Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish stonemason’s son, brought German philosophy and literature to Britain, wrote a French Revolution that made him famous when the first volume’s only manuscript was burned by a maid and he rewrote it, and became the Victorian sage, thundering against materialism, democracy and cant. The essays on Characteristics and on Sir Walter Scott, and the Inaugural Address he gave as Rector of Edinburgh, show the prophetic voice in shorter compass. Mill, Dickens, Ruskin and Emerson all learned from him, and most of them eventually recoiled from where he went.