ANON.

"Sartor Resartus" is what old Dennis used to call "a heap of clotted nonsense,"
mixed, however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking
poetic vigour. But what does the writer mean by "Baphometic fire-baptism?" Why,
cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally
intelligible? . . .

We quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the Sartor Resartus; which may
be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way. Indeed
by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand
the fairest chance of getting at its meaning:--

The fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom, which feeling
is its Baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will
keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard
battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.

Here is a bray worthy of the most sonorous animal that ever chewed the thistle.
It reminds us of another equally lucid passage, which we remember meeting with
in the works of an eminent transcendental philosopher of the day, who observed (we
forget on what occasion, but that is not material), that "there were some people who
supposed that an unusual collocation of words, involving a juxtaposition of ideas,
immediately suggested the notion of an antiperistatical paradoxology." These two
scribes should be harnessed together in a donkey cart. They have both an equal
length of ear.

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