IV. CARLYLE AND NEWMAN
BY FRANK WILSON CHENEY HERSEY
AMONG the great voices that stirred England in the early years of the Victorian era, none were more eloquent than those of Newman and Carlyle—the one a suave ecclesiastic who lighted again the candles of the mediæval church; the other a volcanic Scots peasant who set the Thames on fire. We may still hear the sound of their voices, and note the vast difference in their appearance, their manner, their tone and method, their appeal to their generation. Matthew Arnold’s description of Newman at Oxford〖See Newman’s description of Oxford in Harvard Classics, xxviii, 47-50.〗 remains forever in the memory:
“Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary’s, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music—subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: ‘After the fever of life, after weariness and sickness, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state,—at length comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision.’
Now the other man comes before us (noted by Caroline Fox in her journals):
“Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt a well-dressed London audience scarcely the arena for him to figure in as a popular lecturer. He is a tall, robust-looking man; rugged simplicity and indomitable strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius in it—not always smouldering there, but flashing from his beautiful gray eyes, from the remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. His manner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously convinced of what he utters, and who had much—very much—in him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear; and when the Englishman’s sense of beauty or truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were not the kind of homage which Truth demanded.”
And this man flung forth such ringing words as: “Be no longer a Chaos but a World or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day: for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.”