ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Publishers introduce the present edition of Mr. Carlyle's Essays with the following note from the American Editor of the First Edition.

Messrs. CAREY & HART,

Gentlemen :-I have to signify to his American readers, Mr. Carlyle's concurrence in this new edition of his Essays, and his expressed satisfaction in the author's share of pecuniary benefit which your justice and liberality have secured to him in anticipation of the sale. With every hope for the success of your enterprise, I am your obedient servant,

Concord, June, 1845.

R. W. EMERSON.

Pagu

DEATH OF GOETHE

341

New Monthly Magazine.-Vol. XXXIV. No. CXXXVIII. 1832.

Fraser's Magazine.-Vol. XV. Nos. LXXXV. and LXXXVI. 1837. MEMOIRS OF MIRABEAU

London and Westminster Review.-Nos. VIII. and LI. 1837. PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

London and Westminster Review.-Nos. IX. and LII. 1837. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT

London and Westminster Review.-Nos. XII. and LV. 1838.

VARNHAGEN VON ENSE'S MEMOIRS

London and Westminster Review.-No. LXII. 1838.

PETITION ON THE COPY-RIGHT BILL

The Examiner.-April 7, 1839.

DR. FRANCIA

Foreign Quarterly Review.-No. LXII. 1843.

1

· - 383

398

422

426

433

451

452

CARLYLE'S

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1827.]

his Gallery of Weimar Authors; a series of strange little biographies, beginning with Schiller, and already extending over Wieland and Herder,-now comprehending, probably by conquest, Klopstock also, and lastly, by a sort of droit d'aubaine, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, neither of whom belonged to Weimar. Authors, it must be admitted, are happier than the old painter with his cocks: for they write, naturally and without fear of ridicule or offence, the name and description of their work on the title-page; and thenceforth the purport and tendency of each volume remains indisputable. Doering is sometimes lucky in this privilege; for his manner of composition, being so peculiar, might now and then occasion difficulty, but for this precaution. His biographies he works up simply enough. He first ascertains, from the Leipzig Conversationslexicon or Jörden's Poetical Lexicon, Flögel, or Koch, or other such Compendium or Handbook, the date and

DR. JOHNSON, it is said, when he first heard | monger, whose grand enterprise, however, is of Boswell's intention to write a life of him, announced, with decision enough, that, if he thought Boswell really meant to write his life, he would prevent it by taking Boswell's! That great authors should actually employ this preventive against bad biographers is a thing we would by no means recommend; but the truth is, that, rich as we are in biography, a wellwritten life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to furnish the record. But great men, like the old Egyptian kings, must all be tried after death, before they can be embalmed: and what, in truth, are these "Sketches," "Anas," "Conversations," "Voices," and the like, but the votes and pleadings of the ill-informed advocates, and jurors, and judges, from whose conflict, however, we shall in the end have a true verdict? The worst of it is at the first; for weak eyes are precisely the fondest of glittering objects. And, accord-place of the proposed individual's birth, his ingly, no sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself; though, many times, this mirror is so twisted with convexities and concavities, and, indeed, so extremely small in size, that to expect any true image, or any image whatever from it, is out of the question.

parentage, trade, appointments, and the titles of his works; (the date of his death you already know from the newspapers ;) this serves as a foundation for the edifice. He then goes through his writings, and all other writings where he or his pursuits are treated of, and whenever he finds, a passage with his name in it, he cuts it out, and carries it away. In this manner a mass of materials is collected, and the building now proceeds apace. Stone is laid on the top of stone, just as it comes to hand; a trowel or two of biographic mortar, if perfectly convenient, being perhaps spread in Richter was much better-natured than John- here and there, by way of cement; and so the son; and took many provoking things with the strangest pile suddenly arises; amorphous, spirit of a humorist and philosopher; nor can pointing every way but to the zenith,-here a we think that so good a man, even had he fore-block of granite, there a mass of pipe-clay; seen this work of Doering's, would have gone the length of assassinating him for it. Doering is a person we have known for several years, as a compiler, and translator, and ballad

* Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Leben, nebst Characteristik seiner Werke; von Heinrich Doering. (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of his Works; by Heinrich Doering.) Gotha. Hennings, 1826. 12mo. pp. 208.

till the whole finishes, when the materials are finished, and you leave it standing to posterity, like some miniature Stonehenge, a perfect architectural enigma.

To speak without figure, this mode of lifewriting has its disadvantages. For one thing. the composition cannot well be what the critics call harmonious; and, indeed, Herr Doering's transitions are often abrupt enough. His hero

77