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ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Publishers introduce the present edition of Mr. Carlyle's Essays with the following note from the American Editor of the First Edition.

Messrs. CAREY & HART,

Gentlemen :-I have to signify to his American readers, Mr. Carlyle's concurrence in this new edition of his Essays, and his expressed satisfaction in the author's share of pecuniary benefit which your justice and liberality have secured to him in anticipation of the sale. With every hope for the success of your enterprise, I am your obedient servant,

Concord, June, 1845.

78506

R. W. EMERSON.

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CARLYLE'S

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1827.]

DR. JOHNSON, it is said, when he first heard | monger, whose grand enterprise, however, is of Boswell's intention to write a life of him, his Gallery of Weimar Authors; a series of announced, with decision enough, that, if he strange little biographies, beginning with Schilthought Boswell really meant to write his life, ler, and already extending over Wieland and he would prevent it by taking Boswell's! That Herder,-now comprehending, probably by great authors should actually employ this pre- conquest, Klopstock also, and lastly, by a sort ventive against bad biographers is a thing we of droit d'aubaine, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, would by no means recommend; but the truth neither of whom belonged to Weimar. Auis, that, rich as we are in biography, a well- thors, it must be admitted, are happier than the written life is almost as rare as a well-spent old painter with his cocks: for they write, naone; and there are certainly many more men turally and without fear of ridicule or offence, whose history deserves to be recorded than the name and description of their work on the persons willing and able to furnish the record. title-page; and thenceforth the purport and But great men, like the old Egyptian kings, tendency of each volume remains indisputable. must all be tried after death, before they Doering is sometimes lucky in this privilege; can be embalmed: and what, in truth, are for his manner of composition, being so pecuthese "Sketches," "Anas," "Conversations," liar, might now and then occasion difficulty, "Voices," and the like, but the votes and plead- but for this precaution. His biographies he ings of the ill-informed advocates, and jurors, works up simply enough. He first ascertains, and judges, from whose conflict, however, we from the Leipzig Conversationslexicon or Jörshall in the end have a true verdict? The worst den's Poetical Lexicon, Flögel, or Koch, or other of it is at the first; for weak eyes are precisely such Compendium or Handbook, the date and the fondest of glittering objects. And, accord-place of the proposed individual's birth, his ingly, no sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself; though, many times, this mirror is so twisted with convexities and concavities, and, indeed, so extremely small in size, that to expect any true image, or any image whatever from it, is out of the question.

Richter was much better-natured than Johnson; and took many provoking things with the spirit of a humorist and philosopher; nor can we think that so good a man, even had he foreseen this work of Doering's, would have gone the length of assassinating him for it. Doering is a person we have known for several years, as a compiler, and translator, and ballad

*Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Leben, nebst Characteristik seiner Werke; von Heinrich Doering. (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of his Works; by Heinrich Doering.) Gotha. Hennings, 1826. 12mo.

Pp. 208.

parentage, trade, appointments, and the titles of his works; (the date of his death you already know from the newspapers;) this serves as a foundation for the edifice. He then goes through his writings, and all other writings where he or his pursuits are treated of, and whenever he finds a passage with his name in it, he cuts it out, and carries it away. In this manner a mass of materials is collected, and the building now proceeds apace. Stone is laid on the top of stone, just as it comes to hand; a trowel or two of biographic mortar, if perfectly convenient, being perhaps spread in here and there, by way of cement; and so the strangest pile suddenly arises; amorphous, pointing every way but to the zenith,—here a block of granite, there a mass of pipe-clay; till the whole finishes, when the materials are finished, and you leave it standing to posterity, like some miniature Stonehenge, a perfect architectural enigma.

To speak without figure, this mode of lifewriting has its disadvantages. For one thing, the composition cannot well be what the critics call harmonious; and, indeed, Herr Doering's transitions are often abrupt enough. His hero

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