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III The English Essays
1. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
 Life
Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist, was born into a
peasant family in a small village in southern Scotland in 1795. At 14, he
entered Edinburgh University. There he was influenced by the Scottish
Enlightenment Movement and finally abandoned Calvinism on which he was
brought up. After leaving the university without a degree, Carlyle read
widely on German Romanticism and philosophy, especially the works of
Goethe (1749-1832) and
Schiller (1759-1805), and
began to show his promises as a translator and critic of German literature.
At this period, he published Life of Schiller (1823-1824) and
translated Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (1824). In 1826, Carlyle married
Jane Welsh and then settled at the farm of her parents, where he finished
his first important work Sartor Resartus, which was partly autobiographical
and partly philosophical.
Later the couple moved to London, where he became
acquainted with
John Stuart Mill, a famous
essayist then, who introduced him to Emerson, the American philosopher and
essayist. “The visit of an angel,” called Jane their meeting with Emerson.
Carlyle started with Emerson a correspondence which lasted decades despite
their different characters. “He talks like a very unhappy man, profoundly
solitary, displeased and hindered by all men and things about him,” Emerson
said about his friend. From 1833 to 1834, Sartor Resartus was first
published in Fraser’s Magazine, but criticized for eccentricity. It was
written in an energetic, complex language that came to be called
“Carlylese”. Two years later, it was republished in America and warmly
accepted.
At 42, Carlyle published The French Revolution, A
History (1837), which finally established him as a great critic in
English literature. In 1841, six lectures were collected into On Heroes
and Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History and published.
During the 1840s, Carlyle moved towards Fascism, which
led to a break with many old friends and allies such as Mill and, to a
lesser extent, Emerson. After the revolutions of 1848, and political
agitations in Britain Carlyle published a collection of essays entitled
Latter Day Pamphlets (1850) in which he attacked democracy as an absurd
social ideal, while equally condemning hereditary aristocratic leadership.
In later writings Carlyle sought to examine instances
of heroic leadership in history, such as Letters and Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell (1845). His other outstanding works included Chartism
(1839), Past and Present (1843), and The History of Friedrich Ⅱ of
Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (1858-1865).
In 1865, Carlyle was elected Lord Rector of
Edinburgh University.
However, only one year later, he encountered the sudden death of his beloved
wife, from which he never recovered. For the next 15 years, he lived in
lonely seclusion. In 1874, he accepted the Prussian Order of Merit offered
by
Bismarck. However, he
declined baronetcy from Disraeli. Carlyle died in 1881 and was buried in his
hometown beside his parents instead in the Westminster Abbey out of his own
desire.
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