The masterpiece of Mr. Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English prose
literature, is his "French Revolution," a rhythmic Epic without verse.
To write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing
heart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a
momentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he
must have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and
diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of
millions of contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely
artistic, creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast
tumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly in
clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. Outside of
the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth
and difficulty that has been done so well? A theme of unusual grandeur
and significance is here greatly treated.
The foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try
whether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer
to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested,
or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with
a fire from the writer's soul.
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