This is
not in the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others. On the
contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought.
But it is the habit of a mind accustomed to follow out its own
impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in
the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing; but in his
arrogance there is no littleness,--no self-love. It is the heroic
arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror;--it is his nature, and
the untamable energy that has given him power to crush the dragons.
You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere; and perhaps, also, he would
only laugh at you if you did; but you like him heartily, and like to
see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron
in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you, if you
senselessly go too near. He seems, to me, quite isolated,--lonely as
the desert,--yet never was a man more fitted to prize a man, could he
find one to match his mood. He finds them, but only in the past.
He sings, rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical,
heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally, near
the beginning, hits upon some singular epithet, which serves as a
_refrain_ when his song is full, or with which, as with a knitting
needle, he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced, now and then,
to let fall a row.
Pages:
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259