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works, he deplores the present state of things, denounces existing Kings, Aristocracies, Churches, and specially declaims against modern political movements. We did wrong to emancipate the negroes; they find the necessaries of life cheap, work little, and let the sugar crops rot. We are too lenient with our criminals (see p. 158). He would take more work out of them. He considers the transaction of Government business to be in a wretched state-hampered by "blind obstructions, fatal indolences, pedantries, stupidities;" the Colonial Office "a world-wide jungle of red-tape, inhabited by doleful creatures." He would have none but men of ability in important posts. He dis-. approves strongly of Parliaments elected by the people; sneers at voting and "ballot-boxes"; asks whether a crew that settled every movement by voting would be likely to take a ship round Cape Horn. His ideal of government is to have a king (which he is constantly deriving from Can through König, and constantly translating "Ableman") at the head of affairs, and capable, obedient officials under him through all degrees of importance. How to realise the ideal he does not show; and, as we have said, he takes no account of the endeavours of human communities towards this ideal, or of the uncontrollable forces that make it an impossibility.

Criticism. Of literary criticism in the ordinary sense word-in the sense of noting faults and merits of style, what to avoid and what to imitate--Carlyle's

the

next to nothing. He published, as we have showing

of Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,' remarks men of letters-German, French, and English.

s contain the title various great But in these

essays he does not occupy himself with style, or with the statement and illustration of critical canons. He deals rather with life, character, and opinions; declaims on his favourite topics— Mystery, Reverence, Industry, Veracity; rails at reviewers, logiciaus, historical philosophers, sceptical philosophers, atheists, and other favourite objects of aversion. He ranks authors, not according to their literary power, but according as they possess his cardinal virtues. Goethe and Johnson he extols above measure as being men of power, and, at the same time, industrious, veracious, and reverential towards the mystery of the world. In consideration of this he passes over in Goethe some minor iniquities that elsewhere he condemns in the abstract, and passes over in Johnson what some writers are pleased to call his intolerant prejudices and narrow canons of criticism. Voltaire and Diderot he finds industrious and veracious, but terribly wanting in reverence. Accordingly, he refuses to call them great men-finds in Voltaire adroitness rather than greatness, and styles him a master of persiflage. One or two of his precepts may be called literary, though they

scarcely belong to minute criticism. He warns writers to beware of affectation; to study reality in their style. One of the chief merits of Burns is his "indisputable air of reality." He further recommends them to write slowly; points out the evils of Sir Walter Scott's extempore speed, and affirms that no great thing was ever done without difficulty. Once more he stands up for a style that does not show its meaning at once, that becomes intelligible slowly and after much laborious study. On this ground he praises Goethe and Novalis, saying that no good book or good thing of any sort shows itself at first. Still another literary notion, already alluded to, is his idea that, in the present day, men should write prose and not poetry, and history rather than fiction.

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary.

His command of words must be pronounced to be of the highest order. Among the few that stand next to Shakspeare he occupies a very high place.

As his peculiar feelings are strongly marked, so are the special regions of his verbal copiousness. As a matter of course, he was specially awake to, and specially retained, expressions suiting his peculiar vein of strength, rugged sublimity, and every form of ridicule and contempt down to the lowest tolerable depths of coarseness. It would be interesting to collect the various forms that he uses to express his sense of the confusion, the chaotic disorder, of these latter days. An estimate of his abundance on that or any other of his favourite topics would give the reader the most vivid idea of his lingual resources.

Having a strong natural bent for the study of character, he is a consummate master of the requisite phraseology. In the language needful for déscribing character, he probably comes nearer Shakspeare than any other of our great writers. To be convinced of this, we have only to look at his opulence in bringing out the leading features of such a man as John Sterling. Between the subjective and the objective side, the language of feeling and the language of gesture and action, he is pretty evenly divided-a master of both Vocabularies.

In the use of Latinised terms, as against Saxon, he follows the Shakspearian type of an indifferent mixture. He does not particularly affect either extreme. Often on themes where other writers would use solemn words of Latin origin, he prefers what Leigh Hunt calls a "noble simplicity," which others might call "profaue familiarity"; but he employs liberally the Latinised vocabulary when it suits his purpose. His acquaintance with technical names

is considerable. He makes frequent metaphorical and literal application of the language of mathematics and natural philosophy his favourite studies when a young man. He knew also the vocabulary of several industries, as well as of the social mechanism and institutions.

Two circumstances in particular make his command of acknowledged English appear less than it really is. First, revelling in his immense force of Comparison or Assimilation, he shows a prodigious luxuriance of the figures of similarity-nicknaming personages, applying old terms to new situations, and suchlike. He often substitutes metaphorical for real names when the real are quite sufficient, and perhaps more suitable for the occasion. Now this habit, not to speak of its lowering the value and freshness of his genius by over-doing and over-affecting originality of phrase, often makes it appear as if he did not know the literal and customary names of things, and were driven to make shift with these allusive names. Another circumstance produces the same impression. He is most liberal in his coinage of new words, and even new forms of syntax. For this he was taken to task by his friend John Sterling,1 part of whose criticism we quote :—

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"A good deal of the language is positively barbarous. 'En"vironment,' vestural,' 'stertorous,' visualised,' 'complected,' "and others I think to be found in the first thirty pages, are “words, so far as I know, without any authority; some of them "contrary to analogy; and none repaying by their value the disadvantage of novelty. To these must be added new and erroneous locutions: 'whole other tissues' for all the other, and similar 6 uses of the word whole; orients' for pearls; 'lucid' and "lucent' employed as if they were different in meaning; 'hulls' "perpetually for coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then only for the husk of a nut; 'to insure a man of misapprehension;' "talented,' a mere newspaper and hustings word, invented, I be"lieve, by O'Connell. I must also mention the constant recurrence of some words in a quaint and queer connection, which "gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism to many "sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite'; which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of "emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,' 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational "or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if "in some uneasy dream, which does not rise to the dignity of "nightmare."

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In this passage, which Carlyle himself has given to the world, some of his most striking peculiarities of diction are noticed. То give an adequate view of his verbal eccentricities, would be no

1 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, 276.

small labour.

He extends the admitted licences of the language in every direction, using one part of speech for another, verbs for nouns, nouns for verbs, adverbs and adjectives for nouns. His coinages often take the form of new derivatives-"benthamee," 66 amusee." He abuses the licence of giving plurals to abstract nouns: thus "credibilities," "moralities," "theological philosophies," "transcendentalisms and theologies."

This excess of metaphors, new words, and grammatical licences is in favour of the reader's enjoyment, but not so much in favour of the student's instruction. It belongs to the inimitable, unreproducible part of the style; the student cannot take the same liberties without bearing the charge of copying an individual manner, instead of deriving from the common fund of the language. So far it may stimulate to do likewise in one's own independent sphere; but close imitation is little better than parody, and imitation of any kind runs some danger of ridicule.

Sentences.

In his essays, particularly in the earlier essays and in his 'Life of Schiller,' Carlyle shows none of the irregularity of structure that appears in his matured style. He has an admirable command of ordinary English, and constructs his sentences to suit the motion of a massive and rugged, yet musical rhythm.

Even in his essays, though himself writing with great care, he speaks slightingly of painstaking in the structure of sentences. What he really objects to is making sentences after an artificial model, of a particular length, or with a particular cadence, or with a particular number of members; but he speaks as if he condemned all labour in the arrangement of words, and lays himself open to be quoted by any that would shirk the trouble of making themselves as intelligible as possible to their readers.

The sentences of his later manner we can describe in his own words. Among his editorial remarks on the style of Teufelsdroeckh is the following:

"Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered."

From this figurative description one would suppose his sentences to be extremely involved and complicated. As a matter of fact, they are extremely simple in construction-consisting, for the most part, of two or three co-ordinate statements, or of a short direct statement, eked out by explanatory clauses either in apposition or in the "nominative absolute" construction. These apposi

tion and absolute clauses are the "tag-rags," and it is in the connection of them with the main statement that we find the "dashes and parentheses." This character of his sentences is so obvious that few examples will suffice:—

"Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES."

In this explanation of the Philosophy of Clothes, the sentences are free from intricacy. The second sentence exemplifies a very common form with Carlyle in his less irregular moods, although he sneers at some sentence makers because they are very curious to have their sentence consist of three members; yet he seems to have been himself a lover of this peculiar cadence.

He very often uses the sentence of two members, one explanatory of the other-avoiding the error of joining them by a conjunction. Thus in his description of John Sterling's mother :

"The mother was a woman of many household virtues; to a warm affection for her children, she joined a degree of taste and intelligence which is of much rarer occurrence.

As examples of his practice of apposition, take the following:'Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished individuals.”` Speaking of John Sterling, he says:

"To the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike, half-embarrassed shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance; curiously mingling with its ardours and audacities."

The Crown - Prince's imprisonment by his father is thus described:

"Poor Friedrich meanwhile has had a grim time of it these two months back; left alone, in coarse brown prison-dress, within his four bare walls at Cüstrin; in uninterrupted, unfathomable colloquy with the Destinies and the Necessities there."

In the following long sentence abundant use is made both of participle and of nominative absolute :—

"Eminent swill of drinking, with the loud coarse talk supposable, on the part of Mentzel and consorts, did go on, in this manner, all afternoon; in the evening drunk Mentzel came out for air; went strutting and staggering about; emerging finally on the platform of some rampart, face of him huge and red as that of the foggiest rising Moon ;-and stood, looking over into the Lorraine Country; belching out a storm of oaths as to his taking it, as to his doing this and that; and was even flourishing his sword by way of accompaniment; when, lo, whistling slightly through the summer air, a

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