Carlyle’s unpublished lectures preserved in the 
 
 Anstey MS., 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 
 
 BOMBAY BRANCH, ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 R. P. KARKARIA. 
 
Carlyle’s hitherto unpublished Lectures on the periods of 
 European Culture, as preserved in the Anstey MS., in the 
 possession of the Society. Part . I. By R. P. Karkarta, 
 Esq. 
 
 [Read, 31st August 1891.] 
 
 When our Honorary Secretary, whose brief tenure of office has 
 already been signalised by the re-discovery, as I may term it, of our 
 valuable Dante MS., by the tracing and settling of the history of our 
 Assyrian Relics and Inscriptions, whose decipherment promises to 
 throw some new light on ancient Assyrian history, and the order that 
 has been slowly evolved out of the chaotic mass of geological specimens 
 iu our Museum, requested me to write a paper on another precious 
 literary MS. in our possession, I hesitated a good deal before I consented. 
 For what, I thought, has an Asiatic Society to do with Carlyle and 
 the periods of European Culture ? But I was encouraged by the fact 
 that only last year our Asiatic Society had shown its readiness to 
 listen to a valuable paper by Mr. Macdonell on Dante, a subject 
 equally, if not further removed from the aims of an Oriental Society. 
 Nay, to judge from the unusually large attendance of members on that 
 occasion, it seemed that the Society liked such papers better than 
 other purely Oriental ones. Therefore I hoped that the indulgence 
 which was granted to Dante might be extended to Carlyle, especially 
 as the words, spoken by him more than half a century ago, are here 
 given out to the world almost for the first time since they were uttered. 
 Nor are some parts of his lectures so very removed from our 
 legitimate province. What he says about Belief and Unbelief, for 
 example, at great length and from different points of view, is applicable 
 to the East as well as to the West. Again his sympathetic manner 
 of looking at old and worn-out creeds like those of the ancient Greeks 
 and Romans, and his vindication of the sincerity of these peoples from 
 the charges of quackery and falsehood, should be very instructive to 
 those who treat the ancient though by no means worn-out creeds of 
 India and the East. 
 
 The immediate occasion of Carlyle mounting the platform and giving 
 lectures to a ‘ dandiacal ’ audience, against whom he had inveighed 
 
2 
 
 carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 in Sartor , was his straitened pecuniary circumstances TIis object was, 
 as he himself says in these lectures of Shakespeare, ‘ to gather a little 
 money, for he was very necessitous.’ Thus it was his poverty 
 consented not his will. Though by the year 1838 he had done 
 some of his best w T ork, written Sartor , which is now the most widely 
 read of his works (Dr. Smiles, Memoir of Murray, Vol. II., p. 325), 
 and just finished his grand epic of the French Revolution, besides 
 having written some of his best shorter essays, Carlyle had not 
 yet emerged into fame. The vast public which later on learnt to 
 admire his writings, in spite of their superficial uncouthness and re¬ 
 pulsiveness, had not yet arisen. He had yet to educate and almost to 
 create the public taste to appreciate his works. His books therefore 
 could either find no publisher at all, or, if published, bring him no 
 profit whatever. He was, as a consequence, in constant dread of 
 misery and ruin. But amidst this gloom of darkness there was one ray 
 of hope. A prophet has proverbially no honour in his own country. But 
 beyond the Atlantic, in the new home which his countrymen had found 
 for their shattered liberties, they showed greater discernment. 
 Carlyle was honoured there as a rising great teacher. The Americans 
 could appreciate the philosophy of Herr Teufelsdroch, and, what 
 was of more vital importance, could pay in hard dollars for it, 
 much earlier than the British Philistine. Moreover, he had kind 
 friends there especially, the Emersons, who would willingly do every¬ 
 thing for him. So Carlyle almost resolved to have nothing more 
 to do with the Old England that had treated him so harshly, and to 
 start for New and kinder England,—‘to buy a rifle and spade, and 
 withdraw to the Transatlantic Wilderness, far from human beggaries 
 and basenesses,’ as he himself put it vigorously. (Reminiscences ed. 
 Froude, Vol. II., p. 180.) Thus his country was about to lose 
 him just at the time when he had reached the maturity of his 
 powers. Some keen-sighted friends, who knew what a loss and a 
 shame it would be to let such a man go, resolved to keep him back 
 still. It was known that he was going to America in response to an 
 invitation to lecture there. So these friends, chief among whom was 
 Harriet Martineau and the Wilsons, prevailed upon him to remain and 
 lecture at home. 
 
 Carlyle had a great horror of mounting the platform, and hated this 
 kind of work. “ The excitement of lecturing, ” says Mr. Froude, w hose 
 Life of his great master, is worthy to rank by the side of Boswell and 
 
Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 3 
 
 Lockhart, Carlyle’s own Sterling and Sir George Trevelyan’s Macaulay 
 as one of the very best biographies in any literature, “so elevating and 
 agreeable to most men, seemed to depress, and irritate him. ” {Life 
 in Lonn t Vol. I., p. 138.) An observer, Sir George Pollock, who 
 had just then been called to the bar, writes of ‘ Carlyle in the agony of 
 lecturing with tirmset mouth, painful eyes, and his hands convulsively 
 grasped, suffering as one might fancy an Indian would at the stake!” 
 (Personal Reminiscences, Vol I., 177.) Carlyle himself writes to 
 Emerson : “I shall be in the agonies of lecturing ! All me! Often when 
 I think of the matter how my one sole wish is to be left to hold 
 my tongue, and by what bayonets of Necessity clapt to my back, 
 I am driven to that lecture-room, and in what mood, and ordered to 
 speak or die, I feel as if my only utterance should be a flood of tears 
 and blubbering! But that, clearly will not do. Then, again, I think 
 it is perhaps better so ; who knows ?” (Correspondence of Carlyle and 
 Emerson, ed. Prof. Norton, Vol. I., p. 156.) It was better so, and he 
 was persuaded in the end, ‘ Detestable mixture of prophecy and play 
 actorism, as I sorrowfully defined it,’ he grumbles; ‘ nothing could 
 well be hatefuller to me ; but I was obliged. And she, oh she was my 
 angel, and unwearied helper and comforter in all that; how we drove 
 together, we poor two, to our place of execution ; she with a little 
 drop of brandy to give me as the very last; and shone round me like 
 a bright aureola, when all else was black and chaos! ’ (Reminiscences 
 ed. Froude, Vol. II., p.187.) Miss Martineau got together about 200 
 friends who consented to listen to him discoursing on German literature, 
 his favourite subject. This was the first course of lectures, and it proved 
 a success, though Henry Taylor, who was present at the first lecture, had 
 augured otherwise. Writing to Miss Fenwick on May 6, 1837, he 
 says : ‘He was nervous in the extreme insomuch that he told me 
 nothing but the determination not to be beaten could have brought 
 him through the first lecture. Nervous difficulties take much 
 of course from the effect, which they might otherwise have; but I 
 doubt whether under any circumstances, he would have much charm 
 for a fashionable London auditory. He wants all the arts and dex¬ 
 terities which might propitiate them. But though I fear he has no 
 chance of much success, I think his naivete and the occasional 
 outbreaks of his genius and spirit will save him from being considered 
 as a signal failure. His nervousness makes me dreadfully nervous in 
 listening to him, so that I find the greatest relief when he is done.’ 
 
4 
 
 Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 (Correspondence of Henry Taylor ed. Dr, Dowdeu, p. 81.) Carlyle 
 did not write out his lectures, but insisted on speaking to his audience. 
 As it floes not appear that this course was reported in full, it 
 seems to be now lost. 
 
 Encouraged by this success, his friends got up a second course. 
 
 It was to be on the periods of European Culture. The lectures 
 were to be twelve in number, the subscription for each ticket 
 being two guineas. They were delivered in 17, Edward Street, 
 Portman Square, during the months of April, May and June, 
 1838. The first lecture was given on Monday, April 30, and 
 the rest on the succeeding Mondays and Fridays of each week. 
 The portrait which Caroline Fox has drawn two years later of Carlyle 
 as he appeared while lecturing is graphic and may be given here: 
 “Carlyle soon appeared and looked as if he felt a well-dressed London 
 audience scarcely the arena for him to figu re in as popular lecturer. 
 He is a tall, robust-looking man; rugged simplicity and indomitable 
 strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius in it—not always 
 smouldering there, but flashing from his beautiful grey eyes, from 
 the remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. His 
 manner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously convinced 
 of what he utters, and who had much—very much—in him that was 
 quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear ; and 
 when the Englishman’s sense of beauty or truth exhibited itself in 
 vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave 
 his hand, as if that were not the sort of homage which Truth 
 demanded. He began in a rather low nervous voice with a broad 
 Scotch accent, but it soon grew r firm and shrank not abashed from its 
 great task.” (Journals and Letters, Vol. I., p. 152.) Monckton 
 Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, too, w r as favourably impressed. 
 
 ‘ The most notable things in your way,’ wrote he to Aubrey de Vere 
 in 1838, ‘ have been Carlyle’s Lectures ; they have been perhaps more 
 interesting than anything else, as all picturesque history must be, and 
 he talks as graphically as his “French Revolution.” His personality 
 is most attractive. There he stands, simple as a child, and his happy 
 thought dances on his lips and in his eyes, and takes word and 
 goes away, and he bids it God-speed, whatever it be.’ (Life of 
 Lord Houghton by Mr. Wemyss Reid, Vol. I., p» 220.) But Carlyle 
 struck another observer quite differently. George Ticknor, the Ame¬ 
 rican historian of Spanish literature, was in London while Carlyle was 
 
caklyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 5 
 
 delivering his second course of lectures, and he thus writes of him in 
 his journal: “He is a rather small, spare, ugly Scotchman, with a 
 strong accent, which I should think he takes no pains to mitigate. 
 His manners are plain and simple, but not polished, and his conver¬ 
 sation much of the severe sort. To-day he spoke, as I think he 
 commonly does, without notes, and therefore as nearly extempore as a 
 man can who prepares himself carefully, as it was plain he had done. 
 He was impressive, I think, though such lecturing could not well be 
 very popular, and in some parts, if not poetical, he was pictur¬ 
 esque. He was nowhere obscure, nor were his sentences artificially 
 constructed, though some of them no doubt savoured of his 
 peculiar manner.” (Life of Ticknor, Vol. II., p. 180.) “This 
 time,” says Mr. Froude, “he succeeded brilliantly, far better than 
 on his first experiment.” The money result was nearly <£300 
 after all expenses had been paid,—a great blessing, as Carlyle said, 
 to a man that had been haunted by the squalid spectre of beg¬ 
 gary. But a greater blessing was that it had a great influence on 
 many men who have since become famous. Frederic Denison Maurice, 
 another great ‘ guide of English thought in matters of faith ’ in this 
 century, said that 4 he had been more edified by Carlyle’s Lectures of 
 1838 than by anything he had heard for a long while, and that he had 
 then the greatest reverence for Carlyle. (Life of Maurice by his Son, 
 Vol. I., p. 251.) 
 
 As to his method of lecturing it appears that Carlyle usually brought 
 some notes with him to the lecture-room, but never used them. Miss 
 Kate Perry, writing to Sir Henry Taylor in 1882 about her remini¬ 
 scences of Carlyle’s Lectures of 1840, says: “I remember Jenny 
 imitating him very funnily when looking at his notes. After his 
 hour was over, he said : ‘ I find I have been talking to you all for one 
 hour and twenty minutes, and not said one ivord of what is down on 
 this sheet of paper, the subject-matter of our lecture to-day. I ask 
 your indulgence, though you have good right not to give it to me, so 
 good morning.’ I dare say you were also present at that lecture, and 
 remember the amusement it caused.” (Correspondence of Sir H. 
 Taylor ed. Dowden, p. 400.) The present course, too, was not 
 written out, but strictly spoken though he had prepared himself 
 carefully for it, especially the Greek and Roman parts. “Classics,” 
 as Mr. Froude says, “ are not the strong point of an Edinburgh 
 education, and the little he had learnt there was rusty.” So he had to 
 
6 
 
 Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 read up his classics for the first three lectures. The lectures were briefly 
 reported in the Examiner by Leigh Hunt, who, as Dr. Grauett truly 
 says, is always forgetting the reporter in the critic. Thus with the 
 exception of this short notice of Hunt, the course was supposed to 
 have been lost. “ It must ever be a source of regret,” says Mr. Wylie, 
 in his 1 Life of Carlyle,’ “ to the students of Carlyle’s writings that, 
 while the reporters of the London Press were, in that summer of 1838, 
 busy preserving every word of the orations of men who are already 
 forgotten, this poor fragment is all that has come down to us of a 
 series of lectures which would have thrown so much light on the 
 story of Carlyle’s spiritual life ” (p. 169). 
 
 But since this was written Dr. Dowden has published in the 
 Nineteenth Century (May 1881) some extracts from a note-book 
 containing a report of the lectures. Dr. Dowden’s report, how¬ 
 ever, to judge from the extracts he has given, is, as Dr. Garnett 
 says, a blundering one, and he has omitted many characteristic 
 passages. Our MS., though like Dr. Dowden’s, it wants one 
 lecture, viz ., the ninth, is very accurate and has no other omissions 
 like those in the latter. This omission of the ninth Lecture, which 
 was on French Scepticism, is not, I think, a serious one. For 
 Carlyle himself notes in his Journal: ‘ On Voltaire and French 
 Scepticism is the worst, as I compute, of all. On the day I was 
 stupid and sick beyond expression; also I did not like the man, 
 a fatal circumstance of itself, I had to hover vague on the surface. 
 The people seemed content enough. I myself felt sincerely disgusted. 
 That is the word.’ (Froude, I., 137.) Moreover, there is an 
 excellent summary of this lecture at the beginning of the tenth. 
 On collating all the extracts given by Dr. Dowden with the correspond¬ 
 ing passages in our MS , I have found that the reading of the latter is in 
 every case superior, and is free from the blunders of the former. 
 In a passage in the first lecture the Dowden MS. has this sentence: 
 “ Their first feature was whai we may call the central feature of all 
 others existing vehemence .’ Existing clearly gives no sense, and 
 Dr. Dowden, suspecting this, has conjectured exhausting . But our 
 MS. has exciting vehemence , which is the apposite epithet. A 
 little further there is this: “The sun of Poetry stared upon him.” 
 We have shone instead of stared, which is much better. In the sixth 
 lecture, speaking of the great favour which Calderon has with the 
 Germans, he says: “But I suspect that there is very much of forced 
 
Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 7 
 
 taste in this.” Both MSS. give “forced taste,” but in our MS. there is 
 a marginal note which says that this was not the expression used^ 
 “but I suppose it was the meaning of a technical word, which I did 
 not catch.” In the tenth lecture there is a ludicrous mistake in the 
 Dowden MS. “ In spite of early training I never do see sorites of 
 logic hanging together, put in regular order, but I conclude that it is 
 going to end in some niaiserie , in some miserable delusion.” This is 
 our reading. But the Dowden MS. has measure, the reading evidently 
 of an ignorant transcriber, instead of the French word niaiserie s 
 which is, of course, the only appropriate one in the place. In 
 the eleventh lecture there is this sentence in the Dowden 
 MS. : “ It was the primeval feeling of nature they came to crush 
 
 but * * rallied.” Dr. Dowden says that there is a word omitted 
 
 in his MS., and he conjectures “the spirit of France rallied.” But 
 our MS. has the full sentence, “ It was the primeval feeling of nature 
 they came to crush, and round it the old spirit of fanaticism had 
 rallied.” Towards the close of the third lecture, the Dowden MS. 
 omits a ‘ no * in a sentence and thus makes it illogical. ‘ It was given 
 to Tacitus to see no deeper into the matter than appears from the 
 above account of it.’ The no is in our MS. In the first lecture, 
 instead of ‘ faculty ’ which is in our MS. and is the proper word, the 
 other has ‘ facility.’ These are only the more prominent discrepancies. 
 I have noted many more of a less serious nature. They all prove our 
 MS. to be superior and more accurate ; and, as far as can be judged, a 
 correct and full report of Carlyle’s famous lectures. 
 
 A few words now about the writer of the MS., who has preserved 
 these lectures for the world. The audience which attended his 
 lectures is thus described by Jane Welsh Carlyle. ‘In quality the 
 audience is unsurpassable; there are women so beautiful and intelli¬ 
 gent that they look like emancipations from the moon; and men 
 whose faces are histories in which one may read with ever new 
 interest.’ (Letters and Memorials ed. Froude, Vol. I., p. 93.) Carlyle 
 himself in one of his letters to his mother, writes : “ My audience 
 was supposed to be the best, for rank, beauty, and intelligence, 
 ever collected in London. I had bonnie braw dames, Ladies this, 
 Ladies that, though I dared not look at them for fear they should 
 put me out. I had old men of fourscore; men middle-aged, with 
 fine steel-grey beards; young men of the Universities, of the law 
 profession, all sitting quite mum there, and the Annandale voice golly- 
 
8 
 
 CARLYLE’S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES. 
 
 ing at them.” (Fronde, Life in London , Vol. I., p. 140.) Amongthese 
 last, mentioned by Carlyle, was a young man who afterwards lived to 
 achieve a great success in his profession, as well as some in politics, in 
 two continents. Mr. Thomas Anstey was studying law at about this 
 time in London and was this year called to the bar. It speaks much 
 about his critical discrimination and foresight that he should have been 
 at so much pains to have a full report of these lectures for his private 
 use, at a time when Carlyle was not much known beyond the little circle 
 of his personal friends. Later on, taking notes of Carlyle’s lectures be¬ 
 came it seems fashionable, among ladies especially, as Caroline Fox 
 records in her Journal, April 19, 1841, that ‘ Sterling spoke of ladies 
 taking notes at Carlyle’s lectures of dates, not thoughts, and these all 
 wrong.’ (op. cit. Vol. I., p. 230.) Mr. Anstey has preserved also his 
 ticket of admission to the course, which is signed by Carlyle himself, 
 and is numbered 64. It is pasted on the inside of the cover of the MS. 
 When Anstey’^ vast library was dispersed at his death in 1873, our 
 Society bought this MS. among other valuable books. And we owe it 
 to the excellent judgment of our then Honorary Secretary, the late 
 Mr. James Taylor, that we possess this precious MS. of lectures, 
 whose supposed loss has been lamented by students of Carlyle. 
 
 The method which has been followed in the treatment of the MS- 
 is something like that which Carlyle has himself graphically 
 described in one of his Essays. “ You go through his writings and 
 all other writings, where he or his pursuits are treated of, and where- 
 ever you find a passage with his name in it, you cut it out, and carry 
 it away. In this manner a mass of materials is collected, and the 
 building now proceeds apace. Stone is laid on the top of stone, 
 a trowel or two of biographic mortar, if perfectly convenient, being 
 spread in here and there, by way of cement; and so the strange 
 pile suddenly arises; amorphous, pointing every way but to the 
 zenith, here a block of granite, there a mass of pipeclay ; till the 
 whole finishes, when the materials are finished!” ( Miscellanies , Vol. 
 I., p. 3.) Such a thing therefore will be the following paper. The 
 sole object is to give some idea of the wealth of matter and 
 manner contained in these lectures. Typical passages will therefore be 
 quoted in full. As Dr. Garnett says, these Lectures contain ‘Carlyle’s 
 opinions on a number of topics not elsewhere treated by him,’ care 
 will betaken to present such. On the whole, there will be little of my 
 own, and I shall achieve my object if I earn Charles II.’s famous 
 
CARLYLE^S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES. 
 
 9 
 
 compliment to Godolphin of being never in the way and never 
 out of it. 
 
 Carlyle commences his course with a few introductory words on 
 the greatness and dignity of Literature and on the importance of treat¬ 
 ing literary history, that is, the record of what men have thought, 
 before political history, the narration of what they have done. “It 
 must surely be an interesting occupation to follow the stream of mind 
 from the period at which the first great spirits of our Western World 
 wrote and flourished, down to these times. He who would pursue the 
 investigation, however, must commence by inquiring what it was these 
 men thought , before he enquires what they did , for after all they were 
 solely remarkable for Mind, Thought, Opinion,—opinion which 
 clothed itself in Action. x\nd their opinions have survived in their 
 books. A Book affords matter for deep meditation. Upon the 
 shelves books seem queer, insignificant things — but in reality there is 
 nothing so important as a book is. It stirs up the minds of men long 
 after the author has sunk into the grave and continues to evert its 
 corresponding influence for ages. Authors, unlike heroes, therefore, 
 do not need to be illuminated by others, they are themselves luminous. 
 This thought that was produced to day,—the pamphlet that was 
 published to-day, are only as it were reprints of thoughts that have 
 circulated ever since the world began. And we are interested in its 
 history for the thought is alive with us, and it lives when we are 
 dead. 5 ’ It may be noted that later on, at the close of the fourth 
 lecture, Carlyle, in a passage seemingly—but seemingly only—con¬ 
 tradictory to this, places noble action above even noble utterance 
 through books. Speaking of the contempt with which the medieval 
 warriors looked upon the art of waiting, he says : “Though writing 
 is one of the noblest utterances, for speech is so,—there are other 
 ways besides that of expressing one’s self; and to lead a Heroic life 
 is, perhaps, on the whole, a greater thing to do than to write a 
 Heroic Poem . . . Actions only will be found to have been pre¬ 
 
 served when writers are forgotten. Homer will one day be swallowed 
 up in Time, and so will all the greatest writers that have ever lived ; 
 and comparatively this is very little matter. But actions will not 
 be destroyed; their influence must live : good or bad, they will live 
 through Eternity, for the weal or woe of the doer! In particular 
 the good actions will flow on in the course of time, unseen perhaps, 
 but just as a vein of water flowing underground, hidden in general, 
 
10 
 
 CARLYLE'S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES. 
 
 but at intervals breaking out to tne surface in many a well for the 
 refreshment of men! ” No one need blame Carlyle for thus dissent¬ 
 ing from the famous view of Aristotle, in order to agree with Bacon 
 in preferring an active to a contemplative life. 
 
 Carlyle has no sympathy with those who would frame a theory for 
 explaining every fact in the political, social, as well as literary world. 
 Though he later on adopted what Mr. Herbert Spencer sarcastically 
 calls the “ great man theory,” though he is capable of saying the 
 history of the world is but the Biographies of great men” ( Heroes , 
 p. 1), and though he may be said to have written his greatest and 
 most laborious works to illustrate this cardinal theory which runs like a 
 fine thread through all his teaching, yet at the outset of these lectures, 
 he refuses to frame any theory about the history of European culture. 
 Indeed, somewhat strangely, he says that such theories are almost 
 impossible, not only in the present subject but almost everywhere else 
 in human things. “There is very great difficulty in reducing this 
 generation of thought to a perfect theory, as indeed there is with 
 everything else, except perhaps the stars only, and even they are not 
 reduced to theory,—not perfectly at least,—for although the solar 
 system is quite established as such, it seems doubtful whether it does 
 not in its turn revolve round other solar s} r stems; and so any theory 
 is in fact only imperfect. This phenomenon therefore is not to be 
 theorised on.” It is to be wished that these wise words had been 
 borne in mind by another historian of the same subject as this of 
 Carlyle, Dr. Draper, whose “ History of the Intellectual Development 
 of Europe is thoroughly vitiated by his absurd “ physiological theory ” 
 that the progress of society resembles that of a human being from 
 childhood to old age. Emerson, whose lectures on Human culture were 
 delivered in Boston at about the same time as his friend Carlyle’s, 
 and were, as Carlyle himself noted, ‘ on the very subject I am to dis¬ 
 course upon here in May coming,’ treated the subject in the light of 
 a curious theory of his own. Culture, according to him, is the unfold¬ 
 ing of a man’s potentialities, and is a discipline so universal as to 
 demonstrate that no part of a man is made in vain. And he demon¬ 
 strated this in successive lectures on the hands, the head, the eye and 
 ear, the heart, etc. (cf. Memoir of Emerson, by J. E. Cabot, Vol. I., 
 p.322, Vol. II., 351). In spite however of his disclaimer, Carlyle too 
 has a theory in these lectures or rather a central idea, which runs 
 through them all and connects the whole. With him belief and 
 
carlylf/s unpublished lectures. 11 
 
 faith is the one thing needful in human affairs, and disbelief and doubt 
 the cancer of the mind eating all life and vigour out of it and paralyz¬ 
 ing its activity. He judges periods and. nations by this standard, and 
 according as belief or doubt prevails, he praises or condemus them. 
 In the history of European culture he views the steady progress of 
 belief retarded at certain points by periods of doubt and unbelief. 
 A succession of faiths runstbrough all the ages from the earliest times 
 to the nineteenth century, with intervals of scepticism between them- 
 at certain periods. In the early times there prevailed the faiths of 
 Greece and Rome. These were followed by the Christian faith, after 
 a short reign of scepticism under Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus and 
 Seneca. The Christian faith had continued to rule for a long time 
 till it was seriously checked by the scepticism of the eighteenth 
 century, represented by Hume in England, Voltaire in France, and 
 the early writings of Goethe, especially his Werther in Germany. 
 This again was followed by the revival of faith in the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century, faith not exactly Christian, but a consi¬ 
 derably modified form of it, of which Goethe was the herald on the 
 continent. Carlyle has divided his course into four periods accord¬ 
 ingly, corresponding to these successions of faith. The first period 
 treated in three lectures is taken up with Greece and Rome, their 
 Pagan faith as well as Pagan scepticism. The second and long¬ 
 est period, treated in five lectures, treats of the Christian Faith and 
 its influence on culture in the four chief countries of Europe : Italy, 
 Spain, Germany and England. France has the chief place in the third 
 period of scepticism, which interrupted and modified the course of the 
 Christian Faith, and is treated in three lectures. The last period of 
 the revival of faith in this century is treated at great length in a single 
 closing lecture on Modern German literature, especially Goethe and 
 his works. 
 
 He begins the first period of European culture with the Greeks in 
 whose history he traces three epochs, after the introduction of civi¬ 
 lized arts into the country and the formation of societies. The first 
 is the siege of Troy, which happened in the 12th century B.C. The 
 second was that of the Persian invasion, during which ‘ their fate 
 trembled in the iron scale of destinay for while.’ “It is a pity that 
 during this time we have but little information as to the influence 
 produced upon them by the aspect of their beautiful country, its lofty 
 mountains and fertile valleys, the gigantic trees which clothed the 
 
12 
 
 caelyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 summits and sides of their craggy precipices, and all so beautifully 
 get off bv the bright sky which was shining upon them ; as well as the 
 means by which all this was rendered serviceable to them in the 
 ways of daily life. It is only battles that are marked by historians, 
 but subjects like these are rarely noticed.” Carlyle, it would thus 
 seem, has adopted the views of Montesquieu, whose great work, as is 
 well known, treats of such influences upon history, views which have 
 been carried to an absurd extreme by the late Mr. Buckle in his 
 great historical fragment. The third epoch is that of Alexander the 
 Great. Like the other two it also has reference to the East. “It was 
 the flower-time of Greece,—her history is as that of a tree from its 
 sapling state to its decline,—and at this period she developed an efflo¬ 
 rescence of genius such as no other country ever beheld. But it speedily 
 ended in the shedding of her flowers and in her own decay. From that 
 time she continued to fall and Greece has never again been such as she 
 then was. Europe was henceforth to develop herself on an independent 
 footing, and it had been so ordered that Greece was to begin that. As 
 to their peculiar physiognomy among nations, they were in one respect 
 an extremely interesting people, but in another unamiable and weak 
 entirely. There is a remarkable similarity in character of the French 
 to these Greeks. Their first feature was what we may call the central 
 feature of all others, exciting vehemence, not exactly strength, for there 
 was no permanent coherence in it as in strength, but a sort of fiery im¬ 
 petuosity or vehemence, never anywhere so remarkable as among the 
 Greeks, except among the French. But connected with this vehemence 
 and the savageness to which it led, they had an extraordinary delicacy 
 of taste and genius in them. They had a prompt dexterity in seizing the 
 relations of objects, a beautiful and quick sense in perceiving the places 
 in which the things lay all round the world which they had to work 
 with; and which without being entirely admirable was in their own 
 internal province highly useful. So the French, with their undeniable 
 barrenness of genius, have yet in a remarkable manner the faculty of 
 expressing themselves with precision and elegance, to so singular a 
 degree that no ideas or inventions can possibly become popularised till 
 they are presented to the world by means of the French language.* 
 
 * Cf. “ The French are great indeed as cooks of everything, whether an 
 idea or a lump of meat; they will make something palatable of the poorest 
 notion and the barest bone,” one of the sayings of Carlyle recorded by Lord 
 Houghton in his Commonplace Book, and now first published in his Life by 
 Mr. W. Reid, Yol. II., 479. 
 
Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 13 
 
 “And this is true of history and of all things now in the world 
 of all philosophy, of everything else. But in philosophy, poetry 
 and all things, the Greek genius displayed itself with as curious 
 a felicity as the French does in frivolous exercises. Singing 
 or music was the central principle of the Greeks, not a subordinate 
 one. And they were right. What is not musical is rough and hard 
 and cannot be harmonised. Harmony is the e'ssence of art and 
 science. The mind moulds to itself the clay and makes it what it will. 
 The Pelasgic Architecture, which still subsists in its huge walls of 
 stones formed of immense bolars piled one upon another, presents, I 
 am told now, at the distance of 3,000 years, the evidence of most magni¬ 
 ficent symmetry and an eye to what is beautiful. Their poems are 
 equally admirable. Their statuary comprise still the highest things that 
 we have to show for ourselves in that art. Phidias, for example, had 
 the same spirit of harmony, and the matter of his art was obedient 
 to him * * * This spirit of harmony operated directly in him, 
 
 informing all parts of his mind,—thence transferring itself into sta¬ 
 tuary and seen with the eye and filling the hearts of all people. 
 Thence Carlyle passes to consider the religion of the Greeks. Poly¬ 
 theism at first sight seems an inextricable mass of confusions and 
 delusions. But there was no doubt some meaning in it for the people. 
 It may be explained in one of two ways: the first is that the fable 
 was only an allegory to explain the various relations of natural facts, 
 of spiritual facts and material; and much learning has been expended 
 on this theory, which is called Hermenism.* Bacon himself wrote 
 upon it in his treatise ‘ De Sapientia Veterum.’ But Carlyle 
 characteristically inclines to the other theory that their gods were 
 simply their Kings and Heroes whom they afterwards deified. ‘Man 
 is always venerable to man ; great men are sure to attract worship or 
 reverence in all ages, and in ancient times it is not wonderful that 
 sometimes they were accounted as gods. For the most imaginative 
 of us can scarcely conceive the feelings with which the earliest of 
 the human species looked abroad on the world around them. At first 
 doubtless they regarded nothing but the gratifications of their wants, 
 as in fact wild people do yet. But the man would soon begin to 
 ask himself whence he was, what were his flesh and blood, what he 
 
 * Sic in MS., but Anstey has himself queried it on the margin, as it is 
 obviously wrong. 
 
14 carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 himself was who was not here a short time ago, who will not be here 
 much longer, but still existing a conscious individual in this immense 
 universe. The theories so formed would be extremely extravagant, 
 and little would suffice to shape this system into Polytheism. For it is 
 really in my opinion a blasphemy against human nature to attribute 
 the whole of the system to quackerv and falsehood.” 
 
 V If 
 
 Carlyle then defends their Divination, the grand nucleus round 
 which Poly theism formed itself, the constituted core of the whole matter. 
 He sees no quackery about it. On the contrary he sees a great deal of 
 reason in their oracles. If the divine who entered into the deep dark 
 chasm at Dodona for inspiration, “was a man of devout frame of 
 mind, he must surely have then been in the best state of feeling 
 for foreseeing the future and giving advice to others. No matter 
 how this was carried, by divination or otherwise, so long as the 
 individual suffered himself to be wrapt in union with a higher 
 being. I like to believe better of Greece than that she was 
 completely at the mercy of fraud and falsehood in these matters.” 
 Surely this sympathetic way of inquiring into the past, entering into 
 the minds and hearts of men of a distant age to think and feel as 
 they thought and felt more than two thousand years ago, is much supe¬ 
 rior to the supercilious manner of viewing and criticising the creeds and 
 customs of ancient times by importing our modern views into the dis¬ 
 tant and dim past. And this sympathetic manner, this trying to see 
 good and wisdom in ancient customs, to find out their true basis in 
 sincerity and reason in no way inferior to our own, if applied to the 
 customs and creeds of our ancestors and of ancient India, would lead 
 to much better results, would tend to make us much wiser than the 
 negative barren criticism of antiquity pursued with the vanity of ex¬ 
 tolling our times at the expense of the past. But to return to Carlyle. 
 This acquittal of Greece from the charge of fraud and falsehood and 
 quackery in her ancient religious system is all the more emphatic, 
 coming as it does from such a hater of sham and quackery in every 
 shape and guise as Carlyle. ‘The Greeks discovered, indenpedently 
 of their idolatry, that truth which is in every man’s heart, and to 
 which no thinking man can refuse his assent, they recognised a 
 destiny, a great dumb black power ruling during time, which knew 
 nobody for its master, and in its decrees was as inflexible as adamant, 
 and every one knew that it was there.’ Such therefore was the Religion 
 of the Greeks to whose Liteiature he passes in the second lecture. 
 
15 
 
 carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 • The first to be treated are the poems of Homer which Carlyle, 
 quoting Joannes von Muller, says are the oldest books of importance, 
 next after the Bible. 'There are none older even among the Chinese, 
 for in spite of what has been said about their works, there is no 
 evidence that any of them are older than the poems of Homer, some 
 there are about the same age, but very insignificant, such as romances 
 or chronicles.’ Carlyle was misinformed as regards the earliest 
 Chinese book of importance, which is the celebrated Yih-hing or Book 
 of Changes, the first of the famous Nine Classics. this work, which 
 is a philosophical treatise, first saw the light according to Prof. R. K. 
 Douglas within a prison’s walls in 1150 B. C., its author, Wan-Wang, 
 having been imprisoned for a political offence. As to Homer, who 
 he was and whether he was the real author of the Homeric poems, 
 very little is known. Carlyle does not believe in one Homer, the 
 author of the Homeric poems. ‘Indeed, the only argument in 
 favour of Homer being the real author, is derived from the 
 common opinion on the point, and from the unity of the poem, of 
 which it was once said, that it was as unlikely that it should be owing 
 to an accidental concurrence of different writers as that by an accidental 
 arrangement of the types it should have been printed.’ But Carlyle 
 on reading the poem again, could not find this unity, ‘I became 
 completely convinced that it was not the work of one man. One 
 may cut out two or three books without making any alteration in its 
 unity.’ But yet the character of Homer’s poems is the best among 
 all poems. For in the first place they are the delineation of something 
 more ancient than themselves and more simple, and therefore 
 more interesting, as being the impressions of a primeval mind, the 
 proceedings of a set of men, our spiritual progenitors. The first 
 things of importance in 4 the world’s history are mentioned there. 
 Secondly, they possess qualities of the highest character of whatever 
 age or country. The Greek genius never exceeded what was done by 
 the authors of those poems which are known as the writings of 
 Homer.* ’ And these qualities may be reduced to two heads : “ First, 
 Homer does not believe his story to be a fiction. He believed his 
 
 * Cf. “All history should aim at resembling the Iliad, remembering it is a 
 greater task than the human mind is capable of, really and literally, to present 
 the smallest fact as it itself appeared,” one of Carlyle's sayings (apud Reid, 
 Life of Lord Houghton , Vol. II., p. 441). 
 
J 6 
 
 carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 narratives to be strictly true. Secondly, the poem of the Iliad was 
 actually intended to be sung —it sings itself —not only the cadence, 
 hut the whole thought of the poem sings itself, as it were. Now, if we 
 take these two things and add them together, the combination makes 
 up the essence of the best poem that can he written. There is more 
 of character in his second poem, which treats of a higher state of 
 civilization Its hero Ulysses, is the very model of the Type-Greek, a 
 perfect image of the Greek genius, a shifty, nimble active man involved 
 in difficulties, but every now and then bobbing up out of darkness 
 and confusion, victorious and intact.’* 
 
 But we must leave Homer interesting as he is, and pass on to the 
 philosophers of the Greeks, among whom Pythagoras was the greatest 
 in the earlier times. ‘What will immortalise Pythagoras is his 
 discovery of the square of the hypotenuse. It seems that he may 
 rather be said not to have invented it, but imported, for I understand 
 the Hindoos and other people of the East have long known it.’ Next 
 comes the historian Herodotus whose ‘woik is, properly speaking, an 
 Encyclopaedia of the various nations, and displays in a striking manner 
 the innate spirit of harmony that was in the Greeks. It is the spirit 
 of order which has constituted him the prose poet of his century.’ 
 As regards his credibility, Herodotus is most veracious when he 
 writes from his own observation; but ‘ when he does not profess to 
 know the truth of his narratives, it is curious to see the sort of 
 Arabian Tales which he collects together.’ Of the great Tragedians, 
 ASschylus is held the greatest. ‘ It is said that when composing he 
 had on a look of the greatest fierceness. He has been accused of 
 bombast ; from his obscurity he is often exceedingly difficult, but 
 bombast is not the word at all. His words come up from the great 
 volcano of his heart, and often he has no voice for it, and he 
 copulates his words together and tears his heart asunder.’ 
 Sophocles completed his work and was of a more chastened and 
 cultivated mind. He translated it into a choral peal of melody ; 
 Aeschylus only excels in his grand bursts of feeling. The Antigone 
 is the finest thing of the kind ever sketched by man. Euripides 
 carried his compositions occasionally to the very verge of disease, and 
 displays a distinct commencement of the age of speculation and 
 scepticism. He writes often for the effect's sake , not as Homer or 
 Aeschylus, wrapt away in the train of action; bnt how touching is 
 effect so produced. He was accused of impietv. In a sceptical kind 
 
carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 17 
 
 of man these two things go together very often—impiety and desire of 
 effect. There is a decline in all kinds of literature when it ceases to 
 be poetical and becomes speculative. Socrates was the emblem of the 
 decline of the Greeks in its transitive state; he was the friend of 
 Euripides. It seems strange to call him so. I willingly admit that he 
 was a man of deep feeling and morality.’ But Carlyle characteristically 
 does not approve of his hostile attitude towards the religion of the 
 Greeks. ‘ I can well understand the idea which Aristophanes had of 
 him, that he was a man going to destroy all Greece with his innovations. 
 To understand that, we have only to go back to what I said in my last 
 lecture on the peculiar character of the Greek system of religion, the 
 crown of all their beliefs. The Greek system, you will remember, was 
 of a great significance and value for the Greeks, even the most absurd¬ 
 looking part of the whole—the Oracle—this too was shown to have 
 been not a quackery, but the result of a sincere belief on the part of 
 the priests themselves. No matter what you call the process, if the 
 man believed in what lie was about and listened to his faith in a 
 higher power, surely by looking into himself, apart from earthly 
 feeling, he would be in that frame of mind by far the best adapted for 
 judging correctly and wisely of the future. They send the most pious, 
 intelligent and reverend among them to join themselves to this 
 system, and thus was formed a sort of non-pagan Church to the 
 people. There were also the Greek games. The mind of the whole 
 nation by its means obtained a strength and coherence. If I may not 
 be permitted to say that through it the nation became united to the 
 Divine power, I may at any rate assert that the highest considerations 
 and motives thus became familiar to each person, and were put at the 
 very top of his mind. But at Socrates’ time this devotional feeling 
 had in a great measure given way. He himself was not more sceptical 
 than the rest. He shows a lingering kind of aim and attachment for 
 the old religion of his country, and often we cannot make out whether 
 he believed in it or not. He must have had but a painful intellectual 
 life, a painful kind of life altogether, we would think.’ These last 
 sentences, one would think, can very well be applied to Carlyle himself 
 with regard to his attitude towards the old religion of his country. 
 Socrates seems to him to have been an entirely unprofitable character. 
 ‘ I have a great desire to admire Socrates, but I confess that his writings 
 seem to be made up of very wire-drawn notions about virtue ; there 
 is no conclusion in him ; there is no word of life in. Socrates.’ Alter 
 
18 
 
 Carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 Socrates the Greek nation became more and more sophistical. 
 The Greek genius lost its originality; it, lost its poetry, and gave way 
 to the spirit of speculation. Alexander subdued them, and no 
 great genius of any very remarkable quality appeared in Greece. 
 
 In the third lecture Carlyle treats of the Romans: their character, 
 their fortune, and what they did. At the outset, comparing the 
 Romans with the Greeks, he says : ‘ We may say of this nation that, 
 
 as the Greeks may be compared to the children of antiquity from their 
 naivete and gracefulness, while their whole history is an aurora, the 
 dawn of a higher culture and civilization,—so the Romans were the 
 men of antiquity and their history a glorious, warm laborious day ; 
 less beautiful and graceful no doubt than the Greeks, but most essen¬ 
 tially useful.’ The Romans will not require much discussion in 
 connection with our subject because ‘ the Roman life, and the Roman 
 opinions are quite a sequel to those of the Greeks ; a second edition, 
 we may say, of the Pagan system of belief and actions.’ The 
 Greek life itself ‘ was shattered to pieces against the harder, stronger 
 life of the Romans. It was just as a beautiful crystal jar becomes 
 dashed to pieces upon the hard rocks ;—so inexpressible was the force 
 of the strong Roman energy.’ The Romans evince the characters of 
 two distinct species of people,—the Pelasgi, and the Etruscans or 
 Tuscans, entirely different from these. The latter had a gloomy 
 heaviness, austerity and sullenness. They were men of a gloomy 
 character, very different from the liveliness and gracefulness of the 
 Greeks. ‘In the Romans we have the traces of these two races 
 joined together,—the one proved the noblesse,—the other, the 
 commonalty. The Etruscans had a sort of sullen energy, and, 
 above all, a kind of rigorous thrift. And thrift, though generally 
 regarded as mean, includes in itself the best virtues that a man can 
 have in this world. It includes all that man can do in his vocation. 
 ‘ Even in its worst state, it indicates a great people, I think. The Dutch, 
 for example,—there is no stronger people than them ; the people of New 
 England, the Scotch, all great nations ! In short, it is the foundation 
 of all manner of virtue in a nation.’* 
 
 Along with this there was in the Roman character a great seriousness 
 and devoutness; and it was natural that ‘the Greek religion was light 
 
 * Carlyle eulogises thrift in several places in his works, especially in Frederic 
 the Great, Yol. II. 
 
oarlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 19 
 
 a ml sportful compared to the Roman.’ 4 Their notion of Fate, which we 
 observed was the central element of Paganism, was much more productive 
 of consequences than the Greek notion •, and it depended entirely on the 
 original character which had been given to this people. Their notion 
 was that Rome was always meant to be the Capital of the whole 
 world, that right was on the side of every man who was with Rome, 
 and that, therefore, it was their duty to do everything for Rome. 
 This belief tended very principally to produce its own fulfilment,— 
 nay, it was itself founded on fact: ‘Did not Rome do so and so? ’ they 
 would reason.’ The stubborn energy of their ancestors was employed 
 by the Romans in all the concerns of their ordinary life, and by it 
 they raised themselves above all other people. ‘Method was their 
 great principle, just as Harmony was of the Greeks. The Method of 
 the Romans was a sort of Harmony, but not that beautiful, graceful 
 thing which was the Greek Harmony. Theirs was the harmony of 
 plan—an architectural harmony which was displayed in the arranging 
 of practical antecedents and consequences. Their whole genius was 
 practical. Speculation with them was nothing in the comparison. 
 Their vocation was not to teach the sciences—what sciences they 
 knew they had received from the Greeks—but to teach practical 
 wisdom, to subdue people into polity/ * 
 
 Pliny, says Carlyle, declares that he cannot describe Rome: “ so 
 great is it that it appears to make heaven more illustrious, and to 
 bring the whole World into civilization and obedience under its autho¬ 
 rity.” This is what it did. It went on fighting and subduing the 
 world. But it was not with the spirit of a robber. “ Some have 
 thought that the Romans had done nothing else but fight to establish 
 their dominion where they had not the least claim of right, and that 
 they were a mere nest of robbers. But this is evidently a misappre¬ 
 hension. Historians have generally managed to write down such facts as 
 are apt to strike the memory of the vulgar, while they omit the circum¬ 
 stances which display the real character of the Romans. The Romans 
 were at first an agricultural people; they built, it appears, their 
 barns within their walls for protection. But they got incidentally 
 
 * Cf. The celebrated lines of Virgil:— 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento: 
 Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. 
 
20 
 
 CARLYLE’S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES. 
 
 into quarrels with other neighbouring state ; and it is not strange 
 that they should have taken the opportunity to compel them by force 
 to adopt their civilization, such as it was, in preference to the more 
 foolish and savage method of their own. I do not say that the 
 Roman was a mild kind of discipline. Far from that, it was estab¬ 
 lished only by hard contests and fighting. But it was of all the most 
 beneficial. In spite of all that has been said and ought to be said 
 about Liberty, it is true Liberty to obey the best personal guidance, 
 either out of our own head or out of that of some other. No one 
 could wish to see some fool wandering about at his will and without 
 any restraint or guidance. We must admit it to be far better for 
 him even if some wise man were to take charge of him, even though 
 by force, although that seems but a coarse kind of operation. But 
 fighting was not at all the fundamental principle in their conquests ; 
 it was their superior civilization which attracted the surrounding 
 nations to their centre. If their course had been entirely unwise all 
 the world would have risen in arms against these domineering tyrants 
 for ever claiming to be rulers where they had no right at all, and 
 their power could not have subsisted there as it did.” This is quite 
 characteristic of Carlyle, with whom power and supreme authority 
 pass as by right from the weak to the strong, from those who were 
 unfit to enjoy them to those who were capable of wielding them. 
 The great contest of the Romans with Carthage which ‘as far 
 as probabilities went was more likely to subject the whole world,’ 
 was the ‘ crowning phenomenon of their history.’ But the Car¬ 
 thaginians, between whom and the Jews Carlyle sees a great 
 resemblance, were subdued, and he rejoices in their overthrow. 
 Carlyle characteristically does not like the constitutional struggles 
 between the Patricians and the Plebeians, and the internal discord 
 which characterised the history of the later Roman Republic. He 
 therefore rejoices in its overthrow and the elevation of Caesar. ‘ I 
 cannot join in the lamentation made by some over the downfall of 
 the Republic, when Caesar took hold of it. It had been but a con¬ 
 stant struggling and scramble for prey; and it was well to end it, and 
 to see the wisest, cleanest and most judicious man of them place himself 
 at the top of it. The Romans, under the Empire, attained to their com¬ 
 plete grandeur. Their dominion reached from the River Euphrates 
 to Cadiz, and from the border of the Arabian desert to Severus’ wall 
 up in the north of England. And what an empire was it; teaching 
 
carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 21 
 
 mankind that they should be tilling the ground as they ought to 
 do, instead cf fighting one another. For that is the real thing which 
 every man is called on to do,—to till the ground,—and not to slay 
 his poor brother man.’ 
 
 Passing from their history to their language and literature, he finds 
 the latter to be but a copy of that of the Greeks ; but still ‘ there is a 
 kind of Roman worth in many of their books.’ Their language, too, 
 has a character belonging to Home. ‘Its peculiar distinguishing 
 character is its imperative sound and structure finely adapted to com¬ 
 mand. So in their books, as, for instance, the poems of Virgil and 
 Horace, we see the Roman character of a still strength.” But their 
 greatest work was practical. It was written on the face of the planet 
 in which we live,—their Cyclopean highways, extending from country 
 to country, their Aqueducts, their Coliseums, their whole Polity ! 
 And how spontaneous all these things were ! How little any Roman 
 knew what Rome was!” Then he goes on to say that there can be no 
 preconceived plan for the creation of national greatness in the minds 
 of the individuals who follow their own particular aims and plans. 
 “ There is a tendency in all historians to place a plan in the head of 
 every one of their great characters, by which he regulated his actions ; 
 forgetting that it is not possible for any man to have foreseen events, 
 and to have embraced at once the vast complication of the circum¬ 
 stances that were to happen. It is more reasonable to attribute national 
 progress to a great, deep instinct in every individual actor. Who of 
 us, for example, knows England, though he may contribute to her 
 prosperity ? Everyone here follows his own object,—one goes to 
 India, another aspires to the army, and each after his own ends. 
 But all thus co-operate together after all, one Englishman with 
 another, in adding to the strength and wealth of the whole nation. 
 The wisest Government has only to direct this spirit into a proper 
 channel. But to believe that it can lay down a plan for the creation 
 of national enterprise is an entire folly. These incidents form the 
 deep foundation of a national character ; when they fall, the nation falls 
 too; just as when the roots of a tree fall and the sap can mount the 
 trunk and diffuse itself among the leaves no longer, the tree stops 
 too! ” All greatness therefore as is well known is unconscious 
 with him. Pursuing this train of thought Carlyle starts the paradox 
 that literature makes itself remarkable only during the decline of a 
 nation. “ During a healthy, sound, progressive period of national 
 
22 
 
 CARLYLE’S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES. 
 
 existence, there is, in general, no literature at all. In a time of 
 active exertion the nation will not speak out its mind. It is not 
 til! a nation is ready to decline that its literature makes itself 
 remarkable. And this is observable in all nations. For there are 
 many ways in which a man or a nation expresses itself besides books. 
 The point is not to be able to write a book : the point is to have the 
 true mind for it Everything in that case which the nation does 
 will be equally significant of its mind. If any great man among the 
 Romans,—Julius Csesar or Cato, for example, had never done anything 
 but till the ground, they would have acquired equal excellence in that 
 way, they would have ploughed as they conquered. Everything a 
 great man does carries the traces of a great man. Perhaps even 
 there is the most energetic virtue when there is no talk about virtue 
 at all! I wish my friends here,” emphasises Carlyle, “ to consider and 
 keep this in view : that progress and civilization may go on unknown 
 to the people themselves : that there may be a primeval feeling of 
 energy and virtue in the founders of a state, whether they can fathom 
 it or not. This feeling gets nearer every generation to be uttered. 
 For though the son only learns such things as his father invented, yet 
 he will discover other things, and teach as well his own as his father’s 
 inventions in his turn to his children. And so it will go on working 
 itself out, till it gets into conversation and speech. We shall observe 
 this precisely when we come to the reign of Elizabeth [VIII. Lecture]. 
 All great things, in short, whether national or individual, are uncon¬ 
 scious things! I cannot get room to insist on this here, but we shall 
 see them as we go on, like seeds thrown out upon a wide, fertile field ; 
 no man sees what they are, but they grow up before us and become 
 great. What did that man, when he built his house, know of Rome or 
 of Julius Caesar that were to come? These were the products of Time. 
 Faust of Mentz, who invented Printing, that subject of so much 
 admiration in our times, never thought of the results that were to 
 follow ; he found it a cheaper way of publishing his Bibles, and he used 
 it for no other purpose than to undersell the other booksellers. In 
 short, from the Christian Religion down to the poorest genuine song, 
 there has been no consciousness in the minds of the first authors of 
 anything of excellence. Shakespeare, too, never seemed to imagine that 
 he had any talent at all, his only object seems to have been to gather 
 a little money, for he was very necessitous. And when we do find 
 consciousness the thing done is sure to be not a great thing at all. It 
 
carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 23 
 
 is a very suspicious circumstance when anything makes a great noise 
 about itself; it is like a drum, producing a great deal of sound, but 
 very like to be empty!” This test of unconsciousness, embodied in 
 the maxim of Schiller that ‘ Genius is ever a secret to itself,’ he had 
 already announced and applied to greatness in 1831, in an article 
 in the Edinburgh Review, afterwards reprinted as ‘ Characteristics ’ 
 in his Miscellanies. It provoked even Sterling, one of his staunchest 
 admirers, to a long refutation in his article in the Westniinster Review 
 for 1839 (reprinted in his Miscellaneous Essays ed. J. Hare, Yol. I.). 
 
 Next Carlyle takes a short survey of the famous masterpieces of 
 Roman literature. Virgil’s ^Eneid he thinks entirely inferior to 
 Homer, because there is the fatal consciousness, on which he has just 
 enlarged,—“ that knowledge that he is writing an Epic,—the plot, 
 the style, all is vitiated by that one fault.” Then the charac¬ 
 ters are also inferior. “ iEneas is a lachrymose sort of man alto¬ 
 gether. But when this fatal consciousness left Virgil he became a 
 great poet, as is to be seen in his minor poems. He was a great 
 poet when he did not observe himself, and when he let himself 
 alone.” In his women he succeeded wonderfully. “Virgil was an 
 amiable man and always in bad health, much subject to dyspepsia and to 
 all kinds of maladies that afflict men of genius” and with which Carlyle 
 was but too familiar. And it would have been curious to know whether 
 they moved Virgil’s spleen as they did that of his critic and made him 
 vent his anger in the most vehement language in his journals. “ We 
 must, on the whole, conclude that Virgil was, properly speaking, 
 not an Epic poet.” Horace too has the same consciousness; and 
 Carlyle finds another hindrance in admiring him, in his perverse 
 moral philosophy, the Epicurean system. Another poet who had 
 an ever-present consciousness of himself is Ovid, who is thus very 
 inferior to Horace or Virgil. From his time “ we get more and more 
 into self-consciousness and into scepticism not long afterwards, without 
 being able to find any bottom at all to it!” And Roman literature 
 continued to degenerate till it reached its lowest point in Seneca. “ If 
 we want an example of a diseased self-consciousness, an exaggerated 
 imagination, a mind blown up with all sorts of strange conceits, the 
 spasmodic state of intellect, in short, of a man morally unable to 
 speak the truth on any subject,—we have it in Seneca. He was led 
 away by this strange humour into all sorts of cant and insincerity. 
 He had that spirit of self-conceit, pride and vanity, which is the 
 
24 
 
 carlyle’s unpublished lectures. 
 
 ruin of all things in this world, and always will be.” This decline in 
 their literature was the consequence of their decline in virtue. “ The 
 vices of this kind of literature connect themselves in a natural 
 sequence with the decline of Roman virtue altogether. When that 
 people had once come to disbelief in their own gods, and to put all 
 their confidence in their money, believing that with their money they 
 could always buy their money’s worth, this order of things was 
 closely succeeded bv moral abominations of the most dreadful kind, 
 such as were not known before and never since the most fearful 
 abominations under the sun.” But even in deserts there are oases, and 
 in this dreary age there was one great writer, the greatest of Roman 
 writers, Tacitus,—such is the power of genius to make itself heard 
 and felt in all times. Tacitus displays more of the Roman spirit per¬ 
 haps than any one before him. In eloquent words does Carlyle eulogise 
 this truly great man. “In the middle of all those facts in the litera¬ 
 ture of his country, which correspond so well with what we know 
 of the history of Rome itself—in the middle of all that quackery and 
 puffery coming into play time about in every department, when critics 
 wrote books to teach yon bow to hold out your arm and your leg —in 
 the middle of all this absurd and wicked period Tacitus was born and 
 was enabled to be a Roman after all! He stood like a Colossus at the 
 edge of a dark night, and he saw events of all kinds hurrying past 
 him and plunging he knew not where, but evidently to no good, for 
 falsehood and cowardice never yet ended anywhere but in destruction ! 
 He was full of the old feelings of goodness and honesty ; he has no 
 belief but the old Roman belief.” With Tacitus Carlyle quits the 
 subject of Pagan literature, for after him all things went on sinking 
 down more and more into all kinds of disease and ruin. “After the 
 survey which we have made, we come to the conclusion that there is a 
 strange coherence between the healthy belief and outward destiny of a 
 nation. Thus the Greeks went on with their wars and everything else 
 most prosperously, till they became conscious of their condition, till the 
 man became solicitous after other times. Socrates, we said, is a kind 
 of starting point from which we trace their fall into confusion and 
 wreck of all sorts. So it was with the Romans. Cato the elder, used 
 to tell them, “ the instant you get the Greek literature among you there 
 will be an end of the old Roman spirit.” He was not listened to; 
 the rage for Greek speculation increased; he himself found it impos¬ 
 sible to keep back, although be grew very angry about it, and in kis 
 
carlyle's unpublished lectures. 
 
 25 
 
 old age he learned the Greek language and had it taught to his sons. 
 It was too late; nobody could believe any longer, and every one 
 had set his mind on being a man and thinking for himself.” In 
 the middle of all this occurred an event which was destined to change 
 it all and to regenerate the effete ancient world, the advent of 
 Christ, the new character in which all the future world lay hid. 
 The rise of Christianity may be said to have put a stop to ancient 
 history; and here 1 stop for the present, and shall resume the 
 subject on another occasion. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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