Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/15



knows what befell the original manuscript of The French Revolution: a fate unexampled in the history of the world's great literature. It is true that in the case of one great but non-literary production of the human intellect it had a parallel which, though not exact, is close enough to entitle Newton's dog Diamond to share a sinister immortality with the nameless housemaid of Mr. John Stuart Mill. But the disaster which the illustrious astronomer bore with such heroic patience, must, after all, have seemed less irreparable to him even at the moment of its accidence, than his own calamity may well have appeared to Carlyle. To have the. of a mathematical process destroyed is, after all, but to lose something which you can send the trustiest of retrievers to hunt for, and that, too, along a road every step of which is familiar to him. Sir Isaac could, and probably did, despatch faithful Reason to recover for him his lost calculations; Carlyle had to depend mainly upon treacherous Memory or capricious Imagination for the reconstruction of his destroyed History. That, after a brief interval of stunned despair, he braced himself to the heart-breaking task, and without complaint accomplished it—generously, the while, concealing from his friend how terribly he felt the blow—was a feat of noble fortitude which may well atone for many an outburst of querulous impatience under minor ills.

It seems a feat, too, the more remarkable, because, of all historians, Carlyle, one must think, would be likely to suffer most from such a hideous mishap. No man's completed work is likely to have differed more widely from its rough notes than that of this splendid Impressionist, whose laboriously accumulated materials