Carlyle; a gift of saying what
he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle
through your ears. His diction surrounds itself with a magnetic
_aura_, which seems to float it, to part it from the paper, it
stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. Common phrases he
refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, and in the
ordering of words he has command of a magical logic. The marrowy vigor
in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, such nimbleness,
such accent to his sentences, to his style.
Mr. Carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities. Through them
he is poetical; through them there is so much light in his pages. More
often from his than from any others, except those of the major poets,
breaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames around a thought when it
knows itself embraced by a feeling. Of humor and of wit, what an added
fund does our language now possess through his pen. The body of
criticism, inclosed in the five volumes of Miscellanies, were
enough to give their author a lasting name. When one of these papers
appeared in the Edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the
contributions of the Jeffreys and Broughams, like a guinea in a
handful of shillings.
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