_ (5th October 1795), is
merely a casual point in a long movement, at which the poet finds it
artistic to stop. But the French Revolution does not stop there, nor
did the "Whiff of Grapeshot" end it in any but an arbitrary sense.
When the poet tells us that, upon Napoleon's defeating the sections
around the Convention, "the hour had come and the Man," and that the
thing called the French Revolution was thereby "blown into space,"
nothing more silly, mendacious, and "phantasmic" was ever stated by
sober historian. The Convention was itself the living embodiment and
product of the Revolution, and Bonaparte's smart feat in protecting it,
increased its authority and confidence. If Carlyle's _French
Revolution_ be trusted as real history, it lands us in as futile a _non
sequitur_ as ever historian committed.

Viewed as an historical poem, the _French Revolution_ is a splendid
creation. Its passion, energy, colour, and vast prodigality of
ineffaceable pictures place it undoubtedly at the head of all the
pictorial histories of modern times. And the dramatic rapidity of its
action, and the inexhaustible contrasts of its scenes and
tableaux--things which so fatally pervert its truthfulness as authentic
history--immensely heighten the effect of the poem on the reader's
mind. Not that Carlyle was capable of deliberately manufacturing an
historical romance in the mendacious way of Thiers and Lamartine. But,
having resolved to cast the cataclysm of 1789 and the few years before
and after it into a dramatic poem, he inevitably, and no doubt
unconsciously, treated certain incidents and certain men with a poet's
license or with a distorted vision. This too is more apparent toward
the close of his work, when he begins to show signs of fatigue and
exhaustion. Nay, it is to be feared that we are still suffering from
the outrage committed on Victorian literature by Mr. Mill's incendiary
housemaid. We may yet note marks of arson in the restored volume. At
the same time, there are large parts of his work which are as true
historically as they are poetically brilliant. Part I.--"The
Bastille"--is almost perfect. The whole description of Versailles, its
court, and government, of the effervescence of Paris--from the death of
Louis XV. to the capture of Versailles--is both powerful and true.
Part II.--"The Constitution"--is the weakest part of the whole from the
point of view of accurate history. And Part III.--"The Terror"--is
on