CARLYLE, Thomas, Scotch essayist,historian and miscellaneous writer; b. Ecclefechan,near Annandale, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland,4 Dec. 1795; d. London, 4 Feb. 1881.Carlyle's ancestors were said to have come toAnnandale from Carlisle, England, in the timeof David II, but at the author's birth theimmediate family was living in very straitenedcircumstances at Ecclefechan, where the grandfather,Thomas, was village carpenter and hisfive sons masons. The second of these, James,a man of “largest natural adornment,” assertive,choleric, honest and pious, with an uncommongift of forcible expression, married as hissecond wife Margaret Aitken, a woman ofaffectionate nature and piety of mind. By herhe had four sons and five daughters, of whomthe eldest was Thomas. The third son,John Carlyle (q.v.), became distinguished as thetranslator of Dante. Thomas, like the otherchildren, was brought up with much affectionatecare. His parents intended him for the Churchand gave him all the education in their power.He early learned his letters and soon became avoracious reader. At 10 he was sent to thegrammar school at Annan, where, as a moody,sensitive child, he was much bullied by theother boys, and probably suffered acutely. Atthe age of 13 he was ready to enter EdinburghUniversity, which he attended from 1809 to1814, without, however, taking a degree. Hisindividuality did not readily allow itself to bemolded to the academic routine. Finding himselfunable, because of religious doubts, toenter the ministry, he went to Annan Academyas tutor in mathematics, in 1814. Later hetaught at Kirkcaldy, where he made theacquaintance ofEdward Irving (q.v), one of hiswarmest friends. Irving's friendship was ofgreat value to Carlyle, and his library enabledthe latter to gratify his love of reading and tomitigate the distaste which he felt for teaching.In October 1818 the work became so repellentthat he resigned from his school, saying that“it were better to perish than to continueschool-mastering.” Then he went to Edinburghto try to earn his living.

The next three years were perhaps the mosttrying of his life. He was tormented to anuncommon degree by his lifelong enemy, dyspepsia,and as a result was greatly depressed inspirit. Uncertain what career to follow, tryinghis hand at many vocations and differentstudies, miserably poor, finding his onlyemployment for a time in writing hack articles,he was “mentally and physically adrift” in thesense that is described in his “Everlasting No”of ‘Sartor Resartus.’ Toward the middle of1821, however, he seems, by much resolutionand energy of will, to have shaken off muchof the depression, to have attained the positionof the “Everlasting Yea.” The men who atthis time most influenced him were the Germans,particularly Goethe, the mystic Richter,and the philosopher Fichte. German literaturewas now his most absorbing study, and laterthis study bore fruit in his ‘Life of Schiller’(1823-24), his translation of Goethe's ‘WilhelmMeister’ (1824) and in several essays. Thesebooks mark his formal entrance into literature.Up to the time of their publication Carlyle'spublished writing had been a series of articlesfor Sir David Brewster's ‘Encyclopedia,’ atranslation of Legendre's ‘Geometry,’ to whichhe prefixed an ‘Essay on Proportion,’ andmiscellaneous hack work. The ‘Life of Schiller’and the translation of ‘Wilhelm Meister’met with favorable reviews, and the translationis usually regarded as one of the best ofall renderings into English. While he was atwork on these books he was (1822-24) tutorin a well-to-do family, the Bullers, from whomhe received £200 a year for not disagreeablework. In spite of the kindness of his patrons,he managed, as was usual with him duringlife, to find much fault with his surroundingsand to utter complaints with very little fairnessor reserve. A trip (1824) to London andParis broke the monotony of his existence, andgave him many new impressions and opinionsin what was a critical period of his growth.Returning to Scotland in 1825 he establishedhimself at Hoddam Hill, a farm near the Solway,where he farmed and wrote. On 17 Oct.1826, Carlyle, after a somewhat prolonged,vacillating and rather stormy wooing, succeededin marrying Jane Baillie Welsh; a woman inmany ways as remarkable as himself anddistinguished as a descendant of John Knox. Thehumors and distempers of their married lifehave become proverbial and are to be foundmost fully recorded in Froude's biography.Both seem to have been extremely andunintelligently self-willed and so vain as to bewholly lacking in reticence about their domesticlife. For two years they lived at Scotsbrignear Edinburgh, where they had the advantageof the intelligent society of the capital,and where Carlyle supported himself by writingfor the reviews. In theEdinburgh Review,under the editorship of his friendJeffrey(q.v.), he published, in 1827, his well-knownesssy on ‘Richter’ and ‘The State of GermanLiterature,’ an article which led to the famouscorrespondence with Goethe. For several yearstheEdinburgh and other reviews were hisonly medium of publication. He essayed anovel but failed, and was disappointed m hisattempts to secure the chair in moral philosophyat Saint Andrews and a professorship inLondon University.

In May 1828 the Carlyles removed to alonely farm, Craigenputtoch, overlooking theSolway. Here he wrote his ‘Essay on Burns,’one of his most sympathetic pieces of criticism(Edinburgh Review, 1828), several other essaysof much importance, as ‘Voltaire,’ ‘Novalis’and his ‘Sartor Resartus,’ the book for whichhe is perhaps most famous. Refused by severalpublishers, ‘Sartor Resartus’ first saw lightinFraser's Magazine, between December 1833and August 1834, where it excited such a stormof protest that no separate English editionappeared till 1838. Meanwhile (1836) it firstappeared in book form in America, where itwas especially commended by Emerson. Thismost characteristic book of Carlyle purports tobe a review by an English editor of a treatiseby a learned German professor, Herr Teufelsdröckh,with whose life and opinions it deals.The book is written around the famousPhilosophy of Clothes, designed bySwift (q.v.),and is in the main symbolical of Carlyle'screed at this time — that as clothes expressthe taste of the wearer, so life in all its formsmay be regarded as the vesture of the mind.The idea is not a very original one, but isexpressed with such oddity of phrase and imagethat it appears as profound as forcible. Themost interesting feature is the account of themoral and spiritual attire of Teufelsdröckh,who is Carlyle himself. It is the querulous,stormy tale of early suffering, lack ofsympathy from fellowmen, disappointment alikein the business of the head and the affairs ofthe heart, despondency and despair over thegreat question why man is in the universe,doubt and wavering, and final acceptance ofthe facts of existence with the hope of solutionthrough stern endeavor. The book mightbe called a prose epic of the inner life, and itis wholly egoistic and anthropocentric.

In 1834 the Carlyles removed to London,where they settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea,and here were their headquarters for theremainderof their lives. Soon after the changehe began his ‘French Revolution,’ which wascompleted in 1837 and which gave him muchmore reputation than he had heretoforeenjoyed. During the same period he wrote the‘Diamond Necklace’ and the articles on ‘Mirabeau’and ‘Sir Walter Scott,’ the honorariumfrom which was of great benefit in hisimpecunious state. The success of the historyenabled him, in the four following years, togain audience for four series of lectures,‘German Literature,’ the ‘History of EuropeanLiterature,’ ‘Revolutions’ and the morecharacteristic ‘Heroes and Hero-Worship.’Published in book form in 1841, this series remainsto-day one of the most widely read of Carlyle'sworks and is perhaps the clearest expressionof his philosophy of history. “As I take it,”he says, “universal history, the history of whatman has accomplished in this world, is atbottom the history of the great men who haveworked there.” The moral animus of the bookis expressed farther on in the same introduction:“We cannot look, however imperfectly,upon a great man, without gaining somethingby him. He is the living light-fountain whichit is good and pleasant to be near.” Again,speaking of the Hero as a man of letters, hetells us the purpose of all his own writing:“The writer of a book, is he not a preacher,preaching not to this parish or that, on this dayor that, but to all men in all times and places?”

The book may conveniently mark animportant time in Carlyle's life. The pamphleton ‘Chartism’ of 1840 had enunciated adoctrine, of a political sort, that “Might is right,”— “one of the few strings,” says Nichol, “onwhich, with all the variations of a politicalPaganini, he played through life.” About thistime, in short, his ideas of history, of morals,of politics, of his own mission, seem to havecrystallized. Furthermore, his circumstanceshad definitively bettered. His name was wellknown and be was able to refuse a chair ofhistory at Edinburgh University and lateranother at Saint Andrews. In 1842 the death ofMrs. Carlyle's mother threw an income of atleast £200 in the hands of the Carlyles andrelieved them of the fear of penury.

From this time on Carlyle's work fallsmainly into two main classes: (1) the lives ofgreat individuals and (2) pamphlets of aquasi-political sort, powerful lashings of moderninstitutions. The most important of the latter,‘Past and Present,’ written in seven weeks,appeared in 1843. Herein Carlyle commits acommon and characteristic fallacy in comparinga charming picture of monastic England withsome of the worst things of modern life, tothe obvious disadvantage of the latter and, byextension and implication, to modern civilisationas a whole. Nevertheless, the book makesa strong appeal to our humanity, and is perhapsthe best example of Carlyle's manyprotests against modern barbarism. It is said tohave been productive of good in factorylegislation. Meanwhile he was engaged on animportant work of the first class spoken of, —‘Cromwell,’ which, after three years' preparation,appeared in 1845. Carlyle, with characteristicthoroughness, spent a large part of thesummers of 1842 and 1843 in visiting the battlefieldsof the Civil War. It is significant thatthe “great man” was now, with Carlyle, notnecessarily a man of letters, as in his worksprevious to the ‘French Revolution,’ but a manof political prowess as well, and this tendencyto exalt the man of might reached its climax inthe ‘History of Frederick II.’ The yearsbetween ‘Cromwell’ and the beginning of‘Frederick’ are marked by his notable ‘Latter-DayPamphlets’ (1849), one of the mostdenunciatory of his books, and his ‘Life of JohnStirling’ (1851), a dear friend who had diedsix years before and who, like Edward Kingand Arthur Hallam, is chiefly rememberedthrough the work of a greater man. After atrip in the fall of 1851, with the Brownings, toFrance, where he met the chief literary celebritiesof the time — and passed unfavorablecomment on them as on all affairs French — hesettled down to the planning of the ‘Historyof Frederick II.’ On the preparation of thiswork and the composition of it he was engagedfor the next 13 years. His study wasindefatigable and he made two trips to Germany,in 1852 and 1858, to study the battlefields ofFrederick. In 1850 the first two volumes werepublished with great success, the third in 1862,the fourth in 1864 and the fifth and sixth in1865. During the composition he had donepractically no side work; a somewhatunintelligent dialogue, ‘Ilias Americana in Nuce,’on the American War, and his ‘Prinzenraub’are the only pieces.

The compilation of ‘Frederick’ marks theclimax of Carlyle's life. It won for him recognitionin England as the foremost of prosewriters, and in Germany, too, his fame wasnaturally great. Even the Scotch decided tohonor a prophet of their own country; he waselected lord rector of Edinburgh University,and in the spring of 1866 delivered theinaugural address, on the ‘Reading of Books.’While on his trip he received news of the deathof Mrs. Carlyle, which, in spite of theirdisagreements, was a severe blow to him and maybe said to mark the beginning of his decline.He was over 70 years of age and the labor of‘Frederick’ had left him worn and weary.Thereafter he wrote only three books ofcomparative importance. ‘Shooting Niagara —and After,’ of the type of ‘Past and Present,’the ‘Early Kings of Norway,’ of the herotype, and ‘Reminiscences of Jane Carlyle andof Jeffrey and Edward Irving,’ written in themonths following the death of his wife, butnot published until after his death. His lastpublic utterance, according to Froude, was aletter which he wrote, in May 1877, to theTimes, protesting against the moral supportwhich England was giving to Turkey in thewar with Russia. His life at this time isdescribed as one surrounded by honors andsupported by a few staunch friends, but as one ofgrowing weariness and desire to be at rest,until, after two years of physical feebleness,he died quietly in his 86th year.

Carlyle's character and place in literaturehave, since his death, as during his life, beensubjects of much comment and of comment ofthe most diverse sorts. He has been extolledon the one hand as the greatest of prophets,the most eloquent of sages; and condemned, onthe other, as the noisiest of egoists. It istherefore impossible to fix with any approximationhis value as a character or as a man ofletters, in the sense that Milton, Addison, Grayand others may be tolerably well characterized.His severest critics, like Mr. Robertson, areundoubtedly right when they accuse him ofinconsistency and irrationality and when theypoint out in his character certain elements ofbrutality and narrow egoism, and yet the factremains that he has been the awakening forceof many men and that there is a feeling abroadthat he is one of the great names in Englishprose. Perhaps the most sensible of theseopposing views may best be summed up inHuxley's words (letter to Lord Stanley, 9March 1881): “Few men can have dissentedmore strongly from his way of looking atthings than I; but I should not yield to themost devoted of his followers in gratitude forthe bracing, wholesome influence of his writingswhen, as a very young man, I was essayingwithout rudder or compass to strike out acourse for myself.”

In view of such diverse opinions, all ofwhich contain truth, it seems necessary merelyto protest against loose extremist views whichhave just been referred to. Whether oneregards him as the wisest of men or the noisiestof hypocrites is, after all, a question of temperor of what one regards as valuable in theuniverse, and usually has value only as theexpression of personal opinion. Carlyle's influence,like that of Dr. Johnson, is the personalinfluence of a powerful and upright man ratherthan that of a philosopher or a discoverer ofnew truth. His personal qualities as expressedin his writings — his integrity, his earnestness,his independence, his sincerity, his hatred ofsham, cant and affectation, his vigor — are whatcount in his hold on people. As a system, hiswork, as his critics justly remark, is unscientificand untrue. His work, so voluminous and, onthe face of it, consisting of translations, literary,biographical, historical essays and books,tracts of the times and satires, comes down tothe glorification of a galaxy of interesting and,in different ways, powerful individuals: Schiller,Goethe, Cromwell, Frederick, himself (in‘Sartor Resartus’) and others, and to thedoctrine that their power is good. There is, ofcourse, no means of testing the general truthof such views. They are really personal. Heis, therefore, to be regarded as a seer, aprophet, a preacher, who feels deeply a, ratherthanthe, meaning of life, and exhorts hisreaders to feel rightly and live rightly, to “dothe duty which lies next them,” to “work anddespair not.” These things he said with animpressiveness equaled by few men and to avery large body of listeners. SeeFrench Revolution, The;Hero and Hero Worship;Sartor Resartus;Frederick the Great.

Bibliography. — Of the numerous editionsof Carlyle's writings the best, aside from hiscorrespondence, is probably the AshburtonEdition, in 17 volumes. The ‘Early Letters ofThomas Carlyle’ (1886; 2d series, 1888); the‘Correspondence between Goethe and ThomasCarlyle’ (1887); and the ‘Correspondence ofThomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson’(1883), edited by C. E. Norton are the besteditions of his letters. Froude's ‘ThomasCarlyle’ (in 4 vols., 1882-84) is the great biography,and is, incidentally, the most censured biographyof recent times, because of the franknesswith which it discloses the domestic life of theCarlyles. Excellent short lives are those ofJohn Nicoll, in the ‘English Men of LettersSeries’ (1894), Richard Garnett, in the ‘GreatWriters Series’ (1887) (to which there is addeda very full bibliography), and Sir Leslie Stephen,in theDictionary of National Biography.The critical essays of Matthew Arnold, Emersonin ‘Discourses in America,’ AugustineBirrell, ‘Obiter Dicta’, J. R. Lowell. ‘ProseWorks,’ Vol. II, John Morley, ‘Miscellanies,’Vol. I, J. M. Robertson, ‘Modern Humanists,’the severest of Carlyle's critics, and Stephen,‘Hours in a Library,’ Vol. III, may be citedas representing different views among the mosteminent of modern critics. Consult alsoFroude's ‘Letters and Memorials of JaneWelsh Carlyle’ (1883); Roe, F. W., ‘Carlyleas a Critic of Literature’ (1910); Craig, R. S.,‘The Waking of Carlyle’ (1909); Wilson,‘Froude and Carlyle’ (1898); Shepherd andWilliamson, ‘Memoirs of the Life and Writingsof Thomas Carlyle’ (1881); Wylie,‘Thomas Carlyle the Man and his Books’(1881).

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