GLIMPSES OF CARLYLE[16]

Of the people I saw in London you will wish me to speak first of the
Carlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an evening
to be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him.
He was in a very sweet humor--full of wit and pathos, without being
overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich
flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his
personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing,
before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his
great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a
narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my
lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That
evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving
light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and
some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the
Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told
with beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer or artizan in the
country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty
English world, and sits reading the "Essays" and looking upon the
sea....

[Footnote 16: From a letter to Emerson, written in 1846, and printed
in the "Memoirs."]

The second time Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty,
French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes,[17] author of a "History
of Philosophy," and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he
must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him.
But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt
Carlyle a little--of which one was glad, for that night he was in his
acrid mood; and tho much more brilliant than on the former evening,
grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything
he said....

[Footnote 17: George Henry Lewes, whose relations to George Eliot
began after Margaret Fuller's visit. Lewes was not a Frenchman, but of
Welsh descent, born in London, and a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes,
the actor.]

Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced
with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the
usual misfortune of such marked men--happily not one invariable or
inevitable--that they can not allow other minds room to