The Life of Froude by Herbert Paul
page 67 of 357 (18%)
page 67 of 357 (18%)
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of Commons for amending the law of copyright, he was guided by self-
interest, but it was not a counsel of despair. The City Companies, says Froude, "are all which now remain of a vast organisation which once penetrated the entire trading life of England--an organisation set on foot to realise that impossible condition of commercial excellence under which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and all wares offered for sale, of whatever kind, should honestly be what they pretend to be." For "impossible" Carlyle proposed "highly necessary, if highly difficult," and a similar change was made. But why people who do not understand political economy should be more honest than those who do neither master nor disciple condescended to explain. It is much easier to preach than to argue. More valuable than these gibes is Carlyle's reminder that guilds were not peculiar to England. "In Lubeck, Augsburg, Nurnberg, Dantzig, not to speak of Venice, Genoa, Pisa,--George Hudson and the Gospel of Cheap and Nasty were totally unknown entities. The German Gilds even made poetry together; Herr Sachs of Nurnberg was one of the finest pious genial master shoemakers that ever lived anywhere--his shoes and rhymes alike genuine (I can speak for the rhymes) and worthy." It is strange that Carlyle should have taken the trouble to correct a misquotation from Juvenal, and still stranger that Froude should have left the words uncorrected. Misquotation was a too frequent habit with him. In his second chapter he applies to Henry the famous passage in Tacitus's character of Galba, and changes capax imperii to dignus imperil, though dignus would have required imperio, and would then have made inferior sense. Some of Carlyle's queries were |
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