Literary fame is a slippery and indefinite thing. There are countless impossible questions one could ask. How many readers must a work have to be considered alive at all? Is fame to be allowed to some of the obscure poets like Campion, Traherne, and Shenstone, who are known only to the specialist? Definiteness and finality are as difficult of attainment as to tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is northerly. But it is certain that the immortals are dependent upon an amazingly small set of followers, which tends to grow smaller as the ages turn. Yet those who deserve long life will in the long run reach an old age, frosty but kindly. And we may leave them with confidence in the hands of Time, who, after all, like Autolycus, pockets only what have come to be unconsidered trifles. CARLYLE AND KULTUR I The opinions anyone holds in this momentous crisis are largely determined by those he has imbibed from the thinkers of the past, and it is interesting to notice how much Carlyle has been brought into the discussion on both sides. A somewhat systematic consideration of the bearing of his teachings on the present war may therefore not be altogether profitless. For many reasons he is not the sort of man to invite much attention from journalistic, academic, and dilettante writers. He is unpopular in a double sense; for he is neither superficial nor facile, and his ideas are opposed to the optimistic convictions that dominate in this generation. Some insist that he is responsible for the extravagant paradox and persistent denial of the obvious and the accepted indulged in so freely by such journalistic products as Shaw and Chesterton, but these men only imitate his manner to pervert his meaning. That they imitate him, however, is proof of his influence; for the popular writer does not imitate anyone whose repute is not of the highest. The academic mind is indifferent or hostile to him because the formlessness of his writings and their abnormal character seem serious defects to those to whom the formal is more important than the substantial. His learning, too, while undoubtedly extensive, is not always accurate or orthodox. The king is not the "cunning or the kenning" man, and his contempt for "logic-choppers" and "word-mongers" does not commend him to such as value the theoretical above the practical. To the dilettante he is equally repellant. He hated mediocrity and superficiality, and he had inconveniently high standards. This latter reason is the openly avowed one for hostility towards him in the case of an English writer, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, who freely denounces him in his diffuse discussions of the war, but also cites facts that tend to disprove his contention that Carlyle is without influence; for he tells of repeated experiences with British workingmen who were readers of Carlyle and ardent believers in his gospel.