" The Essayists and Reviewers, "Septem contra
Christum," "should," he said, "be shot for deserting their posts"; even
Dean Stanley, their _amicus curioe,_ whom he liked, came in for a share
of his sarcasm; "there he goes," he said to Froude, "boring holes in the
bottom of the Church of England." Of Colenso, who was doing as much as
any one for the "Exodus from Houndsditch," he spoke with open contempt,
saying, "he mistakes for fame an extended pillory that he is standing
on"; and was echoed by his wife, "Colenso isn't worth talking about for
five minutes, except for the absurdity of a man making arithmetical
onslaughts on the Pentateuch with a bishop's little black silk apron on."
This is not the place to discuss the controversy involved; but we
are bound to note the fact that Carlyle was, by an inverted Scotch
intolerance, led to revile men rowing in the same boat as himself, but
with a different stroke. To another broad Churchman, Charles Kingsley,
partly from sympathy with this writer's imaginative power, he was more
considerate; and one of the still deeply religious freethinkers of the
time was among his closest friends. The death of Arthur Clough in 1861
left another blank in Carlyle's life: we have had in this century to
lament the comparatively early loss of few men of finer genius. Clough
had not, perhaps, the practical force of Sterling, but his work is of a
higher order than any of the fragments of the earlier favourite.
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