Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 01.djvu/15



, the final judge of appeal from the verdicts of successive ages, is rather fond of 'reserving' his decisions. Often they are held over for a generation or more, under the formula of suspension known in the somewhat 'late' Latinity of the lawyers, as Curia advisari vult. But sitting as Lord Justice on that supreme appellate tribunal which examines the claims of departed writers, Time has been 'swift of despatch' in the case of Thomas Carlyle. His award has been delivered within fifteen years of Carlyle's death, and it confirms the judgment of his contemporaries as to his literary greatness. The appeal of his posthumous detractors is dismissed with costs.

We cannot exactly condole with the defeated appellants: they hardly deserve that. But we can make some allowance for them, for, in truth, we can now more clearly see what grounds they had for taking the case to a higher court. Nay, we can even admit that their excuse has been in part provided for them by the victorious respondent himself. No great man of letters has ever so persistently be-littled the mere art of literature as Carlyle. It is true that he had his literary heroes to point his discourses on hero-worship—his Johnson, his Rousseau, his Burns: surely as strange a leash as were ever strung together,—and of course not even he could fail to disengage the matchless art of Shakespeare from his philosophy, his morality, his profound thoughts on life, and what not else among those high matters in which alone Carlyle was interested. But as a rule, it is the direct dogmatic teaching of a work of literature (which is its accident) and not the manner of it, the aesthetic charm, the emotional appeal, the intel-