side from
character. When Lord Bacon left his name and memory to men's charitable
judgments and the next age, he probably had in view his invaluable
legacy to mankind of earnest searchings after truth, which made him one
of the greatest of human benefactors. How far the poetry of Byron has
proved a blessing to the world must be left to an abler critic than I
lay claim to be. In him the good and evil went hand in hand in the
eternal warfare which ancient Persian sages saw between the powers of
light and darkness in every human soul,--a consciousness of which
warfare made Byron himself in his saddest hours wish he had never
lived at all.

If we could, in his life and in his works, separate the evil from the
good, and let only the good remain,--then his services to literature
could hardly be exaggerated, and he would be honored as the greatest
English poet, so far as native genius goes, after Shakespeare
and Milton.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

1795-1881.

CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY.

The now famous biography of Thomas Carlyle, by Mr. Froude, shed a new
light on the eccentric Scotch essayist, and in some respects changed the
impressions produced by his own "Reminiscences" and the Letters of his
wife. It is with the aid of those two brilliant and interesting volumes
on Carlyle's "Earlier Life" and "Life in London," issued about two years
after the death of their distinguished subject, that I have rewritten my
own view of one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century.

Of the men of genius who have produced a great effect on their own time,
there is no one concerning whom such fluctuating opinions have prevailed
within forty years as in regard to Carlyle. His old admirers became his
detractors, and those who first disliked him became his friends. When
his earlier works appeared they attracted but little general notice,
though there were many who saw in him a new light, or a new power to
brush away cobwebs and shams, and to exalt the spiritual and eternal in
man over all materialistic theories and worldly conventionalities.

Carlyle's "Miscellanies"--essays published first in the leading Reviews,
when he lived in his moorland retreat--created enthusiasm among young
students and genuine thinkers of every creed. Lord Jeffrey detected the
new genius and gave him a lift. Carlyle's "French Revolution" took the
world by surprise, and established his fame. His "Oliver Cromwell"
modified and perhaps changed the opinions o