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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan in the south of Scotland, December
4, 1795. His father, a rigorous Calvinist belonging to the seceding "Burgher
Kirk," was a stone-mason, a man of stern and upright character with a gift of
fiery speech. Thomas began his education at home, went next to the village
school, thence to the grammar school at Annan, and in 1809 walked to
Edinburgh, a hundred miles away, and entered the University with a view to
preparing for the ministry. On finishing his arts course, he was appointed
mathematical usher at Annan and two years later at Kirkcaldy, where he formed
an intimate friendship with Edward Irving. But he hated teaching, and, as he
had abandoned his orthodox views and could no longer think of preaching, he
returned to Edinburgh to study for the bar, supporting himself by private
tutoring and writing for encyclopedias. These years, 1819-1822, he regarded as
the most miserable of his life. Tormented with dyspepsia, torn with religious
perplexity, with no prospects and no profession, he found comfort only in the
affection of his family. It was about this time that the study of German led
him to Goethe, who proved his chief aid in his struggles to gain spiritual
peace.
Through Irving Carlyle obtained a position as tutor to Charles and Arthur
Buller at a salary that enabled him to help his family in substantial ways.
This engagement lasted for two years, during which he translated Legendre`s
"Geometry" and Goethe`s "Wilhelm Meister," and wrote a "Life of Schiller." His
relation with the Bullers led him to London, and for a short time to Paris;
and in his "Reminiscences" we have a graphic picture of the unfavorable
impression made on him by fashionable and literary society.
He now retired to a farm near his father`s house, and spent a peaceful
year, chiefly in translating. In 1826 he married Jane Baillie Welsh, the
brilliant and beautiful daughter of a doctor in Haddington, whom he had met
through Irving. Miss Welsh was descended on one side from John Knox, on the
other from the gypsies, and, it was claimed, William Wallace; and her
temperament did not belie her ancestry. She had been much courted, and her
wooing by Carlyle was as ominous as it was extraordinary. Over their
subsequent domestic relations there has been a vast amount of unseemly
controversy, no one condemning Carlyle more severely than he did himself. Yet
it may be argued that they found in their marriage as much satisfaction as
either of them was capable of finding in wedded life. Carlyle`s absorption in
his work and his career undoubtedly led to much neglect and suffering on the
part of his wife, but it is clear that the expressions of remorse in his
writings after her death are not fairly to be taken as judicial evidence
against him.
For the first eighteen months after marriage, the Carlyles lived in
Edinburgh, where they shared in the most distinguished intellectual society of
the city, and where Carlyle formed with Francis Jeffrey a pleasant and useful
relation. Jeffrey accepted articles for the "Edinburgh Review," and their
success there opened to Carlyle the pages of other periodicals. The first two
reviews were on Richter and on German Literature, which, with his translations
and later writings in the same field, gained him recognition as a pioneer of
German literature in England, and brought him generous personal
acknowledgments from Goethe.
In spite of these successes, the financial affairs of the Carlyles were
still far from satisfactory, and to reduce expenses they retreated to the farm
of Craigenputtock, which belonged to Mrs. Carlyle. Here they lived for more
than six years, in an isolation broken only by occasional visits from guests,
notable among whom were the Jeffreys and Emerson. It was here that the
quasi-autobiographical "Sartor Resartus" was written, and more German
articles, the market for which, however, grew duller and duller. A visit to
London in 1831, for which he had to borrow money from Jeffrey, led to new
relations with publishers and editors; and four months in Edinburgh broadened
his range of subjects. But, finally, solitude and the need of money drove them
to London, where they settled in 1834 in the house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea,
where they lived for the rest of their lives.
The most important event of the earlier years of the London period was
the ripening of Carlyle`s friendship with J. S. Mill. To this intercourse was
due his undertaking his "History of the French Revolution," published in 1837.
Meanwhile, he succeeded in getting sorely needed funds by lecturing, giving
four courses in successive springs, the last of which was his well-known
"Heroes and Hero-worship." These relieved him from pressing necessities, and
with the recognition of the brilliant qualities of his "French Revolution"
came the turn in his fortunes. He gained many friends, among whom were such
men as John Sterling, whose life he afterward was to write with sympathy and
charm; F. D. Maurice, J. G. Lockhart, R. M. Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton,
and the Barings; and he was often sought out by young inquirers. Emerson had
introduced his works to America, with the result of both fame and profit. He
was already becoming a noted figure in intellectual circles in London.
His political ideas were put into definite shape in his "Chartism"
(1839), and, if any one had ever doubted it, it now became clear that he was
never to be classed with any of the established political parties. "Past and
Present," a contrast between medieval monastic life and modern conditions,
still further emphasized his separation from both Tories and Radicals. While
these shorter works were being put forth, he was laboring on his next great
book, the "Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell"; and when this appeared in
1845 his position as one of the leading men of letters of the day was
thoroughly established.
After a year or two mainly occupied with political writing, most of it at
once powerful in style and ineffective in result, he settled down to another
great task, a life of Frederick the Great, which occupied his main energies
till 1865, and extended his reputation both on the Continent and at home. In
this year he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University. The Inaugural
Address, which constitutes the sole duty of this honorary office, he delivered
the next year; and on his journey south after a triumphal reception he was met
at Dumfries by the news of his wife`s death. She was buried in the Abbey Kirk
at Haddington; and the epitaph which her husband placed upon her grave tells
what the blow meant for him. It runs thus: "In her bright existence she had
more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a capacity of
discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she
was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word
unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy that he did or
attempted. She died at London, 21st April, 1866, suddenly snatched from him,
and the light of his life as if gone out."
And, indeed, the light of his life had gone out. He was henceforth a
broken man. He revised his collected works, wrote his "Reminiscences," but
undertook no new tasks. He was now at the head of his profession, and
surrounded by friends and admirers; honors were showered on him at home and
abroad; but he lived in a gloom that deepened to the end. He died on February
4, 1881, and was buried in the old kirkyard at Ecclefechan.
Of the works by Carlyle here printed, "Characteristics" is a condensed
and telling statement of some of his most fundamental ideas; the essay on "Sir
Walter Scott" exhibits, both in its strength and in its shortcomings, the
domination of ethical over esthetic considerations in his estimate of
literature, and contains besides many characteristics generalizations on human
life and conduct; the "Inaugural Address," the subject of which is nominally
the "Reading of Books," summarizes rapidly his own intellectual history, and
digresses in true Carlylean fashion into religion, ethics, history, and a
variety of other topics. It is written in an exceptionally simple and
straightforward style, admirably suited to the occasion; the two other papers
represent more truly his habitual manner of expression - often abrupt, often
exaggerated, sometimes grotesque, but, to use his own words of his "French
Revolution," coming "direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man."
This style was, indeed, highly characteristic of its owner. The endless
labor he put into his histories, the passion of his political convictions, the
profound earnestness of his moral and religious preaching, were combined with
a thirst for effective expression that led him to shatter any convention that
stood in the way of truth, and gave a weight and edge to his utterance that
make it a thing unique in English literature. Complex and inconsistent to the
point of paradox, absolutely sincere yet exaggerated and over-emphatic,
violent to brutality yet tender of heart, a Radical to the Tories and a Tory
to the Radicals Carlyle formed no school, yet was one of the most stimulating
and potent influences of his century. Over his character and his message the
voices of controversy have not yet died down, but whoever turns to his work
finds coursing everywhere through it the red blood of a man.
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