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One of these, Professor Masson of Edinburgh, in memory of Carlyle's own tribute to Goethe, started a subscription for a medal, presented on his eightieth birthday; but he valued more a communication of the same date from Prince Bismarck.
Carlyle's influence has consisted more in his attitude than in any special truth which he has preached. It has been the influence of a moralist, of a practical rather than a speculative philosopher. "The end of man," he wrote, "is an action, not a thought." He has not been able to persuade the time that it is going wrong, but his criticisms have been wholesomely corrective of its self-conceit.
Carlyle's visit to Castle Marling, Barbara Hare called at Miss Carlyle's, and found them going to tea much earlier than usual. "We dined earlier," said Miss Corny, "and I ordered tea as soon as the dinner went away. Otherwise, Archibald would have taken none." "I am as well without tea. And I have a mass of business to get through yet."
Carlyle's poetry can only be exhibited in long extracts, which would be here out of place, and might excite controversy as to the meaning of words, and draw down upon me the measureless malice of the metricists.
And then there are infinite gradations, such as the friendships of old and young, pupils and masters, parents and children, nurses and nurslings, employers and servants, all of them in a way unequal friendships, but capable of evoking the deepest and purest kinds of devotion: such famous friendships have been Carlyle's devotion to his parents, Boswell's to Johnson, Stanley's to Arnold; till at last one comes to the typical and essential thing known specially as friendship the passionate, devoted, equal bond which exists between two people of the same age and sex; many of which friendships are formed at school and college, and which often fade away in a sort of cordial glow, implying no particular communion of life and thought.
Carlyle's last great work, History of Friedrich II., was fortunately finished in 1865, the year before his great misfortune. In the latter part of 1865 the students of the University of Edinburgh elected Carlyle Lord Rector of that institution because they considered him the man most worthy to receive such high honor. In the spring of 1866, he went to Edinburgh to deliver his inaugural address.
Carlyle's dictum about the valet species how they never honour the unaccredited hero, having no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god, Public Opinion. I saw through the motive of his new-fledged respect for me and yet encouraged it; for it flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me.
What can we say, but that the cause which pleased the gods had in the end to please Cato also? When all is said, Carlyle's inconsistent optimism throws no more light than others have done on the apparent relapses of history, as the overthrow of Greek civilisation, the long night of the Dark Ages, the spread of the Russian power during the last century, or of continental Militarism in the present.
For these reasons, and also because in many instances his advice was followed, it may be worth while to give some account of his pencil jottings, written when Carlyle's hand was still firm, and as legible as they were fifty years ago. Upon the first chapter as a whole, Carlyle's judgment, though critical, was highly favourable.
At his table during our stay we met various interesting guests, one of whom suggested the idea regarding the secret of Carlyle's cynicism and pessimism to which reference is made in my "Warfare of Science."
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