this the extraordinary vigour and exactness of his memory were displayed ; the impressions of the past seemed to stand complete pictures before him, sharp in outline, full in detail, and fresh as if but yesterday. He talked but little of his immediately personal affairs j there was no touch of vanity or" 1 self-engrossment in his narratives. He had no conceit about his works, and never put on the air of a prophet or a man deserving of superior consideration. One day the talk fell upon his books. "Poor old I Sartor!" he said. "It's a book in which I take little satisfaction ; really a book worthy very little as. a work of art, a fragmentary» disjointed, vehement production. It was written when I was livin' at Craig enputtock, one o' the solitariest places on the face o' the earth ; a wild moor-land place where one ;. might lead a wholegome, simple- life,, and 1 might labourwithout Htatejnrap|idri, >,and, be v not altogether without -freace puch ;as London

cannot give. We were quite alone, and there is much that is beautiful and precious in them as I look back on those days." He went on to tell of the difficulties he had in : getting the book published, of which 'an account has since been given in his " Life," and of the lack of favour with which it was at first received, and then he said, " But it's been 80 with all my books, I've had little satisfaction or encouragement in the dom' of them, and the most satisfaction I can get out of them now is the sense of havin' shouldered a heavy burden o' work, an' not flinched under it. I've had but one thing to say from beginnin to end o' them, and that was that there's no other reliance for this world or any other but just the Truth, and that if men did not want to be damned to all eternity they had beat give up lyin', and all kinds o' falsehood ; that the world was far gone already through lyin', and that there's no hope for it save just so far as men find out and believe the Truth, and match their lives to it. But on the whole the world has gone on lyin' worse than ever ! (A lau^h.) It's not a very pleaain' retrospect—those books o' mine— of a long life ; a beggarly account of empty boxea. "Doubtless it's better to se*e things breaking up and falliing into confusion if so we can only get rid of the endless dubieties and bottomless insincerities of this hag-ridden old world. The very last entirely sincere voice heard in England was that of Olive Cromwell : the spirits of the "Truth was in him." Carlyle's talk stamped itself on the memory, but it cannot be truly reported, for dialect, voice, tone, emphasis, and expression of face were all essential elements of it. It was full of incommunicable flashes of hmrnour and gleams of imagination. His speech was an interpretation of bis written words, and had his letters and his personal records addressed the ear as well as the eye, they would have lain far less open to misunderstanding. Carlyle, indeed, used* capitals, itelics, and punctuation as no writer has used them, to give the full weight and just balance to written clause and sentence, but, even as he employed them, they cannot supply the place of intonation and look. He wrote as if speaking, but the vital significance of roice and uoanner are lacking in the printed words. The exactness and readiness of Carlyle's memory were not less striking as regards books than as regards his personal experiences. He cited easily, and more often from Shakespeare and Dante than from others. "Andrew Marvell's peoms," said he one day, "are worth reading, though I find little of divine inspiration in them, and I don't value the man over highly. In fact, Cromwell was the only man of that time whom one can wholly reverence. The more I learn of him the surer am I that he was among the greatest of the sons of men. The mask taken from the dead face of him is the very likeness of the man - grand, stern, melancholy, tender I know no other mortal head so fine. I never saw the mask of Dante, but he too had a face worthy of him. I've tried to get the best likeness of hiorl could find, and I would like to see" the mask of what it could tell of the man's spiritual history from the time when Giotto painted him as he was when he eaid — " ' Io mi son tin che quando Amore spira. noto ; ed a puel modo Che ditta dentro, vo slgnificando. 1 *'