Historians Reconsidered: Carlyle

Few Victorian prophets are more discredited today than Carlyle, or so little read, yet he is still beloved of biographers? Nor is this surprising: ever since Froude first shocked his admirers by revealing that the grand protagonist of simple domestic virtues had broken Jane Welsh upon  the wheel of his egoism, observers have been struck by the paradoxes in his character and have sought to explain them. Carlyle preached the gospel of stem manliness, but there is strong evidence that he was impotent. The rough Scottish peasant who despised well-bred learning and fashionable society permitted himself to be lionized by the rich, and succumbed to the fascination of Lady Ashburton.