often companions of the
old gentleman on some of his walks, though Fitzjames's opportunities
were limited by his many engagements. I may here say that it would, I
think, be easy to exaggerate the effects of this influence. In later
years Fitzjames, indeed, came to sympathise with many of Carlyle's
denunciations of the British Constitution and Parliamentary Government.
I think it probable that he was encouraged in this view by the fiery
jeremiads of the older man. He felt that he had an eminent associate in
condemning much that was a general object of admiration. But he had
reached his own conclusions by an independent path. From Carlyle he was
separated by his adherence to Mill's philosophical and ethical
principles. He was never, in Carlyle's phrase, a 'mystic'; and his
common sense and knowledge of practical affairs made many of Carlyle's
doctrines appear fantastic and extravagant. The socialistic element of
Carlyle's works, of which Mr. Ruskin has become the expositor, was
altogether against his principles. In walking with Carlyle he said that
it was desirable to steer the old gentleman in the direction of his
amazingly graphic personal reminiscences instead of giving him texts for
the political and moral diatribes which were apt to be reproductions of
his books. In various early writings he expressed his dissent very
decidedly along with a very cordial admiration both of the graphic
vigour of Carlyle's writings and of some of his general views of life.
In an article in 'Fraser' for December 1865, he prefaces a review of
'Frederick' by a long discussion of Carlyle's principles. He
professes himself to be one of the humble 'pig-philosophers' so
vigorously denounced by the prophet. Carlyle is described as a
'transcendentalist'--a kind of qualified equivalent to intuitionist. And
while he admires the shrewdness, picturesqueness, and bracing morality
of Carlyle's teaching, Fitzjames dissents from his philosophy. Nay, the
'pig-philosophers' are the really useful workers; they have achieved the
main reforms of the century; even their favourite parliamentary methods
and their democratic doctrines deserve more respect than Carlyle has
shown them; and Carlyle, if well advised, would recognise the true
meaning of some of the 'pig' doctrines to be in harmony with his own.
Their _laissez-faire_ theory, for example, is really a version of his
own favourite tenet, 'if a man will not work, neither let him eat.'
Although Fitzjames's