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CARLYLE'S LOVES AND LETTERS 87
What is the meaning of this ? Why simply
that the Victorians made the mistake about
Carlyle that every age makes about its Carlyles.
They took a thoughtful journalist for a master ;
and this they did because the journalist had
the skill and conviction to persuade them, and
himself, that what is commonest and most
in human nature is also most sublime.
vigorous
Carlyle could, in perfect good faith, give tone
to the vulgar instincts and passions he could
;
make narrow-mindedness, brutality, intolerance,
obtuseness, and sentimentality seem
noble he ; knew, being an unconscious hypocrite,
how, without a glimmer of open cynicism,
to make the best of both worlds. For instance,
Carlyle and his public wished to believe in
Eternal Justice regulating the affairs of men.
They believed in it as something emotionally
congenial to them, not, you may be sure, as a
metaphysical truth discovered and confirmed
by the intellect. Intellectual processes were
not in Carlyle's way : he was a popular
philosopher. From this belief in Eternal
Justice he naturally deduced the doctrine that
to his-
Right is Might, which doctrine applied
tory bore fruit most grateful to hero-worship-
pers
a sect that flourished uncommonly in
those days. When, however, it was pointed
out by earthy and eristic rationalists that if in
the past Right was Might then it followed that