This
is a clear case of a disciplinarian suffering from temporary
derangement. I really cannot quite stomach such heroic and sweeping
work. Carlyle, who was a Scotch peasant by birth, raised himself until
he was deservedly regarded as the greatest man of his day, and he did
this by means of literature; yet he coolly sets an ignorant, cruel,
crowned drill-serjeant high above the men of the literary calling. It is
a little too much! Suppose that Carlyle had been flogged back to the
plough-tail by some potentate when he first went to the University;
should we not have heard a good deal of noise about the business sooner
or later? Again, we find Mr. Froude writing somewhat placidly when he
tells us about the men who were cut to pieces slowly in order that their
agony might be prolonged. The description of the dismemberment of
Ballard and the rest, as given in the "Curiosities of Literature," is
too gratuitously horrible to be read a second time; but Mr. Froude is
convinced that the whole affair was no more than a smart and salutary
lesson given to some obtrusive Papists, and he commends the measures
adopted by Elizabeth's ministers to secure proper discipline. Similarly
the wholesale massacre of the people in the English northern counties is
not at all condemned by the judicious Mr.
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