a succession of migrations to the South in
search of a friendly climate, with the occasional publication of an
"article," a tale, or a poem in _Blackwood_ or elsewhere--this, on the
prosaic background of an easy competence, was what made up the outer
tissue of Sterling's existence. The impression of his intellectual power
on his personal friends seems to have been produced chiefly by the
eloquence and brilliancy of his conversation; but the mere reader of his
works and letters would augur from them neither the wit nor the _curiosa
felicitas_ of epithet and imagery, which would rank him with the men
whose sayings are thought worthy of perpetuation in books of table-talk
and "ana." The public, then, since it is content to do without
biographies of much more remarkable men, cannot be supposed to have felt
any pressing demand even for a single life of Sterling; still less, it
might be thought, when so distinguished a writer as Archdeacon Hare had
furnished this, could there be any need for another. But, in opposition
to the majority of Mr. Carlyle's critics, we agree with him that the
first life is properly the justification of the second. Even among the
readers personally unacquainted with Sterling, those who sympathized with
his ultimate alienation from the Church, rather than with his transient
conformity, were likely to be dissatisfied with the entirely apologetic
tone of Hare's life, which, indeed, is confessedly an incomplete
presentation of Sterling's mental course after his opinions diverged from
those of his clerical biographer; while those attached friends (and
Sterling possessed the happy magic that secures many such) who knew him
best during this latter part of his career, would naturally be pained to
have it represented, though only by implication, as a sort of deepening
declension ending in a virtual retraction. Of such friends Carlyle was
the most eminent, and perhaps the most highly valued, and, as co-trustee
with Archdeacon Hare of Sterling's literary character and writings, he
felt a kind of responsibility that no mistaken idea of his departed
friend should remain before the world without correction. Evidently,
however, his "Life of Sterling" was not so much the conscientious
discharge of a trust as a labor of love, and to this is owing its strong
charm. Carlyle here shows us his "sunny side." We no longer see him
breathing out threatenings and slaughter as in the Latter-Day Pamphlets,
but moving amo