We have seen several pictures of him here; one, a full-length portrait,
with hat and overall, if it did not tell us much, told the fewest lies;
another, we remember, was well said to have “too combed a look;”
one other also we have seen in which we discern some features of the man we
are thinking of; but the only ones worth remembering, after all, are those
which he has unconsciously drawn of himself.
When we remember how these volumes came over to us, with their encouragement
and provocation from month to month, and what commotion they created in many
private breasts, we wonder that the country did not ring, from shore to
shore, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with its greeting; and the
Boones and
Crocketts of the
West make haste to hail him, whose wide humanity embraces them too. Of all
that the packets have brought over to us, has there been any richer cargo
than this? What else has been English news for so long a season? What else,
of late years, has been England to us — to us who read books, we mean?
Unless we remembered it as the scene where the age of Wordsworth was spending
itself, and a few younger muses were trying their wings, and from time to
time as the residence of
Landor,
Carlyle alone, since the death of
Coleridge,
has kept the promise of England. It is the best apology for all the bustle
and the sin of commerce, that it has made us acquainted with the thoughts of
this man. Commerce would not concern us much if it were not for such results
as this. New England
owes him a debt which she will be slow to recognize. His earlier essays
reached us at a time when Coleridge’s were the only recent words which
had made any notable impression so far, and they found a field unoccupied by
him, before yet any words of moment had been uttered in our midst. He had
this advantage, too, in a teacher, that he stood near to his pupils; and he
has no doubt afforded reasonable encouragement and sympathy to many an
independent but solitary thinker.
It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the
world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our
shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well
dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and
suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism. It is plain
that the reviewers, both here and abroad, do not know how to dispose of this
man. They approach him too easily, as if he were one of the men of letters
about town, who grace Mr. Somebody’s
administration, merely; but he already belongs to literature, and depends
neither on the favor of reviewers, nor the honesty of booksellers, nor the
pleasure of readers for his success. He has more to impart than to receive
from his generation. He is another such a strong and finished workman in his
craft as Samuel
Johnson was, and, like him, makes the literary class respectable; since
few are yet out of their apprenticeship, or, even if they learn to be able
writers, are at the same time able and valuable thinkers. The aged and
critical eye, especially, is incapacitated to appreciate the works of this
author. To such their meaning is impalpable and evanescent, and they seem to
abound only in obstinate mannerisms, Germanisms, and whimsical ravings of
all kinds, with now and then an unaccountably true and sensible remark.
