CARLYLE LETTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19388, 24 July 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

CARLYLE LETTERS.

A DEPRESSING PICTURE. The Yale Review for July publishes some newly-discovered letters from Thomas Carlyle to Dr. Eckermann, a rather unfortunate German writer, who had been introduced to his notice by Goethe. Carlyle writes in 1828 giving a depressing picture of the state of English literature, and declaring that " Triviality has extended its empire over the British printing world."

" The aspects of our literature at present," says Carlyle, " had one a weak Faith, are in fact discouraging enough: our real Poets,- "Wordsworth, Coleridge driven into silence by the state of public taste; and the air filled with nothing, as it were, but the chirping of ten thousand grasshoppers, each firmly believing that it is a mighty Singer. Politics also take up far too much attention even with the best heads;, as v: a man were alive in the world not to live, but forever and ever to mend his house for living in. " Thomas Moore is nothing more than one of our Heinses or Kraftmanner; he has published an Epicurean, resplendent with gold-leaf and Bristol diamonds, and inwardly made of mere potters' clay. Waiter Scott manufactures novels. Peace be with them! But the spirit of England is not dead, only asleep; neither, as I firmly believe, is the day distant when these men will be for most part swept into the lumber-room, and quite another scene enacted."

Carlyle is " tired of reviewing," but not quite certain ' whether there is any force in me to produce an original work." " I reckon this position in Craigenputtock quite an original one for a philosopher and lover of literature; as it were, a sort of Crusoe's Island, where the whole happiness or sorrow depends on the islander himself. We are busy making clean gravel roads, digging gardens for the planting of many a flower and shrub in the spring. These grim moors are all icebound for the present, and doubly stern and solitary. Nevertheless we bolt the door against frost, and utterly defy him with blazing fires.. " By day I lop trees for exercise, or gallop down the valley on an Irish nag; and at night, when the curtains are all down, and the hearth swept, and the fire bright and strong, it is even a luxury to listen to the piping of the tempests, and think that far and wide the black winter is looking in on us in vain." On the eve of his removal from Craigenputtock to London, Carlyle writes:— " Phlegethon-Fleetditch is what I used to name the London waterway; but once for all, literature, I find, so mad is its state becoming and become, cannot be carried on elsewhere by an Englishman: thro' Ph'legethon-Fleetditch, • therefore, our course does lie; and we will take it, by God's blessing, with as little criticism as possible."