From Thomas Archer Hirst   Nov 9th 1851¹

Marburg, | Nov 9^th 1851

My dear John,

Thanks for the Literary Gazette containing review of Carlyles Life of Sterling,² for which it was I have no doubt sent; the following number containing the second notice³ I have also been expecting, if you have it by you it would be acceptable. But better than the review Wrightson who returned to Marburg last week brought me according to order the book itself, which for the last week has filled with unusual interest my few hours devoted to such reading. For many reasons I hold this book among the costliest of my collection, and among Carlyles it ranks among, if it be not the most valued, inasmuch as through it, more directly than through his others, I can make the acquaintance of Carlyle himself – his homelier attributes, and the manly honest and hearty love to his friend that is so often apt to be hid by a rough exterior.

This morning to breakfast I read the last chapter and as is ever the case with the best books I read, it induced me to seize my pen and in the absence of your bodily self, attempt through a scribble to tell you how and why it has so pleased me. Thus my letter.

Of Sterling himself, even in so far as his own writing could inform me, I know next to nothing. The former Biography by Archdeacon Hare⁴ whose shortcomings and misinterpretations this present work of Carlyle’s was mainly undertaken to remedy I never saw, consequently how far this object has been attained I am for the most part unable to judge. One only of Sterling’s writings fell into my hands, as you will remember, and that was his essay on Carlyle;⁵ fresh, as if it were but yesterday I remember how it pleased me, and to day as I finish Carlyle’s judgement of Sterling, the two appear to me beautifully complimentary to each other, opening up by the mutual bearing of their subjects, a field at once rich in matter of thought and full of a valuable significance. If I had time, and were able, I could linger with profit here, and learn much from these honest records of each other that two friends, bound together by manly sympathies, like and yet unlike, have left to us. Carlyle the massive, strong and energetic is himself seen in more vivid outline by the taper which he holds up to his brilliant, genial yet weaker and less perseverant Friend. In Sterling’s essay Sterling and not Carlyle was measured, the former appears as the unit employed to gage the latter, so far as it goes the task too is well performed, but one feels that said task is not completed in some directions, the outlines of the thing measured begin to fail in distinctness, until at last on the chart we come to the regions marked ‘unexplored’. Far otherwise is it with Carlyles Life of Sterling, yet fully substantiating the opinion just expressed, complimentary, as I said thereto. The thing measured here is an Island not a Continent. the infinite ocean surrounds it, yet its shores are marked out in clear and defined outline. With an admirable pride our guide leads us through the riches of his possession, lingers with fondness in the beautiful flowery meadows, shews us the reclaimed lands that have with labour been tilled and arrowed,⁶ and on which the corn is springing; nor does he forget the moorlands and barren places which would have also been tilled and ploughed had not the husbandman been called away.

Sterling was a brave, hard striving fellow brother; of visible success making itself apparent to the world there was little, yet the struggle was not the less noble, and one feels thankful to the loving hand that has wrested such struggles from their obscurity, and held them up as example, encouragement or caution to the obscure ones that are now struggling. ‘I have remarked’, says Carlyle, and the same remark I find almost verbatim in a page of my late Swiss Journal, ‘that a true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the greatest man; that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man’s life a strange emblem of every man’s; and that Human Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the welcomest on Human walls’.⁷ As he also says, Sterling’s life is the more significant for us, as an emblem for his own and our time, on account of his intense susceptibility to the impressions it had to offer, ‘he fashioned himself eagerly by whatsoever of noble presented itself; participating ardently in the world’s battle, and suffering deeply in its bewilderments’.⁸ The History of Sterling’s search for a religion, is handled ably. I know nothing on the same subject treated with a hand so masterly, or offering to the doubter, who feels and labours under the same want that Sterling did, so significant a lesson. With an intellect keen and searching he had unmasked the hypocrisy and emptiness that lurks beneath existing formal creeds. The destructive part of his labour, the pulling down; he accomplished, as it is not difficult for any of us to do, bravely; but the new building on its ruins! That is the difficulty to him and us, and as I said Sterling’s nature was such as to make his essay thereon more than usually instructive. With aspirations abhorrent of all Vacuum, with a soul that had sworn fealty to Truth and hatred to hypocrisy, yet with a want of a self-sufficing principle of reverence in him, he felt deeper than most the barrenness of the field he had fallowed. He with unusual sincerity and earnestness tried to requicken the old forms (since it must have a form) with his ‘reason’ to accept what his ‘understanding’ had falsified, and we see the result. At a crisis in his life he hastily grasped at the ecclesiastical anchor, became a Church of England Parson, prayed as earnestly as most could do that said Church would be his Spiritual Mother, – she would not answer him. Coleridge it appears had great influence on him in this respect. He was the originator of this scheme of reconciliation with the old defeated universalities. There is a chapter devoted to Coleridge⁹ – A chapter of as trenchant character sketching as I remember ever to have read. In some respects though with a different result it has great similarity to Emersons picture of Socrates,¹⁰ which in its way is a masterpiece. – Coleridge was one of the most brilliant surprising talkers that ever lived, and by the young thinking souls of the day was looked up to as a prophet, with a strange fascination they hung upon his eloquent words as the[y] rolled unceasingly from him, as if there was a living spring of inspiration Yet there was one amongst them too sturdy for Coleridges’ eloquence to warp. I can see him, the future exploder of ‘shams’ and piercer of ‘windbags’ standing amongst that group, though in a retired corner of the same, listening with serious face to the words as they issued unceasingly forth, and at the end when all around him with looks of admiration pronounced it as the height of eloquence & wisdom, he with disappointed look turns silently away, his firm lips but opening to grumble forth a ‘transcendent moonshine’.¹¹ Yes, Coleridge here is turned literally inside out; the young Carlyle continued to attend these literary reunions around the great Lion, returned ever dissappointed, puzzled at first whether to deem it inspiration or ‘flat infatuated imbecility’,¹² began at last to harbour treasonable opinions with regard to it, and at last came to the conclusion that ‘it was talk not flowing any whither like a river, but spreading every whither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; what you were to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost, swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out boundless as if to submerge the world’.¹³ Coleridge little thought how one of his hearers was not fascinated, but silently measuring him all this time, one who at some future day (1851) would give the world the result of said measurement:

‘To the man himself Nature had given, in high measure, the seeds of noble endowment; and to unfold it had been forbidden him. A subtle lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous pious susceptibility to all good and all beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean light; - but embedded in such weak laxity of character, in such indolences and esuriences¹⁴ as had made strange work with it. Once more, the tragic story of a high endowment with an insufficient will – an eye to discern the divineness of Heaven’s splendours and lightnings, the insatiable wish to revel in their godlike radiances and brilliancies; but no heart to front the [seathing] terrors of them, which is the first condition of your conquering an abiding place there………. For pain, danger, necessity, slavish harneshed toil, and other highly disagreeable behests of destiny, shall in no wise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will approve himself loyal to his mission in this world’.¹⁵

So far I had got when Carl Schmitt¹⁶ came to pull me out for a walk, and thus put me out of my ‘gang’;¹⁷ however, the above has served my purpose, for which alone it was undertaken you have perhaps, or at any rate must read the book for yourself, and [thus] render what I or another reviewer have to say quite dispensable. Write soon, John, and tell me how the Toronto affair progresses and what you are at present doing with yourself. All is once more in working order here, and taking all together I never felt myself better able to meet it. The English Kräntzchen¹⁸ has begun again, the last meeting was at Fraulein Baumbach’s; Knoblauch was there, and in his element – relating his English journey. They make good progress in English and none more so than Fraulein Baumbach,¹⁹ who at every such Aesthetic Tea-drinking raises herself in my estimation, she is unassuming, unaffected yet at bottom an able as well as amiable girl, were it not for Mathematics, and seeing her so seldom, one cannot tell what might happen: If I had nothing else to do I think sometimes there might be a possibility of even me, slow blooded as I am, falling in love. – But occupation is the greatest enemy womenkind have. Were it not for that, John Tyndall would before this have been spliced. ‘Nicht Wahr’!!²⁰ In absence of a wife, however, it may be some consolation to thee that thou hast

an affectionate friend | Tom Hirst.

Monday evening – 11 P.M. Just found out that I have forgotten to post my letters today – Ball in Ritter,²¹ music as in days of yore comes wafted on the still breeze across the Ketzerback.²² The lamp up at the Castle²³ glistening as usual, Moon almost at full tips the [Accacia] leaves (now covered with snow!) with silver. I wonder if you’re looking at the same moon now. I believe you are. | Lebe – wohl.²⁴

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