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L. Carlyle's Marginalia in Sterling's Essays and Tales
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Nowhere, perhaps, are the Carlyle marginal annotations more suggestive and diverting than on his copies of Essays and Tales by John Sterling, in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection at the Harvard College Library.
This Sterling is, of course, Carlyle's John Sterling, subject of the Carlyle Life to be issued three years later. Commonly known only as a young man for whom two unnecessary biographies were written, Sterling appears on further acquaintance to be delightfully representative of his time. Though the chronicle of his years is largely a record of vain Sittings in search of health, ending in slow death by tuberculosis, he managed throughout to keep his soul singularly alive and sensitive. A brilliant leader of the famous “Apostles” at Cambridge, he shared the undergraduate idealism there of the 1820's. As part owner of the young Athenaeum in 1828 and 18295 he did his bit at “uplift” in journalism.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939
References
1 Collected and edited with a memoir of his life by Julius Charles Hare, M.A. In two volumes (London, 1848). Citations of this copy are made by the kind permission of the Custodian of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection at Harvard College Library. References to these margins are included in the text.
2 The Life of John Sterling (London, 1851).—All references in this paper to the works of Thomas Carlyle are to the Centenary Edition (London: Chapman and Hall, 1896–99).
3 See A. P. Stanley, “Archdeacon Hare,” Quarterly Review, xcvii (June, 1855), 5.
4 The present writer has in preparation a study of John Sterling, including a criticism of Carlyle's biography, based upon unpublished letters in addition to printed sources.
5 See (M. Trench), Richard Chevenix Trench. letters and Memorials (London, 1888), i, 17.
6 See Blackwood's Magazine, xxii (November, 1837), 573.
7 E. Wilson (London, 1833). This novel is studied by S. Howe, Wilhelm Meister and his English Kinsmen (New York, 1930).
8 “Carlyle's Works,” xxxiii (October, 1839), 1.
9 Carlyle, op. cit., p. 191.
10 J. A. Froude, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (London, 1883), i, 39.
11 Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872 (Boston, 1883), i, 140.
12 T. Carlyle, Life of Sterling, p. 106.
13 A. Carlyle, Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Robert Browning (New York, 1923), pp. 210, 217, 236, 237.
14 Ibid., p. 231.
15 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ii, 56.
16 See Carlyle's letter to his mother: J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle. A History of his Life in London, 1834–1881 (New York, 1884), i, 357.
17 H. Allingham and D. Redford, William Allingham. A Diary (London, 1907), p. 216.
18 Fremde, Carlyle's Life in London, i, 283.
19 A. Carlyle, New Letters of Thomas Carlyle (London, 1904), i, 52.
20 The change appears in the report of Carlyle's last lecture of 1839 quoted from the Examiner. See R. H. Shepherd, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Carlyle (London, 1881), ii, 214.
21 C. E. Norton, Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1814–1826 (London, 1886), pp. 72, 156.
22 (London, 1901), p. 120.
23 “Varnhagen von Ense's Memoirs,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (London, 1899), iv, 108–109.
24 See letter to Sterling, 17 January, 1837, New Letters, i, 52.
25 See in qualification Carlyle letter of 9 December, 1847, Shepherd, op. cit., ii, 16. This suggests that Carlyle had some knowledge of the memoir in advance of its publication—knew at least that it was to be “long-winded.”
28 Part i, Chap. i.
27 F. Maurice, Life of Frederick Denison Maurice (New York, 1884), i, 548.
28 See English Review, X (June to Decmber, 1848), 399 ff.
The long compaign of the Record against the Sterling Club, held infidel for bearing the name of Sterling, begins March 1, 1849. Maurice, op. cit., i, 532.
29 C. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 2d edition (Philadelphia, 1884), p. 247.
30 Op. cit., i, 357, note.
31 Stanley, op. cit., pp. 5–6, note.
32 Fox, op. cit., p. 266.
33 D. A. Wilson, Carlyle on Cromwell and others (London, 1925), p. 409.
34 Carlyle at the Zenith (London, 1927), p. 368.
35 Carlyle's Life in London, ii, 57.
36 J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle. A History of the First Forty Years of his Life, 1795–1835 (New York, 1882), i, 179.
37 Trench, op. cit., i, 272.
38 Froude, Carlyle's Life in London, i, 298.
D. A. Wilson, Carlyle to the French Revolution (London, 1924), p. 372.
39 See E. W. Coningham, Twelve Letters by John Sterling (London and Brighton, 1851).
40 Life of Sterling, p. 261.