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QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. L-History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great. By Thomas Carlyle. Second Edition. 1858.

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Tis not surprising that the biography of Frederick II. of Prussia should have had considerable attractions for Mr. Carlyle. The triumph of the monarch's strong and self-relying will in doing battle with adverse circumstances was in itself enough to command the sympathies of a writer with whom success and the practical assertion of power have always been the chief claims to fame. The tragic elements too of Frederick's early life could not fail to touch other feelings of the best nature, which in certain moods belong to no one more largely than to Mr. Carlyle. But even here it seems that the disposition to side with the strongest will has exercised its habitual sway over the mind of the historian; for during the life-time of Frederick's tyrannical father this potentate of the hour is the person for whom our approbation is asked, while the Crown Prince is made to play almost as inferior a part in his own biography as he actually did at his father's court. King Frederick William is in fact the hero of the two volumes which purport to be the history of his son, and the present instalment of the work is in great measure devoted to placing a man who has hitherto been considered to be little better than a ruffian in the rank of one of the best and wisest monarchs of Christendom, and proving him to be one of the kindest and most judicious parents that ever adorned domestic life. To exhibit the great military commander of the middle of the preceding century-the supposed last representative of the lost art of king-craft in Europe-in a truer and clearer light than has yet been done, which is the avowed aim of Mr. Carlyle, however, is a task which remains almost entirely to be accomplished in future portions of the biography.

Since the days of Frederick, and the transactions among which he played so conspicuous a part, other vast agencies have been at work, and other great names have for their time filled the public ear with the sound of exploits of arms and policy. In parVol. 105.-No. 210. ticular,

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ticular, the volcanic energies of the great French Revolution came into play, and streams of lava from that huge centre of disturbance have partially covered the previous surface of events: but the proportions of the great King of Prussia have been sufficient to maintain him in undiminished eminence, and the figure of the victor of Rosbach was never lost sight of, even in the fullest blaze of Austerlitz and Wagram. The lofty position of the very highest names in every department of human exertion is only confirmed by comparison with subsequent, as well as with antecedent celebrity. The military genius of Frederick is in no more danger of suffering eclipse from the later campaigns of a Wellington and a Napoleon than from the earlier battles of an Eugene and a Marlborough. It cannot be truly said that his memory is likely to be forgotten, or that it requires vindication from neglect. His picture has been painted often enough; the colours are still bright, and a new artist has no room to excuse his choice of the subject on the ground that a fresh portrait is necessary in order to save the lineaments of its original from the risk of oblivion. But it is sufficient that the painter is fascinated by the figure he attempts to portray, and that he has some striking abilities for the task, to justify him in the attempt to add one more to the existing series of likenesses of a well-known historical personage.

This must, however regretfully, be pronounced to be Mr. Carlyle's worst work. It should be his best, because he has been long occupied in the collection of materials from sources which, although accessible to every one, are from their multitude enough to repulse any attempts to master them, unless the research was prosecuted with the utmost enthusiasm and industry; and it has the additional merit of containing many passages in which he has put forth all his strength. It must, nevertheless, be called his worst, because, although composed after the completion of a collected edition of his former writings, the publication of which must have compelled him to pass them carefully in review, the present work outdoes its predecessors in those faults of style, and still graver occasional aberrations of thought, which have always given as much pain to Mr. Carlyle's admirers as they have afforded amusement to the world at large. Before the field of art in this country had been invaded by what we cannot avoid thinking is a similar perversion of taste, Mr. Carlyle had in the field of English literature long indulged in those peculiarities for which he is perhaps now more notorious, than he is famous for the merits which should win him an enduring reputation. The (so called) Præ-Raphaelite school of painters have professed the same abhorrence of the merely conventional. They too have

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claimed a monopoly of what they call truth to nature, which, in their judgment, has hitherto been falsified by too much attention to art: they too, in following their own humour, and despising the remonstrances of all who disagree with themselves on questions of truth and beauty, have been led into a wilderness of delusions and ugliness from which few of them can now hope ever to escape. Both in Mr. Carlyle's writings and in the pictures of this school there are to be found happy effects, and some intense expression of local and particular truths. But in both cases this power in minute parts is attained by the sacrifice of the subject considered as a whole. There is in both cases the same tendency to an affectation of peculiar veracity, which is among the worst of all affectations; and the same cant against cant, which is itself the perfection of cant. The perpetual exclamation against shows and unrealities is sure to end in being the most monstrous show and unreality of the whole. In both again there is the same habitual avoidance of established and recognised types of fitness, apparently because they are recognised and established. This has driven the painters to expound their own idea of the beautiful under forms which are often positively ugly; and with Mr. Carlyle the desire to get away from the common regions of accepted moral conclusions seems to have betrayed him into maintaining some very questionable positions on the limits of right and wrong. In both, it must be allowed, a certain earnestness of purpose redeems in some degree much that is wilful and wayward, and which otherwise might be passed by as unworthy of notice. But the parallel must not be too closely pressed. On the one hand, we cannot accord to the new school of art that sense of humour (in which they are totally deficient), that large sympathy with humanity, those deep and stirring passions, which, with a strange crust of caprice, and with some moral obliquities, underlie even the wildest and most objectionable portions of Mr. Carlyle's writings. On the other hand, the most promising of the Pre-Raphaelite painters have already moved onwards, and have shown themselves capable of distinction in a larger arena than they at first proposed to themselves, while Mr. Carlyle has degenerated from the better, though peculiar, style of his earlier writings.

In fact, in reading the History of Frederick II. of Prussia, we are almost led to doubt whether the volume which we supposed was open before us has not been playfully removed, and a volume of the Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel substituted in its place. Rabelais never rioted in greater licence of style, or has more completely set decorum at defiance. The old humourist

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humourist of Chinon has told us, among other qualities of King Shrove-tide, that when he whistled it was whole scuttles full of green apes.' Mr. Carlyle in the present work calls the French Revolution that whirlwind of the universe-lights obliterated-and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the Empyrean-black whirlwind which made even apes serious, and drove most of them mad.' Then we find such expressions as 'Mudgods' and 'Cesspools of the Universe,' the old Apes of the Dead Sea;' Frederick himself, in his old age, on the terrace at Sans Souci, is 'like an old snuffy lion on the watch;' the Wendish idol Triglaph was a three-headed monster, 'something like three whales' cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead drunk.' And we have of course the old vocabulary repeated which is destined to try so severely the temper and the judgment of future lexicographers of the English tongue. With all this we have an astonishing number of individual portraits, and at times we may fancy that we are sitting at one of the late Mr. Mathews's entertainments; so ready is Mr. Carlyle in his varied impersonations of the different historical characters. But like the theatrical performer, he relies too often on the most obvious external characteristics of his personages. This may be necessary to produce a rapid effect upon the stage, but it is without excuse in writing. Those, for instance, to whom Leibnitz may be introduced for the first time do not get a very profound notion of that philospher, when he is only described as a rather weak but hugely ingenious old gentleman, with bright eyes and long nose, with vast black peruke and bandy legs.' Mr. Carlyle again dives for a moment below his table, and re-appears as Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau with his gunpowder face' and his iron-ramrod;' or as 'Margaret Pouch-Mouth,' alluding to that facial peculiarity. Then we have the Countess of Darlington and the Duchess of Kendal, George I.'s fat and lean mistresses, one of whom is always laboriously designated and distinguished as 'a cataract of fluid tallow,' and the other as 'the May-pole,' or lean human nailrod.' Both of them indeed had been better omitted altogether from a tableau already crowded, and in which their presence is of no significance whatever.

Again we encounter the old unworthy device to excite attention-the comic business of our old friends Dryasdust and Sauerteig; the former an imaginary personage, who comes on like the pantaloon in the pantomime to be thwacked and rendered ridiculous as the representative of old-fashioned history; the latter the pseudonym under which are introduced such fragments and extracts from Mr. Carlyle's own note-books as cannot be well incorporated with his main text.

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The proper business of the book is ushered in by some three hundred pages of antecedent history. With an extensive violation of the Horatian precept, not to begin the history of the Siege of Troy with an account of the accouchement of Leda, it has been thought necessary to lay the foundation of the work so deep as in the tenth century, and the history of the house of Brandenburg is traced from the days of Henry the Fowler. Probably no other Englishman, competent to the task, would have encountered the labour of going through the voluminous masses of German history which have been conscientiously studied for this summary. Original documents do not appear to have been much consulted for any portion of the work; but the accumulated stores of many an old German Dryasdust have been rifled, and we cannot help remarking that the poor Dryasdusts have been very badly treated. They have been first laid under contribution, and then outrageously vilified by their whimsical persecutor.

What is most seriously to be regretted is the waste of time involved in this mode of writing history. Mr. Carlyle has traversed eight hundred years of German annals, and has shown in flashes an acquaintance with his subject which has astonished the most learned of the Teutons themselves. It is not likely that the same task will be speedily undertaken again, and we cannot help deploring that such an opportunity has been lost for throwing a steady light, in the shape of a good English history, upon the Germanic centuries through which Mr. Carlyle has taken his glancing and irregular flight. A vast deal more valuable matter might surely have been sifted out, and been rescued from the 'dust-bins of creation,' to which Mr. Carlyle has, with groanings and despair, returned so much of the contents of his sieve. A good service might thus have been done, for which both Germany and England would have been grateful.

We have no desire to insist too strongly upon the duty of maintaining the dignity of historical writing. That style is best which most effectually fulfils its purpose in the truthful representation of incidents, of the actors, and of the motives and mutual relations of the various agents. But we have a right to expect that the fittest use shall be made of materials; that nothing shall be capriciously rejected; and that the reader's attention shall not be distracted by the antic gestures of the exhibitor, who has undertaken to pass before him the panorama of events. Yet among so much that is rather to be lamented than to be admired, there are many passages which both for thought and style are worthy of a great writer. The supposed