The compilation of marks the climax of Carlyle's life. It won for him recog nition in England as the foremost of prose writers, and in Germany, too, his fame was naturally great. Even the Scotch decided to honor a prophet of their own country; he was elected lord rector of Edinburgh University, and in the spring of 1866 delivered the in augural address, on the 'Reading of Books.' While on his trip he received news of the death of Mrs. Carlyle, which, in spite of their dis agreements, was a severe blow to him and may be 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 of com parative importance. Shooting Niagara and After,' of the type of 'Past and Present,' the 'Early Kings of Norway,' of the hero type, and 'Reminiscences of Jane Carlyle and of Jeffrey and Edward Irving,' written in the months following the death of his wife, but not published until after his death. His last public utterance, according to Froude, was a letter which he wrote, in May 1877, to the Times, protesting against the moral support which England was giving to Turkey in the war with Russia. His life at this time is de scribed as one surrounded by honors arid sup ported by a few staunch friends, but as one of growing 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 literature have, since his death, as during his life, been subjects of much comment and of comment of the most diverse sorts. He has been extolled on the one hand as the greatest of prophets, the most eloquent of sages; and condemijed, on the other, as the noisiest of egoists.$ It is therefore impossible to fix with any approxima tion his value as a character or as a man of letters, in the sense that Milton, Addison, Gray and others may be tolerably well characterized. His severest critics, like Mr. Robertson, are undoubtedly right when they accuse him of inconsistency and irrationality and when they point out in his character certain elements of brutality and narrow egoism, and yet the fact remains that he has been the awakening force of many men and that there is a feeling abroad that he is one of the great names in English prose. Perhaps the most sensible of these opposing views may best be summed up in Huxley's words (letter to Lord Stanley, 9 March 1881) : 'Few men can have dissented more strongly from his way of looking at things than I; but I should not yield to the most devoted of his followers in gratitude for the bracing, wholesome influence of his writings when, as a very young man, I was essaying without rudder or compass to strike out a course for myself?) In view of such diverse opinions, all of which contain truth, it seems necessary merely to protest against those extremist views which have just been referred to. Whether one re gards him as the wisest of men or the noisiest of hypocrites is, after all, a question of temper or of what one regards as valuable in the uni verse, and usually has value only as the ex pression of personal; Carlyle's influ ence, like that of Dr. ohnson, is the personal
influence of a powerf and upright man rather than that of a philosopher or a discoverer of new truth. His personal qualities as expressed in his writings — his integrity, his earnestness, his independence, his sincerity, his hatred of sham, cant and affectation, his vigor — are what count in his hold on people. As a system, his work, as his critics justly remark, is unscientific and untrue. His work, so voluminous and, on the face of it, consisting of translations, liter ary, biographical, historical essays and books, tracts of the times and satires comes down to the glorification of a galaxy of interesting and, in different ways, powerful individuals: Schil ler, Goethe, Cromwell, Frederick, himself (in Resartus') and others, and to the doc trine that their power is good. There is, of course, no means of testing the general truth of such views. They are really personal. He is, therefore, to be regarded as a seer, a prophet, a preacher, who feels deeply a, rather than the, meaning of life, and exhorts his readers to feel rightly and live rightly, to I'do the duty which lies next them,l) to ((work and despair not These things he said with an impressiveness equaled by few men and to a very large body of listeners. See FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE; HERO AND HERO WORSHIP; SARTOR RESARTUS ; FREDERICR THE GREAT.
Bibliography.— Of the numerous editions of Carlyle's writings the best, aside from his correspondence, is probably the Ashburton Edi tion, in 17 volumes. The 'Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle' (1886; 2d series, 1:.:•:) ; the 'Correspondence between Goethe and Thomas Carlyle' (1887); and the 'Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson) (1883), edited by C. E. Norton are the best editions of his letters. Froude's 'Thomas Car lyle' (in 4 vols., 1882434) is the great biography, and is, incidentally, the most censured biog raphy of recent times, because of the frankness with which it discloses the domestic life of the Carlyles. Excellent short lives are those of John Nicoll, in the 'English Men of Letters Series' (1894), Richard Garnett, in the 'Great Writers Series' (1887) (to which there is added a very full bibliography), and Sir Leslie Ste phen, in the Dictionary of National Biography. The critical essays of Matthew Arnold, Emer son in 'Discourses in America,' Augustine Birrell, (0aiter Dicta', J. R. Lowell, 'Prose Works,' 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 cited as representing different views among the most eminent of modern critics. Consult also Froude's 'Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle' (1883) ; Roe, F. W., 'Carlyle as a Critic of Literature' (1910) • Craig, R. S., 'The Waking of Carlyle' (1409) ; Wilson, (Fronde and Carlyle> (1898) ; Shepherd and Williamson, 'Memoirs of the Life and Writ ings of Thomas Carlyle' (1881) ; Wylie, 'Thomas Carlyle the Man and his Books' (1881).