Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/135

 and the parent of numerous heavy sins; let it be severely punished, but not too lightly imputed. Scarcely any mortal is absolutely free from it, neither most probably is Richter; but it is in minds of another substance than his that it grows to be the ruling product. Moreover, he is actually not a visionary, but, with all his visions, will be found to see the firm Earth in its whole figures and relations much more clearly than thousands of such critics, who too probably can see nothing else. Far from being untrained or uncultivated, it will surprise these persons to discover that few men have studied the art of writing, and many other arts besides, more carefully than he; that his Vorschule der Æsthetik (Introduction to Æsthetics) abounds with deep and sound maxims of criticism; in the course of which, many complex works, his own among others, are rigidly and justly tried, and even the graces and minutest qualities of style are by no means overlooked or unwisely handled.

Withal, there is something in Richter that incites us to a second, to a third perusal. His works are hard to understand, but they always have a meaning, and often a true and deep one. In our closer, more comprehensive glance, their truth steps forth with new distinctness; their error dissipates and recedes, passes into venality, often even into beauty; and at last the thick haze which encircled the form of the writer melts away, and he stands revealed to us in his own steadfast features, a colossal spirit, a lofty and original thinker, a genuine poet, a high-minded, true and most amiable man.

I have called him a colossal spirit, for this impression continues with us: to the last we figure him as something gigantic; for all the elements of his structure are vast, and combined together in living and life-giving, rather than in beautiful or symmetrical order. His Intellect is keen, impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humour he sports with the highest