WawatlWPt ^SMMMMK-- 4(1 «»^ ^ .jtb/ ^r * B®*^^. m ^,^ (m?^ 1 p ^ ^A'-'^w 3^ .^.<'.««^ — M-r-^Tf. jSi) .^■^< Jf^, O-/^^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Prophets of the Nineteenth Century By the Same Author Dante. A Sketch of his Life and Works Petrarch. A Sketch of his Life and Works Old Colony Days Each of above, i6mo, cloth, $1.25 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. TiroMAS Cai:lyi,e. Prophets of the Nineteenth Century Carlyle^ Ruski?i^ Tolstoi By May Alden Ward Author of "Life of Dante," "Petrarch," ««01d Colony Days," etc. London Gay and Bird 22 Bedford Street, Strand 1900 Copyright, 1900, By Little, Brown, and Company All rights reserved UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. PREFATORY NOTE Y)EFORE Carlyle died he said that jL_J John Ruskin was the only man in England ivho was carrying out his ideas ; and Ruskin said recently that Tolstoi is the one man in the world tvho stands for the movement tvhich he had tried to further. Was there this rela- tion between these three men, so differ- ent in all their personal attributes? So far as the tivo former are concerned there can be no doubt of it, for the rela- tion tvas direct and organic. Carlgle was tiventij-four years old at the time of Ruskin s birth, and had reached the zenith of his influence before Ruskin had com- V 861-^03 Prefatory Note 'pleied the early art writings tvJiich gave him his reputation. During this time Riishin had been steadili/ coming under the influence of Carlyle, hut about the time he attained forty, Carlyle s influ- ence became so predominant that he de- sired to recall his early work and begin over again. lie actually allowed his art works to go out of print, though there was nothing in them which he had any reason to regret, or tvhich was in any way antagonistic to the teachings of Carlyle. Both men had really been tvorking at the same problems, though in entirely different methods. Ruskin now came to feel that Carlyle s method was better, and therefore he took his new departure in the direction of his economic experiments for the bet- terment of the people, by means of im- proving their environment. To this end VI Prefatory Note he cheerfully davotcd his jyrivaie fortune of nearhj a million dollaj^s ivhich he had inherited from his father. In this last act we may see a close relation to the teachings and practice of Tolstoi. Though the relation iv'dh Tolstoi is less direct, and probably not at all organic, it is none the less real; since a spiritual sympaihy through the contagion of ideas, mag fur- nish a homl of the most lasting kind. By such a fellowship these three men are absolidelg united, — three social reformers working toward the highest ends; and, in spite of local differences, toicard almost the same end. With tvhat difficidties they contended and with tvhat struggles of soul they reached their neio gospel, of the mission of man to his fellow, the story of each must tell ; but there is no longer room to doubt that to each of them it tvas a VII Prefatory Note gospel, uttered with as complete a sin- cerity as any that ever came to the heart of man ; and as truly has it proved pro- phetic of the great movement which is now sweeping over the world, proclaiming the coming of sweetness, and jog, and comfort to human life, through the sur- render of luxury, greed, and vulgarity. The false gods mag fight hard and tarry hng, hut their disguise is now torn from them. Henceforth they must masquerade in their true character. Vlll CONTENTS Page Thomas Caklyle and his Gospel of Work 3 John Ruskin as a Social Reformer . 83 The Gospel of Count Tolstoi . . . 137 THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS GOSPEL OF WORK Prophets of the Nineteenth Century THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS GOSPEL OF WORK WE are somewhat startled when we remember that England has already celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Carlyle. It is hard to realize that his date is more than a century old, for he seems to be- long particularly to our own day. Nevertheless, he was born while that other great Scotchman, Robert Burns, was still in the world, w^hose life he has painted as none other 3 Prophets of the 1 9th Century could; born before the Reign of Terror had died away, which he was yet to make so terribly real to us ; born before " that portentous mix- ture of quackery and hero," Napo- leon, had commenced to show his hand. The men who came into the world at the same time with Carlyle belong without question to a past age. Keats was born a year later, Shelley tkree years earlier, Byron six years earlier. All three, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, had done what they were to do in the world, and had passed out of it, before Carlyle had found out what his work was to be. Had his life been no longer than that of these three contemporaries, his name would never have been known. At the age when their genius was fully 4 Thomas Carlyle flowered, he was simply a country schoolmaster iu an unknown Scotch village; for Carlyle matured late, and it was characteristic of him that he should keep silence until he had something to say. He did not begin by feeling his way as other writers do, but when his mes- sage was ready he uttered it. What, then, was his message? It may well be called " the gospel of work": " If you have anything to do in the world, DO IT." This was the text upon which he con- tinued to ring the changes for more than half a century. He in- sisted that we are placed here for a purpose, — to be of use in the world; and if we fail to accom- plish this we are mere dead rub- bish, cumbering the earth. A 5 Prophets of the 19th Century necessary part of this teaching was his intense hatred of shams, together with his insistence on the value and the dignity of Ufe. It was a gospel that was greatly needed hy the indolent and senti- mental age on which it fell, and its influence was incalculable. It is safe to say that there has been no single literary man of note in Eng- land or in America, during the last generation or in this, who has not been helped and inspired by the words of Carlyle. And who shall count the vast multitude of men and women, not writers, whose lives have been made larger by his teachings ; who have learned from him that life is more than living, that the only real life, the only full life, is a life of service ; that fame 6 Thomas Carlyle and money and all that the world calls success are small and trivial compared with the great realities of life which are tinith and duty I His great aim was to call men back to reality. He tried to hold up before men's eyes a high standard of human living, and to show them how utterly modern human life comes short of that standard. Whatever may be the final judg- ment on Carlyle's writings, he has left an indelible mark on the thought of the nineteenth century. His quickening and stimulating influence cannot be overestimated. To have aroused a self-seeking generation to a higher idea of life is a task worthy of a prophet. Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4th, 1795, in the little 7 Prophets of the 19th Century Scotch village of Ecclefechan, — a village consisting of a single street with a brook running along one side of it. His father was a stone- mason, and built with his own hands the house in which the son was born. Both parents were honest Scotch peasants and strict Calvinists. That they were poor goes without saying. The father, after he had given up masonry and taken to farming, was able, in an exceptionally favorable year, to make five hundred dollars for a family of nine children. But no one in Scotland is too poor to know the value of an education, and the Carlyles resolved from the first that Thomas should be educated. After exhausting the village school, he was sent at the age of ten to 8 Thomas Carlyle the Academy at Annandale, a few miles away. There are in " Sartor Resartus " several bits of autobi- ography, and one of them is the description of the ten-year-old hoj, walking by his father's side to the school, his heart full of joyous hope, — hope which was never to be realized, for the school proved a place of misery to him. The schoolboys were cruel and tyranni- cal to all new-comers. Carlyle's mother had exacted from him be- fore leaving home a promise never to fight, not to give blows even in self-defence ; a promise which prob- ably embittered the whole of his after life, for the boys were not long in discovering that he did not fight, and in consequence they bullied and tormented him outra- 9 Prophets of the 19th Century geously. After months of this treat- ment, he finally turned one day in a rage upon the biggest bully, and began kicking him with all his strength. After that he was left alone, but he had no desire to asso- ciate with his schoolmates. The effect of this experience was to make him solitary and misan- thropical even at that early age. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Edin- burgh. The life of a student at a Scotch university at that day was very different from what we know of college life to-day. Most of the students were poor ; many of them paid their own way by hard work. They hired cheap lodg- ings and lived on the oatmeal and potatoes sent them from home 10 Thomas Carlyle every week. Carlyle fared like the rest. It was the desire and intention of his parents that he should enter the ministry of the Kirk of Scot- land, and the yonth acquiesced in their plans. What his own secret desires were may be seen from some words written in an old Greek text-book used by him at this time and found long years after by one of his admirers. " O Fortune, thou that parcellest out to man his lot of pleasure or of pain, thou that givest to one to feast upon fat things, and dash through life in a coach and six, — and to another to starve on his salted herring, and drive through life his Cutler's Wheel, — bestow (if it please thee) crowns and kingdoms and princi- 11 Prophets of the 19th Century palities and purses and puddings and power, upon the great and the noble and the fat ones of the earth. Grant me that with a heart of in- dependence, unseduced by the world's smiles, and unbending to its frowns, I may attain to literary fame. And though starvation be my lot, I will smile that I have not been born a king. ..." At- tain it he did, though not until after he had learned to have a far higher aim in life than to gain fame. Sixty years afterward, when his fame was greater than he had ever dreamed of, he said to the students of this same university: "Man is born to expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has given him in doing the work he 12 Thomas Carlyle finds lie is fit for ; to stand up to it to the last breath of life and do his best. We are called upon to do that ; and the reward we all get — which we are perfectly sure of, if we have merited it — is that we have got the work done, or at least that we have tried to do the work. For that is a blessing in itself ; and I should say there is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat and clothes, what matters whether he buys those necessaries with seven thousand a year, or with seven million, could that be, or with seventy pounds a year? He can get meat and clothes for that ; and he will find intrinsically, if he is a wise man, wonderfully little real differ- ence." Unlike many other preach- 13 Prophets of the 19th Century ers and theorists, Carlyle lived up to this high ideal throughout a long life. But before he had attained this high philosophical plane, be- fore he had discovered that the meaning of life is work well done, when he was still a boy of nineteen, to whom literary fame seemed the highest aim, even then he had adopted a simple, heroic view of life. He had chosen a life of true worth and hard literary work, though its meed should be salt herring and starvation, rather than the life of a mere dilettante filled with earth's fat things and hur- rahed to as he dashes through life in a coach and six. He had al- ready struck the keynote of his life. Carlyle left the university at the age of nineteen. He has left a 14 Thomas Carlyle sarcastic picture of it and of wliat he learned there in " Sartor." He was still to continue the study of theology in accordance with his parents' wishes. His family ties were very close ones. His relations with his mother were exceptionally beautiful. Notwithstanding her lack of learning, he never failed to show her the greatest respect and devotion. When he went away to college she was not able to write her name, but, in order not to be deprived of communicating with her boy, she resolved to learn to write. And learn she did, though we can imagine what slow and weary work it was for a woman of her age. The father writes on one occasion that she would have sent a letter, but the carrier only 15 Prophets of the 1 9th Century remained two days, and she was such a slow writer that she could not get it done, but would send it the next time. A sample of her simple, affectionate letters will show the relation between her and her son, and her watchful care over the needs of his body and of his soul: — Son Tom, — I received your kind and pleasant letter. Nothing is more satisfying to me than to hear of your welfare. Keep up your heart, my brave boy. You ask kindly after my health. I complain as little as possible. When the day is clear it has a great effect on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes, with a box to bring home your clothes. Send them all home that I may wash and sort them once more. Oh, man, could I but write ! I '11 tell ye a' when we meet, but 16 Thomas Carlyle I must in the meantime content myself. Do send me a long letter ; it revives me greatly ; and tell me honestly if you read your chap- ter e'en and morn, lad. You mind I hod if not your hand, I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in particu- lar. I must run to pack the box, so I am, Your affectionate mother, Margaret Carlyle. But in spite of his respect for his parents' wishes, Carlyle began to see, before his student days were over, that he could not conscien- tiously enter the ministry. He kept on with his studies in a perfunc- tory way, teaching in the mean- time to pay his expenses. All that was necessary to do to keep in the Divinity School was to register, pay the fee, and appear once a year with a sermon. Carlyle delivered 2 17 Prophets of the 19th Century two of these animal sermons before he definitely broke with theology. He describes his sermons as " weak, flowery, sentimental things." He has told in his own words the story of the terrible struggle through which he passed when the voice came to him saying, "Arise and settle the question of thy life." "I had been destined by my father and my father's minister to be myself a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. But, now that I had gained man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the doctrines of my father's kirk; and it was needful that I should now settle it. And so I entered my chamber and closed the door, and around me there came a trooping throng of phantoms dire from the abysmal depth of the 18 Thomas Carlyle nethermost perdition. Doubt, fear, unbelief, mockery, and scoffing were there; and I wrestled with them in agony of spirit. Thus it was for weeks. Whether I ate I know not, whether I drank I know not, whether I slept I know not. But I know that when I came forth again it was with the direful per- suasion that I was the miserable OT\Tier of a diabolical arrangement called a stomach." For the rest of his life he was never allowed to forget that " infernal api^aratus," for he was for fifty years a con- firmed dyspeptic. So much was dyspepsia a part of him that we should as soon thmk of Jove with- out his thunderbolts as of Carlyle without his dyspepsia. For a time after giving uj^ the ministry he 19 Prophets of the 1 9th Century tried teaching, but came to the con- ckision that he would rather perish in a ditch than earn his hving by that trade. Then came the study of the law. At first it seemed to him glorious for its independence, but after a time he came to look upon the law, the " dull people who studied it, and the brilliant lecturers, as mere denizens of the kingdom of dulness, pointing towards nothing but money as wages for all that bogpool of dis- gust." He flung the thing away forever, and was again at sea about the future. Then came the dreari- est years, — " eating of the heart, misgivings as to whether there shall be presently anything else to eat ; disappointment of the nearest and dearest as to the hoped-for entrance 20 Thomas Carlyle on tlie ministry ; and steadily grow- ing disappointment of the self with the undertaken law profes- sion, — above all, perhaps, wander- ing through mazes of doubt, per- petual questionings unanswered." He had already had his brief romance, his love for Margaret Gordon, the original of " Blumine" in " Sartor." Her friends inter- fered and the affair was soon over. He was more solitary than ever. In Edinburgh, he says, " from my fellow-creatures, little or nothing but vinegar was my reception, when we happened to meet or pass near each other, — my own blame mainly, so proud, shy, poor; at once so insignificant-looking and so grim and sorrowful." He had one true friend, however, in Ed- 21 Prophets of the 19th Century- ward Irving, whom he had known in his teaching days, and who had from the first recognized Carlyle's genius. " From Irving," he says, " I first learned what the commun- ion of man with man may mean." Carlyle had gradually become a devout reader of German literature, then an unknown study in Eng- land, and was beginning to feel a capacity for work ; but he heard no voice calling for just the kind of work that he could do. The first ray of light came from his friend David Brewster, who set him to work on the Edinburgh Encyclo- pedia ; there was not much money in it, but a certain drill, and, still better, a sense of accomplishing something. He wrote innumerable articles for the cyclopedia, and 22 Thomas Carlyle translated Legendre's Geometry. Irving obtained for him a tutorship in a wealthy family, that of the Bullers, whoso three promising sons became not only his pupils but his life-long friends. The salary enabled him to go on with his writ- ing, which he had come to feel was his life work. Irving influenced his future in still another way, for it was he who introduced him to Mrs. Welsh and her daughter at Haddington. Miss Welsh was at that time very much in love with Irving and he with her, but he was bound by a previous engagement, and the lady would not release him, although he explained to her the state of affairs. Carlvle knew noth- ing of this, and the friendship of Jane Welsh gave new zest to his life. 23 Prophets of the i 9th Century When we come to the story of Carlyle's marriage, one hardly knows how to tell it. We feel as if we had listened to a scandal- monger, who has told us things we had no right to know. Mr. Fronde is so recently dead that one hesi- tates to abuse him. But let any woman among us try to imagine her own love-letters, those of her husband, together with all the letters they exchanged after mar- riage, her own private diary, if she keeps one, wherein are recorded her most sacred thoughts and feel- ings, thoughts which she would not even share with her husband, and his private journal of all the daily happenings of their lives; imagine, I say, that all these sacredly private papers should be 24 Thomas Carlyle placed in the hands of a man, not her husband, who is to use his own discretion about giving them to the world. But if he has no dis- cretion, how can he use it ? And so poor Jennie Carlyle, after having been for forty years a faithful wife, having seconded her husband's aims in every way, after having sacrificed her time, her strength, her own ambition, on the altar of his genius, is held up to the world as a woman who did not love her husband. And Thomas Carlyle, the brave teacher who taught us to despise sham and renounce self, is called to account for every cross, dyspeptic word he uttered during forty years of married life. Well niaj^ a man of genius say, " Deliver me from my friends." 25 Prophets of the 19th Century It was in 1821 that Carlyle first met Jane Welsh, and in 1826 that he married her, after overcoming innumerable obstacles. The chief difficulty was the fact that he had no place to put a wife, and no way to keep her. Having given up the ministry, the law, teaching, and civil engineering, he had not found the work that the world wanted. He was still eating his own heart, with the aforemen- tioned " misgivings as to whether there shall presently be anything else to eat." He had done much, hack writing and something better. He bad translated Wilhelm Meister, and had written a life of Schiller, which was published as a serial in the "London Magazine." These tasks brought him the rare treasure 26 Thomas Carlyle of Goethe's friendship, but brought him little money. To Carlyle, poverty did not seem such an in- tolerable evil as it did to Miss Welsh. He conceived that it would be a fine idea to live in the country, in peace and quiet, " far from the madding crowd," where he might bring to birth the works he had in mind. Miss Welsh had inherited a small farm at Craigen- puttoch, a lonely, moorland, barren place, fifteen miles from every- where, and Carlyle suggested that they live there, — an idyllic life, he thought; he to farm, and she to bake and brew, and both to live in independence. He had saved two hundred pounds, and he knew a man, a hedger, whose family lived happily on fifteen pence a day. A 27 Prophets of the 19th Century very simple Utopia, but as illu- sory as the wildest dream of the dreamers. Carlyle's tastes were so simple that the plan seemed per- fectly feasible to him. To Miss Welsh it seemed otherwise. She replied that she would not live at Craigenputtoch a month with an angel. She had implicit faith in her lover's genius, and thought some sinecure ought to be found which would enable him to write. To which he answered: "A sine- cure ! God bless thee, my darling, I could not touch a sinecure, though twenty of my friends should volun- teer to offer it. . . . For affection, or the faintest imitation of it, a man should feel obliged to his very dog; but for the gross assistances of j)atronage or purse, let him 28 Thomas Carlyle pause before accepting them from any one." Notwithstanding such widely different ideas of life, the matter was finally arranged. They were married and went to live in Edinburgh. Friends made various attempts to obtain for Carlyle a professor- ship in some university, but all their efforts were unavailing. He was already too individual and marked a character to find favor with the authorities. The little that he earned from his writings would not suffice for their needs, and the two hundred pounds was fast dwindling. He was offered work as a journalist on condition that he would dip his pen in the real party ink, but this he could not do. The Craigenputtoch project 29 Prophets of the 1 9th Century- was again revived, and this time Mrs. Carlyle consented to try it. In the second year of their married hfe they removed to the moorland farm, which Mr. Froude describes as " the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The nearest house is more than a mile from it ; the elevation, seven hun- dred feet above the sea, stunts the trees, and limits the garden prod- uce to the hardiest vegetables. The honse is gaunt and hungry- looking. It stands, with the scanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by grace or grandeur, — mere undulating hills of grass and heather, with peat- bogs in the hollows between them." They were fifteen miles from the 30 Thomas Carlyle nearest town and from the nearest doctor. The roads in winter were ahnost impassable. This dreary sohtude was their home for the next seven years. Carlyle had his books and his fire and his pen. His brother did the farming. He could write in peace, and their scanty income could be made to suffice. He did not, therefore, look upon their lot as a hard one. It seemed perfectly natural to him that his wife should bake and mend and scour. All his life he had seen his mother, whom he loved and reverenced above all others, busied in these tasks as a matter of course, and he saw no incongruity in his wife's doing it. To Mrs. Carlyle, brought up as she had been, the loneliness and entire 31 Prophets of the 19th Century- change in her manner of living proved a terrible ordeal, although she wrote bright letters describing her trials and tribulations in bread- making, milking, and so on. The intensely earnest, busy, struggling man, writing away with his very heart's blood, had little time to give praise or thanks for all this domestic drudgery. In truth, he scarcely realized it. " You don't want to be praised for doing your duty," he said to her once. " But I did, though," she writes in her journal, very naturally. To Carlyle the result of the life at Craigenputtoch was some of his best work, including the Essay on Burns, that on Voltaire, and above all, " Sartor Resartus." It is very much to be doubted whether " Sar- 32 Thomas Carlyle tor" could ever have been written in Edinburgh or London. To the wife, the result of these seven long years of imprisonment was broken health and shattered nerves, — a result which affected her whole future life. Before coming to the moors, even before his marriage, Carlyle had already passed through what he called his " Baphometic- fire-baptism," his struggle with the everlasting No. The long battle, which left him conscious of that infernal apparatus called a stomach, was probably the turning-point of his life. He was not making a de- cision merely as to the choice of a profession, but a decision as to the basis on which his work was to be done. Should he strive for fame, for money and place, — for pud- 3 33 Prophets of the 19th Centur)^ dings and power, as he would have put it, — or should he utter the truth that was in him though the heavens fall I That is, should he adapt himself to the market, cater to the public taste, make himself popular, allow himself to be the tool of a party ; or should his pen be guided solely by his own con- science, even though, starvation stare him in the face? But before he could settle this there were other questions that his soul had to face: What is man^ What is life? What are we placed here for? On this would his decision depend. And the answer that he found for bimxself, after long soul-search- ings, was this: "We are here to do God's will. The only key to a right life is self-renunciation. 34 Thomas Carlyle The man who lives for self, who works for selfish ends, is a charla- tan at bottom, no matter how great his powers. The man who lives for self alone has never caught a vision of the true mean- ing and order of the universe. Human life is a solemn thing, — an arena wherein God's purpose is to be worked out. I must, with open, spiritual vision, behold in this universe, and through it, the mighty All, its Creator, in his beauty and grandeur, humbling the small Me into nothingness. His purpose, not mine, shall be carried out, for to that end the universe exists. Life shall be a barren, worthless thing for me unless I seek to fall in with God's plan, and do the work he has sent me here to do. 35 Prophets of the 19th Century Ah, then, tlie torturous pangs of disappointed hopes, jealousy, and despair shall be at rest, and I, now in harmony with Grod, can sing at my work, and amid my toil find blessed rest. For, what though I fail to reach the mark I set before me; what though its immediate results have been small I the very attempt, persevered in, of working out the Divine purpose in my life has made that life a truly noble one. Now, indeed, I am independ- ent of the world's smile or frown, since I am in harmony with Grod, and have his smile as the light of my life. I have got into the blessed region of the ' Everlasting Yea.' And however ill outwardly and apparently, all is going well for me inwardly and ultimately." 36 Thomas Carlyle This was the theory of life whicli Carlyle had slowly and painfully worked out for himself, the theory which he tried to live up to for the rest of his life. The grajDhic passage in " Sartor " which describes the way in which light suddenly shone in upon him, was, he confessed to his friends, a true experience. He was possessed by a nameless fear, by that un- reasoning presentiment of evil felt by all of us at times of doubt and indecision. He knew not whether he had in him a certain faculty, a •certain worth, such even as the most have not ; or whether he was the completest dullard of these modern times. Alas, the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could he believe when the 37 Prophets of the 19th Century- net result of his work as yet amounted simply to nothing ? "So had it lasted," he says, " as in bit- ter and protracted death agony, through long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smoulder- ing in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. ... I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear ; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what ; it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me ; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless Jaws of a de- vouring monster, wherein I, palpi- tating, waited to be devoured. Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole city or suburbs, was I, one sultry dog- 38 Thomas Carlyle day, toiling along the dirty little street, . . . in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebu- chadnezzar's f menace; . . . when all at once there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, ' What art thou afraid off Wherefore like a coward dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling ? Despicable biped, what is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee I Death? Well, Death ; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and man may, will, or can do against thee. Hast thou not a heart ; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and as a child of freedom, though outcast, ti'ample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then ; I will meet it and 39 Prophets of the 1 9th Century- defy it.' And as I so thought there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and I shook base fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed ; not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but indignation and grim, fire-eyed Defiance. Thus had the Everlasting No (as he calls the Devil) claimed me. To which my whole Me now made answer: 'I am not thine, but free, and forever hate thee.' It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-Birth, or Baphometic Fire- Baptism ; perhaps I directly there- upon began to be a man." He had yet to pass what he calls the "Everlasting Yea, — " the re- 40 Thomas Carlyle alization that there is sometliiiig higher than happiness to live for. " I asked myself : What is this that ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and la- menting and self -tormenting on ac- count of I Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not Happy! Because the Thou (sweet gentle- man) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lov- ingly cared for? Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy I A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be Unhappy! There is in man a Highek than love of Happiness : he can do without hap- piness, and instead thereof find 41 Prophets of the 19th Century- blessedness. . . . Love not Pleas- ure; love Gfod. This is the Ever- lasting Yea, wherein all contradic- tion is solved : wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." And still another passage must be quoted to illustrate Carlyle's spiritual development at this time. " Conviction, were it never so ex- cellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that ' Doubt of any sort cannot be re- moved except by Action.' On which ground too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or un- certain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which was to me of invaluable ser- vice: 'Do THE DUTY WHICH LIES 42 Thomas Carlyle NEAREST THEE,' which tllOll kllOWOst to be a Duty ! Thy second duty will already have become clearer. May we not say, however, that the hour of Spmtual Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal World, wherein the w^hole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes re- vealed, and thrown open ; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meis- ter, that your ' America is here or nowhere ' 1 The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or no- where is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, 43 Prophets of the 1 9th Century live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is thyself; the impediment too is in thyself; thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of : what matters whether the stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see. . . . " I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but be a World, or even a Worldkin. Pro- duce ! Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in Grod's 44 Thomas Carlyle name ! 'T is the utmost thou hast in thee ; out with it then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand findest to do, do it with thy whole might." For a man who has reached so high a plane, poverty and discom- fort can have no terrors. For him the outward life, the surroundings, are mere accidents. The real life is the inward, the spiritual. Yet some one must look after the prac- tical, and his brother struggled along with the farm, and the brave wife with the housekeeping. At one time the combined resources of the three amounted to twelve pence, with no knowledge of where the next was to come from. Car- lyle was well paid for his writings in the " Edinburgh Review," the " Foreign Quarterly," and " Fra- 45 Prophets of the 1 9th Century ser." But he was a slow and labo- rious writer. The least thing he wrote contained a part of his very life. He was so extremely con- scientious that he would not touch a subject until he had thoroughly mastered it. For a single magazine article on Diderot, he devoured twenty-five ponderous volumes. The income from his writings was therefore necessarily limited. In addition there was a severe strain upon it from outside during all these years. He had taken upon himself the entire expense of the education of his brother John. Having confidence in this brother, he had given him the most com- plete medical education, includ- ing two years of special study in Germany. 46 Thomas Carlyle After all this outlay, John was now struggling penniless in Lon- 'don, and, finding j^atients slow to appear, was growing impatient, and talked of trying to live by his pen, — of writing for the magazines. Carlyle responded with a shrill cry of alarm. Periodical writing, he said, was simply the worst of all existing employments. The trade of literature was worse as a trade than that of honest street sweep- ing. Incessant scribbling is inevi- table death to thought. If you have real thoughts, let time and silence ripen them. In the meantime he urged his brother to cling to his profession ; so convinced was he of the dangerous, precarious, and on the whole despicable and ungainly nature of a life by scribbling. At 47 Prophets of the 19th Century the same time he would by no means disparage or discourage real literature. " Nay, had I but two potatoes in the world, and one true idea, I should hold it my duty to part with one potato for paper and ink, and live upon the other till I got it written." Affairs at Craigenputtoch were growing worse. Alick, the brother, became discouraged and gave up the farm. Larry, the horse, to whom they were greatly attached, became discouraged and died. Even the potatoes seemed doubt- ful. Carlyle himself was discour- aged. He saw nothing for it, he said, but to turn cynic, and live and die in silence. At this juncture Jeffrey, a warm friend always, offered, in the most delicate man- 48 Thomas Carlyle ner, his help. He proposed to settle upon Carlyle an annuity of a hun- dred pounds a year, no one but themselves to know of it. Carlyle, " in the meekest, friendliest, but most emphatic manner," promptly refused. Under these circumstances " Sar- tor Resartus " was written, and " of all the wonders of that wonderful book, none is more wonderful than its high spirits." When it was finished, Carlyle prepared to go to London to find a publisher for it; to find also some humble employment for himself, since Craigenputtoch seemed no longer practicable. He knew that he had put into the book the best that was in him, and he knew its worth. His wife had said to him when she 4 49 Prophets of the 19th Century finished reading the last page, " It is a work of genius, dear." But neither of them knew the long and bitter struggle that must be gone through before the world would recognize its worth. What more pitiful than the thought of Carlyle hawking about that masterpiece among the publishers, who would have none of it? "I carried it from one terrified owl to another," he says. All were equally afraid of it. Eraser agreed to publish it if the author would pay him one hundred and fifty pounds. " Better wait awhile," said a friend. " Yes," he replied, "it is my purpose to wait till the end of eternity." Long- mans refused it blankly. Bentley the same. Murray returned it, but afterward, at the request of Lord 50 Thomas Carlyle Jeffrey, who had managed to read twenty-eight pages of the manu- script, consented to examine it again. The result was that he offered to i^ubUsh it on a phm which should cost Carlyle nothing, but by which he would get nothing except the pleasure of seeing the work in print. But after the print- ing had begun, Murray became frightened again and withdrew from the bargain. Murray in- formed him, when he returned the manuscript, that he needed only a little tact to produce a popular as well as an able work, — while Mur- ray's " taster " wrote that Carlyle's wit " reminded him of the German baron who took to leaping on tables and said that he was learning to be lively." 61 Prophets of the 19th Century It was with hearts sad and sore that the Carlyles returned to their moorland solitude, carrying with them the despised and rejected manuscript. A few months later the author succeeded in arranging with Fraser to publish " Sartor " piecemeal. It was cut up into sec- tions and appeared in ten numbers of the magazine. It was paid for at a much lower rate than Carlyle's other writings, but the proceeds enabled them to drag out another twelve months of existence at Craigenputtoch. If it was hard to find a publisher for " Sartor," it was still harder to find a public. As it appeared from month to month in Eraser, sub- scribers began to write to the edi- tor, " Stop that stuff or stop my 52 Thomas Carlyle paper." — " When is that stupid series of articles by the crazy tailor going to end I " and so on. Only two voices were heard in approval : an Irish Catholic priest from Cork, and a Mr. Emerson from America. The critic of the "Sun" pro- nounced it "a heap of clotted nonsense." And what was this " Sartor " which in 1832 fell upon such stony ground, and of which, in 1882, seventy thousand copies were sold by one firm! It was Carlyle's phi- losophy of life, clothed in quaint garb, and it contains the germ of all his later works. Sartor Resartus means the " tailor re tailored." It is called a philosophy of clothes, and pretends to have been written by an imaginary professor, whose 63 Prophets of the 19th Century name is Diogenes Teufelsdrockh (God-born devil's-dung, the latter being the vulgar name for assa- foetida). He lived in the village of Entepfuhl (Duckpuddle), was educated at the school of Hinter- schlag (Spanking), and at the imiversity of Weiss Nichts Wo (Know not where), where he came to be professor. His chair was that of Allerei Wissenschaft (Things in General), or, as it has been called, Hodge-Podge Philosophy. In the professor's mouth Carlyle puts the thoughts which " time and silence " had ripened in himself. The phi- losophy of the imaginary professor is, in brief, '' that all forms, habits, and institutions which man has fashioned are but the garments in which he has from time to time 54 Thomas Carlyle arrayed himself for his own decora- tion, comfort, or protection; that these garments, like all other of man's works, grow old, decay, be- come useless, and, in spite of all patching and retailoring, must sooner or later be thrown away, and be replaced by new ones ; and that many of the garments which the men of our days are wearing have well-nigh reached the last stage of dilapidation." From this text he preaches discourses upon the loftiest topics of human thought, — as on space and time, on customs, on the system of nature, on the past and the future, on immortalitj^ Thousands upon thousands who have been quickened and stirred to the very depths by the splendid passages of " Sartor," find it hard to 55 Prophets of the 19th Century realize that it fell still-boni into the world. When it came to an end in the pages of " Fraser," not the bravest mortal alive would have ventured to suggest republishing it as a book. Affairs were growing no brighter at Craigenputtoch. The reviews, which had heretofore always been open to Carlyle's pen, had grown cool toward him. Many articles were rejected, — among them the matchless essay on the " Diamond Necklace." Such is the fallibility of editors. In these dark days, however, there came one ray of brightness. A stranger one day alighted at the door and announced himself as Mr. Emerson, of Amer- ica. " He had sought out Carlyle in his remote moorland solitude to tell him that he was read and 56 Thomas Carlyle approved in far-off America. Only the day before, Carlyle had written in his journal: *I am left here the solitariest, most stranded, most helpless creature .that I have been for many years.' Emerson came to say to him, ' Faint not — the word you utter is heard, though in the ends of the earth and by humblest men; it works, prevails.'" The two men talked soul to soul on vital themes and at the end of twenty-four hours parted, friends for life. One result of this visit was a correspondence covering nearly half a century, — a treasure which the world could ill spare. In 1833 Carlyle wrote in his jour- nal: "It is twenty-three months since I earned a penny b}^ the craft of literature, and yet I know no 57 Prophets of the 19th Century fault I have committed. I shall quit literature, it does not invite me. Providence warns me to have done with it. I have failed in the Divine Infernal Universe." The bleak farm by the bleak hills be- came unendurable to him and to his wife. They resolved to burn their ships, — to sell their farm stock, a part of their furniture, and whatever could be sold, go to London, live upon the proceeds while they lasted, and then sink or swim. The conditions whicb Carlyle had imposed on himself made it no easy matter to swim. He regarded his talent as a sacred trust, and had laid down as a fixed rule that he would never write merely to please, never for money ; that he would never write any- 68 Thomas Carlyle thiii