CARLYLE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.1 have only to say, in reply to " A. W.," that the wonder- fully vivid description of Coleridge's conversation in Carlyle's ' Life of Sterling " differs generically from the reflections ou various obscure persons so much objected to in the " Reminis- cences." It is a criticism—many people think a most admirable and discriminating criticism—of a conspicuous public teacher who exercised an enormous influence over the opinions of the young men of his generation, and who exercised that influence, beyond all his contemporaries, by means of his conversation. It is, I conceive, in no degree an exception to the fact that Carlyle's works, as published by himself, are, in spite of their xery strong language and opinions, singularly free from harsh and ill-natured judgments on individual contemporaries,—from such judgments as Macaulay wrote about Croker, or Robert Montgomery, or Sadler, or the Editor of Macintosh's works. I have no wish to trespass further upon your space, or to .follow your correspondent into his dissertation about " moral currency." My sole object has been to remind your readers of the extreme absurdity of estimating a great writer mainly by the mere sweepings of his portfolio, and not by his deliberately published books, and by the broad lines of thought and character which they reveal. I am not myself a disciple of Carlyle. Many of his opinions I venture to think distorted, exaggerated, -questionable, or unsound ; but I have no doubt that future generations will regard him as one of the greatest intellectual .figures and, on the whole, one of the healthiest moral influences of his time, and that they will find very much in his writings that may instruct the wisest and improve the best of their
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