MR. ASQUITH ON CARLYLE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " Sesernoa."1
think your correspondent Lieutenant BhIlake mistakes Mr. Asquith's reference to Carlyle's criticism of Sir Walter Scott. The ex-Prime Minister's magnificent address on Criticism introduces several very ludicrous blunders in literary estimates by Dr. Johnson, Richardson. Goldsmith, De Quincey, and Carlyle of which he gives most striking examples, and it is the absurdity of Carlyle 'a estimate of Scott that he comments on as an early opinion, and not as his more matured and con- sidered estimate of his great countryman. The point is that a great critio frequently makes mistakes which in the verdict of posterity he would willingly expurgate from his precipitate effusions—I em, Sir, &a., G. Mesmer/. Guthrie Lodge, Newburgh, Fife.
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