Note 69 — XXVII.

The Passage of Carlyle to which FitzGerald refers is perhaps in ‘Anti-Dryasdust,’ in the Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. ‘By very nature it is a labyrinth and chaos, this that we call Human History; an abatis of trees and brushwood, a world-wide jungle, at once growing and dying. Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit-trees of To-day, there lie, rotting slower or faster, the forests of all other Years and Days. Some have rotted fast, plants of annual growth, and are long since quite gone to inorganic mould; others are like the aloe, growths that last a thousand or three thousand years.’ Ste. Beuve, in his ‘Nouveaux Lundis’ (iv. 295), has a similar remark: ‘Pour un petit nombre d’arbres qui s’élèvent de quelques pieds au-dessus de terre et qui s’aperçoivent de loin, il y a partout, en littérature, de cet humus et de ce détrius végétal, de ces feuilles accumulées et entassées qu’on ne distingue pas, si l’on ne se baisse.’ At the end of his copy FitzGerald has referred to this as ‘Carlyle’s Peat.’