the rebuke and warning of a prophet. But, as we look back on them
after forty or fifty years of experience, we find in them too much of
passionate exaggeration, at times a ferocious wrong-headedness, and
everywhere so little practical guidance or fruitful suggestion, that we
cannot reckon these magnificent Jeremiads as permanent masterpieces.

As to _Friedrich_, it is not a book at all, but an encyclopaedia of
German biographies in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Who
reads every word of these ten volumes? Who cares to know how big was
the belly of some court chamberlain, or who were the lovers of some
unendurable Frau? What a welter of dull garbage! In what dust-heaps
dost thou not smother us, Teufelsdröckh! O, Thomas, Thomas, what
Titania has bewitched thee with the head of Dryasdust on thy noble
shoulders? Compare _Friedrich_ with _Cromwell_. In the Life of the
Puritan hero we have a great purpose, a prolonged homily, a magnificent
appeal against an unjust sentence passed two hundred years before by
ignorance, bigotry, and passion. The literary interest never
overpowers the social and political, the moral and the religious
purpose. Twenty years later, when he takes up the German _Friedrich_,
the literary interest overpowers the historical. Half of the ten
volumes of _Friedrich_ are taken up with tiresome anecdotes about the
ordinary appendages of a German court. Even the true greatness of
Frederick--his organisation of a model civil administration--is
completely obscured in the deluge of court gossip and _Potsdamiana_.
_Friedrich_ is a wonderful work, highly valuable to the student, a
memorable result of Teufelsdröckhian industry and humour--but it is not
a masterpiece: judged by the standard of Carlyle's own masterpieces, it
is really a failure. _Cromwell_ is the life of a hero and a statesman;
_Friedrich_ consists of miscellaneous memoirs of the court and camp of
the greatest of modern rulers.