[3] The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman & Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.]
But whatever subject Mr. Carlyle takes up, and whether he be right or wrong in his opinions, he is sure to write an interesting book. He is never wearisome, and whether his tale have been twice told or not, he clothes it by his original treatment with an attractive charm that few writers can lend even to an entirely new subject. The maxim of the author of _Modern Antiquity_, that
"True genius is the ray that flings A novel light o'er common things,"
has seldom been better illustrated than by this life of Sterling. The facts are most of them neither new nor of a nature in themselves to excite any very strong interest, but the details of the life are told with such simplicity, and yet with such constant reference to the grand educational process which they collectively make up, that one seems listening to a narrative by Sterling's guardian angel, loving enough to sympathize in the smallest minutiæ, and wise enough to see in each of them the greatness of the crowning result. Nor is this impression in the least impaired by the insignificance of the sum total of Sterling's actual achievements. For had they been tenfold greater than they were, they would have been as nothing in the presence of that which Mr. Carlyle looks to as the soul's great achievement--heroic nobleness of struggle and a calm abiding of the issue. After noticing the purity of Sterling's character, and his conformity to "the so-called moralities," his biographer goes on to say:
"In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,--he excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of distress--and surely his fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world,--could not tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;--which surely was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;--and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came.