Moddle and Noddle for the critical world.

a few of the gilt farthings we speak of:

Here are

"He that was honest with his existence has always meaning for us, be he king or peasant. He that merely shammed and grimaced with it, however much, and with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing, he may have cooked and eaten in this world, cannot long have any. Some men do cook enormously (let us call it cooking, what a man does in obedience to his hunger merely, to his desires and passions merely),—roasting whole continents and populations, in the flames of war or other discord;-witness the Napoleon above spoken of. For the appetite of man in that respect is unlimited; in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could eat the entire Solar System, had we the chance given, and then cry, like Alexander of Macedon, because we had no more Solar Systems to cook and eat. It is not the extent of the man's cookery that can much attach me to him; but only the man himself, and what of strength he had to wrestle with the mud-elements, and what of victory he got for his own benefit and mine."

"Capital!" says Moddle. "Highly suggestive!" says Noddle. "Trash!" says the irritated general

reader.

Another farthing

"But the Fates appointed otherwise; we have all to accept our Fate!"

Another

“All things end, and nothing ceases changing till it end." This is a double imposture-it is not even an original sham, coming as it does from the wellknown mint of Mrs Gamp, "Vich likeways is the hend of all."

Here is a very magnificently gilded farthing

"Just about threescore and ten years ago, his speakings and his workings came to finis in this World of Time; and he vanished from all eyes into other worlds, leaving much inquiry about him in the minds of men." The plain copper is that Frederick died the gilding, therefore, is rather thick.

But it is at the most interesting point of this narrative that he gives us what may be considered the climax of his profound reflections. The King has imprisoned his son, and thinks of putting him to death-and our chronicler, winding up his chapter impressively, remarks, "Here has a business fallen out, such as seldom occurred before!"

Formerly his images, however absurd, always preserved a consistency which rendered their effect. decisive. Now we frequently have the absurdity without the consistency. Frederick, we are told, is "a man of infinite mark," whatever distinction that may imply. He also, we are told, has a "snuffy nose rather flung into the air, under its old cockedhat-like a snuffy old lion on the watch." A lion in a cocked-hat, and addicted to snuff, gives a new impression of the animal; but he subsequently figures still more strangely as a vocalist. "Friedrich Wilhelm's words, in high clangorous metallic plangency, and the pathos of a lion raised by anger into song, fall hotter and hotter." This may have been suggested by some recollection of Bottom acting the lion-"I will roar you gently as any nightingale." The "high

clangorous metallic plangency," however, is undoubtedly original.

It is said that Carlyle's style is easily imitated. Not certainly his best style; for to imitate that, a man must have an equal gift of imagination. But the style we have been commenting on is not difficult. Our friend Herr Botherwig (an Anglicised German, brought up from his cradle upon mystical and transcendental food) imitates it passably. Take this excerpt from Botherwig:

"Thomas, knowing well that greedy Cormorant-Public is apt to take what grains of wheat are offered to it thanklessly, and with small thought or care for the labour of the winnower, does, with frequent iteration (lest said public should think that writing history were task light and blithesome as going a-Maying), bewail piteously, and not without lachrymose Sufflication, the painful obscuration of his philosophic spirit, while wallowing amid the inane ponderosities of the Muddemons or Prussian chronicle-writers, where is to be found much of the raw material of our Prussian-Jargonic-History. Wherefore, in revenge, Thomas calls them hard names, of which Prussian Dryasdust is the chief opprobrious epithetname mysterious haply to Cormorant-Public, but explainable thus:-Northern-magician Scott (magician conceivably akin some way, or shall we say by left-handed relationship, to the Sphere-Harmonies), did, in sportive preamble to certain fictitious narrative, introduce supposititious antiquarian friend, under the name of Doctor Dryasdust-which cognomen, tickling the capricious Midriff of Thomas, does for him ever after officiate as Generic appellation for all of that brotherhood; and Dryasdust is forthwith stereotyped and enrolled in that singular Lexicography (not perusable by living man without wonder), along with the Pythons, Veracities, Foam-Oceans, and other Indigestions and Dire Chimeras. Whence arises

also this other question-Is there not, in the masses of Historical rubbish, some quality worse than bewildering?—is there not, moreover, something contagious?"

Botherwig agitates this further question, "Whether, in the composition of Thomas, there be not, haply, as much of prig as genius? whether we have not unconscious charlatanism mixed with not-unconscious veracity. What," exclaims Botherwig, "what if thou, the sworn foe of shams, have deserted to the Enemy! What if thou, the Denouncer of Windbags, are also thyself a Professor of Flatulence! O heavens!"-Enough of Botherwig, who certainly could not, with anything like equal success, attempt to imitate those inferior writers, Clarendon and Gibbon.

Far, however, from becoming more and more hazy and unintelligible as he grows older, the historian exhibits in the later volumes fewer crotchets and fewer freaks of style, but not less of that descriptive and allusive power and wealth of imagery which have always formed his chief attractions. The "gilt farthings" which we spoke of, the bits of commonplace palmed upon us under a thick disguise of staring metaphor and allusion, have been mostly withdrawn from circulation, and replaced by a more legitimate coinage. No doubt this view of the later volumes is partly due to our familiarity with Carlylese, rendering us indifferent to verbal pranks, and more sensitive to excellences. But it is owing in

much greater degree to the improvement in his subject. He is no longer encumbered with FrederickWilliam, the eccentric hero of the earlier volumes, the crazy, brutal father of the soldier-king. The insupportable tediousness of such dim transactions as "Double-Marriage Projects" and "Tobacco Parliaments" (or orgies in which the crack-brained potentate indulged, along with a few congenial lunatics and idiots), happily came to an end along with their author. Frederick's boyhood, too, so squalid, so barren of interest and incident, giving so little promise or suggestion of the future conqueror and statesman, had ended before his father's death; and with the wars for which he gave the signal by the seizure of Silesia, he stands forth surrounded by figures so spirited and so martial, in the midst of such a clangour of arms and shock of nations, as would lend interest to a narrative far less picturesque in treatment and clear in effect than Mr Carlyle's. For, the same industry which formerly led the historian to grope and sift thoroughly, though with many lamentations and protests, amid the chronicles of the voluminous Dryasdusts of Prussia, and pick such scraps as suited him from the chaos of stupidity, has also induced him, as the chronicler of a conspicuous era in war, to study military problems to unusually good purpose. A man who can in a science so eminently practical, and which has for the most part been so pedantically treated, as the