rewrote his celebrated peroration on the trial of Queen Caroline seventeen times.  Carlyle had to rewrite his book, but his materials remained; his great pictures were all in his mind.  In this second writing there may have been less emotion,—­less fire in his descriptions; but there was fire enough, for his vivacity was excessive.  Even his work could be pruned, not by others, but by himself.  “The household at Chelsea was never closer drawn together than in those times of trial.”  Carlyle lost time and spirits, but he could afford the loss.  The entire work was delayed, but was done at last.  The final sentence of Vol.  III. was written at ten o’clock on a damp evening, January 14, 1837.

This great work, the most ambitious and famous of all Carlyle’s writings, and in many respects his best, was not received by the public with the enthusiam it ought to have awakened.  It was not appreciated by the people at large.  “Ordinary readers were not enraptured by the Iliad swiftness and vividness of the narrative, its sustained passion, the flow of poetry, the touches of grandeur and tenderness, and the masterly touches by which he made the great actors stand out in their individuality.”  It seemed to many to be extravagant, exaggerated, at war with all the “feudalities of literature.”  Partisans of all kinds were offended.  The style was startlingly broken, almost savage in strength, vivid and distinct as lightning.  Doubtless the man himself had grown away from the quieter moods of his earlier essays.  Froude quotes this from Carlyle’s journal:  “The poor people seem to think a style can be put off or on, not like a skin but like a coat.  Is not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it, exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?  The Public is an old woman.  Let her maunder and mumble.”

But the extraordinary merits of the book made a great impression on the cultivated intellects of England,—­such men as Jeffrey, Macaulay, Southey, Hallam, Brougham, Thackeray, Dickens,—­who saw and admitted that a great genius had arisen, whether they agreed with his views or not.  In America, we may be proud to say, the work created general enthusiasm, and its republication through Emerson’s efforts brought some money as well as larger fame to its author.  Of the first moneys that Emerson sent Carlyle as fruits of this adventure, the dyspeptic Scotchman wrote that he was “half-resolved to buy myself a sharp little nag with twenty of these trans-Atlantic pounds, and ride him till the other thirty be eaten.  I will call the creature ‘Yankee.’ ...  My kind friends!” And Yankee was duly bought and ridden.