e heights above the petty
controversies where men wrangled over extinct issues. Goethe had
solved the problem which vexed Carlyle's soul, and set an inspiring
example of the true spirit and its great reward.

Carlyle, however, was not qualified by temperament or mental
characteristics to follow Goethe's steps. If not primarily a reasoner,
and too impatient perhaps for slow logical processes, he was also not
a poet. Some of the greatest English teachers of his period embodied
their conceptions of the world in poetry. Wordsworth and Shelley and
Byron, in particular, were more effective representatives of the chief
spiritual influences of the day than the few speculative writers.
Carlyle thought for a time that he could utter himself in verse, or at
least in prose fiction. He tried, only to feel his incompetence. As
Froude observes, he had little ear for metrical composition. There
were other and perhaps greater obstacles. A poet must be capable of
detachment from the actual world in which he lives, however profound
his interest in its great problems. He must be able to dwell with
"seraph contemplation" and stand aside from the actual contest. To
Carlyle such an attitude was partly impossible, partly contemptible.
He had imbibed the Puritan aversion to aesthetic enjoyments. He had
been brought up in circles where it was thought wrong for a child to
read the 'Arabian Nights,' and where Milton could only obtain a
doubtful admission as a versifier of the Scriptural narrative. Carlyle
retained the prejudice. He always looked askance at poetry which had
no immediate bearing upon conduct, and regarded "aesthetic" as
equivalent to frivolous. "May the devil fly away with the fine arts"
is a sentiment which he quotes with cordial sympathy. This view was
congenial to his inborn characteristics.

One striking peculiarity was his extraordinary "receptivity" of all
outward impressions. The strange irritability which he set down to the
"hag Dyspepsia" made him resemble a patient in whom disease has
produced a morbidly excessive sensibility. Little annoyances were
magnified into tragic dimensions. The noises in a next-door house
affected him as an earthquake might affect others. His memory was as
retentive as his impressions were strong. Froude testifies that his
account of a little trip to Paris, written forty years later without
reference to memoranda, is verified down to the minutest details by
contemporary letters. Scenes instantan