loves and wonders at, well _Emersonised_, depicted by Emerson--
filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him then to live
by itself.' [*] But Carlyle forgot the sluggishness of the ordinary
imagination, and, for the moment, the stupendous dulness of the
ordinary historian. It cannot be matter for surprise that people
prefer Smollett's 'Humphrey Clinker' to his 'History of England.'

[* Footnote: One need scarcely add, nothing of the sort
ever proceeded from Emerson. How should it? Where was it
to come from? When, to employ language of Mr. Arnold's
own, 'any poor child of nature' overhears the author of
'Essays in Criticism' telling two worlds that Emerson's
'Essays' are the most valuable prose contributions to the
literature of the century, his soul is indeed filled 'with
an unutterable sense of lamentation and mourning and woe.'
Mr. Arnold's silence was once felt to be provoking.
Wordsworth's lines kept occurring to one's mind--

'Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool.'

But it was better so.]

The third and last mark to which I call attention is his humour.
Nowhere, surely, in the whole field of English literature, Shakespeare
excepted, do you come upon a more abundant vein of humour than
Carlyle's, though I admit that the quality of the ore is not of the
finest. His every production is bathed in humour. This must never be,
though it often has been, forgotten. He is not to be taken literally.
He is always a humourist, not unfrequently a writer of burlesque, and