I left him that night, intending to go out very often to their house.  I assure you there never was anything so witty as Carlyle’s description of ——­ ——.  It was enough to kill one with laughing.  I, on my side, contributed a story to his fund of anecdote on this subject, and it was fully appreciated.  Carlyle is worth a thousand of you for that;—­he is not ashamed to laugh, when he is amused, but goes on in a cordial human fashion.

The second time, Mr. C. had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him.  But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for, that night, he was in his more acrid mood; and, though much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything he said.

For a couple of hours, he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind.  Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmasters had taught him that it was great to do so, and had thus, unfortunately, been turned from the true path for a man.  Burns had, in like manner, been turned from his vocation.  Shakspeare had not had the good sense to see that it would have been better to write straight on in prose;—­and such nonsense, which, though amusing enough at first, he ran to death after a while.  The most amusing part is always when he comes back to some refrain, as in the French Revolution of the sea-green.  In this instance, it was Petrarch and Laura, the last word pronounced with his ineffable sarcasm of drawl.  Although he said this over fifty times, I could not ever help laughing when Laura would come,—­Carlyle running his chin out, when he spoke it, and his eyes glancing till they looked like the eyes and beak of a bird of prey.  Poor Laura!  Lucky for her that her poet had already got her safely canonized beyond the reach of this Teufelsdrockh vulture.

The worst of hearing Carlyle is that you cannot interrupt him.  I understand the habit and power of haranguing have increased very much upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you.  To interrupt him is a physical impossibility.  If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down.  True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration, sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it.  The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this, by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature, not one of them, perhaps, perfectly just, but all drawn with the finest, boldest strokes, and, from his point of view, masterly.  All were depreciating, except that of Beranger.  Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty sympathy.