.. echoes: as if this alone were true and alive.
My blessings on you, good Ralph Waldo.
Emerson answers in 1872, on receipt of the completed edition of his
friend's work: "You shall wear the crown at the Pan-Saxon games, with no
competitor in sight ... well earned by genius and exhaustive labour, and
with nations for your pupils and praisers."
The general verdict on Carlyle's literary career assigns to him the first
place among the British authors of his time. No writer of our generation,
in England, has combined such abundance with such power. Regarding his
rank as a writer there is little or no dispute: it is admitted that the
irregularities and eccentricities of his style are bound up with its
richness. In estimating the value of his thought we must discriminate
between instruction and inspiration. If we ask what new truths he has
taught, what problems he has definitely solved, our answer must be,
"few." This is a perhaps inevitable result of the manner of his writing,
or rather of the nature of his mind. Aside from political parties, he
helped to check their exaggerations by his own; seeing deeply into the
under-current evils of the time, even when vague in his remedies he
was of use in his protest against leaving these evils to adjust
themselves--what has been called "the policy of drifting"--or of dealing
with them only by catchwords.
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