Miss Margaret Fuller writes from England about Carlyle:–
“He seemed to be quite isolated, lonely as the desert, yet never was man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds them, but only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which as with a knitting needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and then tp let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor—for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, if he can but make them turn about, but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove’s bird; yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that either.”
“Miss Margaret Fuller writes from England.” Boston Post, 24 February 1847, pp. 2.
