the two Keiths, "active" Prince Henry,-"Smelfungus," make it quite impossible for every man indeed of that stern band of war-him to render an extensive sketch of this riors who surrounded Frederic-all these are sort interesting or even intelligible to the brought before us living and moving, not a general reader. The second volume is maintrait forgotten which can give individuality to ly occupied in the vain endeavour to make a the character. Even men long familiar to us hero out of that drunken savage Frederic we learn to know better than before: Chat- William; and, though enriched with much ham again lives to "bid England be of good of Mr. Carlyle's humour and genius, is, we cheer and hurl defiance at her foes;" Wolfe, must say, on the whole wearisome. Volumes greatly daring, is borne by the midnight three, four, and five are the cream of the flow of the St. Lawrence to the scene of his work; for the end of the Seven Years' War, glory and his death; Montcalm, prophetic as from the battle of Torgau to the Peace of his end draws near, foretells the revolt of Hubertsburg, is very tedious, and the BavaAmerica and the humiliation of England. rian War is unendurable. The redeeming points in the sixth volume are the account of the Partition of Poland, and, perhaps, the best index that was ever put together. As a whole, the book wants proportion. We have too much of Frederic's ancestry, far too much of his father in particular; we have too much of his campaigns, and too little of his internal administration. Prolix, confused, out of proportion-all this, we regret to say, can be urged truly against the Life of Frederic.

But not only from Courts and armies does Mr. Carlyle gather that personal element which gives so much interest to his History. Many of the great names in literature light up the page, and cheer the reader, if but for a moment, with a pleasant effect of contrast. They are introduced for all sorts of reasons -often for no reason at all, but they are always welcome. Their only connexion with the theme may be the time of their death, as Swift and Pope; they may have recorded some incident in the great struggle, as Smollet; like Maupertuis they may be laughed at, with Johnson they may receive a few words of hearty greeting; some come and go, pleasantly, but without result, as Gellert or Zimmermann; a few leave behind them for ever the marks of the tread of the monarchs of thought, as Voltaire. Kings, statesmen, warriors, men of letters, pass in proud procession before us; types from every class in that strange society enliven the scene; and, as the stately panorama rolls on, the gazer looks with rapt attention on a brilliant and life-like picture of a bygone age, separated from us by a gulf broader and deeper than could have been the work of time alone. The historian of the great catastrophe which closed the eighteenth century, has in this book enabled any painstaking reader to form for himself some idea of what was the state of the nations which made that catastrope inevitable.

On the other hand, it is not to be denied that many and forcible objections can be urged against the Life of Frederic as a work of art. It is often prolix and often confused; sins both of commission and of omission are numerous. Thus the first volume is concerned almost exclusively with the history of the Hohenzollerns-with the rise of Prussia into a nation and a royalty. This preamble, though undoubtedly too long, might have been made interesting had it been written in a clear and perspicuous style. But Mr. Carlyle's abruptness and obscurity, his trick of telling a story by allusion, and his preposterous habit of quotation from

But all other literary faults sink into insignificance when we think of the style in which Mr. Carlyle has seen fit to write. Why in this respect he should have chosen so to fall away from his former self, it is hard to tell. It is quite melancholy to compare what he has done with what he chooses to do now. In his early days, Mr. Carlyle wrote English as few men have ever written it-simply and clearly, yet with a richness and power peenliarly his own. No reader will blame us for recalling to his recollection the following most pathetic passage from the Diamond Necklace, published nearly thirty years ago :—

"Beautiful High-born that wert so foully out of old Hapsburg Dynasties, came it not also hurled low! For, if thy Being came to thee rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh, is there (like my own) out of Heaven? Sunt lachrymæ a man's heart that thinks, without pity, of those long months and years of slow-wasted ignominy-of thy birth, soft-cradled in Imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the Guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment-bar was but the merciful end? Look there, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended, attire the Queen of the world. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop: a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of

maniac heads; the air deaf with their triumphyell! The Living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang; her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands. There is then

no heart to say, God pity thee? O think not of these; think of HIM whom thou worshippest, the Crucified,-who also treading the winepress alone, fronted sorrow still deeper; and triumphed over it, and made it holy; and built of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow,' for thee and all the wretched! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light,-where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the block; the axe rushes Dumb lies the world; that wild yelling world, and all its madness, is behind thee."

To us this passage seems to fulfil all the conditions of good writing-the worthiest thoughts expressed in appropriate and moving

words. Beside it Burke's celebrated burst of

eloquence on the same sad theme becomes tinsel; apart from the beauty of the diction, there is a tenderness of feeling which goes to the heart. Nothing of a similar stamp, or at all approaching to it, can be found throughout these six large volumes; the following, rather, is a fair specimen of Mr. Carlyle's later style :

"When the brains are out, things really ought to die; no matter what lovely things they were, and still affect to be, the brains being out they actually ought in all cases to die, and with their best speed get buried. Men had noses at one time, and smelt the horror of a deceased

reality fallen putrid, of a once dear verity be come mendacious, phantasmal; but they have, to an immense degree, lost that organ since, and are now living comfortably cheek-by-jowl with lies. Lies of that sad 'conservative' kind, and indeed of all kinds whatsoever: for that kind is a general mother; and breeds, with a fecundity that is appalling, did you heed it much."-(Vol. iii. p. 337.)

ignoble ancestry; if not by him to be improved and enriched, at least to be preserved perfect and undefiled.

Besides this unhappy substitution of rant and fustian for real force of expression, Mr. Carlyle's tricks of composition have grown into vicious prominence. The old Smelfungus and Sauerteig device is repeated in these volumes until it becomes irksome to a degree; his love of nicknames and sweeping terms of abuse has grown to an extreme. What possible good can come from raving against "boiling unveracities," "apes of the Dead Sea," "putrid fermentations of mud pools," and so on? What does it all mean? To what reader does it convey any distinct comprehensible idea? Nay, these wild generalities have a directly pernicious effect. They may do Mr. Carlyle a good turn now and then in the way of finishing in convenient vagueness some terrible denunciation; but they do this at the expense of clear thinking on his part and clear apprehension on the part of his readers. Nothing is more fallacious than the use of what Mr. Foster, in his essay on the use of the word romantic, calls "exploding terms." They only serve the purpose of concealing obscurity or confusion of thought, and, in the hands of Mr. Carlyle, they serve this purpose many and many a time. Even worse, if possible, is Mr. Čarlyle's fondness for nicknames, and the prominence he gives to physical peculiarities. It would be tedious to give instances-they are to be found on every page. In regard to the latter point, Mr. Carlyle seems to have taken a hint from Mr. Dickens. The peculiarities both in dress and appearance of many of his characters, of George II. for example, are as frequently insisted on and made as familiar to us as the coat-tails of Mr. Pickwick or the teeth of Mr. Carker.

Such tricks, besides being in bad taste, are We cannot find it in our hearts to forgive positively misleading. Mr. Carlyle's admirers this falling away in Mr. Carlyle. Such a are fond of claiming for him the great merit rare and splendid gift was his, and to see how of getting at the real nature of a man-of he has thrown it behind him! And the drawing his characters "from within outworst is, that he has done this wilfully, with wards," to use their favourite way of putting his eyes open. Affectation, a love of singu- it. The fact may be so; but certainly the larity, an idea that inverted sentences and habit we refer to gives no very strong tesuncouth phraseology would give weight to timony that it is so. For in this way we get his teaching-such have been the causes of nothing but the outsides of people. They the corruption of Mr. Carlyle's style. are identified by some external trait, and are ever after associated with it. Now, this trait may be the index to the real character of the man, but it also may not. We should like to have the character well analysed before the nickname is given, or the representative peculiarity fixed upon. The device is amusing and telling. A forcible impression is produced on the imagination; but the question will intrude-is that impression true? Are

Not only has he thus deprived his readers of much pleasure; not only has he done himself grievous injustice, he has also inflicted a deep, though not, we hope, a lasting injury, on the English language, than which no more grievous fault can be laid to the charge of a great author. A man like Mr. Carlyle should look on the language in which he writes as a proud heritage come down to him from no

the pictures like the originals? We feel ourselves too much at the mercy of the writer, and would welcome with a sense of security characters drawn in the old-fashioned style. With a brief but vehement protest against the use of German nomenclature by Mr. Carlyle, at once unpleasing and puzzling, and, worst of all, not consistently kept up,-we pass from considering the book in its literary aspects.

Unfortunately, when we do this we leave all possibilities of praise behind us, and get deeper and deeper into the region of mere fault-finding. We say nothing of his wonderful admirations, and for his not less groundless dislikes; but when we look at the general scope and tenor of the book, we can hardly convince ourselves that Mr. Carlyle is in earnest. We feel it impossible to get into a state of moral indignation on the matter, as some reviewers have done; the whole thing looks so like a ponderous joke. Mr. Carlyle's morality may be expressed by the formula-act up to your character, that is, do whatever you like; his politics may be expressed by the formula-seize whatever you have a chance of getting, and, when asked to give it up, answer by demanding more.

And this line of defence, not only immoral, but shabby-unworthy of any higher order of criminal than a thimble-rigger-is further supported on the ground that Frederic "did not volunteer into this foul element like the others," an assertion which is as nearly as possible the exact reverse of fact. Whether Frederic's invasion of Silesia was justifiable or not, we shall presently see; but that, whether justifiable or unjustifiable, it was entirely. voluntary on his part, is beyond question. Statements of this sort-and throughout these volumes their name is legion-altogether overthrow our confidence in the candour of the historian.

Space would soon fail us did we attempt anything like an enumeration of the fal lacious arguments and perverted judgments with which the Life of Frederic abounds. We will recall to the recollection of our readers but one more example-perhaps the most remarkable of all. No one who ever read it has forgotten the story of the execution of Katte, the unhappy companion of Frederic's flight, when driven to despair by the brutality of his father. Mr. Carlyle does his best to gloss over the barbarity of Frederic William; but the facts Thus he really seems to believe that he represented even by his friendly pen-the has satisfactorily disposed of all objections sentence of the court-martial changed into to Frederic's faithfulness, by the question, one of death by the king-the sudden inti"How, otherwise than even as Friedrich did, mation to the prisoner-this night drive of would you, most veracious Smelfungus, have sixty miles just before his execution, for no plucked out your Silesia from such an ele- other purpose but that the prince should “see ment and such a time?" which, in plain Eng-him die "-the prince himself tortured into lish, means that by setting before yourself an utterly unjustifiable end you become entitled to adopt any means, however iniquitous, for its attainment. Again, what can any reader make of the two following passages, occurring in the same volume, and but a few apart?

a happy insensibility, and so only escaping the sight of the death of his friend,-make up a drama of refined cruelty which recalls. Carrier or Lebon, or some other of the more distinguished ruffians of the French Revolution pages

"And indeed we will here advise our readers to prepare for dismissing altogether that notion of Friedrich's duplicity, mendacity, finesse and the like, which was once widely current in the world; and to attend always strictly to what Friedrich says, if they wish to guess what he is thinking; there be ng no such thing as 'mendacity discoverable in Friedrich, when you take the trouble to inform yourself."-(Vol. iii.

1

p. 419.)

And then, at the end of all this, Mr. Carlyle tells us that it was "indeed like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, though not that alone." To the justly exasperated reader we can suggest this comfort, that a hobby is least mischievous when pushed to its greatest extreme. Readers may therefore restrain their wrath; serious remonstrance would be even more out of place; but a feeling of considerable irritation cannot be altogether restrained. If an author of ordinary powers and moderate pretensions were to in

"Magnanimous I can by no means call Friedrich to his allies and neighbours, nor even super-dite nonsense of this sort, inextinguishable stitiously veracious, in this business; but he thoroughly understands, he alone, what first thing he wants out of it, and what an enormouswigged mendacity it is he has got to deal with. For the rest, he is at the gaming-table with these sharpers; their dice all cogged; and he knows it, and ought to profit by his knowledge of it. And, in short, to win his stake out of that foul weltering mediey, and go home safe with it if he can."-(Vol. iii. p. 478.)

laughter would be his portion. But when it comes from a great teacher in Israel--a writer it is forced upon us with profound confidence, of rare genius and of vast influence; when and our assent demanded with the loftiest arrogance, a plain man feels at once impatient and affronted. It is not so much that his sense of morality is offended, the thing is too preposterous for that; but he feels in

Till Mr. Carlyle took the matter in band, people had pretty well made up their minds as to the character of Frederic. Lord Stanhope, the most impartial and sober-minded of historians, thus writes of him :

actly what might have been expected from | to vindicate the Carlylian theory of govern Frederic, the result of an unamiable craving ment more completely and conclusively than for a contemptible revenge? the meanness of has ever yet been done, by showing it sucthe proceeding being, if possible, increased cessful in action. Has either of these things by the pains taken that Frederic's share in it been accomplished? should be concealed. How low this great prince should stoop to gratify his pleasure in inflicting pain, may be gathered from the fact of his having actually issued orders to curtail the sugar and chocolate consumed by his distinguished guest, a charge which Mr. Carlyle, so far as we can see, does not venture to contradict. Often a vital fallacy is dexterously conveyed in a few words, as when we are told of "the Silesian, or partition of Prussia question ;"-the fact being that Silesia did not at that time belong to Prussia at all, and that the Empress Queen, in her attempts on the province, was only seeking to regain her own. Very extraordinary, too, is Mr. Carlyle's way of dealing with Frederic's flight from the field at Mollwitz. That a young prince at his first battle should have been disturbed by the defeat of his cavalry, and even swept away in their headlong rout, is small discredit to him; Frederic's after life can well bear this slight weak

ness.

But no spots must be on Mr. Carlyle's sun. Accordingly, instead of simply saying that Frederic ran away, he tells us that he "was snatched by Morgante into Fairyland, carried by Diana to the top of Pindus (or even by Proserpine to Tartarus, through a bad sixteen hours), till the battle whirlwind subsided." Maupertuis told the English ambassador at Vienna how he rode off in the King's suite, how some Austrian hussars sallied out of Oppeln upon them, whereupon Frederic, exclaiming, "Farewell, my friends, I am better mounted than you all," gaily rode off, leaving his friends to captivity. No very great sin after all, except in the manner of doing the thing; but Mr. Carlyle will have none of it, and so disposes of Maupertuis by quoting against him Voltaire's account of his doings after Mollwitz. This is really too bad. Voltaire to be cited as a good authority against Maupertuis, the man of all others whom he most hated and despised! What a "world of scorn would look beautiful" in Mr. Carlyle's eyes at the idea of Voltaire being quoted as an authority against Frederic! This list of omissions and misrepresentations, ranging from matters of the highest moment to matters seemingly of the lowest, might be extended almost indefinitely; and it seems conclusive against the trustworthiness of Mr. Carlyle's history.

With all this, what has Mr. Carlyle made out? The main purpose of his book seems to be twofold-first, to give to the world in Frederic the ideal of a patriot king; second,

"Vain, selfish, and ungrateful, destitute of not from former kindness, but only for future truth and honour, he valued his companions, use. But turn we to his talents, and we find the most consummate skill in war, formed by his own genius, and acquired from no master; we find a prompt, sagacious, and unbending administration of affairs; an activity and applicaton seldom yield ng to sickness, and never cept by variety of occupation; a high and relaxed by pleasure, and seeking no repose exoverruling ambition, capable of the greatest exploits, or of the most abject baseness, as either tended to its object, but never lo ing sight of that object; pursuing it with dauntless courage and an eagle eye, s metimes in the heavens and sometimes through the mire, and never tolerating either in himself or in others one moment of languor, or one touch of pity."

To reverse such judgment as this-to make the world recognise in Frederic not only a great warrior and statesman, but also an honest politician and a high-minded man, is Mr. Carlyle's leading object. Whether or not he has succeeded in this object we shall hereafter see; but in the first place, we must remark that his devotion thereto has, in one important respect, been prejudicial to the real value and interest of his work. His endeavour to set Frederic before us in a new light makes him dwell upon the influence and doings of that prince, to the entire exclusion of the various elements, at once of discord and of progress, which were then awakened in the world. Mr. Carlyle could never be a supporter of the "dynamical" theory of history; but in this book he rejects it altogether, and thereby misses the real grandeur of his theme. In the struggle which we know by the name of the Seven Years' War, many forces were at work very different from the ambition of Frederic. The national and political spirit of Germany was moving on the face of the waters. It had slept a deep sleep ever since the death of Gustavus on the field of Lützen. The old mediæval tendencies towards independence and self-government had been utterly overwhelmed in the Thirty Years' War. gloomy reign of darkness and terror-of Austria and Popery-had lasted for some hundred years. But the time had now come, though the fulness of time was not yet. The