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JOHN STERLING.

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who was gifted beyond the rest, was among the first to see how much a movement of this kind must mean, if it meant anything at all. He had an instinctive sympathy with genius and earnestness wherever he found it. In the author of Sartor Resartus' he discovered these qualities, while his contemporaries were blind to them. I have already mentioned that he sought Carlyle's acquaintance, and procured him the offer of employment on the Times.' His admiration was not diminished when that offer was declined. He missed no opportunity of becoming more intimate with him, and he hoped that he might himself be the instrument of bringing Carlyle to a clearer faith. Carlyle, once better instructed in the great Christian verities, might become a second and a greater Knox.

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'I have seen,' Carlyle writes in this same May, a good deal of this young clergyman (singular clergyman) during these two weeks, a sanguine light-loving man, of whom, to me, nothing but good seems likely to come; to himself unluckily a mixture of good and evil.' Of good and evil-for Carlyle, clearer-eyed than his friend, foresaw the consequences. Frederick Maurice, Sterling's brother-in-law, on the occasion of the agitation about subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, had written a pamphlet extremely characteristic of him, to show that subscription was not a bondage, as foolish people called it, but a deliverance from bondage; that the Articles properly read were the great charter of spiritual liberty and reasonable belief. Sterling lent the pamphlet to Carlyle, who examined it, respectfully recognising that an earnest man's earnest word was worth reading; but,' he said,

iny verdict lay in these lines of jingle, which I virtuously spared Sterling the sight of :-

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Thirty-nine English Articles,
Ye wondrous little particles,

Did God shape His universe really by you?

In that case I swear it,

And solemnly declare it,

This logic of Maurice's is true.'1

Carlyle afterwards came to know Maurice, esteemed him, and personally liked him, as all his acquaintance did. But the verdict' was unchanged. As a thinker he found him confused, wearisome, and ineffectual; and he thought no better of the whole business in which he was engaged. An amalgam of Christian verities' and modern critical philosophy was, and could be nothing else but, poisonous insincerity. This same opinion in respectful language he had to convey to Sterling, if he was required to give one. But he never voluntarily introduced such subjects, and Sterling's anxiety to improve Carlyle was not limited to the circle of theology. Sterling was a cultivated and classical scholar; he was disturbed by Carlyle's style, which offended him as it offended the world. This style, which has been such a stone of stumbling, originated, he has often said to myself, in the old farmhouse at Annandale. The humour of it came from his mother. The form was his father's common mode of speech, and had been adopted by himself for its brevity and emphasis. He was aware of its singularity and feared that it might be mistaken for affectation, but it was a natural growth, with this merit among others,

Slightly altered when printed in Past and Present.'

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that it is the clearest of styles. No sentence leaves the reader in doubt of its meaning. Sterling's objections, however, had been vehement. Carlyle admitted that there was foundation for them, but defended himself.

To John Sterling.

Chelsea: June 4, 1835.

Your objections as to phraseology and style have good grounds to stand on. Many of them are considerations to which I myself was not blind, which there were unluckily no means of doing more than nodding to as one passed. A man has but a certain strength; imperfections cling to him, which if he wait till he have brushed off entirely, he will spin for ever on his axis, advancing nowhither. Know thy thought -believe it-front heaven and earth with it, in whatsoever words nature and art have made readiest for thee. If one has thoughts not hitherto uttered in English books, I see nothing for it but you must use words not found there, must make words, with moderation and discretion of course. That I have not always done it so proves only that I was not strong enough, an accusation to which I, for one, will never plead not guilty. For the rest, pray that I may have more and more strength! Surely, too, as I said, all these coal marks of yours shall be duly considered for the first and even for the second time, and help me on my way. on my way. . . . But finally do you reckon this really a time for purism of style, or that style (mere dictionary style) has much to do with the worth or unworth of a book? I do not. With whole ragged battalions of Scott's novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French, and even newspaper Cockney (where literature is little other than a newspaper) storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian English breaking up from its foundations, revolution there is visible as everywhere else.

The style! ah, the style!' Carlyle notes nevertheless in his journal, as if he was uneasy about it;

for in the French Revolution' the peculiarities of it were more marked than even in Sartor: '

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The poor people seem to think a style can be put off or put on, not like a skin but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it, exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death? The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

Sterling was not satisfied, and again persisted in his remonstrances. Das wird zu lang, Carlyle said; 'he made the letter into matches;' not loving his friend the less for advice which was faithfully given, but knowing in himself that he could not and ought not to attend to it. The style was and is the skin--an essential part of the living organisation.

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But besides the style, Sterling had deeper complaints to make. He insisted on the defects of Carlyle's spiritual belief, being perhaps led on into the subject by the failure of Maurice's eloquence. 'Sartor' was still the text. It had been ridiculed in Fraser' when it first appeared. It had been republished and admired in America, but in England so far it had met with almost entire neglect. Why should this have been? It was obviously a remarkable book, the most remarkable perhaps which had been published for many years.

You ask (said Carlyle) why the leading minds of the country have given the Clothes philosophy no response? My good friend, not one of them has had the happiness of seeing it! It issued through one of the main cloacas (poor Fraser) of periodical literature, where no 'leading mind,' I fancy, looks if he can help it. The poor book cannot be destroyed by fire or other violence now, but solely by the

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general law of destiny; and I have nothing more to do with it henceforth. How it chanced that no bookseller would print it, in an epoch when Satan Montgomery runs, or seems to run, through thirteen editions, and the morning papers, on its issuing through the cloaca, sang together in mere discord over such a creation-this truly is a question, but a different one. Meanwhile do not suppose the poor book has not been responded to; for the historical fact is, I could show very curious response to it here, not ungratifying, and fully three times as much as I counted on, or as the wretched farrago itself deserved.

Sterling, however, had found another reason for the comparative failure.

You say finally (Carlyle goes on), as the key to the whole mystery, that Teufelsdröckh does not believe in a 'personal God.' It is frankly said, with a friendly honesty for which I love you. A grave charge, nevertheless-an awful chargeto which, if I mistake not, the Professor, laying his hand on his heart, will reply with some gesture expressing the solemnest denial. In gesture rather than in speech, for the Highest cannot be spoken of in words. Personal! Impersonal! One! Three! What meaning can any mortal (after all) attach to them in reference to such an object? Wer darf Ihn NENNEN? I dare not and do not. That you dare and do (to some greater extent) is a matter I am far from taking offence at. Nay, with all sincerity, I can rejoice that you have a creed of that kind which gives you happy thoughts, nerves you for good actions, brings you into readier communion with many good men. My true wish is that such creed may long hold compactly together in you, and be ‘a covert from the heat, a shelter from the storm, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' Well is it if we have a printed litany to pray from; and yet not ill if we can pray even in silence; for silence too is audible there. Finally assure yourself that I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor circumcised Jew; but an unfortunate Christian individual

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