This was the case with Carlyle; and when
he published that new Book of Job, that weird and marvellous Pilgrim's
Progress of a modern cultivated soul, the "Sartor Resartus," in
"Fraser's Magazine," strange, wild, and incomprehensible as it was to
most men, they did not put it contemptuously aside, but pondered it,
laughed at it, trembled over it and its dread apocalyptical visions
and revelations, respecting its earnestness and eloquence, although
not comprehending what manner of writing it essentially was. Carlyle
enjoyed the perplexity of his readers and reviewers, neither of whom,
with the exception of men like Sterling, and a writer in one of the
Quarterlies, seemed to know what they were talking about when they
spoke of it. The criticisms upon it were exceedingly comical in many
instances, and the author put the most notable of these together, and
always alluded to them with roars of laughter. The book has never yet
received justice at the hands of any literary tribunal. It requires,
indeed, a large amount of culture to appreciate it, either as a work
of art, or as a living flame-painting of spiritual struggle and
revelation.
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