He said it was the mission, the special vocation of
all who felt the mutual responsibility of men. But nationality of
Italy meant to Carlyle, only "the glory of having produced Dante and
Columbus," and he cared for them not for the national thought they
interpreted, but as gigantic men. Mazzini cared for "the progressive
history of mankind," Carlyle for "the Biography of great men."
Carlyle's sadness "unending sadness," came, Mazzini thought from
looking at human life only from the individual point of view. And a
poem by Browning, "Cleon" would have afforded him another example of
"the disenchantment and discouragement of life," from individualism.
Browning was as great an individualist as Carlyle; he stood as far
apart from belief in Collective Humanity, and Democracy as Carlyle
did, though in Italy, he felt the thrill of its nationality, as
Carlyle did not. But Mazzini might have said also truly of Browning,
that, with the exception of Italy, "he sympathised with the separate
life of each man and not with their collective life." The sadness
Mazzini attributed to Carlyle's strong individualistic point of view,
ought logically then to have been the heritage of Browning also.
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