Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 21 (US).djvu/13

 INTRODUCTION

works composing this volume date from the most arduous period in Carlyle's career. Success had not yet dawned upon him; his means were still painfully narrow; and he had just entered upon the doubtful experiment of matrimony. He was at this time supporting himself wholly by contributions to the literary reviews, and had not yet obtained that admiring acceptance among their editors which he was afterwards to acquire. He had tried verse-writing with results discouraging, at any rate, to every one but himself; and had proved even to his own satisfaction that he was quite unfitted for novel-writing. Naturally he was glad in such circumstances to accept any literary employment which was offered him; and the nature of this particular commission is described with much candour in a note to the collected Edition of 1857, wherein he speaks of German Romance as 'a Book of Translations, not of my suggesting or desiring, but of my executing as honest journey work in defect of better.' He could, of course, hardly speak with so much freedom as this in the preface to the original edition, yet it is not difficult even there to discern evidences of his personal indifference to, if not positive distaste for, his work, and of his disturbing doubts as to whether it was worth performing at all. The following, for instance, is anything but an enthusiastic account of the romantic material from which he had to select:—

'In Germany, accordingly, as in other countries, the Novelists are a mixed, innumerable, and most productive race. Interspersed with a few Poets, we behold whole legions and hosts of Poetasters, in all stages of worthlessness; here languishing in the transports of Sentimentality, there dancing the St.-Vitus dance of hard-studied Wit and Humour; some

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