NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

Sartor Resartus: the Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrökh. In Three Books. 1 vol. 8vo.

In saying that Mr. Carlyle is one of the deepest thinking and most original minded writers of the present day, we merely repeat the confirmed opinion of the most intellectual and philosophical part of London and Edinburgh society-an opinion, too, which is now gaining ground rapidly even among those who, knowing him only by his writings, were at first deterred by the oddity of his manner, and the German turn of his style and language. On the latter head, perhaps, more objections have been raised by hasty and unthinking readers than the case justifies; and it would be difficult to prove, on philological principles, that Mr. Carlyle's metaphysical terms, compound words, and compound figures, are unenglish. For ourselves, we recognise no formal and unchangeable law in our plastic and elastic language-a rich mosaic made up of all idioms, but the grand substratum of which, together with its constitution and spirit, is essentially Saxon. Sometimes, we confess, there is a sort of mistiness in Mr. Carlyle's sentences, but this never lasts long; and however much he may delight in wrapping himself in a German-looking mantle, he has English flesh and bones, thews and sinews, and a thoroughly British heart beneath it. His thoughts and feelings are national without prejudice or bigotry. Some heresies he has both in politics and poetry; but we let them pass. We admire his bold examining for himself, his total freedom from the thraldom of mere conventionalities: we admire, even when it is at its roughest, his odd or crabbed style; in part, because we are wearied to death with the trim and measured sentences of the mass of modern writers-sentences that look as if they had been turned on a turner's wheel, and that have, too often, no thought at all, or not more than a vague generality under their silky, sliding, shiny surface.

No man is more happy in epithets, or in describing character in a word or two. We remember being mightily tickled at one of his lectures on German literature, wherein he hit off a Doctissimus of one of the universities, an antagonist of Luther's, as being a very illustrious dull sort of a man. We believe that Mr. Carlyle displays this faculty more forcibly in conversation than in writing. As a conversationist, indeed, his fame stands at the highest. He is esteemed by many as being equal in this way to Coleridge himself; but we believe that Mr. Carlyle sometimes Sept. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.-NO. LXXXIX.

B

lets other people talk, which Coleridge never did, though few there were but were fully satisfied with giving rest to their tongues and employment to their ears when he was holding forth. As in poor Coleridge's case, Mr. Carlyle's admirers admire him with a fervency quite rare to the English character; and as some of the brightest and purest of intellects are included in this wide and spreading circle, we are justified in assuming that he is an extraordinary man, and one (being active and industrious) that will do greater and better things than those he has hitherto produced, though upon those he may safely build an honourable reputation. We see that he announces the publication of his miscellaneous works in four volumes. His essays are not for the vulgar and the trivial: they will find no favour in the eyes of those who read running; and to circulating libraries and fashionable boudoirs they will be unknown; but we trust that there is manly sense enough in the country to appreciate and reward such writing-that there is a sufficient number of lovers of metaphysical inquiry, of original thinking, to absorb a very large edition. A small one, we should think, would be engrossed by Mr. Carlyle's personal friends, admirers, and disciples.

The history of the startling little work before us is rather curious. It was first published, in monthly parts, in " Fraser's Magazine," and did not attract a tithe of the attention which it merited; it was afterwards taken up by an American bookseller, and published as a separate volume in the United States. It is laudable in the transatlantic bibliopoles thus to discover merit which has not been puffed in England; and it is no doubt convenient unto them to be able to appropriate an English author's lucubrations, without reference to the substantial and vulgar consideration of dollars and cents. The book puzzled Jonathan mightily, (and it will pleasantly puzzle many of the family of John Bull as well,) but it was widely read and admired. In its American shape it first attracted the notice of Miss Martineau, who, in one of her delightful volumes about America, spoke of it as it deserved to be spoken of:-and then people at home began to inquire touching "Sartor Resartus; or, the Life and Opi

nions of Herr Teufelsdröckh.'

To tell precisely what this oddest of odd books is, is an utter impossibility

"Who can describe the indescribable ?"

ge

We are, however, inclined to believe that the North American Reviewer is not far from the truth in saying, that Sartor Resartus means, in the vernacular, "The tailor patched;" that there is in it a treatise upon clothes, their origin and influence; but that, though there is a good deal 66 throughout the work in a half serious, half comic style upon dress, it seems to be in reality a treatise upon the great science of things in neral, which Teufelsdröckh is supposed to have professed at the university of Nobody-knows-where." Nay, we even think that we may safely add the reviewer's advice to dandies not to purchase the volume in the expectation of finding in it any particular instruction in regard to the tying of the neckcloth and the cut of their coats, albeit the articles of faith of the Pelhamite school are concisely and logically set down as they here, follow.

"ARTICLES OF FAITH.

"1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided.

"2. The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly rolled.

66

3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot.

4. There is safety in a swallow tail.

"5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings.

coats.

6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waist

"7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips."

Still, however, not triangles and wrinkles, not collars and swallow tails, not waistcoats and breeches, but things in general, and everything else, are the main subjects of the book; and we rather think, with the Boston editor, that "Sartor Resartus may be a criticism upon the spirit of the age, exhibiting in a just and novel light the present aspects of religion, politics, literature, arts, and social life.

The worthy Bostonian seems to have been rather startled at our author's advancing the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style; but to our own particular taste this humour is perfectly delicious. We love to be led by a smile or a laugh to deep wisdom; and we have no doubt that many will be drawn to listen to his valuable lessons and materials for thinking, who would have turned away with a yawn if he had put them in the usual didactic shape.

It is difficult to convey by an extract a notion of the book. Even harlequin would have hesitated in the choice of his brick where all the bricks are so different. But we will venture to give a part of the" Preliminary," and will then add a bit of description, such as is not found in descriptive novel writers.

"Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable rushlights, and sulphurmatches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in nature or art can remain unilluminated, it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the subject of clothes.

“Our theory of gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the planetary system, on this scheme, will endure for ever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme, whereby, at least, our nautical logbooks can be better kept; and water transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of geology and geognosy we know enough: what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the creation of a world is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, how the apples were got in? presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the social contract, on the standard of taste, on the migration of the herring? Then, have we not a doctrine of rent, a theory of value; philosophies of language, of history, of pottery, of apparitions, of intoxicating liquors? Man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his soul, body, and possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed : our spiritual faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichâts. How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand tissue of all tissues, the only real tissue, should have been quite overlooked by science the vestural tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth, which man's soul wears as its outward wrappage and overall, wherein his whole other tissues are included and screened, his whole faculties work, his whole self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some struggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding clothes as a property,

* Our philosopher thus hits upon the final cause of clothes. "Are we opossums ? have we natural pouches, like the kangaroo? or how, without clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's-seat, and true pineal gland of the body social-I

mean a PURSE?"

not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a clothed animal; whereas he is by nature a naked animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in clothes. Shakspeare says, we are creatures that look before and after; the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany, comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract thought can still take shelter, that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and rotten boroughs, and revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude, here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Horet ihr Herren und lasset's euch sagen ;' in other words, till the universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance, and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peatbogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our humorist expresses it,

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously enough thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe bas tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would criticism erect not only fingerposts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men, make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer, light on some outlying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;-thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night? Wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.

Perhaps it is a proof of the stinted condition in which pure science, especially pure moral science, languishes among us English; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all English culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of thought,that this, not philosophy of clothes, but recognition even that we have no such philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this abstruse inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations on our total want of a philosophy of clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival namely, of a new book from Professor Teufelsdrökh, of Weissnichtwo, treating expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not, even by the blindest, be overlooked."

Here we have Professor Teufelsdrökh up on a mountain: and even poor Godwin would allow that it was good for us sometimes to be "in the mount."

"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey tent, musing and meditating, on the high table cloud in front of the mountains; over me, as a roof, the azure dome, and around me, for walls, four azure flowing curtains,-namely, of the four azure winds, on whose bottom fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair castles that stood sheltered in these mountain hollows; with their green flower lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still the straw-roofed cottages, wherein stood many a mother baking bread, with her children round her-all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine towns and villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple bells,) with metal tongue; and in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated smoke-clouds, whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewifes, at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husband's kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say, ' Such and such a meal is getting ready here.' Not uninteresting! For you have the whole borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat. If, in my wide wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the world in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

"Often also could I'see the black tempest marching in anger through the distance: round some schreck-horn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair, till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your schreck-horn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an atmosphere-of a world, O Nature! or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the living garment of God? O Heavens! is it, in very deed. He then that ever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?"

The man who can write poetry like this in plain, idiomatic, English prose, may be forgiven his heresies touching rhythm and verse, and his occasional indulgence in extravagances.

The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart., Speaker of the House of Commons, with a Memoir of his Life; to which are added, other Relics of a Gentleman's Family. Edited by SIR HENRY BUNBURY, Bart.

The late Earl of Clancarty, when a boy, stumbled upon a chest in his grandfather's house in Ireland, containing a vast heap of French letters, addressed to one of his ancestors by the witty and observant Count Antoine Hamilton, who had written in them all that passed under his eye in the court and camps of Louis XIV. The young earl was enchanted with these letters, and the scenes and characters they described; but when his grandfather died he was unfortunately absent on the continent. On his return to Ireland he eagerly asked after the box, and learned with some difficulty that it had been removed a year or two before to the house of an old aunt. When he reached the house of this unlucky relative, his lordship found that the box, with nothing in it "but a great heap of old French letters," had been consigned to the cellar; and, on going to the cellar, (if he was a choleric man he must, for the nonce, have wished the old lady in one deeper still,) he found the box falling to pieces from the effects of damp, and all the papers in it converted into a pulp, on which the writing could no longer be distinguished. And thus perished the correspondence of Antoine Hamilton.

This family anecdote about old papers seems to have made a proper impression on the mind of the accomplished and amiable editor of the pre