Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1881 — Carlyle’s Dyspepsia. [ARTICLE]

Carlyle’s Dyspepsia.

Speaking of Thomas Carlyle, the New York Telegram says: “He had told his friends that he had a terrible struggle to decide between the ministry and literature,andJhat the struggle rent his being. At last he shut himself up, according to his own aecount, ani fer three days and nights prayed and fasted, never touching a morsel of food, and came out of his seclusion resolved upon authorship. ‘I suffered everything in that time,’ he said. •! don’t know, and never can know, what thoughts and temptations and agonies I had in those days. But I know that I came out of the struggle with the d—d dyspepsia, and I’ve never been rid of it since;’ The confession is important and explanatory. He spoke most significant truths. Dyspepsia has tormented him through lire. It has colored and toned his writings; his opinions, his despondency, his acridity, his violence and ravings are directly traceable to indigestion of the worst and most confirmed sort. If he had had a sound stomach he would have been a different man, at least a different author. He would have seen things in another and a better light, he would have been in accord with humanity instead of attacking it continually, as if it were a mass of stupidity and brutishness. Most of Carlyle’s works, particularly his latest ones, may well be designated the literature of dyspepsia, for dyspepsia has dictated their leading ideas and their saturnine philosophy. None but a dyspeptic could have so glorified Frederick of Prussia, or have elevated selfish tyranny into a secular virtue. To understand Carlyle one must read him, so to speak, through the atmosphere of creative dyspepsia.

Lord Campbell fell in love for the first time at forty-one, and though rejected, wrote to a friend “I can only say, with Gibbon, that I feel dearer to myself for having been capable of this elegant and refined passion.*' How much more should the Baroness Bur-dett-Coutts be pleased with her romantic self, asks The Toronto Olobe. The Colorado (Texas) Citizen has discovered another of the signers of the Texas declaration of independent* —W. B. Hostes. nearly eighty years old; and still able to do light work on his farm. Mr. Scates thinks that besides Dr. C. B. Stewart, another still lives in the person of John W. Blunt, of Ban Augustine. It may interest that class which can find no good in John Cbinamap except to’ encourage the opium culture and Veen down tnp ntt shat of tteTLwp mu»j by lh« Irhh mHrauUl^bader.’ 11 *' nwrehant. and Menfei *slater "of Alice