That Carlyle saw this, and saw it so clearly, is no doubt partly due
to a cause, of which more must be said directly; to his craving for
ideas. [Footnote: See p. xciv.] But it was in part owing to his hearty
acceptance of the historical method. Both as critic and as historian,
he knew--at that time, no man so well--that each nation has its own
genius; and justly pronounced the conduct of that nation which "isolates
itself from foreign influence, regards its own modes as so many laws
of nature, and rejects all that is different as unworthy even of
examination", to be "pedantry". [Footnote: _Miscellanies_, i. 37, 38.]
This was the first, and perhaps the most fruitful consequence that he
drew from the application of historical ideas to literature. They
enlarged his field of comparison; and, by so doing, they gave both
width and precision to his definition of criticism.
But there is another--and a more usual, if a narrower--sense of the
historical method; and here, too, Carlyle was a pioneer. He was among
the first in our country to grasp the importance of studying the
literature of a nation, as a whole, and from its earliest monuments,
its mythological and heroic legends, downwards to the present.
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