In one page "the judgments of the heart are of more value than those of
the head." In the next "morals in a man are the counterpart of the
intellect that is in him." The Middle Ages were "a healthy age," and
therefore there was next to no Literature. "The strong warrior disdained
to write." "Actions will be preserved when all writers are forgotten."
Two days later, apropos of Dante, he says, "The great thing which any
nation can do is to produce great men.... When the Vatican shall have
crumbled to dust, and St. Peter's and Strassburg Minster be no more; for
thousands of years to come Catholicism will survive in this sublime
relic of antiquity--the _Divina Commedia."_
[Footnote: It has been suggested that Carlyle may have been in this
instance a student of Vauvenargues, who in the early years of the much-
maligned eighteenth century wrote "Les graudes pensees viennent du
coeur."]
Passing to Spain, Carlyle salutes Cervantes and the Cid,--calling Don
Quixote the "poetry of comedy," "the age of gold in self-mockery,"--pays
a more reserved tribute to Calderon, ventures on the assertion that
Cortes was "as great as Alexander," and gives a sketch, so graphic that
it might serve as a text for Motley's great work, of the way in which
the decayed Iberian chivalry, rotten through with the Inquisition, broke
itself on the Dutch dykes.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233