THOMAS CARLYLE

BY

JOHN NICHOL, LL. D, M.A., BALLIOL, OXON


1904



PREFATORY NOTE

The following record of the leading events of Carlyle's life and attempt
to estimate his genius rely on frequently renewed study of his work, on
slight personal impressions--"vidi tantum"--and on information supplied
by previous narrators. Of these the great author's chosen literary
legatee is the most eminent and, in the main, the most reliable. Every
critic of Carlyle must admit as constant obligations to Mr. Froude as
every critic of Byron to Moore or of Scott to Lockhart. The works of
these masters in biography remain the ample storehouses from which every
student will continue to draw. Each has, in a sense, made his subject his
own, and each has been similarly arraigned.

I must here be allowed to express a feeling akin to indignation at the
persistent, often virulent, attacks directed against a loyal friend,
betrayed, it may be, by excess of faith and the defective reticence that
often belongs to genius, to publish too much about his hero. But Mr.
Froude's quotation, in defence, from the essay on _Sir Walter Scott_
requires no supplement: it should be remembered that he acted with