CARLYLE, THOMAS

Carlyle, Thomas: translation

(1795–1881)

Writer and social prophet. Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan in Scotland, but uneasily lost his Calvinist faith, and became influenced by German Romanticism . He translated Goethe'sWilhelm Meister's Apprenticeshipin 1824, and published theLife of Schillerthe following year.Sartor Resartus(1833–4) reflects Carlyle's debt to the German movement, and the themes of anti-democratic Romanticism, invoking the dynamic as opposed to the mechanical, and the personal, moral force of the ‘strong just man’ as against the degraded masses and the plod of everyday events, dominate much of his difficult and mannered work. The manuscript of Carlyle'sHistory of the French Revolution(1837) was accidentally used to light a fire by one of J. S. Mill's servants when Carlyle was visiting him, but he rewrote it. He was a friend of Emerson and greatly influenced the New England transcendentalists . Samuel Butler said that it was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable instead of four.