He scarcely refers to Chaucer; he alludes to Spenser here and
there with some homage, but hardly ever, excepting Shakespeare, to the
Elizabethan dramatists.
Among writers of the seventeenth century, he may have found in Hobbes
some support of his advocacy of a strong government; but his views on
this theme came rather from a study of the history of that age. Milton
he appreciates inadequately. To Dryden and Swift he is just; the latter,
whether consciously to Carlyle or not, was in some respects his English
master, and the points of resemblance in their characters suggest
detailed examination. Their styles are utterly opposed, that of the one
resting almost wholly on its Saxon base, that of the other being a
coat of many colours; but both are, in the front rank of masters of
prose-satire, inspired by the same audacity of "noble rage." Swift's
humour has a subtler touch and yet more scathing scorn; his contempt of
mankind was more real; his pathos equally genuine but more withdrawn;
and if a worse foe he was a better friend. The comparisons already
made between Johnson and Carlyle have exhausted the theme; they remain
associated by their similar struggle and final victory, and sometimes by
their tyrannous use of power; they are dissociated by the divergence of
their intellectual and in some respects even their moral natures; both
were forces of character rather than discoverers, both rulers of debate;
but the one was of sense, the other of imagination, "all compact.
Pages:
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311