I know few confessions that are so filled
with gleams of high poetry and beauty as many of these solitary
lamentations. But I believe that the terrors that Carlyle had to
face were the terrors of a swift, clear-sighted, feverishly active,
intuitive brain, prevented by mortal weakness and frailty from
dealing as he desired with the dazzling immensity and intricacy of
the world's life and history.
I feel no real doubt of this, because Carlyle's passion for
accurate and minute knowledge, his intense interest in temperament
and character, his almost unequalled power of observation--which is
really the surest sign of genius--come out so clearly all through
his life, that his finite limitations must have been of the nature
of a torture to him. One who desired to know the truth about
everything so vehemently, was crushed and bewildered by the narrow
range and limited scope of his own insatiable thought. His power of
expressing all that he saw and felt, so delicately, so humorously,
and at times so tenderly, must have beguiled his sadness more than
he knew.
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