Carlyle's important works may be divided into three general classes,--critical and literary essays, historical works, and Sartor Resartus, the last being in a class by itself, since there is nothing like it in literature. To these should be added a biography, the admirable Life of John Sterling, and Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences, which are more interesting and suggestive than some of his better known works. We omit here all consideration of translations, and his intemperate denunciations of men and institutions in Chartism, Latter-Day Pamphlets, and other essays, which add nothing to the author's fame or influence.
Essay on BurnsOf the essays, which are all characterized by Carlyle's zeal to get at the heart of things, and to reveal the soul rather than the works of a writer, the best are those on "Burns," "Scott," "Novalis," "Goethe," "Characteristics," "Signs of the Times," and "Boswell's Life of Johnson."[244] In the famous Essay on Burns, which is generally selected for special study, we note four significant things: (1) Carlyle is peculiarly well fitted for his task, having many points in common with his hero. (2) In most of his work Carlyle, by his style and mannerisms and positive opinions, generally attracts our attention away from his subject; but in this essay he shows himself capable of forgetting himself for a moment. To an unusual extent he sticks to his subject, and makes us think of Burns rather than of Carlyle. The style, though unpolished, is fairly simple and readable, and is free from the breaks, crudities, ejaculations, and general "nodulosities" which disfigure much of his work. (3) Carlyle has an original and interesting theory of biography and criticism. The object of criticism is to show the man himself, his aims, ideals, and outlook on the universe; the object of biography is "to show what and how produced was the effect of society upon him; what and how produced was his effect on society." (4) Carlyle is often severe, even harsh, in his estimates of other men, but in this case the tragedy of Burns's "life of fragments" attracts and softens him. He grows enthusiastic and--a rare thing for Carlyle--apologizes for his enthusiasm in the striking sentence, "We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify." So he gives us the most tender and appreciative of his essays, and one of the most illuminating criticisms of Burns that has appeared in our language.
Heroes and Hero WorshipThe central idea of Carlyle's historical works is found in his Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), his most widely read book. "Universal history," he says, "is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." To get at the truth of history we must study not movements but men, and read not state papers but the biographies of heroes. His summary of history as presented in this work has six divisions: (1) The Hero as Divinity, having for its general subject Odin, the "type Norseman," who, Carlyle thinks, was some old heroic chief, afterwards deified by his countrymen; (2) The Hero as Prophet, treating of Mahomet and the rise of Islam; (3) The Hero as Poet, in which Dante and Shakespeare are taken as types; (4) The Hero as Priest, or religious leader, in which Luther appears as the hero of the Reformation, and Knox as the hero of Puritanism; (5) The Hero as Man of Letters, in which we have the curious choice of Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns; (6) The Hero as King, in which Cromwell and Napoleon appear as the heroes of reform by revolution.
It is needless to say that Heroes is not a book of history; neither is it scientifically written in the manner of Gibbon. With science in any form Carlyle had no patience; and he miscalculated the value of that patient search for facts and evidence which science undertakes before building any theories, either of kings or cabbages. The book, therefore, abounds in errors; but they are the errors of carelessness and are perhaps of small consequence. His misconception of history, however, is more serious. With the modern idea of history, as the growth of freedom among all classes, he has no sympathy. The progress of democracy was to him an evil thing, a "turning of the face towards darkness and anarchy." At certain periods, according to Carlyle, God sends us geniuses, sometimes as priests or poets, sometimes as soldiers or statesmen; but in whatever guise they appear, these are our real rulers. He shows, moreover, that whenever such men appear, multitudes follow them, and that a man's following is a sure index of his heroism and kingship.
Whether we agree with Carlyle or not, we must accept for the moment his peculiar view of history, else Heroes can never open its treasures to us. The book abounds in startling ideas, expressed with originality and power, and is pervaded throughout by an atmosphere of intense moral earnestness. The more we read it, the more we find to admire and to remember.
French RevolutionCarlyle's French Revolution (1837) is to be taken more seriously as a historical work; but here again his hero worship comes to the front, and his book is a series of flashlights thrown upon men in dramatic situations, rather than a tracing of causes to their consequences. The very titles of his chapters--"Astraea Redux," "Windbags," "Broglie the War God"--do violence to our conception of history, and are more suggestive of Carlyle's individualism than of French history. He is here the preacher rather than the historian; his text is the eternal justice; and his message is that all wrongdoing is inevitably followed by vengeance. His method is intensely dramatic. From a mass of historical details he selects a few picturesque incidents and striking figures, and his vivid pictures of the storming of the Bastille, the rush of the mob to Versailles, the death of Louis XVI, and the Reign of Terror, seem like the work of an eyewitness describing some terrible catastrophe. At times, as it portrays Danton, Robespierre, and the great characters of the tragedy, Carlyle's work is suggestive of an historical play of Shakespeare; and again, as it describes the rush and riot of men led by elemental passion, it is more like a great prose epic. Though not a reliable history in any sense, it is one of the most dramatic and stirring narratives in our language.
Oliver CromwellTwo other historical works deserve at least a passing notice. The History of Frederick the Great (1858-1865), in six volumes, is a colossal picture of the life and times of the hero of the Prussian Empire. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches is, in our personal judgment, Carlyle's best historical work. His idea is to present the very soul of the great Puritan leader. He gives us, as of first importance, Cromwell's own words, and connects them by a commentary in which other men and events are described with vigor and vividness. Cromwell was one of Carlyle's greatest heroes, and in this case he is most careful to present the facts which occasion his own enthusiasm. The result is, on the whole, the most lifelike picture of a great historical character that we possess. Other historians had heaped calumny upon Cromwell till the English public regarded him with prejudice and horror; and it is an indication of Carlyle's power that by a single book he revolutionized England's opinion of one of her greatest men.
Sartor ResartusCarlyle's Sartor Resartus (1834), his only creative work, is a mixture of philosophy and romance, of wisdom and nonsense,--a chaotic jumble of the author's thoughts, feelings, and experiences during the first thirty-five years of his life. The title, which means "The Tailor Patched-up," is taken from an old Scotch song. The hero is Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, a German professor at the University of Weissnichtwo (don't know where); the narrative concerns this queer professor's life and opinions; and the central thought of the book is the philosophy of clothes, which are considered symbolically as the outward expression of spirit. Thus, man's body is the outward garment of his soul, and the universe is the visible garment of the invisible God. The arrangement of Sartor is clumsy and hard to follow. In order to leave himself free to bring in everything he thought about, Carlyle assumed the position of one who was translating and editing the old professor's manuscripts, which are supposed to consist of numerous sheets stuffed into twelve paper bags, each labeled with a sign of the zodiac. The editor pretends to make order out of this chaos; but he is free to jump from one subject to another and to state the most startling opinion by simply using quotation marks and adding a note that he is not responsible for Teufelsdroeckh's crazy notions,--which are in reality Carlyle's own dreams and ideals. Partly because of the matter, which is sometimes incoherent, partly because of the style, which, though picturesque, is sometimes confused and ungrammatical, Sartor is not easy reading; but it amply repays whatever time and study we give to it. Many of its passages are more like poetry than prose; and one cannot read such chapters as "The Everlasting No," "The Everlasting Yea," "Reminiscences," and "Natural Supernaturalism," and be quite the same man afterwards; for Carlyle's thought has entered into him, and he walks henceforth more gently, more reverently through the world, as in the presence of the Eternal.
Carlyle's StyleGeneral Characteristics. Concerning Carlyle's style there are almost as many opinions as there are readers. This is partly because he impresses different people in widely different ways, and partly because his expression varies greatly. At times he is calm, persuasive, grimly humorous, as if conversing; at other times, wildly exclamatory, as if he were shouting and waving his arms at the reader. We have spoken of Macaulay's style as that of the finished orator, and we might reasonably speak of Carlyle's as that of the exhorter, who cares little for methods so long as he makes a strong impression on his hearers. "Every sentence is alive to its finger tips," writes a modern critic; and though Carlyle often violates the rules of grammar and rhetoric, we can well afford to let an original genius express his own intense conviction in his own vivid and picturesque way.
His MessageCarlyle's message may be summed up in two imperatives,--labor, and be sincere. He lectured and wrote chiefly for the upper classes who had begun to think, somewhat sentimentally, of the conditions of the laboring men of the world; and he demanded for the latter, not charity or pity, but justice and honor. All labor, whether of head or hand, is divine; and labor alone justifies a man as a son of earth and heaven. To society, which Carlyle thought to be occupied wholly with conventional affairs, he came with the stamp of sincerity, calling upon men to lay aside hypocrisy and to think and speak and live the truth. He had none of Addison's delicate satire and humor, and in his fury at what he thought was false he was generally unsympathetic and often harsh; but we must not forget that Thackeray--who knew society much better than did Carlyle--gave a very unflattering picture of it in Vanity Fair and The Book of Snobs. Apparently the age needed plain speaking, and Carlyle furnished it in scripture measure. Harriet Martineau, who knew the world for which Carlyle wrote, summed up his influence when she said that he had "infused into the mind of the English nation ... sincerity, earnestness, healthfulness, and courage." If we add to the above message Carlyle's conceptions of the world as governed by a God of justice who never forgets, and of human history as "an inarticulate Bible," slowly revealing the divine purpose, we shall understand better the force of his ethical appeal and the profound influence he exercised on the moral and intellectual life of the past century.