Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

228 LETTEES WRITTEN BY THOMAS CARLYLE TODerfflinger's Elector, was an acquaintance of myOliver, too ; this is a new point of union. I hadread Lippe ^ already ; but grudged him not a secondreading, neither is this perhaps the last. I haveknown the man always sincehis Widow ;Herder's Biography byand regarded him with real curiosity andinterest. A most tough, original, unsubduable leanman ! Those scenes in the Portuguese War whichstood all as a Picture in my head were full of admonitionto me on this last occasion. I said tomyself, ' See, there is a man with a still uglier enterprisethan thine; in the centre he too of infinitehuman stupidities ; see how he moulds them, controulsthem, hurls them asunder, stands like a piece ofhuman Valour in the middle of them ;—see, and take'shame to thyself ! Many thanks to you for this newGift. And weary not to go on working with great orwith small encouragement in that true province ofyours. A man with a pen in his hand, with the giftof articulate pictural utterance, surely he is wellemployed in painting and articulating worthy actsand men that by the nature of them were dumb.I on the whole define all Writing to mean even that,or else almost nothing. From Homer's ' Iliad ' downto the New-Testament Gospels,—to the ' Goethe'sPoems '(if we will look what the essence of them is),'Graf Fi'iedrich Wilhelm Ernst von Schaumburg-Lippe, Portuguesefield-marshal, called Herder, 1771, toof tbe consistory.Buckeburg as counsellor