yle lectured to
considerable, yet select, audiences on "German Literature," "The
Successive Periods of European Culture," "The Revolutions of Modern
Europe," and "Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History."
Carlyle's yearly earnings from these lectures, the last series of
which had been published, varied between L135 and L300, and maintained
him and his wife till the "French Revolution" not only established his
reputation as a literary genius of the highest order, and as, in
Goethe's phrase, "a new moral force," but placed him beyond the
possibility of want. Yet, until late in life, his annual income from
literature was not more than L400. In 1838 appeared "Sartor Resartus"
in book form, and the first edition of his "Miscellanies." The
following year, Carlyle, who was at one time averse to the idea of
becoming a personal force in politics, published the first of a series
of attacks on the shams and corruptions of modern society, under the
title of "Chartism." This he followed in 1843 with "Past and Present,"
and in 1850 with "Latter-day Pamphlets," which proved among other
things that, if he did not quite approve of slavery, he disapproved of
the manner in which it had been abolished in the British dominions. In
1845 appeared "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," perhaps the most
successful of all his works, inasmuch as it completely revolutionized
the public estimate of its subject. In 1851 he published a biography
of his friend, John Sterling. From this time Carlyle gave himself up
entirely to his largest work, "The History of Frederick II., commonly
called Frederick the Great," the first two volumes of which were
published in 1858, and which was concluded in 1865. The preparation of
this book led Carlyle to make two excursions to the Continent,
which, with a yachting trip to Ostend, two tours in Ireland (on which
he intended to write a book based on a diary that was published after
his death), and regular visits to his kindred and friends in Scotland,
formed the chief distractions from his literary labors. Among the few
public movements with which Carlyle identified himself was that which
resulted in the establishment of the London Library, in 1839. In
August, 1866, he also allowed himself to be elected chairman of the
committee for the defence of Mr. Eyre, who had been recalled from his
post of Governor of Jamaica on the ground of his having shown
unnecessary severity in suppressing a negro insurrection which had