| <Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, June 1843>
| <Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present> <fn>
| <pb n="341">
| What are we to make of Thomas Carlyle? ~~ how often 
| have we been asked this question! And yet we wish we had been 
| asked it somewhat oftener; for there are many persons in the 
| world ~~ in the limbo of the literary world more perhaps than 
| anywhere else ~~ who never think of asking any questions at all, 
| but carry all their judgments ready-made with them in their 
| pockets, prepared, packeted, and labeled, according to the exact 
| recipe of some traditionary pharmacopoeia of classicality; these 
| men have made of Thomas Carlyle what they make of everybody 
| whose name does not appear upon the superscription of their 
| stamped papers; ~~ he is not classical, he is not orthodox, 
| according to their neat articles: therefore he is naught. But we 
| have had too many turnings and overturnings in the literary, as 
| well as in the political world, since the year 1789, to be much 
| concerned now about the ready-made judgments of these nice 
| and correct gentlemen of the pharmacopoeia. Let them even 
| count their packets, and take their powders regularly. None but a 
| most wanton and mischievous person would attempt to disturb 
| the composure of their stomachs by a dose of Coleridge or 
| Carlyle. Let them continue, in the midst of these stormy times, to 
| sit apart in their neatly-varnished cabinets, dealing forth, for 
| recreation, at intervals, stout, puffy blasts against such 
| questionable men as he with whom we have here to do ~~ <persona> 
| "a fool ~~ an affected puppy ~~ a blown-up bundle of conceited 
| verbosity ~~ a genius sublimely unintelligible ~~ a 
| metaphysician ~~ a German!" </persona> ~~ 'Tis both a shorter and an 
| easier method at all times to live down than to write down 
| merely negative criticism of this kind. We shall, therefore, for the 
| sake of ourselves, and those of our readers who are not too wise 
| to ask questions, try in what fashion we can answer this one; ~~ 
| <hi rend="italic"> <persona> What are we to make of Thomas Carlyle? 
| </persona> </hi> 
| Thomas Carlyle, in the common use of the English 
| language, is not a poet. Much less does he look like a 
| philosopher ~~ as philosophers, calm, cool, and reasoning, are 
| wont to be; a critic, though he has criticized a great deal, you 
| cannot call him in the common sense at all; to science he has no 
| pretence, one of the most unscientific men of decided grasp 
| perhaps that breathes; political economy and statistics he hates; 
| law he declares to be a mere sham; at legislation certainly he 
| aims, and that on a great scale; but legislation, he says expressly, 
| is not his business, and he has no business to intermeddle with it. 
| What, then, shall we make of him? He is a 
| preacher, a preacher out of the pulpit, ~~ a prophet perhaps; for 
| in these respectable days, when no man can preach or prophesy 
| in the regular pulpits who cannot squeeze his thoughts into the 
| orthodox dialect of the thirty-nine Articles, or The Confession of 
| Faith, ~~ a thinker of power and originality, a soul burdened with 
| a moral message to its fellow-souls ~~ a heart from the fiery 
| centre of Nature shot direct, as <reg orig="some one"> 
| someone </reg> phrases it, literally 
| <persona> "raging with humanity." </persona>
| Such an one, though meant by nature for 
| occupying a pulpit, finding the entrance into the churches as they 
| now are, guarded by grim comminatory clauses, and barricaded 
| by thorny formulas, which he cannot swallow, necessarily 
| becomes a wandering prophet, a preacher of the wilderness, 
| whose house is where he can find shelter, and whose dinner must 
| often be brought to him by ravens: what, since the invention of 
| printing, we call a prophet no longer, but only a writer of  books, 
| a literary man of a very strange and eccentric character. Such a 
| preacher, such a prophet is Thomas Carlyle; and if you do not 
| take up "Past and Present" in this serious acceptation, you had 
| better throw it down. The book is not written for you. People do 
| not go to church merely or mainly to be amused. 
| <foreign lang="german"> </foreign> Life is a very 
| serious thing: and we live, unquestionably, in very serious times. 
| Mr. Carlyle (who has more of Schiller than of Goethe in him, 
| though he is always talking of the latter) has written this motto, 
| from the earnest German poet, upon the portico of his temple. 
| Enter seriously with the real intent to worship, and assuredly you 
| will find something worthy to be worshipped; for here also, amid 
| many outlandish and fantastic imps, <persona> "here also there 
| are Gods." </persona>
| But what kind of Gods? ~~ what sort of a sermon? ~~ and 
| what is the text? ~~ The Gods, we are afraid, are strange Gods, 
| very German-looking Gods, not English at all. The sermon is a 
| very strange sermon, couched in a very strange dialect, half 
| ancient Hebrew, and half modern Teutonic, rushing strangely 
| into all places which vulgar sermons are strangely careful to 
| eschew; orthodox only in one point, that it deals somewhat 
| largely in a certain sweeping facility of denunciation: and the 
| text is twofold; one from a book that we ought all to know 
| something about ~~ a very good text, but one very difficult to 
| preach on to any practical purpose in this country ~~ <q> 
| </q> and the other, also a 
| very good text, from the proverbial philosophy of some pious old 
| monk ~~ <foreign lang="latin"> </foreign> ~~
| <pb n="342">
| <q> <hi rend="italic"> </hi> 
| </q> ~~ Labour, free labour, and the just wages of labour; 
| labour, not for the material love of cold metals basely bright, but 
| for the love of God, and of your fellow-men, for the love of mere 
| labour, if you can find nothing better; this is the sum and 
| substance of Thomas Carlyle's new book, and the drift of his new 
| sermon: and if you will only  not be too hasty to take offence at 
| grotesque peculiarities, ~~ if you will bear in mind charitably, 
| that the most comely cavaliers in the days of romance used 
| constantly to be escorted by the most ugly and misshapen dwarfs, 
| ~~ then, after reading to the end, you are like to confess with us, 
| that though somewhat too long, and too much crammed with 
| eager iterations, it is, nevertheless, on the whole, a very good 
| book, a very sound and (not to speak it profanely) Evangelical 
| discourse. 
| But Mr. Carlyle is more than a preacher. He is a prophet 
| also. A prophet is not essentially different from a preacher; he is 
| only different in degree. Prophesying is preaching in its highest 
| power. Preaching is a common thing ~~ too common, and too 
| cheap by far now-a-days ~~ a thing to be heard decently on 
| Sunday, (by all respectable persons at least,) that it may be 
| decently forgotten on Monday; but prophecy is only for great 
| occasions, for stirring eras, when self-renovating Time is 
| pregnant with some new birth; such as the era of the 
| Reformation, the era of the French Revolution, of which last era, 
| this present year, 1843, in Great Britain, is a part. We may be 
| mistaken: every man may be mistaken; but we think we can mark 
| with the finger distinctly three men who, in their whole aspect 
| and character, deserve to be esteemed the mighty literary (as 
| opposed to scientific or legislative) prophets of the great 
| revolutionary change which is even now working itself out in 
| this troubled isle. The men we mean are, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. Don't think it 
| strange that these so different intellects in some respects, are here 
| named together. It is the cast and character of the men, the tone 
| of their mind, their position in relation to the age, of which we 
| speak. No matter that Coleridge was outwardly connected with 
| that political party whose office it is to maintain the present by 
| explaining the past, rather than to interpret the future by creating 
| the present: inwardly he did not belong to them: therefore, also, 
| some of the less wise of them have already begun publicly to 
| proclaim him a heretic. No matter either that of these three men 
| whom we call preeminently prophets, the two who are gone had 
| the function of verse, the one who remains has not; their vocation 
| of preaching, of prophesying is the same. Do you not feel it? Is 
| there not something serious and weighty, as if of a prophet-burden
| ~~ something solemn, awful, and soul-compelling in the 
| apparition, in the utterances of these men? Do you not see how 
| they stand forth each of them, apart from the busy throng of 
| British actualities, and in a dialect each of his own, testify 
| solemnly against the various idol-worships of the age ~~ the 
| worship of Mammon and Materialism in all its portentous extent, 
| of false glory, and of vain shows, of gilded 
| coaches, and of sounding names, of titled idleness and mitred 
| stupidity? This you must feel, this you must see in them, or you 
| see and feel nothing at all in the matter. This you must see and 
| feel specially in Thomas Carlyle; and yet, again, specially in this 
| new book of his; than which a more solemn sermon in some 
| respects, and terrible prophecy, has never been thundered into 
| British ears. 
| There is one thing which, from the days of Cassandra 
| downwards, has been characteristic of all prophetic utterances, 
| that they are wont to be delivered in a language which, to the 
| common ear is not easy to be understood. This unintelligibility, 
| in the case of true prophets, arises, in a great measure, not so 
| much from any intellectual peculiarity on the part of the 
| preacher, as from a moral incapacity on the part of the hearers. 
| <q> </q> They cannot 
| understand, chiefly because they will not understand. At the 
| same time, even prophets of the highest class are seldom 
| altogether without blame in the matter of the proverbial obscurity 
| with which they are wont to involve their oracles. Possibly, in 
| some points of view, this obscurity cannot be altogether avoided; 
| but it should always be guarded against. Unhappily of all modern 
| prophets, there is none who lies open to the charge of having 
| involved himself in needless obscurity, so manifestly as Thomas 
| Carlyle. We must, therefore, speak more particularly of this 
| matter, as much for the sake of the public, as for the sake of Mr. 
| Carlyle himself perhaps. How does this obscurity of the 
| prophetic diction arise in the general case, and why is Mr. 
| Carlyle in particular more obscure than his brethren? Consider 
| what language is. It is the general system of audible, and (by help 
| of writing) visible symbols, whereby reasonable souls have 
| agreed to express that general stock of ideas which one 
| reasonable soul has in common  with another; the common 
| currency of thought, so to speak. But it is also another, and a no 
| less important thing. It is that particular body of audible symbols 
| which each particular soul moulds and shapes out for itself to 
| express that particular system of ideas, so and so arranged, and 
| so and so coloured, that belongs to it as an individual, and to no 
| other; at least to none in exactly the same combination, and to 
| exactly the same degree. Now, there are two kinds of style: the 
| style of common men, and the style of  uncommon men. Of these 
| two kinds, you will plainly see that the former will necessarily be 
| altogether composed of the common currency of thought; while 
| the latter will always bear upon it a distinct image and 
| superscription to be deciphered perfectly only by spirits kindred 
| to the coiner. And the more uncommon and original a man is, the 
| more uncommon, original, and, to the common man, 
| unintelligible will be his style. This is a universal rule applicable 
| to all writers and speaker; but there is something more than this 
| in the case of the prophet. He is a man who haws not merely 
| more of the individual to imprint upon his language than 
| common men, but his whole habits of thought and manner of life 
| tend to withdraw him (inconveniently we must
| <pb n="343">
| Say) from that public, or mass of common men, to whom it is his 
| vocation to preach. John the Baptist was not the only prophet 
| who showed himself fond of solitude and the wilderness. They 
| must all be educated in that school. They must talk much with 
| themselves, with God, and with the devil too, sometimes. Is it, 
| then, strange at all, ~~ is it not rather quite natural, that, with a 
| gigantic soul, struggling with strong throes continually to shape 
| the world to its likeness despotically, and not slavishly receive a 
| likeness from the world, and communing daily in solitary places 
| with spirits rather than with men, ~~ the prophet should 
| unconsciously (the wicked world says affectedly) form to 
| himself a style of utterance only half understood at times by 
| those common mortals to whom it is addressed? 'Tis a pity this 
| prophetic obscurity ~~ a great pity; but let not money-making 
| men, with glib eloquence discoursing largely of the great 
| material Trimurti, Corn, Coin, and Currency, ~~ let not prim 
| <persona> "Dandiscal bodies," </persona>
| expert masters of small-talk, and of large 
| oaths, ~~ let not nice, critical gentlemen, with a fluent array of 
| vituperatory and laudatory phrases, from the most recent or the 
| most ancient dictionary of Aesthetics, ~~ let not exact, scientific 
| men, painfully grinding out, to name the most musical things in 
| nature, the most dissonant jargon in art, ~~ let no damnatory, 
| sacerdotal men, systematically deafening their own ears, and 
| other peoples' with an <q> 
| </q> ~~ let not the wholesale dealers in 
| these kinds, or in any other kind of authorized slang, be too ready 
| to be found declaiming against the unauthorized slang of Thomas 
| Carlyle, the literary prophet. Let us be charitable, ~~ let us be 
| considerate. We all deal in slang, more or less. The only 
| difference is, that the prophet deals in a new and strange slang 
| known only to himself, and not yet become the property of any 
| legitimate corporation of men. This charity the prophet has a 
| right to expect from us. He is not the less bound, however, to get 
| rid of his slang as quickly as he can. Is there not offence enough 
| in the matter, without adding a new stumbling-block in the 
| manner? Men who are capable only of small things will lay hold 
| of the tags of your style, and incommode the free movement of 
| your apostleship seriously. Do not be afraid to harm your mighty 
| mission by being as little singular as possible in small things. A 
| more original, a more powerful, a more racy style, than Mr. 
| Carlyle's, the English language has not to show; but its faults ~~ 
| O what faults! Was not the English language made to be 
| understood by English men? It may be true ~~ it is true to a 
| certain extent ~~ that the preachers of German things, in 
| England, at the present day, are forced to Germanize their 
| English, just as the Greek of the New Testament was necessarily 
| Hebraized by the first preachers of Christianity; but Mr. Carlyle 
| does not give himself any reasonable pains to temper the harsh 
| edge of this disagreeable necessity. He will not even condescend 
| to explain; he merely alludes. He tumbles and tosses, plunges 
| and plashes, spouts and plays capriciously, a huge, strange, 
| leviathan of literature in his wild German ocean at large, and 
| seems nothing concerned to think, that of those 
| who behold the portentous phenomenon, for twenty that will 
| wonder and gaze, only one will be edified; as if the mission of a 
| great prophet were to open the outward eyes of men merely, and 
| not rather their understandings and their hearts. The god who 
| exults thus inconsiderately in the strangeness of his own Avatar, 
| had need to see well to it, that the children of men may not 
| mistake him here and there (innocently enough) for a 
| posture-maker and a buffoon.
| We hope no reasonable admirer of Mr. Carlyle will consider 
| us as having spoken too largely, or too severely on this merely 
| external matter of style. There are some men in whom a vicious 
| style of writing is so ingrained, that you cannot hope to reform 
| them by criticism any more than you can teach the gnarled oak 
| not to delight in tortuosity. There are also in Mr. Carlyle's style 
| some peculiarities which, though they may be more nearly allied 
| to fault than excellence, no man that loves natural vigour more 
| than a conventional classicality, would wish to see removed. But 
| there are other peculiarities, again, which are mere adventitious 
| tricks, which do not belong to Mr. Carlyle's nature essentially; as 
| <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> may satisfy 
| himself, by comparing the earlier 
| productions of this writer's pen with the later. These tricks and 
| juggleries of German phrase, partly of metaphysical, partly of 
| merely grammatical peculiarity, our direct clear-seeing, 
| steady-marching, hard-hitting, English tongue will not away with. 
| Besides, John Bull, as Mr. Carlyle has very clearly discerned, is a 
| great respecter of use and wont in all things, and will have law 
| and custom to reign supreme, to a certain extent, over language 
| as well as over the Church. Let this author, therefore, who, 
| though of German training, has evidently not walked the streets 
| of London with his eyes shut, only condescend to untwist a few 
| of these foolish Teutonic tassels that he so studiously appends to 
| his English speech: let him take, then, some historical theme 
| worthy of his strength ~~ Oliver Cromwell, say, Martin Luther, 
| or Napoleon: let him leave the story as much as possible to tell 
| itself, and not swamp it, as he did the French Revolution, in 
| monstrous self-repeating convolutions and contortions of 
| German phrase and German philosophy; ~~ <hi rend="italic"> 
| so, </hi> we predict he is strong enough to plant himself proudly 
| upon the very top-pinnacle of a conspicuous niche in that already 
| too crowded gallery of the <persona> "Eccentricities 
| of Genius." </persona>
| In order to understand rightly Mr. Carlyle's sermon, of 
| which we shall now proceed to give some extracts, the reader 
| will first consider, and mark distinctly, the preacher's position, 
| intellectual and moral, in reference to the present age. We live in 
| an age of railroads, and steam-coaches, patent coffee-percolators, 
| and block-pavements. Plato knew nothing of these things: 
| Immanuel Kant, 2000 years after him, not much more. Between 
| Arkwright, with his sounding host of spinning jennies, and 
| Hesiod, with his caroling troop of Heathen gods and goddesses, 
| what a leap! Such a leap there is between Thomas Carlyle's "Past 
| and Present," and the last edition of Adam
| <pb n="344">
| Smith, or any other book of these days (of which there are so 
| many) that deals mainly in material facts and figures. Mr. Carlyle 
| is the most thorough, the most earnest, the most despotic of all 
| modern spiritualists. He is a burning-hot, heavy-hammering, 
| practical English Platonist; not one of your old serene 
| metaphysical vapourers, placid mathematical visionaries there at 
| Alexandria. Marching with a visible glory in his countenance, 
| from the base of the double-peaked Parnassus in Germany, upon 
| the one summit of which sits Goethe, and on the other Jean Paul 
| Richter; ~~ marching resolutely forth, with a burden in his 
| breast, as from some modern sacred Sinai, he dashes wildly into 
| the midst of our Utilitarian stir here in Britain, and startles the 
| ears of the money-changers, and the pleasure-hunters, and the 
| idlers and hypocrites in high places, with the ominous cry heard 
| of old from the wilderness, <q> </q> ~~ Is Thomas 
| Carlyle's prophetic cry in season, or out of season at the present 
| hour? We think it is altogether in season. Who can deny that we 
| English are idol-worshippers of Mammon more than any people 
| upon the earth? Is it not a broad, day-staring truth which our 
| many faithful church-goings, and constant cries of 
| <persona> "Church in danger!" </persona> do not disprove 
| at all, but rather prove in many ways? 
| Who can deny that pampered idleness lolls with us in high 
| places, and honest labour starves? Who can believe that these 
| things shall be upon god's earth, and no prophet be sent to testify 
| against them? Thomas Carlyle is not the first who has lifted up 
| his voice against these things; neither will he be the last. Let us 
| therefore receive him honourably, as a God-sent prophet, and 
| thank heaven for him. Adam Smiths, and Ricardos, and 
| McCullochs, we have enough in every shop: they are prophets, 
| too, after their fashion; and whoso denounces them is not wise. 
| But there is an older and a more venerable gospel than that of 
| political economy, of which Mr. Carlyle is one of the most 
| notable modern missionaries; and among other definitions of 
| wealth in these mercantile times, ~~ in this mechanical age, ~~ in 
| this money-making country, ~~ there was need of a strong and an 
| earnest voice to call out loudly in every street this one also ~~ 
| <q> </q> There was need of a prophet to preach the 
| old gospel of Christ, <q> </q> somewhere out of the 
| pulpit, ~~ a gospel altogether contrary to that now preached in 
| the pulpit by the Puseyites. 
| Mr. Carlyle has wisely, for the purpose of contrast, woven 
| into the midst of his preaching, an old Monkish chronicle of the 
| twelfth century, published by the Camden Society; but his 
| main business is not with the Past but with the Present; and to 
| this, therefore, we shall confine ourselves in our extracts. The 
| volume opens with the following dark picture of 
| real British horrors in the nineteenth century: ~~ <q>
| <pb n="345">
| </q> Such is the evil: we have known it, we have felt it in 
| manifold ways ~~ rising Hydra-headed against all attempts to 
| subdue it ~~ only too sadly. But where, and what is the remedy? 
| Here, we have no doubt, Mr. Carlyle will disappoint many as an 
| inquirer, as he did in his precursor of this book, the "Chartism;" 
| but Mr. Carlyle is true to his vocation. The remedies he proposes 
| are not legislative or legal remedies at all: he points at such, 
| indeed, but he does not project them. The remedies which he 
| proposes are the remedies which a preacher and a prophet only 
| can propose ~~ the same remedies that are proposed in the New 
| Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount. Begin, he says, with 
| examining yourself: see that your heart be in the right place. Be 
| sure that you actually do wish to do something for the love of 
| your brother's soul, and not for the love of your own purse. So 
| setting out, you will find plenty of things to do: otherwise, 
| unprovided with the motives of an honest love, you can only 
| prove yourself a busy bungler; and there are too many such 
| already. This is a favourite text with Mr. Carlyle; and no doubt 
| he is right. Look at the thousandfold futile fruitless 
| <persona> "tongue-fence" </persona> that goes on every 
| day there in Parliament, and you will 
| certainly see that the want of honest will to do, is the main cause 
| why so little is done. <q> </q> 
| The vain expectation of good from details of legislation, 
| without a true and loving heart, being thus summarily cut off, 
| Mr. Carlyle proceeds to protest in his strong speech against that 
| evil which, while it subsists to its present extent, is the grand 
| obstacle to all improvement, namely, the Love of Money, or as he 
| phrases it, the <hi rend="italic"> gospel of Mammonism. </hi> <q>
| <pb n="346">
| </q> Here is a prophet's blast, indeed! containing much, 
| doubtless, that is true, and something also that is not true. 
| 'Tis a strong word that, <hi rend="italic"> <q> 
| </q> </hi> and too like the sweeping 
| condemnations that we are accustomed to hear from Puseyite 
| pulpits. We wish Mr. Carlyle would avoid such damnatory 
| paradoxes. Even in the mouths of earnest prophesying men, these 
| things have something puerile in them, and, worse than puerile, 
| pernicious. 
| We do not stay to inquire whether the love of money is to be 
| rooted out of the heart of man by putting a veto on 
| <persona> "fair competition," </persona> and suppressing 
| <persona> "cash-payment." </persona> Mr. Carlyle may 
| settle these things (which may require a little more study than he, 
| perhaps, has hitherto bestowed on them) with the political 
| economists, with the bankers, and bill-brokers, and with Robert 
| Owen. We proceed to the second great plague of England, which, 
| after the gospel of Mammonism, must, according to Mr. Carlyle, 
| imperatively be swept from its habitation on British soil, 
| otherwise we are ruined, ~~ it is the gospel of 
| titled luxury and idleness, the plague of the unworking 
| aristocracy, of men holding land in a country, and doing no duty 
| to the country, except, indeed, it be ~~ as Mr. Carlyle delights to 
| iterate ~~ the duty of shooting partridges, and dilettantizing at 
| legislation. <q>
| <pb n="347">
| </q> Truly here is a democratic sermon ~~ a philosophy of 
| property (a century or two beyond the repeal of the Corn-laws) 
| very startling to Conservative ears. <hi rend="italic"> <q> 
| </q> </hi> 
| Tiberius Gracchus, Frederick William III. Of Prussia, (when 
| Stein was his minister,) and Thomas Carlyle ~~ these three shall 
| teach us to make an Agrarian Law, when it may seem necessary. 
| But the grand theme of this book remains. To balance these 
| false gospels of <persona> "Mammonism" </persona> and 
| <persona> "Do-nothing Aristocracy," </persona>
| we have the true gospel of Labour, and the just wages of Labour. 
| Let the working man hear that, and amid his sooty toil rejoice. 
| He is the only hero, in Mr. Carlyle's estimation ~~ the only 
| noble. <q> </q>
| Mr Carlyle's book is full of pictures dark enough, of 
| complaints loud enough, and blasts strong enough of earnest, 
| indignant appeal. But there is faith also, (as a prophet can never 
| exist without that,) and a triumphant outlook into the boundless 
| conquests that the <persona> "Chivalry of Labour," </persona>
| million-handed, under its thousand captains of the 
| <persona> "Gifted," </persona> is yet destined to achieve 
| on the earth. We can allow ourselves, further, only two extracts, 
| burning with the noblest eloquence, one on these heroic guides 
| and captains of labour; the other on that chivalry of labour itself. 
| <q>
| <pb n="348">
| </q>