German romance, published in 1827. Carlyle married in 1825, and about the same time retired to his country farm of Craigenputtoch in Dumfriesshire, where he remained for several years to cultivate, undisturbed, his own line of literature and contemplation. There is an interesting reference to his abode and manner of life in one of his letters to Goethe, with whom he at this period maintained a friendly correspondence:—"Here Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of Saint Pierre. My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forebode me no good result. But I came here solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own; here we can live, write, and think as best pleases ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature…. From some of our heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and the Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me…. The only piece of any importance that I have written since I came here, is an 'Essay on Burns.'" Besides this (1828), he had contributed to the Edinburgh Review his first article on Richter and a survey of German literature (1827). From that date till 1844 he continued to write at intervals for the Edinburgh, Foreign Quarterly, and Frazer, the series of critical and historical essays which make up his "Miscellanies." Those on Count Cagliostro and the Diamond Necklace form a sort of proem to the "French Revolution." That work itself appeared in 1837, and with it Carlyle's name was for the first time brought before the public. "Sartor Resartus" was originally written in 1830, and after being rejected by several London firms, was printed in successive numbers of Frazer's Magazine. Published as a single volume only in 1838, it made its way in this country slowly but steadily, and helped to establish the author's place in the front rank of our thinkers. "Chartism" appeared in 1839. Meanwhile Carlyle, who had transferred his residence to the metropolis, had been distinguishing himself in another sphere. In the summer of 1837 he delivered a course of six lectures on German literature, and a second series of twelve on the history of literature (1838). In 1839 he gave a course on the revolutions of modern Europe; and in 1840 delivered the lectures on "Heroes and Hero-worship," which were afterwards published. Carlyle himself, at the conclusion of his last lecture, expressed his satisfaction with the cordial way in which his call for attention had been answered, but it was his last effort in this direction. He has confined himself since then to the other channels of literature, in which he judged, perhaps rightly, that his force more really lay. His "Past and Present" was published in 1843; "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches" in 1845. The rapid sale of this latter work bore testimony to the growing fame of its author. A new edition was called for a few weeks after its publication, and a third, with additions, appeared in 1849. The "Latter Day Pamphlets" came out in 1850, and the "Life of John Sterling" in 1851. His "Life of Frederick the Great," 2 vols. 8vo, appeared in 1860.
When Carlyle's essay on German literature first appeared, it marked an era in the history of criticism. The writers who contributed to the early numbers of the Edinburgh Review, brought with them a large amount of taste and sound judgment, which they successfully applied to such works as fell within their sphere, and could fairly be tested by their canons. In dealing with a new literature they failed to criticise, because they had never made the necessary effort to comprehend it, and intolerantly proscribed all that did not conform to rules which, applied beyond that sphere, became mere arbitrary formulæ. If such criterions have been dismissed as inadequate—and it is a first principle of our criticism that we must place ourselves as far as possible in the position of our author—it is mainly owing to the influence of the "Miscellanies." The literature of Germany—to which three-fourths of those papers are devoted—first became known in England through Carlyle, because he himself was the first to apprehend its meaning. At the close of one of his essays he gives two pieces of advice, salutary at all times, but more especially needful at the time they were given. The first records his conviction that careful study is necessary to understand well anything that is much worth understanding;—the belief, in his own phrase, that nothing great can be "adequately tasted." Nothing more impresses the student of his works than his thoroughness. He never takes a task in hand without the obvious determination to perform it to the best of his ability; consequently, when he has satisfied himself that he is master of his subject, he will more than satisfy others. His second impresses the duty of trying to throw ourselves into the mind of others before we pronounce judgment on them. This is the grand secret of Carlyle's success as a critic: to it is chiefly owing his pre-eminent skill to interest us in the thoughts, feelings, and fortunes of every one of whom he writes. He has many of the minor requisites of a good critic; he knows how to distinguish the essential from the accidental—what to forget and what to remember—what to say and what not to say—where to begin and when to stop. Not only his biographies of Schiller and Sterling, but the shorter notices scattered among his essays, are intrinsically more complete, and throw more real light on character, than whole volumes of ordinary memoirs. He exhibits in prose the same penetrating imagination which distinguishes a great poet, and, circum præcordia ludens, brings out in bold relief the main features of the men whom he designs to commemorate. His desire to find good in all greatness—a charitable breadth of sympathy expressed in the saying, that we must judge a man not by the number of his faults, but by the amount of his deflection from the circle, narrow or wide, which bounds his being—enables him to appreciate those most widely differing in creed, sentiment, and lines of activity from each other and himself. We can understand how a native of the Scottish Lowlands, having much of his nature in common with their lyrist, should have written the best of essays on Robert Burns; or how one so remarkable for stern independence and strength of will, should find congenial themes of discourse in Johnson, Luther, Mirabeau, and Francia; but when the same searching criticism is applied to such names as Voltaire, Diderot, and Novalis, with the same generous liberality, we admire a genius as flexible as it is intense. Carlyle sums his view of history, when he calls it "the essence of innumerable biographies." Nothing is more characteristic than his tendency to individualize every thing he meets, and his dislike of abstractions, political or moral, which he cannot connect with something concrete, single, and definite. Most biographies are too vague for him; he delights in Boswell. He glides over dissertations and generalizations, to pick out some little bit of fact from the heart of Clarendon or Hume. The essence of history does not lie in laws, senate-houses, and battle-fields, but in the tide of thought and action—the world of existence that in gloom and brightness blossoms and fades apart from these. Other writers have expanded biography into history—Carlyle condenses history into biography. Even in the "French Revolution," where he has pre-eminently to deal with masses, he gives a striking prominence to their leaders. They pass before us as the writer gives them names, and calls them back again as they lived, and moved, and died, amid those stormy scenes. But this is only one of the aspects of the work. The "Revolution" has been compared to an epic poem. Its author recognizes in his theme the longest and fiercest fight the world ever saw—the death-wrestle of outworn feudalism and young democracy. Hence there is a deep back-ground to all these figures, in the rush and surge of contending multitudes. If the book is in prose, it is such prose as was never seen before. It is all a "flame picture," every page seems on fire; we read the whole as if we were listening to successive volleys of artillery. "Cromwell" is avowedly biographical. The events of the period are brought out in Carlyle's book only so far as they are connected with the career and character of his hero; but in its elucidation of that character it is without a rival. There never was a work which more completely reversed a historical verdict. The old notions of hypocrisy, fanaticism, and ambition are refuted out of his own month; but it required the illustrative genius of his editor to bring back life and meaning to those half-forgotten letters, and sweep away the clouds that so long obscured the august proportions of the Protector. "Frederick" abounds with evidences of the same revivifying power. The introductory portion, which has to lead us through one of the most tangled mazes of early Prussian history, is rendered interesting mainly by the restoration of a whole gallery of German worthies. In the main body of the book, the men and women connected with the Prussian court are brought out in fuller light and shade:—Frederick himself at Sans Souci, with his cocked hat, walking stick, and wonderful grey eyes; Sophie Charlotte, with her grace, wit, and
