REFLECTIONS IN HYDE PARK. 49 distracted. I flung it by, saying, If I never write it, why then it will never be written. Not by ink alone shall a man live or die.' This is the first time in my life I ever did such a thing; neither do I doubt much but that it was rather wise. It goes abreast with much that is coming to a crisis with me. You would feel astonished to see with what quietude I have laid down my head on its stone pillow in these circumstances, and said to Poverty, Dispiritment, Exclusion, Necessity, and the Devil, Go your course, friends; behold, I lie here and rest.' In fact, with all the despair that is round about me, there is not in myself, I do think, the least desperation. I feel rather as if, quite possibly, I might be about bursting the accursed enchantment that has held me, all my weary days, in nameless thraldom, and actually beginning to be alive. There has been much given me to suffer, to learn from, this last year. That things should come to a crisis is what I wish. Also how true it is, Deux afflictions mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation. the whole I shall never regret coming to London, where if boundless confusion, some elements of order have also met me; above all things, the real faces and lives of my fellow mortals, stupid or wise, so unspeakably instructive to me.' Fancy me for the present reading all manner of silly books, and for these late days one pregnant book, Dante's 'Inferno;' running about amongst people and things, looking even of a bright sunset on Hyde Park and its glory; I sitting on the stump of an oak, it rolling and curvetting past me on the Serpentine drive, really very superb and given gratis. On 1 In the journal under the same date Carlyle says: Very often of late has this stanza of Goethe's come into my mind. I translated it in the Wanderjahre, but never understood it before : : "There in others' looks discover What thy own life's course has been And thy deeds of years past over In thy fellow-men be seen." It is verily so. I am painfully learning much here, if not by the wisdom of the people, yet by their existence, nay by their stupidity. live and learn.' Learn— Unspeakable thoughts rise out of it. This, then, is the last efflorescence of the Tree of Being. Hengst and Horsa were bearded, but ye gentlemen have got razors and breeches; and oh, my fair ones, how are ye changed since Boadicea wore her own hair unfrizzled hanging down as low as her hips! The Queen Anne hats and heads have dissolved into air, and behold you here and me, prismatic light-streaks on the bosom of the sacred night. And so it goes on. As writing seemed impossible, Carlyle had determined to go to Scotland after all. Lady Clare had meant to be in England soon after midsummer, bringing John Carlyle with her. John was now the great man of the family, the man of income, the travelled doctor from Italy, the companion of a peeress. His arrival was looked forward to at Scotsbrig with natural eagerness. Carlyle and he were to go down together and consult with their mother about future plans. Mrs. Carlyle would go with them to pay a visit to her mother. The journey might be an expense, but John was rich, and the fares to Edinburgh by steamer were not considerable. In the gloom that hung over Chelsea this prospect had been the one streak of sunshine-and unhappily it was all clouded over. Lady Clare could not come home after all, and John was obliged to remain with ner, though with a promise of leave of absence in the autumn. At Radical Scotsbrig there was indignation enough at a fine lady's caprices destroying other people's pleasures. Carlyle more gently could pity the heart that suffered, whether it beat under silk or under sackcloth' for Lady Clare's life was not a happy one. He collected his energy. To soften his wife's disappointment, he invited Mrs. Welsh to come immediately on a long visit to Cheyne Row. Like his BOOK TO BE FINISHED. 51 father he resolved to 'gar himself' finish the burnt volume in spite of everything, and to think no more of Scotland till it was done. The sudden change gave him back his strength. To Margaret Carlyle, Scotsbrig. Chelsea: June 30, 1835. As for our own share there is need of a new resolution, and Jane thinks that if we are to shorter way to send for her Jack and I, if he is coming, At lowest, when Mrs. Welsh we have gone far to form one. wait till September it will be needless for her to come to Scotland this year. She had, in the main, only her mother to see there, and it seems the mother up hither without delay. can go to Scotland by ourselves. was returning, I would accompany her, and you would see me at least. I at any rate am to fall instantly to work again, having now filled up my full measure of idleness. . . . That wretched burnt MS. must, if the gae of life remains in me, be replaced. 'It shall be done, sir,' as the Cockneys say. After that the whole world is before me, where to choose. I cannot say I am in the smallest degree 'tining heart' in these perplexities. Nay, I think in general I have not been in so good heart these ten years. London and its quackeries and follies and confusions does not daunt me. I look on all matters that pertain to it with a kind of silent defiance, confident to the last that the work my Maker meant me to do I shall verily do, let the Devil and his servants obstruct as they will.. . . The literary craft, as I have often explained to you, seems gone for this generation. I do not see how a man that will not take the Devil into partnership— one of the worst partnerships, if I have any judgment—is to exist by it henceforth. Well, then, it is gone. Let it go with a blessing. We will seek for another occupation. We will seek and find. It is on one's self and what comes of one's own doings that all depends. However, I must have this book off my hands. Should I even burn it, I will be done with it. To John Carlyle. Chelsea: July 2. I have decided to falling instantly to work again with vigour. If I can write that Revolution' volume, the saddest affair I ever had to manage, I will do it. The first wish of my heart is that it were done in almost any way; weary, most weary am I of it. I will either write it, or burn it, or One thing that will gratify you is the perceptible increase of health this otherwise so scandalous faulenzen (idling) has given me. I am also farther than ever from 'tining heart.' Nothing definite yet turns up for my future life. Yet several things turn more decisively down, which is also something; amongst others literature. I feel well that it is a thing I shall never live by here; moreover, that there are many things besides it in God's universe. . . . As a last resource, in the dim background rises America, rise the kindest invitations there. I really could go and open my mouth in Boston to that strange audience with considerable audacity; perhaps it were the making of me to learn to speak. I really in some moods feel no kind of tendency to whimper or even to gloom. God's world, ruled over by the Prince of the Power of the Air, is round me, and I have taken my side in it, and know what I mean as well as the Prince knows. Fancy me working and not unhappy till I hear from you. . . . I find I could get employment and pay, writing in the Times,' but I will have no trade with that. Old Sterling amuses me a little; has eyes; has had them on men and men's ways many years now, a trenchant, cleanwashed, military old gentleman. 6 Things after this began to brighten. Mrs. Welsh came up to cheer her daughter, whose heart had almost failed like her husband's, for she had no fancy for an American forest. Carlyle went vigorously to work, and at last successfully. In ten days he had made substantial progress, though with 'immense difficulty' OBJECTIONS TO STYLE. 53 still. It was and remained the most ungrateful and intolerable task he had ever undertaken.' But he felt that he was getting on with it, and recovered his peace of mind. He even began to be interested again in the subject itself, which had become for the time entirely distasteful to him, and to regret that he could not satisfy himself better in his treatment of it. Notwithstanding his defence of his style to Sterling, he wished the skin were less rhinoceros-like.' Journal. July 15, 1835.-The book, I do honestly apprehend, will never be worth almost anything. What a deliverance, however, merely to have done with it! This is almost my only motive now. I detest the task, but am hounded into it by feelings still more detestable. I am all wrong about it in my way of setting it forth, and cannot mend myself. I think often I have mistaken my trade. That of style gives me great uneasiness. So many persons, almost everybody that speaks to me, objects to my style as 'too full of meaning.' Had it no other fault! I seldom read in any dud of a book, novel, or the like, where the writing seems to flow along like talk (certainly not too full') without a certain pain, a certain envy. Ten pages of that were easier than a sentence or paragraph of mine; and yet such is the result. What to do? To write on the best one can, get the free'st, sincerest possible utterance, taking in all guidances towards that, putting aside with best address all misguidances. Truly I feel like one that was bursting with meaning, that had no utterance for it, that would and must get one-a most indescribably uneasy feeling, were it not for the hope. Gradually the story which he was engaged in telling got possession of him again. The terrible scenes of the Revolution seized his imagination, haunt |