preponderance of helpless good-nature and muddled kindliness. The
mistake of much of Carlyle's work is that it is too poignantly
dramatic, and bristles with intention and significance; and he did
not allow sufficiently for the crowd of vague supers who throng the
background of the stage. Neither did he ever go about the world
with his eyes open for general facts. Wherever he was, he was
intensely observant, but he spent his days either in a fierce
absorption of work, blind even to the sorrow and discomfort of his
wife, or taking rapid tours to store his mind with the details of
historical scenes, or in the big houses of wealthy people, where he
kept much to himself, stored up irresistibly absurd caricatures of
the other guests, and lamented his own inaction. I have never been
able to discover exactly why Carlyle spent so much time in staying
at great houses, deriding and satirising everything he set eyes
upon; it was, I believe, vaguely gratifying to him to have raised
himself unaided into the highest social stratum; and the old man
was after all a tremendous aristocrat at heart. Or else he skulked
with infinite melancholy in his mother's house, being waited upon
and humoured, and indulging his deep and true family affection. But
he was a solitary man for the most part, and mixed with men,
involved in a cloud of his own irresistibly fantastic and whimsical
talk; for his real gift was half-humorous, half-melancholy
improvisation rather than deliberate writing.

But it is difficult to discern in all this what his endless and
plangent melancholy was concerned with. He had a very singular
physical frame, immensely tough and wiry, with an imagination which
emphasized and particularised every slight touch of bodily
disorder. When he was at work, he toiled like a demon day after
day, entirely and vehemently absorbed. When he was not at work he