The interpreter was there, but he spoke not.
Better than any man in England Mr. Carlyle could, if he would,
have taught the generation that was growing up with him, whose ear he
had already gained, what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity
there was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative
singers. Of such teaching, that generation stood in especial need, to
disabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for
harmony; to refresh, with clear streams from "the divine fountain,"
hearts that were fevered by the stimulus of Byronic "strong waters;"
to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to
that higher plane where breathe great poets, whose incomparable
function it is, to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement
and the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult
through the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific
sentiment. The gifted interpreter was dumb. Nay, he made diversions
into Scotland and Germany, to bring Burns and Scott more distinctly
before Englishmen, and to make Schiller and Goethe and Richter better
known to them. And it pleased him to write about "Corn-law rhymes.
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