Masters of Literature, Carlyle (Classic Reprint) PDF Download

Author: A. W. Evans
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781331393054
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Excerpt from Masters of Literature, Carlyle For more than twenty-five years of his lifetime Carlyle occupied a place among his contemporaries which is very nearly unique in the history of English men of letters. Men of all schools and of all parties listened for the oracles delivered at Chelsea with veneration, enthusiasm, doubt, dissent, or amusement, but always with close attention. His denunciations of what displeased him in life or in letters were passed about from mouth to mouth and laughed at or applauded, while his approval of a scheme or of a movement was looked upon by those (and they were not many) who received it as a testimonial of the highest worth. He was, in short, almost an English institution. And this ascendancy was quite as much a tribute to his character as an acknowledgment of his genius. Men felt that he had reached his convictions by the road of personal experience as well as of ardent intellectual toil, that he had taught himself before he took it upon himself to teach others, and that whatever value might be attributed to the message he delivered, there could be no shadow of doubt regarding its sincerity. Like Dr. Johnson, with whom, in spite of many points of dissimilarity, Carlyle had a great deal in common, his position was due to what he was as much as to what he had written. Johnson, an Englishman of Englishmen, a Tory and a Royalist, content to accept the teaching of the Church of England with scarcely a movement of doubt, was, as Carlyle himself discerned, gifted by nature for "the noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood and guidance of mankind." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.