Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/134

 The style and structure of the book appear alike incomprehensible. The narrative is every now and then suspended to make way for some "Extra-leaf," some wild digression upon any subject but the one in hand; the language groans with indescribable metaphors and allusions to all things human and divine; flowing onward, not like a river, but like an inundation; circling in complex eddies, chafing and gurgling now this way, now that, till the proper current sinks out of view amid the boundless uproar. We close the work with a mingled feeling of astonishment, oppression and perplexity; and Richter stands before us in brilliant cloudy vagueness, a giant mass of intellect, but without form, beauty or intelligible purpose.

To readers who believe that intrinsic is inseparable from superficial excellence, and that nothing can be good or beautiful which is not to be seen through in a moment, Richter can occasion little difficulty. They admit him to be a man of vast natural endowments, but he is utterly uncultivated, and without command of them; full of monstrous affectation, the very high-priest of bad taste: knows not the art of writing, scarcely that there is such an art; an insane visionary floating forever among baseless dreams, which hide the firm Earth from his view; an intellectual Polyphemus; in short, a monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, (carefully adding) cui lumen ademptum; and they close their verdict reflectively, with his own praiseworthy maxim: "Providence has given to the English the empire of the sea, to the French that of the land, to the Germans that of—the air."

In this way the matter is adjusted; briefly, comfortably and wrong. The casket was difficult to open; did we know by its very shape that there was nothing in it, that so we should cast it into the sea? Affectation is often singularity, but singularity is not always affectation. If the nature and condition of a man be really and truly, not conceitedly and untruly, singular, so also will his manner be, so also ought it to be. Affectation is the product of Falsehood, a heavy sin,