meant to be. The graces, the polish, the sprightly elegances which belong to men of lighter make, we cannot look for or demand from him. His movement is essentially slow and cumbrous, for he advances not with one faculty, but with a whole mind; with intellect, and pathos, and wit, and humour, and imagination, moving onward like a mighty host, motley, ponderous, irregular and irresistible. He is not airy, sparkling and precise, but deep, billowy and vast. The melody of his nature is not expressed in common note-marks, nor written down by the critical gamut; for it is wild and manifold; its voice is like the voice of cataracts and the sounding of primeval forests. To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that understand it deep majestic music.
De te fabula narratur. Carlyle had not yet found his later and characteristic manner; but the time was not far distant when almost every line of this picturesque description was to become applicable to himself.
