NEWS AND VIEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11010, 14 March 1899, Page 3

NEWS AND VIEWS.

DR. BEATTIE OROZIER AND CARLYLE. Or, Crazier, whose '' Autobiography" was I recently issued by Longmans-, tells in a very j interesting chapter of a visit he paid on on* I occasion to Oarlyle. The young doctor was | troubled with intellectual difficulties, and he j went to the Seer for advice, having previously ; communicated with him by letter. "But ! what may be be '." was one. of Carlyle's carl} 1 questions. Dr. Crozier replied that ho had ' just started m practice as a doctor in Lon I ilon. but that lie had come from Canada i mainly with the view of going in for liters lure. Oarlyle at rnvt said, in a "hard, irri--1 table tone": " Na, ua, that winna do. Ye'd better stick to your profession, young man. It's time enough to think of literature when you've cleared yotll own mind, awl have ' something worth saying. Medicine is « noble i calling." Or. Crosier say* he felt rebuked ! and was most uncomfortable, which was not at all -urprising. and bye Carlyle turned ; suddenly to his visitor and said sympathetically. "Ami which of the authors hav» ye i been reading that ye have- been brought into | this frame of mind ?" I Jr. Crozier began to enumerate them in a haphazard sort of way, and had got » far as Mill and Buckle and Darwin—unit was about to add Herbert Spencer—when Oarlyle broke in with: 'Oh, ay, poor Mill. He ii*hl to come to ma her* with his Benthamism, his Radicalism, his greatest number, and a' [hat nonsense, but 1 had to tell him at last that it was a' moonshine, and ho did na like it. But he was a thin, wire-drawn, sawdustish, logic-chopping kind o' body, was poor Mill. When hi: liook on Liberty come out lie sent me a copy of it to read, but 1 just had to tell him that 1 (lithi't agree with a single word from beginning to end. He was offended, and never ian-.e back to me." Hut as the memory of tlieir early friendship came over Carlyle's mind he seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then added, with a sigh, " Ay, but lie was a pure-minded man. John Mill !" Oarlyle was now in " full sail," as Dr. Cro zier says, ami he went next to Buckle: "Of all the blockheads by whom this bewildered generation has be™ deluded that man Buckle you have just mentioned was the greatest. . . . I'eople had kept pestering me to read his book, and at last I sat down to it in the garden with my pipe, determined to give a whole day to it. But a more long-winded, conceited blockhead, anil quo more full of empty barren formulas about the progress of the species, progress of this, anil progress of that, and especially of the progress of science, 1 never came across. A poor crealure that, could hie of service to no mortal. . . , The only good thing I ever hoard of him was his affection for his mother." Fiuatly, Herbert Spencer's name was mentioned, Dr. Crozier having said, " Yes, Herbert Spencer has shown that mind is merely a molecular motion in brain substance," etc., when " Carlvle contracted his brows like a hawk and shrieked, ' Spencer ! shown !' and went off into a peal of derisive laughter. . . After a pause he exclaimed contemptuously. 'An immeasurable ass !' . . . ' And so ye's been meddling with Spencer, have ye ? He was brought to me by l.ewes, and a more conceited young man I thought I had never seen. He seemed to think himself just a perfect owl of Minerva for knowledge.' And then, looking fiercely at mo, ' Ye'll get little good out of him, young man.'" All quite in the Seer's well-known style.