Life of John Sterling · Thomas Carlyle
"JOHN STERLING."
Here are sufficient points of "discrepancy with agreement," here is material for talk and argument enough; and an expanse of free discussion open, which requires rather to be speedily restricted for convenience' sake, than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, as it tends to do!-- In all Sterling's Letters to myself and others, a large collection of which now lies before me, duly copied and indexed, there is, to one that knew his speech as well, a perhaps unusual likeness between the speech and the Letters; and yet, for most part, with a great inferiority on the part of these. These, thrown off, one and all of them, without premeditation, and with most rapid-flowing pen, are naturally as like his speech as writing can well be; this is their grand merit to us: but on the other hand, the want of the living tones, swift looks and motions, and manifold dramatic accompaniments, tells heavily, more heavily than common. What can be done with champagne itself, much more with soda-water, when the gaseous spirit is fled! The reader, in any specimens he may see, must bear this in mind.
Meanwhile these Letters do excel in honesty, in candor and transparency; their very carelessness secures their excellence in this respect. And in another much deeper and more essential respect I must likewise call them excellent,--in their childlike goodness, in the purity of heart, the noble affection and fidelity they everywhere manifest in the writer. This often touchingly strikes a familiar friend in reading them; and will awaken reminiscences (when you have the commentary in your own memory) which are sad and beautiful, and not without reproach to you on occasion. To all friends, and all good causes, this man is true; behind their back as before their face, the same man!--Such traits of the autobiographic sort, from these Letters, as can serve to paint him or his life, and promise not to weary the reader, I must endeavor to select, in the sequel.
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