A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

by John W. Cousin

CAREW, THOMAS (1594?-1639). —Poet, s. of Sir Matthew C., was ed. at Oxf., entered the Middle Temple, and was one of the first and best of the courtly poets who wrote gracefully on light themes of Court life and gallantry. C.'s poems have often much beauty and even tenderness. His chief work is Coelum Britannicum. He lived the easy and careless life of a courtier of the day, but is said to have d. in a repentant frame. His poems, consisting chiefly of short lyrics, were coll. and pub. after his death. One of the most beautiful and best known of his songs is that beginning "He that loves a rosy cheek."

CAREY, HENRY (d. 1743). —Dramatist and song-writer, was believed to be an illegitimate s. of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. He wrote innumerable burlesques, farces, songs, etc., often with his own music, including Chrononhotonthologos (1734), a burlesque on the mouthing plays of the day, and The Dragon of Wantley (1744?). His poem, Namby Pamby, in ridicule of [Ambrose Phillips] (q.v.), added a word to the language, and his Sally in our Alley is one of our best-known songs. God Save the King was also claimed for him, but apparently without reason.

CARLETON, WILLIAM (1794-1869). —Novelist, s. of a poor Irish cottar, b. and brought up among the Irish peasantry, acquired an insight into their ideas and feelings which has never been equalled. His finest work is in his short stories, collected under the title of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, of which two series were pub. in 1830 and 1832 respectively. He also wrote several longer novels, of which the best is Fardorougha the Miser (1837), a work of great power. Others are The Misfortunes of Barny Branagan (1841), Valentine M'Clutchy (1845), Rody the Rover (1847), The Squanders of Castle Squander (1854), and The Evil Eye. C. received a pension of £200 from Government.

CARLYLE, ALEXANDER (1722-1805). —Autobiographer, s. of the Minister of Cummertrees, Dumfriesshire, was ed. at Edin. and Leyden, and entering the Church became Minister of Inveresk, and was associated with Principal Robertson as an ecclesiastical leader. He was a man of great ability, shrewdness, and culture, and the friend of most of the eminent literary men in Scotland of his day. He left an autobiography in MS., which was ed. by Hill Burton, and pub. in 1860, and which is one of the most interesting contemporary accounts of his time. His stately appearance gained for him the name of "Jupiter" C.

CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795-1881). —Historian and essayist, was b. at Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire. His f., James C., was a stonemason, a man of intellect and strong character, and his mother was, as he said, "of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." His earliest education was received at the parish school of Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl of Sartor Resartus). Thence he went to the Grammar School of Annan, and in 1809 to the Univ. of Edin., the 90 miles to which he travelled on foot. There he read voraciously, his chief study being mathematics. After completing his "Arts" course, he went on to divinity with the view of entering the Church, but about the middle of his course found that he could not proceed. He became a schoolmaster first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy, where he formed a profound friendship with [Edward Irving] (q.v.), and met Margaret Gordon, afterwards Lady Bannerman, believed by some to be the prototype of Blumine in Sartor. Returning in 1819 to Edin. he for a time studied law and took pupils; but his health was bad, he suffered from insomnia and dyspepsia, and he tired of law. He was also sorely bestead by mental and spiritual conflicts, which came to a crisis in Leith Walk in June 1821 in a sudden uprising of defiance to the devil and all his works, upon which the clouds lifted. For the next two years, 1822-24, he acted as tutor to Charles Buller (whose promising political career was cut short by his premature death) and his brother. On the termination of this engagement he decided upon a literary career, which he began by contributing articles to the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. In 1824 he translated Legendre's Geometry (to which he prefixed an essay on Proportion), and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister; he also wrote for the London Magazine a Life of Schiller. About this time he visited Paris and London, where he met Hazlitt, Campbell, Coleridge, and others. Thereafter he returned to Dumfriesshire. In the following year (1826) he m. Jane Baillie Welsh, and settled in Edin. Here his first work was Specimens of German Romance (4 vols.) A much more important matter was his friendship with Jeffrey and his connection with the Edinburgh Review, in which appeared, among others, his essays on Richter, Burns, Characteristics, and German Poetry. In 1828 C. applied unsuccessfully for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in St. Andrews, and the same year he went to Craigenputtock, a small property in Dumfriesshire belonging to Mrs. C., where they remained for several years, and where many of his best essays and Sartor Resartus were written, and where his correspondence with Goethe began. In 1831 he went to London to find a publisher for Sartor, but was unsuccessful, and it did not appear in book form until 1838, after having come out in Fraser's Magazine in 1833-34. The year last mentioned found him finally in London, settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, his abode for the rest of his life. He immediately set to work on his French Revolution. While it was in progress he in 1835 lent the MS. to J.S. Mill, by whose servant nearly the whole of the first vol. was burned, in spite of which misfortune the work was ready for publication in 1837. Its originality, brilliance, and vividness took the world by storm, and his reputation as one of the foremost men of letters in the country was at once and finally established. In the same year he appeared as a public lecturer, and delivered four courses on German Literature, Periods of European Culture, Revolutions of Modern Europe, and Heroes and Hero-Worship, the last of which was pub. as a book in 1841. Although his writings did not yet produce a large income, his circumstances had become comfortable, owing to Mrs. C. having succeeded to her patrimony in 1840. Books now followed each other rapidly, Chartism had appeared in 1839, Past and Present came out in 1843, and Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell in 1845, the last named being perhaps the most successful of his writings, inasmuch as it fully attained the object aimed at in clearing Cromwell from the ignorant or malevolent aspersions under which he had long lain, and giving him his just place among the greatest of the nation. In 1850 he pub. his fiercest blast, Latter Day Pamphlets, which was followed next year by his biography of his friend [John Sterling] (q.v.). It was about this time, as is shown by the Letters and Memoirs of Mrs. C., that a temporary estrangement arose between his wife and himself, based apparently on Mrs. C.'s part upon his friendship with Lady Ashburton, a cause of which C. seems to have been unconscious. In 1851 he began his largest, if not his greatest work, Frederick the Great, which occupied him from that year until 1865, and in connection with which he made two visits to Germany in 1852 and 1858. It is a work of astonishing research and abounds in brilliant passages, but lacks the concentrated intensity of The French Revolution. It is, however, the one of his works which enjoys the highest reputation in Germany. In 1865 he was elected Lord Rector of the Univ. of Edin., and delivered a remarkable address to the students by whom he was received with enthusiasm. Almost immediately afterwards a heavy blow fell upon him in the death of Mrs. C., and in the discovery, from her diary, of how greatly she had suffered, unknown to him, from the neglect and want of consideration which, owing to absorption in his work and other causes, he had perhaps unconsciously shown. Whatever his faults, of which the most was made in some quarters, there can be no doubt that C. and his wife were sincerely attached to each other, and that he deeply mourned her. In 1866 his Reminiscences (pub. 1881) were written. The Franco-German War of 1870-71 profoundly interested him, and evoked a plea for Germany. From this time his health began to give way more and more. In 1872 his right hand became paralysed. In 1874 he received the distinction of the Prussian Order of Merit, as the biographer of its founder, and in the same year, Mr. Disraeli offered him the choice of the Grand Cross of the Bath or a baronetcy and a pension, all of which he declined. The completion of his 80th year in 1875 was made the occasion of many tributes of respect and veneration, including a gold medal from some of his Scottish admirers. He d. on February 5, 1881. Burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, but he had left instructions that he should lie with his kindred. He bequeathed the property of Craigenputtock to the Univ. of Edin.