Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/31

 the wall; and scarcely had this been done when the fatal sound was heard in his throat, and in a few minutes Hoffmann was no more.

Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture might have done great things: there lay in it the elements of much moral worth, and talents of almost the highest order. Nor was it weakness of Will that so far frustrated these fine endowments; for in many trying emergencies he proved that decision and perseverance of resolve were by no means denied him. Unhappily, however, he had found no sure principle of action; no Truth adequate to the guidance of such a mind. What in common minds is called Prudence, was not wanting, could this have sufficed; for it is to be observed, that so long as he was poor, so long as the fetters of everyday duty lay round him, Hoffmann was diligent, unblamable and even praiseworthy: but these wants once supplied, these fetters once cast off, his wayward spirit was without fit direction or restraint, and its fine faculties rioted in wild disorder. In the practical concerns of life he felt no interest: in religion he seems not to have believed, or even disbelieved; he never talked of it, or would hear it talked of: to politics he was equally hostile, and equally a stranger. Yet the wages of daily labour, the solace of his five senses, and the intercourse of social or gregarious life, were far from completing his ideal of enjoyment: his better soul languished in these barren scenes, and longed for some worthier home. This home, unhappily, he was not destined to find. He sought for it in the Poetry of Art; and the aim of his writings, so far as they have any aim, as they are not mere interjections, expressing the casual moods of his mind, was constantly the celebration and unfolding of this the best and truest doctrine which he had to preach. But here too his common failing seems to have beset him: he loved Art with a deep but scarcely with a pure love; not as the fountain of Beauty, but as the fountain of refined Enjoyment; he demanded from it not heavenly peace, but earthly excitement; as indeed through