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Wilhelm Meister, he must have followed the counsel Job's wife gave her husband.

Looking at it from another point of view, Sartor forms part of the literature of skepticism. The Book of Job, the works of Lucretius and Montaigne all show the spirit of doubt or of unbelief; but it is only in our own era that. skepticism has been recognized as a distinct literary motif, as the reason for a book's existence. To this class belong Faust, Manfred, Cain, Sartor Resartus, and In Memoriam, which all depict in different ways the struggle between faith and unfaith. The protagonists are all, for a time at least, doubters. Carlyle and Tennyson find different remedies for the trouble, where Goethe and Byron find none. But they all agree in this, - that they do not write for the purpose of upsetting any faith, as pronounced freethinkers have done in numberless didactic essays and tracts. Their aim is art, not teaching. They are all deeply in earnest because they regard the questions they raise as the weightiest that can concern the mind. They are all reverent, they are never flippant. They never exhibit the boyish vehemence of Shelley in Queen Mab. skepticism is the salt of their work. out of Faust and the drama shrinks into a mere intrigue. Imagine a Teufelsdröckh who has never doubted, suffered, renounced, attained to calm, and the interest in the book has vanished. Unless the author of In Memoriam found it necessary to state in his own way the "truths that never can be proved," the great poem would dwindle to an epitaph. Our century has been marked by widespread religious doubt. The undeniable fact Carlyle and Tennyson do not attempt to blink. They have felt the doubt, and they offer ways of escape from it, in each case embodying, as I believe, their own experience. In their work is to be found the antidote to Byronism, and both show the influence of Goethe.

At the same time the Take Mephistopheles

In his parable of "The Flower," Tennyson shows that he is quite aware that he had set the tune for all the minor singers of his day. It is a simple fact that his manner has dominated the poetry of the last forty years almost as absolutely as Pope's manner dominated the poetry of the eighteenth century. Carlyle's distinctive manner is much more strongly marked than Tennyson's; but possibly for that very reason has found no imitators. In some points, the eccentricities, as well as the excellences, of Browning and Mr. George Meredith resemble Carlyle's; but it would be difficult to make out a case of deliberate mimicry. Carlyle's style is the bow of Ulysses, the brand of Astur, a weapon for no feebler hand than his. He has not led other writers to imitate his style, but his direct personal influence on the leaders of thought has been very great. He has influenced the men of influence. His first convert of note was Emerson. Now though the sneer that he was an "American pocket edition of Carlyle" is ridiculous, and Emerson is undoubtedly his own man, he would still be the first to acknowledge his indebtedness to the great Scotsman. Indeed, the tone of Emerson's letters to his friend show throughout a curious blending of friendship and discipleship. And it was Emerson who emancipated America from literary dependence on England. During the nine silent, sad years between 1833 and 1842, Tennyson, as yet " the unaccredited hero," was Carlyle's friend, and the two seem to have had numberless unchronicled smokes and talks together. These years were undoubtedly the great poet's forty days in the wilderness, the time when he perfected his art and thought out the problems of In Memoriam; and there is good reason for believing that Carlyle's Sartorian philosophy aided him in his task. Some curious verbal resemblances have been already pointed out.' Kingsley, again, in his earlier novels,

1 See Notes, 40 30, 46 3, 4, 80 12, 81 4, 5, 84 15, 122 22, 152 18, 210 25.

is unmistakably under the influence of Carlyle. Sandy Mackay, in Alton Locke, is admittedly modeled from the sage of Chelsea. In the fierceness, the tenderness, the humor, the Scotch accent of that remarkable dealer in secondhand books, we have probably the most artistic representation of Carlyle's wonderful table talk. Ruskin, who came later, is also proud to acknowledge Carlyle as his master in his humanitarian efforts. The attitude of Huxley and Tyndall toward him has been already explained. It was Tyndall who stood by him all through the trials of the Edinburgh rectorship, and he was one of the few who saw him laid in the earth. Though only a few of the noted names are assembled here to show his power over the minds of men, the list might be greatly increased; and to trace that power through all its subtle workings would require, not a paragraph, but a volume. It is "mightiest in the mightiest," and it is felt only less keenly by great masses of the undistinguished. In all the Anglian world - in England, the United States, and the great colonies uncounted young men have come under that potent spell, and have found in Carlyle either tonic, or teaching, or both. Of all his works none braces and builds the spirit up like Sartor Resartus; and nowhere else does Carlyle give the world so much of himself at his best.

SARTOR RESARTUS.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY.

CONSIDERING our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for fivethousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps 5 more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that 10 hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary 15 System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and watertransport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of 2 Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the

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