Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age
is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But
it is full of the romance of subtle and decorous psychology. It is not
the highest art: it is indeed a very limited art. But it is true art:
wholesome, sound, and cheerful. The world does not exist in order to
supply brilliant literature; and the march of democratic equality and
of decorous social uniformity is too certain a thing, in one sense too
blessed a thing, to be denied or to be denounced. An age of colour,
movement, variety, and romantic beauty will come again one day, we know
not how. There will be then a romance of passion and incident, of
strenuous ambition and mad merriment. But not to-day nor to-morrow.
Let us accept what the dregs of the nineteenth century can give us,
without murmuring and repining for what it cannot give and should not
seek to give.
In this little series of studies, I shall make no attempt to estimate
the later literature of the Victorian Age, nor will I at all refer to
any living writer. Nor shall I deal with social and moral philosophy,
poetry, art, or religion. I propose to look back, from our present
point of view, on the literature, in the narrower sense of the term,
produced in the earlier part of the Queen's reign.
II
THOMAS CARLYLE
It is now for about half a century that the world has had all that is
most masterly in the work of Thomas Carlyle. And a time has arrived
when we may very fairly seek to weigh the sum total of influence which
he left on his own and on subsequent generations. We are now far
enough off, neither to be dazzled by his eloquence nor irritated by his
eccentricities. The men whom he derided and who shook their heads at
him are gone: fresh problems, new hopes, other heroes and prophets whom
he knew not, have arisen. Our world is in no sense his world. And it
has become a very fair question to ask--What is the residuum of
permanent effect from these great books of his, which have been
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