I could not. You must stand in the shadow of that
mountain of shams, to know how hard it is to cast light across it.
Honor to Carlyle! _Hoch!_ Although in the wine with which we drink
this health, I, for one, must mingle the despised "rose-water."
And now, having to your eye shown the defects of my own mind, in the
sketch of another, I will pass on more lowly,--more willing to be
imperfect,--since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to
be only this or that. It is much if one is not only a crow or
magpie;--Carlyle is only a lion. Some time we may, all in full, be
intelligent and humanly fair.
CARLYLE, AGAIN.
_Paris, Dec, 1846._--Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant
richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and
a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not
converse;--only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked
men,--happily not one invariable or inevitable,--that they cannot
allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their
atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the
greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.
Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not
only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as
so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority,--raising his
voice, and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound.
Pages:
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258