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CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLYLE 
 

Conversations 
 
 WITH 
 
 Carlyle 
 
 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY, 
 
 K.C.M.G. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 & 745 BROADWAY. 
 
 1892. 
 

 ^^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These papers were originally published in the 
 Contemporary Review, chiefly for the purpose of 
 presenting a more real, as well as a more human, 
 picture of the philosopher of Chelsea than readers 
 have been accustomed to of late. 
 
 It has been no little gratification to me to 
 receive letters from cultivated and thoughtful 
 people, declaring that the conversations and corres- 
 pondence, and, in some degree, the testimony of the 
 author, had enabled them to accept anew an estimate 
 of Carlyle which they had relinquished with pain, 
 and to be assured that the nature and habits of 
 the eminent man were not unworthy of his position 
 as a teacher and leader of his age. 
 
 They have incidentally served another purpose : 
 they furnish a striking gallery of portraits, and 
 an unique body of criticism on the writers of the 
 century, by one of the most impressive painters of 
 men that ever existed. The criticisms have some- 
 times been called harsh and unjust, by impatient 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 partisans of this or that personage ; but when 
 they are dispassionately examined, they will be 
 found, in almost every instance, to be just judg- 
 ments, the exact truth uttered by a critic as com- 
 petent to discern and express it as Bacon or 
 Burke. The conversations have not been pre- 
 maturely published ; it is more than forty years 
 since the earliest of them were written, and it is 
 not too soon to hear the judgment of such an 
 expert on the men and things among which he 
 lived. 
 
 Critics of these papers have recognised that 
 Carlyle is made to use the exact phraseology he 
 was accustomed to employ. The conversations 
 were, in fact, written down immediately after they 
 took place, when his emphatic and significant 
 language was still fresh in my memory. Readers 
 who knew Carlyle will, I think, recognise the 
 familiar cadence, and those who did not know him 
 will have the means of realising his ordinary 
 speech and method for themselves. 
 
 Villa Marguerite, 
 
 Nice, Alpes Maritimes, 
 ApnV, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Visit of the Young Irelanders to Carlyle . . i 
 
 Letter describing the Visit 4 
 
 First Letter from Carlyle to Gavan Duffy . 7 
 
 Letter from Mrs. Carlyle 8 
 
 Letter accompanying "Past and Present" . . 10 
 
 The "Curse of Cromwell" 12 
 
 Letters projecting First Visit to Ireland . . 15 
 
 His Visit 22 
 
 w. e. forster 23 
 
 Letter of Felicitation 28 
 
 Correspondence respecting his Second Visit to 
 
 Ireland 33 
 
 Second Visit commenced . . . . . .45 
 
 Carlyle in 1849 .46 
 
 Extracts from "Irish Reminiscences" ... 49 
 
 His Opinion of Wordsworth 53 
 
 Of Francis Jeffrey 55 
 
 Of Browning and Coleridge 56 
 
 Of Savage Landor 64 
 
 Odds and Ends 67 
 
 h 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 An Irish Poor-House . 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 71 
 
 Dickens and Thackeray 
 
 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 Sir James Stephen 
 
 
 
 
 
 78 
 
 Sir Henry Taylor 
 
 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 The London Press in 1849 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 83 
 
 "Sartor Resartus" 
 
 
 
 
 
 88 
 
 Carlyle's Method of Work 
 
 
 
 
 
 92 
 
 Father O'Shea 
 
 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 A Kerry Homestead 
 
 
 
 
 
 96 
 
 Lady Beecher (Miss O'Neill) 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 98 
 
 "Festus" 
 
 
 
 
 
 lOI 
 
 Irish History . . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 102 
 
 Henry VIII 
 
 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 The Chelsea Philosophy . 
 
 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 Buckle 
 
 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 Mazzini 
 
 
 
 
 
 109 
 
 Lynch Law .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 III 
 
 More Odds and Ends . 
 
 
 
 
 
 114 
 
 W. E. FORSTER 
 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 The Desolation of Westport 
 
 
 
 
 
 118 
 
 Repeal Pipes .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 124 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Irish Land Question in 1849 . . . .127 
 
 Mr. Espinasse 131 
 
 Mr. Linton 132 
 
 "Wanted, a Few Workmen" 136 
 
 Carlyle's Article in the "Nation" . . .146 
 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets 151 
 
 A Paper to Supersede Parliament — The First 
 
 Tenant-Right Movement 154 
 
 Cardinal Wiseman 163 
 
 John Stuart Mill 166 
 
 Dr. Murray and the '-'Edinburgh Review" . . 175 
 
 Disraeli 179 
 
 Specimen of an Harangue . . . . . .181 
 
 PART FOURTH. 
 
 A Friendly Proposal 187 
 
 A Talk with Thackeray 192 
 
 Edmund Burke 197 
 
 The Malvern Water-Cure 199 
 
 Sir Arthur Helps 200 
 
 Apropos of W. C. Macready 203 
 
 Letters from Macready 205 
 
 Sir Henry Parkes 210 
 
 Letter from Mrs. Carlyle on his Return from 
 
 Australia 214 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Stories about Lord P . . . \ . 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle and the Dog-Stealer 
 Two Stories of Carlyle's Good Temper 
 
 George Sand . 
 
 A Dispute with Carlyle 
 
 Modern Art 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle's Death 
 
 Letters in Favour of Young Men in Australia 
 Letter from John Forster .... 
 Letter approving of Duffy's Ministerial Career 
 Second Letter from John Forster 
 
 Carlyle in 1880 
 
 Carlyle's Death 
 
 Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2X6 
 
 219 
 
 220 
 
 222 
 223 
 228 
 230 
 232 
 240 
 242 
 249 
 252 
 256 
 
 257 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Portrait of Thomas Carlyle . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Carlyle 187 
 
 Carlyle on Horseback in Hyde Park . . .213 
 
 / 
 
CONVERSATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE 
 WITH THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 part 3First 
 
 It is nearly half a century since I made the ac- 
 quaintance of Thomas Carlyle. In the only frag- 
 ment of her diar}^ saved from the flames, and 
 published with her " Letters and Memorials," Mrs. 
 Carlyle describes the visit of three Irish law- 
 students, who were, moreover, intense Nationalists, 
 to her husband in April 1845. She had seen 
 Italian, German, and Polish patriots beyond count, 
 but Irish specimens of the genus were altogether 
 new to her ; and here were, as she says, " real hot 
 and hot live Irishmen, such as she had never sat at 
 meals with before." On the whole, they did not 
 displease her, and one of them had afterwards the 
 good fortune to be admitted by the lady to a frank 
 and cordial friendship, lasting to the day of her 
 death. Her description of her \asitors may still 
 have an interest for inquisitive readers. Mr. Pigot, 
 mentioned first, was son of the Irish Chief Baron, 
 and afterwards became a successful advocate at the 
 
 A 
 
2 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Indian Bar; the person whose name she could not 
 recall was John O'Hagan (afterwards Mr. Justice 
 O'Hagan, recently head of the Land Commission 
 in Ireland) ; and the third visitor was the present 
 writer. They were introduced to the Chelsea 
 recluse by Frederick Lucas, then editor of the 
 Tablet, afterwards Member of Parliament for the 
 County of Meath, and one of the leaders of the 
 first Irish party of Independent Opposition. 
 
 " The youngest one, Mr. Pigot [says Mrs. 
 Carlyle], a handsome youth of the romantic cast, 
 pale-faced, with dark eyes and hair, and an * Eman- 
 cipation of the Species' melancholy spread over 
 him, told my husband, after having looked at and 
 listened to him in comparative silence for the first 
 hour, with ' How to observe ' written in every 
 lineament, that now he (Mr. Pigot) felt assured he 
 (my husband) was not in his heart so unjust 
 towards Ireland as his writings led one to suppose, 
 and so he would confess, for the purpose of retract- 
 ing it, the strong feeling of repulsion with which he 
 had come to him that night. 
 
 " ' Why, in the name of goodness, then, did you 
 come ? ' I could not help asking, thereby producing 
 a rather awkward result. Several awkward results 
 were produced in this ' nicht wi' Paddy.' They 
 were speaking of the Scotch intolerance towards 
 Catholics, and Carlyle as usual took up the cudgels 
 for' intolerance. 'Why,' said he, 'how co7ild they 
 do otherwise ? If one sees one's fellow-creature 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 
 
 following a damnable error, by continuing in which 
 the devil is sure to get him at last, and roast him 
 in eternal fire and brimstone, are you to let him go 
 towards such consummation ? or are you not rather 
 to use all means to save him ? ' 
 
 " ' A nice prospect for you, to be roasted in fire 
 and brimstone,' I said to Mr, Lucas, the red-hottest 
 of Catholics. ' For all of us,' said poor Lucas, 
 laughing good-naturedly ; ' we are all Catholics.' 
 Nevertheless the evening was got over without 
 bloodshed — at least, malice prepense bloodshed, for 
 a little blood was shed involuntarily. While they 
 were all three at the loudest in their defence of 
 Ireland against the foul aspersions Carlyle had cast 
 on it, and ' scornfully ' cast on it, one of their noses 
 burst out bleeding. It was the nose of the gentle- 
 man whose name we never heard. He let it bleed 
 into his pocket-handkerchief privately till nature 
 was relieved, and was more cautious of exciting 
 himself afterwards. 
 
 " The third, Mr. Duffy, quite took my husband's 
 fancy, and mine also to a certain extent. He is a 
 writer of national songs, and came here to ' eat his 
 terms.' With the coarsest of human faces, decidedly 
 as like a horse's as a man's, he is one of the people 
 that I should get to think beautiful, there is so 
 much of the power both of intellect and passion in 
 his physiognomy. As for young Mr. Pigot, I will 
 here, in the spirit of prophecy, inherited from my 
 great-great-ancestor, John Welsh, the Covenanter, 
 make a small prediction. If there be in his time an 
 
4 , THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 insurrection in Ireland, as these gentlemen con- 
 fidently anticipate, Mr. Pigot will rise to be a 
 Robespierre of some sort; will cause many heads 
 to be removed from the shoulders they belong to ; 
 and will ' eventually ' have his own head removed 
 from his own shoulders. Nature has written on 
 that handsome but fatal-looking countenance of his, 
 quite legibly to my prophetic eye, ' Go and get 
 thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand 
 towards the great work of immortal smash.' " ^ 
 
 The young Irishmen were greatly impressed by 
 the philosopher and his wife. They did not accept 
 his specific opinions on almost any question, but 
 his constant advocacy of veracity, integrity, and 
 valour touched the most generous of their sym- 
 pathies, and his theory that under the divine govern- 
 ment of the world right and might are identical, as 
 right infallibly became might in the end, was very 
 welcome teaching to men struggling against enor- 
 mous odds for what they believed to be intrinsic 
 justice. The letter of one of the visitors to his wife, 
 written next day, sufficiently indicates their state of 
 enthusiasm : — 
 
 "We dined at Hampton Court yesterday, and 
 spent the evening at Thomas Cariyle's. I have 
 much to tell you of him, but more of his wife. She 
 is one of the most natural, unaffected, fascinating 
 
 ^ " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle." Prepared 
 for publication by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by J. A. Froude. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 5 
 
 women I ever encountered, and O'H. and P. de- 
 clare they would rather cultivate her acquaintance 
 than the philosopher's. She is no longer hand- 
 some, but full of intellect and kindness blended 
 gracefully and lovingly together. Among a hundred 
 interesting things which she told us, one was that 
 Alfred Tennyson does not, as you supposed, tell 
 his own story in ' Locksley Hall ; ' that he is un- 
 married, and unlikely to marry, as no woman could 
 live in the atmosphere of tobacco-smoke which he 
 makes about him from morn till night. Of Miss 
 Barrett she has a low — in my mind, altogether too 
 low — an opinion. She says s/ie could not read 
 her, and that Carlyle (so she pronounces his name) 
 advised the poetess to write prose ! Oh, misguiding 
 philosopher, to tell a dove not to fly or a swan not 
 to swim ! 
 
 " We had a long talk about Ireland, of which he 
 has wrong notions, but not unkindly feelings, and 
 we came away at eleven o'clock at night, delighted 
 with the man and woman. She bantered the 
 philosopher in the most charming manner on his 
 style and his opinions, but philosophers, I fear, do 
 not like to be bantered. He knows next to nothing, 
 accurately or circumstantially, of Irish affairs. He 
 has prejudices which are plainly of Scotch origin, 
 but he intends and desires to be right, and when 
 he understands the case, where could such an advo- 
 cate be found before England and the world ! " 
 
 A month later I had my first letter from Carlyle, 
 
6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and I am moved to publish it and a selection from 
 those which followed, because they may help to 
 realise for others the picture of that eminent man 
 which remains in my own memory. It has been 
 a personal pain to me in recent times to find among 
 honourable and cultivated people a conviction that 
 Carlyle was hard, selfish, and arrogant. I knew 
 him intimately for more than an entire generation — 
 as intimately as one who was twenty years his 
 junior, and who regarded him with unaffected 
 reverence as the man of most undoubted genius 
 of his age, probably ever did. I saw him in all 
 moods and under the most varied conditions, and 
 often tried his impatient spirit by dissent from his 
 cherished convictions, and I found him habitually 
 serene and considerate, never, as so many have 
 come to believe of his ordinary mood, arrogant 
 or impatient of contradiction. I was engaged for 
 nearly half the period in the conflict of Irish 
 politics, which from his published writings one 
 might suppose to be utterly intolerable to him; 
 but the readers of these letters will find him taking 
 a keen interest in every honest attempt to raise 
 Ireland from her misery, reading constantly, and 
 having sent after him, wherever he went, the 
 journal which embodied the most determined re- 
 sistance to misgovernment from Westminster, and 
 throwing out friendly suggestions from time to 
 time how the work, so far as he approved of it, 
 might be more effectually done. This is the real 
 Carlyle; a man of generous nature, sometimes 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 7 
 
 disturbed on the surface by trifling troubles, but 
 never diverted at heart from what he believed to 
 be right and true. 
 
 This was the first letter : — 
 
 "Chelsea, May 12, 1845. 
 
 " My dear Sir, — I am happy to hear that there 
 is at last a prospect of seeing your book, which I 
 have been in expectation of since the night you were 
 here. Certainly I will look into it; my distinct 
 persuasion is that you must mean something by it 
 — a very considerable distinction for a book or man 
 in these days. 
 
 " I have likewise to thank you for your kind 
 purpose of sending me the Nation, the first number 
 of which, indeed, I find has safely introduced itself 
 through the Rowland Hill slit in the door this day. 
 As I have very little time, and especially at present 
 hardly read any newspaper, it would be a further 
 kindness if you now and then marked such passages 
 as you thought would be most illuminative for me. 
 
 " I can say with great sincerity I wish you well ; 
 and the essence of your cause, well — alas ! if one 
 could get the essence of it extracted from the 
 adscititious confusions and impossible quantities of 
 it, would not all men wish you and it right well ? 
 
 "Justice to Ireland — justice to all lands, and to 
 Ireland first as the land that needs it most — the 
 whole English nation (except the quacks and knaves 
 of it, who in the end are men of negative quantities 
 and of no force in the English nation) does honestly 
 
8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 wish you that. Do not believe the contrary, for 
 it is not true ; the believing of it to I'e true may 
 give rise to miserable mistakes yet, at which one's 
 imagination shudders. 
 
 " Well, when poor old Ireland has succeeded again 
 in making a man of insight and generous valour, 
 who might help her a little out of her deep confu- 
 sions — ought I not to pray and hope that Ae may 
 shine as a light instead of blazing as a firebrand, to 
 his own waste and his country's ! Poor old Ireland, 
 every man of that kind she produces, it is like 
 another stake set upon the great Rouge-et-Noir of 
 the Destinies: 'Shall I win with thee, or shall I 
 lose thee too — blazing off upon me as the others 
 have done ? ' She tries again, as with her last 
 guinea. May the gods grant her a good issue ! 
 
 " I bid you, with many kind wishes, good speed, 
 and am, very truly yours, T. Carlyle." 
 
 From Madame also there came pleasant greet- 
 ings : — 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
 Sept. 14, 1845. 
 
 "My dear Sir, — Thank you emphatically for 
 the beautiful little volume you have sent me, ' all to 
 myself (as the children say). Besides the pro- 
 spective pleasure of reading it, it is no small imme- 
 diate pleasure to me as a token of your remembrance ; 
 for when one has ' sworn an everlasting friendship ' 
 at first sight, one desires, very naturally, that it 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 9 
 
 should not have been on your Irish principle, ' with 
 the reciprocity all on one side.' 
 
 "The book only reached me, or rather I only 
 reached it, last night, on my return home after an 
 absence of two months, in search of — what shall I 
 say ? — a religion ? Sure enough, if I were a good 
 Catholic, or good Protestant, or good anything, I 
 should not be visited with those nervous illnesses, 
 which send me from time to time out into space to 
 get myself rehabilitated, after a sort, 'by change 
 of air.' 
 
 "When are you proposing, through the strength 
 of Heaven, to break into open rebellion ? I have 
 sometimes thought that in a civil war I should 
 possibly find my * mission ' — nioi! But in these 
 merely talking times, a poor woman knows not how 
 to turn herself; especially if, like myself, she 'have 
 a devil ' always calling to her, * March ! march ! ' 
 and bursting into infernal laughter when requested 
 to be so good as specify whither. 
 
 " If you have not set a time for taking up arms, 
 when at least are you coming again to * eat terms ' 
 (whatever that may mean) ? I feel what my husband 
 would call ' a real, genuine, healthy desire ' to pour 
 out more tea for you. 
 
 " My said husband has finished his * Cromwell ' 
 two weeks ago, then joined me at a place near 
 Liverpool, where he remained a week in a highly 
 reactionary state; and then he went North, and I 
 South, to meet again when he has had enough of 
 peat-bog and his platonically beloved ' silence ' — 
 
10 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 perhaps in three weeks or a month hence. Mean- 
 while I intend a great household earthquake, through 
 the help of chimney-sweeps, carpet-beaters, and 
 other like products of the fall of our first parents. 
 And so you have our history up to the present 
 moment. 
 
 " Success to all your wishes, except for the de- 
 struction of us Saxons, and believe me always very 
 cordially yours, jANE W. Carlyle." 
 
 The calamity to which Carlyle alludes in the next 
 letter was among the heaviest of my life. My 
 young wife and Thomas Davis, the friend I loved 
 best on the earth, died within a week : — 
 
 " Chelsea, Ocf. 25, 1845. 
 
 " My dear Sir, — Will you accept of this book 
 [' Past and Present '] from me, which probably you 
 have already examined, but may put now on your 
 shelves as a symbol of regards that will not be un- 
 welcome to you ? 
 
 " For a good while past, especially in late weeks, 
 during a rustication in Scotland, I have read punctu- 
 ally your own part, or what I understand to be such, 
 of the Nation newspaper, and always with a real 
 sympathy and assent. There reign in that depart- 
 ment a manfulness, veracity, good sense and dignity, 
 which are worthy of all approbation. Of the much 
 elsewhere that remains extraneous to me, and even 
 afflictious to me, I will here say nothing. When 
 one reflects how, in the history of this world, the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. ii 
 
 noblest human efforts have had to take the most 
 confused embodiments, and tend to a beneficent 
 eternal goal by courses ;l/iej/ were much mistaken 
 in — why should we not be patient even with Repeal ? 
 You I will, with little qualification, bid persevere 
 and prosper, and wish all Ireland would listen to 
 you more and more. The thing you intrinsically 
 mean is what all good Irishmen and all good men 
 must mean ; let zV come quickly, and continue for 
 ever. Your coadjutors also shall persevere, under 
 such conditions as they can, and grow clearer and 
 clearer according to their faithfulness in these. 
 
 " My wife, while I was absent, received a little 
 book from you with much thankfulness, and answered 
 with light words, she says, in profound ignorance of 
 the great affliction just then lying heavy on you, 
 which had made such a tone very inappropriate. 
 Forgiveness for this — you may believe always that 
 there is a true sympathy with you here, a hearty 
 goodwill for you here. 
 
 "When you come to London again, fail not to 
 let us see you. If I ever visit Ireland, yours is a 
 house I will seek out. With many wishes and 
 regards yours very sincerely, 
 
 " T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Though Carlyle wrote his letters spontaneously — 
 I have seen hundreds of them without a correction 
 or erasure — he was as painstaking with his proofs 
 as Burke or Macaulay. The next letter was sug- 
 
12 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 gested by a desire for accuracy in the topography of 
 Cromwell's Irish campaign : — 
 
 " Chelsea, /«??. 19, 1846. 
 " I am about to do what to another kind of man 
 than you I should myself regard as a very strange 
 thing. I am sending you the ' Curse of Cromwell ' 
 to get it improved for me ! The case is, I am very 
 busy preparing a second edition of that book ; and 
 am anxious, this being the last time that I mean 
 to touch it, to avoid as many errors as may be 
 avoidable. In the Irish part of the business I could 
 not, after considerable search and endeavour, pro- 
 cure any tolerable Irish atlas ; and in spelling out 
 the dreadful old newspaper letters from that scene, 
 which are nearly indecipherable sometimes, I felt 
 now and then my footing by no means secure. 
 Other errors there may be which an intelligent, 
 punctual man, acquainted with the localities, might 
 put me on the way of rectifying; but those of the 
 names of places and such like he would himself 
 rectify. For geographical corrections I see nothing 
 that I can do so wise as depend upon you and your 
 help. . . . Excuse all this. I would like much to 
 talk weeks with you on these subjects ; for it seems 
 to me, as I have said already, Ireland, which means 
 many millions of my own brethren, has again a 
 blessed chance in having made a man like you speak 
 for her, and also (excuse the sincerity of the word ) 
 that your sermon to her is by no means yet accord- 
 ing to the real gospel in that matter." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 13 
 
 This service having been duly performed, was 
 graciously acknowledged : — 
 
 '■'March 12, 1846. 
 
 " I have received the annotated sheets this day, 
 and am abundantly sensible of the trouble you 
 have taken, in reference especially to such a matter, 
 which many good feelings in you, in the twilight 
 we yet look at it under, call upon you to hate and 
 not to love ! In spite of all obstructions, my fixed 
 hope is that just men, Irish and English, will yet 
 see it as God the Maker saw it, which I think will 
 really be a point gained for all of us, on both sides 
 of the water. It is not every day that the Supreme 
 Powers send any missionary, clad in light or clad 
 in lightning, into a country to act and speak a 
 True Thing there ; and the sooner all of us get to 
 understand, to the bottom, what it was that he 
 acted and spoke, it will most infallibly be the better 
 every way. Nations and men that cannot under- 
 stand Heaven's message, because (which very often 
 happens) it is not agreeable to them — alas ! the 
 sum of all national and human sins lies there, and 
 our frightful doom is ' to follow the message of 
 the otJier place then.' I believe you to be a good 
 man and one of the chosen of Ireland, or I would 
 not write these things to you. Certainly if 3^ou 
 could abolish the scene of Portnadown Bridge and 
 other such out of my mind, you would do me a 
 real kindness; and indeed it is mostly gone, or 
 altogether gone, out of the memory of England, 
 fierce as it once stood there ; but out of the 
 
14 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 memory of Ireland it ought never to go. Oh, no, 
 not till Ireland be very much other than it yet is. 
 And a just and faithful son of Ireland has some- 
 thing quite other to do with it than tell his country- 
 men to forget it. You by much meditating might 
 understand what it was that Cromwell (a man also 
 lifted far away above all ' rubbish ' in his time) did 
 mean, and the eternal Heaven along with him, in 
 Ireland. If you cannot, there is no other Irishman 
 yet born, I suppose, that can ; and we shall have 
 to wait for him perhaps with terrible penalties for 
 his not being here. 
 
 " Some friendly critic upbraids me, on one of 
 these sheets, that I do not admit the Irish to be 
 a nation. Really and truly that is the fact. I 
 cannot find that the Irish were in 1641, are now, 
 or until they conquer all the English, ever again 
 can be a * nation,' anything but an integral con- 
 stituent part of a nation — any more than the Scotch 
 Highlands can, than the parish of Kensington can. 
 Alas ! the laws of Nature in regard to such matters 
 (what used to be called God's laws) are very 
 different indeed from those written down in books 
 of sentiment, as many a poor Polander and the 
 like finds to his cost. Nay, do not stamp this note 
 under your feet, or at least pick it up again and 
 read my thanks, my real regard for you, and best 
 wishes in all things. 
 
 "The printer, I believe, has most of the 'Irish 
 Campaign' in type, but I will profit carefully by 
 your corrections still." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 15 
 
 With the topographical corrections I sent him 
 some notes on the character of Owen Roe O'Neill, 
 the general on whom the Irish relied at that era, 
 but who died (by poison, his partisans believed) 
 before Cromwell landed in Ireland. 
 
 His First Visit to Ireland. 
 
 Carlyle had long desired to visit Ireland, and in 
 the summer of 1846 promised that he would soon 
 carry out this design. Here is his letter : — 
 
 " Chelsea, /z^/)/ 22, 1846. 
 
 " I am just about escaping out of London, for a 
 little movement and for summer air, of which I have 
 rather need at present for more reasons than one. 
 To-morrow afternoon I expect to be in Lancashire 
 with some friends, where my wife now is ; the sea 
 breezes and the instantaneous total change of scene 
 will be good so far as they go. My next goal, for 
 another rest of longer or shorter continuance, must 
 be my native place, Dumfriesshire, on the other side 
 of the Solway Frith, where I must aim to be about 
 the first week in August. 
 
 "One of my intermediate projects was a short 
 flight over to Ireland, upon which I wish to consult 
 you at present. A swift steamer, I know, takes 
 one over any evening (or, I believe, morning) with 
 the mail-bags : there is Dublin to be looked at for 
 a day or two, there is * Conciliation Hall ' to be seen, 
 once ; then yo2i are to be seen and talked with, 
 
i6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 oftener than once if you like ; many other things no 
 doubt ; but this is nearly all of definite that rises on 
 me at present, and this, if other things go right, will 
 abundantly suffice. In Dublin and all places I get 
 nothing but pain out of noise and display, and insist, 
 even at the expense of some breaches of politeness, 
 on remaining altogether private — strictly incognito 
 — if there is any need of putting an ' in ' to it, which 
 sometimes (for poor mortals are very prurient, and 
 run after Pickwicks and all manner of rubbish) I 
 have found there was. From Dublin I could get 
 along, by such route as seemed pleasantest, to 
 Belfast, and then on the proper day a steamer puts 
 me down at Annan, on the Scotch Border, my old 
 school-place, within six miles of the smoke of my 
 mother's cottage ; very well known to me, all dead 
 and a few living things, when once I am at Annan. 
 
 " This is the extent of my project, which may or 
 may not become an action, though I do hope and 
 wish in the affirmative at present. What part of it 
 chiefly depends on you is, to say whether or not 
 you are in Dublin, how a sight of Conciliation Hall 
 (I want nothing more but a sight with somebody to 
 give me the names) in full work is to be obtained ; 
 and what else, if anything, you could recommend 
 to the notice of a very obtuse and lonesome stranger 
 taking a two days' glimpse of such a place. Do 
 this for me, if you please, so soon as you find an 
 hour of leisure ; my address is * Mrs. Paulet's, Sea- 
 forth House, Liverpool,' whither also, if you could 
 make your people send the Nation till new notice. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 17 
 
 it would save a little time and trouble to certain 
 parties. But that latter point is, of course, not 
 important. 
 
 "Mr. O'Connell, I am not much concerned to 
 find, is somewhat palpably deserting ' Repeal,' and 
 getting into a ^'r/z^r relation, I suppose, towards the 
 earnest men of Ireland who do mean what they talk. 
 I cannot say any man's word that I hear from your 
 side of the water gives me anything like an unmixed 
 satisfaction, except for most part your own : there 
 is a candid clear manfulness, simplicity, and truth 
 in the things you write for your people (at least I 
 impute them to you) which seems to me the grain 
 of blessed unnoticed wheat among those whirlwinds 
 of noisy chaff, which afQict me as they pass on 
 their way to Chaos, their fated inevitable way ; but 
 the wheat, I say to myself, will grow. So be it. 
 Expecting a word from you soon. — Yours always 
 truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 I welcomed the project cordially, and received 
 further details when he had already set out on his 
 summer excursion. 
 
 "Seaforth House, Liverpool, 
 Aii£: 6, 1846. 
 " Your hospitable and most friendly message found 
 me here the day after my arrival. Travelling suits 
 me very ill, only the fruit of travelling is of some 
 worth to me. Heaven, I think, among other things, 
 will be a place where one has leave to sit still. 
 
 "The Belfast steamer, it turned out on inquir}^, 
 
 B 
 
i8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 sailed only once a fortnight ; the first day too early 
 for my limits, the second too late. Belfast therefore 
 was out. There remained then Dublin, and perhaps 
 a run to Drogheda, and back again to Liverpool; 
 which did for some days seem possible ; but new 
 perversities arose from another side, unforeseen or 
 but half foreseen ; and on the whole I have to decide 
 that Ireland for the present is impossible ; that I 
 must embark for my mother's this night. To- 
 morrow morning my address, if I prosper, will be 
 ' Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.,' to which place, if you 
 can again trouble your clerk to direct my copy 
 of the Nation, or failing that, to return to his old 
 Chelsea address, it will be a kind of saving of 
 trouble. I by no means give up my notion yet of 
 seeing you and a glimpse of Ireland before return- 
 ing home, but I must attack it now on the other 
 side, and after a variety of Scotch movements, which 
 are still much in the vague for me. My wife stays 
 here for a few days longer with some relations in 
 the neighbourhood, and after that, I hope, will join 
 me in Scotland ; but her health at this moment is 
 far from good, and her movements are and must be 
 a little uncertain. She still remembers you with true 
 interest, and is far enough from standing between 
 me and Ireland : she rather urges me thither, did 
 not laziness and destiny withstand. This with many 
 real regards and regrets, and with real hopes too, 
 is all I can say of my Irish travels at present. You 
 shall certainly hear of me again before I return. 
 " For the present (though this was not one of 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 19 
 
 my motives) it has struck me you might be as well 
 not to have me or any stranger near you ! A 
 crisis, and, as I augur, perhaps a truly blessed one, 
 is even now going on in your affairs. For the first 
 time I read a Conciliation Hall debate last week; 
 the veracity and manfulness, the intelligence and 
 dignity seemed to me to be all on one side, and 
 the transaction, though beneficent, was to me a 
 really tragic character. But the divorce of earnest 
 valour from blustering and incoherent nonsense is 
 a thing that did behove to come. May a blessing 
 follow it ! Much may follow. — Yours always, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 In the autumn he wrote from Scotsbrig, where he 
 was on a visit to his mother, that his arrangements 
 were nearly completed, and again, a little later, to 
 announce the day of his arrival in Ireland. 
 
 "Scotsbrig, ^z/^Zifj-/ 29, 1846. 
 " I am still here, lounging about, with occasional 
 excursions, in a very idle manner, for some weeks 
 past ; one of the saddest, most mournfully interest- 
 ing scenes for me in all this world. The moors are 
 still silent, green, and sunny, and the great blue 
 vault is still a kind of temple for one there ; almost 
 the only kind of temple one can try to worship in 
 in these days. Otherwise, the country is greatly in 
 a state of degravement, the harvest, with its black 
 potato-fields, no great things, and all roads and 
 lanes overrun with drunken ?iavvies ; for our great 
 
20 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Caledonian Railway passes in this direction, two 
 railways, and all the world here, as elsewhere, 
 calculates on getting to Heaven by steam ! I have 
 not in my travels seen anything uglier than that 
 disorganic mass of labourers, sunk threefold deeper 
 in brutality by the threefold wages they are getting. 
 The Yorkshire and Lancashire men, I hear, are 
 reckoned the worst, and, not without glad surprise, 
 I find that the Irish are the best in point of be- 
 haviour. The postmaster tells me several of the 
 poor Irish do regularly apply to him for money 
 drafts, and send their earnings home. The English, 
 who eat ' twice ' as much beef, consume the residue 
 in whisky, and do not trouble the postmaster. If 
 there were any legislator in this country, he would 
 swiftly and somewhat sternly, I think, interfere in 
 the matter : a poor self-cancelling * National Palaver ' 
 cannot interfere. ' Parliament in College Green ! ' 
 O Heaven, you ought daily to thank Heaven that 
 that is for ever an impossibility for you ! I would 
 like also to show Exeter Hall and the Anti-Slavery 
 Convention a glimpse of these free and independent 
 navvies on the evening of monthly pay-day, and 
 for a fortnight after. But enough of them and their 
 affairs. 
 
 " I am now looking homewards ; but have not yet 
 by any means given up my purpose to have a glance 
 at Ireland first. On the contrary, I am now busy 
 making out an eligible route. One or two on closer 
 investigation have been renounced ; my view at 
 present is towards Ayrshire, towards some of the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 21 
 
 Western Scotch ports. Glasgow, at any rate, will 
 not fail to offer a steamer, but I do not, except on 
 necessity, care to see Glasgow at present. One 
 way or other, I think it likely I may be in Ireland, 
 on some point or other, in a week hence. You 
 shall hear from me again, with more minute speci- 
 fications, in not many days. 
 
 " If Dundrum be, as I fancy, a clean sea-village, 
 it might be possible to procure, what I find for most 
 part very unattainable away from home, a lodging 
 with a qinef bedroom, in which the wretched traveller 
 might hope for natural sleep. All else is indifferent 
 but that ; and that, too, has generally to make itself 
 indifferent. But if such were the case, I might very 
 pleasantly stay two or three days beside you, and 
 bathe in the Irish Sea, before I went farther. In 
 any case I mean to see you there, to have a con- 
 siderable colloquy with you, if I can. My next 
 address will be Dumfries (Mrs. Aitken, Assembly 
 Street), but after Wednesday I shall not be sure of 
 getting it at once. Pray let the Nation henceforth 
 be sent to Chelsea as heretofore, where my wife 
 will now in two days be. I wish I were there 
 myself, and my travels well over. — Yours ever 
 truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 " Dumfries, Sept. 2, 1846. 
 
 " On Friday, the day after to-morrow, I propose 
 
 to set out for Ayr; and ten miles beyond that, at 
 
 Ardrossan, expect to find a steamer which will land 
 
 me at Belfast early next morning, some time between 
 
22 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 4 and 6 A.M. of Saturday. I hope to see Belfast, 
 and get very swiftly out of the smoke of it again. 
 So far is clear prediction, if the Fates will; after 
 that I am somewhat in the vague; but do con- 
 fidently expect to find some coach that will carry 
 me to Drogheda that same day, and calculate ac- 
 cordingly on passing the Saturday night at Drog- 
 heda, sleeping or not as the Destinies appoint. 
 From Drogheda to you, by aid of railways, &c., 
 I think there cannot be above two hours : some 
 time on Sunday, at some place or other, I flatter 
 myself, we shall have met. My ulterior movements 
 shall remain undecided till I have rested for a day. 
 
 " Drogheda, as Cromwell's city, and twice besieged 
 in that war, is a place I could look at for some 
 hours with proper interest, especially if I had an 
 intelligent monitor to tell me what to look at, but 
 that I fear is far too great a luxury to hope for ; I 
 must try to do the best I can without that. In any 
 case, I will call at the Post Office, and if a letter 
 from you lie there waiting me with any indication 
 as to Drogheda, and more especially as to yourself, 
 and how I can best see you, it is like to be very 
 welcome indeed. No more in such a hurry as this." 
 
 Dundrum was not, as Carlyle supposed, a water- 
 ing-place on the coast, but a village on a slope of 
 the Dublin mountains, where I was then spending 
 the summer. It contented him, however, and he 
 met there, among other notabilities, most of the 
 writers and orators on whom their contemporaries 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 23 
 
 bestowed the sobriquet of Young Ireland. He 
 was evidently pleased with some of them, and he 
 won their respect and sympathy in no limited 
 measure. We brought him to Conciliation Hall, 
 where he saw O'Connell, and to as many of the 
 lions of Dublin as it was possible to interest him 
 in, and after a brief visit he sailed away to England, 
 leaving many enthusiastic friends behind. The 
 relation of these young Irishmen to Carlyle was 
 somewhat different from the relation existing between 
 him and thoughtful young Englishmen. He did not 
 teach them to think as /le thought, but he confirmed 
 their determination to think for themselves. As 
 they were not idlers or fops, but serious students, 
 they welcomed his dictum that work done was the 
 best evidence of life and manhood, and that any 
 toleration of shams or false pretences was fatal 
 to self-respect. I can confidently affirm that his 
 writings were often a cordial to their hearts in 
 doubt and difficulty, and that their lives were more 
 sincere, simple, and steadfast because they knew 
 him. 
 
 W. E. FORSTER. 
 
 The year after his visit the famine which sprang 
 from the potato blight of 1846 was raging in Ireland. 
 He sent me the report of a young Quaker intrusted 
 with the distribution of a relief fund contributed 
 chiefly by the Society of Friends. It exhibited such 
 practical sense and generous sympathy that I read 
 it with much interest, little foreseeing that the 
 young man would, in a few years, become a stern 
 
24 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ruler of the country to which he was a benevolent 
 visitor. 
 
 "Chelsea, March i, 1847. 
 
 " Dear Duffy, — Here is a paper which has 
 come to me to-day from the writer of it, a very 
 worthy acquaintance of mine, which as a small 
 memorial of me for the moment, a small drop of oil 
 on huge waters of bitterness and tumult, I send 
 you to read. Forster is a young wealthy manu- 
 facturer, who migrated some years ago from 
 Devonshire or Cornwall to Yorkshire for taking 
 up that trade, and was recommended to me by 
 John Sterling; I have ever since liked him very 
 well. A Quaker, or rather the son of a Quaker, 
 for he himself has little to do with what is obsolete, 
 a most cheery, frank-hearted, courageous, clear- 
 sighted young fellow : — the Quakers, some months 
 ago, made a special subscription for Ireland, and 
 decided, like prudent people, on seeing with their 
 own eyes their money laid out. Forster's father 
 and self were of the deputation for that end, or, for 
 aught I know, were the sole deputation ; and this is 
 the report they have given in. Read it, I say, and 
 enjoy five minutes of a Sabbath-feeling — not too 
 frequent with any of us in these times. 
 
 *' It is long since I heard anything direct from 
 you ; nay, in the Nation itself I now find but little 
 of you ; only here and there, in some genial, honest, 
 patient human word (as in the paper on Emigration 
 last week) do I trace your hand, and with all my 
 heart wish it speed. The aspect of Ireland is beyond 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 25 
 
 words at present. The most thoughtless here is 
 struck into momentary silence in looking at it; the 
 wisest among us cannot guess what the end of 
 these things is to be. For it is not Ireland alone ; 
 starving Ireland will become starving Scotland and 
 starving England in a little while ; if this despicable 
 root will but continue dead, we may at last all say 
 that we have changed our sordid chronic pestilential 
 atrophy into a swift fierce crisis of death or the be- 
 ginning of cure ; and all * revolutions ' are but small 
 to this — if the potato will but stay away ! 
 
 "Your Irish governing class are now actually 
 brought to the Bar; arraigned before Heaven and 
 Earth of /wwgoverning this Ireland, and no Lord John 
 Russell, or * Irish Party ' in Palace Yard, and no man 
 or combination of men can save them from their sen- 
 tence, to govern it better, or to disappear and die. 
 The sins of the fathers fall heavy on the children, 
 if after ten generations — surely, I think, of all the 
 trades in the world that of Irish landlord at this 
 moment is the frightfullest. The Skibbereen peasant 
 dies at once in a few days; but his landlord will 
 have to perish by inches, through long years of 
 disquieting tumult, dark violence, and infatuation 
 under yet undeveloped forms ; and him, if God take 
 not pity on him, nobody else will pity ! Either 
 this, it seems to me, is inevitable for the Irish 
 landlord, or else a degree of manfulness and gene- 
 rous wisdom, such as one hardly dares to hope 
 from him — from him or from those about him. It 
 is realty a tremendous epoch we have come to, if 
 
26 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the potato will not return ! And then, as I said, 
 our Scotch landlords, and then also our EngHsh, 
 come in their turn to the Bar — not much less 
 guilty, if much more fortunate — and they now will 
 have a ravelled account to settle ! But England 
 and they are fortunate in this, that we have already 
 another aristocracy (that of wealth, nay, in some 
 measure that of wisdom, piety, courage) — an aristo- 
 cracy not at all of the * chimerical ' or ' do nothing ' 
 sort, though not yet recognised in the Heralds' books, 
 or elsewhere well ; but an aristocracy which does 
 actually guide and govern the people, to such ex- 
 tent at least as that they do not by wholesale die 
 of hunger. That you in Ireland, except in some 
 fractions of Ulster, altogether want this, and have 
 nothing but landlords, seems to me the fearful 
 peculiarity of Ireland. To relieve Ireland from this; 
 to at least render Ireland habitable for capitalists, 
 if not for heroes; to invite capital, and industrial 
 governors and guidance (from Lancashire, from 
 Scotland, from the moon, and from the Ring of 
 Saturn), what other salvation can one see for 
 Ireland ? The end and aim of all true patriotism is 
 surely thitherward at present ! Alas ! you must 
 tell Mitchel that I read with ever greater pain those 
 wild articles of his, which, so much do I love in 
 them otherwise, often make me very sad. Daniel 
 O'Connell, poor old man, now nearly do7ie with his 
 noisy unveracities, has played a sad part in this 
 earth! All Ireland cries out, 'You have saved us.' 
 But the fact is very far otherwise. Good Heavens ! 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 27 
 
 when I think what pestilent distraction, leading 
 direct to revolt and grape-shot, and yet unsounded 
 depths of misery he has cast into all young heroic 
 hearts of Ireland, I could wish the man never had 
 been born ! Mitchel may depend on it, it is not 
 repeal from England, but repeal /ro7/i the Devil, 
 that will save Ireland. England, too, I can very 
 honestly tell him, is heartily desirous of 'Repeal,' - 
 would welcome repeal with both hands if England 
 did not see that repeal had been forbidden by the 
 laws of Nature, and could in the least believe in 
 repeal ! Ireland, I think, cannot lift anchor and 
 sail away with itself. We are married to Ireland 
 by the ground-plan of this world — a thick-skinned 
 labouring man to a drunken ill-tongued wife, and 
 dreadful family quarrels have ensued ! Mitchel I 
 reckon to be a noble, chivalrous fellow, full of talent 
 and manful temper of every kind. In fact, I love 
 him very much, and must infinitely regret to see the 
 like of him enveloped in such poor delusions, parti- 
 sanships, and narrow violences, very unworthy of 
 him. * Young Ireland,* furthermore, ought to under- 
 stand that it is to them that the sense and veracity 
 of England looks mainly for help in a better admini- 
 stering of Ireland ; to them (and not to the O'Connell 
 party, who are well seen for what they are), to them, 
 in spite of all their violence, for it is believed that 
 there are among them true men. This I can testify- 
 as a fact on rather good evidence. Adieu, dear Duffy ; 
 I meant but a word, and here is an essay ! — Ever 
 yours, T. Carlyle. 
 
28 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " The Chapmans were to send you a book they 
 had been reprinting of mine. I suppose it arrived 
 safe. Read the Tablet of yesterday, and forgive 
 the editor for some nonsense that now and then 
 falls from him ; this is sense. These poor priests in 
 Cloyne : weeks ago, when I read the report of their 
 meeting, I said to myself, ' Thank God for it. This 
 is the first rational utterance of the human voice I 
 have yet heard in that wide howl of misery and 
 folly which makes the heart sick ! ' May all the 
 priests in Ireland with one accord do the like, and 
 all true Irishmen join with them. Adieu." 
 
 A little later he sent felicitations on an event of 
 high personal importance to me. 
 
 "Chelsea, March 15, 1847. 
 " Dear Duffy, — I am delighted to hear of your 
 good fortune ! From a phrase in your former letter 
 I had been anticipating something of this kind, 
 which now it seems has happily arrived. I noticed 
 the young beauty, among the others, that day in 
 Bagot Street; but had I then known what was 
 coming I should have taken a much closer survey. 
 Pray give her my best regards ; my true wishes 
 that this new union may be blessed to you both, 
 that you may have many happy, and, what is much 
 more, many brave and noble years together in this 
 world. If it be the will of the Fates, I shall be right 
 glad to make farther acquaintance with this lady, 
 perhaps under better auspices, some time by-and-by. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 29 
 
 The site of your new house (for we went by so 
 many routes to Dundrum) is not at present very 
 clear to me ; may I know it better one day, and see 
 with satisfaction what a temple of the Muses and 
 stronghold of the heroisms and veracities you have 
 made of it, even in these dark times ! A man in all 
 ' times ' makes his own world : this in the darkest 
 condition of the elements is a gospel that should 
 never forsake us. 
 
 " I am very idle here at present ; but surely, if I 
 live, shall not always be 'idle.' The world, mainly 
 a wretched world of imposture from zenith to nadir, 
 seems as if threatening to fall rapidly to pieces in 
 huge ruin about one's ears; it seems as if in this 
 loss of the poor Irish potato the last beggarly film 
 that hid the abyss from us were snatched away, and 
 now its black throat lay yawning, visible even to 
 fools ! How to demean oneself in these new circum- 
 stances is rather a question. We shall see Bocca 
 stretta occhi sciolti. 
 
 " I will say no more about ' Repeal ' at present. 
 The ' Coxcombs in London ' are a dreadful sorrow 
 to us all, and every honest soul of us is straining 
 as he can to get rid of them in some good way — to 
 change them and their windy spouting establish- 
 ment into some real council of Amphictyons. But 
 we know also that already they are not ' the Govern- 
 ment,' except in name merely ; that already the real 
 Government, and even the Acts of Parliament, for 
 every locality, rest truly with those that have power 
 in that locality — in Ireland with the Irish aristocracy. 
 
30 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 for example ; the more is your woe ! Do you think 
 ^/lej/ are precious to any good man here ? Adieu. 
 
 " T. CARLYLE." 
 
 His Second Visit to Ireland. 
 
 Three years later, Carlyle paid a second visit to 
 Ireland. To make the conditions and circumstances 
 of this new journey intelligible, some brief ex- 
 planation may be convenient. In the interval the 
 political and personal fortunes of his Irish friends 
 had undergone a tragical reverse. The generous 
 young men who surrounded him in 1846 were for 
 the most part State prisoners or political refugees 
 in 1849. A famine, which had twice decimated 
 the agricultural population in a country which pro- 
 duced a superabundance of food for all its people, 
 drove men to abandon further reliance on peti- 
 tions and remonstrances to a deaf oracle. The Euro- 
 pean revolutions of 1848 indicated another possible 
 remedy for intolerable wrongs, and in the mid- 
 summer of that year a national insurrection was 
 attempted. In the forlorn and dispirited condition 
 of the people it failed utterly, and the men respon- 
 sible for the attempt, some of the very men, indeed, 
 who had welcomed Carlyle to Ireland three years 
 earlier, were convicted of high treason or treason 
 felony, and were transported beyond the seas. 
 
 For my part, I had been four times arraigned 
 
 for the same offence as my friends, but it proved 
 
 . impossible to obtain a verdict. The curious story 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 31 
 
 of my escape has been already told in detail.^ It 
 may be stated in a sentence. Lord Clarendon, 
 then Lord Lieutenant, honoured me with his special 
 enmity, and to procure a sure and speedy verdict 
 against me, so overstrained the criminal law that, 
 by the skill of my eminent counsel, the instrument 
 was shattered in his hands. After ten months' 
 close imprisonment, during which the steam was 
 three times kindled in the frigate designed to 
 carry me into penal exile, and had to be three 
 times extinguished amid public laughter, which 
 seriously discomposed official and judicial persons, 
 I was admitted to bail, to come up if required for 
 another trial at the next Commission, 
 
 During my imprisonment, Carlyle wrote to me 
 with affectionate sympathy. He was far from 
 approving of an Irish revolution, or believing one 
 possible ; but it may be assumed that he was of 
 opinion I had not done anything in furtherance of 
 that object unworthy of a man of honour. 
 
 "Chelsea, October 21, 1848. 
 "Dear Duffy,— It was not till last night that 
 I could discover for myself any distinct plan of 
 attempting to convey a word of sympathy to you, 
 in this the time of your distress ; and I know not 
 still for certain whether the small enterprise can 
 take effect. If this bit of paper do reach you within 
 your strait walls, let it be an assurance that you are 
 
 ^ "Four Years of Irish History." By Sir C. Gavan Duffy. 
 London ; Cassell & Co. 
 
32 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Still dear to me ; that in this sad crisis which has 
 now arrived, we here at Chelsea do not find new 
 cause for blame superadded to the old, but new 
 cause for pity and respect, and loving candour, and 
 for hope still, in spite of all ! The one blame I 
 ever had to lay upon you, as you well know, was 
 that, like a young heroic all-trusting Irish soul, you 
 had believed in the prophesying of a plausible son 
 of lies preaching deliverance to your poor country ; 
 and believing, had, as you were bound in that case, 
 proceeded to put the same in practice, cost what it 
 might cost to you. 
 
 " Even in this wild course, often enough denounced 
 by me, I have to give you this testimony, that your 
 conduct was never other than noble ; that whoever 
 might show himself savage, narrow-minded, hateful 
 in his hatred, C. G. Duffy always was humane and 
 dignified and manful ; nay, often enough, in the midst 
 of those mad tumults, I had to recognise a voice of 
 clear modest wisdom and courageous veracity, ad- 
 monishing ' Repealers ' that their true enemy was not 
 England after all, that repeal from England, except ac- 
 companied by repeal from the Devil, would and could 
 do nothing for them ; and this most welcome true voice, 
 almost the only such I could hear in Ireland, was the 
 same C. G, Duffy's. Courage, my friend ; all is not 
 yet lost ! A tragic destiny has severed you from 
 that one source of mischief in your life. Let this, 
 though at such a hideous cost to you, be welcome, 
 as instruction dear-bought but indispensable ! By 
 Heaven's blessing, this is no finis in your course, 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 
 
 but the Jinis only of a huge mistake, and the 
 beginning of a much nobler course, delivered from 
 that. I mean what I say. The soul of a man can 
 by no agency, of men or of devils, be lost and 
 ruined, but by his own only ; in all scenes and 
 situations this is true, and if you are the true man 
 I take you to be, you will find it so yet. Courage, 
 I say ; courage, patience, and for a time pious 
 silence ! If it please God, there is yet a day given 
 us ; ' all days have not set ; ' no, only some of them. 
 " Dear Duffy, I know not whether you can send 
 me any word of remembrance from the place where 
 you are, but rather understand that you cannot, nor 
 is it material, for I can supply the word. But if 
 now, or henceforth at any time while I live, I could 
 be of any honest service to you, by my resources 
 or connections here or otherwise, surely it would 
 be very welcome news to me. Farewell for the 
 present. My wife joins in affectionate salutation to 
 you. That autumn evening on the pier at Kings- 
 town, with your kind figure, and Mitchel's in the 
 crowd, yes, it will be memorable to me while I 
 continue in this world. Adieu. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 After my release from prison, I spent a few 
 weeks in London, and saw much of Carlyle, Mrs. 
 Carlyle, and their closest friends. I do not think 
 his second visit to Ireland was projected at that 
 time, but shortly after my return home he mooted it 
 in a letter. 
 
 C 
 
34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " Chelsea, 29^"/^ Maj 1849. 
 " Dear Duffy, — There has risen a speculation 
 in me, which is getting rather lively in these weeks, 
 
 ^\ of coming over to have a deliberate walk in Ireland, 
 and to look at the strange doings of the Powers 
 there with my own eyes for a little. The hot 
 season here — of baked pavements, burning skies, 
 and mad artificialities growing ever madder, till 
 in August they collapse by sheer exhaustion — is 
 always frightful to me ; and during this season, 
 from various causes, is likely to be frightfuller than 
 common : add to which, that I have fewer real 
 fetters binding me here than usual — nothing express 
 at all but an edition of 'Cromwell,' which the 
 printers, especially after two weeks hence, may 
 manage for themselves ; in short, all taken together, 
 I incline much to decide that I ought to give myself 
 the sight of one other country summer somewhere 
 on this green earth, and that Ireland, on several 
 accounts, has strong claims of preference on me. I 
 do not expect much pleasure there, or properly any 
 ' pleasure.' Alas ! a Book is sticking in my heart, 
 which cannot get itself written at all ; and till that 
 be written there is no hope of peace or benefit for 
 me anywhere. Neither do I expect to learn much 
 out of Ireland. Ireland is, this long while past, 
 pretty satisfactorily intelligible to me — no pheno- 
 
 ' menon that comes across from it requiring much 
 explanation ; but it seems worth while to /00k a 
 little at the unutterable Oirtiiis Gulf of British, 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 35 
 
 and indeed of European, things, which has visibly 
 broken forth there : in that respect, if not in 
 another, Ireland seems to me the notablest of all 
 spots in the world at present. * There is your 
 problem — -yours, too, my friend.' I will say to my- 
 self, * Then, see what you will make of that ! ' In 
 short, why shouldn't I go and look at Ireland, and 
 be my own {Eternity s) Commissioner there ? Wm. 
 Edward Forster, the young Quaker whom you have 
 seen, offers to attend me for at least two weeks, 
 from the middle of June onwards; and, in truth, 
 day after day the project is assuming a more 
 practical form. Probably something really may 
 come of it. 
 
 " My preparations hitherto do not amount to 
 much ; yet I am doing, under obstructions, what I 
 can. Yesterday, not till after much groping, I did 
 at last get a tolerable map of Ireland (the Railway 
 Commissioners', in six big pieces). I have examined 
 or re-examined various books ; but, unfortunately, 
 find hardly one in the hundred worth examining. 
 Sir James Ware's book (by Harris) is the one good 
 book I have yet seen. Flaherty says * Camden 
 saw England with both eyes, Scotland with only 
 one, and Ireland ccbcus, with none ' — nevertheless, 
 Camden is yet by far my best guide in historical 
 topography; indeed he, the very Apollo of topo- 
 graphers, has rendered all others vile to me, un- 
 endurable on any ground that he has touched. I 
 have also read the life of St. Patrick — Jocelyn's 
 absurd legend; the dreary commentaries of poor 
 
36 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Bollandists ; and St. Patrick's own Confessio (which 
 I beheve to be genuinely his, though unfortunately 
 it is typical, not biographical) ; and one of the few 
 places where I yet clearly aim to be is on the top 
 of Croagh Patrick, to wish I could gather all the 
 serpents, devils, and inalefici thither again, and 
 rolling them up into one big mass, fling the whole 
 safely into Clew Bay again ! St. Patrick's Purgatory 
 too (but the real one, — in Lough Erne, I think) ; the 
 Hill of Tarah likewise, — and if I could find that 
 Castle of Darwasth (or Ardnochar and Horseleap, 
 in W. Meath county), where the native carpenter, 
 when Hugh de Lacy was showing him the mode 
 of chipping and adzing, suddenly took his axe and 
 brained De Lacy — I should esteem it worth while. 
 The famishing Unions ^ I of course want especially 
 to see ; this of itself, I suppose, will take me into 
 the * Picturesque ' department, which, on its own 
 strength, I must not profess to regard much. What 
 remarkable ine7t have you in Ireland ? There is a 
 very wide question. But, in fact, I am still, as you 
 perceive, in a dim inquiring condition as to this 
 tour, and solicit help fi^om any likely quarter. 
 Aubrey de Vere has undertaken to put down on 
 paper his notions of a set of Irish notabiles and 
 notabilia for me : one of the purposes of this letter 
 was partly to try whether you perhaps would not 
 contribute a little in the same way, or in any other 
 way. Write me a word as soon as you have 
 leisure on this and on other things. 
 
 ^ The Poor Law Unions, where the famine was most aggravated. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 37 
 
 " [John] Forster was greatly pleased with you 
 both, and perhaps there may be an abatement of 
 nonsense in one small province of things by reason 
 of that visit. What you are deciding on for your 
 own future course will be very interesting to me, 
 so soon as it has got the length of being talked 
 about. We send many kind regards to Mrs. Duffy, 
 last seen as a Naiad, then vanishing in the dust of 
 the Strand — Eheu ! In Bagot Street there is a 
 beautiful sister, whom I remember well, and always 
 wish to be remembered b}^^ No more ; paper and 
 time are done. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 A second letter on the same subject refers to my 
 conditional promise to accompany him on his excur- 
 sion, the condition being that I was not in prison 
 at the time fixed for the journey, for my bail termi- 
 nated on the 1 2th of July, little more than a month 
 from the date of his letter. 
 
 " Chelsea, /2^;z^ 8, 1849. 
 " Dear Duffy, — Many thanks for your comfort- 
 able, kind, and instructive letter. I like well to 
 fancy you fishing in the clear waters about Bray, 
 in the still valley of the Dargle, in this weather, and 
 do imagine that whatever else you may catch, there 
 is a real chance of your achieving, in such scenes 
 
 ^ Mrs. Callan, a woman of remarkable gifts and accomplish- 
 ments, to whom Carlyle, as will be seen, sent friendly messages 
 for more than forty years. 
 
38 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and employments, some addition of health and com- 
 posure both to body and mind. Fear nothing for 
 the ' I2th of July;' there is, I suppose, not the 
 slightest purpose on the part of the official persons 
 to try that operation again; they know too well 
 that if they did, they have not the least chance 
 to succeed. If it pleases Heaven, you shall have 
 passed victoriously through that most dangerous 
 experiment — dangerous not from Monahan^ alone, 
 or even chiefly, as I read it, and a new and clearer 
 course will henceforth open for you, not to terminate 
 without results that all wise men will rejoice at. 
 You have an Ireland ready to be taught by you, 
 readier by you just now than by any other man ; 
 and God knows it needs teaching in all provinces 
 of its affairs, in regard to all matters human and 
 divine ! Consider yourself as a brand snatched 
 from the burning, a providential man, saved by the 
 beneficent gods for doing a inaiis work yet, in this 
 noisy, bewildered, quack-ridden and devil-ridden 
 world ; and let it, this thought, in your modest in- 
 genuous heart, rather give you fear and pious anxiety 
 than exultation or rash self-confidence — as I know 
 it will. 
 
 " Certainly I mean to avail myself of your guid- 
 ance, of your proffered company, if it will at all 
 suit ; and we will take ' the three weeks ' in what- 
 ever quarter your resources can best profit the 
 common enterprise. Meanwhile, as to time — though 
 I feel that there ought now to be no delay on my 
 ^ The Irish Attorney-General. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 39 
 
 part (for, in fact, I must soon go to Ireland or else- 
 whither), there has yet been no day fixed, and my 
 speculations and inquiries, which still continue, yield 
 me scattered points of interest all over Ireland ; but 
 except the 'famine districts,' which one must see, 
 but would not quite hasten to see, there is no point 
 I am decisively attracted to beyond all others ; so 
 that the voyage hitherto is still zVz nitbibus as to all 
 its details. As to the day of its commencement, 
 which is the first indispensable detail, A. de Vere 
 advises that I should wait a little till the cholera 
 abate in those sad regions. I myself think of 
 coming by steam from London at once, speculate 
 on starting second Thursday hence, sometimes (in 
 sanguine moments) even first Thursday ! To- 
 morrow I am to consult with Twistleton (an ex- 
 cellent man, who loves Ireland, whom you would 
 have loved had you known him) ; to-day I go for 
 the Penny Cyclopcsdia affairs you spoke of, I read 
 Fraser too, with the map ; and much else. I must 
 see Glendalough, Ferns, Enniscorthy, Doneraile 
 (Mouser's House there) ; in fact, I am getting fondest 
 of Wexford, I find. Write to me what yoicr times 
 are, so far as they are fixed. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 ''T. CARLYLE." 
 
 But to get a philosopher afloat on seas which he 
 had not explored was no ordinary enterprise, and 
 it needed several additional despatches before he 
 set sail. 
 
40 THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 
 " Chelsea, /zme i6, 1849. 
 
 " Ever since Sunday last I have had a despicable 
 snivelling cold hanging about me; fruit of these 
 grim north winds, which we enjoy here in the grey 
 condition with almost no sun. Add to this a most 
 wearisome miniature painter, who (with almost no 
 effect) has cut out the flower of every morning for 
 me; and has not yet ended, though he is now 
 reduced to after-dinner hours — and, in fact, may 
 end when he like, for he will never manage his 
 affair, I perceive. 
 
 " So that I have been obliged to give up Thursday 
 Jirst, but do now definitely say TJnirsday come 
 a week. Barring accidents, I mean to sail on that 
 day (10 A.M.) in the steamer for Dublin from this 
 port ; when the steamer will arrive, you can perhaps 
 tell me, for I do not yet learn here, having hitherto 
 been no farther eastward than the office in the 
 Regent's Circus in prosecution of my inquiry. 
 Expect me then, however, if accidents befall not, 
 and if with utmost industry I do not fail to get 
 these innumerable ragtaggeries settled or suppressed 
 in time for that morning ; * Thursday come a week,' 
 which I think is the twenty-eighth of the month, 
 is announced as my day of sailing. Mrs. Carlyle 
 purposes, in a day or two after, to set out for 
 Scotland and some secluded visiting among friends. 
 Forster may now, for what I know, appear in 
 Dublin about the same time ; his perennial cheerful- 
 ness, intelligent, hearty, and active habits would 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 41 
 
 render him a very useful element in such an expedi- 
 tion, I believe. But at any rate, I am delighted that 
 you go with me, and I really anticipate a little good 
 from the business for myself and for all of us. 
 
 " Twistleton, whom I see again to-morrow, will 
 furnish the introductions you suggest. If the agent 
 of any EngHsh estate, or indeed, I suppose, of any 
 chief Irish one, could prove serviceable, most pro- 
 bably some of my friends here could procure it for 
 me; but that, at any rate, can be managed from 
 Ireland quite as well. Of Irish aristocrats I re- 
 member only Stafford O'Brien, Lord Bessborough, 
 Castlereagh, &c., none of whom, by the aspect of 
 him, had much promise for me. I suppose the 
 Imperial Hotel is as good as any ? Please say, 
 and consider of tours and of methods, &c., for 
 two persons, and for third Kildare, Maynooth, &c., 
 and then southward along the coast. Three days 
 in Dublin, or even two. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 " Chelsea, ///?2^ 24, 1849. 
 " Dear Duffy, — Your Dublin agent for ships is 
 right, and I am wrong : for Dublin the days of 
 sailing are Wednesday and Saturday (if one looks 
 narrowly, with spectacles, into the corners of the 
 thing) ; and what is more, their hour of sailing 
 seems to be variable, sometimes so early in the 
 morning as would not suit me at all ! Add to which, 
 I am sunk over head and ears in a new avalanche 
 of Cromwell rubbish all this day (the last, I do 
 
42 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 hope, of that particular species of employment !), 
 and I have barely time to save the post, and send 
 you a word postponing- the exact decision. On the 
 whole, Holyhead and the railway still survive. My 
 attraction for the other route was partly that I might 
 see once the southern shores of England ; also that 
 I might be left entirely alone, which, for two days 
 in a returning Dublin steamer, I calculated might 
 well be my lot. Alone, and very miserable, it will 
 beseem me to be, a good deal in this the most 
 original of my ' tours.' Brief, on Monday I will try 
 to settle it, and then tell you. 
 
 " Forster does not come with me ; will join me 
 when I like after, &c., &c. I mean that yon shall 
 initiate me into the methods of Irish travel, and keep 
 me company so far as our routes, once fixed upon, 
 will go together. Your friendly cheerfulness, your 
 knowledge of Ireland, all your goodness to me, I 
 must make available. Define to 3^ourself what it is 
 you specially aim towards in travelling, that I may 
 see how far without straining I can draw upon you. 
 
 " People are giving me letters, &c. Aubrey de 
 Vere has undertaken for * six good Irish landlords,' 
 vehemently protesting that ' six ' (suggested by me) 
 is not the maximum number. He wishes to send 
 me across direct to Kilkee (Clare County), where 
 his friends now are. A day or two of peace at some 
 nice bathing-place, to swim about, and then sit silent 
 looking out on the divine salt flood, is very inviting 
 to my fancy; but Kilkee all at once will not be the 
 place, I find. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 
 
 "Twistleton brought his successor Power down 
 with him last night. I hoped Power might have been 
 an Irishman ; but I do not think he is. Twistleton 
 is decidedly a loss to Ireland, I reckon, as matters 
 now stand ; a man of much loyalty, pious affection, 
 stout intelligence, and manful capability every way. 
 
 " I have read a good many of your friend 
 Ferguson's ' Irish Counties,' which is slow work, if 
 one hold fast by the map ; but is very instructive. 
 I wish these articles existed as a separate book.^ 
 I would take them with me as the best vade mecum 
 on such a journey. Have you got the book * Facts 
 from Gweedore ' ? I never could see it yet, but 
 consider it well worth seeing. Irish songs you 
 also remember. 
 
 " A Mr. Miley, a Catholic priest of your city, was 
 to have come to me one day ; but I think the unfor- 
 tunate painter must have deterred Lucas and him ; 
 at all events, they did not appear. 
 
 " Enough for this day ; on Monday a more definite 
 prophecy, as to time at least. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 " Chelsea, /z^;/d? 26, 1849. 
 " Dear Duffy, — On Wednesday, by theAthlone, 
 or by something else better if I fail in the A tlilone 
 (of which you shall have notice) ; expect me, there- 
 fore, not later than that day ; and so let one point, 
 the preliminary of all, be fixed at last. 
 
 ^ Probably Sir Samuel Ferguson's topographical papers in the 
 Dublin University Magazine, 
 
44 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " A stock of letters, to be used or not, for Dublin 
 and other places, especially for the ruined West, is 
 accumulating on me ; in Dublin I have a Dr. Stokes, 
 Dr. Kennedy, Chambers Walker, and various mili- 
 tary and official people ; certainly longer than ' two 
 days' will be needed in Dublin if I am to get much 
 good, of these people ; but I will make what despatch 
 proves possible. 
 
 " You have your ' routes ' in a state of readiness 
 that we may be able at once to get to business. At 
 present, Maynooth, Kildare town, and then some 
 march across to Glendalough, or through Wicklow, 
 is jfiguring in my imagination ; after which, Wexford, 
 Ross, Waterford, &c. But in my present state of 
 insight all hangs in the clouds. I wish only I were 
 fairly among the hills and green places, with the 
 summer breeze blowing round me, and a friendly 
 soul to guide and cheer me in my pilgrimage. 
 Kildare, I repeat, for St. Bridget's sake — Bridekirk 
 (her kirk, I suppose), was almost the place of my 
 birth ; and Bridget herself, under the oaks 1400 
 years ago, is for her own sake beautiful to me. 
 One Fitzgerald, a Suffolk Irish friend of long stand- 
 ing, offers me introduction to some specifically Irish 
 family of his kindred in that region — on the Curragh 
 itself, if I remember. We shall see. 
 
 "All kinds of business yet remain for me, and 
 not a minute to spare. People say the Queen is 
 coming to look at Ireland, fooHsh creature ! — Yours 
 ever truly, T. CARLYLE." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 45 
 
 Carlyle reached Dublin on 3rd of July, and spent 
 a week in accepting hospitalities from a few of his 
 original friends of 1846 who remained, and from 
 various official personages, to whom he brought in- 
 troductions from London. He left behind some hasty 
 notes of his Irish journey, which have unhappily 
 been published since his death. He gave them to 
 his amanuensis soon after they were written ; they 
 passed through several hands, and finally reached 
 a firm of publishers, who printed them, and sent 
 proofs to certain of Carlyle's friends for considera- 
 tion. I recommended that the proposed volume 
 should be suppressed, out of respect for his memory ; 
 but Mr. Froude, who could speak with more authority 
 in the premises, was of opinion that the publishers 
 were free to do what they pleased with what had 
 become their property, and he saw no objection to 
 their giving it to the world. Carlyle describes him- 
 self as setting out from Scotland "in sad health 
 and sad humour," and this temporary gloom dis- 
 colours the book. Though he is universally cour- 
 teous in his references to the friends to whom I 
 presented him in Dublin and during the subse- 
 quent journey, some of them country gentlemen, 
 barristers, and doctors, who a few months before 
 had been political prisoners, or inscribed in the 
 Castle list of suspects, he writes of notable persons 
 of both sexes in Dublin who received him with 
 lavish hospitality with a license of language which 
 I am persuaded he himself would neither have 
 justified nor sanctioned had he lived to see it in 
 
46 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 print.^ There is nothing which a man might not 
 have written to his wife or friend without offence, 
 but there is much quite unfit to be launched into 
 
 jDubHcity. 
 
 Carlyle was at this time past fifty years of age, 
 had a strong, well-knit frame, a dark, ruddy com- 
 
 " plexion, piercing blue eyes, close-drawn lips, and 
 an air of silent composure and authority. He was 
 commonly dressed in a dark suit, a black stock, a 
 deep folding linen collar, and a wide-brimmed hat, 
 sometimes changed for one of soft felt. A close 
 observer would have recognised him as a Scotchman, 
 ari^probably concluded that he was a Scotchman 
 who had filled some important employment. There 
 
 ^ This is the book known as " Reminiscences of my Irish Journey 
 in 1849." By Thomas Carlyle. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 
 & Co. 1882. 
 
 A'curious pedigree of Irish discontent might be extracted from 
 Carlyle's experience on this journey. lie was the guest in Dublin, 
 Kilkenny, Cork, Galway, and other towns, of men who were em- 
 bodiments of a passion which had quite recently exploded in an un- 
 successful insurrection. The introductions he brought from London 
 were sometimes to men who were sons of noted rebels of a previous 
 generation, who had conspired with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and 
 Wolfe Tone for separation from England. Dr. Stokes, President 
 of the College of Physicians, and a Professor in the University, he 
 notes as " son of an United Irishman." Sir Alexander MacDonnell, 
 Chief Commissioner of Education, as^ "son of an United Irishman, 
 too ; " and in a young Fellow of the University he recognises the 
 Laureate of '98. He even encountered the Irish discontent, which 
 was ripening for an eruption twenty years later, in the person of 
 Isaac Butt, not yet an avowed Nationalist. " I saw, among others, 
 Councillor Butt, brought up to me by Duffy : a terribly black, burly 
 son of earth ; talent visible in him, but still more animalism ; big 
 bison-head, black, not ^ziife unbrutal : glad when he went off ' to 
 the Galway Circuit ' or whithersoever." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 47 
 
 was not a shade of discontent or impatience dis- 
 cernible- in his countenance ; if these feehngs arose, 
 they were kept in check by a disciphned will. It 
 must be remembered that by this time his life had 
 grown tranquil ; he had outlived his early struggles 
 to obtain a footing in life and a hearing from the 
 world; he had written the "French Revolution"^' 
 and " Cromwell," and his place in literature was no 
 longer in doubt, A number of young Englishmen, 
 beginning to distinguish themselves as writers or 
 in public life, recognised him as master, and one of 
 the show-places which distinguished foreigners were 
 sure to visit in London was the narrow house in a 
 dingy little street off the Thames, where the Philo- 
 sopher of Chelsea resided. , 
 
 This is the aspect he presented among men to 
 whom he was for the most part new. But I musty 
 speak of his relation to his fellow-traveller. If you 
 want to know a man, says the proverb, make a 
 solitary journey with him. We travelled for six 
 weeks on a stretch, nearly always tete-a-tete. If I 
 be a man who has entitled himself to be believed, 
 I ask those who have come to regard Carlyle as 
 exacting and domineering among associates, to accept 
 as the simple truth my testimony that during those 
 weeks of close and constant intercourse, there was 
 not one word or act of his to the young man who 
 was his travelling companion unworthy of an indul- 
 gent father. Of arrogance or impatience not a shade. 
 In debating the arrangements of the journey, and 
 all the questions in which fellow-travellers have a 
 
 ^^ 
 
4S THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 joint interest, instead of exercising the authority to 
 which his age and character entitled him, he gave 
 and took with complaisance and good-fellowship. 
 
 I do not desire the reader to infer that the stories 
 of a contrary character are absolutely unfounded ; 
 but they have been exaggerated out of reasonable 
 relation to fact, and have caused him to be grievously 
 misunderstood. He was a man of genuine good 
 nature, with deep sympathy and tenderness for 
 human suffering, and of manly patience under 
 troubles. In all the serious cares of life, the repeated 
 disappointment of reasonable hopes, in privation 
 bordering on penury, and in long-delayed recogni- 
 tion by the world, he bore himself with constant 
 courage and forbearance. He was easily disturbed, 
 indeed, by petty troubles, when they interfered with 
 his life's work, never otherwise. Silence is the 
 necessary condition of serious thought, and he was 
 impatient of any disturbance which interrupted it. 
 Unexpected intrusion breaks the thread of reflection, 
 often past repair, and he was naturally averse to 
 such intrusion. He had sacrificed what is called 
 success in life in order to be free to think in solitude 
 and silence ; and this precious peace, the atmosphere 
 in which his work prospered, he guarded rigorously. 
 At times he suffered from dyspepsia, and critics are 
 sometimes disposed to forget that dyspepsia is as 
 much a malady, and as little a moral blemish, as 
 toothache or gout, and the sufferer a victim rather 
 than an offender. I shall perhaps return to 'this 
 subject, and I am content to say here that I have 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 49 
 
 often seen a " brisk little somebody critic and 
 whipper-snapper in a rage to set things right " 
 show more temper in an hour than this maligned 
 man in an exhausting journe}'' of weeks. 
 
 We travelled slowly during a great part of July 
 and August, through Leinster, Munster, and Con- 
 naught, in journeys of many hours at a time, made 
 in the carriages of our friends, in railway trains, 
 stage coaches, or Irish cars. There were oppor- 
 tunities for continued talk, which I turned to account 
 in a manner which Carlyle describes in his " Irish 
 Reminiscences." Two or three extracts will suffi- 
 ciently indicate how the daily tete-a-tete was em- 
 ployed. 
 
 " Waterford car at last, in the hot afternoon we 
 rattled forth into the dust. . . . Scrubby ill-cultivated 
 country. Duffy talking much, that is — making me 
 talk. Kilmacthomas, clean, white village, hanging 
 on the steep decliningly. Duffy discovered ; en- 
 thusiasm of all for him, even the policeman. Driver 
 privately whispered me he would like to give a cheer. 
 ' Don't, it would do him no good.' . . . Jerpoint 
 Abbey, huge distressing mass of ruins, huts leaning 
 on the back of it — to me nothing worth at all, or 
 less than nothing if dilettantism must join with it. 
 Rest of the road singularly forgotten; Duffy keep- 
 ing me so busy at talk, I suppose. ' Carrickshock ' 
 farm on the west, where ' 18 police,' seizing for 
 tithes, were set upon and all killed some eighteen or 
 more years ago. And next ? Vacancy, not even 
 
 D 
 
50 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 our talk remembered in the least — probably of ques- 
 tions which I had to answer. Duffy, &c." 
 
 Sometimes we seem to have got on danger- 
 ously explosive topics. "This afternoon was it 
 I argued with Duffy about Smith O'Brien ; I in- 
 finitely vilipending, he hotly eulogising the said 
 Smith," or "Sadly weary; Duffy reads Irish ballads 
 to me, unmusical enough," where his temporary 
 mood probably influences his judgment. But the 
 talk was chiefly of eminent men whom he had 
 known. When I named a man in whom I was 
 interested, he spoke of him forthwith. When I 
 named another he took up the second, and so 
 throughout the day. I knew that one of his most 
 notable gifts was the power of making by a few 
 touches a likeness of a man's moral or physical 
 aspect, not easily forgotten. His portraits were 
 not always free from a strain of exaggeration, but 
 they were never malicious, never intentionally cari- 
 pcatured ; they represented his actual estimate of 
 ' the person in question. It has been said of him 
 that he had a habit which seemed instinctive of 
 looking down upon his contemporaries, but it must 
 not be forgotten that it was from a real, not an 
 imaginary eminence. He insisted on a high and 
 perhaps impossible standard of duty in the men 
 whom he discussed ; but it was a standard he lived 
 up to himself, and it only became chimerical when 
 it was applied indiscriminately to all who were 
 visible above the crowd. His own life was habi- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 51 
 
 tually spent in work, and belonged to a moral world 
 almost as far apart from the world in which 
 the daily business of life is transacted as the 
 phantom land of the " Pilgrim's Progress." It is 
 sometimes forgotten how completely posterity has 
 pardoned in Carlyle's peers characteristics which 
 are treated as unpardonable crimes in him. His 
 sense of personal superiority was not so constant 
 or so vigilant as Wordsworth's, though the poet 
 was perhaps more cautious in the exhibition of it ; 
 Burke was far more liable to explosions of passion, 
 and Johnson harsher and more peremptory every 
 day of his life, than Carlyle at rare intervals in 
 some fit of dyspepsia. 
 
 Of his manner, I ought, perhaps, to say a word. 
 In a tete-d-tete he did not declaim but conversed. 
 His talk was a clear rippling stream that flowed 
 on without interruption, except when he acted the 
 scene he was describing, or mimicked the person 
 he was citing. With the play of hands and head 
 he was not a bad mimic, but his countenance and 
 voice, which expressed wrath or authority with 
 singular power, were clumsy instruments for badin- 
 age. His attempts, however, were more enjoyable 
 than skilful acting; he entered so frankly into the 
 farce himself, laughing cordially, and manifestly 
 not unmindful of the contrast his levity presented 
 to his habitual mood. Though he commonly spoke 
 the ordinary tongue of educated Englishmen, if 
 he was moved, especially if he was moved by 
 indignation or contempt, he was apt to fall into 
 
52 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 v/hat Mrs. Carlyle calls "very decided Annan- 
 dale." 
 
 I made notes of his talk daily, and finally offered 
 them to him to read. He playfully excused himself, 
 but tacitly sanctioned the practice, which I con- 
 tinued down to his death. It is more than forty 
 years since the earliest notes were written. I have 
 omitted many which time has rendered obsolete, 
 but otherwise they remain as they were set down 
 on the day of the conversation. I more than once 
 meditated destroying them as they had answered 
 their original purpose, which was simply my per- 
 sonal instruction ; but when I considered what would 
 be the worth of Bacon or Burke's impression of his 
 most notable contemporaries, I shrank from destroy- 
 ing Carlyle' s judgments on men, concerning many 
 of whom the world maintains a permanent interest. 
 What most of us enjoy with the keenest relish in 
 the memoirs and correspondence of men of letters 
 is their judgment of each other. We can rarely 
 accept it without reserve, but what Montaigne 
 thought of Rabelais, what Ben Jonson thought of 
 Shakespeare, Rousseau's private opinion of Voltaire, 
 Samuel Johnson's estimate of Fielding and Richard- 
 son will always be memorable. Even Byron's rash 
 judgment on Wordsworth and Keats, Southey's 
 contempt for Shelley, or, to come lower down, 
 Brougham''s estimate of Macaulay, or Macaulay's 
 estimate of Brougham are only obiter dicta in 
 criticism, but are tit-bits in literary gossip. We 
 do not regard Fielding as a blockhead and a barren 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 53 
 
 rascal because Johnson pronounced him to be so, or 
 Wordsworth as a poetical charlatan and a political 
 parasite on the authority of Byron ; and when 
 Brougham declares that Macaulay could not reason, 
 and had no conception of what an argument was, 
 or when Macaulay affirms that Carlyle might as 
 well take at once to Irving's unknown tongue as 
 write such an essay as "Characteristics," there is 
 no harm done except to the critic himself; but we 
 would not willingly lose even the splenetic judg- 
 ments of men of genius, much less judgments which 
 are often profoundly wise and always substantially 
 fair like those iittered by Carlyle. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 On our first day's journey, the casual mention of 
 Edmund Burke induced me to ask Carlyle who was 
 the best talker he had met among notable people in 
 London. 
 
 He said that when he met Wordsworth first he 
 had been assured that he talked better than any 
 man in England. It was his habit to speak what- 
 ever was in his mind at the time, with total indiffer- 
 ence to the impression it produced on his hearers ; 
 on that occasion he kept discoursing on how far you 
 could get carried out of London on this side and on 
 that for sixpence. One was disappointed, perhaps ; 
 but, after all, this was the only healthy way of 
 talking, to say what is actually in your mind, and 
 let sane creatures who listen make what they can of 
 
54 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 it. Whether they understood or not, Wordsworth 
 maintained a stern composure, and went his way, 
 content that the world should go quite another 
 road. When he knew him better, he found that 
 no man gave you so faithful and vivid a picture of 
 any person or thing which he had seen with his 
 own eyes. 
 
 I inquired if I might assume that Wordsworth 
 came up to this description of him as the best talker 
 in England. 
 
 Well, he replied, it was true you would get more 
 meaning out of what Wordsworth had to say to you 
 than from anybody else. Leigh Hunt would emit 
 more pretty, pleasant, ingenious flashes in an hour 
 than Wordsworth in a day. But in the end you 
 would find, if well considered, that you had been 
 drinking perfumed water in one case, and in the 
 other you got the sense of a deep, earnest man, who 
 had thought silently and painfully on many things. 
 There was one exception to your satisfaction with 
 the man. When he spoke of poetry he harangued 
 about metres, cadences, rhythms and so forth, and 
 one could not be at the pains of listening to him. 
 But on all other subjects he had more sense in him 
 of a sound and instructive sort than any other 
 literary man in England. 
 
 I suggested that Wordsworth might naturally like 
 to speak of the instrumental part of his art, and 
 , consider what he had to say very instructive, as by 
 modifying the instrument, he had wrought a revolu- 
 tion in English poetry. He taught it to speak in 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 55 
 
 unsophisticated language and of the humbler and 
 more familiar interests of life. 
 
 Carlyle said, No, not so ; all he had got to say in 
 that way was like a few driblets from the great 
 ocean of German speculation on kindred subjects by 
 Goethe and others. Coleridge, who had been in 
 Germany, brought it over with him, and they tran- 
 slated Teutonic thought into a poor, disjointed, 
 whitey-brown sort of English, and that was nearly 
 all. But though Wordsworth was the man of most 
 practical mind of any of the persons connected with 
 literature whom he had encountered, his pastoral 
 pipings were far from being of the importance his 
 admirers imagined. He was essentially a cold, 
 hard, silent, practical man, who, if he had not fallen 
 into poetry, would have done effectual work of some 
 sort in the world. This was the impression one 
 got of him as he looked out of his stern blue eyes, 
 superior to men and circumstances. 
 
 I said I had expected to hear of a man of softer 
 mood, more sympathetic and less taciturn. 
 
 Carlyle said, No, not at all ; he was a man quite 
 other than that; a man of an immense head and 
 great jaws like a crocodile's, cast in a mould designed 
 for prodigious work. 
 
 Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 After a pause he resumed. As far as talk might 
 be regarded as simply a recreation, not an inquiry 
 after truth and sense, Jeffrey said more brilliant 
 
56 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and interesting things than any man he had met in 
 the world. He was a bright-eyed, Hvely, ingenuous 
 little fellow, with something fascinating and radiant 
 in him when he got into his drawing-room tribune. 
 He was not a great teacher, far enough from that, 
 nor a man of solid sense like Wordsworth, but his 
 talk was lively and graphic, though, when one came 
 to consider it, it was not in any remarkable degree 
 instructive or profitable. It was pleasant and titil- 
 lating, at any rate, like the odorous perfume of a 
 pastille m^x milles jleurs. 
 
 I remarked that, having started in life with the 
 traditional estimate of Jeffrey as the king of critics 
 and so forth, I found his articles in the Edinburgh 
 Review, when I hunted them out with infinite pains, 
 thin and disappointing. 
 
 Yes, Carlyle replied, his speculations and cogita- 
 tions in literature were meagre enough. His critical 
 faculty was small, and he had no true insight into 
 the nature of things ; but the Edinburgh Review 
 had been of use in its time, too; when a truth 
 found it hard to get a hearing elsewhere, it was 
 often heard there. At present the great Review 
 was considerably eclipsed, and the influence with 
 which it started into life was quite gone. 
 
 Browning and Coleridge. 
 
 I begged him to tell me something of the author 
 of a serial I had come across lately, called " Bells 
 and Pomegranates," printed in painfully small type, 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. $7 
 
 on inferior paper, but in which I took great delight. 
 There were ballads to make the heart beat fast, and 
 one little tragedy, "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 
 which, though not over disposed to what he called 
 sentimentality, I could not read without tears. The 
 heroine's excuse for the sin which left a blot in a 
 'scutcheon stainless for a thousand years, was, in 
 the circumstances of the case, as touching a line as 
 I could recall in English poetry : — 
 
 " I had no mother, and we were so young." 
 
 He said Robert Browning had a powerful intel- 
 lect, and among the men engaged in literature in 
 England just now was one of the few from whom it 
 was possible to expect something. He was some- 
 what uncertain about his career, and he himself 
 (Carlyle) had perhaps contributed to the trouble 
 by assuring him that poetry was no longer a field 
 where any true or worthy success could be won or 
 deserved. If a man had anything to say entitled to 
 the attention of rational creatures, all mortals would 
 come to recognise after a little that there was a 
 more effectual way of saying it than in metrical 
 numbers. Poetry used to be regarded as the 
 natural, and even the essential, language of feel- 
 ing, but it was not at all so ; there was not a 
 sentiment in the gamut of human passion which 
 could not be adequately expressed in prose. 
 Browning's earliest works had been loudly ap- 
 plauded by undiscerning people, but he was now 
 heartily ashamed of them, and hoped in the end to 
 
58 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 do something altogether different from " Sordello " 
 and " Paracelsus." He had strong ambition and 
 great confidence in himself, and was considering his 
 future course just now. When he first met young 
 Browning, he was a youth living with his parents, 
 people of respectable position among the Dissenters, 
 but not wealthy neither, and the little room in 
 which he kept his books was in that sort of trim 
 that showed he was the very apple of their eyes. 
 He was about six and thirty at present, and a little 
 time before had married Miss Barrett, the writer of 
 various poems. She had long been confined to a 
 sofa by spinal disease, and seemed destined to end 
 there very speedily, but the ending was to be quite 
 otherwise, as it proved. Browning made his way 
 to her in a strange manner, and they fell mutually 
 in love. She rose up from her sick bed with re- 
 covered strength and agility, and was now, it was 
 understood, tolerably well. They married and were 
 living together in Italy, like the hero and heroine of 
 a mediaeval romance. 
 
 I asked him did he remember a little poem of 
 Coleridge's called, " The Suicide's Argument ; " it 
 had the most astonishing resemblance to one of 
 Browning's various styles, and in a smaller man 
 would suggest palpable imitation. 
 
 This was the poem : — 
 
 "THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT. 
 
 Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, 
 No question was asked me — it could not be so ! 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 59 
 
 If the life was the question, a thing sent to try, 
 And to live on be Yes ; what can No be ? to die. 
 
 Nature's Answer. 
 
 Is't returned, as 'twere sent ? Is't no worse for the wear ? 
 
 Think, first, what you are ! Call to mind what you were ! 
 
 I gave you innocence, I gave you hope. 
 
 Gave health and genius, and an ample scope. 
 
 Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair ? 
 
 Make out the invent'ry ; inspect, compare ! 
 
 Then die — if die you dare ! " 
 
 He replied that Browning was an original man, 
 and by no means a person who would consciously 
 imitate any one. There was nothing very admirable 
 in the performance likely to tempt a man into imita- 
 tion. It would be seen by-and-by that Browning 
 was the stronger man of the two, and had no need 
 to go marauding in that quarter. 
 
 I said I thought the stronger man would find it 
 hard to match " Christabel," or " The Ancient 
 Mariner," or to influence men's lives as they had 
 been influenced by "The Friend," or "The Lay 
 Sermon " in their day. 
 
 Not so, Carlyle said; whatever Coleridge had 
 written was vague and purposeless, and, when one 
 came to consider it, intrinsically cowardly, and for 
 the most part was quite forgotten in these times. 
 He had reconciled himself to believe in the Church 
 of England long after it had become a dream to him. 
 For his part he had gone to hear Coleridge when he 
 first came to London with a certain sort of interest, 
 and he talked an entire evening, or lectured, for it 
 
6o THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 was not talk, on whatever came uppermost in his 
 mind. There were a number of ingenious flashes 
 and pleasant illustrations in his discourse, but it led 
 nowhere, and was essentially barren. When all 
 was said, Coleridge was a poor, greedy, sensual 
 creature, who could not keep from his laudanum 
 bottle though he knew it would destroy him. 
 
 One of the products of his system, he added, after 
 a pause, was Hartley Coleridge, whom he (Carlyle) 
 had one day seen down in the country, and found 
 the strangest ghost of a human creature, with eyes 
 that gleamed like two rainbows over a ruined world. 
 The poor fellow had fallen into worse habits than 
 his father's, and was maintained by a few benevolent 
 friends in a way that was altogether melancholy 
 and humiliating. Some bookseller had got a book 
 called " Biographia Borealis " out of him by locking 
 him up, and only letting him out when his day's 
 work was done. He died prematurely, as was to be 
 expected of one who had forgotten his relation to 
 everlasting laws, which cannot by any contrivance 
 be ignored without worse befalling. His brother, 
 he beheved, had long ceased to do anything for him. 
 The brother was a Protestant priest; a smooth, 
 sleek, sonorous fellow, who contrived to get on 
 better in the world than his father or brother, for 
 reasons which need not be inquired into. He had 
 the management of some model High Church schools 
 ,at Chelsea, and quacked away there, pouring out 
 huge floods of the sort of rhetoric that class of 
 persons deal in, which he trie4 to persuade himself 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 6i 
 
 he believed. These were about the entire outcome 
 of the Coleridgian theory of human duties and 
 responsibihties. 
 
 I inquired if he had ever seen a sonnet by Cole- 
 ridge not included in his poems, but published in 
 "The Friend," entitled "The Good Great Man." 
 In my judgment it might be confidently placed 
 beside the best sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth ; 
 if Robert Browning had written it of Thomas 
 Carlyle, it would do honour to both. He had not 
 read it, and I recited it from memory. 
 
 " How seldom, Friend ! a good great man inherits 
 
 Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains ! 
 It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 
 If any man obtain that which he merits, 
 
 Or any merit that which he obtains. 
 For shame, dear Friend ! renounce this canting strain ; 
 What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ? 
 Place — titles — salary — a gilded chain. 
 Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain ? 
 Greatness and goodness are not means but ends, 
 Hath he not always treasures, always friends. 
 The good great man ? Three treasures, love and light, 
 
 And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath, 
 And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, 
 
 Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death." ^ 
 
 Yes, he said there were bits of Coleridge fanciful 
 and musical enough, but the theory and practice of 
 
 ^ Speaking of this little poem several years afterwards with 
 Robert Browning, he pointed out a fact which had escaped me, 
 that though in structure and character it is a sonnet, it might be 
 technically denied that title, as it has a line more than the legitimate 
 number. 
 
62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 his life as he lived it, and his doctrines as he 
 practised them, was a result not pleasant to con- 
 template. 
 
 Reverting to Browning, I told him that I found 
 it difficult to induce my friends to accept him at my 
 estimate. One of them, to whom I lent " Sordello," 
 sent it back with an inquiry, whether by any chance 
 it might be the sacred book of the Irvingite Church, 
 written in their unknown tongue. Or if it had a 
 meaning, as I had assured him, was there any good 
 reason why the problems of poetry should be made 
 more obstruse and perplexing than the problems 
 of mathematics ? 
 
 At a later period (1854), speaking again of the 
 Brownings, I asked him if he had read " Aurora 
 Leigh." I found graphic character painting and 
 charming bits of social philosophy in it, and a style 
 as easy and flowing as the best talk of cultivated 
 people. What it wanted, I thought, was what her 
 husband was strongest in, dramatic power. The 
 feeble old Puseyite and the peasant girl, the woman 
 of fashion and the woman of genius, spoke the 
 same epigrammatic or axiomatic language. If it 
 were reduced to half the length, it would probably 
 have twice the chance of living. 
 
 Carlyle said he had read little bits of " Aurora 
 Leigh," in reviews chiefly, and did not discern 
 anything in it which suggested the probability of 
 Its living beyond its little day. It furnished rather 
 a beggarly account of this nineteenth century, with 
 which one might guess future centuries would not 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 
 
 concern themselves much. She went extensively 
 into Fourierism and phalansteries, things likely to 
 be altogether forgotten, and which would make 
 the reading of the book a task as difficult to the 
 next century as Spenser's historical allegories or 
 Dryden's theological ones were just now. But she 
 did not want a certain bright vivacity and kieen 
 womanly eye for the strange things transacted in 
 the theatre of the world neither. If her book was 
 too big, that was not an uncommon fault of books 
 just now. After a pause, he went on to say that 
 he often reflected what an old Roman or a vigorous 
 Norseman would make of modern sentimental poetry, 
 or of such a windy phenomenon as Shelley or any 
 of his imitators. 
 
 Carleton. 
 
 I recalled an incident at one of our recent break- 
 fasts in Dublin, the by-play of which had escaped 
 him. He was speaking of Shelley, and declared 
 he was a poor shrieking creature who had said or 
 sung nothing worth a serious man being at the 
 trouble of remembering. D. F. MacCarthy, a young 
 poet, who was an enthusiastic Shelleyite, was in 
 great wrath, but controlled himself out of respect 
 for the laws of hospitality.^ William Carleton,^ 
 who was present, took up Carlyle's dictum, and 
 declared that this was what he had long been 
 
 ^ D. F. MacCarthy, the translator of Calderon and author of 
 " The Early Days of Shelley," &c. 
 ^ Author of " The Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." 
 
54 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 saying to these young men, but they would not 
 hsten to him. MacCarthy, who had great humour 
 and readiness, and who was persuaded that Carleton 
 had never taken the trouble to read either Shelley 
 or Carlyle, looked at him reproachfully a moment, 
 and muttered, "Surely, Carleton, you would not 
 disparage Shelley's masterpiece, 'Sartor Resartus'?" 
 The ripple of laughter with which the company re- 
 ceived this sally put Carleton on his guard ; he 
 looked round the table, and with his keen natural 
 wit, divined the state of the case, and escaped the 
 ambuscade, " Ah, my young friend," he said, " it 
 would be well for Shelley if he could write a book 
 like * Sartor Resartus.' " 
 
 Savage Landor. 
 
 I spoke of Savage Landor. Landor, he said, was 
 a man of real capacity for literary work of some 
 sort, but he had fallen into an extravagant method 
 of stating his opinions, which made any serious 
 acceptance of them altogether impossible. If he 
 encountered anywhere an honest man doing his 
 duty with decent constancy, he straightway an- 
 nounced that here was a phenomenal mortal, a new 
 and authentic emanation of the Deity. This was a 
 sort of talk to which silence was to be preferred. 
 Landor had not come to discern the actual relation 
 of things in the world ; very far from it. But there 
 'was something honourable and elevated, too, in his 
 view of the subject when one came to consider it. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 65 
 
 He was sincere as well as ardent and impetuous, 
 and he was altogether persuaded for the time that 
 the wild fancies he paraded before the world were 
 actual verities. But the personal impression he left 
 on those who casually encountered him was that 
 of a wild creature with fierce eyes and boisterous 
 attitudes, uttering prodigious exaggerations on 
 every topic that turned up, followed by a guffaw of 
 laughter that was not exhilarating; rather other- 
 wise, indeed. 
 
 I said he dropped his paragons as abruptly as he 
 took them up. The first edition of the " Imaginary 
 Conversations " was dedicated to Bolivar and Sir 
 Robert Wilson ; to Bolivar because he accomplished 
 a more memorable work than any man had ever 
 brought to a termination in this universe, and to 
 Wilson for prodigious military achievements and 
 heroic personal virtues. John Forster told me that 
 Landor erased these dedications because he had 
 altered his mind about both men, and regarded 
 Bolivar, in particular, as an impostor, crowned with 
 laurels for winning battles at which he was not 
 even present. 
 
 Yes, Carlyle replied, this was his method of 
 procedure. He was not inflexible in his opinions, 
 but he was inflexible in his determination to be 
 right, which, when one came to consider it, was the 
 more manful and honourable method. 
 
 I suggested that it was a serious deduction from 
 the " Imaginary Conversations " that they had the 
 dramatic form without the dramatic spirit. He 
 
 E 
 
66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 made Romans, Saxons, and Sandwich Islanders talk 
 the same balanced periods, and approached the 
 heart of a subject by the same slow Socratic 
 method. And he sometimes destroyed the illusion 
 of his work by putting sly sarcasms on Pitt or 
 Byron, Napoleon or the Pope, into the mouths of 
 Greeks and Romans, or of Englishmen of quite 
 a different generation. 
 
 Yes, he said, even in the windy rollicking Noctes 
 of Blackwood you met human beings whose sayings 
 belonged to the speaker, and were not to be con- 
 founded one with another; but the "Conversations" 
 were all more or less Landor. There were fine 
 touches of character, it must be confessed, in 
 his statesmen and poets which Wilson or Lock- 
 hart could not match ; astonishing liveliness and 
 vigour, too, and a far wider horizon of human 
 interest. 
 
 I inquired whether literature was not merely his 
 pastime, taken up by fits and starts. 
 
 He replied that Landor had been drawn into 
 literature by ambition ; he found it did not altogether 
 succeed with him ; his merits were far from being 
 acknowledged by all mankind, which soured him in 
 dealing with his fellow-creatures. 
 
 After a pause he went on. Landor, when he was 
 young, went to Italy, believing that England was 
 too base a place for a man of honour to dwell in ; 
 but he soon came to discover that Italy was intrin- 
 sically a baser place. For the last ten years he 
 lived near Bath, coming rarely to London, which he 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 
 
 professed to hate and despise. He had left his wife 
 in Italy, giving her all his income except a couple 
 of hundred pounds to get him a daily beefsteak in 
 England. She was not a wise or docile woman, 
 and he could not live with her any longer. He 
 was about to remove his children that they might 
 be properly educated, a task for which he esteemed 
 her in no way fit ; but the eldest son snatched up 
 a gun, and declared that he had come to a time of 
 life to form an opinion on this question, and by 
 G — he would shoot any one who attempted to 
 separate his mother and her children — so Landor 
 had to leave them where they were. 
 
 I inquired if his wife were the lanthe to whom 
 so many of his poems were addressed. Carlyle said 
 he thought not ; lanthe was probably a young girl 
 at Bath, whom Landor counted the model of all 
 perfection, and whom he got a good deal rallied 
 about in London, other people forming quite a 
 different estimate of her gifts. 
 
 Odds and Ends. 
 
 He fell into a pleasant gossip on trifling things, 
 and suggested that "going the whole hog" was 
 probably a phrase of Irish origin. Hog he found 
 was a synonym in Ireland for a tenpenny piece 
 when that coin was in common use in the country. 
 It might be assumed, without much improbability, 
 that an Irishman who began to give his friend a 
 
68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 treat in a frugal spirit gradually warmed to the 
 business, and at length, in an explosion of hospitality, 
 proclaimed his intention of magnanimously spend- 
 ing the entire coin. In this sense, going the whole 
 hog had a plain significance; but in the other it 
 was hopeless nonsense. I told him that I thought 
 I had recently chanced on the explanation of another 
 perplexing phrase, Hamlet's test of his own sanity 
 — that he knew a hawk from a handsaw. A 
 plasterer who was working for me called to tlie 
 boy in attendance to bring him his hawk, which it 
 appears is the name of the sort of pallet on which 
 a plasterer carries mortar. Knowing a hawk from 
 a handsaw in this sense . was a natural enough 
 test of intelligence, like knowing a hatchet from a 
 crowbar. 
 
 Was there any evidence, he inquired, that the 
 word was in use in the reign of Elizabeth ? This 
 was an indispensable basis for my hypothesis. 
 The hawk and the heronshaw of falconry seemed 
 a more natural comparison in the mouth of a 
 young prince than one taken from the tools of an 
 artisan. 
 
 Speaking of the significant sayings of notable 
 men, I happened to quote Lord Plunket's phrase, 
 that to the unthinking history was only an old 
 almanac. He said the phrase, if anybody cared to 
 know, was not Lord Plunket's at all, but Jimmy 
 Boswell's, who said to Johnsifon that somebody or 
 other would reduce all history to the condition of 
 an old almanac, a mere chronological series of 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 69 
 
 events. I answered, laughing, that the currency 
 of Jimmy Boswell's book in Ireland sixty years ago 
 was an indispensable basis for any theory that 
 called in question Plunket's originality. 
 
 Speaking of the difficulties foreigners find in 
 mastering colloquial English, he mentioned a blunder 
 of Mazzini's, who called Scotch paupers "Scotch 
 poors." I told him a kindred story which a friend 
 of mine, who visited Dr. Dollinger, brought home 
 with him. "There is a prodigious multitude of 
 infidels in Germany, I fear," said my friend. "Yes," 
 replied the professor, "infidels are numerous, but 
 there are a good many ' fidels ' also." 
 
 He had been smoking all day, and I suggested 
 that one who suffered so much from sleeplessness 
 and indigestion ought not to smoke, or at any rate 
 to smoke so constantly. He replied that he pro- 
 bably did himself some slight injury, but not much. 
 He had given up smoking for an entire year at the 
 instance of a doctor, who assured him at a period 
 when he suffered much that his only ailment was 
 too much tobacco. At the end of the year he was 
 walking one evening in the country, so weak that 
 he was hardly able to crawl from tree to tree, when 
 he suddenly determined that whatever was amiss 
 with him that fellow at least did not understand it, 
 and he returned to tobacco, and smoked since with- 
 out let or hindrance. In latter days he had got 
 in London a bunch of Repeal pipes, as they were 
 called, which were by far the best he had ever met 
 with ; but he could not get a further supply in 
 
70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Dublin, though he had made careful inquiries. I 
 laughingly assured him that these excellent Repeal 
 pipes were strictly reserved for true believers in 
 Irish Nationality, and promised him a supply if he 
 qualified in the ordinary manner. 
 
part Secont), 
 
 One of the objects of Carlyle's tour was to visit 
 some of the distressed unions, and Kilkenny was 
 the first we reached. The Board of Guardians, who 
 had perhaps not carried out the policy of the Govern- 
 ment with sufficient deference, was suspended, and 
 a Vice-Guardian appointed in its place. We met 
 this officer at the table of the Mayor, whose guests 
 we were, and I abridge from the " Reminiscences " 
 Carlyle's report of his experiences of various sorts 
 in Kilkenny. An accident rendered him unfit for 
 immediate work, but he was fortunate enough to 
 get a long sleep, and speedily rallied to his task. 
 
 " Kilkenny ; long feeble street of suburb ; sinks 
 hollow near the Castle ; bridge and river there ; then 
 rapidly up is inn. Car to Dr. Cane's O'Shaugnessy 
 and the other two Poor-law Inspectors at dinner 
 there ; still waiting (8l or 9 p.m.), Duffy, Cane, and 
 Mrs. C. ; warm welcome : queer old house ; my 
 foot a little sprained ; Dr. C. bandaged it. Talking 
 difficult ; no good out of the O'Shaugnessys, no 
 good out of anything till I got away to bed. {Next 
 day.) O'Shaugnessy takes us out in Cane's carriage 
 to look over his poor houses ; subsidiary poor-house 
 
72 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 (old brew-house, I think), workhouse being filled 
 to bursting ; with some 8000 (?) paupers in all. 
 Many women here ; carding cotton, knitting, spin- 
 ning, &c., &c. place, and they, very clean ; — ' but 
 one can,' bad enough ! In other Irish workhouses, 
 saw the like ; but nowhere ever so well. Big 
 Church or Cathedral, of blue stones, limestony in 
 appearance, a-building near this spot. Buttermilk 
 pails (in this subsidiary poor-house, as in all over 
 Ireland) — tasted from one; not bad on hot day. 
 Eheu ! — omitted other subsidiary poor-houses (I 
 think) ; walked towards original workhouse with 
 its 3000. Workhouse ' ordered as one could.' O'S. 
 vproved to be the best of all the workers I saw in 
 Ireland in this office ; but his establishment quite 
 shocked me. Huge arrangements for baking, stacks 
 of Indian meal stirabout ; lOOO or 2000 great hulks 
 of men lying piled up within brick walls, in such a 
 country, on such a day ! Did a greater violence to 
 the law of nature ever before present itself to sight, 
 if one had an eye to see it ? Schools, for girls, 
 rather goodish ; for boys, clearly bad ; forward, 
 impudent routine, scholar — one boy, with strong 
 Irish physiognomy, getting bred to be an impudent 
 superficial pretender. So ; or else sit altogether 
 stagnant, and so far as you can, rot. Hospital : 
 haggard ghastliness of some looks, — literally, their 
 eyes grown 'colourless' (as Mahomet describes the 
 horror of the Day of Judgment) ; 'take me home! ' 
 one half-mad was urging ; a deaf man ; ghastly 
 flattety^ us by another, {his were the eyes) : ah. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 73 
 
 me ! Boys drilling, men still piled within their 
 walls : no hope but of stirabout ; swine's meat, 
 swine's destiny (I gradually saw) : right glad to get 
 away. Cane himself, lately in prison for 'repale,' 
 now free and Mayor again, is really a person of 
 superior worth. Tall, straight, heavy man, with 
 grey eyes and smallish globular black head ; deep 
 bass voice, with which he speaks slowly, solemnly, 
 as if he were preaching. Irish (moral) Grandison 
 — touch of that in him ; sympathy with all that is 
 good and manly however, and continual effort to- 
 wards that. Likes me, is hospitably kind to me, 
 and I am grateful to him. Upstairs about 8 o'clock 
 (to smoke, I think), lie down on rough ottoman at 
 bed's end, for 5 minutes — fall dead asleep, and Duffy 
 wakes me at one o'clock ! We are to go to-morrow 
 morning towards Waterford — I slept again, till 
 towards six. {Next morning.) Off with Duffy, in 
 Dr.'s chariot, to Railway Station about 10^ a.m." 
 
 Our talk was at first of the scenes in the work- ' "-"^M^ 
 house. The house was full of men fit for active 
 industry, and women, many of whom were vigorous 
 and healthy, squatting on the floor like negroes in 
 a slave-ship. One Chamber of Horrors still re- 
 mains in my memory : a narrow room where about 
 thirty women sat round the walls, each carrying in 
 her arms a pallid baby sickening in the poisoned 
 air which they breathed over and over again. 
 Carlyle was vehement in his indignation. He 
 looked at many things in Ireland, he said, with 
 
 / 
 
74 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 silent pity, but tlie workhouse, where no one worked, 
 was so unutterably despicable that he could not 
 retain his composure. Consider the absurdity of 
 shutting up thousands of forlorn creatures to be 
 fed at the cost of beggars like themselves. Why 
 not regiment these unfortunate wretches, put 
 colonels and captains, sergeants and corporals, over 
 them, and thrash them, if it proved needful, into 
 habits of industry on some lands at home or in 
 the colonies ? Try them for a couple of years, 
 he would say, and if they could not feed and 
 clothe themselves, they ought to be put out of the 
 world. 
 
 I suggested that he was indignant in the wrong 
 quarter. These poor people did not object to 
 work — would, I had no doubt, be rejoiced at the 
 opportunity of working to escape from their pande- 
 monium ; but the wisdom of the Empire assembled 
 at Westminster decided that this being a work- 
 house they must on no account be permitted to do 
 a stroke of work. They were not sluggards at all, 
 but the serfs of a Parliament which kept them swel- 
 tering in compulsory indolence and apathy. 
 
 After a time the talk returned to men of letters. 
 
 Dickens and Thackeray. 
 
 I asked him to tell me about Dickens, respecting 
 whom I commonly found myself in a minority. 
 His humour was irresistible, but was there a 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 75 
 
 character in his books, except Mrs. Nickleby, whom 
 one met in actual life ? I read Thackeray over 
 and over again, but I had rarely been tempted to 
 return to a book of Dickens. 
 
 Dickens, he said, was a good little fellow, and \j 
 one of the most cheery, innocent natures he had 
 ever encountered. But he lived among a set of 
 admirers who did him no good — Maclise the 
 painter, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, and the 
 like ; and he spent his entire income in their 
 society. He was seldom seen in fashionable 
 drawing-rooms, however, and maintained, one 
 could see, something of his old reporter independ- 
 ence. His theory of life was entirely wrong. He , 
 thought men ought to be buttered up, and the 
 world made soft and accommodating for them, and 
 all sorts of fellows have turkey for their Christmas 
 dinner. Commanding and controlling and punish- 
 ing them he would give up without any misgiv- ^ 
 ings in order to coax and soothe and delude them 
 into doing right. But it was not in this manner 
 the eternal laws operated, but quite otherwise. 
 Dickens had not written anything which would be 
 found of much use in solving the problems of life. 
 But he was worth something ; he was worth a 
 penny to read of an evening before going to bed, 
 which was about what a read of him cost you. 
 His last book went on as pleasantly as the rest, 
 and he might produce innumerable such like books 
 in time. 
 
 I suggested that the difference between his men 
 
76 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and women and Thackeray's seemed to me like the 
 difiference between Sinbad the Sailor and Robinson 
 Crusoe. 
 
 Yes, he said, Thackeray had more reality in him 
 and would cut up into a dozen Dickenses. They 
 were altogether different at bottom. Dickens was 
 doing the best in him, and went on smiling in 
 perennial good humour ; but Thackeray despised 
 himself for his work, and on that account could 
 not always do it even moderately well. He was 
 essentially a man of grim, silent, stern nature, but 
 lately he had circulated among fashionable people, 
 dining out every day, and he covered this native 
 disposition with a varnish of smooth, smiling com- 
 placency, not at all pleasant to contemplate. The 
 course he had got into since he had taken to 
 cultivate dinner-eating in fashionable houses was 
 not salutary discipline for work of any sort, one 
 might surmise. 
 
 I inquired if he saw much of Thackeray. No, 
 he said, not latterly. Thackeray was much enraged 
 with him because, after he made a book of travels 
 for the P. & O. Company, who had invited him to 
 go on a voyage to Africa in one of their steamers, 
 he (Carlyle) had compared the transaction to the 
 practice of a blind fiddler going to and fro on a 
 penny ferry-boat in Scotland, and playing tunes to 
 the passengers for halfpence. Charles Duller told 
 Thackeray ; and when he complained, it was neces- 
 sary to inform him frankly that it was undoubtedly 
 his opinion that, out of respect for himself and his 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 77 
 
 profession, a man like Thackeray ought not to have 
 gone fiddling for halfpence or otherwise, in any 
 steamboat under the sky. 
 
 (Diary, 1880.) Speaking of both after they 
 were dead, Carlyle said of Dickens that his chief j 
 faculty was that of a comic actor. He would have 
 made a successful one if he had taken to that sort 
 of life. His public readings, which were a pitiful 
 pursuit after all, were in fact acting, and very 
 good acting too. He had a remarkable faculty for 
 business ; he managed his periodical skilfully, and 
 made good bargains with his booksellers. Set 
 him to do any work, and if he undertook it, it was 
 altogether certain that it would be done effectually, 
 Thackeray had far more literary ability, but one "^ 
 could not fail to perceive that he had no convic- / 
 tions, after all, except that a man ought to be a 
 gentleman, and ought not to be a snob. This 
 was about the sum of the belief that was in him. 
 The chief skill he possessed was making wonderful 
 likenesses with pen and ink, struck off without 
 premeditation, and which it was found he could 
 not afterwards improve. Jane had some of these 
 in letters from him, where the illustrations were 
 produced, apparently as spontaneously as the 
 letter. 
 
 I said I was struck with a criticism which I 
 heard Richard Doyle make on Thackeray, that he 
 had a certain' contempt for even the best of his 
 own creations, and looked down not only on 
 Dobbin, but even on Colonel Newcome, He was 
 
78 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 a good-natured man, however. It was notable that 
 he had written over and over again with enthu- 
 siasm about Dickens, but I could not recall any 
 reference to Thackeray in Dickens' writings during 
 his lifetime, and only a lukewarm "In Memoriam" 
 after his death. 
 
 I asked him, was it as a practical joke, or to win 
 a bet, that Thackeray named the heroine of " Pen- 
 dennis " after a famous courtesan then in London? 
 He said he did not know anything of this, but it 
 could scarcely be an accident with a man about 
 town like Thackeray. I told him of an incident 
 which would have wounded Thackeray cruelly had 
 he known it. He wrote a bantering note to an 
 Edinburgh Reviewer — Macvey Napier, if I re- 
 membered rightly, or perhaps Senior — furnishing a 
 complete list of his works, asking a review in that 
 periodical, and praying that his correspondent 
 " might deal mercifully with his servant." He 
 wanted a review to which he was eminently en- 
 titled, and he was not ashamed to ask for it in a 
 frank and direct manner ; but the letter was 
 exhibited in a collection of autographs, in the 
 waiting-room of Dr. Gully, the water doctor at 
 Malvern, where blockheads would read it and 
 misunderstand the entire transaction. 
 
 Sir James Stephen. 
 
 I had read Sir James Stephen's essays in the 
 Edinburgh Review, and was much struck with 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 79 
 
 some of them, especially the paper on Hildebrand, 
 and I inquired about him. He said he was a man 
 of good brains and excellent discipline, but of 
 manner so strange that it was a long time, in fact 
 several years, before he came to understand what 
 sort of capacity the man had in him. He was 
 constantly shaking and settling his head in a 
 manner that was exceedingly foolish (mimicking), 
 as if he was not satisfied with its position, and 
 thought it might be arranged more conveniently. 
 He was placed early in the Colonial Office, and 
 had got trained in official life till he obtained a 
 complete command of its formulas and agencies ; 
 and it was found, whoever was Colonial Minister, 
 Stephen was the real governor of the colonies. 
 He bowed to every suggestion of the Minister, and 
 was as smooth as silk, but somehow the thing he 
 did not like was found never to be done at all. 
 Charles Duller in his lively political youth named 
 him Mr. Mothercountry — that is, the person who 
 formulated the will of England for colonists, which 
 was for the most part the will of James Stephen. 
 His biographies of saints was a dilettante kind of 
 task, which he took up on account of the quantity 
 of eloquent writing that could be got out of it, not 
 from any sympathetic or genuine love of the 
 subject. He had no notion of living a life in 
 any way resembling the lives of these men. He 
 could talk about them, and inspect their doings 
 with curious eyes, but doing like them was 
 no part of his purpose ; quite otherwise, indeed. 
 
8o THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Stephen had recommended these subjects to him 
 (Carlyle) before he took them up himself, but he 
 could not discern a vestige of human interest in 
 them. 
 
 Latterly, Stephen retired from official life, and 
 got knighted. He retired on account of the death 
 of his son. The young fellow was travelling in 
 Germany without understanding German at all, 
 and he got so puzzled and irritated, that he fell 
 sick at Dresden, and finally died. His father and 
 mother had been terribly shattered by this un- 
 expected catastrophe ; and so Stephen gave up the 
 Colonial Office, and retired to his family to try to 
 knit up silently the ravelled sleeve of life. He 
 lived at Windsor, and seldom came to London now. 
 Stephen was a clever man in his strange official 
 way. He was one of the Clapham people ; and 
 though he professed to apply their creed to human 
 affairs generally, he had small belief in its potency 
 by this time, one could see. 
 
 Sir Henry Taylor. 
 
 From Stephen the talk passed to Taylor. I 
 spoke of " Philip van Arteyelde " as a striking 
 picture of a popular leader, with weaknesses and 
 shortcomings enough not to be idealised out of 
 human sympathy, and expressed a desire to hear 
 something of the author. Henry Taylor, he said, 
 was an official under Stephen in the Colonial 
 Office, but not at all a man of the same intellectual 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 8i 
 
 girth and stature. But a notable person too — 
 a sagacious, vigilant, exact sort of man. Philip 
 van Artevelde was his idea of himself; but he 
 was altogether a different person from that. He 
 was cold and silent for the most part, and rather 
 wearisome from the formal way he stated his 
 opinions. He had been a sailor, and had he stuck 
 by the ship he would have made a serviceable 
 officer; for he had inflexible valour, and that 
 silent persistency which was the main thing which 
 made England what it was. He was engaged 
 just now on a comedy — a decidedly hopeless 
 project, the result of which would be consider- 
 ably worse than nothing, for there was not the 
 smallest particle of humour in the man. He 
 might be said to be a steadfast student, though 
 he read in all only half-a-dozen books ; but he 
 read them a page a day. Bacon was one of 
 them, and his great light on all subjects, specu- 
 lative or practical. 
 
 I said, if I might judge by my own feelings, 
 Mr. Taylor was a living evidence that there was 
 much to be said in poetry for which prose had 
 no adequate substitute, or that, at any rate, there 
 were men to whom poetry was a more natural 
 vehicle of thought. I found his chief drama 
 a constant enjoyment, but his prose, even on 
 subjects which interested me considerably, had not 
 the smallest attraction. There was ability and 
 abundant experience in " The Statesman," for 
 example, but I thought the style heavy, the ideal 
 
 F 
 
82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of a Minister of State low, and the motif poor, 
 and even immoral. 
 
 Carlyle replied that charges of that kind had 
 been made against the book, but unjustly, as 
 he judged. Taylor expressed the highest ideal 
 he had conceived of the thing he had been 
 working among in the unprofitable racket of the 
 Colonial Office. It was the result of his actual 
 experience one might see — a plea for a juster 
 allowance for the many impediments which had 
 to be encountered in working public affairs. 
 He had a great reverence for whatever was 
 standing erect, and thought we were bound to 
 accept it cheerfully because it was able to stand, 
 overlooking the fact that there was a question 
 behind all that — an altogether fundamental ques- 
 tion — on which our reverence strictly depended. 
 He had a high opinion of his own class, and a 
 silent anger, one could perceive, at his (Carlyle's) 
 unaccountable contempt for officialities. I would 
 probably be interested to know that he had 
 married a charming little countrywoman of mine, 
 a daughter of Spring Rice, and lived out of town. 
 He had got his office into such a perfect system 
 that he could work it by attending a couple of 
 hours a day. 
 
 I replied laughingly, that the whole Civil 
 Service, I made no doubt, would be willing to 
 work their offices in the same way if they were 
 allowed. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 83 
 
 The London Press in 1849. 
 
 The talk fell upon newspapers. I spoke of 
 John Forster as a man it was impossible not to 
 like, and whose hterary papers were often pleasant 
 reading, but I could make nothing of his political 
 articles in the Examiner, which seemed to me to 
 have no settled policy or purpose. 
 
 He replied that Forster for the most part advocated 
 the theory of human affairs prevalent in fashionable 
 Whig circles, if any one wanted to hear that sort 
 of thing. He was a sincere, energetic, vehement 
 fellow, who undertook any amount of labour to 
 do service to one whom he knew, or, indeed, 
 whom he did not know. Jane got the long bulky 
 
 MS. of a novel from Miss , a scraggy little 
 
 woman, with nothing beautiful or attractive about 
 her to captivate or inflame him, but with an 
 agreeable quality of talk, too ; and he read it 
 through, cut objectionable things out of it, and 
 prepared it, with much pains, as one could see, 
 for the press, and it got read and talked about in 
 London drawing-rooms. He was a man who 
 liked to hve among people who meant honestly, 
 and, on the whole, chose his company with 
 tolerable success. If he got hold of any opinion 
 that he came to believe, he made all manner of 
 vehement noise and clatter over it, and forwarded 
 it by every means he could devise ; but, if it 
 fell into disrepute, and other people deserted it, 
 
84 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 he would just leave it there, and seek out some 
 other fancy to fondle in place of it. Forster was 
 not a man who had any serious truth to proclaim, 
 or any purpose in life which he laid to heart, but 
 he was infinitely friendly, and entirely sincere in 
 his attachments. A good upright man, one might 
 confidently say. 
 
 I said I had asked Forster lately who it was that 
 was writing feeble imitations of Fonblanque in the 
 Examiner, since he had accepted office in the Board 
 of Trade, and that I was surprised to learn that the 
 writer was Fonblanque himself. The philosophical 
 Radicals proclaimed Fonblanque to be the greatest 
 journalist in England ; but, though he had skill 
 and purpose, he seemed to me to altogether want 
 passion and seriousness. His articles were pleasant 
 reading enough, but Jeremy Bentham and Jonathan 
 Wild did not always amalgamate naturally, and 
 public interests could not be successfully treated in 
 the spirit of an opera bouffe. 
 
 Carlyle replied that Fonblanque was a better 
 man than I supposed — a serious-looking fellow, 
 with fire in his eyes, who seemed to consider that 
 his task in the world was to expose fallacies of 
 all sorts, which, in fact, he did with considerable 
 adroitness and skill. I rejoined that his paper 
 had been the organ of the educated Radicals who 
 flourished in England in the Reform era, but that 
 it had shifted round latterly to become a Govern- 
 ment organ. Carlyle replied that Fonblanque had 
 changed under the influence of circumstances, but 
 not at all with conscious dishonesty. Lord 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 85 
 
 Durham, when he came home, asked him to dinner, 
 and he began to circulate up and down in 
 society yonder in London, and so came to look 
 at the doings of the Government from quite 
 another point of view. As for philosophical 
 Radicalism, he had said all that was in him to 
 say on that subject, which, if well considered, 
 was intrinsically barren. 
 
 After a pause, he added that, among newspaper 
 men, Rintoul, a Scotch printer, who owned the 
 Spectator, was a man of deeper insight than any 
 of them — a man altogether free from romantic or 
 visionary babblement or the ordinary echoes of 
 parliamentary palaver. He was the first man in 
 England who openly declared his complete disbelief 
 in Reform and the Whigs, and now it was every- 
 where seen that his opinions were sound. He 
 wrote the literary papers in his journal ; there was 
 nothing very deep in them, but neither were they 
 ever mere wind ; they meant something always. 
 He speculated on the functions and uses of 
 literature in a very natural manner. But he 
 believed in nothing, and had but a poor barren 
 theory of life, one might perceive. He was 
 essentially a diligent and upright man, and he 
 turned out a newspaper which, on the whole, was 
 the best article of that kind to be found anywhere 
 in England just now. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Talfourd. 
 
 In connection with journalism I mentioned 
 Talfourd, and said I had read his dramas with 
 profound disappointment, and could never get over 
 the conviction that his reputation was the result 
 of unduly favourable criticism by his literary asso- 
 ciates of two generations. 
 
 Carlyle said not so in any sinister sense. He 
 had lived among literary people from the time of 
 Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt, had probably done 
 them many kindnesses, and kept coquetting with 
 letters from that time to this, and so they took an 
 interest in him and praised his plays — over-praised 
 them probably ; but Talfourd had not stimulated or 
 invited this sort of notice. It was quite true, how- 
 ever, that his reputation was entirely undeserved. 
 There was no potency in him ; nothing beyond 
 the common, unless it was a sort of pathetic loyalty 
 to his earliest associates. He had learned some- 
 thing of Charles Lamb's fantastic method of looking 
 at things. Lamb had no practical sense in him, 
 and in conversation was accustomed to turn into 
 quips and jests whatever turned up — an ill example 
 to younger men, who had to live their lives in a 
 world which was altogether serious, and where it 
 behoved them to consider their position in a spirit 
 quite other than jocose ; for a wrong path led to 
 the nether darkness. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. S-j 
 
 Captain Sterling. 
 
 I asked him about Captain Sterling, the Thun- 
 derer. He described his early career, which is now 
 sufficiently known, and passed on to his method 
 of fabricating his thunderbolts. The Captain, he 
 said, used to drive about London, and mix in 
 society, and visit clubs all the forenoon. He heard 
 what all manner of men said on the topics of the 
 day, and at night sat down in his study and re- 
 produced the express essence of what people were 
 thinking, as no one else in England could do. 
 The old pagan was far and away the greatest 
 popular journalist of our day. He saw deeper into 
 things than Cobbett, and had an equally clear, 
 vigorous, incisive expression. 
 
 It was Sterling who carried the Tunes round to 
 the Tories. He saw that there was no good likely 
 to come out of the Whigs, and that on the whole 
 Peel was better entitled to support. It was 
 rumoured up and down, in the trivial talk of 
 London, that the Times was paid for this change, 
 but this was altogether a mistake. Sterling had 
 acted on his knowledge and convictions, and they 
 soon came to be the convictions of his employers. 
 In the end the poor fellow lost his intellect by a 
 paralytic stroke. Afterwards he would talk sen- 
 sibly enough, but his talk wanted sequence and 
 connection. At worst he never uttered mere non- 
 sense. Since his death people missed his writings 
 
88 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 considerably, which was by no means wonderful 
 when one considered the despicable makeshifts and 
 inane trivialities which formed the bulk of what 
 was called newspaper literature. Antony, whom 
 1 had met at Cheyne Row and elsewhere — Major 
 Sterling — was his son. 
 
 "Sartor Resartus." 
 
 As we were approaching Cork, he told me there 
 was a man there it would please him to see face to 
 face if possible. When he was publishing "Sartor," 
 only two men on the face of the globe recognised 
 in it anything beyond bewildered bedlamite rhap- 
 sodies. One of them was Emerson, then a Uni- 
 tarian preacher in America ; the other a Cork priest 
 named O'Shea. Both of them wrote to Fraser, and 
 said, "Let us have more of * Teufelsdrockh,' for 
 the man decidedly means something." At that time 
 it was not at all a question of renown, but a 
 question of living or not living, and he was very 
 grateful to these men for a timely word of en- 
 couragement. 
 
 I told him nothing was easier than seeing Father 
 O'Shea. He would be sure to meet him at the 
 table of some of my friends in Cork, or we would 
 call on him if he preferred. 
 
 Carlyle then proceeded to say he wrote the 
 " Sartor" in a farm-house in the wilds of Dumfries- 
 shire, where he and his wife lived, far enough 
 away from any intelligible creature. Their nearest 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE, 89 
 
 neighbours lay five miles off — a respectable kind 
 of people whom his wife had been connected with 
 before marriage, but who thought him, as he was 
 poor enough at this time, a strange, dreamy sort 
 of fellow, who had nothing in him, and he regarded 
 their talk about as much as the croaking of jack- 
 daws. He and his wife sometimes visited his 
 mother-in-law, who lived fifteen miles away, and 
 his own father and mother were at a still more 
 inaccessible distance, and they lived quite alone for 
 the most part for seven years. It was here he 
 wrote all the early reviews, but as they produced 
 a small and altogether precarious income he deter- 
 mined to write a book, and he wrote " Sartor," and 
 brought it up to London. No respectable book- 
 seller would buy it from him, or so much as publish 
 it. He found the literature of London at that time 
 in a distracted condition, and he determined to 
 remain throughout the winter, and observe it at 
 closer quarters. In the end Fraser consented to 
 take "Sartor" for some small sum — he believed it 
 must have been about eighty pounds — conditioning, 
 however, to put fifty copies of it together in volumes, 
 and this was the way the book got itself published. 
 He might add that when Fraser consented to put 
 " Sartor " into his magazine, he cut down the 
 payment £^ a sheet, to mark his moderate estimate 
 of the book. When he produced fifty copies of the 
 entire thing collected together, half-a-dozen were 
 sent to men of letters in Edinburgh, not one of 
 whom as much as acknowledged the receipt. 
 
 I asked him if the judgment of the bookseller's 
 
90 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 taste, prefixed to " Sartor," was genuine. He said 
 certainly it was genuine. It was the verdict of 
 one of Murray's critics ; Lockhart was believed to 
 be the man.-^ His opinion was altogether more 
 favourable, if any one cared to know, than the 
 writers of the Athenaeum, and the like of them, 
 pronounced on the book when it was at last 
 published as a whole. He had not found literature 
 a primrose path ; quite otherwise, indeed. His 
 earliest experiments had failed altogether to find 
 acceptance from able editors, and when, at length, 
 he came to be recognised as a writer who had 
 something to say, editors were still alarmed at 
 the unheard-of opinions he promulgated, and pro- 
 bably because he did not wear the recognised 
 literary livery of the period. He had tried for 
 
 ^ I. Highest Class Bookseller's Taster. 
 
 Taster to Bookseller. — " The Author of Tenfelsdr'dckh is a person 
 of talent ; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought 
 and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge ; but whether or 
 not it would take with the public seems doubtful. For 2i,jeu (P esprit 
 of that kind it is too long : it would have suited better as an essay 
 or article than as a volume. The Author has no great tact ; his wit 
 is frequently heavy ; and reminds one of the German baron who 
 took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was learning to be 
 lively. Is the work a translation ? " 
 
 Bookseller to Editor. — "Allow me to say that such a writer 
 requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an 
 able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. 
 to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accom- 
 plished German scholar ; I now enclose you his opinion, which, you 
 may, rely upon it, is a just one ; and I have too high an opinion of 
 your good sense to," &c. &c. — MS. {penes nos), London, i^tk 
 September 1831. 
 
. THOMAS CARLYLE. gi 
 
 some permanent place in life with little avail, and 
 had commonly eaten bread as hardly earned as any 
 man's bread in England. He could testify that the 
 literary profession, as it is called, had not been to 
 him by any means a land flowing with milk and 
 honey. He might say, were it of any moment at 
 all, that though he had a certain faculty of work in 
 him, the woman who manufactured the last sensa- 
 tional novel had probably got more money for a 
 couple of her strange ventures than he had been 
 paid by the whole bookselling craft from the 
 beginning to that hour. 
 
 I suggested that he had been ill-interpreted by 
 messieurs the critics to readers to whom his 
 writings were not only new, but were sure to be 
 puzzling and alarming. 
 
 As to criticism, he said Thackeray, John Sterling, [/ 
 and John Mill had written of his work in various 
 quarters with appreciation, and more than sufficient 
 applause ; but criticism in general on books, and 
 men, and things had become the idlest babble. 
 Some of the foolishest and shallowest speculations 
 about his books had appeared in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes by the editor ; but verj/ lately some 
 papers on " Cromwell," by a writer named, or who 
 signed himself " Montecut," contained a deeper , 
 and truer estimate of his theory of life and human 
 interests than he had met anywhere in a review 
 before. 
 
92 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ' Method of Work. 
 
 Speaking of his method of work, he said he 
 had found the little wooden pegs, which washer- 
 women employ to fasten clothes to a line, highly 
 convenient for keeping together bits of notes and 
 agenda on the same special point. It was his 
 habit to paste on a screen in his workroom 
 engraved portraits, when no better could be had, 
 of the people he was then writing about. It kept 
 the image of the man steadily in view, and one 
 must have a clear image of him in the mind before 
 it was in the least possible to make him be seen 
 by the reader. 
 
 I said it was hard to rely on portraits. I had 
 seen in an exhibition in Paris a portrait of Robes- 
 pierre at the climax of his influence, and he looked 
 like a placid provincial practitioner whose brow 
 had not broadened with power or wrinkled with 
 responsibility ; and I added, laughing, that he was 
 not in the least " sea-green." I saw at the same 
 time two contemporary portraits of Louis XVI., 
 borrowed from some historic chateau, as little like 
 each other as Hamlet and Polonius. In one of 
 them the artist had idealised the king's face into a 
 certain strength and dignity ; the other might be 
 taken as the caricature of a constitutional ruler — 
 it was such a coarse commonplace countenance as 
 the daguerreotype sometimes unexpectedly reveals, 
 and a clumsy figure on which royal millinery looked 
 quite out of place. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 93 
 
 There was something in a genuine portrait, he 
 said, which one could hardly fail to recognise as 
 authentic. It looked like an actual man, with a 
 consistent character, and left a permanent image in 
 the memory. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 Returning to the subject of Emerson and 
 " Sartor," he told me much which is now familiar 
 to every one, such as Emerson's unexpected visit 
 to the Highlands, and his second visit to England, 
 when he spent some days with Carlyle touring 
 and visiting literary people, his issuing an edition 
 of " Sartor " in America, and so forth. 
 
 I asked him if Emerson's ideas could be regarded 
 as original. He replied that Emerson had, in the 
 first instance, taken his system out of "Sartor" 
 and other of his (Carlyle's) writings, but he worked 
 it out in a way of his own. It was based on 
 truth, undoubtedly ; but Emerson constantly forgot 
 that one truth may require to be modified by a 
 precisely opposite truth. He had not a broad 
 intellect, but it was clear and sometimes even 
 profound. His writings wanted consistency and a 
 decisive intelligible result. One was constantly 
 disappointed at their suddenly stopping short and 
 leading to nothing. They were full of beauties 
 — diamonds, or at times, bits of painted glass, 
 strung on a thread, which had no necessary 
 connection with each other. He frequently hit 
 
94 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 upon isolated truths, but they remained isolated — 
 they nowhere combined into an intelligible theory 
 of life. 
 
 I asked him if he found more in the man than 
 in his writings. He said, No ; when they came 
 to talk with each other their opinions were con- 
 stantly found to clash. Emerson believed that 
 every man's self-will ought to be cultivated, that 
 men would grow virtuous and submissive to just 
 authority, need no coercion, and all that sort of 
 thing. He knew there were men up and down 
 the world fit to govern the rest ; but he conceived 
 that, when such a man was found, instead of being 
 put in the seat of authority, he ought to be re- 
 strained with fetters, as a thing dangerous and 
 destructive. He bore, however, with great good 
 humour the utter negation and contradiction of his 
 theories. He had a sharp perking little face, and 
 he kept bobbing it up and down with "Yissir, 
 yissir" (mimicking) in answer to objections or ex- 
 positions. He got mixed up with a set of philan- 
 thropists, but I told him, Carlyle added, that we 
 had long ago discovered what sort of a set they 
 were, and that they would be mightily rejoiced to 
 get any decent captain to march at their head. 
 Emerson, however, could not be induced on any 
 conditions to applaud their sordid peace, or preach 
 their panacea of cold water. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 95 
 
 Father O'Shea. 
 
 He met Father O'Shea repeatedly at Cork. I 
 was present during their interviews, but as he 
 has given some account of them himself in the 
 "Reminiscences," I naturally prefer it to my 
 notes : — 
 
 " Rain slightly beginning now, I return ; take 
 to writing : near 1 1 o'clock, — announces himself 
 ' Father O'Shea ! ' (who I thought had been dead). 
 To my astonishment enter a little greyhaired, intelli- 
 gent-and-bred looking man, with much gesticulation, 
 boundless loyal welcome, red with dinner and some 
 wine, engages that we are to meet to-morrow, — 
 and again with explosion of welcome, goes his 
 way. This Father O'Shea, some 15 years ago, 
 had been, with Emerson of America, one of the 
 two sons of Adam who encouraged poor bookseller 
 Fraser, and didn't discourage him, to go on with 
 ' Teufelsdrockh.' I had often remembered him 
 since; had not long before ri^-inquired his name, 
 but understood somehow that he was dead; — and 
 now ! To bed, after brief good night to Duffy ; 
 and, for rattling of window (masses of pamphlets 
 will not still it) cannot, till near 5 a.m., get to sleep 
 at all." 
 
 Next day he met Father O'Shea at dinner with 
 Mr. Denny Lane, another ex-political prisoner. 
 
96 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " Fine brown Irish figure, Denny [he says] ; 
 distiller — ex-repaler ; frank, hearty, honest air ; 
 like Alfred Tennyson a little." 
 
 " Opposite me at dinner was Father O'Shea, 
 didactic, loud-spoken, courteous, good every way — 
 a true gentleman and priest in the Irish style. . . . 
 Good O'Shea, who I hear labours diligently among 
 a large poor flock ; [has] 3 or 4 curates : and 
 though nothing of a bigot, seems truly a serious 
 man." 
 
 We made a brief stay at Killarney, our host 
 being Shine Lalor, who had barely escaped im- 
 prisonment in the late troubles. His residence. 
 Castle Lough, was one of the show places of 
 Killarney, and he brought Carlyle to the points of 
 chief interest in the Lake district. There is a 
 long account of this experience in the " Remi- 
 niscences," but it does not invite citation. 
 
 A Kerry Homestead. 
 
 The land question was a constant topic, and one 
 day, as we drove through the county Kerry, I 
 interrupted a colloquy on Irish landlords, in which 
 Carlyle was disposed to insist that difference of 
 religion made the people unduly suspicious of them, 
 by inviting him to get off our car, and enter some 
 hut's on Lord Kenmare's estate, that he might judge 
 for himself what sort of homes a landlord who 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 97 
 
 professed the same creed as his tenants provided 
 for them. Here is the account he gives in the 
 "Reminiscences" of the district, the people, and 
 their homes : — 
 
 " Bare, blue, bog without limit, ragged people in 
 small force working languidly at their scantlings 
 or peats, no other work at all ; look hungry in 
 their rags ; hopeless, air as of creatures sunk 
 beyond hope. Look into one of their huts under 
 pretence of asking for a draught of water; dark, 
 narrow, two women nursing, other young woman 
 on foot as if for work ; but it is narrow, dark, as 
 if the people and their life were covered under a 
 tub, or ' tied in a sack ; ' all things smeared over 
 too with a liquid green; — the cow (I find) has her 
 habitation here withal. No water ; the poor young 
 woman produces butter-milk; in real pity I give 
 her a shilling. Duffy had done the like in the ad- 
 joining cottage, ditto, ditto in Charcuter, with the 
 addition that a man lay in fever there. These were 
 the wretchedest population I saw in Ireland. 
 ' Live, sir ? The Lord knows ; what we can beg, 
 and rob,' (rob means scrape up; I suppose?): 
 Lord Kinmare's people, he never looks after them, 
 leases worthless bog, and I know not what. Bog 
 all reclaimable, lime everywhere in it : swift exit 
 to Lord Kinmare and the leases, or whatever the 
 accursed incubus is ! " 
 
 After we set out again on our journey, Carlyle 
 said he often thought how like Ireland was to the 
 
 G 
 
98 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Irish horse Larry, which he had up at Craigen- 
 puttock. Larry sometimes broke into insubordina- 
 tion, but, on the whole, he was one of the most 
 generous, kindly, and affectionate fellows that one 
 could anywhere encounter. Mrs. Carlyle became 
 dissatisfied with her mount one day they were 
 riding on the moors, and proposed to try Larry. 
 Up to that moment Larry had been skittish and 
 intractable, but after Jane got on his back he 
 behaved himself like a gentleman. He was on 
 honour, and conducted himself accordingly. 
 
 I suggested that Larry, like his countrymen, 
 knew when he was well-treated, and had a decided 
 objection to perpetual whip and spur. 
 
 Miss O'Neill. 
 
 During our journey through the county Cork, 
 Carlyle decided to visit Sir William and Lady 
 Beecher, to whom he had brought introductions 
 from Major Sterling, and he quitted me a day 
 or two for this purpose. I was curious on his 
 return to hear of Lady Beecher, who was once the 
 famous Irish actress, Miss O'Neill. 
 
 He said he could not contrive to like her. She 
 was a striking figure, but she had cold, cruel eyes, 
 and a silent, reserved air, which was altogether 
 disagreeable. She lived in stern reserve, and 
 imposed her rigorous formal character upon her 
 household and everything about her. Her face 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 99 
 
 might once have been handsome, but he did not 
 think it ever could have been beautiful to him. It 
 was now worn and faded, but her bearing was 
 stately and striking. 
 
 I asked if I was to imply that she played the 
 tragedy queen in private life. 
 
 No, he said, nothing could be more simple and 
 systematic than her habits. She lived in constant 
 obedience to what she called her duty, a sort of 
 thrall of the Thirty-nine Articles and that sort of 
 thing. Very sincerely, too, one could see. 
 
 When he arrived she had evidently not liked 
 him, and peered at him, through her cold blue eyes, 
 half shut with anxious scrutiny ; but she came to 
 like him better afterwards, and opened them a 
 little. There was an immense portrait of her as 
 Juliet, the one commonly engraved, he believed, 
 which the artist had taken out to Russia when the 
 Emperor brought him there, but his brother brought 
 it back, and the old baronet purchased it. There 
 was much more geniality and kindliness about the 
 eyes in the portrait than the lady exhibited just 
 now. She spoke about her former connection with 
 the stage like one quite above all accidents of that 
 kind — as a sovereign might speak of some incident 
 of her early life in exile. There were two young 
 daughters, the youngest really a lovely little lassie, 
 and three boys ; two were going to be barristers, 
 and one was a soldier in Canada. The old baronet, 
 who was stricken with disease, was a fine simple 
 old gentleman, and their house was a thorough 
 English mansion. 
 
lOO THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Our meeting again at Limerick is noted in the 
 " Reminiscences " : — 
 
 ** Long low street, parallel to our rail ; exotic in 
 aspect, Lt'm^ plebs live there. — Station, strait con- 
 fused ; amid rain ; — and Duffy stands there, with 
 sad loving smile, a glad sight to me after all ; and 
 so in omnibus, with spectre, blacksmith, and full 
 fare of others, — (omnibus that couldii!t have a 
 window opened) to 'Cruise's Hotel,' — Cruise him- 
 self, a lean, eager-looking little man of forty, most 
 reverent of Duffy, as is common here, riding with 
 us. Private room ; and ambitious — bad dinner, 
 kickshaws (sweetbreads, salmon, &'^) and uneat- 
 ables." 
 
 ^^July 24. — Glove shop ; Limerick gloves, scarcely 
 any made now ; buy a pair of cloth gloves ; n. b. 
 have my gutta-percha shoes out soletng with leather, 
 gutta having gone like toasted cheese on the paving 
 in the late hot weather ; right glad to have leather 
 shoes again ! Breakfast bad ; confused inanity of 
 morning, settling, &'^ ; about noon Duffy goes away 
 for Galway ; and I am to follow after a day. 
 Foolish young Limerick philosopher, — a kind of 
 'Young Limerick' {neither Old nor Young Ireland), 
 in smoking room (wretched place), smokes with 
 me while Duffy is packing to go ; showed me after- 
 wards the locality of the Mitchel-and-Meagher 
 tragi- comedy, and ciceroned me thro' the streets. 
 Quaker Unthank at 3^ p.m. ; lean triangular visage 
 (kind of ' Chemist,' I think), Irish accent, altogether 
 English in thought, speech and ways. Rational 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. loi 
 
 exact man ; long before any other I could see in 
 these parts." 
 
 We had brief snatches of talk at Limerick when 
 the day's sight-seeing was done. 
 
 " Festus." 
 
 I asked him if he knew anything of a poem 
 called " Festus." A hard-headed young Scotchman 
 wanted to give me a specimen of convenient book- 
 binding, and offered me a volume, which he said I 
 might take without scruple, as he would never open 
 it again ; it was the maddest rhapsody ever printed 
 in legible type. The book was "Festus," but I 
 found it to be rich in poetry and sparkling with 
 imagery of singular freshness and power. 
 
 " Festus," he said, he had never read, but he 
 understood it was "Faustus" in a new garment, a 
 sort of lunar shadow of Faust. Having eaten his 
 pudding he was content, and felt no inclination to 
 eat it again rechauffe. The poem made a great 
 sensation in New England, and might have merits 
 of which he was not aware. A troublesome fool 
 had volunteered to bring the author, Bailey, to 
 Cheyne Row, and it was probable he (Carlyle) 
 had not treated him well. He was abrupt and 
 impatient, he believed, confounding Bailey with the 
 fellow who had volunteered to be sponsor for him. 
 The young man was writing just now for a Notting- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ham newspaper of which his father was printer, or 
 something of that sort. 
 
 Irish History. 
 
 It was inconceivable, he said one day, how 
 Irishmen fought futile and forgotten battles over 
 again. Petrie (artist and antiquary, whom he had 
 met in Dublin) was still in a rage against Bryan 
 Boroihrne for having upset the ancient constitution 
 of Ireland — not a very serious calamity, one might 
 surmise. It was working well, it seemed — or it 
 seemed to Petrie, at any rate — till Bryan conquered 
 and brought into subjection the subordinate princes. 
 Bryan pleased the immortal gods, but the other 
 parties • pleased Petrie. Bryan Boroihme, his 
 friends and enemies, his conquests over Celts and 
 Danes, presented to one's mind only interminable 
 confusion and chaos, or if there might, as my head- 
 shaking implied, be a ground-plan more or less 
 intelligible, it was not worth searching for. But 
 there was a period of Irish history really impres- 
 sive and worthy to be remembered, when the 
 island undoubtedly sent missionaries throughout all 
 the world then known to mankind, when she was 
 a sort of model school for the nations, and in 
 verity an island of saints. A book worthy to be 
 written by some large-minded Irishman was one 
 on that period, accompanied by another, which un- 
 happily would be a tragic contrast, on the present 
 and future of the country. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 103 
 
 I said it was an Irish "Past and Present" he 
 desired, but I thought there was more need of an 
 Irish " Chartism," a vehement protest against the 
 wickedness of ignorant and persistent misgovern- 
 ment. 
 
 There was misgovernment enough in Ireland, he 
 said, and in England too, where, however, it was 
 encountered in an altogether different spirit. This 
 longing after Bryan Boroihme was not a salutary- 
 appetite. There was scarcely a man, he should say, 
 among the whole catalogue of Bryan Boroihmes, 
 worth the trouble of recalling. 
 
 I suggested that they would compare favourably 
 with the English rulers from Henry VIII. to 
 George IV,, both august personages included. 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 Henry [he said], when one came to consider the 
 circumstances he had to deal with, would be seen 
 to be one of the best kings England had ever got. 
 He had the right stuff in him for a king, he knew 
 his own mind ; a patient, resolute, decisive man, 
 one could see, who understood what he wanted, 
 which was the first condition of success in any 
 enterprise, and by what methods to bring it about. 
 He saw what was going on in ecclesiastical circles 
 at that time in England, and perceived that it could 
 not continue without results very tragical for the 
 kingdom he was appointed to rule, and he over- 
 
I04 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 hauled them efFectually. He had greedy, mutinous, 
 unveracious opponents, and to chastise them was 
 forced to do many things which in these sentimental 
 times an enhghtened pubhc opinion [laughing] 
 would altogether condemn ; but when one looked 
 into the matter a little, it was seen that Henry for 
 the most part was right. 
 
 I suggested that, among the things he wanted 
 and knew how to get, was as long a roll of wives 
 as the Grand Turk. It would have been a more 
 humane method to have taken them, like that 
 potentate, simultaneously than successively ; he 
 would have been saved the need of killing one 
 to make room for another, and then requiring 
 Parliament to disgrace itself by sanctioning the 
 transaction. 
 
 Carlyle replied that this method of looking at 
 King Henry's life did not help much to the under- 
 standing of it. He was a true ruler at a time 
 when the will of the Lord's anointed counted for 
 something, and it was likely that he did not 
 regard himself as doing wrong in any of these 
 things over which modern sentimentality grew so 
 impatient. 
 
thomas carlyle. 105 
 
 The Chelsea Philosophy. 
 
 Apropos of the difficulty most people would have 
 in accepting his theory of Henry's character (which 
 the reader will remember was not yet gilded and 
 varnished by Mr. Froude), I spoke of other difficulties. 
 I told him a scoffing friend of mine suggested that 
 the Chelsea Philosophy included two theories 
 impossible to reconcile ; one insisted that a man 
 without a purpose in life was no better than carrion, 
 the other that a man who affirmed that he had a 
 purpose was a manifest quack and impostor. For 
 myself, I said, I found a difficulty of a similar 
 nature, which I would be glad to have cleared 
 up. He taught that a man of genius is commonly 
 quite unconscious of the gift, and he treated with 
 contempt as a cheat any one who professed to be 
 so endowed. Suppose, I added, I ask you. Are you 
 a man of genius ? If you say No, how am I to 
 accept that as a satisfactory answer ? If you say 
 Yes, consider on your own theory what consequence 
 follows. 
 
 He laughed, and said that, with proper deductions 
 for the practical purpose in view on each occasion, 
 all this would be found to be altogether in harmony. 
 As to himself, a forlorn and heavily laden mortal, 
 with many miseries to abolish, or subdue into silence, 
 he made no claim to preternatural endowments of 
 any sort ; few mortals less. As for genius, genius 
 was in some senses strict vigilance, veracity, and 
 
io6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 fidelity to fact, which every mortal must cherish if 
 his life was not to have a tragic issue. After a 
 long pause of silent meditation he went on : — 
 
 One had to accept the manifest facts ; how else ? 
 Not one man in a million spoke truth in these 
 times, or acted it, and hence the condition of things. 
 Thousands of wretches in the poor-house, and 
 hundreds busy fox-hunting or foreign touring in 
 complete indifference to them. A man of the rascal 
 species, who set up a bank of lies as his capital 
 and equipment in life, could not have existed before 
 the last century ; but now you found a man of 
 that class wherever you turned up and down the 
 world. Plain dealing and frank speaking seemed 
 to have vanished. Every year it was harder and 
 harder to get an honest article of any fabric — a 
 thing which was what it purported to be, or was 
 not something shamefully the reverse of that. Our 
 forlorn time might be called the age of shoddy. 
 The inevitable end and net result of this sort of 
 thing was one which he need not be at the trouble 
 of specifying. 
 
 I told him that a lively young man of my ac- 
 quaintance insisted that there was something to be 
 said for shoddy. For his part, he did not want , 
 coats, trousers, hats, and handkerchiefs to last for 
 ever, and make a man look like a caricature of 
 himself. If they lasted a shorter time, they cost 
 less, and you could renew them oftener. A hat 
 thajt would look well for twelve months, if ever there 
 was such a hat, cost a sum for which you could 
 equip yourself with a shoddy hat once a quarter, 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. id; 
 
 having freshness as well as novelty of structure. 
 And women were able to dress infinitely better and 
 more effectively at the same cost under the shoddy 
 system. 
 
 Yes, he said, there was always an advocatiis 
 Diaholi who had a good word for his distinguished 
 client, but the less men trafficked in that sort of 
 commodity the better it would be for them in the 
 long run. 
 
 Buckle. 
 
 I asked him about Buckle. I had recently read 
 the first volume of his introduction to a " History of 
 Civilisation in England," and thought it exhibited 
 prodigious reading and a remarkable power of 
 generalisation ; but the style seemed to me clumsy, 
 and coloured with perpetual egotism. Carlyle said 
 he could not be pestered reading the book beyond 
 the extracts one found in the weekly papers. 
 Buckle had a theory of life one could see to which 
 he required his facts to infallibly correspond — at 
 their peril \laughing\. 
 
 I suggested that Mr. Buckle had gathered 
 valuable materials. Macaulay, with the same facts, 
 would have written half-a-dozen essays, which 
 would become familiar to every reading household 
 in England ; and there was another writer who 
 would have extracted the essential oil from them 
 to better purpose. Buckle's theory was that the 
 world owed its progress, not to the influence of 
 
io8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 religion or the arts of civilisation, but to what he 
 called inquiry — meaning scepticism. From it, he 
 insisted, came religious liberty and the gradual re- 
 cognition of political rights. Nations were misled, 
 he affirmed, by not sufficiently investigating natural 
 causes. He regarded the human race as the bond- 
 slaves of external phenomena ; a rich soil or a 
 temperate climate produced wealth, and civilisation 
 followed but never preceded the creation of capital. 
 Civilisation sprang up in an alluvial soil, or under 
 a genial sky ; and the distribution of wealth, as 
 well as its creation, was governed entirely by 
 physical laws. The Philosopher of Chelsea taught 
 that the course of history was regulated by the lives 
 of great men ; Mr. Buckle insisted that it was 
 regulated by the course of great rivers. 
 
 The eternal laws of the universe, Carlyle said, 
 told an altogether different story, and the man who 
 refused to recognise them, or insisted on recon- 
 structing the world on a theory of his own, was 
 not worth the pains of listening to. 
 
 People kept asking him, " Have you read 
 Buckle's book ? " but he answered that he had not, 
 and was not at all likely to do so. He saw bits of 
 it from time to time in reviews, and found nothing 
 in them but shallow dogmatism and inordinate 
 conceit. English literature had got into such a 
 condition of falsity and exaggeration that one may 
 doubt if we should ever again get a genuine book. 
 Probably not. There were no longer men to write 
 or. to read them, and the ultimate result of that 
 sort of thing was one which might be conceived. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 109 
 
 Mazzini, 
 
 I asked him about the party of Young Italy and 
 its leader. Mazzini, he said, was a diminutive, 
 dark-visaged, little fellow, with bright black eyes, 
 about the stature of that newspaper Barry whom 
 we had encountered at Cork.-^ Mazzini was a 
 perfectly honourable and true man, but possessed 
 by wild and fanciful theories borrowed from the 
 French Republicans. He believed in George Sand 
 and that sort of cattle, and was altogether un- 
 acquainted with the true relation of things in this 
 world. The best thing that had ever befallen him 
 was the opening of his letters by Sir James 
 Graham ; he was little known in London before 
 that transaction ; known, in fact, to few people 
 except the circle in Cheyne Row. But afterwards 
 he had innumerable dinner invitations, and got 
 subscriptions up and down London for his ItaHan 
 schools and other undertakings, 
 
 (Diary, 1854). — I spoke to Mrs. Carlyle of 
 Mazzini, whose name just then was a good deal 
 in the newspapers. She said his character, which 
 was generous and self-devoted, was greatly spoiled 
 by a spirit of intrigue. He was always think- 
 ing what advantage he could get out of every 
 occurrence. 
 
 Advantage for his cause ? I queried. 
 
 ^ Michael Joseph Barry, then editor of the Southern Reporter. 
 
no THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Yes, advantage for his cause, she said ; but by 
 methods such a man should scorn. It was he 
 who planned the dinner of revolutionists at the 
 American consul's lately, which got the American 
 ambassador into such a scrape. The consul, a 
 young American — Sa|inders was probably his 
 name — pestered Mazzini to dine with him. He 
 would only consent on condition that Garibaldi, 
 Kossuth, Ledru-Rollin, and the rest were invited. 
 An old Pole, it was said, had to borrow a sovereign 
 to get his uniform out of pawn. Mazzini expected 
 great results in Italy and Hungary from the false 
 interpretation which would be put on this dinner 
 with an American official. Ledru-Rollin and 
 Kossuth, who hated each other, met there for 
 the first time, and probably never again. In fact, 
 it was all a stage play, which Mazzini expected to 
 produce the effect of a sincere and serious trans- 
 action.'^ 
 
 I said I had supposed him too grave and proud 
 for anything like a trick. She said he was certainly 
 grave and dignified, but he sometimes uttered 
 trivial sentimentalities, with this air of gravity and 
 dignity, in a way that was intensely comic. He 
 was entirely engrossed in his purpose, however, 
 while one of his brother triumvirs, a successor of 
 
 ^ "On Tuesday last, the eve of Washington's birthday, G. 
 N. Sanders, Esq., the American consul at London, gave an inter- 
 national dinner at his residence, when there were present Mr. 
 Buchanan, Kossuth, Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Sir J. Walmsley, 
 M.P:, Garibaldi, Worcell, Orsini, Pulsky, Hertzen, and Mr. Welsh, 
 attache to the Legation in London." — Ilhistrated London News, 
 Feb. 25, 1854. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Rienzi in the government of Rome, actually wrote 
 to London to say that the Westminster Review need 
 not despair of an article he had promised, he would 
 send it with the delay of a month or two. This 
 was a national tribune pour rire. 
 
 Lynch Law. 
 
 Speaking of strikes, Carlyle said artisans had 
 probably been ill-used ; injustice was to be met 
 with in all departments of human affairs, but they 
 had attempted to right themselves by methods 
 which could on no account be tolerated — syste- 
 matised outrages resembling the ugly gambols of 
 Lynch law beyond the Atlantic. 
 
 I suggested that something might be said for 
 Lynch law. It was the only chivalry of the old 
 type left in the world, which righted wrongs and 
 chastised evil-doers for the simple love of justice. 
 Its officials might be regarded by imaginative 
 persons as the knight-errants of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Carlyle laughed, and said they were knights 
 worthy of the century ; blind, passionate, ignorant 
 of real justice, and intolerably self-confident in 
 their ignorance. Lynch law was the invention of 
 a people given to loud talk and self-exhibition, 
 who had done nothing considerable in the world 
 that he had ever heard of. 
 
 At Galway our host was a man who had 
 afterwards a remarkable career — Edward Butler, 
 
112 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 then the editor of a Nationalist journal, who had 
 been a State prisoner recently, and became a few 
 years later leader of the Sydney bar and Attorney- 
 General of New South Wales. In the " Remini- 
 scences " Carlyle notes a curious rencontre at this 
 time : — ■ 
 
 " Hospitable luncheon from this good editor, 
 Duffy's sM^-editor now, I think ; — in great tumult, 
 in blazing dusty sun, we do get seated in the 
 ' Tuam Car,' quite full and — Walker [introduction 
 from Major Sterling, brother of John Sterling] 
 recognising me, inviting warmly both Duffy and 
 me to his house at Sligo, and mounting up beside 
 me, also for Tuam this night, — roll prosperously 
 away, Duffy had almost rubbed shoulders with 
 Attorney- General Monahan ; a rather sinister polite 
 gentleman in very clean linen, who strove hard to 
 have got him hanged lately, but couldn't, such was 
 the bottomless condition of the thing called ' Law ' 
 in Ireland." 
 
 The Queen's College, of which Galway seemed 
 to be particularly proud, planted on the lonely and 
 desolate shores of Lough Corrib, opposite the poor- 
 house, appeared to Carlyle like a reduced gentle- 
 man sitting in the mud waiting for relief from the 
 establishment over the way. 
 
 On our journey towards Sligo an incident 
 occurred so unexpected and characteristic that it 
 deserves to be mentioned. We were inside pas- 
 sengers by a mail coach, and before it started a 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 129 
 
 even in Ireland's night of 1849, 'shall shine more 
 and more unto the perfect day.' Your temptations, 
 and open and disguised impediments, I discern too 
 well, will be many; but the task is great, and, if 
 you front them well, the prize, too, is great. Courage, 
 patience, the eye to see and the heart to endure and 
 do, may these be yours, and all that follows from 
 them ! 
 
 "To-day I have already written two letters, all 
 on Ireland, and must not go deep into the subject 
 again just now. Your account of the potato failure 
 is much stronger than I have yet gathered else- 
 where, though it corresponds in tendency with what 
 I saw in Scotland, where the miserable roots were 
 daily getting spotted more and more, yet it was 
 without that murrain rapidity of '46, and one's con- 
 clusion then was that nobody could yet say or 
 guess to what extent it might go. Anyway, there 
 cannot now be any ' famine ' as in '46 ; poor-rates 
 being everywhere established, and the potatoes, 
 rotted or not, being now altogether the property of 
 the farmer, properly of the landlord, to be struggled 
 for between ikem, the poor cottier having now no 
 share in that game at all. May they rot, I say, 
 always; may the past existence of Ireland remain 
 _pasi, unrestorable by human cowardice or cunning 
 any more in this world ! Alas ! even rotted they 
 will do much mischief still ; they will for years to 
 come make of agriculture a kind of gambling, or at 
 least keep alive an element of that kind in it, per- 
 nicious in all pursuits of men. A farmer in the 
 
 I 
 
I30 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Perth region, I was told repeatedly, had gained 
 ;^2000 by his potatoes alone last year; the prices 
 in London were some sixfold, and the Perth man's 
 potatoes had lived. This year it is likely enough 
 they may have died, and his loss — nay, who can 
 estimate his loss (if there really be a soul in him) 
 whether they have died or lived. 
 
 " You are surely right in what you argue about 
 the state of the land : that it is a covenant of iniquity, 
 clean contrary to God Almighty's law, and conform- 
 able only to my Lord Chancellor's law, that now 
 gives a ploughing man access to Irish soil (and you 
 may add Scottish and English and European if you 
 like) ; a terrible solecism — alas ! alas ! the outcome 
 of a million other silent and spoken solecisms; of 
 all owY solecisms, cants, cowardices, and contraven- 
 tions of the everlasting Acts of Heaven's Parliament ! 
 The sight of it, fallen upon us in its naked horror, 
 and the thought, how far beyond the most distant 
 mountains the sources of it lie, and the remedies of 
 it lie, may well make a man sad. 
 
 " You are sure of my poor sympathy, and of all 
 good men's on this side of the water or on that, in 
 any feasible attempt to improve even a little that 
 misery of miseries. In ' land tenure ' itself, or the 
 direct question of tenant and landlord, it is possible 
 some considerable improvement might by express 
 law be brought about ; but I confess the figure of 
 an ' Act of Parliament ' that could rectify all that is 
 inconceivable; and even of one that could tend at 
 all decidedly to rectify it, I have no clear notion 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 131 
 
 hitherto. If you have, by all means explain it 
 publicly, but not till you have studied it well, and 
 talked with lawyers, political economists, and all 
 such classes upon it. What they have to say, were 
 it even all false, has to be taken along with one, and 
 known both to be, and to be a falsity. The 'land 
 tenure ' in England, you perhaps are not aware, is 
 precisely what your Irish one is, in that most 
 essential respect that the tenant has no lease. 
 Generally throughout this South of England leases 
 are not known, or only beginning to be known ; 
 yet nowhere in the Queen's dominions does the 
 farmer, with all his workers, sit so easy. From the 
 practice of England you will get no help ; I think 
 the Scotch law, if it were investigated with that 
 view, would be found to yield you something. Did 
 you ever speak with Hancock on the subject ? He 
 is full of zealous notions on that or kindred matters, 
 and speaks from under a wig withal. On the whole 
 be practical, be feasible, that is the one condition ; 
 support in abundance awaits you here if that be 
 complied with. 
 
 " Also do not much mind Linton, who is a well 
 enough meaning but, I fear, extremely windy crea- 
 ture, of the Louis Blanc, George Sand, &c., species. 
 And more power to your elbow every way, and 
 always more. — Yours ever sincerely, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 "One Espinasse, a young Edinburgh man, now 
 and for some years past in Manchester, I accident- 
 
132 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ally learn, has written to you, offering services, 
 which have been dechned. Very well, upon that 
 be there no return. But, somehow, I feel that you 
 do not probably understand this poor young man, 
 and that I ought to say a word in explanation of 
 him. Poor fellow ! he is a kind of hero this little 
 Espinasse, and is now threatened with changing into 
 a kind of Scotch Rousseau, so unpropitious are the 
 elements to him. An excellent scholar, especially 
 in German, &c., full of exact information on all 
 manner of subjects, discernment sharp as a hawk's 
 (especially on the satirical side) ; in all ways an 
 honourable, proudly veracious, anti-humbug little 
 fellow (strange as you may think it), and very much 
 to be relied on for doing whatsoever he undertakes 
 to do. Of a contemptuous, proud temper, as I say, 
 though honest to the bone ; that is really the man's 
 character if you can believe me, who have known 
 him for several years. Of late I find he has once 
 or twice taken to the most flagrant imitation of me, 
 which looks absurd and almost mad, quite unfit for 
 any journal, but I assure you he can write in quite 
 other styles than that, and used to do literary, &c., 
 articles for the Manchester Exammer very well 
 indeed, till he took some huff at them. In the 
 interest of suffering humanity, and for the sake of 
 a young man of real superiority, I testify these 
 things. In the name of the Prophet, figs ! " 
 
 Carlyle never saw Mr. Linton, and misunderstood 
 him, I think. W. J. Linton, the well-known wood- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 133 
 
 engraver (and who, judging him by the illustrations 
 of one of his own poems, was also an artist of pro- 
 fuse fancy and skilful pencil), was less a French 
 republican of the school of George Sand and Louis 
 Blanc, than an English republican of the school of 
 Milton and Cromwell, to which Carlyle himself may 
 be said to have belonged. Like many gifted young 
 Englishmen of the time, he found himself drawn 
 towards the Nation, and contributed to it largely in 
 prose and verse. The prose was, for the most part, 
 controversial, justifying or illustrating opinions on 
 which he differed with the editor; the poetry was 
 incitements towards a generous and lofty nationality. 
 I was delighted at the time, and still recall with 
 pleasure the pictures he drew of the future we aimed 
 to create. The sympathic reader will not regret, I 
 think, to make acquaintance with one little poem of 
 this class. 
 
 "THE HAPPY LAND. 
 
 " The Happy Land ! 
 
 Studded with cheerful homesteads, fair to see, 
 With garden grace and household symmetry ; 
 How grand the wide-brow'd peasant's lordly mien, 
 The matron's smile serene ! 
 
 O happy, happy land ! 
 
 " The happy land ! 
 
 Half-hid in dewy grass, the mower blithe 
 Sings to the day-star as he whets his scythe ; 
 And to his babes, at eventide again, 
 Carols as blithe a strain. 
 
 O happy, happy land ! 
 
134 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " The happy land ! 
 
 Where, in the golden sheen of autumn eves, 
 The bright-hair'd children play among the sheaves 
 Or gather ripest apples all the day, 
 As ruddy-cheek'd as they. 
 
 O happy, happy land ! 
 
 " O happy land ! 
 
 The thin smoke curleth through the frosty air, 
 The light smiles from the windows ; hearken there 
 To the white grandsire's tale of heroes old — 
 To flame-eyed listeners told, 
 
 O happy, happy land ! 
 
 " O happy, happy land ! 
 
 The tender-foliaged alders scarcely shade 
 Yon loitering lover and glad blushing maid. 
 O happy land ! the Spring that quickens thee 
 Is Human Liberty ! 
 
 O happy, happy land ! " 
 
 A few days later, I was gratified by a note express- 
 ing emphatic and quite unprecedented approval of 
 what I was labouring to effect in Ireland. All my 
 colleagues in the earlier Nation were either dead, 
 exiled, suffering the penalties of the law of treason, 
 or (in a very few cases) disheartened by failure. I 
 aimed to enlist recruits to fill their places, but I did 
 not conceal from such new-comers the hard terms 
 the service of Ireland imposed, or that the class of 
 work to be done in the existing condition of the 
 country would be slow and obscure. They were no 
 longer invited, as of old, to share in literary projects ; 
 reviving historical traditions or singing madrigals was 
 scarcely an honest employment in such a country. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 135 
 
 Our ship was a wreck on the waters, floating fast 
 towards the breakers ; whoever could help to raise 
 the shattered masts aloft, or unravel the tangled 
 ropes, would be thrice welcome. Carlyle's approval 
 was a strong incentive to press on. 
 
 " Chelsea, Tuesday, October 2, 1849. 
 
 " Capital article, dear Duffy, that in last Nation : 
 ' Wanted, a few Workmen ! ' To every word and 
 tone of that I say, Amen. Stand by that ; that is 
 the real text to preach innumerable sermons from. 
 Properly the one result to be striven for ; all other 
 results whatsoever to be measured precisely by their 
 effect towards accomplishing of this ! / call this 
 the best article I ever read on Ireland ; a noble 
 * eloquence ' in this, the eloquence of sorrow, indig- 
 nation, and belief Cart is not put before horse in 
 these utterances of yours, the first time I have ever 
 seen that condition observed (that I can remember) 
 by any patriotic Irish writer or speaker whatsoever. 
 
 " Steady, steady ! Hold on in that course, which 
 will spread out wide as the world for you, and you 
 will do immense good ; 2Lt fiat ! — In great haste, 
 yours, T. Carlyle." 
 
 Sympathetic readers will be curious to see what 
 sort of an article in a Nationalist journal Carlyle 
 could pronounce the best he had ever read on 
 Ireland ; and if I gratify this sentiment by printing 
 
135 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 it, the reader, I trust, will understand that I would 
 do so with less hesitation if it were the work of any 
 one else. 
 
 " WANTED, A FEW WORKMEN. 
 
 " Ireland has urgent need of workmen, able and 
 willing to work — of men who will gradually create 
 about them, each in his own city, hamlet, or narrow 
 corner, a circle of light and vital warmth, where 
 there is now ignorance and lethargy, 
 
 " It is singular to remark how the obscurest and 
 the most conspicuous offices of public service have 
 become vacant together. The panorama of history 
 nowhere presents a great stage so nearly deserted, 
 or on which the prizes of generous ambition are so 
 feebly contested. 
 
 ** But competitors, high and low, must be called 
 forth again, and the ardour of a noble rivalry re- 
 awakened, or the hope of rebuilding Ireland from 
 her ruins, is a dream. Unless there are labourers 
 sufficient for the labour, the very attempt becomes a 
 cheat or a jest. 
 
 "The generous young men who last bore the 
 heat of the contest have received the wages that 
 oftenest pay heroic toil. They stood in the front 
 rank, nearest the danger, and they have been struck 
 down. They are now pining in exile or seething 
 in prison-ships, and Ireland, it is said, is slavishly 
 indifferent to their fate. This is the very hour when 
 we demand with most confidence new recruits to fill 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 137 
 
 their places. For it is in the hour of her moral 
 eclipse that our country moves the profoundest pity 
 and devotion ; and the men capable of helping her 
 in this extremity are plainly men not to be enlisted 
 by cockades or bounty, by promises of easy triumph 
 or visions of personal distinction. If there be not 
 many candidates who will undertake her service, 
 knowing the wages — men ready to work in obscure 
 toil, willingly embraced and patiently persisted in, 
 without the encouragement of applauding hands or 
 glorification of any sort for the present, we have seen 
 the latter end of Celtic Ireland. 
 
 " If there be practical capacity anywhere in this 
 country, it never had a more favourable field in the 
 world. No class of interest is so adequately repre- 
 sented as to shut its ears to intelligible counsel, if 
 it could hear it. Few offices, under popular control, 
 are so satisfactorily occupied that men do not desire 
 and speculate upon a change for the better. The 
 very offices of Government are vacant — nearly as 
 vacant as if a revolution had given up Dublin Castle 
 to the people. Whoever is able to perform the 
 duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland 
 efficiently, or Minister of Public Works and Indus- 
 trial Progress, or Minister of Public Instruction, will 
 find the place vacant, waiting for his coming. Not 
 the official uniform, and the salary, indeed ; but the 
 power to create and guide operations, and get work 
 done — the true essence of authority. 
 
 "The places are vacant, but the list of candi- 
 dates who have hitherto appeared with claims worth 
 
138 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 considering is very scanty. The difficulty in ejecting 
 usurpers is exactly the want of successors worthy 
 of succeeding ; and nothing more. 
 
 " Spouting, speeching, and operations of that sort 
 can be performed by a large proportion of the adult 
 population of this island. The faculty of writing 
 sonorous and swelling sentences is nearly as 
 common. O'Connell made a guerilla of ruthless 
 speechifiers who disturbed the peace of private 
 society with the thunder of their afternoon elo- 
 quence ; and Young Ireland must plead guilty to 
 having created ' a mob of gentlemen who write with 
 ease.' But there is no country in Europe where 
 there is so little practical genius, practical skill, or 
 fruitful practical knowledge as in Ireland. The 
 smallest official trained in the petty routine of public 
 business, the dullest intermittent commissioner who 
 does 'jobs ' for the Executive, has generally more 
 administrative capacity than some of the best of our 
 public men. The grand, romantic, and picturesque 
 fire the Irish imagination ; but it plunges restlessly 
 in the harness of practical work. And mark the 
 result on our popular institutions. We have Irish 
 members who originate nothing ; Irish corporations 
 bankrupt in funds, character, and influence; Irish 
 boards of guardians replaced by paid officials, who 
 do the work better, to the deep discredit and per- 
 manent injury of the country. 
 
 " Whoever knows anything of the administration 
 of public institutions or political societies amongst 
 us, knows that, however large the body may be, the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 139 
 
 actual labour falls on half-a-dozen men. It does 
 not seem possible to get a larger number together 
 in Ireland who will do habitual work. Yet a country 
 is framed and shaped, lost or won, not by institu- 
 tions, but by the individual labours of men. Better 
 a dozen men like Thomas Davis than an Irish 
 Parliament; for a dozen Thomas Davises would 
 imply that conquest, and many others more im- 
 possible to ordinary capacity. Such men, working 
 together cordially for an honest purpose, multiply 
 their mutual strength in a ratio too subtle for arith- 
 metic. Twice five is often equal, not to ten, but to 
 ten hundred. It is precisely workmen who will 
 work in this spirit Ireland has need of 
 
 "Our soil, climate, sea, situation — the capacious 
 harbours so much more familiar to eloquence than 
 at Lloyd's, the mill sites, the water powers, the 
 immultiplicable treasures that lie locked up in Irish 
 soil, of which we have sung and said so much — 
 what are they but the tools of men — the tools with 
 which they may glorify races, and build up States, 
 if they will ? And here are the tools awaiting 
 the young men of Ireland — plentiful as they ever 
 were in any country on the earth, and obedient 
 to the hands that will learn to wield them. The 
 devil and all his angels could not keep them from 
 possessing this country if they were worthy of 
 it. Even now, thinned and scattered as they are 
 by exile and emigration, they have immeasurably 
 a stronger hold upon Ireland than the Queen, 
 Lords, and Commons of Great Britain, if they had 
 
I40 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 virtue to make a noble use of their capacity and 
 opportunity, 
 
 " The waste lands, waste resources, waste powers, 
 even the waste labour of Ireland (shut up in work- 
 houses) is not so strange a violation of national 
 economy as these waste opportunities — waste simply 
 for want of the individual enterprise and action so 
 common in other countries. In America, the forest 
 is scarcely cleared by the Irish pioneer till a city 
 springs up, and mill wheels are whirling and 
 engines panting, and soon a hundred miles of iron 
 railway links the city of yesterday with the great 
 marts of the Republic and the distant centres of 
 commerce in the Old World. In Australia, where 
 the kangaroo and the cannibal shared the silent 
 shores a few years ago, when Ireland was fighting 
 for religious liberty, cities have grown up which 
 already vie in riches, and even in social organisa- 
 tion, with many of the old fountainheads of civilisa- 
 tion in Europe. It is true these countries have 
 wide territory, and are not pressed upon by old 
 domineering institutions; but the essential differ- 
 ence does not lie here, but in the hopefulness and 
 irrepressible energy with which men work in these 
 new, growing countries. Ireland is new ; Ireland 
 is unexhausted and untried ; and, if we set de- 
 liberately to work, filling up the details of a great 
 design day by day, we would see similar results 
 accomplished; to-day clearing awa:y old rubbish, 
 to-morrow laying a foundation-stone; quarrying 
 materials here, training workmen there ; till the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 141 
 
 design, of which the ignorant could discern little 
 or nothing in the rude details, stood revealed at last 
 a perfect and eternal work. 
 
 " If it be possible to get together a small number 
 of men who understand these deficiencies, and will 
 conscientiously endeavour to amend them, in them- 
 selves and others, it will be a good beginning. 
 Such a brotherhood, like the modern giant of steam, 
 would find no work too heavy or too light for it. 
 They might preach the rights of the poor with the 
 burning zeal of a Howard or a Vincent de Paul, and 
 teach the ignorant with the patient, humble assiduity 
 of Gerald Griffin. At lowest, they would take care 
 to master with anxious study the principles of all 
 weighty measures prescribed to the people, and 
 refuse to cry out that this or that was a remedy 
 without making sure as life and death that it was 
 so. And, having made sure of the right, they 
 would refuse to sit still while anything remained to 
 be done to advance and accomplish it. Ireland is 
 falling to ruin for want of workmen like these. 
 
 " Let such young men as feel honestly called to 
 help us in this design send us their names, and they 
 will be enrolled in a company from which we pre- 
 dict substantial and permanent services to Ireland. 
 But it is workmen we want. With idle politicians, 
 amateur politicians, trading pohticians we propose 
 to transact no business. One hour from the man 
 who gives ten to his own proper pursuits will be 
 precious. Ten hours from the student who is feed- 
 ing his spirit with heroic generous purposes, and 
 
142 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 training his intellect in the school of public affairs, 
 will be welcome. But no magic can turn the jaded 
 hacks of politics, or the fops of literature, into men 
 fit for this company. The fitness of candidates will 
 be tested by the work they can accomplish ; and 
 this is a thermometer that takes no account of any 
 quantity of blatant commonplace, or of eloquent 
 sentiments if they mean nothing, or nothing worth 
 meaning. All candidates shall have a fair trial. 
 For the successful a great prize is reserved — the 
 re-creation and government of Ireland : a prize 
 surely among the divinest that man ever aspired 
 to win. Many will aim for it. 
 
 " ' Time shows who wz7/ and can.' 
 
 " Although we begin to work in the midst of social 
 disorganisation, our main task is not to combat and 
 resist, but to found and create. This is a work of 
 a tangible, practical kind for all who are ready to 
 undertake it. Vague incentives to self-reliance, and 
 the miner morals in general, are like sowing chaff — 
 no harvest grows from that kind of toil ; but we 
 purpose to demand precise and specific results from 
 all who are prepared to help us in taking possession 
 of our covintry : results that will enrich the country 
 and ennoble the workers. The drill, the jacket, and 
 the discipline transform an Irish peasant into a sub- 
 constable, with as military a carriage and as expert 
 an eye and hand as a veteran of the Peninsula. A 
 few years in a National school, and the boy who 
 emerged out of a smoky and squalid cabin, shared 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 143 
 
 with a pig, is turned into a clean and shapely youth, 
 fit to wrestle with the world, and to win the match. 
 Look at a railway porter or a railway policeman — 
 the decent uniform and the punctual system soon 
 make a new man of the peasant. And this physical 
 training is a small thing compared with the result of 
 discipline on the intellect and practical power of 
 cultivated, aspiring men. The one multiplies iron, 
 the other multiplies rarest gold of Ophir. A poor- 
 house, or a lunatic asylum, is scarcely a sadder 
 spectacle to us than the hall of the Four Courts, 
 with its multitude of keenest faculties wasting in 
 endless barrenness, waiting for work to do, which 
 to many will never come, while nobler work ready 
 to be done is waiting for them, if they would learn 
 to do it. There will be many gloomy, discontented 
 hearts in Ireland while idleness is counted a social 
 distinction, and until it becomes the point of honour 
 to be usefully employed. And this is a gospel 
 which we must preach not by words spoken, but 
 by work done. 
 
 "When Napoleon turned administrator, he pro- 
 claimed as the issue of his task that not one pauper 
 should remain in all France ; and that gigantic 
 worker was striding towards this result when the 
 clash of arms called him away from his nobler war 
 against social disorganisation. In the enormous 
 lazar-house of Ireland it is not out of the range of 
 rational ambition to attain the same goal. If the 
 young men of Ireland do their duty we shall see in 
 a few years a happy people sit on our soil, and the 
 
144 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 pauper workhouses become houses of work for free 
 prosperous labour. We shall see raised on this solid 
 basis that glorious temple in which Tone and Davis, 
 O'Brien and Meagher aspired to worship and de- 
 voted their lives to consecrate. That new nation 
 which shall gather back beneath her wings the 
 scattered children of our race, and bid them fulfil 
 her promised destiny. We shall see our free, deve- 
 loped, purified Ireland at last become what foreign 
 genius has predicted, and native genius may accom- 
 plish, 'the new and better Carthage of the West.' 
 
 " This is work for barely one generation. In one 
 generation the Electorate of Brandenburgh grew 
 into the powerful, populous kingdom of Prussia. 
 In the lifetime of one man the loose, boundless, 
 disjointed tracts of the two Russias condensed into 
 a firm and coherent empire. The trampled pro- 
 vinces of Spain in the Low Countries — a huge Bog 
 of Allen, a gigantic public work — arose and expanded 
 into the Empire of the Sea in less time than our 
 young men may still hope to live and work. 
 
 " And no generation of men born into the world 
 had nobler work to do if they be worthy of their 
 destiny. 
 
 "If they prefer sloth and apathy, great results 
 are of course impossible. If they prefer bellowing 
 inane noise and nonsense, they are more hopelessly 
 impossible. But if they will be wise and resolute, 
 a great thinker has foretold their victory. ' Even 
 the casualties of life,' he says, ' seem to bow to the 
 spirit that will not bow to them ; and yield to sub- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 14S 
 
 serve a design which, in their first apparent tendency, 
 they threatened to frustrate.' 
 
 " Ireland wants a few workmen of this calibre." 
 
 Among the recruits who answered this appeal, 
 several had afterwards remarkable public careers, 
 notably a young Munster Catholic who, after forty 
 years, is now an official entrusted with the greatest 
 industrial enterprise committed to any Irishman in 
 our day;^ and a young Munster Protestant, who 
 became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 
 the House of Commons between the death of Mr. 
 Butt and the rise of Mr. Parnell. Out of these 
 speculations on the duty of Irishmen came not all 
 that was hoped indeed, but at any rate the Tenant 
 League of 1850, and the commencement of a 
 land war not yet finished, and the estabHshment 
 of the first Parliamentary party of independent 
 opposition. 
 
 In the succeeding month, Carlyle surprised me 
 by a contribution from his own pen. Here is the 
 letter which accompanied it : 
 
 " Dear Duffy, — The enclosed blotch of writ- 
 ing is tumbling about my blotting books for a 
 while past. I ought to durn it at once; but as 
 penny stamps have come into the world, prefer that 
 you should have the pleasure of burning it. Do 
 so, in Heaven's name ; do what else you like, only 
 
 1 Mr. Commissioner MacCarthy, Land Purchase Commission. 
 
 K 
 
146 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 dofCt (except to your own heart) speak of my mortal 
 name in connection with it. The thing wavers so 
 between being something and being nothing, that, in 
 short, I think you ought to have the burning of it. 
 ' Fas et ab hoste.'' ' A Friend with a surly severe 
 face,' 'From Mr. 'Qraxnbl^s Arboretum Hibernicum,^ 
 &c. &c., some such reference, if you print any por- 
 tion of it. Do as you like ; only, you are sworn to 
 silence deep as death, mind that. 
 
 "Terrible quantity of cry for any symptom of 
 wool that yet clearly appears. Nobody speaks 
 sense (on the whole nobody there) but yourself. 
 So in the Nation too. — Adieu in haste, 
 
 "T. Carlyle. 
 
 "Chelsea, 26/A November. 
 
 " Can you recommend to me a reasonable collec- 
 tion of Irish songs? I do not care how vulgar 
 they are, how, &c. &c., provided only there be in 
 any form a trace of human veracity and insight 
 discernable in them. T. C." 
 
 I printed the contribution with the sort of pre- 
 liminary note he suggested, and strictly preserved 
 his secret ; but he was a man who could not hide 
 himself. Mr. Rintoul of the Spectator immediately 
 identified the article as Carlyle's, and complained 
 that the Nation should talk of a surly face, when, 
 in truth, it was a sweet and sympathetic one to 
 those who understood it. Since his death the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 147 
 
 article has been referred to in biographies and 
 reviews, and printed, in America at any rate. The 
 reader will like to see it, and there is no longer 
 anything that needs to be concealed : — 
 
 "TREES OF LIBERTY. 
 
 "FROM MR. bramble's UNPUBLISHED 'ARBORETUM 
 HIBERNICUM.' 
 
 [This was the preliminary note in the Nation: — "A friend with 
 a surly satirical face flings in our way this banter upon ' Irish 
 indolence.' Very well, friend ; we shame the devil and print your 
 libel. Fas et ab hoste doceri. If there be any seeds of truth in it 
 they will grow, when the chaff and wrappage only make manure 
 for them."] 
 
 " Many Irishmen talk of dying, &c., for Ireland ; 
 and I really believe almost every Irishman now 
 alive longs in his way for an opportunity to do 
 the dear old country some good. Opportunities 
 of at once usefully and conspicuously 'dying' for 
 countries are not frequent, and truly the rarer 
 they are the better; but the opportunity of use- 
 fully if inconspicuously living for one's country, 
 this was never denied to any man. Before ' dying ' 
 for your country think, my friends, in how many 
 quiet strenuous ways you might beneficially live 
 for it. 
 
 " Every patriotic Irishman (that is, by hypo- 
 thesis, almost every Irishman now alive), who 
 would so fain make the dear old country a present 
 of his whole life and self, why does he not, for 
 example — directly after reading this, and choosing 
 
148 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 a feasible spot — at least, plant one tree ? That 
 were a small act of self-devotion ; small, but 
 feasible. Him such tree will never shelter. Hardly 
 any mortal but could manage that — hardly any 
 mortal, if he were serious in it, but could plant 
 and nourish into growth one tree. Eight million 
 trees before the present generation run out, that 
 were indubitable acquisition for Ireland : for it is 
 one of the barest, raggedest countries now known ; 
 far too ragged a country, with patches of beautiful 
 park and fine cultivation, like shreds of bright 
 scarlet on a beggar's clouted coat — a country that 
 stands decidedly in need of shelter, shade, and 
 ornamental fringing, look at its landscape where 
 you will. Once, as the old chroniclers write, 'a. 
 squirrel (by bending its course a little, and taking 
 a longish leap here and there) could have run 
 from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway without 
 once touching the ground ; ' but now, eight million 
 trees, and I rather conjecture eight times eight 
 millions, would be very welcome in that part of 
 the empire. On fruit-trees, though these too are 
 possible enough, I do not yet insist, but trees — at 
 least, trees. 
 
 "That eight million persons will be persuaded 
 to plant each his tree, we cannot expect just yet ; 
 but do thou, my friend, in silence go and plant 
 thine — that thou canst do; one most small duty, 
 but a real one, if among the smallest conceivable, 
 and a duty which henceforth it will be a sweet 
 possession for thee to have lying done. Ireland 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 
 
 for the present is not to be accounted a pleasant 
 landscape. Vigorous corn, but thistles and docks 
 equally vigorous ; ulcers of reclaimable bog lying 
 black, miry, and abominable at intervals of a few- 
 miles; no tree shading you, nor fence that avails 
 to turn cattle — most fences merely, as it were, 
 soliciting the cattle to be so good as not to come 
 through — by no means a beautiful country just 
 now ! But it tells all men how beautiful it might 
 be. Alas, it carries on it, as the surface of this 
 earth ever does inefifaceably legible, the physiog- 
 nomy of the people that have inhabited it : a people 
 of holed breeches, dirty faces, ill-roofed huts — a 
 people of impetuosity and of levity — of vehemence, 
 impatience, imperfect, fitful industry, imperfect, fitful 
 veracity. Oh, Heaven ! there lies the woe of woes, 
 which is the root of all. 
 
 " ' Trees of Liberty,' though an Abbe wrote a 
 book on them, and incalculable trouble otherwise 
 was taken, have not succeeded well in these 
 ages. Plant you your eight million trees of shade, 
 ornament, fruit : that is a symbol much more likely 
 to be prophetic. Each man's tree of industry will 
 be, of a surety, his tree of liberty ; and the sum 
 of them, never doubt of it, will be Ireland's." 
 
 I probably wrote him, what it would have been 
 discourteous to print, that his pleasant little paper 
 betrayed a fundamental unacquaintance with Irish 
 affairs. It was hopeless to reforest a country 
 where, if a tenant planted his seed or sapling, and 
 
ISO THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 
 tended it until it became a mature tree, the law 
 declared it to be the property of the landlord, 
 without a scrap of compensation to the man who 
 reared it. 
 
 Next month he did the next best thing to en- 
 couraging what he thought right, he discouraged 
 what he thought wrong, always with a gracious 
 frankness characteristic of the man, but impossible 
 to the Carlyle whom a heedless public have latterly 
 invented for themselves. 
 
 " Chelsea, (^th Decembej; 1 849. 
 "Dear Duffy, — Read the enclosed testimony 
 (if you have a pair of spectacles at hand), and 
 show it to the contributor who denounces Har- 
 greaves' appointment to the Encumbered Estates 
 Commission as a Ministerial job — thereby instigat- 
 ing me and others against Hargreaves and the 
 Ministers. The fact is other than your contributor 
 supposes ; the fact is not so at all. Let him in 
 future know this ; or do you, at any rate, who 
 abhor injustice to anybody, keep it in view on 
 occasion. My correspondent is a man of the 
 strictest veracity and equity, and even of a pedantic 
 scrupulosity in regard to exactness. Poor fellow, 
 hearing my righteous indignation against Har- 
 greaves and Co., he went silently into the matter, 
 and two days ago surprised me (and, indeed, 
 bored me ; for I had forgotten Hargreaves, and 
 cared and care nothing about him) with letters 
 from barristers, verbal testimonies, &c. &c., which 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 151 
 
 I cannot for a moment refuse to take as decisive 
 evidence that Hargreaves, probably, is a truly able 
 man in this business, and that his appointment 
 indisputably is not a job, but the best the poor 
 men could do for the service of Ireland. ' Copy 
 me that testimony,' I said, selecting the first read 
 to me, ' and it shall go where right will be done 
 upon it.' And so there you have it ; and so I, at 
 least, am quit of it, and of my indignation on this 
 subject for ever and a day ! 
 
 " We sometimes get the Nation on Saturdaj'' 
 night ; but the last two times your man, I think, 
 has been too late, for it has failed. Quicken him 
 a little ; punctualise him — that might be worth 
 while. — Adieu, T. Carlyle." 
 
 "Latter-Day Pamphlets." — Irish Errors. 
 
 At the beginning of 1850 Carlyle commenced to 
 issue the famous " Latter-Day Pamphlets." He 
 sent me No. i, and my acknowledgment of it 
 brought this note : — 
 
 " Chelsea, 13/A February, 1850. 
 " Dear Duffy, — As you seem to take an interest 
 in the * Latter-Day Pamphlets,' I have directed the 
 publisher to send you a copy of No. 2 and the 
 others that follow. I also gave him your admoni- 
 tion about speed on the Irish side of his affairs. 
 The 'edited' is a mere figure of speech, I am 
 
152 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 afraid. Alone under the stars, with nothing but 
 all the dogs of the parish barking for accompani- 
 ment : this is once more like to be my history in 
 the present ugly feat of walking against time ! I 
 should be infinitely gratified, and delivered at once 
 from a variety of very ghastly emotions, if any 
 true brother out of Adam's general posterity could 
 join himself to me, and with a 'Pamphlet' in the 
 orthodox vein; but there is nowhere that I know 
 of any prospect or probability of such; so we must 
 try to do without him, as in former cases. In 
 myself I seem to see some dozen or so of Pamphlets, 
 which, if I can get fairly uttered (a doubtful point 
 in the state of health, state of, &c. &c., I am in), it 
 will be an extraordinary relief to my own inner 
 man; and the dogs of the parish, and even the 
 parish itself, and the universe to boot, shall be right 
 welcome to do whatever is i/ieir part in the concert, 
 according to their own judgment of that. 
 
 " Pray for me, therefore, and wish me well through 
 this adventure ; I mean to speak more plainly than 
 is usual upon a good many things. The world, I 
 think, had better be durn^ than stand as it at present 
 does. God help it and us ! 
 
 " The Nation does not yield me much that I en- 
 tirely approve of, except your own articles, which 
 run like a rivulet of light and human sense through 
 a great continent of very turbid incanite and dim 
 materials. Do not let that patriot abuse poor 
 Clarendon and his cigars any more ! His lordship 
 is not a crapulous man by any means, or in any 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 153 
 
 sense : he learned to smoke in Spain, and is glad 
 to solace himself with an innocent whiff in the 
 middle of his troubles; really the style of that 
 censure is canine, not by any means above the vice- 
 regal phantasm of a government, but below it, and 
 incapable of mending it. Also, don't rejoice over 
 the ' Breaking up of the British Empire ; ' the British 
 Empire is nothing like broken up yet, nor like to 
 be for a thousand years to come, I may prophesy. 
 Nor is it i^/Vhonourable to you to be an English- 
 man, but honourable, if you had even been born a 
 
 Roman or Spartan, withal. Believe me Alas, 
 
 I find this is only a /lalf sheet ; so must say adieu. 
 — Yours always truly, T. Carlyle. 
 
 "You talked of coming over 'about New Year's 
 Day,' but have not come." 
 
 In one of the "Latter-Day Pamphlets" — the one 
 named " Downing Street " — Carlyle, after pouring 
 a torrent of contempt and obloquy on Parliament, 
 whose only function in these times was to select 
 some insignificant individual to be First Minister 
 for a little space, suggested that the thing might be 
 done better and decidedly cheaper by transferring 
 the authority to the Times newspaper. It must 
 have tickled the philosopher's midriff to find this 
 mad banter taken seriously by one of his admirers, 
 who was willing to subscribe £\o a year towards 
 setting up a newspaper which should supersede 
 
154 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Parliament in the minds of all reasonable people. 
 This was the subject of Carlyle's next letter. 
 
 A Paper to Supersede Parliament. The 
 First Tenant-Right Movement. 
 
 "Chelsea, 2'jthjtily, 1850. 
 
 "Dear Duffy, — The enclosed note — otherwise 
 a model in its way — brings me in mind of poor old 
 Ireland, and of this time twelvemonth on the street 
 of Stranorlar, where I saw you last. Take the note, 
 therefore, and a transient sincere blessing from 
 me along with it. Look at 'p. 17' (of 'Downing 
 Street'), however, if you chance to have it within 
 reach, and then let us hft up both our hands, and 
 bless the anonymous Coleraine friend. 
 
 " These ' Pamphlets ' are now out of my hands, 
 thank God. The last of them is waiting for August 
 in the printer's or publisher's hands, and that ugly 
 piece of work, like some others, has been got into 
 the rear. Such a universal howl of astonishment, 
 indignation, and condemnation seldom rose around 
 a poor man before. Voice of the ' universal dog- 
 kennel ' — Whap thap ! Bow-wow ! No human 
 response hitherto, or hardly any, but that also will 
 come so far as needful, I have no doubt. Thank 
 your Nation critic, however; the news of such 
 insight on his part was really welcome. 
 
 ■ " My poor liver is gone almost to destruction with 
 all this and with the summer heats, and other fell 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 155 
 
 ei ceteras ; I seldom in my life felt more entirely 
 worn down, and am now straight for the country — 
 Glamorganshire (S. Wales), most likely, there to 
 lie perfectly silent for some three weeks, and after 
 that, Scotland, &c. &c., perhaps, for a good long 
 while. 
 
 " Your ' Tenant Agitation ' looms out very big on 
 me, and I must say it wears a more business-like 
 aspect than any of the previous 'agitations,' and, I 
 could fancy, may give work to all the * authorities ' 
 (on your side of the water and ours) for a generation 
 or two to come ! Yes, that is the heart of the 
 matter, and a terrific universe of ' work ' lies the7'e 
 before we get to a solution of it ! Cosa fatta ha 
 capo — to end one must begin. That is true, too. 
 Suaviter in modo then, and God be with you. — 
 Yours ever truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 The following is the passage from " Downing 
 Street " referred to : — 
 
 " The notion that any Government is or can be a 
 No-government, without the deadliest peril to all 
 noble interests of the Commonwealth, and by degrees, 
 slower or swifter, to all ignoble ones also, and to 
 the very gully drainer and thief lodging-houses and 
 Mosaic sweating establishments, and at last without 
 destruction to such No-government itself — was 
 never my notion, and I hope it will soon cease 
 altogether to be the world's or to be anybody's. 
 
156 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 But if it be the correct notion, as the world seems 
 at present to flatter itself, I point out improvements 
 and abbreviations. Dismiss your National Palaver ; 
 make the Times newspaper your national palaver, 
 which needs no beer-barrels or hustings, and is 
 cheaper in expense of money and of falsity a thou- 
 sand and a million-fold. Have an economical red- 
 tape drilling establishment (it were easier to devise 
 such a thing than a right modern University), and 
 fling out your orange-skin among the graduates, 
 when you want a new Premier." 
 
 And here is the letter from the Coleraine corre- 
 spondent : — 
 
 " Coleraine, /z(t/y 2isi. 
 " Dear Sir, — You mention an admirable project 
 in p. ly of your ' Downing Street.' But why should 
 not something be done as well as said ? There is 
 small chance for such a project if it be put before 
 the said ' Palavering Parliament.' Why not do 
 something yourself? Say you start a paper at the 
 beginning of next session ; you write a leading 
 article now and then, to explain the pros and co7ts 
 of certain questions before the House, to explain 
 the nature of the difficulties which it is necessary 
 to meet, and to give statistics when necessary, and 
 let the rest of the paper be open to any M.P., in 
 the way you propose. If your objection to this 
 ht of a pecuniary nature, I for one would readily 
 subscribe £io a. year until there are sufficient funds 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 157 
 
 to carry it on, and surely I should not be the only 
 one who would give as much. You find fault with 
 others who talk and do not act, and therefore I 
 suppose you yourself ever ready to act in earnest ! 
 Pray forgive me also if it be very impudent of me 
 to address you thus. I sincerely wish you well, 
 and am anxious for the good of my country, and 
 would do all I could to benefit any fellow-creature, 
 and care not to have my name known. Let me 
 repeat that, if I hear that any such plan will be 
 adopted, I shall not be remiss in subscribing from 
 my own funds, and in persuading those real M.P.'s 
 with whom I am acquainted, to write instead of 
 speaking, and in inducing the mere effigy M.P.'s 
 to assist you with their subscriptions. — Yours 
 sincerely." 
 
 In the year 1850 I was deeply engaged in a task, 
 which had Carlyle's warm sympathy, the organisa- 
 tion of a Tenant League to secure fair rents and 
 permanent tenure for Irish farmers. During our 
 journey in the previous autumn I had obtained the 
 assent of many provincial gentlemen to the scheme, 
 which was launched as soon as the public mind had 
 been prepared for it by the press. Carlyle watched 
 its progress with constant interest from the date 
 when it was first foreshadowed in the Nation till 
 a career of practical action commenced. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The Irish Problem. 
 
 " SCOTSBRIG, ECCLEFECHAN, N.B,, 
 Sepl 15, 1850. 
 
 " Dear Duffy, — I am very glad to have a word 
 from you again. I ran into South Wales, directly 
 after writing to you, and then lay in the utmost 
 attainable inaction for three weeks ; after which, 
 nearly other three weeks ago, I came over hither 
 to my Scottish birthland, when your letter soon 
 found me — where I have been ever since, en- 
 deavouring with all my might to keep free of every 
 botheration (a difficult problem in this world !) and 
 to continue doing absolutely nothing. I do not 
 even speak, unless it cannot be helped. Amid 
 these old scenes of infancy, which have grown so 
 supernatural to me, peopled with mere gliosis and 
 inarticulate memories, I find silent occupation 
 enough ! One is much called to sink silent, at 
 intervals, in this Babel of a world, and let the 
 turbid elements settle into sediment a little. Could 
 I abolish grouse-shooting, and doom all the ivasted 
 classes to sit as I am now doing, for a month each 
 year, what immeasurable quantities of manure 
 should I precipitate out of every mind, and out of 
 the poor world's business, by that act alone ! 
 
 "The Nation comes to me, round by London, on 
 Tuesdays ; everything Irish has got a new im- 
 pressiveness since I saw the poor old land with 
 ray eyes. Depend upon it, I have by no means 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 
 
 forgotten poor old Ireland, nor the people that dwell 
 there. A strange, ragged, still beauty is in my 
 memory of Ireland ; a country bare and waste, and 
 poor, but noble nevertheless ; poor souls, how kind 
 and patient all the people too were with me and 
 * never minded ' my sulky humours ! From no 
 human soul in Ireland that I can bethink me of 
 did I get one uncivil word or look. 'A kind of 
 nobleman thrown into the poor-house (by whisky 
 and other sins and misfortunes),' really this is in 
 some sort the definition of poor Ireland ; shall get 
 out of the poor-house and cast away the sins and 
 whiskies yet, if it please Heaven ! I have told 
 certain proud Yankees on occasion, ' Well, you 
 have many dollars, immensities of bacon, molasses, 
 and such like; but there never yet was a soul of 
 you that could bring a Coolun ^ out of it, much 
 less teach Europe Christianity in old days ; be 
 patient v/ith poor old Ireland, 1 tell you ! ' Ireland, 
 it is to be hoped, will learn wisdom by experience 
 at last ; learn to know a lie from the truth a little 
 when it hears it, and no more expend its breath 
 and hope upon 'Mullaghmast Caps,' and the like 
 Domdaniel-ware (authentic produce of the devil, 
 however fine it looks) ; Ireland will cease to be a 
 lie to itself, and gradually become a truth ; every 
 Irishman that does not lie to himself is helping 
 her towards that ! 
 
 " You never did a wiser thing than that of exclud- 
 
 ^ A peculiarly sweet, pathetic Irish air is the "Coolun." 
 
i6o THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ing stump-oratory from the Tenant League ; I duly 
 noticed that fact, with good hope at the time. And 
 on the whole, I continue to say your present ' agita- 
 tion ' looks more like doing work than any I have 
 ever seen in Ireland. But the work, alas, is immense, 
 and God only knows when or how it will be got 
 done. ' Rent by a valuation ' is not intrinsically 
 so unfeasible — nay, so unusual — witness the old 
 usury laws only abolished in these years; but it 
 is utterly at variance with all the free-trade, laissez- 
 faire and other strongest tendencies of this poor 
 time; and though said tendencies appear to me 
 mostly mean and wooden, and nine-tenths untrue, 
 yet it is precisely the true tenth that rules at 
 present. In fact, to succeed altogether, you must 
 have a new era, no less ! Nay, I cannot but per- 
 ceive that 'fixity of tenure,' with such a set of 
 tenants as you now have in Ireland, would never 
 do, though you even could get it — that in fact, 
 independently of all obstacles on the landlord's, 
 parliament's, and official sides of the question, there 
 is a total unpreparedness on the part of the popula- 
 tion: 'more ado than a dish to wash,' as the pro- 
 verb says before you attain this same new era of 
 justice on the land question ! Nevertheless, I must 
 say always, pause not, use all your courage, all 
 your wisdom, in continually advancing ! You will 
 do good in every way, if you advance wisely ; every 
 step you secure is a laying bare of new intolerable 
 'abuses; a bringing of the Grand Problem (in all 
 its figures, moral, political, social, not agricultural 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. i6i 
 
 alone, and not Irish alone), nearer to the thoughts 
 of the practical necessities of ail men, and thus 
 nearer to its only possibility of solution. Like 
 other such problems, it will be solved by slow- 
 degrees (I suppose), so soon as all men feel that 
 they cannot live without solving it — not much 
 sooner, I doubt. 
 
 " One thing, it strikes me, will become in the 
 course of your struggle much more apparent than 
 it now is : The necessity of that * regimenting of 
 paupers ' in which I see clearly, and nowhere else at 
 all, the beginning of new government, and the neces- 
 sary advancement towards that, for the afflicted 
 world in this epoch. Suppose every Irish 'free' 
 tiller of the earth, so soon as he declared himself 
 a 'free' beggar in need of Indian meal from his 
 poor brothers, fell at once into the hands of an 
 agricultural Sir Duncan Macgregor, and became 
 a ' well-commanded ' tiller of the soil, doing his feat 
 as your green police do theirs ; and not only 
 relieving all men from the burden of him, but 
 gallantly exterminating bogs, and approving him- 
 self a blessing to the earth and to all men. I leave 
 you to compute a little what boundless rehef to 
 all interest whatsoever would lie there; free space 
 granted to laissez-faire, and all extant principles 
 of proceeding to try themselves against the fact, 
 and run their very utmost without shackles on their 
 feet. If they proved equal to the problem of the 
 nineteenth century, well and good ; if (as I see to 
 be inevitable) they proved unequal, at least they 
 
i62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 (what was good in them) would be able to last 
 longer, and to see their successors ready before 
 departing hence. These things, I fancy, will 
 gradually come athwart you there and so many 
 others of the like genus, either in this or some 
 other form of the ' Tenant Agitation ; ' and whatso- 
 ever real work you do in that is done for behalf 
 of these also, which lie so far away from the general 
 thoughts at present, but will become, if I mistake 
 not, very familiar to it by-and-by ! 
 
 " Lucas, I do believe, is capital in his present 
 place. Give him my compliments and true good 
 wishes for that and all other real service to Ireland 
 that may lie in him. When he took to Catholicism 
 first (which seemed to me so distracted an opera- 
 tion), and I heard what he had to say about Irish 
 tenants and landlords, I could not help recognising 
 the finger of Heaven in his change of religion. 
 
 " No Irish ' list of good members,' nor indeed of 
 English, has fallen in my way. They are a dread- 
 fully scarce commodity, I imagine. Nevertheless 
 you must seek for them, as for the vital air of 
 your undertaking. The more honestly you seek, 
 the better is your chance both of finding what is, 
 and of calling forth a set far worthier to be found, 
 in time coming. And so, good speed to you, in 
 this and in all other honourable courses ; and adieu 
 for the present. With kind remembrances to Mrs. 
 Duffy and Mrs. Callan. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 ''T. Carlyle." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 163 
 
 This was the era of Cardinal Wiseman's arrival 
 in England and the clamour about Papal aggres- 
 sion. I confidently counted on seeing Carlyle 
 vehement against the insensate outcry of ignorance 
 and bigotry, but the old Covenanter, who lay 
 beneath all his latter-day philosophy, awoke. We 
 in Ireland were warned to take no offence, and 
 were not, he conceived, in the least manner aimed 
 at in the business, but when Parliament met we got 
 a full share of the tempest. 
 
 " Chelsea, December 2, 1850. 
 
 "Dear Duffy, — Will you send me the exact 
 name and address of Shine Lalor — is he not John, 
 or something else beside Shine ? As to the address, 
 I suppose Killarney itself will do, if he is still re- 
 sident in his castle thereabouts. Item : the Chris- 
 tian name of Dr. Cane, Kilkenny. I am to send 
 (as you perhaps guessj a certain volume to each 
 of the gentlemen, by way of testifying, in a most 
 imperfect manner, what a remembrance I have of 
 them. Ay de mi ! 
 
 " You seem to make rapid way with your Tenant 
 Association ; indeed, I see clearly that is the direct 
 road into the centre of the abyss ; facilis descensus 
 Averni, if you will take the metaphor in good part, 
 for surely if the world's cloaca have any bottom, I 
 do clearly perceive it lies there. 
 
 " Our poor old friend the Pope has committed 
 a sad blunder in sending his pasteboard cardinals 
 with their Bull thunder over to us just now ! AH 
 
1 64 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 men think it an impertinence and futile infatuation 
 on the part of the old gentleman ; and among the 
 general mass of the English people there is such 
 an uproar as I have not seen for twenty years past, 
 of which I cannot say, for my own part, that I alto- 
 gether disapprove. The Pope may depend upon 
 it, we will by no means come back to him ; never 
 through all eternity, to him ! We may find worse 
 fellows, too (nay, I expect far worse). For the 
 rest, I warn you in any case to take no offence 
 against us, you in Ireland, for we do not in the least 
 mean you ! That is truth, and I am very glad to 
 see the Nation teaching that, and hope you will all 
 along keep it well in mind. 
 
 " The Nation, in point of real talent (bating per- 
 haps a little worldly wisdom, and savoir /aire, which 
 is not quite its forte), seems to me the cleverest 
 weekly paper I read. Really on Saturday nights 
 there is none of them that (spite of the exotic colour) 
 has so much the ring of the real metal in it. Go 
 on and prosper ! I have had some difficulty to 
 defend you, to myself and others, for voting against 
 the * Godless colleges.' Beware of that ; look on 
 both sides of that ! What if this that poor, dark, 
 angry menials now call ' Godless colleges ' were 
 actually the beginning of the real religion of the 
 future for Ireland, and for us all destined to live, 
 and rise ever higher heavenward (I grant on occa- 
 sion) ; but we are travelling, these three centuries 
 now, quite in the opposite direction, and have not, 
 I think (for all our bleeding feet and bad weather), 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 165 
 
 the smallest vestige of a notion to turn back ! In 
 brief, it will not surprise me at all if, when the 
 Parliament meets, a law (after infinite j argon, 1 is 
 passed to send Wiseman & Co. about their business 
 again, and prohibit any British subject henceforth 
 from importing ware of that kind into this country. 
 The beautiful ' principles of toleration ' — in v/hich 
 I myself do not believe a jot — will receive some 
 illustration in this business ; and to me, sure enough 
 (if I could have patience with the vile temporary 
 dust), this beating of humbug against humbug is the 
 destruction of nonsense to such and such extent, and 
 ought to be regarded as a gain. Heaven love you 
 always, dear Duffy. I meant only to write a word, 
 and you see ! — Yours always, T. Carlyle." 
 
 The reference to the " Godless colleges " had this 
 meaning. When the scheme of the Queen's Colleges 
 in Ireland was proposed by Sir Robert Peel, the 
 Catholic bishops were divided upon the question of 
 accepting or rejecting them. A majority of the 
 bishops were prepared to accept and support them 
 on condition that certain not unreasonable amend- 
 ments were made for the better protection of the 
 faith and morals of students. The amendments were 
 refused, and a Synod of the Catholic "Church of 
 Ireland declared that the institutions as they stood 
 were dangerous to faith and morals. Under these 
 circumstances, I advised that Catholic pupils should 
 not be sent to these colleges till the necessary 
 reforms were conceded. 
 
i66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 John Stuart Mill. 
 
 In 1 85 1 the Council of the Tenant League deter- 
 mined to invite John Mill to represent an Irish 
 county, that he might advocate in Parliament the 
 principles of land tenure taught in his Political 
 Economy. Mr. Lucas and I were authorised to 
 communicate with him on the subject. Lucas was 
 not able to go to London at the time, and as it was 
 ne)ressary I should see Mr. Mill at once, I asked 
 Mr. Carlyle to introduce me. He complied promptly. 
 He could do this much without scruple, he said, but 
 I must understand that Mill and he had ceased to 
 see much of each other in later times, as, in fact, 
 they had nothing at all in common. Mill had one 
 faculty in great perfection, he possessed t^e power 
 of setting forth his opinions with a lucidity which 
 no one in England could match. What he aimed 
 to make you see you saw as plainly as a con- 
 spicuous object set in the sunshine. But he had 
 ^ the habit of approachmg everything by the way of 
 logical^analysis, and when he brought that method 
 to bear upon a question he got out of it nearly all 
 it could yield him. There were probably quite other 
 qualities in it, not at all to be detected by logical 
 analysis, and altogether unsuspected by him. Of 
 the true relations of things in the universe. Mill had 
 small insight or^none. He was inclined to scream 
 arid shriek about matters of no real importance, and 
 to believe in unrealities of various sorts. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 167 
 
 After pausing a little for anything I might have 
 to say, he proceeded : At one time we saw a good 
 deal of Mill. In the Reform Bill era he was an 
 innocent young creature, with rich auburn hair and 
 gentle pathetic expression, beautiful to contemplate; 
 but a domestic embroilment drove him to adopt a 
 secluded monastic sort of life, in which people saw 
 little of him but the work he did. His life had 
 been wrecked by a Platonic, and qtiite innocent, 
 affection for a married lady, who had since become 
 his wife, concerning whom he had got possessed 
 by an idea, or, indeed, a series of ideas, which were 
 altogether absurd and insupportable. He regarded 
 her as the paragon of womankind, which she was 
 not by long odds ; far otherwise than a paragon, 
 one might safely say. She was the daughter of 
 a Radical doctor, who married her to Taylor, a 
 Radical and Socinian, an honest, simple sort of 
 man, who had no doubt that the ideas which pre- 
 vailed among this class of persons afforded a suffi- 
 cient solution for all the hard problems of life. 
 W. J. Fox, who had a chapel in Finsbury^ where 
 he patronised Peter and Paul as ignorant but well- 
 intentioned persons, and delivered prayers which 
 some one described as the most eloquent prayers 
 that ever were addressed to {inimicking and laugh- 
 ing) a British audience ! Fox had probably the 
 Taylors among his congregation; at any rate, he 
 came to know that Mrs. Taylor, a vivacious little 
 body, found her life among the Socinians weari- 
 some, and he told her that John Mill was the 
 
i68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 man among the human race to relieve in a com- 
 petent manner her dubieties and difficulties. He 
 brought Mill to see her ; and Mill, who had pro- 
 bably never before looked into a woman's face, was 
 spell-bound. She was a shrewd woman, with a 
 taste for coquetry, and she took possession of Mill 
 and wrapped him up like a cocoon. He used to go 
 to her in all his trouble to be comforted, and in all 
 his difficulties to be guided, and probably to be 
 flattered a little besides. 
 
 From that time all Mill's enjoyments in life 
 centred in her. Taylor remonstrated with her on 
 the extent to which the intimacy was carried ; but 
 she told him he might blow up the house if it 
 seemed good to him, but she could not, under any 
 circumstances, give up this friendship, as she would 
 probably call it. There were children to be con- 
 sidered, and he thought he had better endure the 
 thing than make a clamour and a catastrophe. . . , 
 The elder Mill, John's father, James Mill, was a 
 skilful and experienced man ; while he was editor 
 of a newspaper in London he wrote a history of 
 British India, remarkable for its curious acquaint- 
 ance with the laws and customs of the natives. It 
 was a book still worth reading. John, when he 
 began writing, used to produce long-sounding 
 essays on human affairs, very clear in style and 
 expression, and with bits of knowledge too, even 
 considerable bits at times, but, on the whole, not 
 meaning much. Old Sterling, the thunderer, used 
 to say there was a good deal of sawdust in them. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 169 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, who was present, said Mrs. Mill 
 was not the pink of womankind as her husband 
 conceived, but a peculiarly affected and empty body. 
 She was not easy unless she startled you with 
 unexpected sayings. If she was going to utter 
 something kind and affectionate, she spoke in a 
 hard, stern voice. If she wanted to bq alarming or 
 uncivil, she employed the most honeyed and affec- 
 tionate tones. " Come down and see us," she said 
 one day {inimicking her tone), " you will be 
 charmed with our house, it is so full of rats." 
 '' Rats ! " cried Carlyle. " Do you regard thefn as 
 an attraction ? " "' Yes " {piano), " they are such 
 dear, innocent creatures." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle at the same time told me the story 
 now sufficiently known of how the first volume of 
 the "French Revolution" got burnt. When Mill 
 suddenly appeared at Cheyne Row to announce 
 the misfortune, he looked so like the ghost of 
 Hamlet's father, that she knew some catastrophe 
 must have occurred, and exclaimed involuntarily, 
 "Gracious Providence, he has gone off with Mrs. 
 Taylor ! " but happily the misfortune proved to 
 be a more remediable one.^ 
 
 ^ Carlyle, in a letter to Emerson, written shortly after the occur- 
 rence, gives an account of this misfortune. The reader is invited 
 to note how placidly a great trouble is borne by a man who was 
 impatient of little ones, and that he does not even name the "kind 
 but careless friend " who had brought the disaster on him. 
 
 " Since I wrote last to you, there has a great mischance befallen 
 me : the saddest, I think, of the kind called Accidents I ever had 
 to front. By dint of continual endeavour for many weary weeks, I 
 
I70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Carlyle went on to say that when he came down 
 to London, his intimacy with Mill was for a con- 
 siderable time close and regular. The Sabbath 
 bells were not more certain than Mill's friendly visit 
 to Cheyne Row. He could not account for this 
 intimacy suddenly ending ; neither had altered in 
 fundamentals, nor were they further from agreeing 
 than they had always been. 
 
 I suggested that if Mill had heard his estimate of 
 Mrs. Taylor, there need be no difficulty in account- 
 ing for the change. 
 
 had got the first volume of that miserable ' French Revolution ' 
 rather handsomely finished ; from amid infinite contradictions I felt 
 as if my head were fairly above water, and I could go on writing 
 my poor book, defying the devil and the world, with a certain 
 degree of assurance, and even of joy. A friend borrowed this 
 volume of manuscript, — a kind friend, but a careless one, — to write 
 notes on it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening, about 
 two months ago, he came in on us, ' distraction (literally) in his 
 aspect ; ' the manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up as 
 waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone ! I 
 could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have 
 shot himself; we had to gather ourselves together, and show a 
 smooth front to it, which happily, though difficult, was not impos- 
 sible to do. I began again, at the beginning, to such a wretched 
 paralysing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to do, at 
 which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of saffron, 
 to the humour of incipient desperation ; and now, four days ago, 
 perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an element that 
 grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum (think of that !), I, 
 with a new effort of self-denial, sealed up all the paper fragments, 
 and said to myself : ' In this mood thou makest no way, writest 
 nothing that requires not to be erased again ; lay it by for one com- 
 plete week ! ' And so it lies, under lock and key. I have digested 
 the whole misery ; I say, if thou canst never write this thing, why 
 then never do write it : God's universe will go along better with- 
 out it." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 171 
 
 Mr. Carlyle and I called on Mr. Mill, who states 
 in his autobiography the decision he came to on the 
 proposal from Ireland.^ I knew Mr. Mill from that 
 time till his death, and regarded him as one of the 
 most just, upright, and valiant of men. 
 
 The Encumbered Estates Act threw a great deal 
 of the land of Ireland into the market at this time 
 at prices unexpectedly low ; I thought a national 
 effort ought to be made to enable the occupying 
 tenants to purchase these estates, and I framed a 
 plan of a Small Proprietors' Society for this purpose, 
 which had the good fortune to secure the sympathy 
 and approval of Cobden, Bright, and Mill, and some 
 of the best men in Ireland. It is to the prospectus 
 of this society Carlyle's next letter refers. 
 
 " Chelsea, Avril 26, 185 1. 
 " Dear Duffy, — I think your prospectus per- 
 fect ; it has colour enough left ; all you have taken 
 out of it is the angry controversial smoke, whatever 
 
 1 "In this summary of my untoward life, I have now arrived at 
 the period at which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of 
 books was to be exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a 
 member of the House of Commons. The proposal made to me 
 early in 1865 by some electors in Westminster, did not present the 
 idea to me for the first time. It was not even the first offer I had 
 received, for, more than ten years previous, in consequence of my 
 opinions on the Irish Land Question, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Duffy, in 
 the name of the popular party in Ireland, offered to bring me into 
 Parliament for an Irish county, which they could easily have done ; 
 but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament with the office I 
 then held in the India House, precluded even consideration of the 
 proposal." — Autobiography of [ohn Stuart MilL 
 
172 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 could obstruct the clearness, which is here perfect, 
 that of an object seen by sunlight under the general 
 azure of the sky. Few things can seem more 
 creditable ; certainly nothing at all in any best Irish 
 programme we have lately seen. In reading, I 
 almost feel a kind of desire to invest money in the 
 scheme myself — if I had any money worth in- 
 vesting ! 
 
 "At page 22 you speak of draining and improving 
 (to the extent of main drains and roads) the estates 
 you purchase, which, undoubtedly, is very proper 
 so far, before allotting them : but you will have to 
 specify the limits of that a little more, I suppose. 
 The statement at this point of the prospectus startled 
 my attention as a new circumstance ; perhaps some 
 warning of it could be introduced about page lO 
 with advantage ? Indeed, I do not quite know 
 about those * quarter shares,' whether to vote for 
 them or not; nor, in fact^ about any detail of the 
 plan is my vote good for much. I used to believe 
 immensely in small farms ; and certainly the best 
 people of the labouring class I have ever seen lived 
 in that manner; but there goes much more than a 
 small farm to such a result; and failures enough 
 (in an ever-increasing proportion) have become mani- 
 fest to me withal. Brief ^ he who is a free man ' 
 will do rather well in small culture, which is his true 
 position if he is poor ; well in small culture or in 
 big ; but he who is ' not free,' again, whom nature 
 has made a fool and a slave (i.e., too foolish and too 
 slavish for his difficult position), he will never do 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 173 
 
 well, unless, perhaps, if well ordered and compelled ; 
 and it is a pity to put any portion of our poor old 
 Mother's surface under the control of such a one, 
 if we could help it. Democracy, here as elsewhere, 
 I clearly see, is not possible; but, on the other 
 hand, your * aristocracy ' — Good Heavens ! So you 
 must even do your best according to the day 
 and hour. Surely, by this method, you may hope 
 to push out the finest of your Irish peasantry, these 
 likeliest to be able to live as ' free men ' imder our 
 terrible pressures ; and for every one of these you 
 can retain within the four seas gods and men will 
 be obliged to you ! The others they had better go 
 to America, or even to final chaos, than live as 
 they have long been doing : I deliberately say so. 
 But they are not, I believe, going either of these 
 roads just yet ; they are pouring over into Scotland 
 and England (Watt's steam engine is worth a 
 million of O'Connells and stump-orator ' Libera- 
 tors ! ' ), and are fast making us all into one 
 uniform mess of pottage, which I cannot but admit 
 is fair to the Three Kingdoms and her sacred 
 Majesty and Co. ! Oh, Heaven ! one tries to laugh 
 at the things (in this poor epoch), and they are 
 terrible and sacred as the baring of the Lord's 
 right hand upon Iniquity and Quackery and Doggery 
 too long continued. 
 
 " Did yovi ever read a small octavo volume, 
 almost 150 years old (London, 1703, I think), called 
 * Fletcher of Saltoun's Works ' ? I recommend it 
 to you for a couple of evenings. A proud Scotch 
 
174 ■ THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 gentleman, a noble Scotchman, he will show you 
 an advocacy of ' Repeal ' conducted not a la stump- 
 orator, and yet not destined or deserving to succeed 
 at all on those terms, also a Scotland not so unlike 
 your present Ireland ; on the whole a variety of 
 rather curious things, and the soul of a right 
 gallant man for one, and will repay perusal well, I 
 promise you. 
 
 " Your lady-critic is getting very wild upon Leigh 
 Hunt, woman, &c. &c. Beautiful alcoholic steam 
 too ; but it requires to be resolutely cooled, rectified, 
 and condensed, if we are ever to swallow it with 
 satisfaction. — Adieu, yours ever truly, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 I may mention that this scheme came to nothing, 
 because it had the misfortune to include among 
 its directors John Sadlier, M.P., who made his 
 final exit from the world on Hampstead Heath, 
 in circumstances familiar to the reader. He was 
 chairman of a bank in England, and of another 
 in Ireland, and an attorney dealing with real pro- 
 perty on a prodigious scale, and was supposed to 
 be a buttress to the society. When we were 
 about to commence operations, however, he wished 
 to transfer our account to the two banks with which 
 he was connected, from the Bank of Ireland an- 
 nounced in the prospectus, and to sell to the society 
 half-a-dozen estates which he had on hand, rem- 
 nants, I fancied, of purchases which had not proved 
 successful. As projector of the society, answer- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 175 
 
 able to the country for its character and probity, 
 I positively refused my consent. The majority of 
 the directors, however, were disposed to support 
 the man with great reputation for practical ability, 
 and who carried the proxies of several capitalists 
 ready to support our scheme. Thereupon I pub- 
 licly retired, specifying the need which had arisen 
 for doing so, and the society gradually dwindled 
 away and came to nothing. 
 
 Among the friends whom I introduced to Carlyle 
 during the Irish visit was Dr. Murray, Senior Pro- 
 fessor of Theology in Maynooth College. He was 
 a man of vigorous intellect and many accomplish- 
 ments, peculiarly familiar with the English clas- 
 sics, and master of a style which has been rarely 
 excelled for poignancy and lucidity. He wished to 
 become an Edinburgh Reviewer. I asked Carlyle 
 to aid him, which he did promptly and cordially. 
 Here is his letter on the subject : — 
 
 "Chelsea, yc!:;?2^(2:r7 30, 1852. 
 "Dear Duffy, — I will cheerfully do all I can 
 for Dr. Murray ; and indeed have already as good 
 as done so, of which I hope to communicate to 
 you the issue in a day or two. I have described 
 Dr. Murray and his project to the editor in question 
 this morning, and put the question to him : Will 
 you deliberately read his paper if he send one ? 
 By this means, taking part of the risk upon my- 
 self, I think the problem may perhaps be a little 
 abridged, and the risk of the other parties less. 
 
176 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 You shall hear at once what answer there is ; 
 till then, keep silence, please. My conviction is 
 that any deliberate essay of Dr. Murray's would 
 decidedly deserve the trouble of reading by an 
 editor; and doubtless I could so have managed it 
 in general, and perhaps with this entangled blue 
 and yellow in particular ; but, as I said, it will be 
 surer, and may probably be briefer, to proceed 
 as now. 
 
 " Can you send me, one of these days, Dr. 
 Kennedy's address — the doctor of whom I saw so 
 much in Dublin, who is Pitt Kennedy's brother, 
 and who lives somewhere in the southern outskirts, 
 I think — a well-known man ? No haste about it, 
 only don't quite forget. 
 
 " I am truly sorry to hear that your land scheme 
 has come to ruin in so provoking and paltry a 
 way. There can notJiing be done, then, for the 
 poor Irish people at present ! Nothing by express 
 enactment or arrangement ; but they must follow 
 the dumb law of their positions, and sink, sink, 
 till they do come upon rock ! I rather judge so ; 
 nothing considerable, either for them or for any 
 people or object whatsoever ; all objects having 
 got so frightfully enigmatic (hideous and unin- 
 ielligible, as the old official masks drop off them), 
 and our chief interpreter of enigmatic realities being 
 Lord John at this moment — an interpreter that 
 ,probably defies the world for his fellow, if we 
 consider where he is and when he is ! Well, 
 there is no help ; we must all get down to the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 177 
 
 rocks ; we are in a place equivalent to Hell (for 
 every true soul and interest) till we do get thither; 
 there, and there only, on the eternal basis, can 
 there be any ' heaven ' and land of promise for the 
 sons of Adam (sons of Hudson, millionaire and 
 penniless alike, I exclude). Thither must we, as 
 God live — and God knows many of us will have 
 a good bit to go before we arrive there, and will 
 need considerable thrashing and tossing before the 
 chaff be well beaten off us, I guess. It is the 
 dismallest epoch, and yet one of the grandest — 
 like a putrid Golgotha with immortality beyond it ; 
 I do verily believe (in figurative language) com- 
 parable to * resurrection from the dead.' It is in 
 such way I look at it, in silence generally, and 
 welcome even a Brummagem Cromwell of the 
 French as a clear step forward. Five-and-thirty 
 years of Parliamentary stump oratory, all ending in 
 less than nothing ; now let us try drill-sergeantry 
 a little even under these sad terms ! I find the 
 talk of France to be, and to have been, much 
 madder than even their silence is like to be. God 
 is great. 
 
 " You are dreadfully unjust to what you call 
 ' England ' in almost all you say about Ireland, 
 and in general your interpretation of the former 
 hated entity is altogether mistaken, too often (I 
 swear to you) at once lamentable and absurd ! I 
 forgive it, as before, but pray always it might 
 alter. There seems to me no possibility of profit 
 in that direction. I had a letter from a brother 
 
 M 
 
178 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of Mitchel the other day, who dates Washington, 
 an inquiring, strugghng, ingenuous, and ambitious 
 kind of nature, to whom, for John's sake, I made 
 some reply. Adieu, I hope only for a few days. — 
 Yours always, T. Carlyle." 
 
 Dr. Murray contributed to the Edinburgh Review 
 for a brief period, during the editorship of Mr. 
 Empson. When Cornewall Lewis succeeded him in 
 the editorial chair, he made objection to something in 
 an article submitted to him, and Dr. Murray seized 
 the occasion to retire altogether. In a note on the 
 subject to me, he said — 
 
 " A strong religious scruple got into my head 
 about being connected with the Edinburgh Review. 
 Though professedly a literary and political journal, 
 yet, of late years especially, it had become rather 
 theological — the theology being, of course, of a very 
 bad stamp. It occurred to me that there was an 
 impropriety in my contributing to such a periodical. 
 I reasoned myself out of this — still I felt very un- 
 comfortable, though keeping my uneasiness all to 
 myself. There were four articles out of nine in 
 the January number, and two in the last number, 
 more or less of this character. Lewis's note took a 
 heavy weight off my mind." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 179 
 
 Disraeli. 
 
 At the General Election of 1852, I came into 
 Parliament, beating the Chief Secretary, who had 
 been most active in prosecuting me and my friends 
 in '48, and attended a winter session towards the 
 close of that year. I visited Cheyne Row when- 
 ever it was practicable, and on Sunday afternoon 
 had generally a walk with Carlyle in some of the 
 parks. When he was not disposed to walk he 
 had chairs brought to the grass plot behind his 
 house, and tranquilly smoked a long clay pipe, with 
 a friend or two sitting or standing beside him, to 
 whom he talked at intervals. Later, when the 
 Derby Government fell, we spoke of the event. I 
 said, though I had voted against them, I could not 
 help having a certain sympathy with Disraeli for 
 the indomitable pluck with which he faced his 
 enemies at the head of a party which distrusted 
 him only a little less than the honourable gentle- 
 men opposite. The Peelites seemed to hate him 
 with a preternatural animosity, but I had never 
 heard that he had done anything cruel or cowardly 
 against them or any one else. He was a political 
 gladiator, no doubt, as Bolingbroke and Canning 
 had been before him, but it was idle to complain 
 that he struck deft blows at his opponents; that 
 was his vocation. 
 
 A base vocation, Carlyle exclaimed. The case 
 was not a perplexing one at all, it seemed to him. 
 
i8o THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 A cunning Jew got a parcel of people to believe in 
 him, though no man of the smallest penetration 
 could have any doubt that he was an impostor, 
 with no sort of purpose in all he was doing but to 
 serve his own interests. He was a man from whom 
 no good need be expected, a typical Jew, ostentatious, 
 intrinsically servile, but stiffnecked in his designs. 
 
 /tis diabolo dehtr, I interposed. Let it be re- 
 membered that he exhibited a generous courage 
 on behalf of his race, in face of the fierce hostility 
 of the party which he led. He was true, at any 
 rate, to the interest and honour of his own people, 
 which counterbalanced a multitude of sins; and 
 I had a personal satisfaction in seeing a race, who 
 were persecuted for a crime committed centuries 
 and centuries before they were born, reassert 
 themselves. 
 
 They were, he said, paying for sins of their own, 
 as well as of their ancestors. They were an im- 
 potent race, who had never distinguished them- 
 selves in their entire history by any estimable 
 quality. Some of them clambered to what they 
 called prosperity, but, arrayed in the showiest gar- 
 niture, there was always an odour of old clo' about 
 them. They made great quantities of money up 
 and down, and glorified the speculator who made 
 most as the most venerable of mortals. When of 
 old any man appeared among them who had some- 
 . thing to tell worth their attention, one knew how 
 such a one was received by the Israelites, and 
 their vices of character were intractable. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. i8i 
 
 In London I saw Carlyle under a new aspect. 
 Among friends he was still simple and genial ; but 
 he was much run after by inquisitive Americans, 
 who got brief glimpses of him from time to time, 
 and as they wanted for the most part to interview 
 him, he got into the habit of uttering, almost as 
 soon as his visitors had settled down, the sort of 
 harangue on some great topic which they expected 
 from him. At times his friends had to listen to 
 long discourses, which were only an expansion of 
 opinions they had become familiar with in conver- 
 sation. When he delivered himself of one of these 
 set speeches his conversational manner disappeared, 
 and his language came forth like a douche-bath, in 
 a strong, unbroken stream, while, like the Ancient 
 Mariner, he fixed the spectator with his glittering 
 eye. This foaming torrent was as unlike the ripple 
 of his familiar talk as Niagara to a trout stream. 
 To arrest it was nearly impossible, and he was 
 impatient of interruption, even by way of assent, 
 much more of dissent. The reader will probably 
 like a specimen of this method, and here is one 
 addressed to some Irish Americans : — 
 
 An Harangue. 
 
 " Irishmen might be assured there was no one in 
 England wished ill to Ireland, as they had come to 
 imagine. Quite the contrary, good men on all sides 
 would applaud and assist any practical method for 
 
i82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 her relief. If he were given the task of lifting 
 Ireland out of her misery, he would take counsel 
 on all sides with men of practical knowledge on 
 the best means of setting the people to work. He 
 would ask such assistance from Parliament as might 
 be necessary, and then carry out his scheme with 
 unabating stringency. Whoever would not work 
 must starve. He would begin with the workhouses, 
 where men had delivered themselves up as bond 
 slaves to society, by the confession that they could 
 not exist by their own labour ; and at the outset he 
 would organise t/iem. By-and-by he would transfer 
 his workers to the Bog of Allan, or elsewhere, and 
 bring them into contact with work to be done. 
 Organisation was the essential basis of success, 
 and he believed every trade must finally get itself 
 organised as much as it could, even the trade of 
 authorship, so that each man would be put to the 
 work he was fittest to do, and not left wasting his 
 strength and spirit in a totally useless direction. If 
 a wise scheme like this were opposed — as, indeed, 
 it was sure to be — one might rely on the sense of 
 the community for maintaining it. If the Ministry 
 of the day set themselves against it, men of sense 
 would say to them. Get out of that, you ugly and 
 foolish windbags : do you think the Eternal God of 
 Nature will suffer j/ok to stand in the way of His 
 work ? If you cannot open your eyes and see that 
 ,this is a thing that must be done, you had better 
 betake yourselves elsewhere — to the lowest Gehenna 
 were fittest — there is no place for you in a world 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 183 
 
 which is ruled, in the long run, by fact and not by 
 chimera. This is the course which ought to be 
 taken. Men of sense might get the thing done, but 
 men of no sense not at all. In democracy there 
 was no help. Universal suffrage might be worth 
 taking, and then men of sense would discover the 
 limited use of it. For his part, if he could consult 
 his horses, he would certainly ask them whether 
 they preferred oats or vetches, quite sure they were 
 the best judges on t/ia^ point ; but if they presumed 
 to question the propriety of the road he was 
 travelling, he would say, ' No, my worthy quad- 
 rupeds, it is not to London I am going, but in quite 
 another direction. I am going to Greenwich, for 
 reasons too tedious to mention, and so let us set 
 out without more delay.' The notion of settling 
 any question by counting blockheads, or referring 
 it to the decision of a multitude of fools, was alto- 
 gether futile. The wise man must ponder on the 
 right path in the silence of his own heart, and when 
 found take it, though the whole multitude brayed 
 at him with its many heads, which most probably 
 they would — for a time." 
 
 John Forster, who was present on one of these 
 occasions, as soon as Carlyle paused, took the 
 opportunity to assure me that there was no dislike 
 of Irishmen in England, and no assumption of 
 superiority. 
 
 Carlyle said, if there was dislike, it arose from 
 the way Irishmen conducted themselves in England. 
 
l84 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 They often entitled themselves to disfavour by their 
 private performances. Irishmen who knew better 
 must teach these persons to live quite differently, 
 and they ought not to feel the slightest necessity 
 for championing blackguards because they happened 
 to be Irishmen. The curse and destruction of 
 Ireland was her putting up silently — even con- 
 tentedly, it would seem — with lies and falsities, and 
 making heroes of manifest liars. Till this practice 
 ended her case was hopeless. 
 
 After an harangue there was generally a con- 
 versation on the subject of it. On such an occasion, 
 Carlyle listened patiently to dissent, and justified 
 or illustrated his opinions calmly. The Scottish 
 peasantry, he said, were gifted with silent intrepidity 
 and valour. Their constant submission to the 
 Divine Will, and their strict veracity, were qualities 
 which it would behove Irish peasants to imitate, 
 for, to say the truth, he had not found these qualities 
 plentiful among them, nor the plain speaking which 
 comes of honest thinking. 
 
 I replied that he had never seen an Irish peasant 
 in his natural condition, he had only seen a popula- 
 tion resembling a famished crew just escaped from 
 a shipwreck ; the Irish peasantry were intrinsically 
 pious, generous, and veracious. The shiftiness and 
 evasion which they sometimes exhibited in the 
 witness-box were the devices of a people harassed 
 by cruel laws and harsh masters. They evaded, 
 but they would not violate, the sanctity of an oath. 
 I remembered reading, when a boy, the story of a 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 185 
 
 peasant put into the witness-box to give evidence 
 against his own son, which chmg to my memory. 
 The son was charged with stealing a sheep at a 
 famine period, and his father, a venerable and pious 
 old man, must, it was supposed, have seen the 
 transaction, which at that time was a capital offence. 
 "Did you awaken," he was asked, "on the night 
 of Easter Eve after midnight ? " " Yis, sir, I did." 
 " What did you see in the cottage at that time ? " 
 " God help me ! I saw my boy with a sheep between 
 his hands ; but oh ! your Honour, it was for me 
 and the little Michael who were starving that he 
 took it." The old man broke down, and the prisoner 
 in the dock said something to him in a low voice 
 in Irish. The judge asked to have it translated. 
 " Courage, father, may the Saviour protect you and 
 all of us ; you only do what is right, to tell the 
 truth." This was the Irish peasant in his natural 
 condition. 
 
 Carlyle said the stories current of them by 
 writers of their own country gave the impression 
 of an idle, reckless race, with a levity which was 
 not agreeable, but painful, to contemplate. 
 
 I replied that one might as well judge England 
 from the stories of Tim Bobbin, as Ireland from 
 the stories of Maxwell or Lever. Some of the 
 most significant maxims I could recall were Irish 
 sayings, which I heard from my mother when I 
 was a boy, and Irish legends revealing the deep 
 sagacity which lay at the bottom of the national 
 character. Here was one : In a dear summer, as 
 
i85 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the famine periods were called in Ireland, a small 
 farmer was induced by his wife to send out his 
 father to beg. The old man was equipped with a 
 bag, a staff, and half a double blanket, which the 
 frugal housewife prepared for him. After he was 
 gone, she inquired for the moiety of the blanket 
 to make sure he had not carried it off. When the 
 house was ransacked in vain, the . father thought 
 of asking his little son if he had seen it. "Yis, 
 father," the boy replied, " I have put it by till the 
 time comes when I'll want it." "What will you 
 want with it, Owen agrah ? " inquired the father. 
 "Why, father," replied the boy, "you see, when I 
 grow up to be a big man, and I'll be sending you 
 out to beg, I'll want it to put on your back." 
 
 Carlyle said it was a homely apologue intended 
 no doubt to illustrate the force of example ; we 
 might safely assume that the old man was recalled 
 from his begging expedition and put in the most 
 comfortable corner of the cabin after that trans- 
 action. 
 
 Yes, I rejoined, and he must remember it was 
 the apologue of an Irish peasant ; ^twd erat demon- 
 strandum. 
 
MRS. CARLyi^K. 
 
Ipart jfourtb. 
 
 There were few letters for the next three years 
 except brief invitations or rendezvouses, as I Hved 
 much in London, to attend Parliament, and saw 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle habitually. Her appearance 
 at that time was peculiarly interesting. Her face 
 was colourless but most expressive, answering 
 promptly to every emotion ; her eyes were frank 
 and pleasant, and her smile, which was gracious, 
 passed easily into banter or mockery. Ill-health 
 repressed the activity of her body, but not of her 
 spirit, which was as vivacious as of old. 
 
 There is one letter of this era worth printing as 
 an illustration of Carlyle's thoughtful kindness for 
 his friends, a disposition wholly incompatible with 
 the character prejudiced gossips have come to attri- 
 bute to him in recent times. 
 
 "Chelsea, February 6, 1853. 
 " Dear Duffy, — You never came to see me 
 again, which was not well done altogether; but I 
 am not writing of that at present. The time 
 approaches when you will return, and then pro- 
 bably we may do better. 
 
 187, 
 
1 88 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " I remember hearing you speak, when here, 
 about shelves for your books in your PimKco 
 lodging. Now, it strikes me I have, lying in this 
 garret, and of no use to anybody but the moths, 
 a portion of my own old book-case, complete all 
 but the nails ; a couple of standard sides — namely, 
 and perhaps six or seven shelves of four or five feet 
 long; a thing which any carpenter with sixpence 
 worth of nails can knock together for you in an 
 hour or two; which might hold 150 or 200 volumes; 
 and which it would be a small but real comfort for 
 me to know doing service for some friendly Chris- 
 tian in this manner ! Pray think of it, if you still 
 want such a thing ; and pray determine to have it. 
 It is lying here, safe though dusty in the garret, 
 tied together with ropes; and can be brought to 
 you in a barrow; and will be proud to assist in 
 your Parliamentary career; and when that is ended, 
 or changed, will cheerfully serve as firewood, and 
 make itself generally useful ! There is another 
 couple of ' standards ' here ; but before I saved 
 them for such a purpose, the headlong joiner had 
 cut up the shelves of these. ... So stands it ; 
 and will stand for you. In the name of the 
 Prophet ! 
 
 "Some one of your clerks is falling asleep at 
 his post, I think. The Nation, vv^hich did not fail 
 once in seven weeks to reach London on Saturday 
 night, now (this good while) does not, above once 
 in seven weeks, come till Monday morning — often 
 not till Monday at eleven o'clock (which latter 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 
 
 mistake I know is not yours) ; whereby, of course, 
 my use of it, and much more important uses it has 
 to serve in London, is much obstructed. A thing 
 that should be remedied if it easily can. 
 
 " One ' Thomas Muloch, Dublin,' sends me an 
 acrid little pamphlet the other morning, solemnly 
 denouncing and damning to the Pit, really in a 
 rather sincere and devout manner, ' loth the Irish 
 Churches ' (Protestant and Catholic), in the name 
 of Jesus, and of any instalment of salvation to 
 Ireland, of which native country he is a passionate 
 lover. I fear the poor man is maddish. But I 
 have thought a thousand times, since seeing Ireland, 
 to much the same effect, in the name of still higher 
 entities and considerations — though virtuously hold- 
 ing my peace on the subject. The ' Churches ' 
 alas, alas ! Of all preachers and prophets and 
 divine men wanted in Ireland (and in England, and 
 Scotland, and all the other wretched lands, where 
 hypocritical palaver reigns and rules and makes 
 the world fetid and accursed) is the ' Divine Drill- 
 Serjeant' (as I often say) who, with steel whips 
 or by whatever method, would teach poor canting 
 slaves to do a little of the things they eloquently 
 say (and even know) everywhere, and leave un^on&. 
 Poor Muloch ! Really is there any such totally 
 accursed sin as that (with no redeeming side at 
 all) : or even such general, nay universal one, in 
 this illustrious thrice-hopeful epoch of Free Press, 
 Emancipation, Toleration, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and 
 the rest of it ? 
 
190 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Adieu, dear Duffy; you need not write about 
 that sublime question of the deal shelves, only send 
 for them if fit to be accepted. I have been all this 
 winter, if not idle, terribly abstracted, terribly un- 
 successful in regard to getting any work done ! 
 That really is the one thing ' terrible ' in this uni- 
 verse. — Yours, ever truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 He took at first but limited notice of Parlia- 
 mentary men or affairs, but I brought Mrs. Carlyle 
 and her friend. Miss Jewsbury, to luncheon at the 
 House of Commons, where she met some old 
 friends, and her lively fancy played about the sub- 
 ject so habitually afterwards that Carlyle was in- 
 cited to take a little interest in it. He asked my 
 opinion from time to time of the notable men in 
 the Parliament of 1852, and uttered trenchant com- 
 ments on them, but he knew httle or nothing 
 personally of the men in question, and on reading 
 the notes I find them hardly worth publishing. 
 
 As session followed session I got more engrossed 
 in Parliamentary work, and less able to visit Chelsea 
 as of old. The work was sometimes so engrossing 
 as to exclude all other occupation. I served on a 
 Select Committee on the Irish Land Question at 
 that time, of which Lord Palmerston, Bright, 
 Sergeant Shee, Lucas, and other notable men were 
 members, and I frequently attended its sittings at 
 noon, and did not escape from the House of 
 Commons until after midnight, a life altogether 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 191 
 
 incompatible with social engagements. Finally, my 
 health failed, and I had to take a holiday, during 
 which a letter from Carlyle reached me. 
 
 " Cn-KLSEA, June 22, 1854. 
 "Dear Duffy, — I have called repeatedly at 
 your place, but without any definite answer, till 
 Sunday last, when the little girl informed me you 
 were ' not to come back this season ! ' ' Back ' 
 from Dublin or where, she could not say; nor, 
 indeed, give any other response at all, except as 
 to the negative fact, which has occasioned various 
 confused reflections in me ever since. Once, in 
 the Nation, I noticed the address of Malvern on 
 one of your papers; and a little while before, I 
 had seen with concern that some near relative had 
 been taken from you by death. Pray, on all 
 accounts, write me immediately a single word, 
 wherever you may be (at Malvern still, as I could 
 guess), to put an end to the freaks of imagination 
 at least. Something evidently is wrong, or else 
 I should have seen you long ago ; how much may 
 be wrong, it is better to know than to keep 
 guessing, in the morbid humour one gets into. 
 Alas ! calamities abound, and sorrows of a harsh 
 nature and also of a soft; and there is no want 
 of burdens for the poor pilgrim in this world — 
 who often gets foot-sore too, not so able to 
 struggle along with his load. I am afraid you are 
 not yourself in good health, in addition to all, but 
 
192 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 may have gone to Malvern, where indeed the fresh 
 hill breezes may do you good, though the medical 
 ' sheetings,' &c., not very much. 
 
 " I am myself in rather poor case this long 
 while; decidedly below par in bodily health, and 
 with a very fair proportion of other things to keep 
 my spirits from, rising above their due level ! My 
 work, too, which ought to be the consolation for 
 all sorrows, and is really the only conquest one 
 can make in this world, sticks obstinately in the 
 slough, these many long months, let me try and 
 wriggle as I will : in fact, it is the most ungainly 
 job I ever had ; and _^re enough to burn up such 
 a mass of sordid litter, and extract the thread of 
 gold out of it (if there be any in it), is actually 
 not at my disposal in my present mood. Let us 
 hope, let us hope, nevertheless ! National Palaver 
 and its affairs are without interest to me alto- 
 gether of late; and, in fact, lie below the horizon 
 as a thing I have no interest in. Crystal Palace, 
 Turk War, Policy of Lord John, do., do. Not an 
 ideal heroic world this ; no, not by any means !^ — 
 Yours ever truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 Talk with Thackeray. 
 
 During succeeding sessions I saw more of 
 Carlyle, but had no leisure for notes ; one pleasant 
 day, however, I find fully recorded in my diary : — 
 
 July 28 [1855]. 7/ Vej'o Tomaso brought me 
 to-day to see Thackeray. He is a large, robust. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 193 
 
 fresh-looking man, with hair turning grey. The ex- 
 pression of his face disappointed me ; the damaged 
 nose and bad teeth mar its otherwise benign effect, 
 and were imperfectly relieved by a smile which was 
 warm but hardly genial. He is near-sighted, and 
 said, "he must put on his glasses to have a good 
 look at me." He told me he had met some of my 
 friends in America, and liked them. John Dillon 
 was a modest fellow, and Meagher pleased him by 
 laughing at the popular ovations offered to him. 
 They both said whatever they thought, frankly; 
 rather a surprise to him, as in Ireland he had only 
 met three men who spoke the truth ; but then, he 
 added, smiling, he had not made the acquaintance 
 of the Young Irelanders. I asked him if one might 
 inquire the names of these three exceptional Irish- 
 men. That would not be fair, he replied, to the 
 remainder of his acquaintances; but he did not 
 mind saying that Deasy was one of them [Rickard 
 Deasy, then an Irish member, afterwards Attorney- 
 General, and finally Baron of the Exchequer in 
 Ireland]. He spoke of his intended lectures on 
 the House of Hanover, and said he sometimes 
 pondered the question whether every soul of these 
 
 people he had to speak of was not d d in the 
 
 end. The Marquis of Hertford receiving London 
 society in an attitude seen elsewhere only in 
 hospitals, surrounded by smiling crowds, who ate 
 his dinners and congratulated him on his good 
 looks, was a story from which he shrunk, which 
 could be told indeed nakedly only by Swift. 
 
 N 
 
194 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I asked him about the Lindsay-Layard agitation, 
 in which he had recently taken some part. He 
 said they had ruined an excellent cause amongst 
 them. Lindsay had made some remarkable state- 
 ments certainly, but unhappily they did not bear 
 investigation. Sir Charles Wood made pie of them. 
 Layard was a good, simple soul, altogether unfit 
 for the task he took in hand; he set him^self to 
 overthrow the aristocratic scheme of patronage, 
 and quite recently complained to him that the 
 aristocracy had ceased to ask him to dinner ! The 
 constitutional system was getting frightfully damaged 
 in England, and we could not count on a long life 
 for it in its present relations. I asked him how 
 we were to get on in Ireland, where we had 
 only the seamy side of the constitution ? He 
 said he had never doubted our right to rebel 
 against it, if we had only made sure of success ; 
 but in the name of social tranquillity and common 
 sense, he denied the legitimacy of unsuccessful 
 rebellion. 
 
 I rejoined that it was no more possible to make 
 sure beforehand that you were going to win in an 
 insurrection than in a game of roulette. You had 
 to take your chance in both cases. So far as my 
 reading carried me, I found that a successful re- 
 bellion was often preceded by an unsuccessful one, 
 which had the same identical provocation and justi- 
 fication as its more fortunate successor. I spoke 
 rapidly of the Irish famine, the exportation of the 
 natural food of the people to pay inordinate rents. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 195 
 
 the hopeless feebleness and fatuity of Lord John 
 Russell's government, and the horrors of Skull and 
 Skibereen, and I asked him to tell me, if he 
 were an Irishman, what he would have done under 
 the circumstances? He paused a moment, and 
 replied : "I would perhaps have done as you 
 did." 
 
 We afterwards walked out together towards 
 Hyde Park. We met an Italian image boy who 
 had a bust of Louis Napoleon among the figures 
 he carried on his head. Thackeray took off his hat 
 and saluted it, half, but only half, mockingly, and 
 murmured something about a man who understood 
 his business and mastered the art of government. 
 I said Carlyle's theory of governing by the best 
 man woidd be very satisfactory if we could always 
 contrive to catch the best man, but I objected under 
 any pretence to be governed by the worst, however 
 carefully he had studied the art. 
 
 We had been talking a little before of Prince 
 Albert's speech (about constitutional government 
 being on its trial), and Thackeray said that John 
 Lemoinne told him that he was reprimanded for 
 reflecting on it in the Journal des Debats, and that 
 he believed the instigation had come from Windsor. 
 The talk turned upon books, and I told him I had 
 noted with wonder the accuracy, or rather the 
 fitness, of the Irish names of men and places in 
 " Barry Lyndon " that being the point where a 
 stranger usually blunders or breaks down. He 
 said he had lived a good deal among Irish people 
 
N 196 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 in London and elsewhere. Carlyle graciously re- 
 frained from taking any part in the conversation, 
 which struck me as a fine piece of courtesy. 
 
 As we walked towards Chelsea, after parting 
 with Thackeray, Carlyle said that all this talk 
 about administrative reform was very idle and 
 worthless. The people of England lived by stead- 
 fast industry, and took no heed at all of questions 
 of patronage and promotion. The public service in 
 England was notoriously the honestest in Europe, 
 the least liable to be diverted from its duty by any 
 temptation, and that was nearly all one wanted to 
 know about it. If there was any possibility of 
 getting honest work done just now, there was much 
 need of quite other work than those people had in 
 hand. Think of the inorganic mass of men in the 
 disjointed districts called London, with a population 
 equal to that of half-a-dozen Greek States of old, 
 bestridden by aldermen and vestrymen, with all 
 their haranguing and debating apparatus, whom we 
 are ordered to obey (if it were possible) as the 
 guardians of our interests, but who could not 
 supply us from year's end to year's end with a 
 wholesome glass of clean water. 
 
 I said it might be of slight importance to pros- 
 perous people how the service was filled, but it was 
 not a matter of indifference to the considerable class 
 who found the public service their only road to 
 employment that was not servile. It seemed to me 
 a serious and dangerous injustice in the English 
 system that all the great prizes of public life were 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 197 
 
 reserved for the aristocracy, and all the petty prizes 
 for their nominees. 
 
 Carlyle replied that this assumption did not re- 
 present the actual fact as one found it in operation. 
 The higher classes, having more leisure and easier 
 access to Parliament, naturally came in for more of 
 the guerdons which were distributed in that region, 
 but probably no one was denied the share he 
 was fairly entitled to, especially in the highest 
 offices. 
 
 Edmund Burke, I said, was a conspicuous ex- 
 ample of one who had been denied his share. 
 
 Carlyle replied that he did not know what Edmund 
 Burke had to complain of He came to London 
 having nothing, and people there, the aristocracy 
 chiefly, made him a leading man in the business 
 he worked in; he became a Privy Councillor and 
 a Minister of the Crown, and died leaving a good 
 estate. This was not an inconsiderable payment 
 for the strange industry he was engaged in ; what 
 was to be desired more ? 
 
 Why, I replied, it was to be desired that he had 
 been recognised for what he undoubtedly was — 
 the brain and soul of his party. He was never 
 admitted to the Cabinet of which he framed the 
 policy, and which he defended in the House of 
 Commons with supreme ability. It seemed to me 
 a public scandal that Charles Fox was set over 
 the head of a man who taught him his business, 
 onl}'' because Fox was one of the aristocracy, 
 that is to say, was the son of a disreputable and 
 
198 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 unprincipled politician, who had grown rich by 
 nefarious jobbing, and who was made a peer 
 only because he had become intolerable to the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 The Cabinet, Carlyle replied, was in those days 
 composed for the most part of great peers, and 
 Burke, or any one on his behalf, might as reason- 
 ably complain that he was not made a marquis 
 as that he was not made a member of the Cabinet. 
 There is perpetually something above a man which 
 he does not attain, and it was good sense of a ver}^ 
 essential sort to be content without it. Burke's 
 achievements, which might have been conveniently 
 abridged, had obtained in substance the reward he 
 sought and expected. 
 
 I asked him about a lively little book, written 
 by one of the Lindsay-Layard party, in a dialect 
 which was then called Carlylese, and inquired if 
 he had read it. Yes, he said, he had looked into 
 it, and noted the resemblance I spoke of. It was 
 like his style, if he might be supposed to be a judge 
 of the matter, as like perhaps as the reflection of 
 his face in a dish-cover was like that entity. 
 
 He inquired whether the address of Malvern, 
 which he read in a letter of mine in the news- 
 papers, indicated that I had been at the water cure. 
 I said it did. I read a pamphlet of Bulwer Lytton's 
 entitled the " Confessions of a Water Patient," de- 
 'scribing the water cure as a magical remedy for 
 the exhaustion of literary or political work, and I 
 gave it a trial. The early hours, simple meals, 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 199 
 
 and absolute rest, were balsamic ; but I had slight 
 faith in the system, which was kept alive largely 
 by fables. We were told how patients were 
 carried into the establishment, and after a few 
 weeks walked out, but nothing was said of cases 
 where the patients walked in, and were carried 
 out in an oak box. The fanaticism of some of the 
 patients passed belief One poor fellow, who was 
 visibly fading away, told me that his relapses were 
 part of the cure : the doctor must break him down 
 before he could build him up ! Crowds of new 
 patients arrived every week, and nobody asked 
 what became of those who disappeared. My time 
 passed pleasantly enough, as there were intelligent 
 people to talk to — Indian officers, Oxford professors, 
 Californian diggers, and London men and women 
 of letters. 
 
 Carlyle said he had marvelled to note during the 
 summer months what a steady stream of simpletons 
 set from London to Worcestershire. 
 
 Yes, I said, simpletons tempered by sages. My 
 bathman told me, and every one who would listen 
 to him, of his attendance on Mr. Carlyle, and of 
 that great man's behaviour under the douche, or 
 wrapped in wet sheets like an Egyptian mummy 
 swathed in its cerements. The bathman was a 
 living witness that a man may still occasionally be 
 a hero to his z'a/ei de cJiainbre. 
 
 Carlyle laughed, and said that it was very proper 
 that he should be found out. A number of friendly 
 people, John Forster principally, he believed, in- 
 
200 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 duced him to go to Malvern on the evidence of 
 Bulwer Lytton that it was a panacea for dyspepsia 
 and all its kin, and he had fared as a man deserves 
 to fare who puts faith in such testimony. He was 
 somewhat ashamed of the adventure. Dr. Gully 
 was not without insight, but somebody said — it was 
 probably Thackeray — of the other practitioners that 
 the system had been discovered in Germany by an 
 inspired peasant, and was administered in England 
 by peasants who were not inspired. 
 
 Sir Arthur Helps. 
 
 I asked him about Mr. Helps, whose " Essays 
 in the Intervals of Business " I had read with even 
 more pleasure than " Friends in Council," though 
 the vivid talk of the " Friends " gave a freshness 
 to commonplace. Elsmere seemed to me, I said, 
 as dramatically conceived and as consistently drawn 
 as Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 
 Mr. Helps, he answered, had been over in 
 Ireland in an official situation, private secretary 
 to the Lord-Lieutenant or other eminent personage, 
 but he left this place to retire on literature exclu- 
 sively. He had been a rich man, but latterly 
 had lost some of his fortune somehow, and now 
 lived near Southampton and wrote books. He 
 was not at all a considerable man, but he had 
 some truth in him, and pretty bits of fancy too. 
 One of his little books reduced him to death's door 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 201 
 
 in producing it, and there was a long convalescence 
 in each case. He was writing now on the slave 
 trade from the far-off beginning of it. He was 
 rather wearisome from the little bits of theories 
 and speculations he kept talking and talking about, 
 and he had a bad fashion, which he learned up 
 in London, of making a joke of everything that 
 turned up, even when one could perceive he was 
 serious and anxious at bottom. When Emerson 
 was in England, Helps met him and Carlyle down 
 at Stonehenge, and brought them home with him. 
 The circumstance remained in his memory because 
 Emerson broached some amazing theories there 
 about war altogether ceasing in the world, but 
 when he was closely pressed on the method of 
 this prodigious change, luckily for him luncheon 
 was announced, and he would not speak one word 
 more. 
 
 Australia. 
 
 In the autumn of 1855, I resigned my seat in 
 the House of Commons and emigrated to Australia. 
 The end for which I entered Parliament had been 
 rendered hopeless by the perfidy of some of my 
 colleagues, and I resolved to mark my sense of 
 the condition to which they had reduced the Irish 
 cause by peremptory retirement.^ In July I said 
 farewell to the Carlyles, sailed three months later, 
 
 ^ The story is told in detail in the " League of North and 
 South." Chapman & Hall. 
 
202 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and landed at Melbourne in the beginning of 1856. 
 During my first three years in Australia the onl}^ 
 communications from Carlyle were a couple of brief 
 letters of introduction; but in 1859 the stream 
 began to flow anew. 
 
 The reference in the next letter to a town alludes 
 to the township of Carlyle on the Murray river, 
 which, as Minister of Public Lands, I had named 
 after the philosopher. 
 
 " Chelsea, London, AJ>ri7 13, 1859. 
 " Dear Duffy, — I confess I have been remiss 
 in writing to you ; shamefully so, if you did not 
 know the circumstances, or believe in them with- 
 out knowing ! To want of remembering you I 
 will by no means plead guilty ; and I have had no 
 letters, or one and a /i a// (with excellent continua- 
 tion by Mrs. Callan) which were heartily welcomed 
 — welcomer than hundreds that did get answer of 
 some kind ! The truth is I have been swimming 
 in bottomless abysses, whipt and whirled about 
 as man never was, for long years past ; and there 
 are still many months of it ahead ; it was afte7' 
 all this should have once rolled itself away that I 
 always want to write to you, a free man once more 
 (no Prussian or other rubbish crushing the life out 
 of me), till which fine consummation, though my 
 conscience did a little back upon me now and then, 
 it backed to no purpose, as you have seen ! This 
 is the true history of that phenomenon ; and I leave 
 it with you. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. -203 
 
 " As I said, there are months and twelvemonths 
 still of that sad Prussian operative pressing on me ; 
 and one knows not how long the foolish speech- 
 lessness might have lasted, had it not been for a 
 message that arrived this morning, the letter here 
 enclosed, which cannot brook being neglected by 
 me. I shove Frederick aside, therefore (more luck 
 to him), and hasten, with a bad or good grace, to 
 do the needful. 
 
 " Please read carefully that enclosed letter from 
 Macready to me ; it will bring the whole case 
 accurately before you ; and if you can do anything 
 in it, I will earnestly request you, for my sake 
 withal, to do it with your best might. I know not 
 if you are aware, as I am, that the private worth 
 and merits of Mr. Macready, senior, are of the 
 highest order; a man of scrupulous veracity, cor- 
 rectness, integrity, a kind of Grandisonian style 
 of magnanimity, both in substance and manner, 
 visible in all his conduct. I have often said, look- 
 ing at his ways as a ' public ' person, ' Here is a 
 playhouse manager, dependent on the populace 
 for everything, and there is no bishop of souls in 
 England who dare appeal to the truth, and defy 
 the devil and his angels, except this very singular ' 
 bishop, whose diocese is Drury Lane. In fact, I 
 greatly esteem the man ; and his domestic losses 
 and distresses (loss of an excellent, noble, little 
 wife ; loss of child after child, so soon as they 
 grew up ; loss of, &c. &c.) have filled me and others 
 with sympathy for him in these years. I add only 
 
204 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 that he is an Irishman (that his wife was Irish, a 
 pretty little being, whom I think he found an actress, 
 and whom he left a high and real gentlewoman in 
 her sphere), so that you see the whole case is 
 Irish ; and if Macready, junior, whom I do not 
 know, but whose father's account of him I credit 
 to the last particular, ca7t be launched in an honest 
 career, and made useful among his fellow-creatures, 
 it will be, on every side, in the line of your voca- 
 tion. This, I think, is about the substance of all 
 I had to say. You will take it all for truth, my 
 exactest notion of the truth ; and then I must 
 leave it with you. The young man will appear in 
 person, and you can take survey of him. What 
 is fairly possible I have no doubt you will do ; 
 and I need not repeat that it would be pleasant to 
 me among its other results. So enough. 
 
 " The ' Township of Carlyle ' (more power to it) 
 amused us very much, and there was in it a kind 
 of interest, pathetic and other, which was higher 
 than amusement. ' Stuart-Mill Street,' ' Sterling 
 Street ' (especially Jane Street), I could almost have 
 wept a little (had any tears now remained me) at 
 these strange handwritings on the wall ; stern and 
 sad, the meaning of that to me, as well as laugh- 
 able. In short, it is a very pretty device ; and if 
 in the chief square or place they one day put the 
 statue of C. G. D. himself, when he has become 
 head in the colony and led it into the good way 
 (which is far off just now), I shall by no means be 
 sorry. For the rest, the Plans, &c., of Carlyle are 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 205 
 
 firmly bound and secured, along with a learned 
 volume of Scottish antiquarian biography, and there 
 wait till they become antique if possible. I send 
 the most cordial regards to Mrs. Callan, amiable, 
 much suffering body. — I am, as of old, yours truly, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 This was the letter enclosed : — 
 
 " Sherborne, ^prz7 13, 1859. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Carlyle, — I have a great 
 favour to ask of you, a most important service; 
 which, in the belief that, if you can, you will render 
 it, becomes on my part a duty to request of you. 
 I might introduce the subject with preparatory 
 apologies, but I know I should gain nothing by 
 them in your opinion or in the furtherance of the 
 object of my application ; and that, if there should 
 be impediments to your acquiescence in my solicita- 
 tion, they will be valid ones. 
 
 " My second son, after some indecision, adopted 
 of his own free choice the military profession, and 
 entered the East India Company's service with the 
 most hopeful prospects of advancement. Unhappily 
 he was not proof to the idle and reckless course of 
 life too often pursued by Indian officers, and, after 
 a brief career of folly and extravagance, was obliged 
 from insubordinately resenting the rebuke of his 
 commanding officer, to resign his commission. 
 
 " I have reason to believe he is now thoroughly 
 awakened to a sense of his indiscretion, and is 
 
2o6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 deeply repentant of the ill conduct into which he 
 has been betrayed. I have full faith in the sincerity 
 of his penitence, and of his desire and determination 
 to redeem himself in character, if he can only obtain 
 the means of exerting himself creditably. 
 
 " He is still in Bombay, where he has been un- 
 successful (as indeed might naturally be expected) 
 in all his endeavours to obtain employment. On 
 all accounts it is desirable that he should leave 
 India; and Australia seems the only land, where 
 by diligence, endurance, and upright bearing, he 
 may have a chance of raising himself in the esteem 
 of friends and in his own respect. Our mutual 
 friend, Forster, informs me that Mr. Gavan Duffy, 
 who holds office there, which gives him the dis- 
 tribution of employment to a very considerable 
 extent, would be happy in paying attention to any 
 suggestion of yours. Here is my prayer : if you 
 can befriend my unfortunate boy with your interest, 
 he may yet do credit to his family and to your 
 recommendation. My last wish would be a sine- 
 cure, or even easy work for him. The discipline 
 of systematic effort is needful to sustain his good 
 resolutions, and may be the making of him. His 
 colonel, in writing to me, laid stress upon the point, 
 that in his errors he knew of nothing to bring his 
 honour into question; and his recent letters give me 
 assurance, that if opportunity be granted to him, he 
 will never again abuse it. 
 
 " Can you assist me in this most pressing need, 
 either by writing direct to Mr. Duffy, or through 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 207 
 
 the hands of my son Edward ? He is only 23, and 
 has drunk deeply enough of adversity's bitter cup 
 to receive from it a healthful tone for the life that 
 may be before him. He is not without abilities, and 
 with industry may turn them to good account. 
 ■ " I am bold to think, that if you can thus greatly 
 serve me you will do it. I will not say, being sure 
 you know, how gratefully I should receive this 
 saving act of friendship from you. I have been 
 going to write to Mrs. Carlyle about an intimation 
 of a western journey, which she held out ; will you 
 say to her, with my most affectionate regards, that 
 I defer the letter but a little longer ? — Believe me, 
 dear Mr. Carlyle, always and most sincerely yours, 
 
 "W. C. Macready." 
 
 Macready junior duly appeared, and was a gentle- 
 manly prepossessing young fellow, with consider- 
 able intelligence and observation. He spoke of his 
 Indian experience with perfect unreserve, and be- 
 wailed the ruin of young officers from indolence, and 
 the habit of tippling brandy-and-water which the 
 climate induced. He spoke like one who saw and 
 deplored errors of his own, which he would scorn 
 to conceal. I was pleased with him, and offered 
 him an admission to the Civil Service of the colony, 
 where none of the temptations which assailed him 
 in military service need exist, and where he might 
 re-establish himself in the good opinion of his 
 father. He surprised me by replying that he had 
 
2o8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 no desire to enter the public service ; he believed 
 he possessed some of the gifts which made his 
 father famous, and would prefer to try the stage. 
 I predicted that his father would disapprove of this 
 design, but he was immovable. I took him to Mr. 
 Coppin, the manager of the principal Melbourne 
 theatre, and as the young man thought that light 
 comedy was his speciality, Mr. Coppin agreed to 
 give him an opportunity of playing Captain Absolute, 
 provided his real name appeared in the play-bills. 
 Mr. Macready drew one great audience, but not a 
 second, and he gradually descended in the theatrical 
 scale till he reached the bottom, and finally died 
 prematurely. 
 
 His father acknowledged my slight services 
 warmly, and I kept an eye on the young man 
 as long as there was any hope of helping him 
 effectually. 
 
 "Sherborne House, Sherborne, 
 Dorset, _/(2;z?(ta;j 24, i860. 
 
 "My Dear Sir, — It is not an easy thing to 
 satisfy oneself in acknowledging benefits of the 
 greatest value, and which are beyond the reach 
 of requital. I am quite unequal to the task. 
 You have done all that a friend could do to with- 
 draw my son from a dangerous, I may say an 
 evil course, and aided him, as far as prudence 
 could warrant, even when persisting in his most 
 blamable resolution. 
 
 " My thanks are poor and weak in conveying to 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 209 
 
 you my sense of your great kindness, and of my 
 lasting obligation to you ; but you will accept them, 
 I am sure, in the spirit of sincerity in which they 
 are offered. 
 
 "You will still further oblige me by drawing 
 on me at Messrs. Ranson, Bouverie, & Co., i Pall 
 Mall East, for the ;^I0 which you so obligingly 
 furnished my son. He had no right to be in 
 need of it, and the adoption of the mode of life 
 he has resorted to, he knew, is beyond all others 
 most repugnant to my wishes, 
 
 " I need not add my request that you will not 
 make him any further advance. It is a sad re- 
 flection, that he should have turned to such a 
 purpose the means I had used for re-establishing 
 him in a respectable position. But for all you have 
 done to deter him and forward my views for him, 
 I am, and must ever be, your truly grateful debtor. 
 — Believe me, my dear sir, your deeply obliged 
 and very faithful, W. C. Macready. 
 
 "Hon. Gavan Duffy.'' 
 
 I made some renewed efforts to restore the young 
 man to serious courses, which his father acknow- 
 ledged profusely. 
 
 "6 Wellington Square, Cheltenham, 
 August 7, i860. 
 
 "My dear Sir, — I feel more obliged to you 
 than I have powers of expression for. You have 
 done all in your power to rescue my son from the 
 
 O 
 
2IO THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 desperate course in which he has deliberately pre- 
 cipitated himself, and my gratitude to you for such 
 invaluable service is sincere and most fervent. 
 
 " I wish I could encourage the hope, that he may 
 yet see the error of his ways, and avail himself of 
 your ready wish to aid him in recovering himself. 
 I can only say, God grant it, again and again 
 thanking you for your great kindness. 
 
 "With every cordial wish for your health and 
 happiness. — I remain, my dear sir, most sincerely 
 and gratefully yours, W. C. Macready. 
 
 " Hon. Gavan Duffy." 
 
 Sir Henry Parkes. 
 
 The Parkes to whom the next note refers was 
 Sir Henry Parkes, Prime Minister of New South 
 Wales down to the close of last year, but, at the 
 time Carlyle wrote, Emigration Agent for his colony 
 in England. His fellow Emigration Agent was 
 William Bede Dalley, on whom public opinion in 
 England has bestowed a memorial tablet in St. Paul's 
 for his share in the Australian expedition to the 
 Soudan. 
 
 "Chelsea, November lo, 1861. 
 
 "Dear Duffy, — Your friend Parkes, who did 
 
 not present himself till quite lately, ' hearing I was 
 
 so busy,' came the other evening, and gave us a 
 
 few pleasant hours. We find him a robust, effec- 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 211 
 
 tive, intelligent, and sincere kind of man, ex- 
 tremely loyal to C. G. D. ; which is not one of his 
 smallest merits here. He gave me several more 
 precise notions about Australian life ; seemed to 
 be thoroughly at home in the anarchic democratic 
 Universal-Palaver element, and to swim about it, 
 with a candid joy, like a fish in water ; and indeed, 
 I could not but own that in comparison with the old 
 Colonial Office and Parliamentary-Fogie methods 
 of administration, it might be a real improvement; 
 and that, in short, in the present anarchic condition 
 of England, there was nothing for it, but to let her 
 colonies go, in this wild manner, down the wind, 
 whither they listed, till once it became insupportable 
 to the poor minority of wise men among them- 
 selves, and they (probably sword-in-hand) could 
 resolve to take some course with it, life to them 
 having grown worse than death under such condi- 
 tions. It is my prophecy for Yankeeland, and for 
 England, and for all countries with National-Palaver 
 and Penny Newspapers in them ; if the gods intend 
 that these nations are to continue above ground, 
 said nations will have to abolish, or tightly chain 
 up, all that (so far as I can form the last opinion), 
 or if the nation prefers not to abolish, it can at its 
 own good pleasure go down ; to very /iot quarters 
 indeed, and will find i;ie a resigned man, whichever 
 way ! But I waste my paper sadly. 
 
 "The worst news Parkes gave us was, that you 
 did not seem to be in good health ; bad health he 
 sometimes defined your situation to be, when we 
 
212 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 pressed him for details. That you are out of 
 office for the last eighteen months is, since you 
 have means of modest livelihood independent, rather 
 a pleasure to hear ; but this of health — Alas, alas ! 
 could not the Victoria people be persuaded to send 
 j/ou as their * Agent ' hitherward ? Anything that 
 would bring you home, how welcome were it to us ! 
 Or would not your means, though modest,, enable 
 you to live /lere as well as at Melbourne ? What 
 a book j/ou might write on that wild continent of 
 things ; what books and instructions ; how much 
 good you might really do. If not loaded with 
 nuggets, if only able to live as a poor man, so 
 much the better, on my word. You promised to 
 come home at any rate, and see us again. If you 
 delay too long, some of us will not be discoverable 
 here, when you land expectant. I write to try for 
 a letter, at the greatest length you can afford, and 
 without long time, elucidating these and the cognate 
 points, which you need not doubt are at all times 
 interesting to me. Many people, as you may fancy, 
 have criticised you to me ; I answer always, * Yes, 
 yes, and of all the men I saw in Ireland, the two 
 best J so far as I could judge, were Lord George Hill 
 and Charles Duffy, even he and that other ! ' 
 
 "By the lex talionis I have not the least right 
 to a letter; but if you knew the case here, you 
 would completely drop that plea. It is a literal 
 fact that I have not, for years past, any leisure at 
 all; but have had to withdraw out of all society, 
 and employ every available minute of my day 
 
k^)^ _ fvL , 1 <L.J' I^Ci 
 
 l.c.C^y'nl 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 213 
 
 (hardly four good hours to be had out of it with 
 never such thrift, in these sad circumstances !) for 
 running a race, which is too hterally a flight from 
 the infernal Hunt, who is at my heels till I get out 
 of that bad Prussian business. I ride daily, have 
 ridden on a horse, which I call * Fritz ' (an amiable, 
 swift, loyal creature, now falling old) for eight years 
 past : I think about 24,000 miles or so in quest 
 'of health to go on with,' and do not write the 
 smallest note if it can possibly be helped ! This is 
 true, and I will say no more of it ; only let it serve 
 you for an explanation, and in the course of next 
 summer or autumn, I do now hope I shall be out 
 of this unutterable quagmire (dark to me as Erebus, 
 too often, and too long), and shall then have more 
 leisure, leisure to the end of the chapter, as I in- 
 tend ! For I have for once got a complete bellyful 
 of * work ' — curiously enough reserved for me to 
 finish off with. In my young time I had no work 
 that was not a mere flea-bite to this which lay ap- 
 pointed for my old days. 
 
 " It is only by accident I have found time and 
 spirit to write you so much. My intention, un- 
 executed for weeks and months back, was only to 
 send you the enclosed bad photograph accompanied 
 by a word or two, which might stand as apology 
 for a letter. I dare say you recognise the riding 
 figure, though he has little or no face allowed. 
 The standing gentleman is Frederic Chapman, 
 junior, of the firm, a prosperous gentleman who 
 has dismounted from a horse ditto. There is a 
 
214 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Strange worth in indisputable certainty, however 
 Hmited. I wish you would send me such a sun- 
 picture from Melbourne ; it would be very welcome 
 here. Will you give my affectionate regards to 
 Mrs. Callan ? Parkes told me the doctor had got 
 an honourable and profitable employment in his 
 noble profession, which I was very glad of. My 
 wife desires to be remembered, as do I, kindly to 
 
 Mrs. D , of whom I have still an agreeable 
 
 shadow left. — Yours, ever truly, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 That visit home referred to in Carlyle's last letter 
 was made in the beginning of 1865, after ten years' 
 residence in Australia. A few days after my return, 
 before I had time to visit Chelsea, I had a pleasant 
 note from Mrs. Carlyle. 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
 
 Wednesday, April 16, 1865. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Duffy, — Mr. Carlyle read in a 
 newspaper ten days ago that you had 'returned 
 from Australia, and were stopping in London.' I 
 said it couldn't be true ; for you wouldn't have been 
 many hours in London without coming to see us. 
 But Mr. C. thought otherwise — that you might have 
 found no time yet — and he desired me to put 
 George Cooke (a friend of ours who can find out 
 everything) on discovering where you were lodged. 
 Had this failed, I suppose he would have advertised 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 215 
 
 for you in the Times ; if still you had made no 
 sign! 
 
 "You may figure then how glad I was when 
 your letter and basket arrived to me this morning, 
 just as I was starting off for my long daily drive. 
 Since I came back I have done nothing but admire 
 the various presents you have sent me, and think 
 how kind it was of you to collect these things for 
 me so far away. 
 
 " But we want to see you ; when will you come ? 
 
 "Mr. C. says he is going to call for you to- 
 morrow morning ; but most likely you will be gone 
 out. So it would be best to make an appointment 
 to meet here at dinner, say at six o'clock, when a 
 man's day's work is or ought to be done ! Name 
 any day you like, only let it be soon, if you please, 
 for I am impatient to see you. — Affectionately yours, 
 
 "Jane W. Carlyle. 
 
 " Hon. Chas. Gavan Duffy, Grosvenor Hotel." 
 
 I remained a couple of years in Europe, and 
 when in London went to Cheyne Row constantly. 
 On Sunday I generally walked two or three hours 
 in the parks with Carlyle; he talked as frankly 
 as of old, but I was closely engaged and had seldom 
 leisure to make notes. A few exceptional conversa- 
 tions, however, I have found in a diary in which 
 I kept reminiscences of travel. 
 
 When I saw him first he thanked me for acting 
 so promptly on his letters of introduction, and 
 
2i6 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 inquired if these sort of things were commonly of 
 much use to emigrants. I said they were like 
 French assignats, the emission was so excessive 
 that no one any longer wished to touch them. It 
 was easy to write a letter, but it was cruel to 
 write it, if it raised hopes which could not be 
 realised. And as of old there were forged assignats 
 in circulation ; a man brought me from New York 
 a familiar and aJEfectionate letter which I had reason 
 in the end to believe he purchased, and it was from 
 a person whose name I had never heard before. I 
 was most provoked by introductions from men in 
 Parliament and office who had patronage of their 
 own. There was a case in the English newspapers 
 a few years ago arising out of a complaint a school- 
 mistress made against a Minister of State, one of 
 the most conspicuous men in Europe indeed, and 
 shortly afterwards the lady and her husband 
 appeared in Melbourne, and he called upon me 
 with a couple of impressive introductions from 
 important persons. I asked him if he were the 
 plaintiff in such and such a case, and he said 
 
 " Yes." I asked if the charges against Lord P 
 
 were well founded. "Ah," he said, "that was a 
 long story," "Well," I replied, "I must under- 
 stand your long story very distinctly before I take 
 these letters of introduction into consideration." I 
 extracted from him by patient cross-examination 
 that certain influential friends had advised him to 
 drop the case, that the same generous patrons had 
 sent him to Australia with a couple of hundred 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 217 
 
 pounds in his pocket, and armed with irresistible 
 letters of recommendation. I was in doubt at the 
 outset whether he was an honest man driven to 
 emigrate by powerful enemies, a blackmailer who 
 had made a false charge against an eminent states- 
 man, or an injured man who had salved the wound 
 to honour by a handful of money. He left me in 
 no doubt upon the point, and I showed him to the 
 door and threw his letters of introduction into the 
 waste-paper basket. 
 
 Carlyle inquired who had sent the letters, and 
 when he heard their names condemned them 
 sharply. One of my friends in London after- 
 wards told me that when the septuagenarian (who 
 had as little sense of moral diffidence as one of 
 Congreve's fine gentlemen) was rallied by his 
 colleagues on this unseemly adventure, he mur- 
 mured gaily, " Que voulez-vouz vion ami ? Boys 
 will be boys." 
 
 Carlyle told me an amusing story about the same 
 eminent personage. There was a State dinner at 
 his house, including the cream of the official world. 
 Every one present except the wife of the American 
 Minister was familiar with a scandal which attri- 
 buted to their host illegitimate relations with the 
 wife of one of his colleagues, whom he married 
 after her husband's death. Her son during the 
 first marriage was brought in to dessert at the 
 State dinner. When he approached the American 
 lady she put her hand on the boy's head, and look- 
 ing affectionately at her host, exclaimed, " Ah, my 
 
2i8 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 lord, no one need ask who is this young gentle- 
 man's papa." 
 
 I spoke to him of Cobden, whose death I had 
 heard of with the deepest regret, from the pilot who 
 came on board our ship in the Channel, who was 
 full of the tragic news. Yes, he said, a pack of idle 
 shrieking creatures were going about crying out 
 that the great Richard was dead, as if the world 
 was coming to an end, which it was not at all, at 
 least in that regard. Bright, he considered one of 
 the foolishest creatures he had ever heard of, 
 clamouring about America and universal suffrage, 
 as if there was any sensible man anywhere in the 
 world who put the smallest confidence in that sort 
 of thing now-a-days. Their free trade was the 
 most intense nonsense that ever provoked human 
 patience. The people of Australia were quite right 
 to protect their industries and teach their young 
 men trades in complete disregard of Parliamentary 
 and platform palaver. No nation ever got manu- 
 factures in any other way. 
 
 I said it was not desirable to have a permanent 
 population of diggers ready to fly from " rush " to 
 rush, as new discoveries were made, but, if possible, 
 a settled population engaged in all the ordinary 
 pursuits of life ; and Australians were willing to 
 make a sacrifice to secure this end. They did 
 right, he said, and I might lay this to heart, that of 
 all the mad pursuits any people ever took up gold 
 digging was the maddest and stupidest. If they 
 got as much gold as would make a bridge from 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 219 
 
 Australia to Europe it would not be worth a mealy 
 potato to mankind. 
 
 The next time I saw him he told me that he 
 had consented to be nominated Lord Rector of 
 Edinburgh University on condition that no in- 
 augural address should be required from him. His 
 rival was Disraeli, who beat him before at Glasgow 
 — being a person altogether more agreeable to the 
 popular taste. Madame, who was present, assured 
 me, however, that an address would be forthcoming 
 in good time. He made Hght of the affair, treating 
 it as a bore, which perhaps, after all, it was better 
 to endure patiently, since certain persons took an 
 interest and had taken trouble in the business. Both 
 he and she have a repressed but very natural and 
 justifiable pride in it nevertheless. 
 
 Two days later I went over to Cheyne Row and 
 found Madame going out to dine with Lady William 
 Russell, I drove with her and had a very pleasant 
 talk. She is frankly proud of the Lord Rectorship 
 intended for Carlyle, and declares that he must 
 deliver an address. She told with admirable humour 
 a story of her going to inquire for a lost dog, to 
 the shop of one of the gentry whose profession 
 is to find and lose dogs. When she entered she 
 meant to ask him if he sold dogs, but her mind 
 was so possessed by the actual facts of the case, 
 that she blurted out, " Pray, sir, do you steal 
 dogs ? " Returned to Cheyne Row, where two 
 Southern Americans, Colonel La Trobe and Mr. 
 Thomson, were with Carlyle. They were evi- 
 
220 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 dently delighted with Carlyle's pro-slavery opinions. 
 He insists that the South cannot be ruled on New 
 England principles, and that towards any solution 
 of the difficulty it would be indispensable to return 
 to some modification of slave-holding. 
 
 I must mention a couple of incidents at this 
 period which will not surprise those who knew 
 Carlyle, but are hard to reconcile with the new 
 theory of his domineering disposition and impatience 
 of contradiction. In fact, good-humoured and good- 
 natured dissent were never accepted with more 
 equanimity and cordiality by any man, and if it 
 bore a little hard on himself or his opinions, it had 
 not the worse reception for that. 
 
 One Sunday, walking to Battersea Park with 
 two or three friends, one of whom since became a 
 judge and another was an eminent man of letters, 
 we came on a street preacher haranguing a mob at 
 the top of his voice : " Will you open your ears 
 to the word of God, my brethren ? " he cried : " Do 
 you accept this message which I bring you from 
 the fountain of living truth ? " " Not altogether, 
 my friend, if you insist upon knowing," Carlyle 
 whispered with comical emphasis when we had 
 passed the preacher. " And why not ? " asked one 
 of his friends. "You reject him with scorn, but 
 what he looks to you is precisely what the first 
 Puritan looked to Laud or Strafford — an ignorant 
 fanatic dogmatising on questions which he did not 
 understand." 
 
 One evening he was declaiming against Oxford 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 221 
 
 converts, a theme which he knew I disliked, for 
 Dr. Newman was an honoured friend. When he 
 had finished I told him that a comrade of mine 
 was fond of saying that Carlyle's contempt for 
 Newman suggested Satan disparaging the archangel 
 Michael. "Why, sir, Michael (Satan would pro- 
 bably say), is a poor creature ; he has never seen 
 the world, but dozed away life in unquestioning 
 service and submission. Michael, if one will con- 
 sider it well, has the intellect of a cherub, a cherub, 
 you will please to understand, docked at the 
 shoulders, with nothing left but a bullet head to 
 construct little bits of sermons and syllogisms." 
 
 Carlyle laughed, and said he would have to insist 
 in the end on my naming this anonymous critic who 
 was for ever turning up as counsel for the other 
 side. He manifestly suspected that I myself was 
 the unknown critic, but this pleasant parody on 
 Carlyle's method had been actually improvised over 
 the dinner-table by the late Judge O'Hagan. 
 
 Current Literature. 
 
 I inquired shortly after seeing him whether he 
 would follow Frederick by any other historical 
 study. No, he said, he would probably write no 
 more books ; writing books was a task to which 
 a man could not be properly encouraged in these 
 times. Modern literature was all purposeless and 
 distracted, and led he knew not where. Its pro- 
 
222 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 fessors were on the wrong path just now, and he 
 beheved the world would soon discover that some 
 practical work done was worth innumerable " Oliver 
 Twists" and "Harry Lorrequers," and any amount 
 of other ingenious dancing on the slack rope. The 
 journalism which called itself critical had grown 
 altogether Gallic, and exulted over the windy plati- 
 OJtudes of Lam^rtine and the erotics of George 
 Sand. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, who was present, said we had small 
 right to throw the first stone at George Sand, though 
 she had been caught in the same predicament as 
 the woman of old, if we considered what sort of 
 literary ladies might be found in London at present. 
 
 I'^'M. ^ci'i vV'.'^^^^ one was first told that the strong woman of 
 the Westminster Review had gone off with a man 
 whom we all knew, it was as startling an announce- 
 ment as if one heard that a woman of your acquaint- 
 ance had gone off with the strong man at Astley's ; 
 but that the partners in this adventure had set up 
 as moralists was a graver surprise. To renounce 
 George Sand as a teacher of morals was right 
 enough, but it was scarcely consistent with making 
 so much of our own George in that capacity, A 
 marvellous teacher of morals, surely, and still more 
 marvellous in the other character, for which nature 
 had not provided her with the outfit supposed to be 
 essential. 
 
 ^. St e.^x/'•€/<!l The gallant, I said, was as badly equipped for an 
 Adonis, and conqueror of hearts. Yes, Carlyle 
 replied, he was certainly the ugliest little fellow 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 223 
 
 you could anywhere meet, but he was lively and 
 pleasant. In this final adventure it must be admitted 
 he had escaped from worse, and might even be said 
 to have ranged himself. He had originally married 
 a bright little woman, daughter of Swinfin Jervis, 
 a disreputable Welsh member ; but every one knew 
 how that adventure had turned out. Miss Evans 
 advised him to quit a household which had broken 
 bounds in every direction. His proceeding was not 
 to be applauded, but it. could scarcely be said that 
 he had srone from bad to worse. 
 
 A Dispute. 
 
 In all our intercourse for more than a generation 
 I had only one quarrel with Carlyle, which occurred 
 about this time, and I wish to record it because, 
 in my opinion, he behaved generously and even 
 magnanimously. Commenting on some transaction 
 of the day, I spoke with indignation of the treatment 
 of Ireland by her stronger sister. Carlyle replied 
 that if he must say the whole truth, it was his 
 opinion that Ireland had brought all her misfor- 
 tunes on herself. She had committed a great sin 
 in refusing and resisting the Reformation. In 
 England, and especially in Scotland, certain men 
 who had grown altogether intolerant of the con- 
 dition of the world, arose and swore that this thing 
 should not continue though the earth and the devil 
 united to uphold it, and their vehement protest 
 
224 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 was heard by the whole universe, and whatever 
 had been done for human liberty from that time 
 forth, in the English Commonwealth, in the French 
 Revolution, and the like, was the product of this 
 protest. It was a great sin for nations to darken 
 their eyes against light hke this, and Ireland, which 
 had persistently done so, was punished accordingly. 
 It was hard to say how far England was blamable 
 in trying by trenchant laws to compel her into the 
 right course, till in latter times it was found the 
 attempt was wholly useless, and then properly given 
 up. He found, and any one might see who looked 
 into the matter a httle, that countries had pros- 
 pered or fallen into helpless ruin in exact proportion 
 as they had helped or resisted this message. The 
 most peaceful, hopeful nations in the world just now 
 were the descendants of the men who had said 
 " Away with all your trash ; we will believe in 
 none of it ; we scorn your threats of damnation ; 
 on the whole, we prefer going down to hell with a 
 true story in our mouths to gaining heaven by any 
 holy legerdemain." Ireland refused to believe and 
 must take the consequences, one of which, he would 
 venture to point out, was a population preter- 
 naturally ignorant and lazy. 
 
 I was very angry, as he knew my opinions on 
 these points, and had no justification for a homily. 
 I replied vehemently, that the upshot of his discourse 
 was that Ireland was rightly trampled upon, and 
 ' plundered for three centuries, for not believing in 
 the Thirty-nine Articles ; but did he believe in a tittle 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 225 
 
 of them himself? If he did beheve them, what was 
 the meaning of his exhortations to get rid of 
 Hebrew old clothes, and put off Hebrew spectacles ? 
 If he did not believe them, it seemed to me that he 
 might, on his own showing, be trampled upon, and 
 robbed as properly as Ireland for rejecting what 
 he called the manifest truth. Queen Elizabeth, or 
 her father, or any of the Englishmen or Scotchmen 
 who rose for the deliverance of the world, and 
 so forth, would have made as short work of him as 
 they did of Popish recusants. Ireland was ignorant, 
 he said, but did he take the trouble of con- 
 sidering that for three generations to seek educa- 
 tion was an offence strictly prohibited and sternly 
 punished by law. Down to the time of the Reform 
 Act, and the coming into power of the Reformers, 
 the only education tendered to the Irish people 
 was mixed with the soot of hypocrisy and pro- 
 fanation. When I was a boy, in search of educa- 
 tion, there was not in a whole province, where the 
 successors of these English and Scotch prophets 
 had had their own way, a single school for Catholic 
 boys above the condition of a Poor School. My 
 guardian had to determine whether I should do 
 without education, or seek it in a Protestant school, 
 where I was regarded as an intruder; not an 
 agreeable experiment in the province of Ulster, I 
 could assure him. This was what I, for my part, 
 owed to these missionaries of light and civilisation. 
 The Irish people were lazy, he said, taking no 
 account of the fact that the fruits of their labour 
 
 P 
 
226 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 were not protected by law, but left a prey to their 
 landlords, who plundered them without shame or 
 mercy. Peasants were not industrious under such 
 conditions, nor would philosophers for that matter, 
 I fancied. If the people of Ireland found the 
 doctrines of the Reformation incredible three hun- 
 dred years ago, why were they not as well entitled 
 to reject them then as he was to reject them to- 
 day ? In my opinion, they were better entitled. 
 A nation which had been the school of the West, 
 a people who had sent missionaries throughout 
 Europe to win barbarous races to Christianity, who 
 interpreted in its obvious sense God's promise to 
 be always with His Church, suddenly heard that 
 a king of unbridled and licentious passions under- 
 took to modify the laws of God for his own 
 convenience, and that his ministers and courtiers 
 were bribed into acquiescence by the plunder of 
 monasteries and churches; what wonder that they 
 declared that they would die rather than be 
 partners in such a transaction. It might be worth 
 remembering that the pretensions of Anne Boleyn's 
 husband to found a new religion, seemed as absurd 
 and profane to those Irishmen as the similar pre- 
 tensions of Joe Smith seemed to all of us at present. 
 After all they had endured, the people of Ireland 
 might compare with any in the world for the only 
 virtues they were permitted to cultivate, piety, 
 chastity, simplicity, hospitality to the stranger, 
 fidelity to friends, and the magnanimity of self- 
 sacrifice for truth and justice. When we were 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 227 
 
 touring in Ireland together twenty years before, 
 with the phenomena under our eyes, he himself 
 declared that, after a trial of three centuries there 
 was more vitality in Catholicism than in this 
 saving light to which the people had blinded their 
 eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle and John Forster, who were present, 
 looked at each other in consternation as if a catas- 
 trophe was imminent; but Carlyle replied placidly, 
 " that there was no great life, he apprehended, 
 in either of these systems at present ; men looked 
 to something quite different to that for their guid- 
 ance just now." 
 
 I could not refrain from returning to the subject. 
 Countries which had refused to relinquish their 
 faith were less prosperous, he insisted, than those 
 who placidly followed the royal Reformers in 
 Germany and England. Perhaps they were; but 
 worldly prosperity was the last test I expected to 
 hear him apply to the merits of a people. If this 
 was to be a test, the Jews left the Reformers a long 
 way in the rear. 
 
 When nations were habitually peaceful and pros- 
 perous, he replied it might be inferred that they 
 dealt honestly with the rest of mankind, for this 
 was the necessary basis of any prosperity that 
 was not altogether ephemeral ; and as conduct was 
 the fruit of conviction, it might be further inferred, 
 with perfect safety, that they had had honest teach- 
 ing, which was the manifest fact in the cases he 
 specified. 
 
228 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I was much heated, and I took myself off as soon 
 as I could discreetly do so. The same evening, I 
 met Carlyle at dinner at John Forster's. I sat 
 beside him, and had a pleasant talk, and neither 
 then, nor at any future time, did he resent my 
 brusque criticism by the shghtest sign of displea- 
 sure. This is a fact, I think, which a generous 
 reader will recognise to be altogether incompatible 
 with the recent estimate of Carlyle as a man of 
 impatient temper, and arrogant overbearing self- 
 will. 
 
 Modern Art. 
 
 As we passed one day the Albert Memorial going 
 to Hyde Park, he spoke of the chaotic condition 
 of art, like all the other intellectual pursuits. Eng- 
 land had not been fortunate in expressing her ideas 
 in this region more than any other, quite otherwise 
 than fortunate indeed. Some one had compared 
 the memorial to a wedding-cake with a gilded 
 marionette mounted on it ; the effect produced was 
 insignificant or altogether grotesque. The huge 
 edifice called the New Palace of Westminster was 
 not insignificant or grotesque, but it wanted the 
 unity of design which is apt to impress one in a 
 work which is a single birth from one competent 
 mind. When Thackeray saw the river front he 
 declared he saw no reason why it stopped : it ended 
 nowhere, and might just as well have gone on to 
 Chelsea. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 229 
 
 I asked who was responsible for the disappoint- 
 ing effect of the Albert Memorial. The person 
 to be contented, he said, was the Queen. She lived 
 in such an atmosphere of courtly exaggeration that 
 she ceased to comprehend the true relation and 
 proportion of things. Hence the tremendous out- 
 cry over Prince Albert, who was in no respect a 
 very remarkable man. He had had a certain prac- 
 tical German sense in him too, which prevented 
 him from running counter to the feelings of the 
 English people, but that was all. He was very 
 ill-liked among the aristocracy who came into per- 
 sonal relations with him. Queen Victoria had a 
 preternaturally good time of it with the English 
 people, owing a good deal to reaction from the 
 hatred which George IV. had excited. Her son, 
 one might fear, would pay the penalty in a stormy 
 and perilous reign. He gave no promise of being 
 a man fit to perform the tremendous task appointed 
 him to do, and indeed one looked in vain anywhere 
 just now for the man who would lead England 
 back to better ways than she had fallen into in 
 our time. 
 
 Speaking of the relations of Ireland and Scotland, 
 he said Scotia Major and Scotia Minor owed each 
 other mutual services, running back to the dawn of 
 history. Scotland sent St. Patrick to civilise the 
 western isle, and in good time the western isle 
 sent Columbkille and other spiritual descendants 
 of St. Patrick to teach the Scottish Celts their 
 duties towards the Eternal Ruler and His laws. 
 
230 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I said it was disputed whether Scotland had sent 
 St. Patrick to Ireland ; a friend of mine, Mr. Cashel 
 Hoey, had recently written a paper to demonstrate 
 that St. Patrick was a Frenchman. 
 
 A Frenchman I he echoed ; what strain of human 
 perversity could induce an Irishman to desire to 
 see it admitted that St, Patrick was a French- 
 man ? I laughed, and replied that the object 
 probably was to relieve him from the reproach of 
 being a Scotchman. 
 
 Well, he said, in a bantering tone, we might 
 rely it was a controversy in no respect likely to 
 arise about any other Irish personage, whether he 
 was a Scotchman. 
 
 I was in Ireland when the news reached me of 
 Mrs. Carlyle's sudden death. There was none 
 of her sex outside my own immediate kith and 
 kin whose loss would have touched me so nearly. 
 I had known her for thirty years, always gracious 
 and cheerful, even when physical pain or social 
 trouble disturbed her tranquillity. She was per- 
 haps easily troubled, for she was of the sensitive 
 natures who expect more from life than it commonly 
 yields. I verily believe her married life was as 
 serene, sympathetic, and satisfying as those of 
 ninety-nine out of a hundred of the exceptionally 
 endowed classes who constitute Society. The 
 greatly gifted are rarely content; they anticipate 
 and desire something beyond their experience, 
 and find troubles where to robuster natures there 
 would be none. There was an incident connected 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 231 
 
 with her death which has always struck me as 
 pecuharly tragic. When the news reached her 
 husband by telegram, fresh from his election as 
 Rector of the University of Edinburgh, he retired 
 into absolute privacy, but his letters were brought 
 to him next morning, and among them was one 
 from her whom he knew to be dead, full of triumph 
 at his success, and of lively speculations on the 
 future. 
 
 When I saw Carlyle again, some weeks after her 
 funeral, I found him composed, and at times even 
 cheerful. His fresh mourning, a deep folding collar, 
 and other puritanical abundance of snowy linen 
 crowned with a head of silver grey, became him, 
 and gave I a stranger the impression of a noble 
 and venerable old man. There is a photograph 
 engraved with some of the memorials of him, which 
 exhibits a man plunged in gloomy reverie, which 
 did not resemble him even at that painful era, 
 and is a caricature of the ordinary man. The 
 photographer caught him doubtless in some fit of 
 dyspepsia, and obtained quite an exceptional result. 
 Before his great trouble, and even afterwards, his 
 manner was composed and cheerful, and in earlier 
 times no one was readier to indulge in badinage and 
 banter; a smile was much more familiar to his face 
 than a frown or a cloud. 
 
 When I returned to Australia, the correspondence 
 recommenced. The pains Carlyle took to recom- 
 mend for employment young men whom he was 
 never likely to see in the world again reveals the 
 
232 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 true nature of the man, generous, considerate, and 
 sympathetic. 
 
 "Chelsea, March i, 1868. 
 "Dear Duffy, — Many thanks for your kind- 
 ness to R ■ on his arrival ; it is a full honouring 
 
 of the bill I drew on you in that respect ; and 
 whatever more ensues shall rest with yourself only, 
 and your own discernment of the facts, not mine 
 any further. That was a very awkward and pro- 
 voking blunder, doubtless, that about the news- 
 paper; but I ought to tell you withal that I believe 
 it proceeded altogether from ignorance and irresolu- 
 tion in the matter ; and that * pride ' had no share 
 in it at any stage. The poor fellow, at our first 
 meeting, cautiously told me he was busy night and 
 day writing 'a novel,' and had the better half of 
 it done, lodging the while with some charitable 
 comrade. ' Literature ' on those terms, versus 
 Famine, his one alternative. You may guess what 
 approval this project met with from me. * Better 
 die,' I said, with denunciation of * Literature ' so 
 called, especially of newspaper work and its raging 
 blackguardisms (as here in London), the wages of 
 which, however high, I pronounced to be Bedlam 
 and Gehenna, worse almost than all other wages of 
 sin ! At our second meeting, after some weeks of 
 
 consideration, R gratified me much by the 
 
 report that he had now (' last night,' if I remember) 
 hiirnt out of the world his ' novel ' and all that held 
 of it, and was wholly resolute now for a life of 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 233 
 
 silent ivorking as the real crown for him. This 
 will have been, this and not 'pride,' his reason for 
 rejecting your kind offer in that department ; then 
 soon after he will have repented (would have helped 
 for the moment though) been ashamed to trouble 
 you again on it, tried to help himself by the direct 
 course, and so have gone into the quagmire, on 
 ground he knew nothing of! Let him have the 
 benefit of this hypothesis, if you can, as I think; 
 and that is all I will say or expect on the matter. 
 
 "You say nothing of yourself or of your big 
 Australian world, on both which points, especially 
 the former, you might have expected a willing 
 listener surely. I do not even know clearly whether 
 you are in office again or not. A returned emigrant 
 (newspaper editor, I think, but certainly a sensible 
 and credible kind of man) gave me very discourag- 
 ing accounts not long since of the state of immi- 
 gration among you. ' Next to no immigration at 
 all,' reports he ; ' the excellent Duffy Land Lazu, 
 made of even no effect ' by scandalous ' auctioneer- 
 ing jobbers ' and other vulpine combinations and 
 creatures, whose modes and procedures I did not 
 well understand. But the news itself was to me 
 extremely bad. For the roaring anarchies of 
 America itself, and of all our incipient 'Americas,' 
 justify themselves to me by this one plea, 'Angry 
 sir, we couldn't help it : and we anarchies, and all 
 (as you may see) are conquering the wilderness, as 
 perhaps your Friedrich William, or Friedrich him- 
 self, could not have guided us to do, and are 
 
234 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 offering homes and arable communion with mother 
 earth and her blessed verities to all the anarchies 
 of the world which have quite lost their way.' 
 Australia, of a certainty, ought to leave her gates 
 wide open in this respect at all times ; nay, it were 
 well for her could she build a free bridge (' flying 
 bridge') between Europe and her, and encourage 
 the deserving to stream across. I pray you, if ever 
 the opportunity offer, do your very best in this 
 interest, and consider it as, silently or vocally, of 
 the very essence of your function (appointed you by 
 Heaven itself) in that Antipodal world ! And excuse 
 this little bit of preaching, for it is meant altogether 
 honestly and well. 
 
 " What you say of Vichy and dyspepsia is welcome 
 in two respects, first as it reminds me how kind 
 and careful you always are about whatever is im- 
 portant to my now considerably unimportant self; 
 and, secondly, as indicating, which is your one point 
 of personal news, that the salutary effects of Vichy 
 are still evident in you, and that your health (pro- 
 bably) is rather good. Long may that continue, 
 and honourable may be the work you do in virtue 
 of it while the days still are ! As to myself, I know 
 sadly, at all moments, dyspepsia to be the fright- 
 fullest fiend that is in the pit, or out of it ; the 
 accursed brutal nightmare that has ridden me con- 
 tinually these fifty odd years, preaching its truth 
 gospel (v/ould I had listened to it, which I would 
 not), but, alas ! as to any ' cure ' for it, the patient 
 is too old; the patient has it in the blood, in the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 235 
 
 nerves and brain of him as well ; and has no cure 
 of the least likelihood, except the indubitable cure 
 which is now near ahead. Last year about this 
 time I understood myself to be within some fifty 
 or eighty miles of Vichy at one point of my rail- 
 way; and I had before made some inquiries and 
 speculations with my brother and others (well re- 
 membering what you had said to me on the sub- 
 ject) ; but the result was, I considered the probable 
 misery and botheration fairly to surpass any chance 
 of profit to one in my case, and left Vichy lying 
 silent in the muddy darkness (Lyon, to judge of 
 it by night, an uglier chaotic vortex than even 
 Manchester or Glasgow), all the ten or eight wells 
 of Vichy, too populous, quack-governed (I was 
 told), confused and noisy, to be of real service. I 
 do not know that I have grown better in health 
 since I saw you, but neither have I grown percep- 
 tibly worse. Alas ! I have ' health ' enough (it must 
 be owned) for any work I have now the keart to 
 do; it is heart and interest that fail me, v/ere all 
 else right. 
 
 ''We are in a mighty fry about ' education ' just 
 now, and about many other recipes for our late 
 grand ' leap in the dark,' in none of which have I 
 any faith to speak of. Fenianisin has gone to 
 sleep, more power to it (in that direction) ! John 
 Mill has issued a strange recipe for Ireland : to 
 oust all the Irish landlords, and make all the Irish 
 tenants Hindoo ryots. I did not read much of 
 his pamphlet, but it seemed to me (though of the 
 
236 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 clearest expression and most perspicuous logic) to 
 be still weaker and more irrational than his poor 
 treatise on aristocracy, so famous among certain 
 fellow-creatures in this epoch. Adieu, dear Duffy ; 
 write me a long letter if you would do me a pleasure 
 at any time. — Yours ever, T. Carlyle. 
 
 "John Forster has had a good deal of sickness 
 (bronchitis, &c.) this season, and has always rather 
 an excess of work. My kind remembrances to 
 Mrs. Duffy ; and best regards to her amiable sister, 
 whose note, &c., I got, regretting only that the 
 occasion furnished her so many stupid blunders to 
 report withal." 
 
 " Chelsea, December 19, 1868. 
 
 " Dear Duffy, — Above a week ago your letter 
 
 reached me ; a glad arrival, as all your letters are, 
 
 communicating various bits of intelligence which 
 
 are of interest here. What you report about 
 
 R agrees very well with the rough outline I 
 
 had formed of him, from physiognomy and a little 
 talk chiefly ; an Oxford youth of fair faculty, of 
 honest enough intentions too, but as yet of Httle 
 real insight into the world or himself, who might be 
 liable to fail from want of discernment, want of 
 prudence, patience, and dexterity, but not much 
 from any worse or deeper want, as accordingly it 
 geems to have proved. Happily he has now got 
 settled on a reasonably good basis, where we hope 
 he will continue, and develop himself — and that 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 237 
 
 both of 2is two have done with him and his affairs. 
 To you, for my sake, he has cost something ; to me 
 not much, beyond a httle trouble ; and if we have 
 saved a man from London newspaper reportage, and 
 wreck in the lowest gutters, into useful teaching of 
 languages in Tasmania, neither of us will grudge 
 
 the bit of help we gave. From R himself I 
 
 have had no word since his last thank you at this 
 door, which is a symptom I rather approve in him, 
 and certainly wish to continue, for my own share 
 of it. ' Silence is golden,' now and then, rather ! 
 
 That of ' losing a year and half of your time and 
 life,' in the fruitless attempt to sound Colonial and 
 British anarchy, is not so good ! But I suppose 
 you had it to do, by way of satisfying your own 
 mind and conscience ; and I don't wonder you 
 found no bottom, for in fact there is none. I, non- 
 official, have long ceased making any inquiry into 
 these things ; chaos is as big as cosmos, one feels 
 (or indeed infinitely bigger), and distinguishes itself 
 moreover by having no centre ; give chaos your 
 malison and leave it alone ! That thrice disgusting 
 Governor Darling matter, I have always skipt away 
 from, when it turned up in the newspapers, as from 
 extensive carrion in the liveliest state of decomposi- 
 tion — most malodorously pointing out to me the 
 state of both the Downing Streets, yours and ours. 
 Ours, you may depend upon it, has no tyrannous 
 intention of ' governing the antipodes ' or of govern- 
 ing or encountering it at all, except to keep its own 
 poor skin out of trouble, and be a conspicuously float- 
 
238 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ing dead dog amid the general universe of such. 
 That is very certain to me. What your Downing 
 Street, with its appendages, democracies, &c. &c., 
 are, I hope you will thoroughly explain in one of 
 those new books you are meditating; do, there 
 is no usefuller or worthier employment could be 
 cut- out for a thinking and seeing man who has 
 had Australia under his eyes till he comprehends 
 it. In the name of manhood and honesty, and 
 as a precept to you essentially out of heaven, re- 
 gard that as your duty. About a year ago I read 
 in the Wesimmster Review (by a man whom I 
 have seen and believe) such an account of Australian 
 Government, &c. &c., as refuses ever to go out of 
 mind again ; that, especially, of no emigrants arriv- 
 ing, of its being the wish and policy that none 
 should arrive, fairly takes away one's breath ; chal- 
 lenges the universe to produce its fellow in mal- 
 government, ancient or modern, on this afQicted 
 earth ! I entreat you go down to the bottom of 
 all that ; and let any clear-minded man understand 
 how it is and what and why. 
 
 " A visitor (not over welcome) staggers in ; I am 
 driven to this scrap of bare paper as the readiest 
 to hand, for the pretext obliged me to conclude 
 abruptly. You see with what mutinous reluct- 
 ance my poor right hand writes at all; has been 
 liable to shake of late years (left hand still 
 steady). 
 
 " I am very sad of soul, but not therefore to be 
 called miserable ; nor am I quite idle, working 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 239 
 
 rather what I can, in ways that you would not 
 disapprove of. That you have the intention to 
 come home is good, very good — and bring your 
 two books with you. These, I really think, might 
 help against this * millennium ' of the devil with 
 the chains struck off /iv/i. I will believe it of 
 you to the last. 
 
 " * In six years ' it seems to me extremely un- 
 certain (and doubtful of advantage, if it were not) 
 whether you will find 7ne still waiting here to receive 
 you ; but, if you do, you can be sure of a welcome 
 from an old man's heart. 
 
 "Adieu, dear Duffy; I am forced to fling down 
 pen and get out into the air. 
 
 " Forster is complaining a good deal — not dan- 
 gerously. Recommend me to Mrs. Callan at the 
 distance of St. Petersburg. — " Yours, always truly, 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 The reference to St. Petersburg alludes to my 
 answer to some former message to be delivered 
 personally, when I bade him look at the map, 
 and he would see that I was further from Mrs. 
 Callan, then in Queensland, than he was from St. 
 Petersburg. 
 
 He was now engaged in collecting Mrs. Carlyle's 
 letters for publication, and his friend, John Forster, 
 communicated to me his wishes to have her corres- 
 pondence with me returned. 
 
240 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " Palace Gate House, 
 
 Kensington, London, 
 January 25, 1870. 
 
 " My DEAR DUP'FY, — We send you many most 
 kind wishes from this place for all happiness in 
 this New Year, and in all the coming ones (to you 
 and yours). Carlyle and Browning dined with 
 us on Christmas day, and you were, I can assure 
 you, ' very freshly remembered ' by us all. Much 
 interested were we by your last letter to me, and 
 its interruption. You recollect who it was that 
 laid down his pen, being ' interrupted by so great 
 an experiment as dying.' Here was happily an 
 experiment of the other — the creative sort, which 
 we hope you will live triumphantly to complete, 
 with the highest availant cast of characters. Carlyle 
 sends most special message to you, which, indeed, 
 he would write himself, but that the condition of 
 his right hand almost wholly disquaHfies him from 
 writing. It is only in an absolute extremity he 
 now ever makes the attempt, and it pains me (so 
 terribly does the hand shake) to see him strive to 
 lift a glass with it. Fortunately, the left hand is 
 not affected. Well, his message is to say that any 
 notes of poor dear Mrs. Carlyle that you may have, 
 and that you are not indisposed to send him, he 
 will most gladly and gratefully receive from you. 
 
 If you should send anj^, I will ask you kindly to 
 mark on them the date, or approximate date, as 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 241 
 
 far as may be. I meant to have written you a 
 much longer letter, but I am writing under dis- 
 advantages. Immediately after Christmas day, I 
 went down to Torquay to stay with Lord Lytton 
 (who has a house there), most unfortunately caught 
 cold, and was laid up with illness nearly all the 
 time we were there. We returned only on Satur- 
 day last. I am still very ailing; and, amid much 
 arrears of work, I am with difficulty getting this 
 done. I then suddenly remembered ' the 26th.' 
 Carlyle, who dined with us the day after our 
 return, had not forgotten to ask me whether his 
 message was gone. I wish you'd send us a paper 
 when the other change, that will put you in your 
 proper place, approaches more nearly, for the 
 Times' correspondent is very misleading. And, 
 further, I wish you to tell me how parcels are best 
 sent to you — whether there is any special agency 
 that is swiftest, safest, and cheapest ? We are 
 not in the most hopeful political condition here, 
 very few of us believing that Gladstone has by any 
 means yet got to the bottom of the Irish secret. 
 
 My wife tenderly remembers all your kindness, 
 and much desires that the regards she sends, and in 
 which I heartily join, might be permitted to extend 
 to Mrs. Duffy also. I have had such pleasant 
 experience formerly of your habit of returning 
 good for ill in the matter of letter writing, that I 
 dare to hope you may forgive what I am now 
 writing, and make liberal return to me of what I 
 find such real and great pleasure in having from 
 
 Q 
 
242 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 yon, that I am almost impudent enough to think 
 myself entitled to it. Good-bye, my dear Duffy. — 
 I am, ever yours, JOHN FORSTER." 
 
 The following letter was in the handwriting of a 
 lady, and from this time forth Carlyle either dictated 
 his letters, or got a friend to write in his place, 
 the process of engraving on lead (so he described 
 the operation later) being past human patience : — 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
 December 12, 1871. 
 " Dear Duffy, — A good many weeks ago I 
 had your friendly and cheerful little note, which 
 was very welcome to me after the long silence. 
 It has lain on my table ever since, daily soliciting 
 some answer, and, strange to say, daily in vain. 
 Truth is, my own right hand having grown entirely 
 useless to me for writing, the business is altogether 
 disagreeable, and even in the old sense, impos- 
 sible (for ' dictation,' do what I will, never rightly 
 prospers); and the indolence and torpor, now 
 grown habitual, especially in these heavy, dark 
 November and December days, with their fogs and 
 fitful frosts, deter me altogether from answering 
 any letter, except under actual compulsion of the 
 hour. Tantum. mutaius ab illo ! I also had 
 safely delivered by the postman your copy of 
 ' Homes in the Land of Plenty,' recognisable as 
 yours by the handwriting outside, which also was 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 243 
 
 kindly welcome to me. I already had a copy from 
 the author, and had read most part of it ; but this 
 I sent to the Chelsea Library for behoof of my 
 fellow-citizens, and have put yours, as naturally 
 worthier, in its stead. Another paper, excellently 
 written and conceived, concerning the association 
 of all your Australian colonies into one, I also 
 received and read with approval and good wishes 
 at the time you intended.^ For all these things 
 accept my hearty thanks in the lump ; and pardon 
 me for loitering so long with that poor return. 
 
 " It gives me real pleasure to find you again in 
 office, and ruling, so far as any rule is possible, 
 what geographically we may call one of the largest 
 empires (for your colony is clearly the presiding 
 one) that is to be found on the face of the earth. 
 I rejoice also to hear that your Ministry succeeds, 
 or was succeeding when we last heard. The ideas 
 you had upon it, so far as I could gather, were 
 sound and good, and deserved success. One thing 
 I always earnestly wish, in reference to Australia 
 and its progress, that you and Mother-Country 
 could contrive some way to have ten times as much 
 emigration. For fifty years the possibility of this, 
 and the immensely beneficial effects of it (especially 
 for us), have hung before my mind as certainties, 
 even as axioms, evident hke those of Euclid, the 
 total neglect of which, in the face of such circum- 
 stances as ours, are now plainly becoming, has often 
 
 1 A report of a Royal Commission, of which I was chairman, 
 on the Federation of the Australian Colonies. 
 
244 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 filled me, and yet fills, whenever I think of it (which 
 is now seldomer), with astonishment, impatience, 
 and even indignation. 'Administrative Nihilism,' as 
 Huxley calls it, that is the explanation ; and, alas, 
 what Huxley does not say or quite see. Nihilism 
 of that kind is precisely the apple that grows and 
 must grow upon every Parliamentary tree in our 
 day. This I at least perceive; and it quiets me 
 on many a grievance. A government carried on by 
 Parliamentary palaver and universal suffrage, with 
 penny newspapers presiding, must necessarily be a 
 do-nothingism, and neglect not only its colonies, 
 but every other interest, temporal and eternal, except 
 that of getting majorities for itself by hook or by 
 crook. If on these terms we can consider it the 
 best of all kinds of government, we are free to do 
 so ; but the consequences are, have been, and will be 
 ' Nihilism,' as above said by Huxley, nay minimism 
 (as I could say) to an ever more frightful, ruinous, 
 detestable, and even damnable, extent; the ulti- 
 matum of which is petroleum and what we have 
 seen in Paris not so long ago ! In spite of all this, 
 I still privately hope there is patriot honesty and 
 probity enough on both sides of the ocean not to 
 let the immense and noble interest sink to the sea 
 bottom, but to save it as probably the very greatest 
 that ever was entrusted to the guidance of a nation. 
 Enough, oh, far too much of this ; what have I to do 
 'with it more ? 
 
 "Your friend Forster has been here since I 
 began this letter. He is still busy and unwearied. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 245 
 
 though laden with a great burden of almost per- 
 petual ill-health, especially in winter time. . He has 
 just been some weeks on the southern coast taking 
 his holidays there. He looks really a little stronger, 
 and will front under better omens the three months' 
 service that still remains to him. Were April the 
 
 5th once here, F can claim his pension; and 
 
 will without a day's delay give the matter up. I 
 do hope, and indeed expect, he will be able to 
 achieve this without further permanent damage ; 
 and then there is plain sailing, so far as one can 
 see, and nothing worse. The whole world is, in 
 
 these very days and weeks, full of F and his 
 
 * Life of Dickens,' for which there is a perfect rage 
 or public famine (copies not to be supplied fast 
 enough). I should think it likely there is a copy 
 on the sea for you too, and that you will read it 
 with interest and satisfaction two or three months 
 hence, in some holiday you may have. It is curious, 
 and in part surprising ; yields a true view of Dickens 
 (great part of it being even of his own writing) ; only 
 one volume of it, the second not to be begun till 
 after the above-mentioned April 5th. Me nothing 
 in it so surprises as these two American explo- 
 sions around poor Dickens, all Yankee-doodle-dom, 
 blazing up like one universal soda-water bottle 
 round so very measurable ' a phenomenon, this and 
 the way the phenomenon takes it, was curiously 
 and even genially interesting to me, and significant 
 of Yankee-doodle-dom. Volume first ends with a 
 soda-water explosion, which we may reckon genially 
 
246 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 comic ; volume second will end with a ditto, which 
 has a dark death's head in it, and which has always 
 seemed to me very tragic and very mournful. 
 
 "With regard to myself, there is almost nothing 
 to be said that you do not already know. A week 
 ago yesterday I entered on my seventy-seventh 
 year. I am not worse in health than that means, 
 nor can I brag of being much better. I do retain 
 nearly complete soundness of organ, but the strength 
 of everything is inevitably lessening every day; 
 the son of Adam had to die, and if, like a tree, 
 it is to be by the aid of time alone, one knows 
 not whether that is not, perhaps, within certain 
 limits, the less desirable way. But we have no 
 choice left in the matter, and are surely bound 
 to be thankful to be left on any tolerable terms in 
 the Land of the Living and the Place of Hope. 
 You ask me what I am doing, dear Duffy; I am 
 verily doing nothing. Knotting up some thrumbs 
 of my life's web, gazing with more and more 
 earnestness, and generally with love and tenderness 
 rather than any worse feeling, into the eternity 
 which can now be only a few steps ahead. I 
 avoid all company except that of one or two close 
 friends. Last winter I read most of my Goethe 
 over again ; reading a good book is, in fact, my 
 most favourite employment. Even an intelligent 
 book, by an honest-hearted man, is tolerable to me, 
 and my best way of spending the evening. Adieu, 
 dear friend, you see there is not a speck more of 
 room. — Ever yours truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 247 
 
 The next letter was written under circumstances 
 of painful difficulty. His right hand had become 
 practically useless. It was only with a lead pencil, 
 and by the slow laborious method he describes, 
 that he was able to write at all. But I had become 
 Prime Minister at that time, and he would not 
 omit sending his good wishes under his own hand. 
 I rejoice in these multiplied evidences of the genuine 
 kindness of a man who has been so differently 
 pictured by ignorance and prejudice. 
 
 " Chelsea, London, May 28, 1872. 
 " Dear Duffy, — About ten days ago I received 
 the report of speech, the newspaper with your por- 
 trait and sketch of Biography, &c. &c., all of which, 
 especially the first-named article, were very welcome 
 and interesting. The portrait is not very like, 
 though it has some honest likeness ; but in the 
 speech I found a real image of your best self, and 
 of the excellent career you are entering upon, which 
 pleased and gratified me very much. Though un- 
 able to write, except with a pencil, and at a speed 
 as of engraving (upon lead or the like), I cannot 
 forbear sending you my hearty Euge, euge, and 
 earnestly encouraging you to speed along, and 
 improve the * shining hours ' all you can while it 
 lasts. Few British men have such a bit of work 
 on hand. You seem to me to be, in some real 
 degree, modelling the first elements of mighty 
 nations over yonder, scattering beneficent seeds, 
 
248 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 which may grow to forests, and be green for a 
 thousand years. Stand to your work hero-like, the 
 utmost you can ; be wise, be diligent, patient, faith- 
 ful ; a man, in that case, has his reward. I can only 
 send you my poor wishes, but then these veritably 
 are sorry only that they are worth so little. 
 
 "Nothing in your list of projects raises any 
 scruple in me; good, human and desirable we felt 
 them all to be, except that of gold mining only. 
 And this too, I felt at once was, if not human, or 
 to all men's profit, yet clearly colonial, and to 
 Victoria's profit, and therefore inevitable in your 
 season. But I often reflect on this strange fact, 
 as, perhaps, you yourself have done, that he who 
 anywhere, in these ages, digs up a gold nugget 
 from the ground, is far inferior in beneficence to 
 him who digs up a mealy potato — nay is, in strict 
 language, a malefactor to all his brethren of man- 
 kind, having actually to pick the purse of every son 
 of Adam for what money he, the digger, gets for 
 his nugget, and be bothered to it. I do not insist 
 on this, I only leave it with you, and wonder silently 
 at the ways of all-wise Providence with highly 
 foolish man in this poor course of his. 
 
 "Adieu, dear Duffy, I have written more than 
 enough. If I had a free pen, how many things 
 could I still write ; but perhaps it is better not ! 
 I am grown very old, and though . without specific 
 ailment of body, very weak (in comparison), and 
 fitter to be silent about what I am thinking of than 
 to speak. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 249 
 
 "I send my kind and faithful remembrance to 
 Mrs. Callan. John, my brother, is gone to Vichy 
 again (day before yesterday); Forster is looking 
 up again, now that the collar is off his neck. Good- 
 bye with you all. — Ever truly yours, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 Of a brief visit to Europe in 1 874, I find almost 
 no record regarding Carlyle, but a letter from John 
 Forster (who was already stricken by the illness of 
 which he shortly died), full of the overflowing kind- 
 ness of his genial nature. 
 
 " Palace Gate House, Kensington, W., 
 Jtme 27, 1874. 
 
 "My dear Duffy,— I shall be heartily glad 
 to see you again, and so will my wife, who does 
 not forget your kindness to her. 
 
 " Alas ! that there should be such differences 
 between what we seem and what we are. My 
 health is completely broken. I cannot speak of it. 
 Carlyle, whom you are to see to-morrow, as I hear, 
 will tell you something of it. 
 
 " I am going to Knebworth for ten days or so, 
 and might find myself unable to go to you before 
 I leave, which will be, I think, on Monday. But 
 if you change your address in that interval, you 
 will kindly tell me. 
 
 " I sent a letter by a mail to Melbourne, too recent, 
 I suppose, to have reached you before you quitted 
 
250 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 for England. Illness alone had prevented my writ- 
 ing earlier — the third volume [of his * Life of 
 Charles Dickens '] had preceded my letter. 
 
 " In the last I referred to your visit in regard to 
 the Athenaeum, when I do not think there will be 
 any doubt of your election by the committee. 
 Froude, with whom I spoke of it yesterday, is of 
 the same opinion. 
 
 "With all best wishes and kindest regards from 
 us both here, ever, my dear Duffy, most sincerely 
 yours, John Forster." 
 
 I ought perhaps to say that I did not desire 
 the honour which my friend contemplated for me, 
 because I determined, whenever I returned finally to 
 Europe, not to reside in England, and was unwilling 
 to incur the expense of a club I could not probably 
 visit once in a year. At a later period the proposal 
 was renewed by Mr. W. E. Forster, in concert with 
 Lord Carnarvon and Lord O'Hagan (then members 
 of the Committee) ; but I was more convenienced 
 by the compliment graciously conferred on me by 
 the Committee of a month's honorary membership, on 
 three separate occasions, when I remained for that 
 period in London. 
 
 After my return to Australia I had but one letter 
 from Carlyle before my final removal to Europe. 
 Like many recent ones, it was devoted to the 
 general purpose of serving a young man whom 
 he thought deserving, or, at any rate, in much need 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 251 
 
 of help. When we find a man of eighty, who is 
 done with the chief interests of hfe, employing his 
 remaining strength to serve a struggling fellow 
 creature whom he has never seen and can never 
 hope to see, we have safe data, I think, for deter- 
 mining the nature and disposition of this old man. 
 
 " 5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, S.W., 
 Dec. 30, 1876. 
 
 " Dear Duffy, — Till the arrival, about a week 
 
 ago, of the Melbourne RevieWy with your article, 
 
 addressed to me, which was very welcome, both as 
 
 personal memento, and also as a bit of pretty enough 
 
 reading, I had seen no trace of you, nor heard 
 
 any rumour of news. Singularly enough, within 
 
 the last three days, I have received from Melbourne, 
 
 from a poor neighbour of yours there, a feeble but 
 
 pathetic request, which, on reading it, I decided to 
 
 send you, with two enclosures that were in it, 
 
 which are now by mistake burnt, in hopes you 
 
 might be able to do something for the unfortunate 
 
 writer who has thus sent his message to you, 
 
 written within a stone's throw of your own door, 
 
 but obliged to go round the world before it could get 
 
 entrance ! Pray, for my sake, read with attention ; 
 
 understand, too, that the bits of mildly satirical 
 
 verse, once printed in the M elboiu'ne Pzinck, were 
 
 not without some decided indications of a superior 
 
 talent that way. These unhappily are burnt, and 
 
 you must take my word for them. The poor 
 
252 THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 
 creature's letter, as you will observe, expresses a 
 kind of feeble hope that you, by some way or 
 another, might find some employment for him to 
 supplement his miserable ;^40 a year — if you had 
 been in office, and if he, poor wretch, had not been 
 on the free trade side of politics ! 
 
 "The thing I do desire of you, dear Duffy, is 
 that you would see this poor deformed creature, 
 and examine him with your own eyes, and in right 
 and brotherly pity and desire to help. To me it 
 would give a real pleasure if you could in any 
 way help him. And that is all my message ; and 
 so I leave it in your hands. 
 
 " Of myself I have only to say that, being now 
 in my 82nd year, I feel more completely invalided 
 than ever before, and have no strength left for 
 work of any kind. But, except languor and lazi- 
 ness, I feel no decay of spiritual faculty; and I 
 have in the late months read with enjoyment the 
 whole of Shakespeare, and am now reading, still 
 with a kind of real enjoyment and wonder, 
 Brumoy's 'Theatre des Grecs,' of which I have 
 finished prosperously about the fourth part. Adieu, 
 dear Duffy; may good ever be with you, and the 
 blessing of an old friend, if that be of any value. — 
 Yours, ever truly, T. Carlyle." 
 
 My final return to Europe took place in i! 
 I arrived in London in the spring, and immediately 
 visited Carlyle. It was deeply touching to see the 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 253 
 
 Titan, who had never known languor or weakness, 
 suffering from the dilapidations of old age. His 
 right hand was nearly useless, and had to be 
 supported by the left when he lifted it by a 
 painful effort to his mouth. His talk was subdued 
 in tone, but otherwise unaltered. It takes a long 
 time to die, he said, with his old smile, and a gleam 
 of humour in his eye. He was wrapped in a frieze 
 dressing-gown, and for the first time wore a cap ; 
 but, though he was feeble, his face had not lost 
 its character of power or authority. He was well 
 enough, he declared, except from the effects of 
 decay, which were rarely beautiful to see. His 
 chief trouble was to be so inordinately long in 
 departing. It was sad to have survived early 
 friends, and the power of work. Up to seventy 
 he had lost none of his faculties, but when his 
 hand failed that loss entailed others. He could not 
 dictate with satisfaction. He found, when he dic- 
 tated, the words were about three times as many 
 as he would employ propria inami. Composition 
 was in fact a process which a man was accustomed 
 to perform in private, and which could not be 
 effectually performed in the presence of any person 
 whatever. But he had written more than enough. 
 If anybody wanted to know his opinions, they were 
 not concealed. There were still subjects on which 
 he had perhaps something to say, and could say 
 it, for though he was suffering an euthanasia from 
 the gradual decay of the machine, the mind was 
 probably much as it used to be ; but he was content 
 
254 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to consider his work at an end. In looking back 
 over his turbid and obstructed life, he saw only 
 too well that he had scattered much seed by the 
 wayside, which was as good as lost, leaving no 
 visible issue behind. If it was sound vitalised seed 
 it might perhaps spring up and blossom after many 
 years; if not, in Heaven's name, let it rot. But 
 much had been left altogether unspoken, because 
 there was no fit audience discernible as yet, and 
 a man's thoughts, though struggling for utterance, 
 refused to utter themselves to the empty air. The 
 discipline of delay and impediment, of which he 
 had had considerable experience, was not, on the 
 whole, a hostile element to labour in. In his later 
 life he had some share of what men call prosperity ; 
 but, alas, it might well be doubted, if for him and 
 for all men, trouble and trial were not a wholesomer 
 condition than ease and prosperity. 
 
 After a time he seemed anxious to quit the 
 subject of himself, and spoke of general topics. 
 He asked me if I had visited the National Portrait 
 Gallery, which he had done something to promote. 
 He was confident it would prove a school of history 
 for many who had no leisure for regular study of 
 any kind. 
 
 I said I had visited it several times, and with 
 much satisfaction. It would prove a school of 
 history, no doubt, but it was a school in which 
 the pupils would get a good deal disillusiones. 
 What would they say to Lord Bacon looking as 
 jolly and degage as the burlesque personage who 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 255 
 
 used to be known in London as Chief Baron 
 Nicholson, or Queen Elizabeth as flaunting and 
 overdressed as a milliner's lay figure in the 
 Borough, or, in our own times, Charles Lamb 
 transformed into an Itahan nobleman by Hazlitt, 
 or Leigh Hunt into a Venetian bravo by Haydon ? 
 One of the modestest of Enghsh worthies might 
 recall the Dutch ambassador's bull about a col- 
 league whom he described as strutting about with 
 his arms akimbo — like a peacock ! I told him, a 
 propos of historical memorials, that I had been 
 recently in Paris, and visited Robespierre's house 
 in the Rue St. Honore, where the iron stairs which 
 he had so often trodden were still in existence in 
 the gloomy and now dilapidated house where he 
 resided in the heat of the Terror. 
 
 It was from such seemingly insignificant frag- 
 ments, he said, that history had to reconstruct 
 the past, or some resemblance of it more or 
 less credible, an operation rarely performed with 
 success. 
 
 He walked no longer as of old, but he appointed 
 an early day for me to share his customary drive 
 from three o'clock to five. He was accompanied 
 by his niece,^ whose care was now essential to his 
 comfort. We drove to Streatham, through Clapham 
 Common, and home by Battersea Park. Carlyle 
 talked of things which the localities suggested. He 
 spoke much as usual, except that his voice was 
 
 ^ Mrs. Carlyle's niece, and by marriage with his nephew, Mr. 
 Carlyle's niece also. 
 
256 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 feeble, and was so drowned by the noise of the 
 road that I had to guess painfully at his meaning 
 which used to be delivered with such clearness and 
 vigour. I answered to what I was able to hear. 
 He took occasional sips of brandy to keep up his 
 strength, and solaced himself with a pipe. 
 
 I did not see him again before leaving London, 
 and in the spring of the ensuing year the summons 
 to his funeral, which followed me to the south of 
 France, only reached me when the body was already 
 on its way to Scotland. Time had brought to a 
 close, not prematurely, but with many forewarn- 
 ings, a friendship which nothing had disturbed, 
 and which was one of the chief comforts of my 
 hfe. 
 
 As these papers were published to present a 
 more faithful portrait of Carlyle than the one com- 
 monly received, I intended to finish them with a 
 rapid survey of the chief misapprehensions current 
 in later years about the Chelsea household ; but 
 they have run to an unexpected length, and I prefer 
 to postpone to another time and place this purpose, 
 which is by no means relinquished. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Albert, Prince, 195 
 
 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 229 
 
 Albert Memorial, 228, 229 
 
 Americans and Carlyle, 181-184 
 
 Art, Modern, 228, 229 
 
 AthencEU7n, the, 90 
 
 Athenaeum Club, 250 
 
 " Aurora Leigh," Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning's, 62, 63 
 
 Australia, Duffy in, 201-214, 231-236; 
 250-252 ; free trade in, 218 ; federa- 
 tion of colonies, 243 
 
 Bailey, author of " Festus," loi, 102 
 
 Barrett, Miss, 5, 58 
 
 Barry, Michael J. , 109 
 
 Beecher, Sir William, and Lady, 98, 99 
 
 Belfast, 22 
 
 " Bells and Pomegranates," Brown- 
 ing's, 56, 57 
 
 Bessborough, Lord, 41 
 
 Blackwood' s Magazine, 66 
 
 Bolivar, 65 
 
 Books, Thackeray and, 195; Carlyle 
 and, 221 
 
 Books on Ireland, 35 
 
 Boroihme, Bryan, 102, 103 
 
 Boswell, J., 68, 69 
 
 Bourke, Dean, 119 
 
 Bright, John, 171, 190, 218 
 
 Browning, Robert, 56-63, 2^0 
 
 Buckle, H. T. (" History of Civilisation 
 in England"), 107-109 
 
 BuUer, Charles, 76, 79 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 53, 114, 197, 198 
 
 Butler, Edward, 112 
 
 Butt, Isaac, 46, 145 
 
 Caledonian Railway, 20 
 
 Callan, Mrs., 37, 202 
 
 Cane, Dr. , 71-73, 163 
 
 Carleton, William, 63, 64 
 
 Carlisle, Richard (publisher), 115 
 
 Carlyle, John, 249 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, first acquaintance 
 with, 1-4; handwriting of, II ; first 
 visit to Ireland, 15-22 ; and W. E. 
 Forster, 23 - 27 ; Sir G. Dufty's 
 marriage, 28-30 ; second visit to 
 Ireland, 30-50 ; in 1849, 46-49 ; 
 manner of, 51 ; talks with, 52, 53, 
 215-221 (see also " Conversations ") 
 and poetry, 57 ; and pipes, 69, 70, 
 124 ; method of work, 92, 93 ; the 
 Chelsea philosophy, 105-107 ; and 
 strikes, iir, 112; Scotch accent of, 
 116; and the Irish problem, 120, 
 158-162, 171-174 ; and Irish songs, 
 146; article, "Trees of Liberty," 
 in Nation, 145-150; "Latter-Day 
 Pamphlets," 151-157; and Godless 
 colleges, 164, 165; and J. S. Mill, 
 166-171 ; Dr. Murray and, 175- 
 178 ; and Disraeli, 179, 180 ; and 
 Irish Americans, 181-183 ; kind- 
 ness of, 187-190 ; and Thackeray, 
 192-196; and reform, 196-198; at 
 Malvern, 199, 200 ; and Macready, 
 203-210 ; and Sir H. Parkes, 210- 
 214 ; photograph of, 213 ; quarrel 
 with, about Ireland, 223-228 ; and 
 the Albert Memorial, 228, 229 ; 
 death of Mrs. Carlyle, 230, 231 ; 
 letters to Gavan Duffy in Australia, 
 232-239, 242-252; in 1880, 252-255 ; 
 R 
 
258 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Carlyle, T. (continued) 
 
 death of, 256. See also " Letters," 
 "Conversations." 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs., " Letters and Memo- 
 rials of," 2-4; letter from, 8-10; 
 and the horse "LaiTy," 98; and 
 Mazzini, 109, no ; and Mrs. Mill, 
 169 ; how vol. i. ' ' French Revolu- 
 tion " was burnt, 169, 170 ; in 1853, 
 187 ; at House of Commons, 190 ; 
 letter from, 214, 215 ; and Lord 
 Rector of Edinburgh University, 
 219 ; and George Sand, 222 ; sud- 
 den death of, 230, 231 ; John 
 Forster and, 239-242 
 
 Carlyle, township of, in Australia, 
 202, 204 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 250 
 
 Carrickshock, 49 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 41 
 
 Catholic Church of Ireland, 165, 226 
 
 Catholics, Scotch, intolerance to- 
 wards, 2, 3 
 
 Chapman, Frederick, 213 
 
 Chelsea philosophy, the, 105-107 
 
 Churches in Ireland, 189 
 
 Civilisation," Buckle's " History of, 
 Carlyle and, 107-109 
 
 Clare, county, 120 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, 31, 152 
 
 Cloyne, priests in, 28 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 171 ; death of, 218 
 
 Coleraine friend, a, 154, 156, 157 
 
 Coleridge, the poet, 55, 58-61 
 
 Coleridge's brother, 60 
 
 Colleges in Ireland, 164, 165 
 
 Conciliation Hall, Dublin, 19, 23 
 
 Conversations with Thomas Carlyle. 
 See Browning, R. ; Buckle ; Burke, 
 E. ; Coleridge; Disraeli ;• Forster, 
 W. E.; Forster, J.; Helps, Sir A.; 
 Henry VIII. ; Jeffrey, F. ; Lander, 
 W. S. ; Linton, W. J.; Macready ; 
 Mazzini; Mill, J. S.; Murray, Dr.; 
 O'iMeill, Miss; Parkes,, Sir H.; 
 Sand.G. ; Stephen, Sir Jas.; Taylor, 
 Sir H. ; Wordsworth, &c. 
 
 Cooke, George, 214 
 
 Coolun, a (Irish air), 159 
 
 Coppin, Mr., 208 
 
 Cork, Carlyle at, 95, 96 
 
 Criticism on books, Carlyle and, 91 
 
 " Cromwell," Carlyle's, 9, 12-15, 22, 
 34. 41. 91 
 
 Dalley, W. B., 210 
 
 Darling, Governor, 237 
 
 Davis, Thomas, 10, 139 
 
 Deasy, R. , 193 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 74, 75, 'jj, 78 ; 
 Life of, 245, 246 
 
 Dillon, John, 193 
 
 Dispute with Carlyle, 223-228 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 179, 180, 219 
 
 DoUinger, Dr., 69 
 
 Donegal, Carlyle at, 122-124 
 
 " Downing Street" pamphlet, 153- 
 156 
 
 Doyle, Richard, on Thackeray, 77 
 
 Drogheda, 22 
 
 Dublin, 15, 16, 22, 23, 45 
 
 Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, first acquaint- 
 ance with Thomas Carlyle, 1-4 ; 
 letters from Carlyle about Ireland, 
 5-8, 10-15 ; ^ri'i Carlyle's first visit 
 to Ireland, 15-23 ; marriage of, 
 28-30; imprisonment of, 31, 32; 
 Carlyle's second visit to Ireland, 
 33-50 ; and the Nation, 127, 135- 
 145 ; and J. S. Mill, 171 ; Small 
 Proprietors' Society, 171-175 ; 
 enters Parliament, 179 ; at Mel- 
 bourne, 201-214; return to London, 
 214-221 ; dispute with Carlyle, 
 223-228 ; and St. Patrick, 229, 
 230 ; letters to, in Australia, 232- 
 239, 242-252 ; and Carlyle in 1880, 
 252-255 ; death of Carlyle, 256 
 
 Dundrum, 21, 22 
 
 Durham, Lord, 85. 
 
 Dyspepsia, Carlyle and, 48, 200, 234, 
 235 
 
 Edinburgh Review, e^6; Sir J. Stephen 
 in the, 78, 79 ; Dr. Murray and the, 
 175-178 
 
 Edinburgh University, Lord Rector 
 of, 219, 231 
 
 Emerson, R. W. , and "Sartor Re- 
 sartus," 88, 93, 94; and "French 
 Revolution," 169, 170, 201 
 
 Emigrants, letters of introduction to, 
 215, 216, 232-234 
 
 Emigration, the A'ation and, 24, 25 
 
 Empson, Mr., 178 
 
 Encumbered Estates Act, 171 
 
 England and Ireland, 27, 181-4 
 
 Espinasse, Mr., 131, 132 
 
INDEX. 
 
 259 
 
 Evans, Miss, 223. 
 
 Examiner, the London, in 1849, 83- 
 85 
 
 Famines in Ireland, 23-25, 30, 36, 39, 
 
 118-124, 129, 186, 194 
 Fenianism, 235 
 Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 43 
 " Festus," poem called, loi, 102 
 Fonblanque, Albany, 84 
 Forster, John, 37, 65, 75, 83, 84, 183, 
 
 199, 206, 227, 228, 236, 244, 245 ; 
 
 and Mrs. Carlyle's letters, 239-242 ; 
 
 letter from, 249, 250 !J m 
 Forster, W. E., 23-27, 35;y42, 117, 
 
 iiB, 123, 250 /) 
 
 Fox, Charles, 197 
 Fox, W. J. , 167 
 Francis, Philip, 114, 115 
 Eraser and " Sartor Resartus," 88, 89 
 Free Trade, 218 
 " French Revolution,'' Carlyle's, 116 ; 
 
 how volume i. was burnt, 169, 170 
 Froude, Mr., 45, 105 
 
 GalwAY, Carlyle at, 112 ; famine in, 
 
 121 
 George IV. , 229 
 Godless colleges, Carlyle and, 164, 
 
 16s 
 " Going the whole hog," 67 
 Gold-diggers in Australia, 218 
 Governing, Carlyle's theory of, 195 
 Government in Australia, 238 
 Graham, Sir James, 109 
 Gully, Dr., 78, 200 
 Gweedore, 123 
 
 Harangue, an, with Irish Americans, 
 
 181-184 
 Hargreaves, 150 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, 200, 201 
 Henry VIII. , 103, 104 
 Hertford, Marquis of, 193 
 Hill, Lord George, 123, 212 
 History, Lord Plunket's phrase about, 
 
 68, 69 
 History, Irish, Carlyle and, ip2, 103 
 Hoey, Cashel, 116, 230 
 " Hog, going the whole," the phrase, 
 
 67 
 Homestead in Kerry, a, 96-98 
 House of Commons, 190 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, 54, 86 
 Huxley, Professor, and administrative 
 Nihilism, 244 
 
 iNCiDENTon the journey to Sligo, 113 
 Indolence in Ireland, 147, 225 
 Ireland, Carlyle and, 5-8 ; and Crom- 
 well in, 12-15 i first visit of Carlyle 
 to, 15-22 ; and potato blight in, 
 23-27 ; second visit of Carlyle to, 
 30-50 ; at Kilkenny, 71-74 ; at 
 Cork, 95; a Kerry homestead, 96- 
 98 ; at Limerick, 100, loi ; history 
 of, 102, 103 ; at Galway and Sligo, 
 112, 113; distress in, 117-124; in 
 1849, 127-131, 135 ; Duffy's article 
 in Nation about, 135-145 ; songs 
 of, 146 ; Carlyle's article, " Trees of 
 Liberty," in Nation, 145-150 ; the 
 Irish problem, 157-162 ; colleges in, 
 164; Church in, 165, 189; land 
 question in, 171-176, 190; England 
 and, 181-186 ; dispute about, 223- 
 228 ; relations between Scotland 
 and, 229, 230 
 Irish Americans and Carlyle, 181-184 
 " Irish Errors," pamphlet, 151-153 
 " Irish Reminiscences," Carlyle's, 49, 
 50, 71, 95-9B, 100, loi, 112, 118- 
 124 
 Italy, Savage Landor and, 66, 67; 
 Mazzini and, 109, no 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, 55, 56 
 
 Jerpoint Abbey, 49 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 75 
 
 Jervis, S. , 223 
 
 Jewsbury, Miss, 190 
 
 "Junius," the authorship of, 114, 115 
 
 Kenmare, Lord, estate of, 96 
 Kennedy, Dr., 44, 176 
 Kerry homestead, a, 96-98 
 Kildare, 44 
 
 Kilkee (Clare county), 42 
 Kilkenny, 71-73 
 Killarney, 96 
 
 Kilmacthomas, village of, 49 
 Kindness of Carlyle, 187-190 
 
 Lalor, Mr. Shine, 96, 163 
 Lamb, Charles, 86 
 
 Landlords in Ireland, 25, 26, 96, 120, 
 235 
 
26o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Land question in Ireland, 1849, 127- 
 
 131, 171-176, 190 
 Land or, W. Savage, 64-67 
 Lane, Mr. Dennv, 95, 96 
 Larry, the Irish horse named, 98 
 La Trobe, Col., 219 
 " Latter-Day Pamphlets," Carlyle's, 
 
 151-157 
 I^emoinne, John, 195 
 Letters of Thomas Carlyle, see Ire- 
 land, Duffy, &c. , &c. 
 Lewis, Mr. Cornewall, 178 
 Limerick, Carlyle at, 100, loi 
 Lindsay-Layard agitation, the, 194, 
 
 195. 198 
 Linton, W. J., 131 ; and the Nation, 
 
 132-134 
 Lockhart and " Sartor Resartus, ' 90 
 " Locksley Hall," Tennyson's, 5 
 London Press in 1849, the, 83-85 
 Lucas, Frederick, 2, 3, 162, 166, 171, 
 
 190 
 Lynch Law, iii, 112 
 Lytton, Bulwer, pamphlet by, 198, 
 
 200, 241 
 
 MacCarthy, D. F., 63, 64, 145 
 
 MacDonnell, Sir Alexander, 46 
 
 Maclise, the painter, 75 
 
 Macready, W. C, Carlyle and son of, 
 203-210 
 
 Malvern, Duffy at, 191, 192, 198; 
 Carlyle at, 199, 200 
 
 Manchester Exafniner, the, 132 
 
 Mazzini, Guiseppe, 69, 109-111 
 
 Meagher, 193 
 
 Melbourne, Duffy at, 202-210, 251, 
 252 
 
 Method of work, Carlyle's, 92, 93 
 
 Miley, Mr. , 43 
 
 Mill, James, 168 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 91, 166- 171, 235 
 
 Mill, Mrs. J. S., 169 
 
 Mitchel, John, 26, 27, 115, 117, 178 
 
 Modern Art, 228, 229 
 
 Monahan (Irish Attorney-General), 
 38, 112 
 
 Muloch, Thomas, 189 
 
 Murray, Mr. J., and "Sartor Re- 
 sartus," 90 
 
 Murray, Dr., 175-178 
 
 Napoleon, L., Thackeray and bust 
 of. 195 
 
 Nation, the, Carlyle and, 7, 10, 117, 
 123, 127, 128, 133, 152, 158, 164, 
 188 ; Linton's poem in, 133, 134 ; 
 Duffy's article, "Wanted a few 
 Workmen," 135-145; Carlyle's ar- 
 ticle, " Trees of Liberty," 145-150 
 
 National Portrait Gallery, 254 
 
 Newman, Dr., 221 
 
 Nihilism, Huxley and, 244 
 
 O'Brien, Smith, 50 
 O'Brien, Stafford, 41 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 17, 23, 27 
 O'Hagan, Justice, 2, 11.5, 221, 250 
 O'Neill, Miss (Lady Beecher), 98, 99 
 O'Neill, General Owen Roe, 15 
 O'Shaugnessy, 71-73 
 O'Shea, Father, and "Sartor Re- 
 sartus," 88, 95, 96 
 Oxford converts, 220, 221 
 
 P , Lord, stories about, 216-218 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 190 
 
 Papal aggression in Ireland, 163-165 
 
 Paper to supersede Parliament, a, 154 
 
 Parkes, Sir Henry, 210-214 
 
 Parliament of 1852, 190 
 
 Parliament, a paper to supersede, 154 
 
 Parnell, Mr., 145 
 
 Paupers at Westport, 118-122 
 
 Peasant, the Irish, 185, 186 
 
 Peel, Sir R. , and Irish Church, 165 
 
 " Pendennis," Thackeray's, 78 
 
 Petrie (artist), 102 
 
 Philosophy, Carlyle's, 105-107 
 
 Photograph of Carlyle, 213 
 
 Phrase, " going the whole hog," 67 
 
 Pigot, Mr., 1-4 
 
 Pipes, Carlyle and repeal, 69, 70 
 
 Plunket, Lord, 68, 69 
 
 Poetry, Carlyle and, 57 
 
 Poor Law Unions in Ireland, 36 
 
 Portraits, Carlyle and, 92, 93 
 
 Potato blight in Ireland, 23-25, 129, 
 
 130 
 Press, the London, in 1849, 83-85 
 
 Quarrel with Carlyle, 223-228 
 Queen's, College, Galway, 112 
 
 Reform, Carlyle and, 196, 197 
 Rents in Ireland, 157 
 Repeal in Ireland, Carlyle and, 11, 
 17, 27, 29 
 
INDEX. 
 
 261 
 
 Repeal pipes, Carlyle and, 69, 70, 
 
 124-125 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 91 
 Rintoul, founder of the Spectator, 85, 
 
 146 
 Russell, Lord John, 195 
 Russell, Lady William, 219 
 
 Sadlier, John, 174, 175 
 
 St. Patrick, 229, 230 
 
 Sand, George, 109, 222 
 
 Sanders, G. N. , and Mazzini, no 
 
 "Sartor Resartus," Shelley and, 64; 
 Fraser and, 88-91 ; Emerson and, 
 93, 94 ; Father O'Shea and, 95, 96 
 
 Scotch accent, Carlyle's, 116 
 
 Scotch intolerance towards Catholics, 
 
 2, 3 
 Scotland and Ireland, 229, 230 
 Shee, Sergeant, 190 
 Shelley, 63, 64 
 Slavery in America, 220 
 Sligo, the journey to, 113, 120 
 Small Proprietors' Society, Duffy and, 
 
 171-175 
 Smoke, Carlyle and, 69 
 " Sordello," Browning's, 62 
 Spectator, the, 85, 146 
 Stephen, Sir James, 78-80 
 Sterling, Captain John, 24, 87, 88, 
 
 91, 168 
 Sterling, Major Antony, 88, 98, 112 
 Stokes, Dr., 44, 46 
 Strikes, Carlyle and, in, 112 
 
 Tablet, the, 28 
 Talfourd, Sir T. Noon, 86 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, 80-82 
 Taylor, Mrs., 167, 169, 170 
 
 Tenant agitation in Ireland, 145, 155, 
 
 157, 160-163, 166 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 5 
 Thackeray, W. M., 76-78, 91, 228; 
 
 talk with, 192-200 
 "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon, 
 
 Browning's, 57 
 "The Good Great Man," sonnet by 
 
 Coleridge, 61 
 "The Happy Land," poem by W. J. 
 
 Linton, 133, 134 
 " The Suicide's Argument," poem by 
 
 Coleridge, 58, 59 
 Thomson, Mr., 219 
 Times, the, 153, 154, 156 ; Captain 
 
 Sterling and, 87 
 Tobacco, Carlyle and, 69 
 "Trees of Liberty," article by Carlyle 
 
 in Nation, 145-150 
 Twistleton, 39, 41, 43 
 
 Vere, Aubrey de, 36, 39 
 Vichy and dyspepsia, 234, 235 
 Victoria, Queen, and the Albert 
 Memorial, 229 
 
 " Wanted, a few Workmen," article 
 
 in Nation, 135-145 
 Westminster Palace, 228 
 Westminster Review, \}a&, in, 222, 238 
 Westport, Carlyle at, 118, 119, 121, 122 
 Wexford, Carlyle and, 39 
 Wilson, Sir Robert, 65 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 163-165 
 Wood, Sir Charles, 194 
 Woodfall, 114 
 Wordsworth, 53-55 
 Workhouse at Kilkenny, 72, 73; at 
 
 Westport, 118, 119 
 
Boofe ig tije same ^utjor. 
 
 YOUNG IRELAND 
 
 A FRAGMENT OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 From The TIMES. 
 
 ' ' The gifted and ill-fated Party of Young Ireland certainly deserved an 
 Apologia, and it is past dispute that no one could be more competent for 
 the task than Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. Notwithstanding the genuine 
 modesty with which he always attributes the origin of the school (for, in 
 the true sense, it was a school rather than a party) to Thomas Davis, he will, 
 we think, be always regarded as its true founder. . . . The literary quality 
 of the book is remarkable ; the style is vivid and graphic." 
 
 From The SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 ' ' Sir Charles Duffy has many qualifications for his task. With great 
 ability and much literary experience he combines an earnest belief in the 
 justice of his cause ; and it may be added that he always writes in the 
 language and the spirit of a gentleman." 
 
 From The EDINBURGH REVIEW. 
 
 " These, it seems, were the founders, heroes, and martyrs of the Nation, 
 and we are free to confess that the Young Ireland of those days had incom- 
 parably more patriotism, eloquence, and energy than their degenerate 
 successors. But even Ireland cannot produce an inexhaustible supply of 
 Davises and Duffys. It is in the nature of all human things — ' In pejus 
 ruere et retro sublapsa referri.' " 
 
 From The DUBLIN REVIEW. 
 
 • ' The remarkable and romantic career of the author serves to stimulate 
 the curiosity of the public ; but, independently of these advantages, this 
 book contains literary merit of too high an order, and historical matter of 
 too great value, to allow of its being, under any circumstances, ignored or 
 forgotten." 
 
 From The IRISHMAN. 
 
 " Time after time the author returns to describe, or recall his friends, and 
 every time with a new tenderness and renewed affection — an affection in 
 which we surely can share, who are the heirs of the fruits of their heart's 
 toil. So OssiAN recalled the companions of his glorious days, the knightly 
 DiARMUiD, and Oscar ' of the gold-deeds.' " 
 
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. 
 
 Forty-First Edition. 
 
 From The DUBLIN REVIEW, 1846. 
 
 "Our readers will hardly require, on our part, any profession of the un- 
 affected satisfaction with which we welcome this delightful volume. It is 
 a great step towards the realisation of that fond dream of a National 
 Literature, which we have long cherished. We would fain believe that 
 Mr. Duffy's eloquent and earnest Introduction represents the feelings of a 
 large section of the educated public in Ireland. It would be difficult to 
 speak too highly of this Introduction — equally difficult, we trust, to over- 
 estimate its influence. Without reading one word of the volume, every 
 educated man will at once pronounce that a collection made by such an 
 editor must possess merit of the very highest order. We regard it, indeed, 
 as perfect in its kind — correct, yet calm, passionate, but subdued — and 
 combining enthusiasm and order with that tolerance which makes enthusiasm 
 amicable, and that practical sense which prevents ardour from evaporating 
 in noisy and ineffective display." 
 
 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 From The SPECTATOR. 
 
 " We need not say that we cannot always agree in the drift of Sir Charles 
 Gavan Duffy's political criticism. It is a very powerful, and for the most 
 part a very just indictment against the Irish policy of Great Britain. The 
 brief review of Irish history is one of the most vigorous and one of the most 
 painful ' acts of accusation ' against this country which was ever penned, 
 and for English readers one of the most wholesome lessons." 
 
 From The FREEMAN'S JOURNAL (Dublin). 
 
 " We read it through twice in the large edition, and we are reading it 
 through now in its separate form, and it seems to us on the third reading 
 what it seemed on the first. We regard it as the most fascinating chapter 
 in a very fascinating book, as a masterpiece of luminous condensation, and 
 as a gem of historic writing." 
 
 From The AGE (Melbourne). 
 
 " As a plea for Irish Home Rule, nothing more brilliant than the chapter 
 entitled 'A Bird's-Eye View of Irish History,' has ever been printed." 
 
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