riters, wrote very much that
cannot be called equal to his best: and it cannot be denied that the
inferior pieces hold a rather large proportion of the whole. Nothing
is less fatal to true criticism than the popular habit of blindly
overvaluing the inferior work of men of genius, unless it be the habit
of undervaluing them by looking at their worst instead of at their
best. Great men are to be judged by their highest; and it is not of
very great consequence if this highest forms a moderate part of the
total product. Now, what are the masterpieces of Thomas Carlyle? In
the order of their production they are _Sartor Resartus_, 1831; _French
Revolution_, 1837; _Hero-Worship_, 1840; _Past and Present_, 1843;
_Cromwell_, 1845. We need not be alarmed if this list forms but a
third of the thirty volumes (not including translations); and if it
omits such potent outbursts as _Chartism_, 1839; and _Latter-Day
Pamphlets_, 1850; or such a wonderful piece of history as _Friedrich
the Second_, 1858-1865. _Chartism_ and the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_ are
full of eloquence, insight, indignation, and pity, and they exerted a
great and wholesome effect on the generation whom they smote as with
the rebuke and warning of a prophet. But, as we look back on them
after forty or fifty years of experience, we find in them too much of
passionate exaggeration, at times a ferocious wrong-headedness, and
everywhere so little practical guidance or fruitful suggestion, that we
cannot reckon these magnificent Jeremiads as permanent masterpieces.

As to _Friedrich_, it is not a book at all, but an encyclopaedia of
German biographies in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Who
reads every word of these ten volumes? Who cares to know how big was
the belly of some court chamberlain, or who were the lovers of some
unendurable Frau? What a welter of dull garbage! In what dust-heaps
dost thou not smother us, Teufelsdroeckh! O, Thomas, Thomas, what
Titania has bewitched thee with the head of Dryasdust on thy noble
shoulders? Compare _Friedrich_ with _Cromwell_. In the Life of the
Puritan hero we have a great purpose, a prolonged homily, a magnificent
appeal against an unjust sentence passed two hundred years before by
ignorance, bigotry, and passion. The literary interest never
overpowers the social and political, the moral and the religious
purpose. Twenty years later, when he takes up the German _Friedrich_,
the literary interest overpower