Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/33

 wise man we must not call him: but to others his presence was beneficent, his injuries were to himself; and among the ordinary population of this world, to note him with the mark of reprobation were ungrateful and unjust.

His genius formed the most important element of his character, and of course participated in its faults. There are the materials of a glorious poet, but no poet has been fashioned out of them. His mind was not cultivated or brought under his own dominion; we admire the rich ingredients of it, and regret that they were never purified, and fused into a whole. His life was disjointed: he had to labour for his bread, and he followed three different arts; what wonder that in none of them he should attain perfection? Accordingly, except perhaps as a musician, the critics of his country deny him the name of an Artist: as a poet, he aimed but at popularity, and has attained little more. His intellect is seldom strong, and that only in glimpses; his abundant humour is too often false and local; his rich and gorgeous fancy is continually distorted into crotchets and caprices. In fact, he elaborated nothing; above all, not himself. His knowledge, except in the sphere of Art, is not extensive; for an author, he had read but little; criticisms, even of his own works, he never looked into; and except Richter, whom he saw only once, he seems never to have met with any individual whose conversation could instruct or direct him. Human nature he had studied only as a caricature-painter: men, it is said, in fact interested him chiefly as mimetic objects; their common doings and destiny were without beauty for him, and he observed and copied them only in their extravagances and ludicrous distortions. His works were written with incredible speed, and they bear many marks of haste: it is seldom that any piece is perfected, that its brilliant and often genuine elements are blended in harmonious union. On the largest of his completed Novels, the Elixiere des Teufels, he himself set no value; and the Kater Murr, which he meant for a higher object, he did not