There are two main moral necessities for the work of a great man: the first is that he should believe in the truth of his message; the second is that he should believe in the acceptability of his message. It was the whole tragedy of Carlyle that he had the first and not the second.
The ordinary capital, however which is made out of Carlyle's alleged gloom is a very paltry matter. Carlyle had his fauIts both as a man and as a writer, but the attempt to explain his gospel in terms of his "liver" is merely pitiful. If indigestion invariably resulted in a "Sartor Resartus," it would be a vastly more tolerable thing than it is. Diseases do not turn into poems: even the decadent really writes with the healthy part of his organism. If Carlyle's private faults and literary virtues ran somewhat in the same
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