treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship
and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a
football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless
rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable
by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these
dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of
cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and
shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts. Worst
of all for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of
all sympathy by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane
conservation and impressing the reader with the conviction that
Carlyle himself has the truest love for everything old and
excellent, and a genuine respect for the basis of truth in those
whom he exposes. Gulliver among the Lilliputians...

"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.

"But everything must be done well once; even bulletins and
almanacs must have one excellent and immortal bulletin and
almanac. So let Carlyle's be the immortal newspaper."
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