"The life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no lie found in him. His doings and writings are not shows, but performances: you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages; and with that grand perennial tide flowing by, in whose waters he nevertheless refused to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of cant he takes to himself, and offers to others, the lowest possible view of his business, which he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. Into the region of poetic art he indeed never rose; there was no ideal without him, avowing itself in his work; the nobler was that unavowed ideal which lay within him, and commanded, saying, Work out thy artisanship in the spirit of an artist! They who talk loudest about the dignity of art, and fancy that they too are artistic guild-brethren, and of the celestials, let them consider well what manner of man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day-labourer."—Misc. vol. iv. p. 19.
The History of the French Revolution deserves, no doubt, notwithstanding the sort of partiality we have intimated for its wild predecessor, to be considered as the greatest work of Mr Carlyle; but it is the work of which criticism, if she ventures to speak at all, must speak with the loudest and most frequent protests. There are certain grave objections which cannot be got over. As to the style, indeed, Mr Carlyle is, on this head, (except, occasionally, when writing for some Review in which a very violent departure from the English language would not be advisable,) far above all criticism. The attempt to censure the oddities with which it abounds—the frequent repetition—the metaphor and allusion used again and again till the page is covered with a sort of slang—would only subject the critic himself to the same kind of ridicule that would fall upon the hapless wight who should bethink him of taking some Shandean work gravely to task for its scandalous irregularities, and utter want of methodical arrangement. Such is Carlylism; and this is all that can be said upon the matter. But the style which seemed not altogether unnatural, and far from intolerable, in Herr Teufelsdrockh, becomes a strangely inconvenient medium of communication where a whole history is to be told in it. The mischief is, that it admits of no safe middle path: it must arrest attention for its novelty, its graphic power, its bold originality; or it must offend by its newfangled phrase, its jerking movement, and its metaphor and allusion reduced into a slang. Meanwhile, there is so much in a history which needs only to be told—so much, which even this author, skip how he may, must relate, for the sake merely of preserving a continuous narrative—and where the perfection of style would be, as all the world knows, that it should draw no attention whatever to itself. A style like this of our author's, once assumed, cannot be laid down for a moment; and the least important incident is related with the same curiosity of diction, and the same startling manner, that delighted us in the Siege of the Bastile. To convey mere information, it seems quite unserviceable. "How inferior," says our author somewhere himself,—"how inferior for seeing by is the brightest train of fireworks to the humblest farthing candle!"
The basis of a history is surely, after all, the narrative, and whatever may be the estimate of others, the historian proceeds on the supposition that the facts he has to relate are, for their own sake, deserving to be had in remembrance. If not, why is he there recording and verifying them? But Mr Carlyle proceeds throughout on quite the contrary supposition, that the fact for itself is worth nothing—that it is valuable only as it presents some peculiar picture to the imagination, or kindles some noteworthy reflection. He maintains throughout the attitude of one who stands apart, looking at the history; rarely does he assume the patient office of that scribe whom we remember to have seen in the frontispiece of our school histories, recording faithfully what the bald headed Time, sitting between his scythe and his hour-glass, was dictating.
Never, indeed, was history written in so mad a vein—and that not only as regards style, but the prevailing mood of mind in which the facts and characters are scanned. That mood is for the most part ironical. There is philanthropy, doubtless, at the bottom of it all; but a mocking spirit, a profound and pungent irony, are the manifest and prevailing characteristics. It is a philanthropy which has borrowed the manner of Mephistopheles. It is a modern Diogenes—in fact it is Diogenes Teufelsdrockh himself, surveying the Revolution from his solitary watch-tower, where he sits so near the eternal skies, that a whole generation of men, whirling off in wild Sahara waltz into infinite space, is but a spectacle, and a very brief and confused one. This lofty irony, pungent as it is, grows wearisome. By throwing a littleness on all things, it even destroys the very aliment it feeds on; nothing, at last, is worth the mocking. But the weariness it occasions is not its greatest fault. It leads to a most unjust and capricious estimate of the characters and actions of men. Capricious it must, of necessity, become. To be ironical always were insufferable; even for the sake of artistical effect, some personages; and some events, must be treated with a natural feeling of respect or abhorrence; yet if one murder is to be recorded with levity, why not another;—if one criminal is to be dismissed with a jest, levelled perhaps at some personal oddity, why is an earnest indignation to be bestowed on the next criminal that comes under notice? The distinctions that will be made will be not fair judgments, but mere favouritism. Situated thus—plain moral distinctions having been disparaged—Mr Carlyle has given way to his admiration of a certain energy of character, and makes the possession of this sole excellence the condition of his favour, the title to his respect, or perhaps, we should say, to an immunity from his contempt. The man who has an eye—that is, who glares on you like a tiger—he who, in an age of revolution, is most thoroughly revolutionary, and swallows all formulas—he is made a hero, and honourable mention is decreed to him; whilst all who acted with an ill-starred moderation, who strove, with ineffectual but conscientious effort, to stay the wild movement of the revolution, are treated with derision, are dismissed with contempt, or at best with pity for their weakness.
His first hero is Mirabeau, a man of energy enough doubtless, and who had, in a most remarkable degree, that force of character which gives not only influence over, but a sort of possession of, other men's minds, though they may claim far higher intellectual endowments. For this one quality he is forgiven every thing. The selfish ambition of which he must be more than suspected, is not glanced at. Even the ridicule due to his inordinate vanity, is spared him. "Yes support that head," says this dying gladiator to his friend; "would I could bequeath it to thee!" And our caustic Diogenes withholds the lash. As the history proceeds, Danton is elevated to the place of hero. He is put in strong contrast with Robespierre. The one is raised into simple admiration, the other sunk into mere contempt; both are spared the just execration which their crimes have merited. The one good quality of Danton is, that, like Mirabeau, he had an eye—did not see through logic spectacles—had swallowed all formulas. So that, when question is made of certain massacres in which he was implicated, we are calmly told "that some men have tasks frightfuller than ours." The one great vice of Robespierre is, that he lacked courage; for the rest, he is "sea-green and incorruptible"—"thin and acrid." His incorruptibility is always mentioned contemptuously, and generally in connexion with his bilious temperament, as if they related as cause and effect, or were both alike matters of pathology. Mr Carlyle has a habit of stringing together certain moral with certain physical peculiarities, till the two present themselves as of quite equal importance, and things of the same category.
Yet this Robespierre, had our author been in want of another hero, possessed one quality, which, in his estimate, would have entitled him to occupy the pedestal. He had faith. "Of incorruptible Robespierre, it was long ago predicted that he might go far—mean, meagre mortal though he was—for doubt dwelt not in him." And this prediction was uttered by no less a man than Mirabeau. "Men of insight discern that the sea-green may by chance go far: 'this man,' observes Mirabeau, 'will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.'" The audacity of Danton the 'sea-green' certainly did not possess, but of that sort of courage which can use the extremest means for the desired end, he surely had sufficient. He shrunk from no crime, however exorbitant. His faith carried him through all, and nearer to the goal than any of his compeers. He walked as firm as others round the crater of this volcano, and walked there the longest. It is impossible not to feel that here, by the side of Dauton, a great injustice has been done to the incorruptible and faithful Robespierre.
Well may energy or will stand in the place of goodness with Mr Carlyle, since we find him making in another place this strange paradoxical statement: "Bad is by its nature negative, and can do nothing; whatsoever enables us to do any thing is by its very nature good." So that such a thing as a bad deed cannot exist, and such an expression is without meaning. Accordingly, not only is energy applauded, but that energy applauded most that does most. Those who exercised their power, and the utmost resolution of mind, in the attempt to restrain the Revolution, are not to be put in comparison with those who did something—who carried forward the revolutionary movement. With what contempt he always mentions Lafayette—a man of limited views, it is true; and whose views at the time were wide enough? or to whom would the widest views have afforded a practical guidance?—but a man of honour and of patriotic intentions! It is "Lafayette—thin, constitutional pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice." And how are the whole party of the Gironde treated with slight and derision, because, at a period of what proved to be irremediable confusion—when nothing but the whirlwind was to be reaped—they were incessantly striving to realize for their country some definite and permanent institutions! But though their attempt we see was futile, could they do other than make the attempt? Mr Carlyle describes the position of affairs very ably in the following passage:—
"This huge insurrectionary movement, which we liken to a breaking out of Tophet and the abyss, has swept away royalty, aristocracy, and a king's life. The question is, what will it next do? how will it henceforth shape itself? Settle down into a reign of law and liberty, according as the habits, persuasions, and endeavours of the educated, monied, respectable class prescribe? That is to say, the volcanic lava-flood, bursting up in the manner described, will explode, and flow according to Girondine formula and pre-established rule of philosophy? If so, for our Girondine friends it will be well.
"Meanwhile, were not the prophecy rather, that as no external force, royal or other, now remains which could control this movement, the movement will follow a course of its own—probably a very original one. Further, that whatsoever man or men can best interpret the inward tendencies it has, and give them voice and activity, will obtain the lead of it. For the rest, that, as a thing without order—a thing proceeding from beyond and beneath the region of order—it must work and wither, not as a regularity, but as a chaos—destructive and self-destructive always; till something that has order arise, strong enough to bind it into subjection again; which something, we may further conjecture, will not be a formula, with philosophical propositions and forensic eloquence, but a reality, probably with a sword in its hand!"
But, true as all this may be, Mr Carlyle would be the last man to commend the Girondists had they allowed themselves to be borne along passively by this violent movement: is it fair dealing, then, that their efforts—the only efforts they could make—efforts which cost them life, should be treated as little better than idle pedantries?