Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

It is nothing unusual, in this wayward world of ours, to find men denouncing, with apparent sincerity, that very fault which is most conspicuous in themselves. How often do we detect the most quarrelsome fellow of our acquaintance, the Hotspur of his immediate circle, uttering a grave homily against intemperance of speech, and rebuking for some casual testiness a friend, whose general demeanour and bearing give token of a lily-liver? What more common than to hear the habitual drunkard railing at the sin of inebriety, and delivering affecting testimony against the crying iniquity of the ginshop? We have listened to discourses on the comeliness of honesty, and the degrading tendencies of mammon-worship, from gentlemen who, a few hours before, had given private instructions to their brokers to rig the market, and who looked upon George Hudson as the greatest ornament of the age. Cobden mounts the platform to propose a motion in favour of universal peace and brotherhood, and, by way of argument, suggests the propriety of crumpling up the empire of the Russias, like the sheet of white paper which trembles in his omnipotent hand. He is seconded by a Quaker.

Mr Thomas Carlyle has, of late years, devoted a good deal of his leisure time to the denunciation of shams. The term, in his mouth, has a most extended significance indeed – he uses it with Catholic application. Loyalty, sovereignty, nobility, the church, the constitution, kings, nobles, priests, the House of Commons, ministers, Courts of Justice, laws, and lawgivers, are all alike, in the eyes of Mr Carlyle, shams. Nor does he consider the system as of purely modern growth. England, he thinks, has been shamming Isaac for several hundred years. Before the Commonwealth it was overridden by the frightful Incubus of Flunkeyism; since then, it has been suffering under Horsehair and Redtapism, two awful monsters that present themselves to Mr Carlyle's diseased imagination, chained at the entrances of Westminster Hall and Downing Street. Cromwell, perhaps, was not a sham, for in the burly regicide brewer Mr Carlyle discerns certain grand inarticulate strivings, which elevate him to the heroic rank. The gentlemen of the present age, however, are all either shams or shamming. The honourable Felix Parvulus, and the right honourable Felicissimus Zero, mounted respectively upon "desperate Sleswick thunder-horses" – M'Crowdy the political economist – Bobus – Flimnap, Sec. Foreign Department – the Right Honourable Minimus, and various other allegorical personages, intended, we presume, to typify carnal realities, are condemned as Solemn Shams, Supreme Quacks, Phantasm Captains, the Elixir of the Infatuated, and Able-Editor's Nobles.

It is natural to suppose that an individual who habitually deals in such wholesale denunciation, and whose avowed wish is to regenerate and reform society upon some entirely novel principle, must be a man of immense practical ability. The exposer of shams and quackeries should be, in his own person, very far indeed above suspicion of resembling those whom he describes, or tries to describe, in language more or less intelligible. If otherwise, he stands in imminent danger of being treated by the rest of the world as an impertinent and egregious impostor. Now, Mr Thomas Carlyle is anything but a man of practical ability. Setting aside his style for the present, let us see whether he has ever, in the course of his life, thrown out a single hint which could be useful to his own generation, or profitable to those who may come after. If he could originate any such hint, he does not possess the power of embodying it in distinct language. He has written a history of the French Revolution, a pamphlet on Chartism, a work on Heroes and Hero-worship, and a sort of political treatise entitled Past and Present . Can any living man point to a single practical passage in any of these volumes? If not, what is the real value of Mr Carlyle's writings? What is Mr Carlyle himself but a Phantasm of the species which he is pleased to denounce?

We have known, ere now, in England, political writers who, single-handed, have waged war with Ministers, and denounced the methods of government. But they were men of strong masculine understanding, capable of comprehending principles, and of exhibiting them in detail. They never attempted to write upon subjects which they did not understand: consequently, what they did write was well worthy of perusal, more especially as their sentiments were conveyed in clear idiomatic English. Perhaps the most remarkable man of this class was the late William Cobbett. Shrewd and practical, a master of figures, and an utter scorner of generalisation, he went at once in whatever he undertook to the root of the matter, and, right or wrong, demonstrated what he thought to be the evil, and what he conceived to be the remedy. There was no slip-slop, burlesque, or indistinctness about William Cobbett. Mr Carlyle, on the other hand, can never stir one inch beyond the merest vague generality. If he were a doctor, and you came to him with a cut finger, he would regale you with a lecture on the heroical qualities of Avicenna, or commence proving that Dr Abernethy was simply a Phantasm-Leech, instead of whipping out his pocket-book, and applying a plaster to the wound. Put him into the House of Commons, and ask him to make a speech on the budget. No baby ever possessed a more indefinite idea of the difference between pounds, shillings, and pence. He would go on maundering about Teufelsdrökh, Sauerteig, and Dryasdust, Sir Jabez Windbag, Fire-horses, Marsh-jötuns, and vulturous Choctaws, until he was coughed down as remorselessly as ever was Sir Joshua Walmsley. And yet this is the gentleman who has the temerity to volunteer his services as a public instructor, and who is now issuing a series of monthly tracts, for the purpose of shedding a new light upon the most intricate and knotty points of the general policy of Great Britain!

Something of this kind we have already witnessed in a neighbouring country, but never in the like degree. France has had her Flocons and her Louis Blancs, small, pert, presumptuous animals, chalking out schemes of social regeneration, organised labour, industrial regiments, and the like. We do not intend to insinuate that either of these scribes is entitled to be ranked, for parity of intellect, with Mr Carlyle, because by doing so we might involve ourselves in a squabble with some of his benighted admirers. But we say, with perfect sincerity, that so far as regards political attainments and information, clear views, and we shall even add common sense, (distant as that attribute is from any of the parties above named,) MM. Flocon and Blanc are at least as capable guides as Mr Carlyle can pretend to be. Something tangible there is, however pernicious to society, in the propositions of the former – the latter does not favour us with propositions at all; he contents himself with abusing men and matters in a barbarous, conceited, uncouth, and mystical dialect.

One peculiarity there is about the Latterday Pamphlets , as contradistinguished from their author's previous lucubrations, which has amused us not a little. Mr Carlyle has hitherto been understood to favour the cause of self-styled Liberalism. His mania, or rather his maunderings, on the subject of the Protector gained him the applause of many who are little less than theoretical republicans, and who regard as a glorious deed the regicide of the unfortunate Charles. Moreover, certain passages in his History of the French Revolution tended to strengthen this idea; he had a kindly side for Danton, and saw evident marks of heroism in the loathsome miscreant whom, in his usual absurd jargon, he styles "the pale sea-green Incorruptible," Robespierre. On this ground, his works were received with approbation by a section of the public press; and we used to hear him lauded and commended as a writer of the profoundest stamp, as a deep original thinker, a thorough-paced philanthropist, the champion of genuine greatness, and the unflinching enemy of delusions. Now, however, things are altered. Mr Carlyle has got a new crochet into his head, and to the utter discomfiture of his former admirers, he manifests a truculent and ultra-tyrannical spirit, abuses the political economists, wants to have a strong coercive government, indicates a decided leaning to the whip and the musket as effectual modes of reasoning, and, in short, abjures democracy! The sensation caused by this extraordinary change of sentiment has been as great as if Joe Hume had declared himself a spendthrift. Only think of such a document as the following, addressed to the sovereign people!