ABSTRACT
H. D. Traili speaks of Carlyle as “alike ignorant of philosophical systems and contemptuous of philosophical method”. Carlyle never fell as Coleridge did under the spell of the philosophies that were being expounded in his own country in his time. Lockhart in his Life of Scott tells us that “German had been in fashion for thirty years”, and Carlyle’s biographer has noticed that: “The Scotch appreciation of modern languages was what then distinguished their culture from the English”. To no less a degree than Coleridge embodied the Romantic spirit, Carlyle may be said to have been the living embodiment of the Puritanic spirit which had been the source of what was best in the history of England and Scotland, the British Colonies, and the New England States. Carlyle knew well enough that thought was itself a form of action, and might be for individuals or epochs the duty that lay nearest to them.
