Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/141

 Katzenberger's Badereise, and the Jubelsenior; with two of much larger and more ambitious structure, Hesperus and Titan, each of which I have in its turn seen rated as his masterpiece: the former only is known to me. His work on Criticism has been mentioned already: he has also written on Education, a volume named Levana; the Campanerthal (Campanian Vale) I understand to turn upon the Immortality of the Soul. His miscellaneous and fugitive writings were long to enumerate. Essays, fantasies, apologues, dreams, have appeared in various periodicals: the best of these performances, collected and revised by himself, were published some years ago, under the title of Herbst-Blumine (Autumnal Flora). There is also a Chrestomathie (what we should call Beauties) of Richter, in four volumes.

To characterise these works would be difficult after the fullest inspection: to describe them to English readers would be next to impossible. Whether poetical, philosophical, didactic, or fantastic, they seem all to be emblems, more or less complete, of the singular mind where they originated. As a whole, the first perusal of them, more particularly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive; and neither their meaning, nor their no-meaning, is to be discerned without long and sedulous study. They are a tropical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities; but with the fairest flowers, and the coolest fountains; now overarching us with high umbrageous gloom, now opening in long gorgeous vistas. We wander through them enjoying their wild grandeur; and by degrees our half-contemptuous wonder at the Author passes into reverence and love. His face was long hid from us: but we see him at length in the firm shape of spiritual manhood; a vast and most singular nature, but vindicating his singular nature by the force, the beauty and benignity which pervade it. In fine, we joyfully accept him for what he is, and was meant to be. The graces, the polish, the sprightly elegances which belong to men of lighter make, we cannot look for or demand from him. His movement is essentially slow and