CARLYLE, THOMAS, was b. 4th Dec., 1795, fn the t. of Ecclefechan, parish of Hoddam, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Educated first at the parish school, and afterwards. at Annan, he passed to Edinburgh university, with a view to entering the Scottish church, in his 15th or 16th year. Here he studied irregularly, but with amazing avidity. The stories which are related of his immense reading are almost fabulous. About the middle of his theological curriculum, C. felt wholly disinclined to become a clergyman, and, after a short period spent in teaching at Dysart, in Fifcshire, he embraced literature as a profession. His first efforts were contributions to Brewster's Encyclopadia. In 1824, he published a translation of Legendre's Geometry, to which he prefixed an essay on proportion, mathematics having, during his college years, been a favorite study with him. In 1823-1824, had appeared in the London Magazine his Life of Schiller, and, during the same year, his translation of Goethe's Wilhelnx .Meister. In 1825, the Life of Schiller was recast, and published in a separate form. It was very highly praised; indeed, one can discern in the criticisms of the book certain indications of the genius of Carlyle. The translation of Wilhelm Meister met with a somewhat dif ferent fate. De Quincey, in one of his acrid and capricious moods, fell foul both of Goethe and his translator; while lord Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, admitting C. to be " a person of talents," slashed in cavalier fashion at 111c book. In 1827, C. married\ Miss Welch, a lineal descendant of John Knox, and, during the same year, appeared his Specimens of ,German Romance (4 vols., Tait, Edinburgh). From 1827 to 1834, he resided chiefly at Craigenputtoch, a small property in Dumfriesshire, belonging to his wife—the "loveliest nook in Britain,' as be says himself in n. letter to Goethe, " fifteen m n.w. of Dumfries, among the granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway almost to the Irish sea." Here C. revolved in his mind the great questions in philosophy, literature, social life, and politics, to the elucidation of which—after his own singular fashion—lie has earnestly dedicated his whole life. Here, also, he commenced to write the splendid series of critical and biographical essays which first familiarized Englishmen with the riches of modern German thought. For this work, he was incomparably better fitted than any man then living in Great Britain. Possessing a knowledge of the German tongue such as no foreigner ever surpassed, lie was also inspired by the conviction, that the literature of Germany, in depth, truthfulness, sincerity, and earnestness of purpose, was greatly superior to what was admired and relished at home. Gifted, moreover, in a degree altogether unex ampled, with a talent for portraiture, he soon painted in ineffaceable colors ou the British memory, the images of Schiller, Fichte, Jean Paul Richter, and other foreign magnates, until then almost unheard of. Gradually, educated circles awoke to the fact, that a literary Columbus had appeared among them, who had discovered a "new world" of letters, the freshness and grandeur of which were sure to attract, sooner or later, multitudes of adventurous spirits. One of his most beautiful, eloquent, and solid essays written at Craigenputtoch, was that on Burns (Edinburgh Review, 1828). It has given the tone to all subsequent criticism on the Scottish poet. The article on German Literature, in the same periodical, is a masterly review of a subject, the importance of which C. at length succeeded in compelling his countrymen to acknowledge. But his
chef-d'oeuvre written on the moorland farm, was Sartor Resartus (" the tailor done over," the title of an old Scottish song). This work, like all his after-productions, an inde scribable mixture of the sublime and the grotesque, was offered to various London firms, and rejected on the advice of their sapient " tasters," and at length published in successive portions in Fraser's Magazine (1833-34). It professes to be a history or biography of a certain Herr Teufelsdrockh (" Devil's Dirt "), professor in the university of Weissnichtwo (" Kennaquhair "), and contains the manifold opinions, speculations, inward agonies, and trials of that strange personage—or rather of C. himself. The whole book quivers with tragic pathos, solemn aspiration, or riotous humor. C. now removed to London, where he still resides. In 1837, appeared the first work which bore the author's name, The French Revolution, a History. Nothing can be more gorgeous than the style of this " prose epic." A. fiery enthusiasm pervades it, now softened with tenderness, and again darkened with grim mockery, making it throughout the most wonderful image of that wild epoch. C. looks on the explosion of national wrath as a work of the divine Nemesis, who "in the fullness of times" destroys, with sacred fury, the accumulated falsehoods of centuries. To him, therefore, the revolution is a " truth clad in hell-fire." During the same year, he delivered in London a series of lectures on German Literature; in 1838, another series on The History of Literature, or the Sucees sive Periods of European Culture; in 1839, another on Revolutions of Modern Europe; and a fourth in 1840, on Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History; of these only the last has been published. Meanwhile, the first edition of his Miscellanies (contribu tions to the reviews) had appeared in 1838, and his Chartism in 1839. In 1843, followed Past and .Present, which, like its predecessor, showed the deep, anxious, sorrowful interest C. was taking in the actual condition of his countrymen. In 1845, be published what is by many considered his masterpiece—Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations and a Connecting .Narrative. The research displayed in this book is something marvelous, but the author has been nobly rewarded for his toil, inasmuch as his vindication of the protector's character is most triumphant. To •C. has thus fallen the unspeakable honor of replacing in the pantheon of English history the statue of England's greatest ruler. In 1850, the Latter-Day Pamphlets, the fiercest, most sardonic, most furious of all his writings, came out. The violence of the language in these pamphlets offended many. Next year (1851) appeared the Life of John Sterling—a biog raphy of intense fascination for the younger intellects of the age. In 1858-1800, C. published The History of Frederick the Great; and, in 1875, Early Kings of Norway: Also The Portraits of John Knox. C. was elected lord rector of Edinburgh university in 1865; and, in 1873, received the Prussian royal order " for merit." In 1875, he was offered but refused the order of the bath.
That C.'s genius will never want ample recognition, is most certain; but his writings derive so much of their interest and power from what is peculiar to, or at least charac teristic of, the present time, that future ages may possibly wonder at their fiery splendors, and fail to sympathize with their prophetic enthusiasms.