Carlyle's "Cromwell" has less attraction for us to-day than the "French Revolution"; but the service to historical study was even greater. Opinions will always differ as to the wisdom of the Protector's policy and the righteousness of his deeds, but since the publication of these letters and speeches, "edited with the care of an antiquarian and the genius of a poet,"[17] Cromwell's sincerity and genuine piety have been unimpugned. There are others beside Mr Froude who esteem the "History of Frederick II." Carlyle's greatest work. The humour of the book is wonderful, for Carlyle is the greatest humorist since Sterne, and nowhere is this humour more conspicuous than in "Frederick." The splendid portraits of all the most important figures in the eighteenth century fix themselves indelibly in the memory, and it is even said that German soldiers study the art of war from the descriptions of Frederick's campaigns. Nevertheless, the book has much in it that is unsatisfying to Englishmen. Frederick and his father could not easily excite the hero-worshipping inclinations of a free people, and even Carlyle became disillusioned as he proceeded with his task, and finally admitted that Frederick was not worth the trouble he had given to him. He commenced it as a "History of Frederick the Great," and concluded it as a "History of Frederick, _called_ the Great." Carlyle is surely the greatest figure in our modern literature. He wrote no poetry worth consideration, it is true. His verse would long since have been forgotten had it not been for his effectiveness as a prose writer. But although we are accustomed to the claim for poetry that it ranks higher than prose, it must be conceded that in Victorian literature this is not the case, and that Carlyle's enormous personality, his capacity for influencing others for good and ill, have made him the greatest moral and intellectual force of his age. To him we owe the indifference to mere political shibboleths, the lull in party warfare, which is the note of our age. He gave no definite answer to any question, but he gave us the impetus which led others to seek for solutions. His literary influence on Froude and Mill, Mr Ruskin and Mr Lecky, and numbers of others was tremendous. The place which was occupied by Swift in the eighteenth century is held by Carlyle in the nineteenth, and though every line that he has written should cease to be read, he will still be remembered as the greatest of literary figures in an age of great men of letters. FOOTNOTES: [11] Froude's "History of England," vol. ii. chap. ix. [12] "Lectures on the Council of Trent," "English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century," and "Life and Letters of Erasmus." [13] "Memoirs of Mark Pattison." [14] Mrs Thackeray-Ritchie, _Harper's Magazine_ (1883). [15] "Reminiscences," by Thomas Carlyle. 2nd Edition. Edited by C. E. Norton (1887).