Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets ed. by M.K. Goldberg, J.P. Siegel (review)

428 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 M.K. Goldberg and J.P. Siegel, editors. Carlyle's LAtter-Day Pamphlets P. D. Meany for Canadian Federation for the Humanities. xci, 594· $15.95 paper One welcomes the appearance of this first edition of Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets in many years, together with the 'Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question' which Carlyle himself added to the collection in 1858. The edition is the work of Michael Goldberg, author of Carlyleand Dickens, and of Jules Siegel. compiler of Carlyle: The Critical Heritage; both have published articles on Latter-DayPamphlets. The volume is published by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, whose initiative is to be commended. Though in a paper cover, the book is quite attractive, and illustrated. The volume meets a need, although one has reservations about it. The critical and historical introduction, with an account of contemporary reviews, lacks the zest that is appropriate to a response to Carlyle. One is left still pondering the questions: what is the importance of the Latter-Day Pamphlets historically, as well as in relation to the rest of Carlyle's fEuvre? Is this relationship merely a question of more violent rhetoric in the Pamphlets, as the editors suggest? After a bibliographical introduction, the text is photographically reproduced from the first editions in monthly parts. It is unfortunate that the original title-page (with its suggestive epigraphs) is not given for number one, as it is for the succeeding numbers. One wonders whether the rather fuzzy appearance of this version (especially at the top ofpp 113, 14") is due to the poor quality of the printing in 1850, or to the deterioration of the clarity and firmness of the print on the page since then, or to the nature of the photographic method employed. The pages are cluttered by the addition of numerals referring to notes and by markings indicating textual changes. The textual notes are thoroughgoing, like those in G.H. Ford's Norton edition of Dickens's Hard Times; but (as there) one would like a critical justification of them, especially in a volume which looks as though it is intended for the general reader. The critical and historical notes are full, but again give the impression of extensive and careful research done without special zest. There is carelessness in proofreading, and note 4" to 'Downing Street' is particularly redundant. Overall, one welcomes the volume because it makes available this characteristically exuberant and provocative Carlylian 'mixture of radical and reactionary strains' (p xxvi), with its expression ofoutrage on the part of what Carlyle called a 'minority of one' (p 424). Its editors compare the work to that of Dante and Orwell. It is an allusive, mythopoeic Jeremiad, as they say: also Swiftian in its satire. In his search for the evidence of truth and justice in society Carlyle casts a withering eye over the political HUMANITIES 429 institutions of his day and he sees them to be volatile and inadequate. He sees how they are threatened by demagoguery and mammonism. His work here reprinted will surely present a challenge to the political and artistic assumptions of modern students, both with regard to the 1850S and to the present day. (PETER MORGAN) Ina Ferris. William Makepeace Thackeray Twayne. vii. 148. $12.95 U.S. It has recently been argued that the Thackeray worth reading stops after Vanity Fair; as for the later fiction, 'today's readers, having tried them, mostly hasten to try something else' Gohn Carey, Thackeray, p 9). Professor Ina Ferris prefers the simile ofa good wine that won't travel. 'He remains,' she claims, 'a shadowy figure - his name familiar, his writing less so' (Preface). And it is true that the Thackeray on a course reading list is almost invariably Vanih) Fair, whereas for Dickens or George Eliot or Trollope, for example, we ponder which novel to select. Ferris believes the situation is beginning to change, and sets out to explain where and why his skills and purposes are underestimated. That is why she gives more than usual space to The Newcomes and The Adventures of Philip. The latter is a good test. Recent critics have been reclaiming other Thackeray work...