positions of subject and biographer are reversed, the man of genius
writing the life of the unimportant friend, and the fact that the friend
was exceedingly lovable in no way lessening one's discomfort in the face
of such an anomaly. Carlyle stands on an eminence altogether removed
from Sterling, who stands, indeed, on no eminence at all, unless it be
an eminence, that (happily) crowded bit of ground, where the bright and
courageous and lovable stand together. We Germans have all heard of
Carlyle, and many of us have read him with due amazement, our admiration
often interrupted by groans at the difficulties his style places in the
candid foreigner's path; but without Carlyle which of us would ever have
heard of Sterling? And even in this comparatively placid book mines of
the accustomed vehemence are sprung on the shrinking reader. To the
prosaic German, nourished on a literature free from thunderings and any
marked acuteness of enthusiasm, Carlyle is an altogether astonishing
phenomenon.

And here I feel constrained to inquire sternly who I am that I should
talk in this unbecoming manner of Carlyle? To which I reply that I am
only a humble German seeking after peace, devoid of the least real
desire to criticise anybody, and merely anxious to get out of the way of
geniuses when they make too much noise. All I want is to read quietly
the books that I at present prefer. Carlyle is shut up now and therefore
silent on his comfortable shelf; yet who knows but what in my old age,
when I begin to feel really young, I may not once again find comfort in
him?

What a medley of books there is round my pillar! Here is Jane Austen
leaning against Heine--what would she have said to that, I wonder?--with
Miss Mitford and _Cranford_ to keep her in countenance on her other
side. Here is my Goethe, one of many editions I have of him, the one