Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Томас Карлейль

and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. ‘So far hitherto,’ he says, ‘as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (Härte), my Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!’

      Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdröckh too admits, is ‘to unite yourself with some one and with somewhat (sich anzuschliessen)’? Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion with the Zähdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the death of the ‘not uncholeric’ old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. ‘By request of that worthy Nobleman’s survivors,’ says he, ‘I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven’;—wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English reader:

      HIC JACET

      PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,

      ZAEHDARMI COMES,

       EX IMPERII CONCILIO,

       VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI

       EQUES.

      QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,

      QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES

      PLUMBO CONFECIT:

      VARII CIBI

      CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,

       PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE

       HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS,

      IN STERCUS

      PALAM CONVERTIT.

      NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM

       OPERA SEQUUNTUR.

      SI MONUMENTUM QUÆRIS,

       FIMETUM ADSPICE.

      PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dato]; POSTREMUM [sub dato].