On the Choice of Books · Thomas Carlyle
"DEAR SIR,
"I have read with attention, and with many feelings and reflections, your record of Sir C. Napier's Administration of Scinde. You must permit me to thank you, in the name of Britain at large, for writing such a book; and in my own poor name to acknowledge the great compliment and kindness implied in sending me a copy for myself. "It is a book which every living Englishman would be the better for reading--for studying diligently till he saw into it, till he recognised and believed the high and tragic phenomenon set forth there! A book which may be called 'profitable' in the old Scripture sense; profitable for reproof, for correction and admonition, for great sorrow, yet for 'building up in righteousness' too--in heroic, manful endeavour to do well, and not ill, in one's time and place. One feels it a kind of possession to know that one has had such a fellow-citizen and contemporary in these evil days. "The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognisable to me; his subtle, piercing intellect turned all to the practical, giving him just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible adroit contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a long time.
"A singular veracity one finds in him; not in his words alone--which, however, I like much for their fine rough _naïveté_--but in his actions, judgments, aims; in all that he thinks, and does, and says--which, indeed, I have observed is the root of all greatness or real worth in human creatures, and properly the first (and also the rarest) attribute of what we call _genius_ among men. "The path of such a man through the foul jungle of this world--the struggle of Heaven's inspiration against the terrestrial fooleries, cupidities, and cowardices--cannot be other than tragical: but the man does tear out a bit of way for himself too; strives towards the good goal, inflexibly persistent till his long rest come: the man does leave his mark behind him, ineffaceable, beneficent to all good men, maleficent to none: and we must not complain. The British nation of this time, in India or elsewhere--God knows no nation ever had more need of such men, in every region of its affairs! But also perhaps no nation ever had a much worse chance to get hold of them, to recognise and loyally second them, even when they are there. "Anarchic stupidity is wide as the night; victorious wisdom is but as a lamp in it shining here and there. Contrast a Napier even in Scinde with, for example, a Lally at Pondicherry or on the Place de Grève; one has to admit that it is the common lot, that it might have been far worse!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.