to
democracy, logic, or political economy. Instead of my having been taught
anything, in the first instance, by Carlyle, it was only in proportion
as I came to see the same truths through media more suited to my mental
constitution, that I recognised them in his writings. Then, indeed, the
wonderful power with which he put them forth made a deep impression upon
me, and I was during a long period one of his most fervent admirers; but
the good his writings did me, was not as philosophy to instruct, but as
poetry to animate. Even at the time when our acquaintance commenced, I
was not sufficiently advanced in my new modes of thought to appreciate
him fully; a proof of which is, that on his showing me the manuscript of
_Sartor Resartus_, his best and greatest work, which he just then
finished, I made little of it; though when it came out about two years
afterwards in _Fraser's Magazine_ I read it with enthusiastic admiration
and the keenest delight. I did not seek and cultivate Carlyle less on
account of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. He soon found
out that I was not "another mystic," and when for the sake of my own
integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all those of my
opinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied that the chief
difference between us was that I "was as yet consciously nothing of a
mystic." I do not know at what period he gave up the expectation that I
was destined to become one; but though both his and my opinions
underwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we never approached
much nearer to each other's modes of thought than we were in the first
years of our acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competent
judge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that he
was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he not only
saw many things long before me, which I could only, when they were
pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly
probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even
after they were pointed out. I knew that I could not see round him, and
could never be certain that I saw over him; and I never presumed to
judge him with any definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one
greatly the superior of us both--who was more a poet than he, and more a
thinker than I--whose own mind and nature included his, and
infinitely more.

Among the persons of intellect whom I had known of old, th