prejudiced, unjust he is! He has made up his mind about the merit
of an artist; he will lay down a principle about accuracy in art,
and to what extent imagination may improve upon vision; and then he
will abuse Claude for modifying a scene, in the same breath, and
for the same reasons, with which he will praise Turner for
exaggerating one. He will use the same stick that he throws for one
dog to fetch, to beat another dog that he dislikes. Of course he
says fine and suggestive things by the way, and he did a great work
in inspiring people to look for beauty, though he misled many
feeble spirits into substituting one convention for another. I
cannot read a page of his formal writings without anger and
disgust. Yet what a beautiful, pathetic, noble spirit he had! The
moment he writes, simply and tenderly, from his own harrowed heart,
he becomes a dear and honoured friend. In Praeterita, in his diaries
and letters, in his familiar and unconsidered utterances, he is
perfectly delightful, conscious of his own waywardness and
whimsicality; but when he lectures and dictates, he is like a man
blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle--his big
books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and
clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of himself into the
foreground, like some obstreperous showman; he wearies and dizzies
my brain with his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. I saw
the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea,
the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate
and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the
clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer
on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is
entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to
me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to
its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence and seclusion