A History of English Literature

usage; some are Biblical or other archaisms; others spring mainly from
Carlyle's own amazing mind. His purpose in employing, in the denunciation
of shams and insincerities, a form itself so far removed from directness
and simplicity was in part, evidently, to shock people into attention; but
after all, the style expresses appropriately his genuine sense of the
incoherence and irony of life, his belief that truth can be attained only
by agonizing effort, and his contempt for intellectual and spiritual
commonplaceness.
In 1834 Carlyle moved to London, to a house in Cheyne (pronounced Cheeny)
Row, Chelsea, where he lived for his remaining nearly fifty years. Though
he continued henceforth in large part to reiterate the ideas of 'Sartor
Resartus,' he now turned from biography, essays, and literary criticism to
history, and first published 'The French Revolution.' He had almost decided
in despair to abandon literature, and had staked his fortune on this work;
but when the first volume was accidentally destroyed in manuscript he
proceeded with fine courage to rewrite it, and he published the whole book
in 1837. It brought him the recognition which he sought. Like 'Sartor
Resartus' it has much subjective coloring, which here results in
exaggeration of characters and situations, and much fantasy and
grotesqueness of expression; but as a dramatic and pictorial vilification
of a great historic movement it was and remains unique, and on the whole no
history is more brilliantly enlightening and profoundly instructive. Here,
as in most of his later works, Carlyle throws the emphasis on the power of
great personalities. During the next years he took advantage of his success
by giving courses of lectures on literature and history, though he disliked
the task and felt himself unqualified as a speaker. Of these courses the
most important was that on 'Heroes and Hero-Worship,' in which he clearly
stated the doctrine on which thereafter he laid increasing stress, that the
strength of humanity is in its strong men, the natural leaders, equipped to
rule by power of intellect, of spirit, and of executive force. Control by
them is government by the fit, whereas modern democracy is government by
the unfit. Carlyle called democracy 'mobocracy' and considered it a mere
bad piece of social and political machinery, or, in his own phrase, a mere
'Morrison's pill,' foolishly expected to cure all evils at one gulp. Later
on Carlyle came to express this view, like all his others, with much
violence, but it is worthy of serious consideration, not least in twentieth
century America.
Of Carlyle's numerous later works the most important are 'Past and
Present,' in which he contrasts the efficiency of certain strong men of
medieval Europe with the restlessness and uncertainty of contemporary
democracy and humanitarianism and attacks modern political economy; 'Oliver
Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' which revolutionized the general opinion
of Cromwell, revealing him as a true hero or strong man instead of a
hypocritical fanatic; and 'The History of Frederick the Great,' an enormous
work which occupied Carlyle for fourteen years and involved thorough
personal examination of the scenes of Frederick's life and battles. During
his last fifteen years Carlyle wrote little of importance, and the violence
of his denunciation of modern life grew shrill and hysterical. That society
was sadly wrong he was convinced, but he propounded no definite plan for
its regeneration. He had become, however, a much venerated as well as a
picturesque figure; and he exerted a powerful and constructive influence,
not only directly, but indirectly through the preaching of his doctrines,
in the main or in part, by the younger essayists and the chief Victorian
poets and novelists, and in America by Emerson, with whom he maintained an
almost lifelong friendship and correspondence. Carlyle died in 1881.
Carlyle was a strange combination of greatness and narrowness. Like