On leaving Carlyle shook hands with us both and said he was glad to have seen us. “It was pleasant to have friends coming out of the dark in this way.”
Perhaps a reflection or two which occurred to me after this interview may not be out of place. Carlyle was perfectly frank, even to us of whom he knew but little. He did not stand off or refuse to talk on any but commonplace subjects. What was offered to us was his best. And yet there is to be found in him a singular reserve, and those shallow persons who taunt him with inconsistency because he makes so much of silence, and yet talks so much, understand little or nothing of him. In half a dozen pages one man may be guilty of shameless garrulity, and another may be nobly reticent throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle feels the contradictions of the universe as keenly as any man can feel them. He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting anew the riddles which nobody can answer; he knows how strong is the temptation towards the insoluble. But upon these subjects he also knows how to hold his tongue; he does not shriek in the streets, but he bows his head. He has found no answer—he no more than the feeblest of us, and yet in his inmost soul there is a shrine, and he worships.
Carlyle is the champion of morals, ethics, law—call it what you like—of that which says we must not always do a thing because it is pleasant. There are two great ethical parties in the world, and, in the main, but two. One of them asserts the claims of the senses. Its doctrine is seductive because it is so right. It is necessary that we should in a measure believe it, in order that life may be sweet. But nature has heavily weighted the scale in its favour; its acceptance requires no effort. It is easily perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly all genius has gone over to it, and preaching it is rather superfluous. The other party affirms what has been the soul of all religions worth having, that it is by repression and self-negation that men and States live.
It has been said that Carlyle is great because he is graphic, and he is supposed to be summed up in “mere picturesqueness,” the silliest of verdicts. A man may be graphic in two ways. He may deal with his subject from the outside, and by dint of using strong language may “graphically” describe an execution or a drunken row in the streets. But he may be graphic by ability to penetrate into essence, and to express it in words which are worthy of it. What higher virtue than this can we imagine in poet, artist, or prophet?
Like all great men, Carlyle is infinitely tender. That was what struck me as I sat and looked in his eyes, and the best portraits in some degree confirm me. It is not worth while here to produce passages from his books to prove my point, but I could easily do so, specially from the Life of Sterling and the Cromwell. [10] Much of his fierceness is an inverted tenderness.
His greatest book is perhaps the Frederick, the biography of a hero reduced more than once to such extremities that apparently nothing but some miraculous intervention could save him, and who did not yield, but struggled on and finally emerged victorious. When we consider Frederick’s position during the last part of the Seven Years’ War, we must admit that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances or showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the Destinies, in order to teach us what human nature can do, had ordained that he who had the most fortitude should also encounter the severest trial of it. Over and over again Frederick would have been justified in acknowledging defeat, and we should have said that he had done all that could be expected even of such a temper as that with which he was endowed. If the struggle of the will with the encompassing world is the stuff of which epics are made, then no greater epic than that of Frederick has been written in prose or verse, and it has the important advantage of being true. It is interesting to note how attractive this primary virtue of which Frederick is such a remarkable representative is to Carlyle, how moral it is to him; and, indeed, is it not the sum and substance of all morality? It should be noted also that it was due to no religious motive: that it was bare, pure humanity. At times it is difficult not to believe that Carlyle, notwithstanding his piety, loves it all the more on that account. It is strange that an example so salutary and stimulating to the poorest and meanest of us should be set by an unbelieving king, and that my humdrum existence should be secretly supported by “Frederick II. Roi de Prusse.”
* * *
Soon after Carlyle died I went to Ecclefechan and stood by his grave. It was not a day that I would have chosen for such an errand, for it was cold, grey, and hard, and towards the afternoon it rained a slow, persistent, wintry rain. The kirkyard in Ecclefechan was dismal and depressing, but my thoughts were not there. I remembered what Carlyle was to the young men of thirty or forty years ago, in the days of that new birth, which was so strange a characteristic of the time. His books were read with excitement, with tears of joy, on lonely hills, by the seashore and in London streets, and the readers were thankful that it was their privilege to live when he also was alive. All that excitement has vanished, but those who knew what it was are the better for it. Carlyle now is almost nothing, but his day will return, he will be put in his place as one of the greatest souls who have been born amongst us, and his message will be considered as perhaps the most important which has ever been sent to us. This is what I thought as I stood in Ecclefechan kirkyard, and as I lingered I almost doubted if Carlyle could be dead. Was it possible that such as he could altogether die? Some touch, some turn, I could not tell what or how, seemed all that was necessary to enable me to see and to hear him. It was just as if I were perplexed and baffled by a veil which prevented recognition of him, although I was sure he was behind it.
EARLY MORNING IN JANUARY
A warm, still morning, with a clear sky and stars. At first the hills were almost black, but, as the dawn ascended, they became dark green, of a peculiarly delicate tint which is never seen in the daytime. The quietude is profound, although a voice from an unseen fishing-boat can now and then be heard. How strange the landscape seems! It is not a variation of the old landscape; it is a new world. The half-moon rides high in the sky, and near her is Jupiter. A little way further to the left is Venus, and still further down is Mercury, rare apparition, just perceptible where the deep blue of the night is yielding to the green which foretells the sun. The east grows lighter; the birds begin to stir in the bushes, and the cry of a gull rises from the base of the cliff. The sea becomes responsive, and in a moment is overspread with continually changing colour, partly that of the heavens above it and partly self-contributed. With what slow, majestic pomp is the day preceded, as though there had been no day before it and no other would follow it!