



Produced by Ron Burkey





LIFE OF JOHN STERLING

By Thomas Carlyle


Transcriber's Note: Italics in the text are indicated by the use of an
underscore as delimiter, _thusly_. All footnotes have been collected at
the end of the text, and numbered sequentially in brackets, [thusly].
One illustration has been omitted. The "pound" symbol has been replaced
by the word "pounds". Otherwise, all spelling, punctuation, etc., have
been left as in the printed text.

Taken from volume 2 of Carlyle's Complete Works, which additionally
contains the Latter-Day Pamphlets, to be provided as a separate etext.




PART I.



CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 1844, John
Sterling committed the care of his literary Character and printed
Writings to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the
bequest was far from overweening; to few men could the small sum-total
of his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, in those
last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt much; found much unworthy;
looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity, a
brave man's judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time are
not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his
work which the world had already got hold of, and which he could not
burn. This too, since it was not to be abolished and annihilated, but
must still for some time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled,
as the rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors,
to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing nothing did not
seem the fittest to us. This message, communicated after his decease,
was naturally a sacred one to Mr. Hare and me.

After some consultation on it, and survey of the difficulties and
delicate considerations involved in it, Archdeacon Hare and I agreed
that the whole task, of selecting what Writings were to be reprinted,
and of drawing up a Biography to introduce them, should be left to him
alone; and done without interference of mine:--as accordingly it was, [1]
in a manner surely far superior to the common, in every good quality of
editing; and visibly everywhere bearing testimony to the friendliness,
the piety, perspicacity and other gifts and virtues of that eminent and
amiable man.

In one respect, however, if in one only, the arrangement had been
unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both by natural tendency and by his
position as a Churchman, had been led, in editing a Work not free from
ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a Life very full of
such, to dwell with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject;
by no means extenuating the fact, nor yet passing lightly over it (which
a layman could have done) as needing no extenuation; but carefully
searching into it, with the view of excusing and explaining it; dwelling
on it, presenting all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it
over the whole field of his delineation; as if religious heterodoxy had
been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to the Archdeacon's
mind it could by no means seem to be. _Hinc illae lachrymae_. For the
Religious Newspapers, and Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively
in those years, were prompt to seize the cue; and have prosecuted
and perhaps still prosecute it, in their sad way, to all lengths and
breadths. John Sterling's character and writings, which had little
business to be spoken of in any Church-court, have hereby been carried
thither as if for an exclusive trial; and the mournfulest set of
pleadings, out of which nothing but a misjudgment _can_ be formed,
prevail there ever since. The noble Sterling, a radiant child of the
empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory of all that knew
him,--what is he doing here in inquisitorial _sanbenito_, with nothing
but ghastly spectralities prowling round him, and inarticulately
screeching and gibbering what they call their judgment on him!

"The sin of Hare's Book," says one of my Correspondents in those years,
"is easily defined, and not very condemnable, but it is nevertheless
ruinous to his task as Biographer. He takes up Sterling as a clergyman
merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months; during
eight months and no more had he any special relation to the Church. But
he was a man, and had relation to the Universe, for eight-and-thirty
years: and it is in this latter character, to which all the others were
but features and transitory hues, that we wish to know him. His battle
with hereditary Church formulas was severe; but it was by no means his
one battle with things inherited, nor indeed his chief battle;
neither, according to my observation of what it was, is it successfully
delineated or summed up in this Book. The truth is, nobody that had
known Sterling would recognize a feature of him here; you would never
dream that this Book treated of _him_ at all. A pale sickly shadow in
torn surplice is presented to us here; weltering bewildered amid
heaps of what you call 'Hebrew Old-clothes;' wrestling, with impotent
impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that
had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would
recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with
his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations; with his frank
affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general
radiant vivacity of heart and intelligence, which made the presence of
him an illumination and inspiration wherever he went? It is too bad.
Let a man be honestly forgotten when his life ends; but let him not be
misremembered in this way. To be hung up as an ecclesiastical scarecrow,
as a target for heterodox and orthodox to practice archery upon, is no
fate that can be due to the memory of Sterling. It was not as a ghastly
phantasm, choked in Thirty-nine-article controversies, or miserable
Semitic, Anti-Semitic street-riots,--in scepticisms, agonized
self-seekings, that this man appeared in life; nor as such, if the world
still wishes to look at him should you suffer the world's memory of him
now to be. Once for all, it is unjust; emphatically untrue as an image
of John Sterling: perhaps to few men that lived along with him could
such an interpretation of their existence be more inapplicable."


Whatever truth there might be in these rather passionate
representations, and to myself there wanted not a painful feeling of
their truth, it by no means appeared what help or remedy any friend of
Sterling's, and especially one so related to the matter as myself, could
attempt in the interim. Perhaps endure in patience till the dust
laid itself again, as all dust does if you leave it well alone? Much
obscuration would thus of its own accord fall away; and, in Mr. Hare's
narrative itself, apart from his commentary, many features of Sterling's
true character would become decipherable to such as sought them.
Censure, blame of this Work of Mr. Hare's was naturally far from my
thoughts. A work which distinguishes itself by human piety and candid
intelligence; which, in all details, is careful, lucid, exact; and which
offers, as we say, to the observant reader that will interpret facts,
many traits of Sterling besides his heterodoxy. Censure of it, from me
especially, is not the thing due; from me a far other thing is due!--

On the whole, my private thought was: First, How happy it comparatively
is, for a man of any earnestness of life, to have no Biography written
of him; but to return silently, with his small, sorely foiled bit of
work, to the Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or him; and not
to trouble the reviewers, and greater or lesser public, with attempting
to judge it! The idea of "fame," as they call it, posthumous or
other, does not inspire one with much ecstasy in these points of
view.--Secondly, That Sterling's performance and real or seeming
importance in this world was actually not of a kind to demand an express
Biography, even according to the world's usages. His character was not
supremely original; neither was his fate in the world wonderful. What
he did was inconsiderable enough; and as to what it lay in him to have
done, this was but a problem, now beyond possibility of settlement. Why
had a Biography been inflicted on this man; why had not No-biography,
and the privilege of all the weary, been his lot?--Thirdly, That such
lot, however, could now no longer be my good Sterling's; a tumult having
risen around his name, enough to impress some pretended likeness of him
(about as like as the Guy-Fauxes are, on Gunpowder-Day) upon the minds
of many men: so that he could not be forgotten, and could only be
misremembered, as matters now stood.

Whereupon, as practical conclusion to the whole, arose by degrees this
final thought, That, at some calmer season, when the theological dust
had well fallen, and both the matter itself, and my feelings on it, were
in a suitabler condition, I ought to give my testimony about this friend
whom I had known so well, and record clearly what my knowledge of him
was. This has ever since seemed a kind of duty I had to do in the world
before leaving it.


And so, having on my hands some leisure at this time, and being bound to
it by evident considerations, one of which ought to be especially
sacred to me, I decide to fling down on paper some outline of what
my recollections and reflections contain in reference to this most
friendly, bright and beautiful human soul; who walked with me for a
season in this world, and remains to me very memorable while I continue
in it. Gradually, if facts simple enough in themselves can be narrated
as they came to pass, it will be seen what kind of man this was; to what
extent condemnable for imaginary heresy and other crimes, to what
extent laudable and lovable for noble manful _orthodoxy_ and other
virtues;--and whether the lesson his life had to teach us is not much
the reverse of what the Religious Newspapers hitherto educe from it.

Certainly it was not as a "sceptic" that you could define him, whatever
his definition might be. Belief, not doubt, attended him at all points
of his progress; rather a tendency to too hasty and headlong belief.
Of all men he was the least prone to what you could call scepticism:
diseased self-listenings, self-questionings, impotently painful
dubitations, all this fatal nosology of spiritual maladies, so rife
in our day, was eminently foreign to him. Quite on the other side lay
Sterling's faults, such as they were. In fact, you could observe, in
spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was not properly a
thinker at all; his faculties were of the active, not of the passive or
contemplative sort. A brilliant _improvisatore_; rapid in thought, in
word and in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating of