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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The year 1825–26, was of very great importance to Carlyle. It marked his emergence from the ethnic or purely humanistic phase of intellectual development, into the phase of transcendental thought. During the year he found for the first time a permanent within the flux. He encountered an unchanging truth through art: “the fiction of the poet,” he said, “is not falsehood but the purest truth.” This culmination is the result of the æsthetic progress traceable through the preceding period.
Since this article was accepted the materials in some of Professor C. F. Harrolds articles referred to in the footnotes have been embodied in his Carlyle and German Thought, Yale Studies in English, lxxxii (1934).
1 Goethe, J. W., Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels; translated by Carlyle (London: Chapman and Hall, 1907), i, 29.
2 See Carlyle and Miss Welsh, Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, edited by A. Carlyle (New York: John Lowe Co., 1909), ii, 158–159, 186, 238, 242–243.
3 Carlyle, Thomas, Reminiscences (London: Macmillan and Co., 1887), ii, 179–180. See also Froude's Thomas Carlyle, 1795–1835, 2 v. (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1897), i, 269–270.
4 Carlyle, Thomas, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 5 v. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899) (The Works of Thomas Carlyle, xxvi–xxx) i, 398, 457. Carlyle, Thomas, Sartor Resartus, edited by MacMechan (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1896, New impression 1905), pp. 175, 203, 206–207, 239. Carlyle, Thomas, Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Robert Browning, edited by A. Carlyle (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923), pp. 78–79.
5 See the following references: (a) Carlyle, Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill, p. 95. (b) Espinasse, Francis, Literary Recollections and Sketches (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1893), pp. 220–221. (c) Carlyle, Essays, ii, 26. (d) Carlyle, Two Note Books (New York: Grolier Club, 1898), 221–222. (e) Allingham, William, A Diary, edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 273.
6 For instance, in 1816, after trying for eighteen months, he still did not understand such a fundamental principle in English philosophy as the distinction between primary and secondary qualities of matter. See Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, edited by C. E. Norton, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886), i, 82.
7 It is true that, long before this time, Carlyle had affected an air of familiarity when he alluded to the German philosophers. Miss Margaret Storrs has gathered many of these allusions for her dissertation, The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, 1929). I have gathered still more. But they are usually vague in content and are wholly lacking in references to specific works. Perhaps the most striking of the allusions to Kant before 1826 occurs in the Third Part of The Life of Schiller, which was finished by early February 1824 (London Magazine, x, 22). In it Carlyle stands at a safe distance from his subject and makes the well-worn complaint about abstruse terminology used to cloak simple meanings. Then he admits that his remarks are the result of only very limited acquaintance with the subject. I do not find in these allusions a sound basis for supposing that Carlyle had actually read in any of Kant's books before the fall of 1826. On the other hand, I find that Carlyle had made very similar remarks about the philosophy of Kant in March 1823, when he was avowedly viewing it through borrowed eyes (Two Note Books, pp. 40–47). Perhaps the best case of Carlyle's conjuring with Fichte's name occurs also in the Third Part of The Life of Schiller. Only two pages before the allusion to Kant's philosophy, Carlyle puts quotation marks around a passage that he attributes to Fichte (London Magazine, x, 20). However, the matter of this passage—without the signs of direct discourse—had appeared in Madame de Stael's Germany (see the London 1814 edition, iii, 110), the book that had turned Carlyle's attention to Germany in 1817. See Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, i, 119, and Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913), i, 480–481.
8 The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, ii, 324.
9 Two Note Books, 112–113.—The entry was made between March 1827 (see p. 105) and June. The assurance for the latter date lies in the quotations from Richter on p. 114, which were taken for use in the essay on Richter, upon which Carlyle was busy in June (Letters of Thomas Carlyle pp. 49–50). Carlyle's statement of 100 pages of Kant does not agree with his former statement of 150 pages, but this disagreement need not be taken too seriously in what is obviously a springtime reference to his reading during the preceding fall.
10 See Two Note Books, pp. 72–112, passim, for references to philosophic matters. Froude's statement (Thomas Carlyle … 1795–1836, i, 302, cited by Miss Storrs in The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 21) that Carlyle read Kant, Fichte, and Schelling in the winter of 1827 at Edinburgh cannot be substantiated. Froude probably misconstrued some of the notes that Carlyle took on these men while he was reading Reinhold's account or Stapfer's (see later, pp. 814–817 of this paper).
11 Essays, i, 75.
12 Essays, ii, 25–26.
13 Illustrated Memorial Volume of the Carlyle's House Purchase Fund Committee with Catalogue of Carlyle's Books, Manuscripts, Pictures and Furniture Exhibited Therein (London, 1896), p. 77.—However, it is not certain that this volume is the copy he used in his 1826 reading. There seems no way to be certain on this point. Mrs. Strong, Curator of the Carlyle's house, writes me concerning the volume in her care: “Carlyle's book-plate (‘Humiliate‘) is pasted on the inside of the cover but otherwise it has no marking or annotation whatever.”
14 Essays, i, 81.
15 Ibid., ii, 27.
16 Ibid.,ii, 27.
17 Ibid., ii, 26–27.
18 Ibid., ii, 26.
19 Two Note Books, pp. 221–222.
20 Allingham, William, A Diary, p. 273. One Saturday early in 1879.
21 The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 27.
22 Ibid., 42.—Especially on the point that Carlyle's use of Reason differs from Kant's use, see Professor C. F. Harrold's article “Carlyle's Interpretation of Kant,” Philological Quarterly, vii (1928), 345–357.
23 Miss Storrs, The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 52.
24 Ibid., p. 29.
25 Wellek, René, Immanuel Kant in England 1793–1838 (Princeton University Press, 1931), pp. 188–189.
26 See Wilson, David Alec, Carlyle Till Marriage (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1924), p. 211.
27 The passage in point can be found in Carlyle's translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, ii, 129.
23 Carlyle, Thomas, Lectures on the History of Literature …, edited by J. R. Greene (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1892), second edition, pp. 202–203.
29 See “Eight Unpublished Letters of Thomas Carlyle,” edited by R. Garnett, Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, cii (1899), 322–323.
30 The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, i, 12.
31 Kant in England, p. 189.
32 Ibid., p. 200.
33 This and similar statements herein are based on an unpublished record (some 4400 entries) of Carlyle's readings up to 1834.
33a C. F. Harrold, “Carlyle and Novalis,” S.P., xxvii (1930), 48–49.
34 The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 34.
35 Kant in England, p. 201.
36 In addition to the evidence already given concerning Carlyle's study of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, see Carlyle's Two Note Books, pp. 72–112, passim, for references to philosophic matters. See also post, pp. 817–825, in which Carlyle's reading of Schelling and Fichte is shown as part of the transition of Carlyle's interest from the theoretical aspect to the practical aspect of German philosophy. Carlyle himself points out that he did not tarry long with the German or any other systems, but he does not say how long (Lectures on the History of Literature …, pp. 204–205).
37 Two Note Books, pp. 72–73.
38 Ibid., p. 78.—The passage in Coleridge to which Carlyle referred may have been the following one from the third essay in The Friend, Section the First, “On the Principle of Political Knowledge”: “By the pure Reason, I mean the power by which we become possessed of principle, (the eternal verities of Plato and Descartes), and of ideas, (N.B. not images) as the ideas of a point, a line, a circle, in Mathematics; and of Justice, Holiness, Free-Will, etc., in Morals.” See The Works of S. T. Coleridge (Philadelphia: Crissy and Markley, 1849), p. 416. Or Carlyle may have had in mind a footnote to the postscript to the first essay in Section the Second, “On the grounds of Morals and Religion, and the Discipline of the Mind Requisite for the True Understanding of the Same.” In this footnote, after explaining Particularity as one of the manifestations of the French intellect, Coleridge continued: “Hence the idolism of the French, here expressed in one of its results, viz., palpability. Ideas are here out of the question. I had almost said, that Ideas and a Parisian philosopher are incompatible terms, since the latter half, I mean, of the reign of Louis XVI. But even the Conceptions of a Frenchman, whatever he admits to be conceivable, must be imageable, and the imageable must be fancied tangible—the non-apparency of either or both being accounted for by the disproportion of our senses, not by the nature of the conceptions.” (The Works of S. T. Coleridge, p. 497. Closely related thoughts occur in Biographia Literaria, Chapters viii, ix, xii, on pages 263, 266, and 288 respectively.) The probability that the passage just quoted is the one in question is somewhat strengthened by the fact that it occurs in connection with Coleridge's distinction between genius and talent (ibid., 496–498). With this distinction Carlyle had long been familiar: he had pointed to it in March 1823. (Two Note Books, pp. 46–47.)
39 Two Note Books, pp. 83–84.
40 Ibid., p. 84.
41 Two Note Books, pp. 96–97.
42 Ibid., pp. 96–97.
42 Hamburg, bey Friedrich Perthes, 1801–1803, 6 vols.
44 Two Note Books, p. 100.—It would be hard to say which of the two trends seen in this entry is the more characteristic of Carlyle at this period: the tendency to make a brilliant stylistic antithesis or the tendency to point out a reform for his country. At all events, little strictly philosophic tendency on Carlyle's part is revealed in this entry. The philosophic constituents of Carlyle's notes are to be found in Reinhold's distinction between Rationalism and Empiricism. On pages 12 and 13 of the first volume of Beyträge occurs this passage concerning Descartes: “Auch Ihm ist, wie dem Platon, die reale Erkenntniss, als solche, nichts anderes als die Wahrnehmung im Denken und durch Denken—das Philosophiren nichts anderes als reines, des Einflusses der Phantasie sich erwehrendes, und auf das Urwahre zurüchgehendes Denken—das Urwahre nichts anderes als die Gottheit—und das Wahre—die denkenden und materiellen Wesen unter Gott.” (The italics here and hereafter are Reinhold's.) Reinhold's next sentence indicates that Leibnitz developed still further than Descartes had done, these Platonic “ Grundgedanken.” Thus the first part of Carlyle's antithesis can be traced to Reinhold. In the second part of the antithesis, Carlyle was obviously referring to English empiricism. On page seven of the first volume of Beyträge Reinhold said that the English had given up all genuine philosophic thinking after Locke and Hume had brought to conclusion the investigations introduced into England by Bacon. Two pages further on, Reinhold explained: “Baco legte den Glauben an die Natur, und an die, an derselben sich selbst ankündigende, Gottheit, in welchen Beyden Ihm das an sich selbst Wahre und Gewisse bestand, allen seinen Nachforschungen bald ausdrücklich, bald stillschweigend zum Grunde. Er dachte sich die ursprüngliche reale Erkenntniss als die Wahrnehmung des Natürlichen, als solchen, und des Göttlichen am Natürlichen.” On pages 10 and 11 Reinhold rounded his point on English empiricism by saying that a certain characteristic of the English nation seemed to commit England's philosophy to the empirical method and to cause even its moral and religious ideas to be based on sensation.
45 Carlyle appears to be mistaken: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) died when Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was thirteen years old.
46 This entry occurs in Carlyle's Two Note Books, p. 102. Reinhold's Beyträge contains the reference to Gassendi as an empiricist; it occurs near the end of a long sentence dealing with the influence of Malebranche, Fenelon, and Pascal: “Aber diese Männer trieben den Platonismus der Cartesianischen Philosophie, durch die etwas zu stark angebrachte Würze mysticher Ansichten und blosser Gefühle der Religiosität, bis zu einem Extreme, welches, zumal durch seinen zu starken Contrast mit dem Nationalcharakter und den Sitten der Franzosen, nicht wenig dazu beytrug, das entgegengesetzte Extrem der griechischen Sensualphilosophie—den Gassendistischen Epikurismus—und den engländischen Empiricismus in Frankreich herbey zu führen” (i, 20).
47 This entry on page 102 of Two Note Books follows immediately after the one on Gassendi. In next to the last sentence Carlyle is restating in his own words the rationalist's indictments of the moral and religious implications of empiricism. He may have had in mind the following passages from Reinhold, for, in view of Reinhold's religious bias, it does not seem out of place to give the word Glauben some religious significance: “Auch im Glauben wird das Wahre nie ohne das Urwahre, und Dieses nie ohne Jenes geglaubt. Aber das Verhältniss zwischen beyden wird im blossen Glauben nur genossen und gefühlt, nicht erkannt und gedacht. Jeder mislungene Versuch, dasselbe zu erkennen, giebt ein falsches Wissen, eine Afterphilosophie, welche, wenn und inwieferne sie nicht etwa durch den Glauben und die Liebe des Wahren niedergeschlagen, überwogen, wird, Unglauben erzeugt” (Beyträge, i, 72–73). Two pages further on, Reinhold said that speculation becomes skepticism, “wenn und inwieferne der Philosoph bey näherer Untersuchung seines angenommenen Ersten einsieht, dass dasselbe weder das Urwahre selbst seyn, noch auf ein Urwahres zurückführen könne. Aus dieser Einfach, und durch die Darstellung derselben, wird er den Beweis führen, dass die Realität der Erkenntniss durchaus für kein Wissen und durch kein Wissen bewährt und vergewissert werden, und dass der Versuch einer solchen Bewährung und Vergewisserung, so lange seine Unmöglichkeit nicht eingesehen wird, keinen andern Erfolg haben könne, als ein falsches Wissen zu erkünsteln, und die Realität des Glaubens zu untergraben” (Beyträge, i, 75–76). Moreover, I cannot resist the feeling that there is a connection between the passages just quoted from Reinhold and still another of Carlyle's notebook entries, made, presumably, on January 16 also: “To prove the existence of God as Paley has attempted to do (a Kantean would say) is like lighting a lantern to seek for the Sun: if you look hard by your lantern, you may even miss your search” (Two Note Books, p. 103). There is still one more point in connection with Reinhold. Carlyle's discussion of the aim of “what may be called Primary or Critical philosophy” as the discovery of Urwahr, God, the Absolute (see “The State of German Literature,” Essays, i, 79–81) seems reminiscent of Reinhold's allusions to certain Philosophae primae, from Descartes to the recent Germans. Reinhold's discussion involves and identifies the terms Urwahr, Gottheit, and Prius (Beyträge, i, 12–16, and i, 71–72. Part of this first reference has already been quoted in footnote 44.)
48 It is impossible to date these entries with perfect accuracy. They fall between passages dated March 1827 and January 1828. I have dated them April or May because they precede quotations from Richter, with whom Carlyle was occupied by June 4. See Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1826–1836, edited by C. E. Norton (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889), pp. 45–46.
49 Two Note Books, pp. 112–113.
50 Revue encyclopédique, xxxiii (February 1827), 414–431.—Norton identified notes on other articles in the same magazine: for example, on the article that introduced Carlyle to Saint-Simonism.
50a J. A. S. Barrett reads sectators instead of testators; See N. and Q., March 10, 1934, p. 165.
51 Letters of Thomas Carlyle, pp. 45–46 and 20.
52 Carlyle, Thomas, Last Word of Thomas Carlyle (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1892), p. 99. The novel was called Wollen Reinfred.
53 Ibid., p. 99.
54 Ibid., pp. 62–63.
55 Letters of Thomas Carlyle; p. 53; read with Essays, i, 83, footnote, and 59–61 and footnote.
56 Carlyle, Essays, i, 83, footnote.
57 Ibid., i, 83, footnote.
58 Ibid., i, 76–77.
59 Dr. Wellek (Kant in England, p. 295, note 182, see also p. 201) says: “Schelling was probably quite unknown to Carlyle with the exception of the lectures ‘Methode des akademischen Studiums’.” And he suggests further, parenthetically, that even the passage Carlyle assigned to this work was “possibly quoted second-hand.”
60 Ibid., i, 81.—Also see end of footnote 47 in this paper for a suggestion of the connection of Reinhold with this viewpoint.
61 Carlyle, Essays, i, 82–83.
62 Ibid., i, 83.
63 Letters of Thomas Carlyle, p. 53, read with Essays, i, 59–61, and footnote.
64 Essays, i, 77.
65 Ibid., i, 58–61.
66 Carlyle's passage on pp. 58–59 of Essays, Vol. i, should be considered in relation to its context, pp. 58–61 and the footnote on p. 60. Also in the lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, edited by J. C. Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1907), pp. 217–218, Carlyle ascribes to Über das Wesen des Gelehrten the notion that the manifestations of the Divine Idea change in every new generation. The idea is common in Über das Wesen des Gelehrten: see J. G. Fichte's Sämmtliche Werke, edited by I. H. Fichte (Leipzig, 1844), vi, 352, 366, 406, 415, 438, 446; or Smith's translation of The Popular Works of J. G. Fichte (London: John Chapman, 1849), i, 247, 263, 312–313, 324, 352, 361.
67 Essays, i, 58–61.
68 Carlyle himself first pointed out the connection between his Hero as Man of Letters and Fichte's Über das Wesen des Gelehrten. See On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, pp. 217–219.—C. E. Vaughan and B. H. Lehman both recognize Carlyle's indebtedness to Fichte's book, and both realize that Carlyle adapted for his own purposes what he took from Fichte. See Vaughan, “Carlyle and his German Masters,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, collected by A. C. Bradley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), i, 193–195, and Lehman, Carlyle's Theory of the Hero … (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1928), pp. 113–128, especially 122–123.—Moreover, Professor Harrold says that Carlyle appropriated ideas from Fichte's Über das Wesen des Gelehrten for his own philosophy of history. See S.P., xxvii (1930), 58, footnote 55.
69 The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, 53–100, especially 61, 62, 68, 69, 73, 88.
70 Ibid., 62.—She thus takes issue with Vaughan (Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, i, 186), who does not consider the works of Fichte's two periods harmonious with each other.
71 Essays, ii, 10.
72 Ibid., ii, 10.
73 Essays, ii, 22–23.
74 Ibid., ii, 23.
75 When Professor Harrold (S. P., xxvii, 58, footnote 55) says that Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, 1794, perhaps helped furnish ideas for Carlyle's philosophy of history, one supposes that he has in mind Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. But another work, Grundriss der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, with the same key-word in its title, belongs to the same year. See J. G. Fichte's Sämmtliche Werke, edited by J. H. Fichte (Leipzig, 1844). Miss Storrs (op. cit., pp. 60, 68, 69) also refers to Wissenschaftslehre as a book; but she gives no date of publication.
76 Notice the following uses of the words Wissenschaftslehre and Philosophy interchangeably. (1) In a footnote to the Novalis essay Carlyle wrote: “Schelling, we have been informed, gives account of Fichte and his Wissenschaftslehre to the following effect: The Philosophy of Fichte was like lightning; it appeared only for a moment, but it kindled a fire which will burn forever' ” (Essays, ii, 10, note). (2) Further in the ssay, Carlyle translated one of Novalis's Fragmente which contained the expression “Fichtesche Philosophie.” See Novalis Schriften (Jena, 1907), ii, 294. Carlyle's translation of this passage runs: “The Catholic Religion is to a certain extent applied Christianity. Fichte's Philosophy too is perhaps applied Christianity” (Essays, ii, 42). But when Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus, he, perhaps unconsciously, changed the expression “Fichte's Philosophy” to “Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre” (Sartor Resartus, p. 177 and note).
77 Novalis Schriften, i, xxi. This Vorrede by Tieck was reprinted from the third edition of Novalis Schriften, 1815. Carlyle used the fourth edition, 1826. See Carlyle's Essays. ii. 1, footnote.
78 Novalis Schriften, Bd. i, x.
79 The printer's type that is used for this word in Tieck's Vorrede is in no way distinguished from the type used for the rest of the passage. Nor is there any other distinguishing mark. A change in type was the customary distinction for book titles then in German, as now in English.
80 But such a line of reasoning would, if one wished, lead him just as logically to the third Earl of Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. According to Carlyle's own statements he read this work twice: the first reading came before December 4, 1826 (Two Note Books, pp. 71–72), the second, before October 15, 1832 (Essays, iii, 200). At least one of these readings, and possibly both, came before he wrote the essay “Characteristics.” A more modern English instance would be Hazlitt's Characteristics, in the Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims. In the fall of 1831, just before writing Characteristics,“ Carlyle was much interested in Hazlitt. While he was still balancing between an essay ”On Man“ and one ”On Authors“ (Two Note Books, p. 212), he read Hazlitt's Table Talk (Ibid., p. 213). Eventually he decided on the former topic, ”On Man.“ ”Characteristics“ was the result. And in this very essay he made a pointed statement concerning Hazlitt (Essays, iii, 32).
81 S. P., xxvii, 58, footnote 55.
82 Lehman, Carlyle's Theory of the Hero, pp. 114–116.
83 It, alone, in this evidence looks strong enough to support the charge of influence, but it runs foul of Über das Wesen des Gelehrten, and sinks, as we shall see.
84 Fichte's Werke, vii, 58–60 (Smith's translation of The Popular Works of J. G. Fichte, ii, 57–59).
85 Lehman, Carlyle's Theory of the Hero, p. 116.
86 Fichte's Werke, vi, 369–371 (Smith's translation of Popular Works, i, 267–269).
87 Fichte's Werke, vi, 415 (Smith's translation of Popular Works, i, 324).
88 Fichte's Werke, vi, 420–428 (Smith's translation of Popular Works, i, 330–339).
89 Storrs, The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 87.
90 Essays, i, 58–59.
91 See Fichte's Werke, vi, 352 (Smith's translation of Popular Works, i, 247); Werke, vi, 366 (Popular Works, i, 263); Werke, vi, 406 (Popular Works, i, 312–313); Werke, vi, 415 (Popular Works, i, 324); Werke, vi, 438 (Popular Works, i, 352); Werke, vi, 446 (Popular Works, i, 361).
92 Carlyle's passage on pp. 58–59 of Essays, i, should be considered in relation to its context, pp. 58–61 and the footnote on p. 60. Also in Heroes and Hero-Worship, pp. 217–218, Carlyle ascribes to Über das Wesen des Gelehrten the notion that the manifestations of the Divine Idea change in every new generation.
93 Essays, iii, 13–14.
94 Fichte's Werke, vii, 4 and 5 (Popular Works, ii, 2 and 3).
95 Fichte's Werke, vii, 4 and 5 (Popular Works, ii, 2 and 3).
98 Fichte's Werke, vii, 5 (Popular Works, ii, 3).
97 The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 78.
98 Ibid., p. 80.
99 Vaughan, “Carlyle and His German Masters,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, i, 193–194.
100 Lehman, Carlyle's Theory of the Hero, pp. 117–118.
101 Ibid., p. 118.
102 Dr. Wellek writes:“ An analysis of Carlyle's relation to Fichte would lead to the same negative results [as did Dr. Wellek's analysis of Carlyle's relation to Kant], even if it can be shown that Carlyle borrowed certain phrases and little tags of speech and that Fichte had some influence on his theory of the hero.” (Kant in England, p. 201.)
103 Harrold, “Carlyle and Novalis,” S. P., xxvii (1930), 48–49.
104 Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 137, when read with Two Note Books, 135 and 140. Carlyle's first reading of Novalis seems to have been in the year 1825–26 (see Carlyle's translation, German Romance, i, 260).
105 Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 59. It is interesting, and perhaps significant, that Madame de Staël had advanced the same opinion in the book that introduced Carlyle to German literature and thought (Germany, iii, 71).
106 Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 59.
107 Ibid., p. 59 and footnote.
108 Ibid., p. 59.—The work alluded to appears to have been J. G. Fichte's Leben und literarischen Briefwechsel, edited by I. H. Fichte (1830–31).
109 Two Note Books, p. 255.
110 Essays, iii, 25.
111 On June 13, 1833, he called attention to this attitude of biographical interest even toward philosophers (Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill …, p. 57).
112 Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 59.
113 Carlyle, Two Note Books, p. 129.—I have had no opportunity to examine the German journal to see if my guess is right.
114 Macvey Napier, Selections from the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, Esq., edited by his son, Macvey Napier (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879), pp. 116–117. See also Illustrated Memorial Volume of the Carlyle's House Purchase Fund Committee with Catalogue of Carlyle's Books, Manuscripts, Pictures, and Furniture exhibited therein, p. 88.
115 Essays, iii, 25.
116 Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 220.
117 Dr. Wellek, who has examined an 1848 edition of this translation in the library of the Carlyle House in Chelsea, writes of it: “The body of the book is obviously unread, the introduction has marginal notes in Carlyle's hand” (Kant in England, p. 295, note 182).
118 The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte, p. 99. Also Professor Harrold informs me that his copy of Smith's translation, dated 1873, bears this inscription. However, I have seen only a copy of the 1849 edition; it contains no such inscription.
119 Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 220. Instead of going to primary sources, Carlyle appears to have relied upon secondary or popular writings, such as a survey work by Reinhold, a book review by Stapfer, and a preface by Tieck.