Thomas Carlyle by Nichol, John, 1833-1894

[Footnote: The italics are Mr. Froude's.]

CHAPTER V

CHEYNE ROW

[1842-1853]

The bold venture of coming to London with a lean purse, few friends, and little fame had succeeded: but it had been a terrible risk, and the struggle had left scars behind it. To this period of his life we may apply Carlyle's words,--made use of by himself at a later date,--"The battle was over and we were sore wounded." It is as a maimed knight of modern chivalry, who sounded the _reveil_ for an onslaught on the citadels of sham, rather than as a prophet of the future that his name is likely to endure in the history of English thought. He has also a place with Scott amongst the recreators of bygone ages, but he regarded their annals less as pictures than as lesson-books. His aim was that expressed by Tennyson to "steal fire from fountains of the past," but his design was to admonish rather than "to glorify the present." This is the avowed object of the second of his distinctly political works, which following on the track of the first, _Charlism_, and written in a similar spirit, takes higher artistic rank. _Past and Present_, suggested by a visit to the poorhouse of St. Ives and by reading the chronicle of _Jocelin de Brakelond_, was undertaken as a duty, while he was mainly engaged on a greater work,--the duty he felt laid upon him to say some thing that should bear directly on the welfare of the people, especially of the poor around him. It was an impulse similar to that which inspired _Oliver Twist_, but Carlyle's remedies were widely different from those of Dickens. Not merely more kindness and sympathy, but paternal government, supplying work to the idle inmates of the workhouse, and insisting, by force if need be, on it being done, was his panacea. It had been Abbot Samson's way in his strong government of the Monastery of St. Edmunds, and he resolved, half in parable, half in plain sermon, to recommend it to the Ministers Peel and Russell.