nized as a classic. After having been rejected by a number of publishers, it was at length issued in 1834. His History of the French Revolution followed in 1837, and he was now on the high road to fame. The best of his other works, which followed in succession, are Chartism, Past and Present, Hero-Worship (originally delivered as lectures) Miscellaneous Essays, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, Latter-Day Pamphlets, Life of John Sterling, and, the crowning effort of his literary work, The Life of Frederick the Great, completed in 1865. Shortly after the completion of this work he was made lord rector of the University of Edinburgh, and he delivered his installation address on April 2, 1866. But his great success was speedily followed by a great calamity in the death of his wife, on the 21st of the same month. Her husband, surviving her fifteen years, died on the morning of February 5, 1881. CRITICISM BY LOWELL. CARLYLE's historical compositions are wonderful prosepoems, full of picture, incident, humor, and character, where we grow familiar with his conception of certain leading personages, and even of subordinate ones if they are necessary to the scene, so that they come out living upon the stage from the dreary limbo of names; but this is no more history than the historical plays of Shakespeare. There is nothing in imaginative literature superior in its own way to the episode of Voltaire in the Life of Frederick the Great. It is delicious in humor, masterly in minute characterization. . . . With the gift of song, Carlyle would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer. Without it to modulate and harmonize and bring parts into their proper relation, he is the most amorphous of humor ever seen. ists, the most shining avatar of whim, the world has But, with all deductions, he remains the profoundest critic and the most dramatic imagination of modern times ROBERT BURNS NOTE.-The following extract is taken from Carlyle's Essay on Burns. PROPERLY speaking, there is but one era in the life of Burns, and that the earliest. We have not youth and manhood, but only youth; for to the end we discern no decisive change in the complexion of his character: in his thirty-seventh year he is still, as it were, in youth. 5 With all that resoluteness of judgment, that penetrating insight, and singular maturity of intellectual power exhibited in his writings, he never attains to any clearness regarding himself: to the last he never ascertains his peculiar aim, even with such distinctness as is common 10 among ordinary men, and therefore never can pursue it with that singleness of will which ensures success and some contentment to such men. To the last he wavers between two purposes: glorying in his talent, like a true poet, he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and 15 sole glory, and to follow it as the one thing needful, through poverty or riches, through good or evil report. ANALYSIS.-1. Give the grammatical construction of speaking. 3. Parse only. 5. as it were. Dispose of these words. 6, 7. with • power. What kind of adjunct? .... 10. Give the grammatical construction of even. 11. never can pursue. Should there not be a subject supplied! 14, 15. like a true poet. 17. Supply the ellipsis. What figure? Another far meaner ambition still clings to him: he must dream and struggle about a certain "rock of independence," which, natural and even admirable as it 20 might be, was still but a warring with the world on the comparatively insignificant ground of his being more or less completely supplied with money than others, of his standing at a higher or at a lower altitude in general estimation than others. For the world still appears to 25 him, as to the young, in borrowed colors: he expects from it what it cannot give to any man-seeks for contentment, not within himself, in action and wise effort, but from without, in the kindness of circumstances, r love, friendship, honor, pecuniary ease. He would be 30 happy, not actively and in himself, but passively, and from some ideal cornucopia of enjoyments not earned by his own labor, but showered on him by the beneficence of destiny. Thus, like a young man, he cannot steady himself for any fixed or systematic pursuit, but 35 swerves to and fro, between passionate hope and remorseless disappointment: rushing onward with a deep, tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder many a barrier-travels, nay advances far, but, advancing only under uncertain guidance, is ever and anon turned from 10 his path, and to the last cannot reach the only true happiness of a man-that of clear, decided activity in the ANALYSIS.-18-25. he must dream . . . . than others. This is all in apposition with what? Parse others in line 25. 26. Supply the ellipsis in this line. 27. Parse what. 29. Parse without. 32. ideal cornucopia. What is meant? 33. showered on him, etc. What figure? 36 Dispose of to and fro. 38. tempestuous force. What figure? 39. Parse nay. sphere for which by nature and circumstances he has been fitted and appointed. We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns. 45 nay, perhaps, they but interest us the more in his favor. This blessing is not given soonest to the best, but rather it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it; for where most is to be developed, most time may be required to develop it. A complex condition had 50 been assigned him from without-as complex a condition from within: "no pre-established harmony" existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel and the empyrean soul of Robert Burns: it was not wonderful, therefore, that the adjustment between them should have been 55 long postponed, and his arm long cumbered and his sight confused in so vast and discordant an economy as he had been appointed steward over. Byron was, at his death, but a year younger than Burns, and through life, as it might have appeared, far more simply situated, yet 60 in him, too, we can trace no such adjustment, no such moral manhood, but at best, and only a little before his end, the beginning of what seemed such. By much the most striking incident in Burns's life is his journey to Edinburgh, but perhaps a still more im- 65 portant one is his residence at Irvine, so early as in his ANALYSIS.-47-49. This blessing.. obtaining it. Criticise the clause. ... • 49. Give the grammatical construction of most and most. 51. 52. Supply the ellipsis. 53. Mossgiel, a village where Burns in his youth labored on the farm. 53, 54. Point out the figure in these lines. 58. Give the grammatical construction of over. 60. far more simply situated. Parse these words. 61. Parse too. 64-67. Criticise. twenty-third year. Hitherto his life had been poor and toilworn, but otherwise not ungenial, and, with all its distresses, by no means unhappy. In his parentage, deducting outward circumstances, he had every reason to 70 reckon himself fortunate. His father was a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest character, as the best of our peasants are valuing knowledge, possessing some, and, what is far better and rarer, open-minded for more—a man with a keen insight and devout heart: reverent 75 toward God, friendly therefore at once, and fearless, toward all that God has made: in one word, though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete and fully unfolded man. Such a father is seldom found in any rank in society, and was worth descending far in society to 80 ɛeek. Unfortunately, he was very poor: had he been even a little richer, almost ever so little, the whole might have issued far otherwise. Mighty events turn on a straw: the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world. Had this William Burns's small seven acres 85 ANALYSIS.-67-69. Parse poor, toilworn, ungenial, and unhappy. 69-71. Is this a periodic or a loose sentence? Rewrite it. 72. Give the grammatical construction of as and best. 73. Parse valuing and possessing. 75, 76. Parse reverent, friendly, and therefore. 76. Name the modifiers of fearless. 77. in one word. Parse. 78. Give the grammatical construction of but. 77, 78. Transpose and supply the ellipsis. 80. Parse worth and far. 8C, 81. Give the grammatical construction of to seek. 81 had he been. Give the mode of the verb. 82. Give the grammatical construction of even. Dispose of almost ever so little. 82, 83. the whole.... otherwise. What is the meaning? Parse far and otherwise. 83-85. Point out the figures in these lines. 85 Had this, etc. Parse the verb. |