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Updated: June 16, 2025
Now, what are the masterpieces of Thomas Carlyle? In the order of their production they are Sartor Resartus, 1831; French Revolution, 1837; Hero-Worship, 1840; Past and Present, 1843; Cromwell, 1845.
In his poetry he reflects the doubt of an age which witnessed the conflict between science and revealed religion. Apparently he never passed through any such decisive personal struggle as is recorded in Sartor Resartus, and he has no positive conviction such as is voiced in "The Everlasting Yea."
But all nations are in the hands of God, who is above all second causes. And I know of no modern movement to which the words of Carlyle, when he was an optimist, when he wrote the most original and profound of his works, the "Sartor Resartus," apply with more force: "When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying?
He weighed every sentence: if in all his works, from Sartor to the Reminiscences, you pencil-mark the most suggestive passages you disfigure the whole book. His opinions will continue to be tossed to and fro; but as an artist he continually grows.
His illustrative poetical quotations are mostly from Shakespeare, from Milton and Byron also in a passage or two, and now and then one is reminded that he is not unfamiliar with Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and the "French Revolution" of the same unmistakable writer, more perhaps by the way in which phrases borrowed from other authorities are set in the text than by any more important evidence of unconscious imitation.
In such case the Secretary of State might, one would suppose, be allowed to grant a dispensation from the ordinary rule without any danger to American liberty. For the more profound considerations which this vast subject suggests, the judicious reader may well consult "Sartor Resartus." From my boyhood I have been fond of travel, and at times this fondness has been of great use to me.
In this the Sartor Resartus resembles some of the master-works of human invention, which have been acknowledged as such by many generations; and especially the works of Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne and Swift. There is nothing I know of in Antiquity like it. That which comes nearest is perhaps the Platonic Dialogue.
They were in the plight of the good Christian who goes to church every Sunday only to hear the parson rebuke the sins of the people who are not there. The man who dated his moral awakening from "Sartor Resartus" began to find the "Latter Day Pamphlets" wear on his nerves. It is good to be awakened; but one does not care to have the rising bell rung in his ears all day long.
Yeast was plainly the Christian reverse of the Carlyle image and superscription, as read in Sartor and Past and Present.
Sartor Resartus has long taken its place among the greatest prose works of the nineteenth century, and it is a strange commentary on this mandate to us all to "produce, produce!" to find that for eleven years Carlyle could find no publisher who would give it in book form to the world!
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