The foremost literary gift,—­nay, the test whereby to try whether there be any genuine literary gift,—­is the power in a writer to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested, or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with a fire from the writer’s soul.  Of this, the most perfect exhibition is in poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of passion, is born a something new, which, through the strong creativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own.  With this power Mr. Carlyle is highly endowed.  Not only, as already said, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and healthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the French Revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly that this life has been lighted up by his.  Where in history is there a picture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.?  With a few strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history.  And then his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille Desmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre:  it seems now that only on his throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true being.  The giant Mirabeau, ’twas thought at first he had drawn too gigantic.  But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that have come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him.

For a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself.  Making allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so eccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of “Sartor Resartus,” wherein, under the head of “Characteristics,” he comments on the professor’s Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself.  From this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences.  It opens thus:—­

“It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,—­a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness’ double-vision, and even utter blindness.

“Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the “Weissnichtwo’sche Anzeiger,” we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths.  More especially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh’s acquirements, patience of research, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold inaptitude....