Download File

94 CARLYLE'S LOVES AND LETTERS
seems gilding and fillagree, addressed to the
eye, not to the touch."
Mrs. Carlyle, on the other hand, had a
genuine gift ; her genius may be small, but
it is undeniable. She was never in the first
band which
flight of letter -writers, a tiny
consists, we take it, of Merimee, Mme. de
Sevigne, Horace Walpole, Byron,
and whom
else ? But in that larger second class, the
class of Gray and Julie de Lespinasse, Lady
Mary Montagu, Swift, Flaubert, Leopardi,
Charles Lamb, Gibbon, Fitzgerald, Voltaire,
Cicero we suppose, and a good many more, she
is entitled to a place. Jane Welsh, however,
is by no means Mrs. Carlyle. She was but
twenty-five
when she married. Here we find
her rather too conscious of her own superiority ;
not only was she the beauty, she was also the
Muse of the village ; had she been less vain
she must have been unnatural. Yet, under
all her pert provincialism, we can detect that
mysterious quality which distinguishes the
good letter-writer. She writes to please two
people her correspondent and herself ; she
has no need, therefore, to canvass general
truths, but can afford to be personal and
charming. Her artful wit gives pith and
moment to the most trivial enterprises, and
turns domestic projects into adventures of