"For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that
subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a
minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigour; for
all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas,
ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs
that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books,
is full of pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his
point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I
cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it;--his works are
true, to blame and praise him,--the Siegfried of England,--great and
powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy
evil, than legislate for good."[A]
[Footnote A: "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli." (Boston, 1852.) Vol.
iii., pp. 96-104.]
In 1848 Mr. Carlyle contributed a series of articles to the _Examiner_
and _Spectator_, principally on Irish affairs, which, as he has never
yet seen fit to reprint them in his Miscellanies, are apparently quite
unknown to the general public.
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