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the publication of the French Revolution-a History, by Thomas Carlyle; and England realised that a star of the first magnitude had arisen above the horizon. He had acquired some celebrity previously as an introducer of German literature into this country, and as an essayist of extraordinary originality and power. But this was the first of those monumental historical works which placed him in the front rank of the writers of the century, and, in some respects, it is his best. It has become the fashion to sneer at his composition, to affect astonishment at his politics, to lift the hands in pious horror at the mention of his religion, to regard him as a modern Diogenes, unreasonable, vituperative, absurd. He is represented as declaiming in barbarous Anglo-German against shams and chimeras. A Timon without Timon's justification. We are gravely informed that he was a pantheist, a pessimist, a worshipper of mere force, an idolator of great men. Grammarians have put him in their Index Expurgatorius. Religious persons of the stricter sort observe a discreet silence with regard to him in the presence of young people; and politicians smile with pity as they reflect he belonged to neither of the great parties in the State. The publication of his Reminiscences, and, later, his Life, brought a storm of obloquy upon his devoted head. It has been said we "clamour for originality and quarrel with it when we get it." But time is just, and the tempest is subsiding. Whatever Carlyle was not, he was, in some respects, the greatest literary force of the nineteenth century, and to find his rival as a dictator we must go back to Dr. Johnson. His History of the French Revolution marks the beginning of his rule. In the historical field his genius had full play, the men of old time rise again and act anew their life drama; they are no longer mere historical names, but living men. We see their faces, hear their voices, take part in their joys and sorrows. As we read the series of his works, Mahomet comes to us from the desert; Odin from the North; Luther from the Wartburg; Abbot Samson with his rosary; Rousseau with his sentimental sighs; Johnson with his dogmatic intolerance. We hear the mad crowd surging around the Bastille; we see the procession of women marching on Versailles; we see Louis, the irresolute, drinking Burgundy, while his fate is settled by the village postmaster; Mirabeau with shaggy locks; Danton with voice reverberating under the domes; Robespierre in gay attire, with sea-green bilious face, restoring the worship of the Supreme Being. We hear the solitary voice of the last Girondin singing beside the guillotine; we hear the sharp cry of the murdered Marat, and the triumphant defiance of Charlotte Corday. All the actors in the Terror, in the English Rebellion, in the stormy Seven Years' War, come trooping on the stage, called up by the magic wand of the great magician. No other writer has been able to shed such vivid light on the past, or to cause so many dry bones to live clothed in flesh again. It is a modern Ezekiel's vision.

A very different type was Thomas Babington Macaulay. He was thirty-seven at the date of the accession, and, like Carlyle, already a distinguished essayist, but his best work belongs to the earlier part of the Queen's reign. As already noticed, he is generally bracketed with his great contemporary, apparently upon the principle that extremes meet, for never, surely, was there a greater contrast. But for the fact that both had the magical gift of making the past live again, they were at opposite poles in every respect. Reading Macaulay is like riding in a motor car, the speed is terrific, the sense of exhilaration unbounded. He takes away one's breath. Always cocksure, easily confident, absolutely certain of his ground, he pours into a succession of short, vivid, rapid sentences such a wealth of illustrations and allusions, of facts, incidents, names of persons and places, that the reader is borne along like a cork on a rushing river; the mental activity engendered by the attempt to recognise and realise the multitudinous characters and events, passing in swift review, proves incompatible with success in grasping the actual bearing of these facts upon the argument. Such a display of learning, of brilliancy, leaves us in the condition of the Queen of Sheba after gazing in wonder at the riches, and listening to the wisdom of Solomon, "There was no more spirit in her." The impression made by Macaulay upon his contemporaries was immediate. The vigour and splendour of his style were obvious. There was nothing obscure in his drift. He passed over the surface of things. His arguments pre-suppose no philosophical acumen or previous knowledge on the part of a reader. He supplies everything ready-made, premises and conclusions. No one has the least doubt as to what he is required to think or believe. And the process of assimilating the truth according to Macaulay, is made as fascinating an occupation as the reading of favourite fiction. Indeed, it was his boast that young ladies would read him in preference to the latest novel. With Carlyle it was otherwise, there was not that immediate popular recognition. It was long ere his writings were familiar to the masses of his country

men.

When eventually read, it was rather the result of curiosity than attraction, arising from a desire to learn something at first hand from an author held in high repute among the intellectual classes. And his style was always a difficulty. It was "caviare to the general." Το enjoy it implies an acquired taste. Passages abounded that can hardly be equalled for splendour, but these jewels were set in a strange environment. And the subject matter was saturated with the spirit of a foreign philosophy. It was not until his ideas were popularised by disciples, and time had familiarised the public with his style, that he acquired the suffrages of any considerable number of readers. But his influence over a select coterie, including such men as Stuart Mill, Kingsley, Ruskin, Lecky, and Froude, was enormous, and through them he acquired a position of authority to which none of his contemporaries could lay claim.

A glance at the books published in the early years of Victoria reveals the growth of a form of literature that, like Aaron's rod, seems destined to swallow up the rest. The novel has been traced through the windings of a long ancestry to a remote antiquity, but in the form with which we are familiar it is one of the latest products of evolution in literature. Its germ is to be found in Le Sage, and was developed in the course of the eighteenth century. But Sir Walter Scott was the real Columbus of this new world, and gave the impetus to its exploration. He was, and remains, the chief of all writers of fiction. "Everything in the Waverley novels," said Goethe, "is great." And the gallery of Scott is the largest and most important since Shakespeare. But the new reign saw the advent of writers destined to find a home on our shelves in close proximity to Scott. In the year of the accession, works were published by Thackeray, Dickens, and Bulwer Lytton. The last-named enjoyed a celebrity that entitled him at the time to rank with the other two, but a later generation denies him this honour-there are fashions in literature as in clothes. But of the importance of Dickens and Thackeray there has never been any real question. As in the case of Carlyle and Macaulay, the multitude were attracted by one, the comparative few by the other. There were patricians and plebeians. But most of us have outgrown these impressions, and cordially welcome the rival, yet not antagonistic candidates. All life should be interesting to a living man, and, like the wise ancient, we should reckon nothing human alien to ourselves. Whereas the "Wizard of the North" waved his wand over the dead bones of the past, until, endued with life, they stood upon their feet an exceeding great army, the object of Dickens was to pourtray the life of the day, the life, especially, of cities, more particularly the life of London. As we gaze from the windows of a railway carriage over that province of houses, the greater number packed together in rows of mean streets, we are appalled by the problems presented by this vast aggregation of humanity, the majority of whom seem destined to a life of sordid poverty. Charles Dickens takes us into those mean streets, and introduces us to their inhabitants. His knowledge of London was intimate, wonderful, nothing escaped his eye. It is not an impressionist picture that he gives us, but a work of preRaphaelite finish and delicacy of execution. He observed the people and their surroundings, every detail is therethe fog that hangs over the city, the drizzling rain, the leaves blown hither and thither, the aspect of the houses, their furniture, their occupants, the food that is eaten, the clothes that are worn-nothing is omitted because everything is necessary to the complete realisation of life. But. it is not only the external features that are painted with such accuracy. We are made acquainted with the workings of the mind. We enjoy the confidences of bargees, coal heavers, market porters, small clerks, artisans, humble life in all its infinite variety is laid bare; never before had the "simple annals of the poor" received such illustration. Dickens' pathos has been much criticised as unreal and affected; it may be so in its direct present

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