are unable to see, or seeing are to their sorrow unable to express. The past was poetry as well as prose, it was a miracle as well as a series of causes and effects, and for this reason the poetic faculty is required to give a true account of the more extraordinary events in human affairs. We all feel this to be true, and yet we are all contented, from mere habit and tradition, with the present clumsy division of labor. We first read our history,-prose in feeling as well as in style, and then, if there chance to be one, we turn for light to "the poet's sweet comment." We read Mr. Stillman's "Union of Italy," followed by Browning's "Italian in England" and Mr. Swinburne's "Watch in the Night;" we read Hooper's "Campaign of Sedan," followed by Mr. George Meredith's "France, 1870." This specialization is inevitable, because it seldom happens that the historian has been born a poet, or that the poet will take the trouble to become an historian. But because it is inevitable, it is not therefore a good thing; the prose history explains but one part of the event, while the poem may be nothing more than a fond imagination. Only when the functions of historian and poet are united do we get the real truth. Carlyle's account of the battle of Dunbar is at once one of the finest poems and one of the best historical accounts of a battle, that can be found in our language. Now it is quite as essential to the truth of history that the reader should learn from the lips of a poet what were the feelings of Cromwell's solemn soldiers as they prayed behind the corn-sheaves during the tempestuous night, and rode to battle in the lurid sunrise over St. Abb's Head, as it is that he should master the manœuvres that preceded the victory. The ordinary historian can tell us the one, but Carlyle can tell us both.

Again, it is impossible to pass a fair judgment on the events that occurred

in Paris in 1793-4, without some strain of poetry in our thought. Here again Carlyle comes to the rescue. He prefaces an excellent detailed account of the struggle of Mountain and Gironde with these words:

The sound of it, to the mind, is as a hubbub of voices in distraction; little of articulate is to be gathered by long listening and studying; only battle tumult, shouts of triumph, shrieks of despair. The Mountain has left no memoirs; the Girondins have left memoirs, which are too often little other than long-drawn interjections of Woe is me, and Cursed be ye. So soon as history can philosophically delineate the conflagration of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task. . . . The Fireship is old France, the old French Form of Life, her crew a generation of men. Wild are their cries and their ragings there, like spirits tormented in that flame. But on the whole are they not gone, O reader? Their Fireship and they, frightening the world, have sailed away; its flames and its thunders quite away into the deep of time. One thing therefore History will do; pity them all, for it went hard with them all."

Other historians have great pictorial ability; but they apply it with most success to the description of phenomenal objects, and their narratives gain most from the scenic qualities of an event. But Carlyle's pictures are pictures not of the body only, but of the mind, and he is most powerful at narrative when he describes the hearts of a great multitude swayed like the moon-stirred Atlantic, or some single mind sweeping to a pregnant decision. By this power, and by an instinctive art in the right choice, order and construction of his matter, he drives his word home with the blows of a giant. What he has said is carried away and remembered, so that to read Carlyle for an hour leaves more permanent knowledge of history than to read Motley for a day.

Another quality which Carlyle pos

4 Fr. Rev. iii. book iii. chap. it.

sesses in an unusual degree is humor. There is nothing which other historians represent so poorly as this side of the great tragi-comedy which it is their task to put on the stage. Not literature alone, but truth itself, suffers from this deficiency. Man is no less absurd than serious, as the novelist and dramatist know well enough. It is largely for this reason that truth-loving persons are more touched by them than by the historian, who insists on regarding past events with a face worthy of Henry the Second's proverbial solemnity. Yet why not we seen to smile? If individual man is absurd as the novelist perceives how much more absurd are men collected in mobs, parliaments and churches! Any study of them that does not sometimes incite laughter can be only in part true. Yet how little have historians succeeded in this respect! occasional sly Gibbon has indeed an joke, but generally at the expense of the Episcopal reader, to stir him in the depths of his easy chair with a dim sense that some one is laughing at him. The great humorist throws the dry light of his wit, not so much on to the period he is describing, as on to the views of it held by his contemporaries; if he saps "a solemn creed with solemn sneer," he incidentally adds to the value of his work, but he does not reproduce the essential absurdity of the world in which his emperors, philosophers, magistrates and sectaries were moving towards the catastrophe of civilization. Other historians generally leave outside the door whatever humor they have, when they sit down to write "serious history"-serious enough indeed!

How far from this mistaken tradition did Carlyle tear himself, or rather, how far from it was he born! A man of sorrows who can never tolerate real frivolity, he has in him a deep humor which is part of his intense seriousness. When, turning from the speculations

of Teufelsdröckh on his own age, he examined the mighty Revolution of the age that had given it birth, he felt with the touch of genius that here, buried amid far other matter was food for inextinguishable laughter. He could sympathize with the generous ideals of “'89," and he could weep over the disasters that befel them. But he could do more. By the strain of fine humor that runs through his "French Revolution," he adds immensely to our understanding of the period

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What spirit of Patriotism dwelt in men in those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince; that fifteen hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Robespierre; nay, listened nightly hour after hour, applausive: and gaped as for the word of life."

Above all he has found the grim meaning of the season of the Feast of Pikes, when all French patriots, "as in the golden age," swore eternal brotherhood, and fondly thought to keep their oath. It was then that Anacharsis Clootz's "deputation of mankind" presented itself to the National Assembly.

It occurred to the mind of Anacharsis Clootz, that while so much was embodying itself into club and committee, and perorating applauded, there yet remained a greater and greatest; of which, if it also took body and perorated, what might not the effect be: Humankind namely, le Genre Humain itself! . . . Enough that on the 19th evening of June 1790, the sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little planet has not often had to show. Anacharsis Clootz entering the august Salle de Manége, with the human species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks; Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia; behold them all; they have to come to claim place in the grand Federation, having an undoubted interest in it.

In the mean time we invite them to the honours of the sitting, 5 Fr. Rev. 11. book v. chap. viii.

honneur de la séance. A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds: but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French dialect, his words are like spilt water; the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day. . . To such things does the august National Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its regenerative labours, and with some touch of impromptu eloquence, make friendly reply;-as indeed the wont has long been; for it is a gesticulating, sympathetic people, and has a heart, and wears it on its sleeve."

Again, how else save by something of his ironic humor, could the "Paper Age," the Ministry of Calonne, and the self-contented optimism of the Court reformers immediately before the Revolution, be adequately described?"

In his account of the battle of Dettingen he chances to come across the type of English officer who fought our battles on the Continent in the eighteenth century, and again in the Crimea, revived the same traditions of grand but incompetent valor: his "Britannic Majesty," he says, stands during the battle in

attitude of lunge; no fear in him, and no plan, sans peur et sans avis, as we might term it. Like a real Hanoverian Sovereign of England, like England itself and its ways in those German wars. A typical epitome of long sections of English history, that attitude of lunge! The English officers also, it is evident, behaved in their usual way, without knowledge of war, without fear of death, or regard to utmost peril or difficulty; cheering their men, and keeping them steady upon the throats of the French.

These few words by force of humor have drawn an historical portrait of a class of Englishmen once very promi

Fr. Rev. il. book i. chap. x.

7 Ibid. vol. 1. book xi.

Fred. Great, book xiv. chap. v.

nent in the world's affairs, a portrait which impinges itself on the mind, so that the reader not merely reads, but learns and does not forget.

But the most important characteristic of Carlyle as an historian is neither his poetry nor his humor. Although these are essential to the greatest history, great histories have been written deficient in both. But there is one quality, which if an historian has not, he becomes "as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." It is indispensable that he should understand the prime motive force that caused the actions of which he takes account. Now Carlyle has an unrivalled instinct for the detection of men's inmost motives. His peculiar method is to write history from the inside of the actors. Other great historians find the key to men's actions by analysis of their characters and their opinions, rather than by sympathy with their feelings. To appreciate the difference of these two methods, compare Mr. Lecky's treatment of John Wesley in the "History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” with Carlyle's "Mirabeau." Mr. Lecky's portrait is the more exact, but it is difficult to say which is the truer. We understand Wesley in a way in which we do not understand Mirabeau, but we understand Mirabeau in a way in which we do not understand Wesley. We have been told all about the founder of Methodism, but we have been made intimate with Gabriel Riquetti himself.

This distinctive method of Carlyle is still more marked in dealing with smaller people. Other historians, though they may analyze their principal characters with care and success, are apt to take little trouble with the less important figures. They are often content to class a man under some conventional heading descriptive of opinions, character or profession, such as physiocrat, radical, artist, demagogue,

adventurer or Jacobite. This summary treatment is partly justifiable, because otherwise works of history might grow to inordinate length, but it partly arises from the author's want of sympathy and imagination. Carlyle never dismisses anybody in this way. Each of the characters he describes, though only in a sentence, has a personality of its own, with hopes, fears and aspirations often mean enough, but at least peculiar to itself. Above all, whenever he perceives devotion to an ideal in persons however humble, he treats their intention with respect. Thus he never falls into the vice common with modern ecclesiastical historians, of regarding religious movements among uneducated persons with contempt. He does not call his brother a "fanatic" or a "lunatic" because he fails to sympathize with his point of view, but he does his best to understand what the man really meant.

In his later and inferior work, this instinct of sympathy is occasionally smothered by his prejudices, as, for instance, where his hatred of the evil the man did, makes him unjust to Loyola's self, though even in this case he goes straight for Loyola's inmost feeling, with a certain inverted sympathy.' But taking Carlyle's writings as a whole, it is false to say that difference of opinion blinded him to the real feelings of other men. Although he utterly hated Catholicism, he has left us in "Past and Present"

our most sympathetic picture of Mediæval monasticism at its high-water mark, a picture which no Catholic writer can hope to rival. He understood what those monks of St. Edmundsbury felt and thought, with perfect comprehension. Yet was he a student of the Middle Ages? Far from it, but he was a student of man. Again, if there was any one whom he might be expected to hate, it is Guy Faux. We might have supposed that Carlyle Latter-day Pamphlets: "Jesuitism." ECLECTIC VOL. LXXI.

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would have regarded him at least as a mere engine of Satan moving by clock work. Yet we find that he regards him not only as a brother man, a brother soul, but an interesting and almost a noble soul:

the

Well, and are there in history many sterner figures than Guido, standing there with his dark lantern beside the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in Whinniard's cellar under Parliament? To such lengths has he, for his part, carried his insight into true interests of this world. Guido is a very serious figure; has used reasonable efforts to bring himself to the sticking place and Hercules's choice of roads. No Pusey Dilettante, poor spouting New Catholic or Young England in white waistcoat; a very serious man come there to do a thing, and die for it if there be need.1o

But it is in the "French Revolution," where all his qualities are at their best, that his power of writing history from the inside of men is most conspicuous. Here he is never content to deal with lay figures. He tells us what each man was with such truth and clearness that what he did, in each set of given circumstances, comes as a foreseen and inevitable conclusion.

But for an historian of the French Revolution it is at least as necessary to understand mobs as to understand their leaders. In some periods of history it is enough to trace the general condition and sentiment of the various classes of people, and to direct the main effort towards explaining the motives of the principal actors. To some slight degree this is true even of such a popular convulsion as the English Civil War; but it is not true at all of the French Revolution. Carlyle accepts this condition. He knows that it is not enough to explain that Danton did this, and that Lafayette intended to do that. He never for a moment forgets that the "sacred right of insurrection" was

10 Historical Sketches, p. 68.

the motive force in all events from July, 1789, to October, 1795. He sees that the successive throes of that tremendous and abnormal convulsion can be understood only by a sympathetic appreciation on each fateful day of the feelings of those impatient masses, against whom Aristocrat, Constitutionalist and Girondin were alike powerless, by whose fierce favor the Jacobins lived and moved and had their strange being. What was the mob of Paris, what were the women of St. Antoine, what were the men of Marseilles or Varennes feeling and thinking at the hour when their next whim would decide the world's future? What were men saying to each other in the streets on the eve of great irrevocable events? Such questions Carlyle perpetually asks and answers. The five chapters11 which tell what the Parisians thought and did during the second week of July, 1789, are the very heart of the matter, to which all else that concerns the fall of the Bastile is secondary. All the "newly discovered material" in the wide world has not overthrown that account.

The "French Revolution" was his greatest history, but the various writings he has left on the English Parliamentary struggle afford even more striking examples of his method of history from the inside. The generation that had passed the first Reform Bill only partially understood the spirit that had founded English freedom in the days of the early Stuarts. To the Tories, the Puritans were mere phantoms of darkness, Jacobins parading as Methodists; to the Whigs, the interest of the great struggle against Charles had been constitutional and financial, a matter of pounds, shillings, pence and civil liberty. Hampden's attitude of dignified resistance to a raid on his pocket and on the privilege of Parliament was, they

11 Vol. 1. book v. chaps. ill.-vii.

thought, the true quarrel, till the "fanatics" came all too powerfully, and spoiled the game. Men had not fully perceived what we all know so well to-day, that the Pyms and Hampdens were themselves of the "fanatic" class; that the Protestant faith inspired and led them in all they did; that to them the struggle with the Stuarts had been from the beginning a struggle for their religion. Yet this was the cause more than any other that Parliamentary resistance grew strong as death, instead of London sputtering out in some

They tell us that it was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our English Liberties should have been laid by "superstition." These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible Creeds, antiLaudisms, Westminster Confessions, demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to worship in their own way. Liberty to tax themselves, that was the thing they should have demanded! It was superstition, fanaticism, disgraceful ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing. Liberty to tax oneself. Not to pay out money from your pocket except on reason shown. No century, I think, but a barren one would have fixed on that as the first right of man! I should say, on the contrary, a just man will generally have better cause than money in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his government. . . . But if they come to him and say, "Acknowledge a lie, pretend to say you are worshipping God when you are not doing it; believe not the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, or pretend to find, true:" he will answer: "No, by God's help, no; you may take my purse, but I cannot have my moral