ertainly the most
imposing if not the most effective method. Many of his contributions to
the _Edinburgh Review_ were afterwards republished as _Essays_, and
already in those earlier essays which appeared before 1837, we can see
him assuming the _role_ of the historical champion of the whigs. Widely
read and with a marvellous memory, he was generally accurate in his
facts, but his criticism of Gladstone applies with even greater force to
himself: "There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon
would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted
and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices." The critic
is sunk in the advocate, and even a good cause is spoiled by a too
obvious reluctance to admit anything that comes from the other side.
Perhaps his happiest, though far from his greatest, work is to be found
in the stirring ballads of _Ivry_ and the _Armada_, the precursors of
the _Lays of Ancient Rome_. Deservedly popular and full of patriotic
fire, the class of literature to which they belong renders questions of
fairness or unfairness beside the point.

Another contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_, also famous as a
historian, was Thomas Carlyle. He was born in 1795 at Ecclefechan in
Dumfriesshire, and wrote for Brewster's _Encyclopaedia_ and the _London
Magazine_ as well as the _Edinburgh_. In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, and
in 1828 he retired from journalism to live humbly on her means. It was
now that he began to produce his best work. _Sartor Resartus_ appeared
in 1833-34, and the _History of the French Revolution_ in 1837. Even in
the latter of these works he is as much a preacher as a historian.
Perhaps no other writer of the age exercised a greater direct influence,
and in his own country, which seems specially amenable to the preacher's
powers, his message has been as effective in favour of broader views as
the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 was in favour of the
old orthodoxy. His teaching has its roots in a German soil, but it bears
the mark of his own strong personality. His style, with a wilful
ruggedness, displays the German taste for the humour of an incongruous
homeliness, where the subject seems to call for a more dignified
treatment. Perhaps this obvious falseness of expression only relieves
the weight of his stern earnestness of purpose and makes us the more
ready to join in his constant denunciation of everything hollow and
pretentious.

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