Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/45

 Heath himself is called ‘Carrion Heath,’—as being ‘an unfortunate blasphemous dullard, and scandal to Humanity;—blasphemous, I say; who when the image of God is shining through a man, reckons it in his sordid soul to be the image of the Devil, and acts accordingly; who in fact has no soul, except what saves him the expense of salt; who intrinsically is Carrion and not Humanity’: which seems hard measure to poor James Heath. ‘He was the son of the King’s Cutler,’ says Wood, ‘and wrote pamphlets,’ the best he was able, poor man. He has become a dreadfully dull individual, in addition to all!—Another wretched old Book of his, called Chronicle of the Civil Wars, bears a high price in the Dilettante Sale-catalogues; and has, as that Flagellum too has, here and there a credible trait not met with elsewhere: but in fact, to the ingenuous inquirer, this too is little other than a tenebrific Book; cannot be read except with sorrow, with torpor and disgust,—and in fine, if you be of healthy memory, with oblivion. The latter end of Heath has been worse than the beginning was! From him, and his Flagellums and scandalous Human Platitudes, let no rational soul seek knowledge.

Among modern Biographies, the great original is that of Mark Noble above cited; such ‘original’ as there is: a Book, if we must call it a Book, abounding in facts and pretended-facts more than any other on this subject. Poor Noble has gone into much research of old leases, marriage-contracts, deeds of sale and suchlike: he is learned in parish-registers and genealogies, has consulted pedigrees ‘measuring eight feet by two feet four’; goes much upon heraldry;—in fact, has amassed a large heap of evidences and assertions, worthless and of worth, respecting Cromwell and his Connexions; from which the reader, by his own judgment, is to extract what he can. For Noble himself is a man of extreme imbecility; his judgment, for most part, seeming to lie dead asleep; and indeed it is worth little when broadest awake.