He exaggerates. Yes; but he makes
the hour great, the picture bright, the reverence and admiration strong;
while mere precise fact is a coil of lead." Our leading journal on the
morning after Carlyle's death wrote of him in a tone of well-tempered
appreciation: "We have had no such individuality since Johnson. Whether
men agreed or not, he was a touchstone to which truth and falsehood were
brought to be tried. A preacher of Doric thought, always in his pulpit
and audible, he denounced wealth without sympathy, equality without
respect, mobs without leaders, and life without aim." To this we may add
the testimony of another high authority in English letters, politically
at the opposite pole: "Carlyle's influence in kindling enthusiasm for
virtues worthy of it, and in stirring a sense of the reality on the one
hand and the unreality on the other, of all that men can do and suffer,
has not been surpassed by any teacher now living. Whatever later teachers
may have done in definitely shaping opinion ... here is the friendly
fire-bearer who first conveyed the Promethean spark; here the prophet who
first smote the rock." Carlyle, writes one of his oldest friends, "may
be likened to a fugleman; he stood up in the front of Life's Battle and
showed in word and action his notion of the proper attitude and action of
men. He was, in truth, a prophet, and he has left his gospels.
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