Characteristics, "Inaugural Address," and "Sir Walter Scott"

by Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

152 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2008

About the author

Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, critic, and sociological writer. was born in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, eldest child of James Carlyle, stonemason, and Margaret (Aitken) Carlyle. The father was stern, irascible, a puritan of the puritans, but withal a man of rigid probity and strength of character. The mother, too, was of the Scottish earth, and Thomas' education was begun at home by both the parents. From the age of five to nine he was at the village school; from nine to fourteen at Annan Grammar School. where he showed proficiency in mathematics and was well grounded in French and Latin. In November 1809 he walked to Edinburgh, and attended courses at the University till 1814, with the ultimate aim of becoming a minister. He left without a degree, became a mathematical tutor at Annan Academy in 1814, and three years later abandoned all thoughts of entering the Kirk, having reached a theological position incompatible with its teachings. He had begun to learn German in Edinburgh, and had done much independent reading outside the regular curriculum. Late in 1816 he moved to a school in Kirkcaldy, where he became the intimate associate of Edward Irving, an old boy of Annan School, and now also a schoolmaster. This contact was Carlyle's first experience of true intellectual companionship, and the two men became lifelong friends. He remained there two years, was attracted by Margaret Gordon, a lady of good family (whose friends vetoed an engagement), and in October 1818 gave up schoolmastering and went to Edinburgh, where he took mathematical pupils and made some show of reading law.

During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."

For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.

In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.

Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three Works by Thomas Carlyle appears in volume 25 of The Harvard Classics, along with Autobiography and On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. Carlyle and Mill were contemporaries and friends, which is likely why editor Charles W. Eliot included them in the same volume. Carlyle was a highly influential philosopher, essayist, and historian during the Victorian era, and this sampling of his writing is of some interest.

Educator Tim McGee has a lecture that makes for a useful introduction to this text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td3Jl....


[Engraving of Carlyle giving his Edinburgh speech from the Illustrated London News, 1881]

The first of the works contained in this volume is "Characteristics" (1831), an essay of social criticism that Eliot describes as “a condensed and telling statement of some of his most fundamental ideas.” The second work is Carlyle’s "Inaugural Address at Edinburgh", which was delivered to students and faculty at the famous university on April 2, 1866. While about the necessity of reading good books, the speech “summarizes rapidly his own intellectual history, and digresses in true Carlylean fashion into religion, ethics, history, and a variety of other topics.” The third piece, "Sir Walter Scott" (1838), is a long review of John Gibson Lockhart's biography of Scott. Eliot writes that it “exhibits, both in its strength and in its shortcomings, the domination of ethical over esthetic considerations in his estimate of literature, and contains besides many characteristic generalizations on human life and conduct.” I found the review most interesting for its exploration of what constitutes greatness in a human being.

My favorite quote:

“...the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading — to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.”

*******************************************************************************************

[Image: Cover of the Delphi Classics’ The Harvard Classics]

Citation:
Carlyle, T. (2018). Three works by Thomas Carlyle: Characteristics, inaugural address, and Sir Walter Scott. In C. W. Eliot (Ed.), The Harvard classics (eBook). Delphi Classics. https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/t... (Original works published 1831, 1866, and 1838)

Title: “Three Works by Thomas Carlyle: ‘Characteristics,’ ‘Inaugural Address,’ and ‘Sir Walter Scott’”
Author(s): Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Year: 1831, 1866, and 1838, respectively
Series: The Harvard Classics (1909): Volume 25 - Delphi Complete Harvard Classics and Shelf of Fiction
Genre: Nonfiction
Date(s) read: 7/17/25 - 7/18/25
Book 149 in 2025
*******************************************************************************************

[David Redden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Carlyle is an old-style curmudgeon who criticizes individuals that reflect on the state of society, apparently not stopping to consider that in doing so, he is himself reflecting on the state of society. Beyond that, he has a few interesting things to say about the mystery of genius and the human condition in general, but his first argument bothered me so much that I'm afraid I didn't pay him much mind.