ARTICLE BY STERLING.

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CHAPTER VII.

A.D. 1839-40. ET. 44-45.

Review of Carlyle by Sterling-Article on Chartism offered to Lockhart-Expanded into a book-Dinner in Dover Street-First sight of Dickens-Lectures on Heroes-Conception of Cromwell-Visit from Thirlwall-London Library-Impressions of Tennyson— Reviews-Puseyism-Book to be written on Cromwell.

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A PLEASANT surprise waited for Carlyle on his return to London-an article upon him by Sterling in the Westminster Review.' Sterling's admiration was steadily growing-admiration alike for his friend's intellect and character. It was the first public acknowledgment of Carlyle's magnitude' which had been made. He perhaps remembered that he had expressed some spleen at Sterling in the summer, and a little penitence may have been mixed with his gratitude.

To John Sterling.

Chelsea: September 29, 1839. Mill says it is the best thing you ever wrote; and, truly, so should I, if you had not shut my mouth. It is a thing all glaring and boiling like a furnace of molten metal: ' a brave thing, nay a vast and headlong, full of generosity, passionate insight, lightning, extravagance, and Sterlingism— such an article as we have not read for some time past. It will be talked of; it will be admired, condemned, and create

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1 Sterling's article is reprinted by Hare, vol. i. p. 252.

astonishment and give offence far and near. My friend, what a notion you have got of me! I discern certain natural features, the general outline of shape; but it is as one would in the Air Giant of the Hartz, huge as Opheneus, painted there as one finds by sunrise and early vapour-i.e. by Sterling's heart impinging on you between himself and the 'Westminster Review.' I do not thank you, for I know not whether such things are good; nay, whether they are not bad and poison to one; but I will still say, there has no man in these islands been so reviewed in my time. It is the most magnanimous eulogy I ever knew one man utter of another man, whom he knew face to face, and saw go grumbling about in coat and breeches, a poor concrete reality very offensive now and then. God help you, my man, with such a huge Brocken Spectre Chimæra, and a lot of cub chimæras sucking at her I would not be in your shoes for something!

Sterling's appreciation, when read now, rather seems to fall short of the truth than to exceed it. But now is now, and then was then-and a man's heart beats when he learns, for the first time, that a brother man admires and loves him. If Carlyle was proud, he had no vanity, and he allowed no vanity to grow in him. He set himself to his article for Lockhart. He sent for Citoyenne, which had remained till now with Mr. Marshall.

I go out to ride daily (he reported on October 8), sometimes in the Park, sometimes over the river, or somewhere else into the country-sometimes I fall in with some other friend, also riding, and then it is quite cheerful to go trotting together through green lanes, from one open common, with its whin-bushes and high trees, to another. My horse is in the best order, and does seem to do me good. I will try it out, and see what good comes of it, dear though it be.

October 23, 1839.-My riding keeps me solitary. It is all executed at calling hours; the hours I used to spend in visiting or wandering about the crowded thoroughfares, looking at the noisy and, to me, irrational, inarticulate spectacle of the streets. Green lanes, swift riding, and solitude-how much more delightful! For two hours every day I have almost an immunity from pain. My poverty, contrasted with the expensiveness of riding, makes me enjoy the thing more; joy on a basis of apprehension; thankfulness kept constantly alive by the insecurity of the thing one is thankful for. My health is not greatly, yet it is perceptibly, improved. I have distinctly less pain in all hours. Had I work to keep my heart at rest, I should be as well off as I have almost ever been. Much solitude is good for me here. Society enough comes to me of its own accord. Too much society is likely to sweep me along with it, ever and anon, that I, too, become a vain repeater of its hearsays, and have no thought or knowledge of my own. How did Goethe work? One should get into a way of profitably occupying every day, even in the vague, uncommanded, unlimited condition I now stand in. Articles, reviews, have lost their charm for me. It seems a mere threshing of dusty straw. This last year, it is very strange, I have for the first time these twelve years I may say in some measure the first time in my lifebeen free, almost as free as other men perhaps are, from the bewildering terror of coming to actual want of money. Very strange! a very considerable alleviation. It now seems as if I actually might calculate on contriving some way or other to make bread for myself without begging it.

Under these conditions, and riding every day, Carlyle contrived to finish without fret or fume the hypothetical article for the Quarterly '-for the 'Quarterly' as had been proposed, yet, as it grew under his hand, he felt but too surely that in those pages it

could find no place. Could the Tory party five-andforty years ago have accepted Carlyle for their prophet, they would not be where they are now. Heat and motion, the men of science tell us, arc modes of the same force, which may take one form or the other, but not both at once. So it is with social greatness. The Noble Lord may live in idleness and luxury, or he may have political power, but he must choose between them. If he prefer the first, he will not keep the second. Carlyle saw too plainly that for him in that quarter there would be no willing audience.

I have finished (he wrote, November 8) a long review article, thick pamphlet, or little volume, entitled 'Chartism.' Lockhart has it, for it was partly promised to him; at least the refusal of it was, and that, I conjecture, will be all he will enjoy of it. Such an article, equally astonishing to Girondins, Radicals, do-nothing Aristocrats, Conservatives, and unbelieving dilettante Whigs, can hope for no harbour in any Review. Lockhart refusing it, I mean to print it at my own expense. The thing has been in my head and heart these ten, some of it these twenty, years. One is right glad to be delivered of such a thing on any terms. No sect in our day has made a wretcheder figure than the Bentham Radical sect. Nature abhors a vacuum-worthy old girl! She will not make a wretched, unsympathetic, scraggy Atheism and Egoism fruitful in her world, but answers to it—‘Enough, thou scraggy Atheism! Go thy way, wilt thou?'

It proved as he expected with the Quarterly.' Lockhart probably agreed with every word that Carlyle had written, but to admit a lighted rocket of that kind into the Conservative arsenal might have shattered the whole concern. Lockhart sent it back after a week, seemingly not without reluctance, saying

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he dared not.' It was then shown to Mill, who was unexpectedly delighted with it. The Westminster Review' was coming to an end. Mill was now willing to publish Chartism' in his last number as ' a kind of final shout, that he might sink like the Vengeur with a broadside at the water's edge.' Carlyle might have consented; but his wife, and his brother John, who was in England, insisted that the thing was too good for a fate so ignoble. The Westminster Review' was nothing to him, that he should sink along with it. This was his own opinion too, which for Mill's sake he had been ready to waive.

I (he said) offered them this very thing two years ago, the blockheads, and they dared not let me write it then. If they had taken more of my counsel, they need not perhaps have been in a sinking state at present. But they went their own way, and now their Review is to cease; and their whole beggarly unbelieving Radicalism may cease too, if it likes, and let us see whether there be not a believing Radicalism possible. In short, I think of publishing this piece, which I have called Chartism,' about the poor, their rights and their wrongs, as a little separate book. Fraser will print it, halving the profits. It may be out probably the end of this month (December 1).

The book was not long, the printers were expeditious, and before the year was out 'Chartism' was added to the list of Carlyle's published works. The sale was rapid, an edition of a thousand copies being sold immediately-and the large lump of leaven was thrown into the general trough to ferment there and work as it could. 'Meister,' the most unlike it of all imaginable creations, was republished at the same time. The collected Miscellanies' were also passing through the press.