At last Carlyle's task on the "Life of Oliver Cromwell" was finished in August, 1845, when he was fifty years of age. It was the greatest contribution to English history; Mr. Froude thinks, which has been made in the present century. "Carlyle was the first to make Cromwell and his age intelligible to mankind." Indeed, he reversed the opinions of mankind respecting that remarkable man, which was a great accomplishment. No one doubts the genuineness of the portrait. Cromwell was almost universally supposed, fifty years ago, to be a hypocrite as well as a usurper. In Carlyle's hands he stands out visionary, perhaps, but yet practical, sincere, earnest, God-fearing,--a patriot devoted to the good of his country. Carlyle rescued a great historical personage from the accumulated slanders of two centuries, and did his work so well that no hostile criticisms have modified his verdict. He has painted a picture which is immortal. The insight, the sagacity, the ability, and the statesmanship of Cromwell are impressed upon the minds of all readers. That England never had a greater or more enlightened ruler, everybody is now forced to admit,--and not merely a patriotic but a Christian ruler, who regarded himself simply as the instrument of Providence.
People still differ as to the cause in which Cromwell embarked, and few defend the means he used to accomplish his ends. He does not stand out as a perfect man; he made mistakes, and committed political crimes which can be defended only on grounds of expediency. But his private life was above reproach, and he died in the triumph of Christian faith, after having raised his country to a higher pitch of glory than had been seen since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
The faults of the biographer centre in confounding right with might; and this conspicuously false doctrine is the leading defect of the philosophy of Carlyle, runs through all his writings, and makes him an unsound teacher. If this doctrine be true, then all the usurpers of the world from Caesar to Napoleon can be justified. If this be true, then an irresistible imperialism becomes the best government for mankind. It is but fair to say that Carlyle himself denied this inference. Writing of Lecky's having charged him with believing in the divine right of strength, he says:--
"With respect to that poor heresy of might being the symbol of right 'to a certain great and venerable author,' I shall have to tell Lecky one day that quite the converse or reverse is the great and venerable author's real opinion,--namely, that right is the eternal symbol of might; ... in fact, he probably never met with a son of Adam more contemptuous of might except when it rests on the above origin."
Yet the impression of all his strongest work is the other way.
Certain other kindred doctrines may be inferentially drawn from Carlyle's defence of Cromwell; namely, that a popular assembly is incapable of guiding successfully the destinies of a nation; that behind all constitutions lies an ultimate law of force; that majorities, as such, have no more right to rule than kings and nobles; that the strongest are the best, and the best are the strongest; that the right to rule lies with those who are right in mind and heart, as he supposed Cromwell to be, and who can execute their convictions. Such teachings, it need not be shown, are at war with the whole progress of modern society and the enlightened opinion of mankind.
The great merit of Carlyle's History is in the clearness and vividness with which he paints his hero and the exposure of the injustice with which he has been treated by historians. It is an able vindication of Cromwell's character. But the deductions drawn from his philosophy lead to absurdity, and are an insult to the understanding of the world.
It was about this time, on the conclusion of the "Cromwell," when he was on the summit of his literary fame, and the world began to shower its favors upon him, that Carlyle's days were saddened by a domestic trouble which gave him inexpressible solicitude and grief. His wife, with whom he had lived happily for so many years, was exceedingly disturbed on account of his intimate friendship with Lady Ashburton. Nothing can be more plaintive and sadly beautiful than the letters he wrote to her on the occasion of her starting off in a fit of spleen, after a stormy scene, to visit friends at a distance; and what is singular is that we do not find in those letters, when his soul was moved to its very depths, any of his peculiarities of style. They are remarkably simple as well as serious.
Carlyle's friendship for one of the most brilliant and cultivated women of England, which the breath of scandal never for a moment assailed, was reasonable and natural, and was a great comfort to him. He persisted in enjoying it, knowing that his wife disliked it. In this matter, which was a cloud upon his married life, and saddened the family hearth for years, Mrs. Carlyle was doubtless exacting and unreasonable; though some men would have yielded the point for the sake of a faithful wife,--or even for peace. There are those who think that Carlyle was selfish in keeping up an intercourse which was hateful to his wife; but the Ashburtons were the best friends that Carlyle ever had, after he became famous,--and in their various country seats he enjoyed a hospitality rarely extended to poor literary men. There he met in enjoyable and helpful intercourse, when he could not have seen them in his own house, some of the most distinguished men of the day,--men of rank and influence as well as those of literary fame.
Until this intimacy with the Ashburtons, no domestic disturbances of note had taken place in the Carlyle household. The wife may occasionally have been sad and lonely when her husband was preoccupied with his studies; but this she ought to have anticipated in marrying a literary man whose only support was from his pen. Carlyle, too, was an inveterate smoker, and she detested tobacco, so that he did not spend as much time in the parlor as he did in his library, where he could smoke to his heart's content. On the whole, however, their letters show genuine mutual affection, and as much connubial happiness as is common to most men and women, with far more of intimate intellectual and spiritual congeniality. Carlyle, certainly, in all his letters, ever speaks of his wife with admiration and gratitude. He regarded her as not only the most talented woman that he had ever known, but as the one without whom he was miserable. They were the best of comrades and companions from first to last, when at home together.