Truth, in the sense of saying what he thought, was one of his ruling
passions. To one of his brothers on the birth of a daughter, he writes,
"Train her to this, as the cornerstone of all morality, to stand by the
truth, to abhor a lie as she does hell-fire." The "gates of hell" is the
phrase of Achilles; but Carlyle has no real point of contact with the
Greek love of abstract truth. He objects that "Socrates is terribly at
ease in Zion": he liked no one to be at ease anywhere. He is angry with
Walter Scott because he hunted with his friends over the breezy heath
instead of mooning alone over twilight moors. Read Scott's _Memoirs_ in
the morning, the _Reminiscences_ at night, and dispute if you like about
the greater genius, but never about the healthier, better, and larger
man.
Hebraism, says Matthew Arnold, is the spirit which obeys the mandate,
"walk by your light"; Hellenism the spirit which remembers the other,
"have a care your light be not darkness." The former prefers doing to
thinking, the latter is bent on finding the truth it loves. Carlyle is
a Hebraist unrelieved and unretrieved by the Hellene. A man of
inconsistencies, egotisms, Alpine grandeurs and crevasses, let us take
from him what the gods or protoplasms have allowed. His way of life,
duly admired for its stern temperance, its rigidity of noble aim--eighty
years spent in contempt of favour, plaudit, or reward,--left him austere
to frailty other than his own, and wrapt him in the repellent isolation
which is the wrong side of uncompromising dignity.
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