his lot, sought to master Fortune by means of the hard-earned "virtues"— courage or cunning—available to those without faith in providence. Machiavelli's was the heroism of the "everlasting No." Carlyle's version of heroism, on the other hand, rested on the grateful acknowledgment of endowments for which the hero himself could claim no credit. Thus Shakespeare's genius, according to Carlyle, lay in its unawareness of itself. Shakespeare's intellect was "unconscious"; "there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of." If Shakespeare was a prophet, a "blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light," he was "conscious of no Heavenly message" ; and it was the modesty of poetic genius, Carlyle thought, that distinguished the poet from the prophet and made him a superior and more trustworthy type.

Carlyle understood the dangers of hero worship more clearly than his critics have given him credit for. He understood that hero worship turned into idolatry when it attached itself not to the hero's insight but to his false claim of supernatural credentials. ^* At the same time, he praised the "indestructible reverence for heroism" as an important expression of the capacity for wonder and saw the modern disparagement of heroism, accordingly—far more freely expressed in our own day even than in his—as one of the more ominous among many ominous "signs of the times."

The admirable essay "Characteristics" helps to clarify Carlyle's thoughts about the unconsciousness of virtue, which, when it "has become aware of itself, is sickly and beginning to decline." "The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick." Shakespeare "takes no airs for writing

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*	D. H. Lawrence had the same point in mind, I think, when he coined the aphorism that runs through his Studies in Classic American Literature: "Never trust the artist. Trust the tale."

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