THOMAS CARLYLE: The Life and Ideas of a Prophet by Julian Symons

Author:Julian Symons
Language: eng
Format: epub

He said to her: "I know not whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do (as is likeliest), but this I could tell the world: You have not had for a hundred years any book that came more direct and flamingly sincere from the heart of a living man." He might have added, it occurred to him afterwards: "My poor little Jeannie and me, hasn't it nearly killed us both?"

* * * * *

The French Revolution was received much more warmly than its author had expected. Dickens carried a copy of it about with him everywhere; Thackeray wrote a handsome review of it in The Times; Southey praised it highly to Carlyle's face, wrote to one friend that he would probably read it six times, and to another that it was "a book like which there was nothing in our language before nor is likely to be again." Emerson thought it a wonderful book which would last a very long time, and assured Carlyle of its good reception in America, where Sartor had sold more than a thousand copies. Mill summed up this favourable view when he said that the sub-title of the book should not be "A History" but "A Poem". Jeffrey observed cautiously that it was a book which "cannot be read anywhere, without leaving the impression that the author (whatever else may be thought of him) is a man of genius and originality, and capable of still greater things than he has done even here."

To the other side such orthodox Whigs as Macaulay and Brougham recognized Carlyle as a man of dangerous and sinister talent, and disapproved wholly of his zest for violence; while Wordsworth wrote a sonnet against the book and thought it a pity that Carlyle and Emerson, who he joined together as "Philosophers who have taken a language which they suppose to be English for their vehicle" could not be "left exclusively to their appropriate reward -- mutual admiration". The hostile view, however, was swamped by the chorus of praise for this, the first book on which Carlyle's name had actually appeared. Within a few months of its publication he found himself respected, and even famous, in the literary world of the day. Jane expressed a fear to John Sterling that she might be torn to pieces by her husband's feminine admirers, whom she ironically listed: deaf Harriet Martineau who "(presented) him with her ear-trumpet with a pretty blushing air of coquetry"; a Mrs. Pierce Butler who bolted in and out of the house with riding habit, cap and whip, "but no shadow of a horse, only a carriage, the whip I suppose being to whip the cushions with, for the purpose of keeping her hand in practice"; and a large soft vacant young American beauty who declared herself his ardent admirer and called out quite passionately at parting: "Oh, Mr. Carlyle, I want to see you to talk a long long time about -- Sartor".

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