Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
The numerous articles called forth by Carlyle's "Reminiscences,"
both in this country and in England, while varying greatly in the
proportions in which they mix their praise and blame, leave no doubt
that there has occurred a very strong revulsion of feeling about
him, so strong in England that we are told that the subscriptions
for a proposed memorial to him have almost if not entirely ceased.
The censure which Carlyle's friends are visiting on Mr. Froude for
his indiscretion in printing the book, though deserved, has done but
little to mitigate the severity of the judgment passed on the writer
himself. In fact, we are inclined to believe that Mr. Froude's want
of judgment rather helps to deepen the surprise and disappointment
with which the book has been received, as affording an additional
proof of the feebleness of Carlyle's own powers in estimating the
people about him. That, after heaping contempt on so many of whom
the world has been accustomed to think highly, he should have
retained to the last his confidence in, and respect for, a person
capable of dealing his fame such a deadly blow as Mr. Froude, not
unnaturally increases the irritation with which the public has read
his recollections of his friends and contemporaries. The
"disillusion and disenchantment" worked by the book, in so far as it
affects Carlyle's fame as a prophet, is, of course, a misfortune,
and a very serious one. What it was he preached when his preaching
first startled the world, but very few now undertake to say, and
these few by no means agree in their story. His influence,
apparently, was not of the kind which reaches a man through
articulate speech, but rather that which comes through the blast of
a trumpet or the marching tune of a good band, and fills the heart
with a feeling of capacity for high endeavor, though one cannot say
in what particular field it is to be displayed. But though he
founded no school and taught no system of morals, his eminence as
a mere preacher was one of the very valuable possessions of the
Anglo-Saxon world, as a sort of standing protest against the
materialistic tendencies of the age; and this eminence rested a good
deal on the popular conception of the elevation of his own
character. This conception has undoubtedly, whether justly or
unjustly, been greatly shaken, if not destroyed, by the revelation
that invidious comparison between himself and others was almost a
habit of his life; that, while preaching patient endurance, he did
not himself endure patiently even the minor ills of existence; that,
when looking at the fine equipages at Hyde Park Corner, he had to
support himself by "sternly thinking"--"yes, and perhaps none of you
could do what I am at;" that his mental attitude during the
preparation of most of his books was that of a man not properly
appreciated who was going to cast pearls before swine; or, in other
words, the attitude of an ordinary literary man burdened with too
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