d men,--happily not one invariable or
inevitable,--that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and
show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and
instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience
of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all
opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in
their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical
superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a
torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow
freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly
resistance in his thoughts. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed
to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows
not how to stop in the chase.

Carlyle indeed is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there
is no littleness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old
Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulse
that has given him power to crush the dragons. He sings rather than
talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem,
with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning,
some singular epithet which serves as a _refrain_ when his song is
full, or with which, as with a knitting-needle, he catches up the
stitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the
higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject
is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute to
laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the
spirits he is driving before him as Fata Morgana, ugly masks, in fact,
if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem to
others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full of
pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view,
and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I cannot speak
more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to
blame and praise him,--the Siegfried of England, great and powerful,
if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than
legislate for good.

THOMAS FULLER

(1608-1661)

[Illustration: THOMAS FULLER]

The fragrance which surrounds the writings of Thomas Fuller seems
blended of his wit, his quaint worldliness, his sweet and happy
spirit. The after-glow of the dazzling day of Sh