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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (May 15, 1883)
THE HESPERIAN STUDENT. far better work in stimulating them to get the best education at any sacrifice, in the full confidence that it is the best paying and most "practical" in vestment that a young man can make. The time is fast approaching when not only part but all of this opposition will be removed. ghc gtuthnt'fi gcwylwoh. OARLTLE AND LORD JEFFREY. Perhaps there is no essay of Carlyle's which so shames him, which so exhibits his own small, dried up heart and his expanded, never expended, opinion of himself, as his "reminiscence" of Lord Jeffrey. It lias Hie mark of being composed in somewhat simpler style than much of Carlyle's work and contains one or two quite brill iant epigrams, thrown in as mots, aside; but given as the remembrance of the liTo of one who supposed himself something more than an acquaintance, a friend, and with whom friendly relations were maintained during life, it is a discourteous exposure which should never have been published. In it, Carlylo speaks and thinks constantly of himself as infinitely the superior of his friend in learn ing, depth of thought and "mysticism." Seldom has here been revealed to the world such a vain and altos gether treacherous person as Carlyle iu this shows him. self to be. From the first time they met, when Carlylo, the then im. known, was very obsequious, Lord Jeffrey was a bencfac. tor to him. He immediately printed in the Edinburgh Review, I hen under his charge, the first article which the young Carlylo offered him, a study of "Jean Paul," which was quite in itself an introduction to the literary circles of literary Edinburgh, and when the graver article on "German Literature" followed, Thomas Carlylo found himself already famous in a fashion Jeffrey had brought him out and for this alone he should have been eternally grateful, but he takes it rather as his due, all of it, though he had been waiting now ten years to meet this famous man I They soon grow intimate, on the strength of what it is hard to say, for they had little iu common it would seem. They had "long discussions and Argumentative parry ings and thrusting?," but as they were opposite in radical principles neither could persuade the other; and so the more obstinate concludes, wisely enough perhaps, that it was not very profitable exercise. Jeffrey tried practically to help ltis friend by getting a professor's chair at St. Andrews and again at London University, but failed. He seems to have been uniformly patient with the ims pulsivo youth, even though, as Carlylo himself admits, the younger man fctiuck a tone which did not quite bo become their icspectivo ages and positions. Their visits bnck and forth appear to have been free, of pleasure and in sincere spirit. In speaking of Airs. Jeffrey, the American Miss Wilkes, Carlylo manages to drag in a most uncivilized, boorish remark upon our civil war, a slur which should never fail to be thrown in the baiance by all impartial readers when making their estimate of Carlylo. Ho said, thou, "She was the sister of tho 'Commodore Wilkes' who board, ed the Trent some years ago, and almost iuyolvcd us in war willi Yankee land, during Hint beautiful nigger agony or 'civil war' ol theirs!" Turning tor relief from the dark, word-jumbled Sartor Remrtus, or tho scarcely more satisfactory Hero Worship U tho calm, meditative review of a contemorary, must wo bo confronted witli a sentence like the above, so unworthy tho pen of u man of letters, so unlike a Briton. What shall wo say of the stylo of a writer who will, from Hie most carefully poised Eng lish sentences, fall at ono breath so low as to call our Into war a "beautilul niggir agony." As Carlylo rises in worldly reputation which ho al ways affected to despise ho appears to think and care less fjr Jeffrey. IIo was not rich, indeed he was poor, and Jeffrey knew it aud in the kindest possible manner offered to confer upon him an vinnuity of 100, which Carlylo makes great show in refusing, with, "each man to live on his own resources," and answers like that. But ho found it convenient to borrow the same amount short., ly after from Lord Jeffrey. Upon which Carlysc "en dcavorcd to bo thankful." And it is about this limo that ho observes upon the learned barrister that ho did not find his "tho brightest kind of Insight in regatd to any prov ince whatever," re 'uses him the title of deep" and dis covers that he had no views which ho (Carlylo) might adopt in preference to his own. Such is self-willed con. coit. When Carlylo goes to London ho writes and obtains favors fiom his friend, now the Lord Advocate aud in Parliament, aud in return belittles the position aud sneers at such callers as he happens to meet at the great man's house, affirming that Jeffrey did not consort with literary persons, but only with bores. Aud when Carlyle was re fused by him tho position of observer in tho now Edin burgh astronomical observatory, piesumably because he was not fitted, he finds satisfaction in calling the man who did get the place, another friend of Jeffrey's, "blear eyed." After which their notes grow less. Did tho old Scot over speak well of anyone? Of his wife, perhaps, to whom ho applies in this reminiscence, (with questionable propriety in such connection,) the most loving epithets. Carlyle speaks of her constantly as his "dear Jeannie," and when she ceases her long correspondence with Jet frey he calles her "my dearest." Perhaps it was lurking jealousy, after all, despito his protest to the contrary, that made Carlyle's friendship for Jeffrey less sincere than Jef. frcy's for Carlyle. Jeflrey was much taken with tho wit. ty young woman from the limo he first met her, discover, cd an old cousinship, aud had common topics, "without shadow of offence" on Carlyle'spart, as ho asserts. "Could I grudge her the little bit of entertainment,'' he says, "she might be able to extract from this poor harmless sport." But ihe satisfaction with which the biographer chronicles the time when she "gayo him up," (referring to Jeffrey) is not to be hidden. All actions haye motives. Carlylo adds iu a note to this essay, written at Meutone, that his internal conditions are "baddish or bad." 0. VOLTAIRE. It has been well said that each age of human expert, once produces men who drill and blast enough stono and mnrblo for generations to labor on ; pioneers who hew away the old growtii of timber and prepare the remains for use in constructing dwellings for human thought dur. ing another period of growth. But it often happens that M V