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008 - Chapter III The Historians Part 3 · Victorian Literature

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Speaker 1: Chapter three, Part three of Victorian Literature. This is a
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Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or a volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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Speaker 1: Recording by Lynn Thompson. Victorian Literature by Clement Shorter The Historians,
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Speaker 1: Part three, seventeen ninety five to eighteen eighty one. Thomas
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Speaker 1: Carlyle was born at Eclfken in Dumfrieshire on the fourth
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Speaker 1: of December seventeen ninety five. His father was a Stonemason,
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Speaker 1: at whose death Carlyle thus tenderly wrote in his diary quote,
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Speaker 1: I owe him much more than existence. I owe him
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Speaker 1: a noble inspiring example. It was he exclusively that determined
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Speaker 1: on educating me, that from his small hard earned funds,
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Speaker 1: sent me to school and college, and made me whatever
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Speaker 1: I am and become. Let me not mourn for my father,
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Speaker 1: Let me do worthily of him, so shall he still
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Speaker 1: live even here in me, and his worth plant itself
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Speaker 1: honorably forth into new generations. End. From Annan Grammar School,
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Speaker 1: the young Carlyle went to Edinburgh University, where he became
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Speaker 1: a voracious reader. Although never a great classical scholar, he
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Speaker 1: then took the post of mathematical tutor at Anan's school,
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Speaker 1: and afterwards at Kirkuddy, where he was friendly with Edward Irving. Afterwards,
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Speaker 1: the famous preacher. Disgusted with this life, he flung up
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Speaker 1: his appointment and determined to study for the law. For
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Speaker 1: some time, he eked out a scanty subsistence in Edinburgh
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Speaker 1: by writing biographies for Brewster's Encyclopedia. It was at this
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Speaker 1: period that he obtained some measure of mental and moral
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Speaker 1: stimulus from his German studies. Gercha opened a new world
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Speaker 1: to him. He began to study German in eighteen ninety,
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Speaker 1: induced thereto by Madame de Stale's interesting account of the
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Speaker 1: German poets and philosophers. Gerta was seventy five years old
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Speaker 1: when in eighteen twenty four he received from Carlyle an
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Speaker 1: English translation of Vilhelm Meister, with a letter saying, four
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Speaker 1: years ago, when I read your fous among the mountains
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Speaker 1: of my native Scotland, I could not but fancy I
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Speaker 1: might one day see you and pour out before you,
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Speaker 1: as before a father, the woes and wanderings of a
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Speaker 1: heart whose mysteries you seemed so thoroughly to comprehend and
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Speaker 1: could so beautifully represent. Two years later Carlyle sent Gerta
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Speaker 1: his Life of Schiller, and once again he expressed his
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Speaker 1: intense devotion to one whose voice came to me from
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Speaker 1: afar with counsel and help in my utmost need. For
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Speaker 1: if he continues, I have been delivered from darkness into
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Speaker 1: any measure of light. If I know aught of myself
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Speaker 1: and my destination. It is to the study of your writings,
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Speaker 1: more than to any other circumse that I owe this.
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Speaker 1: It is to you, more than any other man, that
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Speaker 1: I should always thank and reverence with the feeling of
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Speaker 1: a disciple to his master, nay of a son to
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Speaker 1: his spiritual father. In the meantime, Carlyle had married Jane Welsh,
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Speaker 1: the daughter of a doctor in Haddington, and had settled
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Speaker 1: at the lonely farmhouse of Quegnpattuck in Dumfrieshire. There he
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Speaker 1: was visited by Emerson, and there he remained for six
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Speaker 1: years before removing to London. Not only had Carlyle then
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Speaker 1: translated Wilhelm Meister and written the Life of Schiller, but
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Speaker 1: he had made numerous translations from Musaeus, Tieck and Richter,
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Speaker 1: and had published essays on these and other German authors.
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Speaker 1: Jean Paul Richter had a peculiar attraction for him, and
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Speaker 1: there can be no doubt that Carlyle owed his extraordinary
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Speaker 1: style in some degree to his study of the German humorist.
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Speaker 1: The forty seven years of Carlyle's London life eighteen thirty
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Speaker 1: four to eighteen eighty one were years of incessant literary activity.
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Speaker 1: The thirty volumes which came from his pen during that
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Speaker 1: time not only secured for him a permanent place amongst
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Speaker 1: the historians, biographers and essayists of our literature, but they
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Speaker 1: kindled for him a glow of intense personal enthusiasm amongst
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Speaker 1: the best of his contemporaries, such as perhaps no other
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Speaker 1: English author has enjoyed. At his death on the fifth
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Speaker 1: of February eighteen eighty one, the world new Carlyle, apart
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Speaker 1: from his books, as a man of simple tastes, content
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Speaker 1: in spite of the wealth which literary success had brought
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Speaker 1: to reside amidst unostentatious surroundings, ever ready to help the
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Speaker 1: distressed and needy, refusing a title and the like official recognitions,
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Speaker 1: and carrying out to the letter the reverence earnestness and
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Speaker 1: unobtrusive manliness which he had inculcated in his writings, devotedly
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Speaker 1: attached to his wife, whom he described on her tombstone
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Speaker 1: as having unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in
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Speaker 1: all of good that he did or attempted, and in short,
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Speaker 1: worthy of the address presented to him on his eightieth
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Speaker 1: birthday by nearly all of the men of literary and
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Speaker 1: scientific eminence in England, including amongst others, Lord Tennyson and
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Speaker 1: George Eliot, Robert Browning and Professor Huxley. A whole generation
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Speaker 1: has elapsed. They said, Since you described for us the
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Speaker 1: hero as a man of letters, we congratulate you and
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Speaker 1: ourselves on the spacious fullness of years which has enabled
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Speaker 1: you to sustain this rare dignity amongst mankind in all
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Speaker 1: its possible splendor and completeness. The publication of mister Frowd's
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Speaker 1: nine volumes of memorials caused a considerable revulsion of feelings.
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Speaker 1: The Carlyle of these letters and reminiscences appeared to be
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Speaker 1: over censorious in his estimate of his contemporaries, not too
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Speaker 1: considerate of his relations with his wife, and however, admirable.
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Speaker 1: He might find contentment in richter, or hein not content
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Speaker 1: without much murmuring. To accept a life of restricted means.
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Speaker 1: To give too much emphasis to this view of Carlyle's
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Speaker 1: character is to ignore certain peculiarities of mister Frowd's biographical
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Speaker 1: and historical style, to which reference has already been made.
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Speaker 1: It will suffice to point out that there are other
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Speaker 1: sources of information about Carlyle than the books of his
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Speaker 1: acqudited biographer. Sir Henry Taylor, Missus Oliphant, Mister Charles Eliot Norton,
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Speaker 1: Missus Gilchrist, and other friends of Carlyle's later life have
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Speaker 1: published much additional matter and have shown, as it were,
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Speaker 1: the other side of the shield. To Sir Henry Taylor,
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Speaker 1: who knew him well, he seemed the most faithful and
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Speaker 1: truehearted of men. And from many sources we learn that
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Speaker 1: mister Frowd's picture is not that of the true Carlyle,
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Speaker 1: that he was not a selfish husb, that his married
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Speaker 1: life was not unhappy, that he was not altogether dumb
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Speaker 1: to the hero's living, whilst eloquent over heroes dead, and
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Speaker 1: that in spite of many faults, he was a noble,
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Speaker 1: high minded man a kingly soul, as Longfellow called him.
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Speaker 1: Writing in his diary during his second visit to England
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Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven, Emerson says, Carlyle and his wife
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Speaker 1: live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very engaging, and
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Speaker 1: in her bookcase all his books are inscribed to her
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Speaker 1: as they came from year to year, each with some
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Speaker 1: significant lines. The letters which Carlyle wrote to his wife
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Speaker 1: at the time she lost her mother are most touchingly affectionate.
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Speaker 1: This is what she wrote to a friend at that time.
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Speaker 1: In great matters, he is always kind and considerate, but
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Speaker 1: these little attentions which we women attach so much importance to.
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Speaker 1: He was never in the habit of rendering to anyone,
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Speaker 1: and now the desire to replaced the irreplaceable makes him
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Speaker 1: as good in little things as he used to be
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Speaker 1: in great end. Quote. And to Carlyle himself, she writes, quote,
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Speaker 1: God keep you, my dear husband, and bring you safe
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Speaker 1: back to me. The house looks very desolate without you,
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Speaker 1: and my mind feels empty too. I expect with impatience
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Speaker 1: the letter that is to fix your return. End quote.
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Speaker 1: On another occasion, writing to her husband's mother, she says, quote,
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Speaker 1: you have others behind, and I have only him, only him,
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Speaker 1: in the whole wide world, to love me and take
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Speaker 1: care of me, poor little wretch that I am not,
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Speaker 1: but that numbers of people love me after their fashion,
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Speaker 1: far more than I deserve. But then his fashion is
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Speaker 1: so different from theirs, and seems alone to suit the
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Speaker 1: crotchety creature that I am end Quote. And then her
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Speaker 1: pride in her husband is well exemplified by an experience
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Speaker 1: related in a letter to him, which shows all so
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Speaker 1: how wide and deep is that mysterious impersonal influence of
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Speaker 1: great authors on men who are totally unknown to them. Quote.
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Speaker 1: A man of the people mounted the platform and spoke,
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Speaker 1: a youngish, intelligent looking man who alone of all the speakers,
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Speaker 1: seemed to understand the question and to have feelings as
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Speaker 1: well as notions about it. He spoke with a heart
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Speaker 1: eloquence that left me warm. I never was more affected
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Speaker 1: by public speaking. A sudden thought struck me, this man
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Speaker 1: would like to know you. I would give him my
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Speaker 1: address in London. I borrowed a piece of paper and
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Speaker 1: handed him my address. When he looked at it, he
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Speaker 1: started as if I had sent a bullet into him.
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Speaker 1: Caught my hand and said, oh, it is your husband.
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Speaker 1: Mister Carlyle has been my teacher and master. I have
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Speaker 1: owed everything to him for years and years. I felt
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Speaker 1: it a credit to you, really to have had a
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Speaker 1: hand in turning out this man. Was prouder of that
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Speaker 1: heart tribute to your genius than any man of reviewers
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Speaker 1: praise are aristocratic invitations to dinner end. It is because
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Speaker 1: the spirit which breeds in the word of this young
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Speaker 1: workman has been the guiding moral force of numbers of
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Speaker 1: men and women in all stations of life during the
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Speaker 1: last sixty years that I have devoted so much space
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Speaker 1: to Carlyle. It is of the greatest importance to literature
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Speaker 1: that the man whose eloquent preaching of justice, sincerity, and
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Speaker 1: reverence has turned the hearts of thousands of his fellow
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Speaker 1: men towards nobility and simplicity of life, should not himself
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Speaker 1: have been out of harmony with all that he taught
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Speaker 1: the world, says Sacchari's gifted daughter has pointed its moral
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Speaker 1: finger of late at the old man in his great
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Speaker 1: old age, accusing himself in the face of all and
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Speaker 1: confessing the overpowering irritations which the suffering of a lifetime
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Speaker 1: had laid upon him and upon her he loved, that
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Speaker 1: old caustic man of deepest feeling, with an ill temper
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Speaker 1: and a tender heart, and a raqi imagination, speaking from
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Speaker 1: the grave, and bearing unto it that cross of passionate
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Speaker 1: remorse which few among us dare to face. Seems to
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Speaker 1: some of us now a figure nobler and truer, a
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Speaker 1: teacher greater far than in the days when all his
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Speaker 1: pain and love and remorse were still hidden from us,
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Speaker 1: all of the reminiscences which excited so much criticism on
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Speaker 1: account of their references to persons still living. Carlyle wrote
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Speaker 1: on the last page, I still mainly mean to burn
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Speaker 1: this book before my own departure, but feel that I
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Speaker 1: shall always have a kind of grudge to do it,
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Speaker 1: and an indolent excuse not yet wait any day that
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Speaker 1: can be done, and that it is possible the thing
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Speaker 1: may be left behind me legible to interest its survivors.
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Speaker 1: Friends only, I will hope, and with worthy curiosity, not unworthy,
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Speaker 1: in which event I solemnly forbid them each and all
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Speaker 1: to publish this bit of writing as it stands here,
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Speaker 1: and warn them that without fit editing, no part of
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Speaker 1: it should be printed, nor so far as I can order,
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Speaker 1: shall ever be, and that the fit editing of perhaps
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Speaker 1: nine tenths of it, will, after I am gone, have
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Speaker 1: become impossible. The only editing which mister Frowd deemed fit
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Speaker 1: was the omission of this paragraph from his edition of
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Speaker 1: the work. And yet to read with the worthy curiosity
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Speaker 1: of which he speaks of his love for father and wife,
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Speaker 1: of his kindly solicitude for brothers and sisters, whom he
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Speaker 1: constantly assisted, is to make him nearer and dearer to
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Speaker 1: those who care to remember that he was, after all
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Speaker 1: but human. Carlyle spoke with too little kindness, it must
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Speaker 1: be owned, of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Lamb, because he
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Speaker 1: saw only the palpable weaknesses of their characters, and was
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Speaker 1: blinded by forbidding externals to the sterling worth of these
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Speaker 1: great men. But he loved Emerson and Tennyson and Ruskin,
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Speaker 1: and he profoundly revered Gerta, who, after all, was the
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Speaker 1: only one of his contemporaries who could take rank anywhere
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Speaker 1: near him. Carlyle recognized that Geta was incomparably his superior
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Speaker 1: in every way, and he was, as Matthew Arnold calls him,
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Speaker 1: the greatest poet of the present age and the greatest
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Speaker 1: critic of all ages, the one man of transcendental genius
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Speaker 1: whom Europe has produced since Dante and Shakespeare. To have
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Speaker 1: first led England to appreciate Geta is not the least
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Speaker 1: of Carlyle's many services to his country. To have acted
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Speaker 1: as an inspiring and helpful prophet is perhaps his greatest.
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Speaker 1: Sartor Resartus first appeared in Fraser's magazine for eighteen thirty three,
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Speaker 1: where it met with but scanty recognition and indeed half
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Speaker 1: ruined the editor, whose subscribers anxiously asked when the tailor
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Speaker 1: sketches were coming to an end. It is surely something
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Speaker 1: more than a passing fashion in literature which leads us
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Speaker 1: now to take up these well worn pages with so
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Speaker 1: much of tenderness and sympathy there is in man. He says,
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Speaker 1: a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness,
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Speaker 1: and instead thereof find blessedness. Was it not to preach
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Speaker 1: forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet,
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Speaker 1: and the priests in all times have spoken and suffered,
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Speaker 1: bearing testimony through life and through death of the godlike
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Speaker 1: that is in man, and how in the godlike only
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Speaker 1: has his strength and freedom. How can it be said
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Speaker 1: that Carlyle did not love humanity when we read the
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Speaker 1: lines in which he expresses reverence for the toil worn
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Speaker 1: craftsman that, with earth made implement laboriously conquers the earth
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Speaker 1: and makes her man's venerable to me, he continues, is
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Speaker 1: the hard hand, crooked coarse, wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue,
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Speaker 1: indefeasibly royal as of the scepter of this planet. Venerable.
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Speaker 1: True is a rugged face or weather tann and besoiled
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Speaker 1: with its rude intelligence, For it is the face of
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Speaker 1: a man, living manlike all, but the more venerable for
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Speaker 1: thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well
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Speaker 1: as love thee hardly entreated brother for us, was thy
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Speaker 1: back so bent for us, were thy straight limbs and
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Speaker 1: fingers so deformed? Thou wert our conscript on whom the
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Speaker 1: lot fell, and fighting our battles worth so marred. It
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Speaker 1: is impossible to exaggerate the effect upon the younger minds
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Speaker 1: of his age of Carlyle's stirring words, inciting to worthy
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Speaker 1: and ever worthier effort. Due to the duty which lies
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Speaker 1: nearest to THEE, which thou knowest to be a duty
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Speaker 1: in all situations. Out of the pit of tuffet wherein
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Speaker 1: a living man has stood, there is actually a prize
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Speaker 1: of quite infinite value placed within his reach, namely, a
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Speaker 1: duty for him to do this highest of gospel forms
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Speaker 1: the basis and worth of all other gospels. Whatever brother
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Speaker 1: he says elsewhere, thou hast possibility in THEE for much
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Speaker 1: the possibility of writing on the eternal skies. The record
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Speaker 1: of a heroic life is not every man God be
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Speaker 1: thanked a potential hero. The measure of a nation's greatness,
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Speaker 1: of its worth under the sky to God and to man,
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Speaker 1: is not the quantity of Bullian it has realized, but
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Speaker 1: the quantity of heroisms it has achieved, of noble pieties
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Speaker 1: and valiant wisdoms that were in it and still are
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Speaker 1: in it. Little less valuable than Sartauisartus Is Past and Present,
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Speaker 1: which was published in eighteen forty three. The reverence and
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Speaker 1: delicacy with which it touches the monasticism of a bygone
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Speaker 1: age are as remarkable as the prophetic vision with which
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Speaker 1: it deals with the social problems of our latter day life,
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Speaker 1: state aided emigration, co operation, and national education are some
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Speaker 1: of the many changes advocated here and elsewhere. Not till
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Speaker 1: the Latter day pamphlets eighteen fifty did Carlyle become an
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Speaker 1: eloquent advocate of force as a guide in politics, thereby
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Speaker 1: alienated John Stuart Mill and many of his old friends.
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Speaker 1: His language then seemed to degenerate into mere shrieking and scolding.
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Speaker 1: The world must be governed, he declared, by men of
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Speaker 1: heroic mold, who know what is good for the inferior
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Speaker 1: natures around them. Let such inferior natures, if need be
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Speaker 1: bescourged into silence. Parliaments he spoke of contemptuously as talking shops,
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Speaker 1: and his sympathies went out heartily to Governor Ayr at
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Speaker 1: the time of the Jamaica Riots and of the Southern
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Speaker 1: States at the time of the American Civil War. An
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Speaker 1: admiration for heaven sent heroes had always been strong in Carlisle,
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Speaker 1: although it certainly had not its after meaning when he
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Speaker 1: wrote in Early Life, not brute force, but only persuasion
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Speaker 1: and faith are the kings of this world. In Heroes
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Speaker 1: and hero Worship, a course of lectures delivered in eighteen
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Speaker 1: forty he had waxed eloquent over Mahomet, Luther and Napoleon,
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Speaker 1: and three years earlier, in eighteen thirty seven, he had
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Speaker 1: published in his French Revolution a brilliant eulogy of Mirabeau.
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Speaker 1: His vindication of Cromwell was brought about, perhaps mainly by
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Speaker 1: his appreciation of the protector's high handed resoluteness, and his
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Speaker 1: Life of Frederick the Second of Prussia was the apology
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Speaker 1: for a man who was the very embodiment of despotic ideals.
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Speaker 1: But quite apart from Carlisle's worth as a moral teacher
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Speaker 1: or as a controversialist, his place in literature is very high.
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Speaker 1: His short biography of Schiller was an epoch making book
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Speaker 1: because of the influence it has exercise upon the study
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Speaker 1: of German literature. But it bears little evidence of the
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Speaker 1: genius of its author, and, in consequence of the abundance
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Speaker 1: of Schiller correspondence subsequently brought to light, it has been
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Speaker 1: superseded by the biographies of Peleski and Duncer. Carlyle's Life
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Speaker 1: of John Sterling is, however, a work of great power,
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Speaker 1: a kind of prose lysidas, which, like the Great Elegy,
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Speaker 1: has rescued from oblivion, a man in whom the world
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Speaker 1: would soon have ceased to be interested. Carlyle again was
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Speaker 1: an essayist of striking individuality. Few literary sketches are more
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Speaker 1: picturesque than his Count Cagliostro and the Diamond Necklace, and
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Speaker 1: the essays on Johnson and Burns are models of generous
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Speaker 1: human insight with literary insight. However, Carlyle was not too
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Speaker 1: well endowed, at least when purely imaginative literature was concerned,
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Speaker 1: and he once expressed the opinion that Shakespeare had better
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Speaker 1: have written in prose. It is part of my creed,
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Speaker 1: he wrote to Emerson. The only poetry is history. Could
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Speaker 1: we tell it right? His method of telling it gives
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Speaker 1: him a place by himself among historians, a place so
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Speaker 1: singular that it is impossible to classify him. Carlyle's French Revolution,
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Speaker 1: said John Stuart Mill, is one of those productions of genius,
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Speaker 1: which is above all raw, and is a law to itself.
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Speaker 1: The deathbed of Lewis the fifteenth, the taking of the Bastille,
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Speaker 1: and the execution of Danton are never to be forgotten.
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Speaker 1: Descriptions and the poetical passage which follows the relation of
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Speaker 1: the bloody horrors of seventeen eighty nine cannot be too
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Speaker 1: often quoted. Oh evening sun of July, how at this
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Speaker 1: hour thy beams for slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields,
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Speaker 1: on old women spinning in cottages, on ships far out
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Speaker 1: in the silent main, on balls at the orangery of Versailles,
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Speaker 1: where high rouge dames of the Palace are even now
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Speaker 1: dancing with double jacketed hussar offices, and also on this
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Speaker 1: roaring hell porch of a hotel de Ville. Scientific history
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Speaker 1: of the French Revolution has yet to be written, and
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Speaker 1: even to appreciate Carlyle's prose epic adequately, we should know
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Speaker 1: something of Mignet, tiare Morse, Stephens, and von Seibel. But
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Speaker 1: neither the accumulation of fresh facts, nor of philosophical deduction
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Speaker 1: from such facts, can impair the value of Carlyle's work.
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Speaker 1: That in spite of all his fire and passion, Carlyle
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Speaker 1: could delineate character with most judicial fairness may be demonstrated
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Speaker 1: by turning to mister John Marley's essays on Robespierre and
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Speaker 1: the other revolutionists, and observing how his calm and unprejudiced
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Speaker 1: intellect has pronounced judgments in every way, endorsing Carlyle's Carlyle's
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Speaker 1: Cromwell has less attraction for us today than the French Revolution,
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Speaker 1: but the service to historical study was even greater. Opinions
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Speaker 1: will always differ as to the wisdom of the protector's
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Speaker 1: policy and the righteousness of his deeds. But since the
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Speaker 1: publication of the use letters and speeches, edited with the
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Speaker 1: care of an antiquarian and the genius of a poet,
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Speaker 1: Cromwell's sincerity and genuine piety have been unimpugned. There are others,
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Speaker 1: beside mister Froud, who esteem the History of Frederic the
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Speaker 1: second Carlyle's greatest work. The humor of the book is wonderful,
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Speaker 1: for Carlyle is the greatest humorous since Stern, and nowhere
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Speaker 1: is this humor more conspicuous than in Frederic. The splendid
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Speaker 1: portraits of all the most important figures in the eighteenth
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Speaker 1: century fixed themselves indelibly in the memory. And it is
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Speaker 1: even said that German soldiers study the art of war
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Speaker 1: from the description of Frederick's campaigns. Nevertheless, the book has
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Speaker 1: much in it that is unsatisfying to Englishmen. Frederick and
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Speaker 1: his father could not easily excite the hero worshiping inclinations
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Speaker 1: of a free people, and even Carlyle became disillusioned as
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Speaker 1: he proceeded with his task, and finally admitted that Frederick
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Speaker 1: was not worth the trouble he had given to him.
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Speaker 1: He commenced it as a history of Frederick the Great,
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Speaker 1: and concluded it as a history of Frederick called the Great.
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Speaker 1: Carlyle is surely the greatest figure in our modern literature.
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Speaker 1: He wrote no poetry worth consideration. It is true his
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Speaker 1: verse would long since have been forgotten had it not
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Speaker 1: been for his effectiveness as a prose writer. But although
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Speaker 1: we are accustomed to the claim for poetry that it
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Speaker 1: ranks higher than prose, it must be conceded that in
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Speaker 1: Victorian literature this is not the case, and that Carlyle's
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Speaker 1: enormous personality his capacity for influencing others for good and ill,
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Speaker 1: have made him the greatest moral and intellectual force of
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Speaker 1: his age. To him we owe the indifference to mere
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Speaker 1: political shiboleetes, the lull in party warfare, which is the
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Speaker 1: note of our age. He gave no definite answer to
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Speaker 1: any question, but he gave us the impetus which led
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Speaker 1: others to seek for solutions. His literary influence on Fred
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Speaker 1: and Mill, mister Ruskin and mister Lecky, and numbers of
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Speaker 1: others was tremendous. The place which was occupied by Swift
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Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century is held by Carlyle in the nineteenth.
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Speaker 1: And though every line that he has written should cease
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Speaker 1: to be read, he will still be remembered as the
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Speaker 1: greatest of literary figures in an age of great men
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Speaker 1: of letters. End of Chapter three, Part three