The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01

by William Cowper Brann

That Carlyle was "an undignified human being," I can well believe; for he was the wisest of his day, and dignity is the distinguishing characteristic of the dodo and the donkey. If Mr. Gosse esteems it so highly, he might procure a pot of glue and adorn his vermiform appendix with a few peacock feathers, else take lessons in posturing from the turkey- gobbler or editor of the Houston Post. Had Carlyle been born a long-eared ass, he might have been fully approved— if not altogether appreciated—by Gosse, Froude and other "critic flies." When Doctor Samuel Johnson was told that Boswell proposed to write his life, he threatened to prevent it by taking that of his would-be biographer. It were curious to consider what "crabbed old Carlyle" would have done had he suspected the danger of falling into the hands of a literary backstairs Mrs. Grundy like Edmund Gosse! In his "Heroes and Hero Worship" he treated his colossi far otherwise than he in turn has been treated by Gosse and Froude. He first recognized the fact that they were colossi, and no fit subject for the microscope. We hear nothing from him to remind us of Lemuel Gulliver's disgust with the yawning pores and unseemly blotches of the epidermis of that monster Brobdingnagian maid who set him astride her nipple. He reverenced them because they possessed more than the average of that intellectual strength which is not only of God, but is God; then considered their life-work as a whole, its efficient cause and ultimate consequence. He does not appear to have thought to inquire whether they had dyspepsia, and how it affected them, being engrossed in that more important question, viz., what ideas they were possessed withal, how wrought out, and what part these emanant volitions of the lords of intellect played in the mighty drama of Human Life.

It is not my present purpose to review Carlyle's literary labors—that were like crowding the Bard of Avon into a magazine article. For 300 years the world has been studying the latter, and is not yet sure that it understands him; yet Shakespeare is to Carlyle what a graded turnpike is to a tortuous mountain path. The former deals chiefly with the visible; the latter with the intangible. The first tells us what men did; the last seeks to learn why they did it. Carlyle is the prince of critics. He is often lenient to a fault, but seldom deceived—"looks quite through the shows of things into the things themselves." Uriel, keenest of vision 'mid all the host of heaven, is his guardian angel. To follow him into the sanctuaries of great souls and become familiar with all their hopes and fears; to pass the portals of master minds and watch the gradual evolution of great ideas in these cyclopean workshops; to mount the hill of Mirza and from it view the Tide of Time rushing ever into the illimitable Sea of Eternity, and comprehend the meaning of that mighty farce-tragedy enacted on the Bridge of Life, were scarce so easy as listening to the buzzing of the "critic fly" or dawdling over a French novel on a summer's day.

Carlyle is frequently called a "mystic," and mystagogue he certainly is—a man who interprets mysteries. If the average reader urge that his interpretation is too oft an obscurum per obscurius, he might reply, in the language of that other woefully "undignified" and shockingly impolite human being, Dr. Johnson: "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir, but not in brains." Carlyle was regarded by those writers of his day who clung to and revered the time-worn ruts, as chief of the "Spasmodic School," the members whereof were supposed to be distinguished by "a stained and unnatural style." This "School," which was satirized by Aytoun while editor of Blackwood's Magazine, was thought to include Tennyson, Gilfillan and other popular authors of the time. I incline to the view that no writer of whom we have any knowledge exhibits less affectation in the matter of style than does the subject of this essay. It is rugged and massive; but so is his mind. It were impossible to imagine the author of "Sartor Resartus" and "The French Revolution" expressing himself in the carefully rounded periods of Macaulay, whose prose is half poetry, and whose poetry is all prose. Carlyle seems to care precious little what kind of vehicle he uses for the conveyance of ideas so long as it does not break down. All his labor "smells of the lamp"; but "the midnight oil"—of which our modern "ready writers" evidently use so little—was consumed in considering what to say rather than how to say it. Not even Shakespeare possesses so extensive a vocabulary. The technical terms of every profession and subdivision of science come trippingly to his tongue. But even the dictionary is not large enough for him, and he extends it this way and that, his daring neology creating consternation among the critic flies and other ephemera. He wrote as he thought, hence his style could not be other than natural. That of Aytoun was formed in the schools, principally modeled by masters—made to fit a procrustean bed—and was, therefore, eminently artificial. If we apply the term "unnatural" to the matter instead of the manner of Carlyle and Tennyson, then away with genius, for intellectual originality is tabooed!—no man is privileged to think his own thoughts. That is the law nowadays nowhere except in the sanctum of the Gal-Dal News, where Col. Jenkins takes the editorial eyas and teaches it to soar ln exact imitation of himself.

Whether by the "Spasmodic" method or otherwise, Carlyle dragged more true orients out of the depths than did any of his contemporaries; and that is saying much, for "there were giants in those days," and they were neither few nor far between. The intellectual glory of the first half of the present century was scarce eclipsed by the Elizabethan era. It was in very truth "a feast of reason and a flow of soul." Goethe and "Jean Paul" were putting the finishing touches to their work while Carlyle, then a young man, was striving to interpret these so strange appearances to the English-speaking world, to hammer some small appreciation of German literature into the autotheistic British head. Tom Moore, sweetest of mere singers, and Lord Byron, prince of poets, were but five and seven years respectively his seniors. He saw the beginning and the end of their literary labors, as of those of Macaulay and Mill, Darwin, Disraeli and Dickens. Much of his best work was done ere the death of Walter Scott, and he might have played as a school boy with the ill-fated Shelley. He had just begun his long life-labor when Longfellow and Tennyson, Hugo and Wagner came upon the scene, and together they wrought wisely and well in that mighty seed-field which is the world! What a galaxy of intellectual gods!—now all gone, returned home to High Olympus—the weird land left to the Alfred Austins, the William Dean Howells and the Ian McLarens! Gone, but not forgotten; yet the world will in time forget— even the amaranthine flowers must fade. Of them all we see but one star that blazes the brighter as the years run on, and that one long mistaken for a mere erratic comet— sans substance, or unformed nebulae hanging like a splotch of semi-luminous vapor in a great void. Year by year the voice of Carlyle rings clearer and clearer from the "Eternal Silence." And as we listen with rapt attention to the music of the spheres becoming audible, intelligible to our dull ear—the Waterloo and Lisbon earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of humanity—even Birth and Death—but minor notes in the Grand Symphony, the Harmony of Infinitude, the little man who has undertaken the management of the microphone, without suspecting its significance, distracts us with the unwished for and utterly useless information that the Voice coming from beyond Time and Space, out of the Everlasting Deep, once "growled like a collie dog!"

* * * RESQUIESCAT IN PACE.

The mortal remains of Jefferson Davis, for four eventful years president of the Southern Confederacy, are now en route to their last resting place in Hollywood cemetery in the city of Richmond. New Orleans, the metropolis of the sunny south-land, surrenders, with sighs and tears, the dust of the distinguished dead to the keeping of the old capital of the Confederacy. There, where died the dream of a new nation; there, where the dashing Cavalier made his last desperate stand against the stubborn Puritan; there, where the cause was irretrievably lost,—where the stars and bars made obeisance to the stars and stripes and the "gray gigantic host" faded from the tragic stage of the world, will be laid the dust of our honored dead to await the judgment day.

Near the grave of Davis will spring a massive monument, which will forever remain a landmark in American history,— aye, in the mighty epic of the world! More imposing cenotaphs have risen, costlier mausoleums have charmed the eye, more gigantic monuments have aspired to kiss the clouds; but to the student of mankind none were more significant, to the historian none more interesting, to the poet none will appeal more powerfully through the long ages yet to be. It will be a new and grander Memnon in masonry, ever sounding celestial music for him that hath ears to hear, when smitten by the golden shafts of Justice's shining orb, when gilded with the celestial radiance of Love and Charity.

To-morrow the Southern people will, with tender hands and loving hearts, finally commit their dead chieftain to the care of the impartial historian. May another Plutarch arise to paint him as he was—nothing extenuating, naught set down in malice. May another Macaulay come forth from the fecund womb of the mighty future to add to the charm of history the music of his voice.

When the generation that knew and loved Davis shall have passed from earth; when those who idealized him shall have crossed the narrow boundaries of Time into Eternity's shoreless sea; when those brave souls who set their breasts against the bayonet shall one and all be gathered into the great hand of God; when those who saw in him the incarnation of a principle in whose defense they had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, shall be no longer with us to warp our better judgment, Jefferson Davis will sink to the ordinary level as a statesman and a soldier. It will be seen that his intellect was of the commonplace, his judgment ofttimes faulty,—that he can have no claim on the bays that lie ever green upon the brow of genius; but his dauntless courage, his devotion to his people, his purity of purpose—in a word, his American manhood—may well defy the crucial test of time and the analysis of the most exacting historian.

The honors which the South pays to the memory of Jefferson Davis are as unique as they are pathetic. He stood for the division of the Union, and the South rejoices that we are one nation and one people. He stood for the perpetuation of human slavery, and the South rejoices that the foul curse hath been lifted from her forever. Intensely loyal to the Union to-day, she bedews with her tears and covers with her rarest flowers the bier of him who devoted his best energies to destroy it. The successful revolutionary leader is always lionized; the patriot who strives and fails, remains dear to the people so long as his cause awakes a responsive echo in their hearts; but where hitherto in the great world's history has chieftain been thus honored, when even those who bore the battle's brunt give thanks to God that his flag went down in defeat lo rise no more forever? It is the grandest tribute ever paid to American manhood.