Froude, not
unnaturally increases the irritation with which the public has read
his recollections of his friends and contemporaries. The
"disillusion and disenchantment" worked by the book, in so far as it
affects Carlyle's fame as a prophet, is, of course, a misfortune,
and a very serious one. What it was he preached when his preaching
first startled the world, but very few now undertake to say, and
these few by no means agree in their story. His influence,
apparently, was not of the kind which reaches a man through
articulate speech, but rather that which comes through the blast of
a trumpet or the marching tune of a good band, and fills the heart
with a feeling of capacity for high endeavor, though one cannot say
in what particular field it is to be displayed. But though he
founded no school and taught no system of morals, his eminence as
a mere preacher was one of the very valuable possessions of the
Anglo-Saxon world, as a sort of standing protest against the
materialistic tendencies of the age; and this eminence rested a good
deal on the popular conception of the elevation of his own
character.
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