THE SKECTCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3512, 5 July 1921, Page 52

THE SKECTCHER.

CARLYLE AS LETTER WRITER. TWO NEW SETS OF UNPUBLISHED LETTERS. j “For the last three months I have ! charitably been supposing that in the | Right Hon Sir 11. Peel, Conservative 1 Minister in these times, there might lie some elements, long concealed, of a great mail; at lowest, of a rational man, meaning something by becoming lory Minister, not meaning nothing. “lie speaks; and audibly calls himself | Windbag, pitifullest pettifogging Quack; ignorant that God’s Universe stands on anything but electioneering majorities and j Parliamentary ‘cases well dressed up.' j He, too, will have to march befoie long, S with new troubles at his heels. The , times do really grow ominous. Except ! perhaps there be some hope in Glad ; stone, Conservatism, so far as one can ! see it in Parliament, is rushing swiftly to its ruin ; and then——? | “As for me, I am sick: swimming in chaos these many weeks, nigh drowning—towards no visible shore. Ordered by all the gc-ds to write; forbidden by all the devils! Ora pro me.” Thomas Carlyle to Thomas Spedding, from Chelsea, February 13, 1842. “Given in our Tub at Chelsea.'’ ‘ ‘ Curious coincidence,’ however hac.k- ---! ueyed, is the only phrase that meets the ; fact that two new sets of letters written by Thomas Carlyle, covering much the same period, are presented in the May periodicals,” says the Glasgow Herald. “The Corn hill prints tile first, instalment of a series that passed between Thomas Story Spedding in the years 1838 to 1870; and the Nineteenth Century prints a shorter series addressed to Miss Jane Wilson, who died in 1890, aged 100, and her brother. Both illustrate Carlyle’s great descriptive power, but the Cornmll set are the more attractive. “Between Carlyle and the Sped dings there was something of spiritual affinity, and Thomas Spedding had something of Carlyle’s own wizardry in words. .the letters are sometimes dated from Chelsea, sometimes from the Scottish side of the Border ; and they deal with personal and public affairs as well as with books. In both sets of letters he is in despair about ‘ Oliver,’ and in both he tells the story of the death o? his wife’s mother at Templand. The ‘State of England’ was his chief preoccupation. The Two Thomases.— “The letters in the Comhill are edited by A. Carlyle, who says; “Carlyle and Spedding first became acquainted in London about the end of 1837, through Spedding’s younger brother James (in later years the biographer of Bacon and the editor of his works), who then held a post in the Co’onia.l Office and was intimate with Carlyle’s friend John Sterling. “Carlyle enjoyed their society and like them both, especially Thomas, whose • modesty, intelligence, warm friendliness, and transparent honesty pleased him greatly. They had long walks together in the London parks or on the streets, follower! by brilliant talks and cosy teas with AJ rs Carlyle in the o ] d Chelsea drawing room. The two Thomases soon became devoted friends, and their devotion lasted as long as they both lived in this world. Carlyle and the Workers.— “Carlyle had long been deeply concerned about the condition of the working classes in this country, and the Chartist movement of 1839 determined him to write something on the subject,” writes Mr A. Carlyle. “Befoie lie and his wife left London for Scotland in the beginning of Julv he had commenced an article ‘ On the Working Classes,’ intended for the Quarterly Review, and brought the unfinished paper with him. On trial he found it impossible to complete it in the country. At home in the autumn, however, it was finished : but as the editor of the Quarterly did not dare to publish it, Carlyle himself brought it out as a separate pamphlet entitled ‘ Chartism.' It now occupies a place amongst his ‘ Miscellaneous Essays.’ The fourth paragraph of this letter reads almost like a portion of ‘ Chartism ’ ; there is nothing wiser or finer in the pamphlet or out of it than is here set down in quiet and eloquent words to his friend T. Spedding. What To Do with Chartism.— “What you say of Chartism is the very truth,” writes * Carlyle ; “revenge begotten of ignorance and hunger! We have enough of it here too ; the material of it exists, I believe, in the hearts of all our working population, and would right gladly-body itself in any promising shape; but Chartism begins to seem unpromising. What to do with it? Yes, there is the question. Europe has been struggling to give some answer, very audibly since the year 1789! The gallows and the bayonet will do what they can; these altogether failing, we may hope a quite other sort of exorcism will be tried. Alas, it is like a dumb, overloaded Behemoth, torn with internal misery and rage; but rhumb, able only to roar and stamp; let the doctors say what ails it, let both doctors and divers and all men tremble if they cannot say, - for tho creature itself is bv nature dumb, you need nol ask- ; t to speak 1 “l nless gentry, elergv. ami ail manner of washed articulate speaking men will learn that their position towards the unwashed is contraYy to the Taw of God, and change it soon, (lie Law of Man’ one has reason to discern, will change it before long, and that in no soft manner. 1 pray Heaven they might learn; but fancy that many stripes u ill nc needed first. However, it is in tile hands of the l ight Schoolmaster; one who, whatever his wages may rise to, does verilv get his lesson taught. Experience of actual

Fact either teaches fools or case, .abolishes f them. “For the rest, that England will not become what Ireland is, that England has taken to protesting, even inarticulately, at a point far short of that, is perhaps a thing one ought to be glad of. The lever-fit of Chart;-m will pass, and other lever-fits; but. the thing it means will not . pass till whatsoever of truth and justice lies in the heart of it has been fulfilled ; it cannot pass till then—a long date, I fear.” The Evil Day.— Carlyle, in another letter from Chelsea to Spedding at Keswick (June 26, 1842), again deals with the condition of England. He says: “From no man. Peel nor Anti-Peel, 1 j j hear the smallest whisper of any plan for j j dealing with the evil day which has at i j length come upon us. I suppose the ! | people will revolt, not willing to die like l Hindoos ; and the Government will order i ! out dragoons. A Chartist Parliament, i l not far in the rear of that, seems likeliest to many: Peel will swiftly thereupon have no difficulty in pointing out a 1 peculiar burden ’ or two Iving upon tne land! A Chartist Parliament or any form of Democracy is, with me, equivalent to Anarchy, and what the Yankees call ‘lmmortal Smash.’ “Seriously speaking, I do not like to look _at the state of England. I can predict nothing of it except that in all likelihood great and long-continued miseries are at no large distance from us. - In the Old Dialect.— “For, as I say in the old dialect, not yet speaking readily any other, All men, rich and poor, have forgotten tor several generations that there is’ any God in this universe,—-except perhaps some wretched shovel-hatted simulacrum, worse than no God, —and we find now at last, what all mortals in all times have at last found, that such godless hypothesis of this universe is not true, that the universe managed in that way becomes unmanageable, —and we, with our expediency, our supply and demand, our greatest "happiness principle, and other melancholy stomach-philosophy, are greater asses than they that believed in witch-craft-were !”