Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

WOTTON REINFRED 17and hisusual purgatory, perhaps aggravated by hislate patron, returned upon him with but greaterbitterness. They flouted him, they beat him, theyjeered and tweaked and torturedhim by a thousandcunning arts, to all which he could only answer withhis tears ; so that his very heart was black withinhim, and in his sadness, of which he would notcomplain, and which also seemed to him as if eternal,he knew not what to do.creature, that loved all things,—hisFor he was a quiet, pensiveshelty, the milkcow,nay the very cat, ungrateful termagant thoughshe was ; and so shy and soft withal, that he generallypassed for cowardly, and his tormentors had namedhim ' weeping Wotton,' and marked him down as aproper enough bookworm, but one without a particleof spirit. However, in this latter point they sometimesovershot themselves, and the boldest and tallestof the house have quailed before the ' weeping Wotton 'Avhen thoroughly provoked, for his fury while it lastedwas boundless, his little face gleamed like a thunderbolt,and no fear ofearthly or unearthly thing couldhold him from the heart of his enemy.But the sway of this fire-eyed genius was transientas the spark of the flint ;his comrades soon learnedthe limits of danger, and adjusting their operationswith a curious accuracy to the properties of theirmaterial, continued toharass him, more cunningly,but not less effectually than before.All these things acted on "Wotton with deep andD