"Carlyle first came to Chapman and Hall in 1843. Forster, who had been one of the regular visitors to Cheyne-row during the nine years or so that the Carlyles had been living there, was responsible for the introduction. When he came he was very depressed, for 'Sartor Resartus' had been a failure, and 'The French Revolution' had brought him more honor than money, and he came with 'Past and Present' in a discontented and suspicious mood.
"At first he was far from a profitable investment for the firm. 'My books,' he protested, and these are his own words, 'were not, and never will be, popular. I do not think my literary income has been above £200 a year in spite of my continued diligence day by day.' He had continual arguments, with Edward Chapman over a uniform collected edition of his works which he wanted to see put on the market, but in which Chapman, at the time, did not believe.
'In the end the collected edition was published, and I think it must have been about the sixties or the seventies that Carlyle really began to sell, and for forty years or so he enjoyed very big sales. To-day, Carlyle sells hardly at all. We have been running a complete edition of his works with an introduction by H. D. Traill, and it just goes on selling, but that is about all. 'The French Revolution will always be read because, however much its style may be out of the fashion of the times, its wonderful portrait gallery of types of character, and the vigor of its narrative, will never be surpassed as a picture of that particular era."
Critics' Condemnation.
'The decline of interest in Carlyle's works has been evident to literary critics for years past. The late Sir Edmund Gosse, reviewing Mr. Augustus Ralli's "Guide to Carlyle," published in 1920 in two volumes at 42/, wrote: — can hardly be questioned that no one of the great Victorians has declined in influence so steadily and shows so little evidence of being restored to favor as the once almost omnipotent author of 'Heroes and Hero Worship.' He at all events is a hero whose shrine is abundantly neglected to-day. Whether we regret it or not, the fact has to be faced that there was something in the texture of Carlyle's mind, in the character of his expressed thought, which soon destroyed its attraction and stimulus. A large portion of his writing has ceased to be interesting; his pages create fatigue and impatience in youthful readers, who read only because there persists a tradition that they must be read. . . . There was no pleasing Carlyle, and if he was wearisome as a preacher he was futile as a prophet. He failed altogether to read the signs of the future aright: he underrated mechanism, and had no conception of its value in the reduction of human distress; he professed to hope for the race, but he started in a determination to be disappointed. What is to be thought of a political watchman of the night who could see nothing in Lord Beaconsfield in 1875 except 'a cursed old Jew, not worth his weight in cold bacon'? What is to be thought of a military observer who declared the Prussian army to be the ultimate expression of good government in its 'victory over chaos' ?"Mr. David Alec Wilson, who died a few weeks ago, and to whom some reference has already been made in these columns, set himself the task of attempting to restore Carlyle to public favor by means of a panoramic biograph of the "Sage of Chelsea," in six volumes. When the fourth volume, which bore the sub-title "Carlyle at His Zenith," was published in 1927 Mr. Ellis Huberts, in reviewing the book in the "New Statesman," wrote:— "This volume might have been called 'Carlyle at His Nadir' or 'The Hero Worshipper in Search of a Hero'— for it is a record of the time in his life when he was given, as it were, his last chance to examine seriously his own prejudice, his own principles, and refused to take it. He avoided more and more not only the society of those with whom he disagreed, but he encouraged in himself (or did nothing to discourage) the habit of summary and severe judgment on men whom he could not understand movements he had not studied, and great historical events, such as the rise of Jesuitism, of which he did not even pretend to grasp the significance. . . . It never seems to have entered his head that some people would not argue with him because they found him so opinionated, so truculent, so unreasonable, and at bottom so really stupid, that they refused to waste their time."
A False Prophet.
Mr. Norwood Young published in 1927 a study of the "Sage of Chelsea" entitled "Carlyle: His Rise and Fall," in which he wrote in a chapter summarising "the man and his work": — "When one remembers that he wrote, as he talked, at random contradicting himself swiftly, without perceiving it or caring that many of his confident assertions were inspired by opposition to the last remark he had heard, by dislike, of any opinion that was common, by fear of becoming associated with fools— for he abandoned views he had forced upon the public as soon as he found that they were generally accepted; that he merely repeated, or exaggerated, what he had learned in his youth at Ecclefechan, the reputation he obtained for profundity and wisdom is one of the curiosities of history. His merit fell as his fame rose. He was a mediæeval peasant, full of the superstitions which when he was born, at the end of the eighteenth century, were still to be found in nurseries and wig-wams. Carlyle's manner of propounding his primitive beliefs was so dictatorial and so impressive that people lost the use of their faculties in listening. When once a man has acquired a reputation for depth, every remark he makes will be considered deep. . . The character he obtained us a moral teacher is one of the perversities of reputation; for he thought and taught that physical force is proof of moral worth. He was a moral teacher who knew nothing of moral force. His views on Labor have been strangely misinterpreted. 'More truly than Ruskin,' says a modern admirer, 'is Carlyle the parent of British Socialism and the forerunner of the Labor movement.' According to a disciple of Karl Marx, 'Almost all English Socialists have received their first decisive impetus towards socialism from the writings of Carlyle, Mill, Ruskin and Henry George.' And yet what Carlyle desired was a Government with an aristocratic land owner at the head, endowed with absolute power. There would be no elections, no Parliament, no free press, no trade unions, no strikes, no doles. Labor would he drilled in regiments, and compelled to work on pain of flogging, and even death. In prisons the treadmill, and the spirit of the treadmill, would be introduced. Ignoring all this, Labor claims him as a champion because when he was himself poor he spoke in moving terms of the sorrows of the class to which he belonged . . .
"As a political teacher he has been ignored. We have not gone back to the feudal system; we have not reintroduced slavery, either of blacks or whites; we have not reduced Parliament to the role of an advisory council of the Crown, without executive power; we have not chosen from the landed aristocracy a dictator, with assistant despots of the Front-de-Boeuf type. On the other hand, the political franchise, which he condemned altogether, has been made universal. The trade union regulation of work is precisely opposite to the governing and drilling of labor by employers which he desired. The doles to the unemployed, which he denounced, have reached a total which he would have regarded with dismay. Freedom of the press continues. Public opinion is not ignored. Instead of the drastic coercion which Carlyle desired to visit Ireland— 'a hearty horsewhip over that back of yours' — we have given Ireland her freedom. We have not accepted Carlyle's opinion that international treaties are 'shadows,' 'diplomatic pack-thread,' 'sheep-skin'; nor do we suppose, as he did, that honor and honesty are 'punctilious.' We have not been converted to his view that necessity knows no law, nor do we decline with him to consider what is morally right."
Age (Melbourne, Vic.), 24 June 1933, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article203811031
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