Carlists

“ Practically everyone doubts everyone else; and there are numbers of well-known Carlists, but they hold their tongues, at any rate in public, and rub shoulders with the men whom they would gladly kill. ”

“ Large sums are wrung from the people, but they are for the most part absolutely wasted in jobbery. If it were not that the British government have taken the part of Isabella, I should recommend them to stand aside altogether and let the factions fight it out. There are a few honest men on both sides, and the Carlists indeed know what they are fighting for. To the other side it is a matter of indifference who wins, provided they themselves can feather their nests. They are not fighting for the poor little queen, but for their own private interests. ”

“ If Sartor Resartus shows Carlyle at his greatest in dealing with the deeper things of the individual consciousness, it is in The French Revolution that his outlook on the world of his fellow-men is the widest, and his mastery of the mighty and everlasting drama of their actions and passions the most assured. It is here, too, beyond doubt, that he displays more impressively than in any other of his writings, the astonishing wealth and variety of his powers. ”

“ Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English prose literature, is his “French Revolution,” a rhythmic Epic without verse. To write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing heart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a momentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he must have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of millions of contentious brains ”

“ And, therefore, Carlyle is naturally attracted to the revolutionary periods, when the underlying forces come to the surface; when the foundations of the great deep are broken up, all conventions summarily swept aside, and the direct as well as the ultimate attention is to the great principles of its social life. ”

“ They succumb to it intellectually, morally, spiritually. On that Carlyle wrecked his chances of producing a permanent [Pg 33] work of art greater than his French Revolution.
ALL. Carlyle?
O.W. I surprise you? Is that because we all know that Carlyle remained poor? So do misers. Carlyle was the greatest intellectual miser of the nineteenth century. In his prime he wrote his greatest work—the history of a failure—the French Revolution. The time came when, with all his powers matured, he stood equipped for the writing of his supreme masterpiece. ”

“ But for the precise amount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the political meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic significance, we seek in vain, finding no word on the subject, nor even evidence of consciousness that such word is needed.' Had Carlyle, in addition to his genius as a historical dramatist, possessed the patient diagnosing power of the writers and thinkers whom he derided, his French Revolution would have taken its place in historical literature as an epoch-making book. ”

“ The French Revolution was a sudden starting from slumber of that terrible spirit of man which sleeps through the greater number of the centuries; and Carlyle appreciates this, and describes it more powerfully and fearfully than any human historian, because this idea of the spirit of man breaking through formulae and building again on fundamentals was a part of his own philosophical theory, and therefore he understood it. ”

“ One conceives easily the deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two: with what terror of feminine hatred the poor seagreen Formula looked at the monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him;—the Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief-product of the Revolution; yet feeling at bottom that such chief-product was little other than a chief wind-bag, blown large by Popular air; not a man with the heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula instead of heart ”

“ Heroes and Hero-Worship, The French Revolution, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, and The History of Frederick the Great. But the earlier works have the same tonic quality as the later, and are free from many of their defects. As a teacher, especially if we take an American point of view, Carlyle grows less trustworthy with advancing years. His cynicism becomes more bitter, his hero-worship leads him to sympathize with autocracy, while his contempt for the stupidity of the masses leads him to distrust all popular government. ”

“ The mannerism, which has been attributed to an imitation of Jean Paul, appeared to Carlyle himself to be derived rather from the phrases current in his father’s house, and in any case gave an appropriate dialect for the expression of his peculiar idiosyncrasy. But it could not be appreciated by readers who would not take the trouble to learn a new language. In the French Revolution Carlyle had discovered his real strength. He was always at his best when his imagination was set to work upon a solid framework of fact. ”

“ Thus we see how Carlyle approached the great questions of life invariably as a moralist. Mere erudition, which too often tends away from the human, did not attract him. Science, which he beheld still unspiritualized, he undervalued: what boots it to know the “mileage and tonnage” of the universe, when our foremost need is to build up character? In politics, in philosophy, in religion, likewise, he set this consideration above all others: before its august presence outward reforms dwindled into insignificance. ”

“ To the question whether mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Mr. Carlyle nowhere gives a clear answer; indeed, on this subject more even than any other, he clings closely to his favourite method of simple presentation, streaked with dramatic irony. No writer shows himself more alive to the enormous moment to all Europe of that transaction ”

“ Carlyle, however, to the ordinary Briton, passed for an eccentric old Diogenes—a railer at things in general, or perhaps a humorist whose misanthropy was half affectation. The Christian Socialists might be treated as amiable and excellent crotchet-mongers, whose philanthropy wanted common-sense. And undoubtedly there was a vulgar version of Political Economy, which used the orthodox phrases ignorantly and blatantly enough, preached an absolute and selfish 'individualism,' and discovered that every scheme of social reform was somehow condemned by inexorable scientific law. ”

“ Carlyle must write thus or nohow, like a drunken man who can run, but cannot walk. What a man's book is that! no prudences, no compromises, but a thorough independence. A masterly criticism on the times. Fault perhaps the excess of importance given to the circumstance of today. The poet is here for this, to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g. dwarf British Debt and raise Nature and social life. ”

“ There are many able and honest and republican men who in their hearts suspect that the latter of the two alternatives is the more correct description of what has happened. Mr. Carlyle is as one who does not hear the question. He draws its general moral lesson from the French Revolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns, from king to churl, that imposture must come to an end. ”

“ He did not care to probe the obscure lives and activities of the great mass of humanity, upon whose slow toil was built up the prosperity of the world and who were the hidden foundation of the political and constitutional edifice reared by the famous men he praised. To speak of ordinary people would have been beneath the dignity of history. Carlyle struck a significant note of revolt: 'The thing I want to see,' he said, 'is not Red-book lists and Court Calendars and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed.... ”

“ Of late, matters coming more and more to crisis, the liberty men seeing their way, as they think, more and more broad and bright before them, and still this too legible and steady old sign-post saying, That it is not the way, lovely as it looks, the outcry against it becomes deafening. Now, I tell you once for all, Carlyle is the only living writer who has spoken the absolute and perpetual truth about yourselves and your business; and exactly in proportion to the inherent weakness of brain in your lying guides, will be their animosity against Carlyle. ”

“ To one who said that his exacting £100 shares for his Book Company was aristocratic, he answered, ‘Call it what you please, that is republican which is done well.’ (3) Carlile took a view of the rationale and initiation of revolution in England as manly as it was sagacious. ‘In the beginning of my political career,’ he writes, ‘I had those common notions which the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience produces, that all reforms must be the work of physical force. ”

“ Carlyle very fairly finds the calamity of the times, not in bad bills of Parliament, nor the remedy in good bills, but the vice in false and superficial aims of the people, and the remedy in honesty and insight. Like every work of genius, its great value is in telling such simple truths. As we recall the topics, we are struck with force given to the plain truths; the picture of the English nation all sitting enchanted, the poor, enchanted so that they cannot work, the rich, enchanted so that they cannot enjoy, and are rich in vain ”

“ Do we ask Mr Carlyle to falsify his own transendental philosophy for the sake of his weaker brethren? By no means. Let him proceed on the "high à priori road," if he finds it—as not many do—practicable. Let men, at all times, when they write as philosophers, speak out simply what they hold to be truth. It is his partiality only that we here take notice of, and the different measure that he deals out to the past and the present. ”

“ It was this emotional appeal of Carlyle which made him such a powerful force among thoughtful men and women, and especially among those whom experience had made acquainted with the worst effects of the industrial revolution. His hero-worship gave no little encouragement to the more brutal sort of Toryism, and there are still many English people who believe {237}that the history of a nation is only the biography of its great men. ”

“ The French Revolution had revolutionised men's thoughts and feelings. There had been revealed to man the inadequacy of the old Deistical or Mechanical{47} philosophy, which, spreading from England to France, had done so much to hasten the revolutionary epoch. Carlyle could find no spiritual sustenance in the purely mechanical theory of life which was offered as the substitute for the theory of the Churches. ”

“ 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 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; he has burnt away foolish illusions; he has awakened thousands to know what it is to be a man,—that we must live, and not merely pretend to others that we live. ”

“ It is curious to notice how, with all his belief in individualism, Carlyle, in political matters, was unconsciously driven in the direction of socialism. Get your great man, worship him, and render him obedience—such was the Carlylean recipe for modern diseases. Suppose the great man found, how is he to proceed? ”

“ It is therefore our purpose to look backwards into that solemn and beautiful past of which heretical England can boast, and behold her, as Carlyle beheld her in his "Past and Present," offering to the world the sublime spectacle of a people devout and faithful, undisturbed by doubt, tranquilized by the harmonious influence of religion, and unharassed by the spirit of so called philosophic inquiry, which, misdirected, is the true bane of English society at the present day. ”

“ He is not the creature of his age, but its creator; not its servant, but its master. “The History of the World is but the Biography of Great Men.”
Anti-scientific in his reading of history, Carlyle is also anti-democratic in the practical lessons he deduces from it. He teaches that our right relations with the Hero are discipular relations; that we should honestly acknowledge his superiority, look up to him, reverence him. Thus on the personal side he challenges that tendency to “level down” which he believed to be one alarming result of the fast-spreading spirit of the new democracy. ”

“ In fine, turn which way you will, to philosophy, to politics, to religion, you find Mr Carlyle objecting, denouncing, scoffing, rending all to pieces in his bold, reckless, ironical, manner—but teaching nothing. The most docile pupil, when he opens his tablets to put down the precious sum of wisdom he has learned, pauses—finds his pencil motionless, and leaves his tablet still a blank. ”

“ But it is a passionate appeal, in the very spirit of Socialism, to the sense of brotherhood, to the feeling that every man has as much right as every other not to be left behind in the race of industrial competition, and that the State, the organization of Society for common purposes, should not be confined merely to negative functions, but should be made the active and positive instrument of the improvement of human life.
Carlyle presented a curious contrast of the aristocrat and the democrat. His feeling was all for the people. ”