Note 42 — Front matter

In this sentence, as printed in the Edinburgh Review, we have certainly a trace of Jeffrey's editing (cf. above, p. 7). There, by the change of weak-eyed maudlin into extreme, and of random into pervading, the sneer is converted into a compliment. Elsewhere Carlyle says of Keats: "The kind of man he was gets ever more horrible to me. Force of hunger for pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force.... Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a chosen 'Vessel of Hell.'" (Nichol: Life of Carlyle, chap. v.) Such is the absurd result to which Carlyle is led by his view of the necessity of a moral aim in all literature.