But let us say beforehand that we can never write of Thomas Carlyle with bitterness. We have received too much good from him in past days. He is our "Lost Leader," but we have loved and honored him as few men were ever loved and honored. It is therefore with tenderness, and not any cold, indifferent criticism, that we find fault with him now. We shall always be grateful to the real Carlyle, the old Carlyle of "Sartor Resartus," of the "French Revolution," of the "Life of Schiller," of "Heroes and Hero-Worship," and of that long and noble series of articles in the Edinburgh, Foreign Review, Westminster, and Frazer, each of which illuminated some theme, and threw the glory of genius over whatever his mind touched or his pencil drew.
Carlyle's "Frederick the Great"[25] seems to us a badly written book. Let us consider the volume containing the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters. Nothing in these chapters is brought out clearly. When we have finished the book, the mind is filled with a confusion of vague images. We know that Mr. Carlyle is not bound to "provide us with brains" as well as with a history, but neither was he so bound in other days. Yet no such confusion was left after reading the "French Revolution." How brilliantly distinct was every leading event, every influential person, every pathetic or poetic episode, in that charmed narrative! Who can forget Carlyle's account of the "Menads," the King's "Flight to Varennes," the Constitutions that "would not march," the "September Massacres," "Charlotte Corday,"--every chief tragic movement, every grotesque episode, moving forward, distinct and clear, to the final issue, "a whiff of grapeshot"? Is there anything like that in this confused "Frederick"?
Compare, for example, the chapters on Voltaire in the present volume with the article on Voltaire published in 1829.
The sixteenth book is devoted to the ten years of peace which followed the second Silesian war. These were from 1746 to 1756. The book contains fifteen chapters. Carlyle begins, in chapter i., by lamenting that there is very little to be known or said about these ten years. "Nothing visible in them of main significance but a crash of authors' quarrels, and the crowning visit of Voltaire." Yet one would think that matter enough might be found in describing the immense activity of Friedrich, of which Macaulay says, "His exertions were such as were hardly to be expected from a human body or a human mind." During these years Frederick brought a seventh part of his people into the army, and organized and drilled it under his own personal inspection, till it became the finest in Europe. He compiled a code of laws, in which he, among the first, abolished torture. He made constant journeys through his dominions, examining the condition of manufactures, arts, commerce, and agriculture. He introduced the strictest economy into the expenditures of the state. He indulged himself, indeed, in various architectural extravagances at Berlin and Potsdam,--but otherwise saved every florin for his army. He wrote "Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg," and an epic poem on the "Art of War." But our author disdains to give us an account of these things. They are not picturesque, they can be told in only general terms, and Carlyle will tell us only what an eyewitness could see or a listener hear. Accordingly, instead of giving us an account of these great labors of his hero, he inserts (chapter ii.) "a peep at Voltaire and his divine Emilie," "a visit to Frederick by Marshal Saxe;" (chapter iii.) a long account of Candidate Linsenbarth's visit to the king; "Sir Jonas Hanway stalks across the scene;" the lawsuit of Voltaire about the Jew Hirsch; "a demon news-writer gives an idea of Friedrich;" the quarrel of Voltaire and Maupertuis; "Friedrich is visible in Holland to the naked eye for some minutes."