Thomas Carlyle : table talk.

  • Thomas Carlyle
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thomas Carlyle : table talk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Carlyle was speaking in his stormy way of the tendency of the age to expend itself in talk. Mrs. Carlyle said archly, “And how about Mr. Carlyle”? He paused a moment; then answered in a low tone: Mr. Carlyle looked long and anxiously to find something he could do with any kind of veracity; he found no door open save that he took, and had to take, though it was by no means what he would have selected. If almost all books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I sometimes, in my spleen, feel as if it really would be better with us. The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by! A friendly thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. The whole earth has no blessing within its circuit worthy to be named along with health. The loss of it I reckon the very dearest item in the lot of man. I often think I could snap my fingers in the face of every thing if it were not for this. Complaint is generally despicable, always worse than unavailing. Carlyle said to Dr. Calvert: I can’t wish Satan anything worse than to try and digest for all eternity with my stomach; we shouldn’t want fire and brimstone then. Pandora’s box was but a toy compared with bilious¬ ness. It is a dreadful thing sickness; really a thing which I begin frequently to think criminal—at least in myself. Nay, in myself, it really is criminal; wherefore I deter¬ mine to be well one day. Surely no man has such friends as I. We ought to say, May the heavens give us thankful hearts! For, in truth, there are blessings which do, like sun-gleams in
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