nt rather than to any
definite reasoning process. The "mystic" naturally recognizes the
inner light as shining through many different and even apparently
contradictory forms. But most mystics retain, in a new sense perhaps,
the ancient formulae. Carlyle rejected them so markedly that he shocked
many believers, otherwise sympathetic. His early friend Irving, who
tried to restore life to the old forms, and many who accepted
Coleridge as their spiritual guide, were scandalized by his
utterances. He thought, conversely, that they were still masquerading
in "Hebrew old-clothes," or were even like the apes who went on
chattering by the banks of the Dead Sea, till they ceased to be human.
He regards the "Oxford movement" with simple contempt. His dictum that
Newman had "no more brain than a moderate-sized rabbit" must have been
followed, as no one will doubt who heard him talk, by one of those
gigantic explosions of laughter which were signals of humorous
exaggeration. But it meant in all seriousness that he held Newman to
be reviving superstitions unworthy of the smallest allowance of brain.

Yet Carlyle's untiring denunciation of "shams" and "unrealities" of
this, as of other varieties, does not mean unqualified antipathy. He
feels that the attempt to link the living spirit to the dead externals
is a fatal enterprise. That may be now a stifling incumbrance, which
was once the only possible symbol of a living belief. Accordingly,
though Carlyle's insistence upon the value of absolute intellectual
truthfulness is directed against this mode of thought, his attack upon
the opposite error is more passionate and characteristic. The 'Sartor
Resartus,' his first complete book (1833-4), announced and tried to
explain his "conversion." To many readers it still seems his best
work, as it certainly contains some of his noblest passages. It was
unpopular in England, and (an Englishman must say it with regret)
seems to have been first appreciated in America. It gave indeed many
sharp blows at English society: it expresses his contempt for the
upper literary strata, who like Jeffrey complained of him for being so
"desperately in earnest"; and for the authors, who were not
"prophets," but mere caterers to ephemeral amusement. But the satire,
I cannot but think, is not quite happy. The humor of the "Clothes
Philosophy" is a little strained; to me, I confess, rather tiresome:
and the impressive passages just those where he forgets it.

His