Carlyle, Thomas

kar-lil', Thomas (1795-1881), an eminent man of letters. He was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. His father was a stone mason, known for intelligence and sterling worth. Carlyle himself says, "No man of my day or hardly any man can have had better parents." Young Thomas was so apt at his books that he could not remember the time when he was unable to read. He attended a nearby academy, taught school, and set out on foot for the University of Edinburgh. With the aid of oatmeal and cheese from home he boarded himself. He was an earnest student and a prodigious reader, learning more, he afterward claimed, from the university library than from his regular studies. "Nay, from the chaos of that library," say he, "I succeeded in fishing up more books than had been known to the keeper thereof." He studied theology, taught, and studied law, but could not tell which he hated worst. He became a tutor to two wealthy boys, and earned quite a sum of money with which he made himself comfortable, and assisted the folks at home.

Carlyle's likings were for literary work. In 1818 he settled down at Edinburgh and began writing articles for the various reviews. Here he married Jane Welsh, a superior woman, who had become interested in his literary struggles. After residing for a short time in Edinburgh, they removed to a small estate belonging to Mrs. Carlyle, known as Craigenputtock, or the Crag of the Hawks. Here Emerson visited him. Two men more unlike could not be found. Their friendship, however, continued through life.

Among other pieces of work, Carlyle here wrote his famous Essay on Burns. He was familiar with his subject and wrote in a sympathetic vein. It is not only his best essay, but the most suitable of his writings for young people. In 1834 he moved to London and settled in a suburb called Chelsea, where Mrs. Carlyle became noted for little receptions given to literary people. Carlyle was known as the "Sage of Chelsea."

Carlyle was a crabbed, bitter, dyspeptic man, of inflexible integrity, and unsparing in his criticisms. His works are hard to read, but are full of good thought. He was an earnest advocate of duty, hard work, and economy. Like Ruskin and other eminent British thinkers, he lacked faith in the ability of the common people to regulate affairs of state. He preached the doctrine that the leaders of society and government ought to be persons of great nobility of character, and of unselfishness, in whose ability and management the people should place implicit confidence. His Heroes and Hero Worship, a series of short lives of great men, gives his ideas on this subject. Another noted work is Sartor Resartus, or The Tailor Resewed. It is an account of his own early mental experience. His essays cover a wide range of German, English, and French subjects. A number are grouped under the title of Past and Present. Quite in line with Heroes and Hero Worship is the Life of Frederick the Great in twelve volumes, and Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. A History of the French Revolution is one of the most vivid pieces of writing in existence.

In 1866 Carlyle was appointed lord rector of Edinburgh University, a purely honorary position, not requiring residence. He went down to Edinburgh and delivered a noble inaugural address full of power, but was prostrated in the flush of new honors by the intelligence that Mrs. Carlyle had passed away. During their lives she had been a most faithful, tactful, and, we may say, brilliant companion, who smoothed away much of his roughness, and to whom he owed no small degree of his success.

Though dyspeptic, and with a tongue that rasped like a file, Carlyle was after all tender-hearted. He spent the rest of his life in the vain regret that he had not been better to his wife while he had not been better to his wife while he had her. At death, in 1881, his remains were conveyed at his request to his native village of Ecclefechan.

Carlyle is not an author easily read, or easily understood. Aside from his Essay on Burns and Essay on Johnson, he is scarcely to be read at all by young people; but he is fairly entitled to the name of "The censor of the age." Few men, if any, have had greater influence on the thought of a century than he.

SAYINGS.

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.

One life,-a little gleam of time between two eternities.

For one man who can stand prosperity, there are one hundred that will stand adversity.

No mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something.

Genius is an immense capacity for taking trouble.

Always there is a black spot in our sunshine; it is the shadow of ourselves.

Do the duty that lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

Find out your task; stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work.

SAID OF CARLYLE:

No literary man of the nineteenth century is likely to stand out more distinct, both for flaws and genius, to the centuries which will follow.--R. H. Hutton.

Carlyle's literary style has been loudly and justly condemned. It is usually jagged and intricate, a mixture of terse English vocabulary with involved German structure of sentence. At first it seems like the belching of a volcanic mind; but after careful scrutiny it is found to be the studied expression of a mighty rhetorician who seeks not grace, but vividness; not elegance, but power.--Thomas B. Shaw.

No writer left a deeper impress on the Victorian Age.--F. V. N. Painter.