himself for a moment.  To an unusual extent he sticks to his subject, and makes us think of Burns rather than of Carlyle.  The style, though unpolished, is fairly simple and readable, and is free from the breaks, crudities, ejaculations, and general “nodulosities” which disfigure much of his work. (3) Carlyle has an original and interesting theory of biography and criticism.  The object of criticism is to show the man himself, his aims, ideals, and outlook on the universe; the object of biography is “to show what and how produced was the effect of society upon him; what and how produced was his effect on society.” (4) Carlyle is often severe, even harsh, in his estimates of other men, but in this case the tragedy of Burns’s “life of fragments” attracts and softens him.  He grows enthusiastic and—­a rare thing for Carlyle—­apologizes for his enthusiasm in the striking sentence, “We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify.”  So he gives us the most tender and appreciative of his essays, and one of the most illuminating criticisms of Burns that has appeared in our language.

The central idea of Carlyle’s historical works is found in his Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), his most widely read book.  “Universal history,” he says, “is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here.”  To get at the truth of history we must study not movements but men, and read not state papers but the biographies of heroes.  His summary of history as presented in this work has six divisions:  (1) The Hero as Divinity, having for its general subject Odin, the “type Norseman,” who, Carlyle thinks, was some old heroic chief, afterwards deified by his countrymen; (2) The Hero as Prophet, treating of Mahomet and the rise of Islam; (3) The Hero as Poet, in which Dante and Shakespeare are taken as types; (4) The Hero as Priest, or religious leader, in which Luther appears as the hero of the Reformation, and Knox as the hero of Puritanism; (5) The Hero as Man of Letters, in which we have the curious choice of Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns; (6) The Hero as King, in which Cromwell and Napoleon appear as the heroes of reform by revolution.

It is needless to say that Heroes is not a book of history; neither is it scientifically written in the manner of Gibbon.  With science in any form Carlyle had no patience; and he miscalculated the value of that patient search for facts and evidence which science undertakes before building any theories, either of kings or cabbages.  The book, therefore, abounds in errors; but they are the errors of carelessness and are perhaps of small consequence.  His misconception of history, however, is more serious.  With the modern idea of history, as the growth of freedom among all classes, he has no sympathy.  The progress of democracy was to him an evil thing, a “turning of the face towards darkness and anarchy.”  At certain periods, according to Carlyle, God sends us geniuses, sometimes as priests or poets, sometimes as soldiers or statesmen; but in whatever guise they appear, these are our real rulers.  He shows, moreover, that whenever such men appear, multitudes follow them, and that a man’s following is a sure index of his heroism and kingship.