Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/82

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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

clearly makes out his case. Carlyle finds thirteen errors in six pages and computes the number in the whole upon that basis. Now these errors, that about Stella, for example, are partly Carlyle's own; and if his attention was ever called to the facts, which I should take to be very doubtful, he should, of course, have omitted, or greatly altered, the passage before republishing the essay. So much must be said in bare justice to Taylor; but I cannot think that any one who tries to read the book will doubt that Carlyle's judgment was substantially indisputable. He speaks, indeed, of Taylor's general abilities more respectfully than might have been expected; he admits the value of some of his criticisms and the excellence of his poetical translation; and the criticism, severe enough, is summed up in the phrase, not familiar in English till Mathew Arnold gave it currency, that Taylor was what Germans called a Philister—'every fibre of him is Philistine.' That appears to me to be true, though it might have been rather taken for granted than insisted upon. Taylor might have replied as the cats'-meat man, according to Sam Weller, replied to the statement that he was no gentleman—that is a 'self-evident proposition.' I only notice it as illustrating the