The late Thomas Carlyle.

Thames Star, Volume XXI, Issue 3780, 8 February 1881, Page 3

The late Thomas Carlyle.

From our cablegrams we learn that Thomas Carlyle, the eminent biographer and historian, is dead. The following notice of him appears in " Men of the Time:"— Carlyle, Thomas, essay'st, biographer, and historian, waß born in 1795, at Ecolefecban, a small village in Dumfriesshire, where his fatbeva man of intellect and earnest; religious feeling, held a small farm, and received the rudiments of bis education afc Annan. At the age of fourteen be entered the University of Edinburgh, passing through a regular curricul-.tn, and studying mathematics under Professor Leslie. Intended by his parents for the ministry, he remained at the University upwards of seven yeare, spending his vacations among the hills and by the rivers of Dumfriesihire. At college his habits were lonely and contemplative. After teaching mathematics in a school in Fifesbire for about two years, he determined to devote himself to literature, and in 1823 commenced his career by contributing to Brewster'B " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia" some able articles on " Monteßquieu," " Montaigne," " Nelson," and the "Two Pitts," and literary notices to the New Edinburgh Review. In the same year he completed a translation of Legenare's "Geometry," to which he prefixed an"E«Bayon Proportion," and published his translation of Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister," a work which showed a direction of reading destined to influence materially his future career. On the completion of this translation he commenced his '.'Life, of Schiller," which was published by instalments in the London Magazine, then sustained by the talents of Lamb, Hazlitt, DeQuincey, Hood, Jobn Scott, and A. Cunningham. For Goethe and Schiller,: :two of-the "true sovereign souls of German literature," his admiration has ever been; unbounded, and his letters to Goethe have appeared in the poet's published correspondence.! Having married in 1827, he re■ided alternately ixi Gomley Bank and i Craigenputtock, a small estate fifteen miles to the north west of Dumfries. In this seclud- d spot he occasionally contributed to "tbe foreign and other reviews of the day. Between 1830 and 1833 be was engaged in writing "Sartor Resartus," which appeared in the latter year in Eraser's Magazine. During the negotiations for the publication of this work he was induced to remove to London, where he has continued to reside, we believe, (since 1834. In 1837 he published ".The French Revolution," a history abounding, in vivid and graphic descriptions. "Chartism,'' and five volumes of his " Esßays," collected for the most part from periodical publications, appeared in 1889, and in 184.0 he delivered a series of lecture! on Hero-worship, which were afterwards published in a collected form. His "Past and Present "appeared in 1843; "Latterday Pamphlets,"' essays suggested by tbe convulsions of 1848 —an era which he calls •' one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European world ever saw," in 1850. His "Life of John Stirling" has been described as " one of the finest biographies ever written." In 1845 Mr Carlyle produced his great work entitled " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations," which gave him a distinguished place among the historians of the age. On the death of tbe Earl of Ellesmere, in 1857, Mr Carlyle . was appointed a trustee of tbe National Portrait Gallery. In 1860-4 he published his "Life of Frederick the Great." " Mr ,C»rlyle's characteristic," says one of his admirers, "is a,rugged earnestness of expression, and a range of thought widened and deepened.. by his acquaintance with ihe writings of the great German thinkers." Mr Carlyle, elected Rector of Edinburgh University, Nov. 11V1865, delivered his inaugural address April 2, r 1866.