somewhat indifferent to the fact that had he had the fashioning of his
own destiny, we should have had at his hands blows instead of books.

Taking him, then, as he was--a man of letters--perhaps the best type
of such since Dr. Johnson died in Fleet Street, what are we to say of
his thirty-four volumes?

In them are to be found criticism, biography, history, politics,
poetry, and religion. I mention this variety because of a foolish
notion, at one time often found suitably lodged in heads otherwise
empty, that Carlyle was a passionate old man, dominated by two or
three extravagant ideas, to which he was for ever giving utterance in
language of equal extravagance. The thirty-four volumes octavo render
this opinion untenable by those who can read. Carlyle cannot be killed
by an epigram, nor can the many influences that moulded him be
referred to any single source. The rich banquet his genius has spread
for us is of many courses. The fire and fury of the Latter-Day
Pamphlets may be disregarded by the peaceful soul, and the preference
given to the 'Past' of 'Past and Present,' which, with its intense and
sympathetic mediaevalism, might have been written by a Tractarian. The
'Life of Sterling' is the favourite book of many who would sooner pick
oakum than read 'Frederick the Great' all through; whilst the mere
student of _belles lettres_ may attach importance to the essays
on Johnson, Burns, and Scott, on Voltaire and Diderot, on Goethe and
Novalis, and yet remain blankly indifferent to 'Sartor Resartus' and
'The French Revolution.'

But true as this is, it is none the less true that, excepting possibly
the 'Life of Schiller,' Carlyle wrote nothing not clearly recognisable
as his. All his books are his very own--bone of his bone, and flesh of