question that arises is this:--Do the chief works of Carlyle
belong to that class of books which attain an enduring and increasing
power, or to that class which effect great things for one or two
generations and then become practically obsolete? It would not be safe
to put his masterpieces in any exclusive sense into either of these
categories; but we may infer that they will ultimately tend to the
second class rather than the first. Books which attain to an enduring
and increasing power are such books as the _Ethics_, the _Politics_,
and the _Republic_, the _Thoughts_ of Marcus Aurelius and of
Vauvenargues, the _Essays_ of Bacon and of Hume, Plutarch's _Lives_ and
Gibbon's _Rome_. In these we have a mass of pregnant and ever-fertile
thought in a form that is perennially luminous and inspiring. It can
hardly be said that even the masterpieces of Carlyle--no! not the
_Revolution_, _Cromwell_, or the _Heroes_--reach this point of immortal
wisdom clothed with consummate art. The "personal equation" of
Teufelsdroeckhian humour, its whimsies, and conundrums, its wild
outbursts of hate and scorn, not a few false judgments, and perverse
likes and dislikes--all this is too common and too glaring in the
Carlylean cycle, to permit its master to pass into the portals where
dwell the wise, serene, just, and immortal spirits. Not of such is the
Kingdom of the literary Immortals.

On the other hand, if these masterpieces of sixty years ago are not
quite amongst the great books of the world, it would be preposterous to
regard them as obsolete, or such as now interest only the historian of
literature. They are read to-day practically as much as ever, and are
certain to be read for a generation or two to come. But they are not
read to-day with the passionate delight in the wonderful originality,
nor have they the commanding authority they seemed to possess for the
faithful disciples of the forties and the fifties. Nor can any one
suppose that the next century will continue to read them, except with
an open and unbiassed mind, and a willingness to admit that even here
there is much dead wood, gross error, and pitiable exaggeration. When
we begin to read in that spirit, however splendid be the imagination,
and however keen the logic, we are no longer under the spell of a
master: we are reading a memorable book, with a primary desire to learn
how former generations looked upon things.

Thomas Carlyle, like all other voluminous w