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Carlyle and Wordsworth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Charles Richard Sanders
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Extract

In general Carlyle was not kind in dealing with the English Romantic poets. Wordsworth was no exception to the rule. As early as 4 March 1823 Carlyle cautioned Jane Welsh against admiring Wordsworth and Byron too much and Goethe too little. “Wordsworth and Byron! They [compared to Goethe] are as the Christian Ensign and Captain Bobadil before the Duke of Marlboro!” Even in treating rustics and their way of life Schiller was far superior to Wordsworth. In his Life of Schiller (1825) Carlyle wrote:

Among our own writers, who have tried such subjects, we remember none that has succeeded equally with Schiller. One potent but ill-fated genius has, in far different circumstances and with far other means, shown that he could have equalled him: the Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns is, in its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis, as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen, without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Rösselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates of Rütli.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 9 , Spring 1981 , pp. 115 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

NOTES

1. The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Duke-Edinburgh, Edition, ed. Sanders, C. R., Fielding, K. J., Campbell, I. M., Clubbe, John, Taylor, Janetta, Christianson, Aileen, and Smith, Hilary, 9 vols. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1970, 1981), II, 300.Google Scholar Henceforth referred to as CL. The Christian Ensign is unidentified. Bobadil is a boastful but weak soldier in Jonson's, BenEvery Man in His Humor.Google Scholar

2. The Life of Friedrich Schiller (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899), p. 175.Google Scholar

3. Tc to Carlyle, John A., 16 04 1828Google Scholar, CL, IV, 360.Google Scholar

4. CL, VI, 81.Google Scholar

5. Froude, J. A., Thomas Carlyle, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1882, 1884), II, 338–39.Google Scholar

6. Ms, National Library of Scotland (henceforth Nls), 618.50.

7. Froude, , III, 31–32.Google Scholar

8. Ms, the Huntington Library.

9. Ms, Nls, 520.41.

10. Ms, Nls,618.53.

11. The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Slater, Joseph (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 132–33.Google Scholar Henceforth Slater.

12. Froude, , III, 45.Google Scholar

13. Literary Recollections and Sketches (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1893), p. 213.Google Scholar

14. Ibid, and Wilson, D. A., Carlyle, 6 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1923–1934), III, 10.Google Scholar

15. Wylie, W. H., Thomas Carlyle: The Man and His Books (London: Marshall Japp, 1881), p. 381.Google Scholar

16. Slater, , p. 205.Google Scholar

17. Ms, Victoria and Albert Museum.

18. Wilson, , Carlyle, III, 65–66.Google Scholar

19. Slater, , p. 236.Google Scholar

20. Wilson, , Carlyle, IV, 3–4.Google Scholar

21. Tc to Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 2 09 1841Google Scholar: MS, NLS, 610.55.

22. Literary Recollections, p. 67.Google Scholar

23. Conversations with Carlyle (London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1896), pp. 53–55.Google Scholar

24. (London, 1897), pp. 144–45.

25. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. Froude, J. A., 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1883), I, 4.Google Scholar

26. Ed. Norton, C. E., with an Introduction by Ian Campbell (London: Dent, 1972), pp. 360–62.Google Scholar

27. For my other studies of portraits, Carlyle's pen, see “Carlyle's Letters to Ruskin,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 41 (09 1958), 208–38Google Scholar; “The Carlyle–Browning Correspondence and Relationship,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 57 (Autumn, 1974), 213–46Google Scholar; (Spring, 1975), 430–62; “Carlyle's Pen Portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,” in Carlyle Past and Present: A Collection of New Essays, ed. Fielding, K. J. and Tarr, Rodger L. (London: Vision Press Ltd., 1976), pp. 216–38Google Scholar; and Carlyle's Friendships and Other Studies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978).Google Scholar