CARLYLE AND HIS GERMAN MASTERS
'The best thing Carlyle did was to let Englishmen know that there was such a thing as German literature.' So said a famous instructor of youth more than thirty years ago. He said it probably less because he believed it himself—so, at least, it is charitable to assume—than for the sake of giving a shock to the undergraduate of the moment. And, if so, his purpose was attained. Yet, even with this allowance, it was a rather perverse utterance. For, with all his debt to the Germans, Carlyle had more than enough to say on his own account; and, when the enemy has done his worst, he remains, as Professor Saintsbury has said, the greatest figure among the men of letters of his own day and country.
Yet the debt of Carlyle to the Germans cannot be denied. And it is the object of the following paper to show at least in part—what it was, and to what authors in particular it was due. No attempt will here be made to go beyond the two writers whose influence on him was, on the whole, the strongest and most fruitful. These are Goethe and Fichte. Much, no doubt, might be said of Richter; but it would require more space than it is here possible to give. Something might also be said about Schiller, the first of the Germans with whom Carlyle made acquaintance, and the first of whom he wrote.[1] But there are two reasons for not entering here on this branch of the subject. The first is that it has been exhaustively discussed by Herr Küchler.[2] The second, that, whatever may be the place finally allotted
- ↑ See Froude, History of Carlyle's Life, i. p. 131.
- ↑ See Anglia, vol. xxvi.
