Leslie Stephen

“ In 1819 he had begun to study German, with which he soon acquired a very remarkable familiarity. Many of his contemporaries were awakening to the importance of German thought, and Carlyle’s knowledge enabled him before long to take a conspicuous part in diffusing the new intellectual light. The chief object of his reverence was Goethe. In many most important respects no two men could be more unlike; but, for the present, Carlyle seems to have seen in Goethe a proof that it was possible to reject outworn dogmas without sinking into materialism. ”

“ Moreover, Froude’s characteristic desire for picturesque effect, unchecked by any painstaking accuracy, led to his reading preconceived impressions into his documents. The result was that Carlyle was too often judged by his defects, and regarded as a selfish and eccentric misanthrope with flashes of genius, rather than as a man with many of the highest qualities of mind and character clouded by constitutional infirmities. Yet it would be difficult to speak too strongly of the great qualities which underlay the superficial defects. ”

“ His most popular contemporaries seemed to him to be false guides, and charlatans had ousted the heroes. The general condemnation of “shams” and cant had, of course, particular applications, though he left them to be inferred by his readers. Carlyle was the exponent of many of the deepest convictions of his time. Nobody could be more in sympathy with aspirations for a spiritual religion and for a lofty idealism in political and social life. To most minds, however, which cherish such aspirations the gentler optimism of men like Emerson was more congenial. ”

“ Froude in this and the later publications held that he was giving effect to Carlyle’s wish to imitate Johnson’s “penance.” No one, said Boswell, should persuade him to make his lion into a cat. Froude intended, in the same spirit, to give the shades as well as the lights in the portrait of his hero. His admiration for Carlyle probably led him to assume too early that his readers would approach the story from the same point of view, that is, with an admiration too warm to be repelled by the admissions. ”

“ The mannerism, which has been attributed to an imitation of Jean Paul, appeared to Carlyle himself to be derived rather from the phrases current in his father’s house, and in any case gave an appropriate dialect for the expression of his peculiar idiosyncrasy. But it could not be appreciated by readers who would not take the trouble to learn a new language. In the French Revolution Carlyle had discovered his real strength. He was always at his best when his imagination was set to work upon a solid framework of fact. ”

“ Chartism begins with a fierce attack upon the laissez faire theory, which showed blindness to this necessity. The prevalent political economy, in which that theory was embodied, made a principle of neglecting the very evils which it should be the great function of government to remedy. Carlyle’s doctrines, entirely opposed to the ordinary opinions of Whigs and Radicals, found afterwards an expositor in his ardent disciple Ruskin, and have obvious affinities with more recent socialism. ”

“ Carlyle, accustomed to his father’s household, was less frightened by the prospect of poverty. He was determined not to abandon his vocation as a man of genius by following the lower though more profitable paths to literary success, and expected that his wife should partake the necessary sacrifice of comfort. ”

“ Carlyle took up the task again and finished the whole on the 12th of January 1837. “I can tell the world,” he said to his wife, “you have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man. Do what you like with it, you ——”
The publication, six months later, of the French Revolution marks the turning-point of Carlyle’s career. Many readers hold it to be the best, as it is certainly the most characteristic, of Carlyle’s books. The failure of Sartor Resartus to attract average readers is quite intelligible. ”

“ Miss Welsh’s previous affair with Irving had far less importance than Froude ascribes to it; and she soon came to regard her past love as a childish fancy. She recognized Carlyle’s vast intellectual superiority, and the respect gradually deepened into genuine love. The process, however, took some time. Her father had bequeathed to her his whole property (£200 to £300 a year) . In 1823 she made it over to her mother, but left the whole to Carlyle in the event of her own and her mother’s death. She still declared that she did not love him well enough to become his wife. ”

“ The ordinary mind complained that he had no specific remedy to propose for the growing evils of the time; and the more cultivated idealist was alienated by the gloom and the tendency to despair. To a later generation it will probably appear that, whatever the exaggerations and the misconceptions to which he was led, his vehement attacks at least called attention to rather grave limitations and defects in the current beliefs and social tendencies of the time. ”

“ Carlyle had thought of occupying Craigenputtock, a remote and dreary farm belonging to Mrs Welsh. His wife objected his utter incapacity as a farmer; and they finally took a small house at Comely Bank, Edinburgh, where they could live on a humble scale. The brilliant conversation of both attracted some notice in the literary society of Edinburgh. The most important connexion was with Francis, Lord Jeffrey, still editor of the Edinburgh Review. Though Jeffrey had no intellectual sympathy with Carlyle, he accepted some articles for the Review and became warmly attached to Mrs Carlyle. ”

“ Jeffrey, stimulated perhaps by his sympathy for Mrs Carlyle, was characteristically generous. Besides pressing loans upon both Thomas and John Carlyle, he offered to settle an annuity of £100 upon Thomas, and finally enabled John to support himself by recommending him to a medical position. [1] Carlyle’s proud spirit of independence made him reject Jeffrey’s help as long as possible; and even his acknowledgment of the generosity (in the Reminiscences) is tinged with something disagreeably like resentment. In 1834 he applied to Jeffrey for a post at the Edinburgh Observatory. ”

“ He went to Edinburgh once or twice, to deliver the discourses required from students of divinity. He does not seem, however, to have taken to his profession very earnestly. He was too shy and proud to see many of the Annan people, and found his chief solace in reading such books as he could get. In 1816 he was appointed, through the recommendation of Leslie, to a school at Kirkcaldy, where Edward Irving, Carlyle’s senior by three years, was also master of a school. Irving’s severity as a teacher had offended some of the parents, who set up Carlyle to be his rival. ”

“ Irving, who had welcomed him on former occasions, was just dying,—a victim, as Carlyle thought, to fashionable cajoleries. A few young men were beginning to show appreciation. J. S. Mill had made Carlyle’s acquaintance in the previous visit to London, and had corresponded with him. Mill had introduced Ralph Waldo Emerson, who visited Craigenputtock in 1833. Carlyle was charmed with Emerson, and their letters published by Professor Norton show that his regard never cooled. Emerson’s interest showed that Carlyle’s fame was already spreading in America. ”