THE CARLYLE CENTENARY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10572, 20 January 1896, Page 4

THE CARLYLE CENTENARY.

MR JOHN MORLEY'S "APPRECIATION."

'In a large hall, almost grim in its simplicity and nakedness, a. London audience on the 4ih December witnessed the celebration of the centenary of Oarlyle's birth by the formal transfer of the Carlyle Memorial House in Cheyne row to a b.dy of trustees, which includes in its number the American Ambassador. The room (says the Westminster Gazette) was crowded, and among those present were Mr Arthur Balfour (who, being late, stood at the back of the hall), Mr Frederic Harrison, Mr William WatsoD, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr Augustine Birrell, Canoa Wilberforce, Mrs Humphry Ward, Mr Herbert Paul, and Mr Mundella. The chiir was occupied by Mr John Morlay, whom Mr Frederic Harrison was disponed to christen the newest "Sage of Chelsea." Mr Morley's half-hour address, which was delivered with groat freedom, clearness, and ease, formed tbe J central feature of the occasion. In the language lof the admirable summary in a Daily New_ J leader, "it was a discriminating eulogy, a ! measured panegyric. Mr Morley began by denying to Carlyle the gift of wisdom, and ended by denying him ths gift of style. Ho condemned with unsparing candour C_rly!e's contempt for science; he charged him with wilful ignorance of subjects on which ho undertook to instruct the public; and he admitted that when logic came in at the door Carlyle went out at tho window. But with the skill of the true rhetorician, and the fidelity of the admiring friend, he enforced the seeming paradox, a paradox ody in name, that the genius, the enthusiasm, and the character of that great man are brought into stronger relief by the accidental errors of his impulses and hi. temper." The speech, in short, was charming and inspiring. We append extracts from it: — mr morley's intercourse with carlvle. _ It waa my good fortune years ago to visit this illustrious man from time to time in his little house iv Cheyne row, and 1 see friends around me who I know shared that privilege, and I believe they will agree with me that no mora courteous, kindly, cheery, considerate, and encouraging friend and counsellor could- be desired for a young man of letters coming to London to try his literary fortunes. —(Cheers.) He railed, he cursed, he deuonnced many things which I then and still permit myself to value. Ho systematically denounced logic. Ho particularly reviled politioal economy, which in that day had not been banished to a remote planet.—(A laugh.) He was very anxious always to warn you on no account to do two things—he often repeated it—-on no account should one write poetry, and on no account aspire to any performjuc. in'the direction of what is called London wit. — (Laughter.) . Natural and constitutional limitations prevented me from error in either of those two directions.—(Laughter.) CARLTLE AXD THE POET.ICAN. In one sense Carlyle has been taken far too seriously. He himtelf constantly broke out with friends here who knew him in great fits of hoarse laughter when one of his own excessive extravagances of speech was pointed out to him, and he was always capable of being brought to reason—or, rather, to consider reasonably any proposition that was laid before him, although at first he was antagonistic to it. I remember once going along with a very eminent statesman of tho present day to »cc Carlyle when a question which still agitate-) tho public mind was prominently before the public—the question of temperance. The point was that my eminent companion desired to compensate the publican who should b. dispossessed of hia license. Carlyle flamed out in most furious wrath at this" proposil; he struck his chair, and declared in tone:) of thunder that if any publicin came to him for compensation he would bid him go to his father the devil.— (Laughter.) My eminent companion took this with composure, and then stated the case for his own view, and I really think that by the time my friend had ceased from his exposition Carlyle was converted; at all events, he sa;d, in the most patient way, " Well, there may be more in it than I thought thero was." lam only indicating that to show that he was well aware that what he was saying was, if closely viewed, extravagant. He certainly was one of the most good-nitured mon iv a thousand ways that one could kuow. I chanced to have Slid in print that it took him 30 volumes iv which to compress his gospel of silence. I was rathor nervous the next time I saw him.—(Laughter.) So far from b-iog angry, I think he rather enjoyed the jest. But my recollection of him in those days is also, I must add, the samo impression which I suppose most of us have got from his books—that thero was more inspiration than direction about Culyle. THE "VOLCANIC MAN'S" TESTIMONY TO DEMOCRACY. For a clear, steady view of things, for the patient handling of complex problems, you look to this volcanic man in vain. In thoae days the earnest pilgrim went away from Chelsea down to Blackheath, where he found Mill, diligeut, patient, magnanimous, loving truth and ever seeking it, but, knowing what Carlyle hardly knew, that truth is not always easy to find.—(Hear, hear.) I think it was Pascal who used the expression Cherche; en gemissant —seek truth with many sighs. Carlyle sought it. He seized truth by the hair of the head, and sought it with objurgations and imprecations. But he was not really impenitent Ha knew, I repeat, when he was extravagant, and, as I have said already, ia the most historical event of his timo in many aspects—l mean the war of American emancipation—he took what some of us think the wrong side, and he was uniformly unfavourable to America and American institutions, as his correspondence with Emerson sufficiently shows. But even with regard to America there is a passage in his letters to Emerson which I should like to read, r.s showing that he was well aware that some of his propositions were untenable, and that he was constantly ready to modify extravagant opinions. " Though," be says to Emerson, -' in my occasional explosions against anarchy, I sti 1 j privately'whisper to myself " —this was in 1871, j after tha war was over and reconstruction j was practically begun—"conld any Frederick j WiUiam, or any Frederick, or the most perfect i governor that you could hope to realise, could '■ he guide forward what is America's essential , task at present faster or mare completely than | what is called anarchical America is now doiDg?" In other words, this great man, thia preacher and hero-worshipper, this m_n who was constantly calling on nations and people to get their strong man and then let him do whßt he likes and all wonld go well— he, I say, was so opeu to teaching that he praotioally admitted that the democracy of a self-governing community was accomplishing

one of the most difficult tasks that any community conld face, with a guooess one might look in vain for in a Frederick, or anybody of : that stamp. . "NEVER AT CLOSE OUARTERS WITH COMPLEX QUESTIONS."- ■■'■■' The social pieces, " Chartism" and " LatterDay Pamphlets," and no forth, are full of a true social spirit *, they breathe a burning indignation against social c.rdne3 and shams. As has been truly said, Carlyle had a deep sympathy with the suffering, though ha had a perfect scorn foe fools; but theso pamphlets, I think, betray iv every page of them a writer who had nerer come, to.close quarters with the immensely difficult and complex questions which he had undertaken to handle and on which he undertook to give his generation light. I think for this question of " Chartism" and "Latter-Day Pamphlets" you need a knowledge of fact and of detail such as Carlyle not only never possessed, but never tried to possess, and, what was much worse, he scorned other people for trying to acquire. WILL CARLYLS'S WOttl- ENDURE ? All the most interesting questions are incapable of answer, and tbat is true of the interesting question whether the chief works,of Carlyle, a_ it has been put by a distinguished critic, belong to that class of works which attain an enduring and increasing power, or to that other class that effect great things for one or two generations and then become practically obsolete ? Some think they will ultimately teud to fail into the latter class rather than the first. My own judgment is—l am not going to prophesy, I reserve all prophecy for nearer field*—tbat their day will not be over for a very long day.—(Cheers.) It ia quite true that a man who writes in the dialect that Carlyle did is heavily handicapped. The classical writ_r_ are those wKo have written in English and not Cariy'ese, and I am one of those for whom, in spit, of the great attraction and merits of Ct-rlyle'a language, the English language is good enough. It is evident, also that, many of his verdicts both on graat m?n and on great events will not stnud. It is 'nevitable, with the change of opinion, that some of his principles, if they ever ooght to have stood, will certainly stand no longer. But when you have made all the deductions you place under each of those heads and any other heads you like, there are in Carlyle's writings so many powerful things, so many manly, fortifying, and invigorating things, so many powerful and tend** things of which you may say, as he himself says in the passage from Francesca in the "Divine Comedy," they are " woven of rainbows on a ground of eternal black " —all these things, I say, are scattered with so profound and untiring a hand through his writings, that we may trust them to attract readers for a long time to come in spite of the perishable nature of much of the material in which these are imbedded.—(Cheers.) ' _ -j "ONE OP THE GREAT MORAL FORCES OP j THE COUNTRY." ] Carlyle, although not a poet in form, yet had a poetic grandeur and fervid sublimity of imagination which enabled him to do some of the thingß that great poets do. His genius, like a great roving flash-light or search-light, revelled afresh in forms of his own and in language of his own the vast mysteries by which the little life of man is encompassed. He makes, and, as I think, wisely makes, regeneration lie in the building up oE the individual character, in the truth of the individual himself, in his absolute sincerity. He wages unrelenting war against conventionalities and formalism, and he will allow no mm to be the slave of even the highest founding word or unexamined principle. He incessantly warns us to mako for the essence, to pierce the inner 6oul in character, to the real force in great event- and movements, to seek the spirit/not the letter. All this, no doubt, sounds commonplace, but it was the fireof his genius, almost unrivalled iv the moral and spiritual field, which enabled Carlyle to make all this alive with a consuming and an incomparable power. —(Cheers ) Ido not know if any of you remember a saying of Goethe's whea once somebody asked him what was the particular value and significance of his work. He said: "After all, there are here and there worthy people who a;e enlightened by my books, and whoever reads them and takes the trouble to understand them will recognise tbat' he has got from them a certain internal freedom." And that is, iv my judgment, what Carlyle c.nfers upon us, what he conferred upon those of us who were first taught by him, and confers upon those who to-day (reek wisdom from him—an internal freedom. You learn that you ought to shake yourself free from conventionalities aud formalism, that you ought to judge matters for yourself and to be yourself. As I say, that is commonplace now, partly because he made it so; but he made all these inaximi, and he gave all this counsel a fire and a spirit which has made him net only one of the foremost literary figures of his own time, which is a comparatively sm-ill thing, bnt one of the greit moral forces of this country for all time.—(Cheers.) Mr Birrell followed in an address in the role of resident and ratepayer of Chels.a, which was frequently starred by humorous observations. He could no more fancy a twentieth century in which people should cease to read " Sartor R.sartm " and the " French Revolution " than he could fancy a Briton whose children had forgotten how to play cricket, and whose old men no longer talked nonsense during a general election.—(Laughter.) The man who lived in the litt'e house in Caeyne row, he added, wrestling with his fate, with his genius, and with untoward circumstances, was not only great bat good.—(Chears.) THE SCOTCH CELEBRATIONS. The Ecclefechan commemorations included the gift by Kaiser Wilhelm of a wreath for the grave. Mr William Martin, president of the Glasgow Ruskin Society, w»* the lecturer, and acquitted himself of a difficult task to the general satisfaction of his he.rers. In the evening Mr George G. Napier delivered his popular lecture on " The Vicinities of Carlyle," illustrated by a large number of limelight views. At the Edinburgh dinner to Carlyle'a memory, a teleg.aphic message was received from Mr Morley. Professor Mas.on, the chairman, said he knew the man, and he vouched that he never knew.a man with greater depths of kindness. As to his rudeness, he had seen him lead a lady downstairs and see her into her carriage with a stately politeness that conld not have been equalled by all the professors of deportment since the world began.—(Cheers.) A GBEMAN APPRECIATION. The centenary was celebr.ifc-d by articles in moat of the German paper*. The Norddeutsche is queted by the Standard's Berlin corespondent as saying that " the man who first paved the way for a truer appreciation of the German poets and thinkers in England was Thomas Carlyle. This he endeavoured to do with all his cbaraoterie tic forceof style, and with the fiery eloquence of an apostle. Long before the unification of this country, C*rlylo prophesied that event, and recognised Prussia's vocat;on in Germany st a time when many otherwise faithful pat-riots in Prussia deemed it necessary. to avert their eves from the prospect of such a future. If any foreign writer aax be called a true friend to Germany, tbat man is Thomas Carlyle. It is the.efore fitting that he should be gratefully remembered among us to-day."