title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Thomas Carlyle was born on 4 December 1795 to James (1758–1832) and Margaret Aitken Carlyle (1771–1853) in the village of Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire in southwest Scotland. Nicholas Carlisle traced Carlyle's ancestry back to Margaret Bruce, sister of Robert the Bruce. His parents were members of the Burgher secession Presbyterian church. James Carlyle was a stonemason, later a farmer, who built the Arched House wherein his son was born. His maxim was that "man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream." As a result of his disordered upbringing, James Carlyle became deeply religious in his youth, reading many books of sermons and doctrinal arguments throughout his life. He married his first wife in 1791, distant cousin Janet, who gave birth to John Carlyle and then died. He married Margaret Aitken in 1795, a poor farmer's daughter then working as a servant. They had nine children, of whom Thomas was the eldest. Margaret was pious and devout and hoped that Thomas would become a minister. She was close to her eldest son, being a "smoking companion, counselor and confidante" in Carlyle's early days. She suffered a manic episode when Carlyle was a teenager, in which she became "elated, disinhibited, over-talkative and violent." She suffered another breakdown in 1817, which required her to be removed from her home and restrained. Carlyle always spoke highly of his parents, and his character was deeply influenced by both of them.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's early education came from his mother, who taught him reading (despite being barely literate), and his father, who taught him arithmetic. He first attended "Tom Donaldson's School" in Ecclefechan followed by Hoddam School (), which "then stood at the Kirk", located at the "Cross-roads" midway between Ecclefechan and Hoddam Castle. By age 7, Carlyle showed enough proficiency in English that he was advised to "go into Latin", which he did with enthusiasm; however, the schoolmaster at Hoddam did not know Latin, so he was handed over to a minister that did, with whom he made a "rapid & sure way". He then went to Annan Academy (), where he studied rudimentary Greek, read Latin and French fluently, and learned arithmetic "thoroughly well". Carlyle was severely bullied by his fellow students at Annan, until he "revolted against them, and gave stroke for stroke"; he remembered the first two years there as among the most miserable of his life.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In November 1809 at nearly fourteen years of age, Carlyle walked one hundred miles from his home in order to attend the University of Edinburgh (), where he studied mathematics with John Leslie, science with John Playfair and moral philosophy with Thomas Brown. He gravitated to mathematics and geometry and displayed great talent in those subjects, being credited with the invention of the Carlyle circle. In the University library, he read many important works of eighteenth-century and contemporary history, philosophy, and "belles-lettres". He began expressing religious scepticism around this time, asking his mother to her horror, "Did God Almighty come down and make wheelbarrows in a shop?" In 1813 he completed his arts curriculum and enrolled in a theology course at Divinity Hall the following academic year. This was to be the preliminary of a ministerial career.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle began teaching at Annan Academy in June 1814. He gave his first trial sermons in December 1814 and December 1815, both of which are lost. By the summer of 1815 he had taken an interest in astronomy and would study the astronomical theories of Pierre-Simon Laplace for several years. In November 1816, he began teaching at Kirkcaldy, having left Annan. There, he made friends with Edward Irving, whose ex-pupil Margaret Gordon became Carlyle's "first love". In May 1817, Carlyle abstained from enrolment in the theology course, news which his parents received with "magnanimity". In the autumn of that year, he read "De l'Allemagne" (1813) by Germaine de Staël, which prompted him to seek a German teacher, with whom he learned the pronunciation. In Irving's library, he read the works of David Hume and Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776–1789); he would later recall that


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: I read Gibbon, and then first clearly saw that Christianity was not true. Then came the most trying time of my life. I should either have gone mad or made an end of myself had I not fallen in with some very superior minds.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In the summer of 1818, following a "Tour" with Irving through "Peebles-Moffat moor country", Carlyle made his first attempt at publishing, forwarding an article "of a descriptive Tourist kind" to "some Magazine Editor in Edinburgh", which was not published and is now lost. In October, Carlyle resigned from his position at Kirkcaldy, and left for Edinburgh in November. Shortly before his departure, he began to suffer from dyspepsia, which remained with him throughout his life. He enrolled in a mineralogy class from November 1818 to April 1819, attending lectures by Robert Jameson, and in January 1819 began to study German, desiring to read the mineralogical works of Abraham Gottlob Werner. In February and March, he translated a piece by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, and by September he was "reading Goethe". In November he enrolled in "the class of Scots law", studying under David Hume (the advocate). In December 1819 and January 1820, Carlyle made his second attempt at publishing, writing a review-article on Marc-Auguste Pictet's review of Jean-Alfred Gautier's "Essai historique sur le problème des trois corps" (1817) which went unpublished and is lost. The law classes ended in March 1820 and he did not pursue the subject any further.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In the same month, he wrote several articles for David Brewster's "Edinburgh Encyclopædia" (1808–1830), which appeared in October. These were his first published writings. In May and June, Carlyle wrote a review-article on the work of Christopher Hansteen, translated a book by Friedrich Mohs, and read Goethe's "Faust". By the autumn, Carlyle had also learned Italian and was reading Vittorio Alfieri, Dante Alighieri and Sismondi, though German literature was still his foremost interest, having "revealed" to him a "new Heaven and new Earth". In March 1821, he finished two more articles for Brewster's encyclopedia, and in April he completed a review of Joanna Baillie's "Metrical Legends" (1821).


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In May, Carlyle was introduced to Jane Baillie Welsh by Irving in Haddington. The two began a correspondence, and Carlyle sent books to her, encouraging her intellectual pursuits; she called him "my German Master".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: During this time, Carlyle struggled with what he described as "the dismallest Lernean Hydra of problems, spiritual, temporal, eternal". Spiritual doubt, lack of success in his endeavours, and dyspepsia were all damaging his physical and mental health, for which he found relief only in "sea-bathing". In early July 1821, an "incident" occurred to Carlyle in Leith Walk, "during those 3 weeks of total sleeplessness, in which almost" his "one solace was that of a daily bathe on the sands between [Leith] and Portobello." The incident was the beginning of Carlyle's "Conversion", the process by which he "'authentically took the Devil by the nose'" and flung ""him" behind me". It gave Carlyle courage in his battle against the "Hydra"; to his brother John, he wrote, "What is there to fear, indeed?"


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle wrote several articles in July, August and September, and in November began a translation of Adrien Marie Legendre's "Elements of Geometry". In January 1822, Carlyle wrote "Goethe's Faust" for the "New Edinburgh Review", and shortly afterwards began a tutorship for the distinguished Buller family, tutoring Charles Buller and his brother Arthur William Buller until July; he would work for the family until July 1824. Carlyle completed the Legendre translation in July 1822, having prefixed his own essay "On Proportion", which Augustus De Morgan later called "as good a substitute for the fifth Book of Euclid as could have been given in that space". Carlyle's translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship" (1824) and "Travels" (1825) and his biography of Schiller (1825) brought him a decent income, which had before then eluded him, and he garnered a modest reputation. He began corresponding with Goethe and made his first trip to London in 1824, meeting with prominent writers such as Thomas Campbell, Charles Lamb, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and gaining friendships with Anna Montagu, Bryan Waller Proctor, and Henry Crabb Robinson. He also travelled to Paris in October–November with Edward Strachey and Kitty Kirkpatrick, where he attended Georges Cuvier's introductory lecture on comparative anatomy, gathered information on the study of medicine, introduced himself to Legendre, was introduced by Legendre to Charles Dupin, observed Laplace and several other notables while declining offers of introduction by Dupin, and heard François Magendie read a paper on the "fifth pair of nerves".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In May 1825, Carlyle moved into a cottage farmhouse in Hoddam Hill near Ecclefechan, which his father had leased for him. Carlyle lived with his brother Alexander, who, "with a cheap little man-servant", worked the farm, his mother, with one maid-servant, and his two youngest sisters, Jean and Jenny. He had constant contact with the rest of his family, most of whom lived close by at Mainhill, a farm owned by his father. Jane made a successful visit in September 1825. Whilst there, Carlyle wrote "German Romance" (1827), a collection of previously untranslated German novellas by Johann Karl August Musäus, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Ludwig Tieck, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Jean Paul. In Hoddam Hill, Carlyle found respite from the "intolerable fret, noise and confusion" that he had experienced in Edinburgh, and observed what he described as "the finest and vastest prospect all round it I ever saw from any house", with "all Cumberland as in amphitheatre unmatchable". Here, he completed his "Conversion" which began with the Leith Walk incident. He achieved "a grand and "ever"-joyful victory", in the "final chaining down, and trampling home, 'for good,' home into their caves forever, of all" his ""Spiritual Dragons"". By May 1826, problems with the landlord and the agreement forced the family's relocation to Scotsbrig, a farm near Ecclefechan. Later in life, he remembered the year at Hoddam Hill as "perhaps the most triumphantly important of my life."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In October 1826, Thomas and Jane Carlyle were married at the Welsh family farm in Templand. Shortly after their marriage, the Carlyles moved into a modest home on Comely Bank in Edinburgh, that had been leased for them by Jane's mother. They lived there from October 1826 to May 1828. In that time, Carlyle published "German Romance", began "Wotton Reinfred", an autobiographical novel which he left unfinished, and published his first article for the "Edinburgh Review", "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter" (1827). "Richter" was the first of many essays extolling the virtues of German authors, who were then little-known to English readers; "State of German Literature" was published in October. In Edinburgh, Carlyle made contact with several distinguished literary figures, including "Edinburgh Review" editor Francis Jeffrey, John Wilson of "Blackwood's Magazine", essayist Thomas De Quincey, and philosopher William Hamilton. In 1827 Carlyle attempted to land the Chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews without success, despite support from an array of prominent intellectuals, including Goethe. He also made an unsuccessful attempt for a professorship at the University of London.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In May 1828, the Carlyles moved to Craigenputtock, the main house of Jane's modest agricultural estate in Dumfriesshire, which they occupied until May 1834. He wrote a number of essays there which earned him money and augmented his reputation, including "Life and Writings of Werner", "Goethe's Helena", "Goethe", "Burns", "The Life of Heyne" (each 1828), "German Playwrights", "Voltaire", "Novalis" (each 1829), "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter Again" (1830), "Cruthers and Jonson; or The Outskirts of Life: A True Story", "Luther's Psalm", and "Schiller" (each 1831). He began but did not complete a history of German literature, from which he drew material for essays "The Nibelungen Lied", "Early German Literature" and parts of "Historic Survey of German Poetry" (each 1831). He published early thoughts on the philosophy of history in "Thoughts on History" (1830) and wrote his first pieces of social criticism, "Signs of the Times" (1829) and "Characteristics" (1831). "Signs" garnered the interest of Gustave d'Eichthal, a member of the Saint-Simonians, who sent Carlyle Saint-Simonian literature, including Henri de Saint-Simon's "Nouveau Christianisme" (1825), which Carlyle translated and wrote an introduction for.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Most notably, he wrote "Sartor Resartus". Finishing the manuscript in late July 1831, Carlyle began his search for a publisher, leaving for London in early August. He and his wife lived there for the winter at 4 (now 33) Ampton Street, Kings Cross, in a house built by Thomas Cubitt. The death of Carlyle's father in January 1832 and his inability to attend the funeral moved him to write the first of what would become the "Reminiscences", published posthumously in 1881. Carlyle had not found a publisher by the time he returned to Craigenputtock in March but he had initiated important friendships with Leigh Hunt and John Stuart Mill. That year, Carlyle wrote the essays "Goethe's Portrait", "Death of Goethe", "Goethe's Works", "Biography", "Boswell's Life of Johnson", and "Corn-Law Rhymes". Three months after their return from a January to May 1833 stay in Edinburgh, the Carlyles were visited at Craigenputtock by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson (and other like-minded Americans) had been deeply affected by Carlyle's essays and determined to meet him during the northern terminus of a literary pilgrimage; it was to be the start of a lifelong friendship and a famous correspondence. 1833 saw publication of the essays "Diderot" and "Count Cagliostro"; in the latter, Carlyle introduced the idea of "Captains of Industry".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In June 1834, the Carlyles moved into 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, which became their home for the remainder of their respective lives. Residence in London wrought a large expansion of Carlyle's social circle. He became acquainted with scores of leading writers, novelists, artists, radicals, men of science, Church of England clergymen, and political figures. Two of his most important friendships were with Lord and Lady Ashburton; though Carlyle's warm affection for the latter would eventually strain his marriage, the Ashburtons helped to broaden his social horizons, giving him access to circles of intelligence, political influence, and power.Carlyle eventually decided to publish "Sartor" serially in "Fraser's Magazine", with the instalments appearing between November 1833 and August 1834. Despite early recognition from Emerson, Mill and others, it was generally received poorly, if noticed at all. In 1834, Carlyle applied unsuccessfully for the astronomy professorship at the Edinburgh observatory. That autumn, he arranged for the publication of a history of the French Revolution and set about researching and writing it shortly thereafter. Having completed the first volume after five months of writing, he lent the manuscript to Mill, who had been supplying him with materials for his research. One evening in March 1835, Mill arrived at Carlyle's door appearing "unresponsive, pale, the very picture of despair". He had come to tell Carlyle that the manuscript was destroyed. It had been "left out", and Mill's housemaid took it for wastepaper, leaving only "some four tattered leaves". Carlyle was sympathetic: "I can be angry with no one; for they that were concerned in it have a far deeper sorrow than mine: it is purely the hand of Providence". The next day, Mill offered Carlyle £200, of which he would only accept £100. He began the volume anew shortly afterwards. Despite an initial struggle, he was not deterred, feeling like "a runner that tho' "tripped" down, will not lie there, but rise and run again." By September, the volume was rewritten. That year, he wrote a eulogy for his friend, "Death of Edward Irving".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In April 1836, with the intercession of Emerson, "Sartor Resartus" was first published in book form in Boston, soon selling out its initial run of five hundred copies. Carlyle's three-volume history of the French Revolution was completed in January 1837 and sent to the press. Contemporaneously, the essay "Memoirs of Mirabeau" was published, as was "The Diamond Necklace" in January and February, and "Parliamentary History of the French Revolution" in April. In need of further financial security, Carlyle began a series of lectures on German literature in May, delivered extemporaneously in Willis' Rooms. "The Spectator" reported that the first lecture was given "to a very crowded and yet a select audience of both sexes." Carlyle recalled being "wasted and fretted to a thread, my tongue … dry as charcoal: the people were there, I was obliged to stumble in, and start. "Ach Gott!"" Despite his inexperience as a lecturer and deficiency "in the mere mechanism of oratory," reviews were positive and the series proved profitable for him.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: During Carlyle's lecture series, "" was officially published. It marked his career breakthrough. At the end of the year, Carlyle reported to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense that his earlier efforts to popularise German literature were beginning to produce results, and expressed his satisfaction: ""Deutschland" will reclaim her great Colony; we shall become more "Deutsch", that is to say more "English", at same time." "The French Revolution" fostered the republication of "Sartor Resartus" in London in 1838 as well as a collection of his earlier writings in the form of the "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays", facilitated in Boston with the aid of Emerson. Carlyle presented his second lecture series in April and June 1838 on the history of literature at the Marylebone Institution in Portman Square. "The Examiner" reported that at the end of the second lecture, "Mr. Carlyle was heartily greeted with applause." Carlyle felt that they "went on better and better, and grew at last, or threatened to grow, quite a flaming affair." He published two essays in 1838, "Sir Walter Scott", being a review of John Gibson Lockhart's biography, and "Varnhagen von Ense's Memoirs". In April 1839, Carlyle published "Petition on the Copyright Bill". A third series of lectures was given in May on the revolutions of modern Europe, which the "Examiner" reviewed positively, noting after the third lecture that "Mr. Carlyle's audiences appear to increase in number every time." Carlyle wrote to his mother that the lectures were met "with very kind acceptance from people more distinguished than ever; yet still with a feeling that I was far from the "right" lecturing point yet." In July, he published "On the Sinking of the Vengeur" and in December he published "Chartism", a pamphlet in which he addressed the movement of the same name and raised the Condition-of-England question.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In May 1840, Carlyle gave his fourth and final set of lectures, which were published in 1841 as "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History." Carlyle wrote to his brother John afterwards, "The Lecturing business went of ["sic"] with sufficient "éclat;" the Course was generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the bad "best" I have yet given." In the 1840 edition of the "Essays", Carlyle published "Fractions", a collection of poems written from 1823 to 1833. Later that year, he declined a proposal for a professorship of history at Edinburgh. Carlyle was the principal founder of the London Library in 1841. He had become frustrated by the facilities available at the British Museum Library, where he was often unable to find a seat (obliging him to perch on ladders), where he complained that the enforced close confinement with his fellow readers gave him a "museum headache", where the books were unavailable for loan, and where he found the library's collections of pamphlets and other material relating to the French Revolution and English Civil Wars inadequately catalogued. In particular, he developed an antipathy to the Keeper of Printed Books, Anthony Panizzi (despite the fact that Panizzi had allowed him many privileges not granted to other readers), and criticised him in a footnote to an article published in the "Westminster Review" as the "respectable Sub-Librarian". Carlyle's eventual solution, with the support of a number of influential friends, was to call for the establishment of a private subscription library from which books could be borrowed.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle had chosen Oliver Cromwell as the subject for a book in 1840 and struggled to find what form it would take. In the interim, he wrote "Past and Present" (1843) and the articles "Baillie the Covenanter" (1841), "Dr. Francia" (1843), and "An Election to the Long Parliament" (1844). Carlyle declined an offer for professorship from St. Andrews in 1844. The first edition of "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations" was published in 1845; it was a popular success, and did much to revise Cromwell's standing in Britain. Financially secure, Carlyle wrote little in the years that immediately followed "Cromwell".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle visited Ireland in 1846 with Charles Gavan Duffy for a companion and guide, and wrote a series of brief articles on the Irish question in 1848. These were "Ireland and the British Chief Governor", "Irish Regiments (of the New Æra)", and "The Repeal of the Union", each of which offered solutions to Ireland's problems and argued to preserve England's connection with Ireland. Carlyle wrote an article titled "Ireland and Sir Robert Peel" (signed "C.") published in April 1849 in "The Spectator" in response to two speeches given by Peel wherein he made many of the same proposals which Carlyle had earlier suggested; he called the speeches "like a prophecy of better things, inexpressibly cheering." In May, he published "Indian Meal", in which he advanced maize as a remedy to the Great Famine as well as the worries of "disconsolate Malthusians". He visited Ireland again with Duffy later that year while recording his impressions in his letters and a series of memoranda, published as "Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849" after his death; Duffy would publish his own memoir of their travels, "Conversations with Carlyle".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's travels in Ireland deeply affected his views on society, as did the Revolutions of 1848. While embracing the latter as necessary in order to cleanse society of various forms of anarchy and misgovernment, he denounced their democratic undercurrent and insisted on the need for authoritarian leaders. These events inspired his next two works, "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" (1849), in which he coined the term "Dismal Science" to describe political economy, and "Latter-Day Pamphlets" (1850). The illiberal content of these works sullied Carlyle's reputation for some progressives, while endearing him to those that shared his views. In 1851, Carlyle wrote "The Life of John Sterling" as a corrective to Julius Hare's unsatisfactory 1848 biography. In late September and early October, he made his second trip to Paris, where he met Adolphe Thiers and Prosper Mérimée; his account, "Excursion (Futile Enough) to Paris; Autumn 1851", was published posthumously.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In 1852, Carlyle began research on Frederick the Great, whom he had expressed interest in writing a biography of as early as 1830. He travelled to Germany that year, examining source documents and prior histories. Carlyle struggled through research and writing, telling von Ense it was "the poorest, most troublesome and arduous piece of work he has ever undertaken". In 1856, the first two volumes of "History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great" were sent to the press and published in 1858. During this time, he wrote "The Opera" (1852), "Project of a National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits" (1854) at the request of David Laing, and "The Prinzenraub" (1855). In October 1855, he finished "The Guises", a history of the House of Guise and its relation to Scottish history, which was first published in 1981. Carlyle made a second expedition to Germany in 1858 to survey the topography of battlefields, which he documented in "Journey to Germany, Autumn 1858", published posthumously. In May 1863, Carlyle wrote the short dialogue "Ilias (Americana) in Nuce" (American Iliad in a Nutshell) on the topic of the American Civil War. Upon publication in August, the "Ilias" drew scornful letters from David Atwood Wasson and Horace Howard Furness. In the summer of 1864, Carlyle lived at 117 Marina (built by James Burton) in St Leonards-on-Sea, in order to be nearer to his ailing wife who was in possession of caretakers there.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle planned to write four volumes but had written six by the time "Frederick" was finished in 1865. Before its end, Carlyle had developed a tremor in his writing hand. Upon its completion, it was received as a masterpiece. He earned a sobriquet, the "Sage of Chelsea", and in the eyes of those that had rebuked his politics, it restored Carlyle to his position as a great man of letters. Carlyle was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University in November 1865, succeeding William Ewart Gladstone and defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a vote of 657 to 310.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle travelled to Scotland to deliver his "Inaugural Address at Edinburgh" as Rector in April 1866. During his trip, he was accompanied by John Tyndall, Thomas Henry Huxley and Thomas Erskine. One of those that welcomed Carlyle on his arrival was Sir David Brewster, president of the university and the commissioner of Carlyle's first professional writings for the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia". Carlyle was joined onstage by his fellow travelers, Brewster, Moncure D. Conway, George Harvey, Lord Neaves and others. Carlyle spoke extemporaneously on several subjects, concluding his address with a quote from Goethe: "Work, and despair not: "Wir heissen euch hoffen," 'We bid you be of hope!'" Tyndall reported to Jane in a three-word telegram that it was "A perfect triumph." The warm reception he received in his homeland of Scotland marked the climax of Carlyle's life as a writer. While still in Scotland, Carlyle received abrupt news of Jane's sudden death in London. Upon her death, Carlyle began to edit his wife's letters and write reminiscences of her. He experienced feelings of guilt as he read her complaints about her illnesses, his friendship with Lady Harriet Ashburton, and his devotion to his labour, particularly on "Frederick the Great". Although deep in grief, Carlyle remained active in public life.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Amidst controversy over governor John Eyre's violent repression of the Morant Bay rebellion, Carlyle assumed leadership of the Eyre Defence and Aid Fund in 1865 and 1866. The Defence had convened in response to the anti-Eyre Jamaica Committee, led by Mill and backed by Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and others. Carlyle and the Defence were supported by John Ruskin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley. From December 1866 to March 1867, Carlyle resided at the home of Louisa Baring, Lady Ashburton in Menton, where he wrote reminiscences of Irving, Jeffrey, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. In August, he published "Shooting Niagara: And After?", an essay in response and opposition to the Second Reform Bill. In 1868, he wrote reminiscences of John Wilson and William Hamilton, and his niece Mary Aitken Carlyle moved into 5 Cheyne Row, becoming his caretaker and assisting in the editing of Jane's letters. In March 1869, he met with Queen Victoria, who wrote in her journal of "Mr. Carlyle, the historian, a strange-looking eccentric old Scotchman, who holds forth, in a drawling melancholy voice, with a broad Scotch accent, upon Scotland and upon the utter degeneration of everything." In 1870, he was elected president of the London Library, and in November he wrote a letter to "The Times" in support of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. His conversation was recorded by a number of friends and visitors in later years, most notably William Allingham, who became known as Carlyle's Boswell.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In the spring of 1874, Carlyle accepted the "Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste" from Otto von Bismarck and declined Disraeli's offers of a state pension and the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath in the autumn. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1875, he was presented with a commemorative medal crafted by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm and an address of admiration signed by 119 of the leading writers, scientists, and public figures of the day. "Early Kings of Norway", a recounting of historical material from the Icelandic sagas transcribed by Mary acting as his amanuensis, and an essay on "The Portraits of John Knox" (both 1875) were his last major writings to be published in his lifetime. In November 1876, he wrote a letter in the "Times" "On the Eastern Question", entreating England not to enter the Russo-Turkish War on the side of the Turks. Another letter to the "Times" in May 1877 "On the Crisis", urging against the rumoured wish of Disraeli's to send a fleet to the Baltic Sea and warning not to provoke Russia and Europe at large into a war against England, marked his last public utterance. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him a Foreign Honorary Member in 1878.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: On 2 February 1881, Carlyle fell into a coma. For a moment he awakened, and Mary heard him speak his final words: "So this is Death—well . . ." He thereafter lost his speech and died on the morning of 5 February. An offer of interment at Westminster Abbey, which he had anticipated, was declined by his executors in accordance with his will. He was laid to rest with his mother and father in Hoddam Kirkyard in Ecclefechan, according to old Scottish custom. His private funeral, held on 10 February, was attended by family and a few friends, including Froude, Conway, Tyndall, and William Lecky, as local residents looked on.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's religious, historical and political thought has long been the subject of debate. In the 19th century, he was "an enigma" according to Ian Campbell in the "Dictionary of Literary Biography", being "variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian." Carlyle continues to perplex scholars in the 21st century, as Kenneth J. Fielding quipped in 2005: "A problem in writing about Carlyle and his beliefs is that people think that they know what they are."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle identified two philosophical precepts. The first is derived from Novalis: "The True philosophical Act is annihilation of self ("Selbsttödtung"); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither." The second is derived from Goethe: "It is only with Renunciation ("Entsagen") that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." Through "Selbsttödtung" (annihilation of self), liberation from material, self-imposed constraints, which arise from the misguided pursuit of unfulfilling happiness and result in atheism and egoism, is achieved. With this liberation and "Entsagen" (renunciation, or humility) as the guiding principle of conduct, it is seen that "there is in man a H than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness!" "Blessedness" refers to the serving of duty and the sense that the universe and everything in it, including humanity, is meaningful and united as one whole. Awareness of the fraternal bond of mankind brings discovery of the ""Divine Depth of Sorrow"", the feeling of "an infinite Love, an infinite Pity" for one's "fellowman".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle rejected doctrines which profess to fully know the true nature of God, believing that to possess such knowledge is impossible. In an 1835 letter, he asked, ""Wer darf ihn" [Who dares name him]? I dare not, and do not", while rejecting charges of pantheism and expressing the empirical basis of his belief:Finally assure yourself I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor circumcised Jew, but an unfortunate Christian individual resident at Chelsea in "this" year of Grace; neither Pantheist nor Pottheist, nor any Theist or "ist" whatsoever; having the most decided contem[pt] for all manner of System-builders and Sectfounders—as far as contempt may be com[patible] with so mild a nature; feeling well beforehand (taught by long experience) that all such are and even must be "wrong". By God's blessing, one has got two eyes to look with; also a mind capable of knowing, of believing: that is all the creed I will at this time insist on. With this empirical basis, Carlyle conceived of a "new Mythus", Natural Supernaturalism.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Following Kant's distinction between Reason ("Vernunft") and Understanding ("Verstand") in "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), Carlyle held the former to be the superior faculty, allowing for insight into the transcendent. Hence, Carlyle saw all things symbols, or clothes, representing the eternal and infinite. In "Sartor", he defines the "Symbol proper" as that in which there is "some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there." Carlyle writes: "All visible things are emblems . . . all Emblematic things are properly Clothes". Therefore, "Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought", and "the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God", as is "man himself".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In "On Heroes", Carlyle spoke of the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls 'the open secret.' . . . open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the World,' that which lies at 'the bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance . . . is but the "vesture", the embodiment that renders it visible.The "Divine Idea of the World", the belief in an eternal, omnipresent and metaphysical order which lies in the "unknown Deep" of nature, is at the core of Natural Supernaturalism.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle revered what he called the "Bible of Universal History", a "real Prophetic Manuscript" which incorporates the poetic and the factual to show the divine reality of existence. For Carlyle, "the right interpretation of Reality and History" is the highest form of poetry, and "true History" is "the only possible Epic". He imaged the "burning of a World-Phoenix" to represent the cyclical nature of civilisations as they undergo death and ""Palingenesia"", or Newbirth"". Periods of creation and destruction do overlap, however, and before a World-Phoenix is completely reduced to ashes, there are "organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves", elements of regeneration amidst degeneration, such as hero-worship, literature, and the unbreakable connection between all human beings. Akin to the seasons, societies have autumns of dying faiths, winters of decadent atheism, springs of burgeoning belief and brief summers of true religion and government. Carlyle saw history since the Reformation as a process of decay culminating in the French Revolution, out of which renewal must come, "for lower than that savage "Sansculottism" men cannot go." Heroism is central to Carlyle's view of history. He saw individual actors as the prime movers of historical events: "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In the area of historiography, Carlyle focused on the complexity involved in faithfully representing both the facts of history and their meaning. He perceived "a fatal discrepancy between our manner of observing [passing things], and their manner of occurring", since "History is the essence of innumerable Biographies" and every individual's experience varies, as does the "general inward condition of Life" throughout the ages. Furthermore, even the best of historians, by necessity, presents history as a ""series"" of ""successive"" instances (a narrative) rather than as a "group" of ""simultaneous"" things done (an action), which is how they occurred in reality. Every single event is related to all others before and after it in "an ever-living, ever-working Chaos of Being". Events are multi-dimensional, possessing the physical properties of "breadth", "depth" and "length", and are ultimately based on "Passion and Mystery", characteristics that narrative, which is by its nature one-dimensional, fails to render. Emphasising the disconnect between the typical discipline of history and history as lived experience, Carlyle writes: "Narrative is "linear", Action is "solid"." He distinguishes between the "Artist in History" and the "Artisan in History". The "Artisan" works with historical facts in an atomised, mechanical way, while the "Artist" brings to his craft "an Idea of the Whole", through which the essential truth of history is successfully communicated to the reader.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: As with history, Carlyle believed that "Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a "Hero"archy (Government of Heroes)". This fundamental assertion about the nature of society itself informed his political doctrine. Noting that the etymological root meaning of the word "King" is "Can" or "Able", Carlyle put forth his ideal government in "The Hero as King": Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise "him" to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the perfect state; an ideal country.Carlyle did not believe in hereditary monarchy but in a kingship based on merit. He continues:


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: The Ablest Man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he "tells us to do" must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn;—the thing which it will in all ways behoove us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubting, to do! Our "doing" and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal of constitutions.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: It was for this reason that he regarded the Reformation, the English Civil War and the French Revolution as triumphs of truth over falsehood, despite their undermining of necessary societal institutions.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle advocated a new kind of hero for the age of industrialisation: the Captain of Industry, who would re-imbue workhouses with dignity and honour. These Captains would make up a new "Aristocracy of Talent", or "Government of the Wisest". Instead of competition and ""Cash Payment"", which had become "the universal sole nexus of man to man", the Captain of Industry would oversee the Chivalry of Labour, in which loyal labourers and enlightened employers are joined together "in veritable brotherhood, sonhood, by quite other and deeper ties than those of temporary day's wages!"


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle believed that his time required a new approach to writing:But finally do you reckon this really a time for Purism of Style; or that Style (mere dictionary style) has much to do with the worth or unworth of a Book? I do not: with whole ragged battallions of Scott's-Novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French and even Newspaper Cockney (when "Literature" is little other than a Newspaper) storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian English breaking up from its foundations,—revolution "there" as visible as anywhere else!


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's style lends itself to several nouns, the earliest being Carlylism from 1841. The "Oxford English Dictionary" records Carlylese, the most commonly used of these terms, as having first appeared in 1858. Carlylese makes characteristic use of certain literary, rhetorical and grammatical devices, including apostrophe, apposition, archaism, exclamation, imperative mood, inversion, parallelism, portmanteau, present tense, neologisms, metaphor, personification, and repetition.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: At the beginning of his literary career, Carlyle worked to develop his own style, cultivating one of intense energy and visualisation, characterised not by "balance, gravity, and composure" but "imbalance, excess, and excitement." Even in his early anonymous periodical essays his writing distinguished him from his contemporaries. Carlyle's writing in "Sartor Resartus" is described as "a distinctive mixture of exuberant poetic rhapsody, Germanic speculation, and biblical exhortation, which Carlyle used to celebrate the mystery of everyday existence and to depict a universe suffused with creative energy."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's approach to historical writing was inspired by a quality that he found in the works of Goethe, Bunyan and Shakespeare: "Everything has form, everything has visual existence; the poet's imagination "bodies forth" the forms of things unseen, his pen turns them to "shape"." He rebuked typical, Dryasdust historiography: "Dull Pedantry, conceited idle Dilettantism,—prurient Stupidity in what shape soever,—is darkness and not light!" Rather than reporting events in a detached, distanced manner, he presents immediate, tangible occurrences, often in the present tense. In his "French Revolution", "the great prose epic of the nineteenth century", Carlyle managed to craft an overwhelmingly original voice, producing deliberate tension by combining the common language of the time with self-conscious allusions to traditional epics, Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, or some contemporary French history source in nearly every sentence of its three volumes.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's social criticism directs his penchant for metaphor toward the Condition-of-England question, depicting a thoroughly diseased society. Declaiming the aimlessness and infirmity of English leadership, Carlyle made use of satirical characters like Sir Jabesh Windbag and Bobus of Houndsditch in "Past and Present". Memorable catchphrases such as Morrison's Pill, the Gospel of Mammonism, and "Doing as One Likes" were employed to counteract empty platitudes of the day. Carlyle transformed his depicted reality in various ways, whether by conversion of actual human beings into grotesque caricatures, envisioning isolated facts as emblems of morality, or by manifestation of the supernatural; in the "Pamphlets", pampered felons appear in nightmarish visions and wrongheaded philanthropists wallow in their own filth.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle could at once use imaginative powers of rhetoric and vision to "render the familiar unfamiliar". He could also be a sharp-eyed, keen observer of the actual, reproducing scenes with imagistic clarity, as he does in the "Reminiscences", the "Life of John Sterling" and the letters; he has often been called the Victorian Rembrandt. As Mark Cumming explains, "Carlyle's intense appreciation of visual existence and of the innate energy of object, coupled with his insistent awareness of language and his daunting verbal resources, formed the immediate and lasting appeal of his style."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: The present table represents data gathered from "Oxford English Dictionary Online", 2012. An explanatory footnote is provided for each "Type".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Over fifty percent of these entries come from "Sartor Resartus", "French Revolution", and "History of" "Frederick the Great". Of the 547 First Quotations cited by the "O.E.D.", 87 or 16% are listed as being "in common use today."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's sense of humour and use of humorous characters was shaped by early readings of Cervantes, Samuel Butler, Jonathan Swift, and Laurence Sterne. He initially attempted a fashionable irony in his writing, which he soon abandoned in favour of a "deeper spirit" of humour. In his essays on Jean Paul, Carlyle rejects the dismissive, ironic humour of Voltaire and Molière, embracing the warm and sympathetic approach of Jean Paul and Cervantes. Carlyle establishes humour in many of his works through his use of characters, such as the Editor (in "Sartor Resartus"), Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (), Gottfried Sauerteig, Dryasdust, and Smelfungus. Linguistically, Carlyle explores the humorous possibilities of his subject through exaggerated and dazzling wordplay, "in sentences abounding with rhetorical devices: emphasis by capitalization, punctuation marks, and italics; allegory, symbol, and other poetic devices; hyphenated words, Germanic translations and etymologies; quotations, self-quotations, and bizarre allusions; and repetitious and antiquated speech."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's writing is highly allusive. Ruth apRoberts writes that "Thomas Carlyle may well be, of all writers in English, the most thoroughly imbued with the Bible. His language, his imagery, his syntax, his stance, his worldview—are all affected by it." Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms and Proverbs are Carlyle's most frequently referenced books of the Old Testament, and Matthew that of the New Testament. The structure of "Sartor" uses a basic typological Biblical pattern. "The French Revolution" is filled with dozens of Homeric allusions, quotations, and a liberal use of epithets drawn from Homer as well as Homeric epithets of Carlyle's own devising. The influence of Homer, particularly his attention to detail, his strongly visual imagination, and his appreciation of language, is also seen in "Past and Present" and "Frederick the Great". The language and imagery of John Milton is present throughout Carlyle's writings. His letters are full of allusions to a wide range of Milton's texts, including "Lycidas", "L'Allegro", "Il Penseroso", "Comus", "Samson Agonistes" and, most frequently, "Paradise Lost". Carlyle's works abound with direct and indirect references to William Shakespeare. "The French Revolution" contains two dozen allusions to "Hamlet" alone, and dozens more to "Macbeth", "Othello", "Julius Caesar", "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", the histories, and the comedies.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: The earliest literary criticism on Carlyle is an 1835 letter from Sterling, who complained of the "positively barbarous" use of words in "Sartor", such as "environment," "stertorous," and "visualised," words "without any authority" that are now widely used. William Makepeace Thackeray recorded his mixed response in his 1837 review of "French Revolution", decrying its "Germanisms and Latinisms" while acknowledging that "with perseverance, understanding follows, and things perceived first as faults are seen to be part of his originality, and powerful innovations in English prose."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Henry David Thoreau expressed appreciation in "Thomas Carlyle and His Works":Indeed, for fluency and skill in the use of the English tongue, he is a master unrivalled. His felicity and power of expression surpass even his special merits as historian and critic. . . . we had not understood the wealth of the language before. . . . He does not go to the dictionary, the wordbook, but to the word-manufactory itself, and has made endless work for the lexicographers . . . it would be well for any who have a lost horse to advertise, or a town-meeting warrant, or a sermon, or a letter to write, to study this universal letter-writer, for he knows more than the grammar or the dictionary.Oscar Wilde wrote that among the very few masters of English prose, "We have Carlyle, who should not be imitated." Matthew Arnold advised: "Flee Carlylese as you would the devil."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Frederic Harrison deemed Carlyle the "literary dictator of Victorian prose." T. S. Eliot complained that "Carlyle partly originates and partly marks the disturbances in the equilibrium of English prose style", a problem that only disappeared with "Ulysses". Indeed, Georg B. Tennyson remarked that "not until Joyce is there a comparable inventiveness in English prose."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Froude recalled his first impression of Carlyle:He was then fifty-four years old; tall (about five feet eleven), thin, but at that time upright, with no signs of the later stoop. His body was angular, his face beardless, such as it is represented in Woolner's medallion, which is by far the best likeness of him in the days of his strength. His head was extremely long, with the chin thrust forward; his neck was thin; the mouth firmly closed, the under lip slightly projecting; the hair grizzled and thick and bushy. His eyes, which grew lighter with age, were then of a deep violet, with fire burning at the bottom of them, which flashed out at the least excitement. The face was altogether most striking, most impressive in every way.He was often recognised by his wideawake hat.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle was a renowned conversationalist. Emerson described him as "an immense talker, as extraordinary in his conversation as in his writing,—I think even more so." Darwin considered him "the most worth listening to, of any man I know." Lecky noted his "singularly musical voice" which "quite took away anything grotesque in the very strong Scotch accent" and "gave it a softening or charm". Henry Fielding Dickens recollected that he was "gifted with a high sense of humour, and when he laughed he did so heartily, throwing his head back and letting himself go." Thomas Wentworth Higginson remembered his "broad, honest, human laugh," one that "cleared the air like thunder, and left the atmosphere sweet." Lady Eastlake called it "the best laugh I ever heard".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Charles Eliot Norton wrote that Carlyle's "essential nature was solitary in its strength, its sincerity, its tenderness, its nobility. He was nearer Dante than any other man." Harrison similarly observed that "Carlyle walked about London like Dante in the streets of Verona, gnawing his own heart and dreaming dreams of Inferno. To both the passers-by might have said, See! there goes the man who has seen hell". Higginson rather felt that Jean Paul's humorous character Siebenkäs "came nearer to the actual Carlyle than most of the grave portraitures yet executed", for, like Siebenkäs, Carlyle was "a satirical improvisatore". Emerson saw Carlyle as "not mainly a scholar," but "a practical Scotchman, such as you would find in any saddler's or iron-dealer's shop, and then only accidentally and by a surprising addition, the admirable scholar and writer he is."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Paul Elmer More found Carlyle "a figure unique, isolated, domineering—after Dr. Johnson the greatest personality in English letters, possibly even more imposing than that acknowledged dictator."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: George Eliot summarised Carlyle's impact in 1855:It is an idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence: if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttees on his funeral pile, it would be only like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest. For there is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle's writings; there has hardly been an English book written for the last ten or twelve years that would not have been different if Carlyle had not lived.Carlyle's two most important followers were Emerson and Ruskin. In the 19th century, Emerson was often thought of as "the American Carlyle". He sent Carlyle one of his books in 1870 with the inscription, "To the General in Chief from his Lieutenant". In 1854, Ruskin made his first public acknowledgement that Carlyle was the author to whom he "owed more than to any other living writer". After reading Ruskin's "Unto This Last" (1860), Carlyle felt that they were "in a minority of "two"", a feeling which Ruskin shared. From the 1860s onward, Ruskin frequently referred to him as his "master" and "papa," writing after Carlyle's death that he was "throwing myself now into the mere fulfilment of Carlyle's work."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: By 1960, Carlyle had become "the single most frequent topic of doctoral dissertations in the field of Victorian literature". While preparing for a study of his own, German scholar Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz found himself overwhelmed by the amount of material already written about Carlyle—in 1894.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: "The most explosive impact in English literature during the nineteenth century is unquestionably Thomas Carlyle's", writes Lionel Stevenson. "From about 1840 onward, no author of prose or poetry was immune from his influence."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Authors on whom Carlyle's influence was particularly strong include Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arthur Hugh Clough, Dickens, Disraeli, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Frank Harris, Kingsley, George Henry Lewes, David Masson, George Meredith, Mill, Margaret Oliphant, Marcel Proust, Ruskin, George Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman. Germaine Brée has shown the considerable impact that Carlyle had on the thought of André Gide. Carlylean influence is also seen in the writings of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Marcu Beza, Jorge Luis Borges, the Brontës, Arthur Conan Doyle, E. M. Forster, Ángel Ganivet, Lafcadio Hearn, William Ernest Henley, Marietta Holley, Rudyard Kipling, Selma Lagerlöf, Herman Melville, Edgar Quinet, Samuel Smiles, Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Miguel de Unamuno, Alexandru Vlahuță and Vasile Voiculescu.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's German essays and translations as well as his own writings were pivotal to the development of the English "Bildungsroman". His concept of symbols influenced French literary Symbolism. Victorian specialist Alice Chandler writes that the influence of his medievalism is "found throughout the literature of the Victorian age".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's influence was also felt in the negative sense. Algernon Charles Swinburne, whose comments on Carlyle throughout his writings range from high praise to scathing critique, once wrote to John Morley that Carlyle was "the illustrious enemy whom we all lament", reflecting a view of Carlyle as a totalizing figure to be rebelled against.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Despite the broad Modernist reaction against the Victorians, the influence of Carlyle has been traced in the writings of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and D. H. Lawrence.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: J. H. Muirhead wrote that Carlyle "exercised an influence in England and America that no other did upon the course of philosophical thought of his time". Ralph Jessop has shown that Carlyle powerfully forwarded the Scottish School of Common Sense and reinforced it by way of further engagement with German idealism. Examining his influence on late 19th- and early 20th-century philosophers, Alexander Jordan concluded that "Carlyle emerges as far-and-away the most prominent figure in a tradition of Scottish philosophy that stretched across three centuries and which culminated in British Idealism". His formative influence on British idealism touched its nearly every aspect, including its theology, its moral and ethical philosophy and its social and political thought. Leading British idealist F. H. Bradley cited from the "Everlasting Yea" chapter of "Sartor Resartus" in his argument against utilitarianism: "Love not Pleasure; love God."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle had a foundational influence on American Transcendentalism. Virtually every member followed him with enthusiasm, including Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Orestes Brownson, William Henry Channing, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Frederic Henry Hedge, Henry James Sr., Thoreau, and George Ripley. James Freeman Clarke wrote that "He did not seem to be giving us a new creed, so much as inspiring us with a new life."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Chandler writes that "Carlyle's contribution to English medievalism was first to make the contrast between modern and medieval England sharper and more horrifying than it had ever been." Secondly, he "gave new direction to the practical application of medievalism, transferring its field of action from agriculture, which was no longer the center of English life, to manufacturing, in which its lessons could be extremely valuable."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: G. K. Chesterton posited that "Out of [Carlyle] flows most of the philosophy of Nietzsche," a view held by many; the connection has been studied since the late-nineteenth century. But Nietzsche rejected this.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle influenced the Young Poland movement, particularly its main thought leaders Stanisław Brzozowski and Antoni Lange. In Romania, Titu Maiorescu of "Junimea" spread Carlyle's works, influencing Constantin Antoniade and others, including Panait Mușoiu, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru and Ion Th. Simionescu.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Percival Chubb delivered an address on Carlyle to The Ethical Society of St. Louis in 1910. It was the first in a series entitled "Forerunners of Our Faith".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: David R. Sorensen affirms that Carlyle "redeemed the study of history at a moment when it was being threatened by a host of convergent forces, including religious dogmatism, relativism, utilitarianism, Saint-Simonianism and Comtism" by defending the "miraculous dimension of the past" from attempts to make "history a science of progress, philosophy a justification of self-interest, and faith a matter of social convenience." James Anthony Froude attributed his decision to become an historian to Carlyle's influence. John Mitchel's "Life of Aodh O'Neill, Prince of Ulster" (1845) has been called "an early incursion of Carlylean thought into the romantic construction of the Irish nation". Standish James O'Grady's presentation of a heroic past in his "History of Ireland" (1878–80) was strongly influenced by Carlyle. Wilhelm Dilthey deemed Carlyle "the greatest English writer of the century". Carlyle's histories were also praised by Heinrich von Treitschke, Wilhelm Windelband, George Peabody Gooch, Pieter Geyl, Charles Firth, Nicolae Iorga, Vasile Pârvan and Andrei Oțetea. Others were hostile to Carlyle's method, such as Thomas Babington Macaulay, Leopold von Ranke, Lord Acton, Hippolyte Taine and Jules Michelet.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Sorensen says that "modern historians and historiographers owe a debt to [Carlyle] that few are prepared to acknowledge". Among those few is C. V. Wedgwood, who said "It is the measure of Carlyle's greatness that, although he did make mistakes, he emerges none the less as one of the great masters." Another is John Philipps Kenyon, who noted that despite his challenging style, Carlyle's "books are still read, and he has commanded the respect of historians as diverse as James Anthony Froude, G. M. Trevelyan and Hugh Trevor-Roper."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Chandler, writing in 1970, said that the influence of Carlyle's medievalism can be found "in much of the social legislation of the past hundred and more years". It is perhaps most pronounced in Forster's Education Act, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, the Factory Acts, and the rise of such practices as business ethics and profit sharing throughout the 19th- and early 20th-centuries. His attacks on "laissez-faire" became an important inspiration for U.S. progressives, influencing the creations of the American Association for Labor Legislation, the National Child Labor Committee and the National Consumers League. His economic statism influenced the progressive American Economic Association's early concept of "intelligent social engineering" (which has been described as elitist and eugenicist). Leopold Caro credited Carlyle with influencing the social altruism of Henry Ford.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's influence on modern socialism has been described as "constitutive". Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels cited him in "The Condition of the Working Class in England" (1844–1845), "The Holy Family" (1845), and "The Communist Manifesto" (1848). Alexander Herzen and Vasily Botkin valued his writings, the former calling him "a Scotch Proudhon." He was one of the main "intellectual sources" for Christian socialism. His importance to the British "fin de siècle" labour movement was acknowledged by major figures such as William Morris, Keir Hardie and Robert Blatchford. Individual reformers took inspiration from him, including Octavia Hill, Emmeline Pankhurst and Jane Addams.Carlyle's aversion to the label notwithstanding, 19th-centuy conservatives were influenced by him. Morris Edmund Speare cites Carlyle as "one of the greatest influences" on Disraeli's life. Robert Blake links the two as "romantic, conservative, organic thinkers who revolted against Benthamism and the legacy of eighteenth-century rationalism." Leslie Stephen noted Carlyle's influence on his brother James Fitzjames Stephen in the early 1870s.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Nationalist movements also looked to Carlyle. He was admired by the Young Irelanders, despite his opposition to their cause. Duffy wrote that in Carlyle, they found a "very welcome" teacher, who "confirmed their determination to think for themselves", and that his writings were "often a cordial to their hearts in doubt and difficulty". Carlyle's philosophy was popular in the Antebellum South and eventual Confederacy. In 1848, "The Southern Quarterly Review" declared: "The spirit of Thomas Carlyle is abroad in the land." American historian William E. Dodd wrote that Carlyle's "doctrine of social subordination and class distinction . . . was all that Dew and Harper and Calhoun and Hammond desired. The greatest realist in England had weighed their system and found it just and humane." Southern sociologist George Fitzhugh's notions of palingenesis, multi-racial slavery, and authoritarianism were profoundly influenced by Carlyle (as was his prose style). Richard Wagner used Carlyle, whom he called a "great thinker", to justify his later German nationalism. References to Carlyle appear in the writings of Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi throughout his life.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: More recently, figures associated with the Nouvelle Droite, the Neoreactionary movement, and the alt-right have claimed Carlyle as an influence on their approach to metapolitics. At a meeting of the New Right in London in July 2008, English artist Jonathan Bowden delivered a lecture in which he said, "All of our great thinkers are shooting arrows into the future. And Carlyle is one of them." In 2010, American blogger Curtis Yarvin labeled himself a Carlylean "the way a Marxist is a Marxist." New Zealand-born writer Kerry Bolton wrote in 2020 that Carlyle's works "could be the ideological basis of a true British Right" and that they "remain as timeless foundations on which the Anglophone Right can return to its actual premises."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Carlyle's medievalist critique of industrial practice and political economy was an early utterance of what would become the spirit of both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts movement, and several leading members recognised his importance. John William Mackail, friend and official biographer of William Morris, wrote, that in the years of Morris and Edward Burne-Jones attendance at Oxford, "Past and Present" stood as "inspired and absolute truth." Morris read a letter from Carlyle at the first public meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Fiona MacCarthy, a recent biographer, affirmed that Morris was "deeply and lastingly" indebted to Carlyle. William Holman Hunt considered Carlyle to be a mentor of his. He used Carlyle as one of the models for the head of Christ in "The Light of the World" and showed great concern for Carlyle's portrayal in Ford Madox Brown's painting "Work" (1865). Carlyle helped Thomas Woolner to find work early in his career and throughout, and the sculptor would become "a kind of surrogate son" to the Carlyles, referring to Carlyle as "the dear old philosopher". Phoebe Anna Traquair depicted Carlyle, one of her favourite writers, in murals painted for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh. According to Marylu Hill, the Roycrofters were "very influenced by Carlyle's words about work and the necessity of work", with his name appearing frequently in their writings, which are held at Villanova University.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: apRoberts writes that Carlyle "did much to set the stage for the Aesthetic Movement" through both his German and original writings, noting that he even popularised (if not introduced) the term ""Æesthetics"" into the English language, leading her to declare him as "the apostle of aesthetics in England, 1825–27." Carlyle's rhetorical style and his views on art also provided a foundation for aestheticism, particularly that of Walter Pater, Wilde, and W. B. Yeats.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Few figures in the history of English literature have been so highly esteemed and then utterly neglected within such a short timespan as Thomas Carlyle. Tennyson divided the history of his reputation into three chronological periods:


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: He also provides a brief overview of these developments:If we were plotting the whole course of Carlyle's reputation through the three periods on a graph, we would note a generally rising curve in Period I up to a very high peak towards the end of his life, a drastic plunge in Period II to a valley almost as deep as the peak was high, and a cautious rise in Period III to a modest eminence but with perhaps a further rise in prospect.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: "If one had to settle upon a single word to characterize the Victorian view of Carlyle, that word should be—Teacher", writes Tennyson. This designation is supported by Harriet Martineau's 1849 assessment of Carlyle: "Whether we call him philosopher, poet, or moralist, he is the first teacher of our generation." For Victorian readers, the Teacher could easily become the Philosopher or the Theologian, and many attempted to extract Carlyle's "system" from his writings. Tennyson draws the connection from teacher to prophet and sage, two frequently used nouns when describing Carlyle.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Tennyson considers Froude's biography (1882–1884) as at once "the shining example of the Victorian view of Carlyle" in its reverent adherence to Carlyle's message and the herald of "a new and rather untidy phase of Carlyle's reputation" for its focus on his personal relationships, particularly with his wife.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Once the Teacher, Carlyle has become the Denouncer. In this stage, the "dominant tone" of negativity is "set by what seemed to be Froude's undermining of Carlyle's reputation as a man and thinker." The focus turned away from Carlyle's "teachings" and towards negative aspects of Carlyle's personal life; it became fashionable to "denounce the denouncer". Owen Dudley Edwards remarked that in this period, "Carlyle was known more than read". As Campbell describes:The effect of Froude’s work in the years following Carlyle’s death was extraordinary. Almost overnight, it seemed, Carlyle plunged from his position as Sage of Chelsea and Grand Old Victorian to the object of puzzled dislike, or even of revulsion.Tennyson distinguishes two camps that arose from this state of affairs—the Loyalists, those who knew and admired Carlyle, and the Revisionists, those who supported Froude's "undermining". Large amounts of material were published in response to the provocations of the Revisionists, so, in a sense, their approach "dominat[ed] Carlyle scholarship for many years". Tennyson observes that the effects of Froude's legacy are still felt in the way that Carlyle is read and perceived, as the controversy is better known than Carlyle's writings.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Similar to Froude's biography, two publications from this time, David Alec Wilson's biography (1923–1934) and Isaac Watson Dyer's bibliography (1928), provide the "last gasp" of the Reactionary period in their open Loyalist partiality, while also ushering in a new era in their emphasis on scholarship, accuracy, and facts.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Whereas the Popular Period pictured Carlyle as Teacher and the Reactionary as Denouncer, the Scholarly-Critical Period imaged him as Influence. In the 1930s, scholarly attention to Carlyle increased, and despite hostilities during and after the Second World War, the general upward trend resumed in the 1950s. For the first time, it was possible "to write about Carlyle without necessarily appearing either as his sycophant or as his grim-eyed detractor." The "scholarly" centerpiece of this period is the "Collected Letters", a correspondence whose sheer size (50 volumes) and timespan of composition (1812–1881) testifies to the enduring importance of Carlyle both as an individual and as a means through which to view his era.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: On the "critical" end, there was a new emphasis on the literary and technical aspects of Carlyle's work, inspired by John Holloway's "The Victorian Sage" (1953) and continued in further studies. The dual approach to Carlyle as Influence and Carlyle as literary genius brought forth a "palingenesis" in Carlyle studies, which would reaffirm Carlyle as pre-eminent among Victorians. Tennyson predicted that a fourth stage would follow: Carlyle as "Vates", in whom, as Carlyle spake in "The Hero as Poet", poet and prophet are one.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: "Despite the pleas of these critics," Cumming reported in 2004, "Carlyle's status as a great, powerful writer has not been rehabilitated even within the universities, and his name is unlikely ever to have the widespread popular currency of such contemporaries as George Eliot, Charles Dickens, or the Brontës." Several factors have contributed to this state of affairs, one of which is Carlyle's resistance to categorisation, limiting his applicability and presence in academic curricula. Another is the common association of Carlyle with racism and fascism. Besides these, the difficulty of his prose can be a challenge to modern readers. Subsequent scholarship has tended stress his influence and his place in the history of ideas.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Fielding writes that Carlyle "was often ready to play up to being a caricature of prejudice". Targets for his ire included the French, the Irish, Slavs, Turks, Americans, Catholics, and, most explicitly, blacks and Jews. Duffy recorded Carlyle's response to Duffy's telling him that "he had taught Mitchel to oppose the liberation of the negroes and the emancipation of the Jews."Mitchel, he said, would be found to be right in the end; the black man could not be emancipated from the laws of nature, which had pronounced a very decided decree on the question, and neither could the Jew.Carlyle "resembled most of his contemporaries" in his beliefs about Jews, identifying them with capitalist materialism and outmoded religious orthodoxy. He wished that the English would throw off their "Hebrew Old-Clothes" and abandon the Hebraic element in Christianity, or Christianity altogether. Carlyle had once considered writing a book called "Exodus from Houndsditch", "a pealing off of fetid "Jewhood" in every sense from myself and my poor bewildered brethren". Froude described Carlyle's aversion to the Jews as "Teutonic". He felt they had contributed nothing to the "wealth" of mankind, comparing "the Jews with their morbid imaginations and foolish sheepskin Targums" to "The Norse with their steel swords guided by fresh valiant hearts and clear veracious understanding". Carlyle refused an invitation by Baron Rothschild in 1848 to support a Bill in Parliament to allow voting rights for Jews in the United Kingdom, asking Richard Monckton Milnes in a correspondence how a Jew could "try to be Senator, or even Citizen, of any Country, except his own wretched Palestine," and expressed his hope that they would "arrive" in Palestine "as soon as possible".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Henry Crabb Robinson heard Carlyle at dinner in 1837 speak approvingly of slavery. "It is a natural aristocracy, that of "colour", and quite right that the stronger and better race should have dominion!" The 1853 pamphlet "Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question" expressed concern for the excesses of the practice, considering "How to abolish the abuses of slavery, and save the precious thing in it."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: From Goethe's recognition of Carlyle as "a moral force of great importance" in 1827 to the celebration of his centennial as though he were a national hero in 1895, Carlyle had long enjoyed a high reputation in Germany. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, many agreed with the assessment of K. O. Schmidt in 1933, who came to see Carlyle as "den ersten englischen Nationalsozialisten" (the first English National Socialist). William Joyce (founder of the National Socialist League and the Carlyle Club, a cultural arm of the NSL named for Carlyle) wrote of how "Germany has repaid him for his scholarship on her behalf by honouring his philosophy when it is scorned in Britain." German academics viewed him as having been immersed in and an outgrowth of German culture, just as National Socialism was. They proposed that "Heroes and Hero-Worship" justified the "Führerprinzip" (Leadership principle). Theodor Jost wrote in 1935: "Carlyle established, in fact, the mission of the Führer historically and philosophically. He fights, himself a Führer, vigorously against the masses, he . . . becomes a pathfinder for new thoughts and forms." Parallels were also drawn between Carlyle's critique of Victorian England in "Latter-Day Pamphlets" and Nazi opposition to the Weimar Republic.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: Some believed that Carlyle was German by blood. Echoing Paul Hensel's earlier claim in 1901 that Carlyle's "Volkscharakter" (Folk character) had preserved "the peculiarity of the Low German tribe", Egon Friedell, an anti-Nazi and Jewish Austrian, explained in 1935 that Carlyle's affinity with Germany stemmed from his being "a Scotsman of the lowlands, where the Celtic imprint is far more marginal than it is with the High Scottish and the Low German element is even stronger than it is in England." Others regarded him, if not ethnically German, as a "Geist von unserem Geist" (Spirit from our Spirit), as Karl Richter wrote in 1937: "Carlyle's ethos is the ethos of the Nordic soul par excellence."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: In 1945, Joseph Goebbels frequently sought consolation from Carlyle's "History of" "Frederick the Great". Goebbels read passages from the book to Hitler during his last days in the "Führerbunker".


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: While some Germans were eager to claim Carlyle for the Reich, others were more aware of incompatibilities. In 1936, Theodor Deimel argued that because of the "profound difference" between Carlyle's philosophical foundation of "a personally shaped religious idea" and the "Völkisch" foundation of National Socialism, the designation of Carlyle as the "first National Socialist" is "mistaken". Ernst Cassirer rejected the notion of Carlyle as proto-fascist in "The Myth of the State" (1946), emphasizing the moral underpinning of his thought. Tennyson has also commented that Carlyle's anti-modernist and anti-egoist stances disqualify him from association with 20th-century totalitarianism.


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: The standard edition of Carlyle's works is the "Works in Thirty Volumes", also known as the "Centenary Edition". The date given is when the work was "originally published."


title: Thomas Carlyle

text: This is a list of selected books, pamphlets and broadsides uncollected in the "Miscellanies" through 1880 as well as posthumous first editions and unpublished manuscripts.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Super Bowl XXVIII was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Dallas Cowboys and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Buffalo Bills to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 1993 season. The Cowboys defeated the Bills, for the second straight year, by a score of 30–13, winning their fourth Super Bowl in team history, tying the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers for most Super Bowl wins. The Buffalo Bills became the only team to both play and lose four consecutive Super Bowls (XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII) for a 0-4 franchise Super Bowl record. The game was played on January 30, 1994, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia. Since the 1993 regular season was conducted over 18 weeks (two byes per team), the traditional bye week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl was not employed; the last time this had happened was before Super Bowl XXV.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: This is the only time that the same two teams have met in consecutive Super Bowls. The defending Super Bowl XXVII champion Cowboys finished with a 12–4 regular season record, despite key players missing games due to injuries. The Bills were making their fourth consecutive Super Bowl appearance, but still seeking their first title, after also finishing with a 12–4 regular season record, largely through the strength of their no-huddle offense.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: After trailing 13–6 at halftime, the Cowboys scored 24 unanswered points in the second half. The Bills had built their lead off of running back Thurman Thomas' 4-yard touchdown run. But just 45 seconds into the third quarter, Thomas was stripped of the ball, and Dallas safety James Washington returned the fumble 46 yards for a touchdown to tie the game. From there, Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith, who was named the Super Bowl MVP, largely took over the game. On Dallas' next possession, Smith was handed the ball seven times on an eight-play, 64-yard drive that was capped off with his 15-yard touchdown run. He later scored on a 1-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. Overall, Smith had 30 carries for 132 yards and 2 touchdowns, while also catching 4 passes for 26 yards.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: NFL owners voted to award Super Bowl XXVIII to Atlanta, Georgia, during their May 23, 1990, meeting in Dallas. The Georgia Dome was under construction at the time of the vote.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The Cowboys' journey to Super Bowl XXVIII proved more difficult than the previous season. Pro Bowl running back Emmitt Smith held out the first two regular season games over a contract dispute, and Dallas lost both of those contests, including a 13–10 loss at home to the Bills. Pro Bowl quarterback Troy Aikman, along with a few other key players, missed games due to injuries.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Following the loss to the Bills, Cowboys linebacker Charles Haley was so upset he slammed his helmet through a locker room wall, screaming "We'll never win with a fucking rookie running back, and we have the greatest one ever sitting at home watching TV!" in reference to Smith's replacement, Derrick Lassic. Team owner Jerry Jones apparently agreed, quickly signing Smith to a contract that made him the highest paid running back in the NFL. Jerry Jones, who was in the locker room when the helmet was thrown, said that it missed him by about 2 feet.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: With Smith back in the starting lineup and Aikman healthy, Dallas went on to win their next seven games, including a dominating 26–17 win over the San Francisco 49ers and a 23–10 win on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles in which Smith rushed for 237 yards, the 6th highest total in NFL history. Their winning streak was finally snapped against the Atlanta Falcons, with Aikman on the sidelines with an ankle injury, and Smith knocked out of the game after his first carry. They also lost their next game against Miami due to an infamous error by defensive lineman Leon Lett that enabled the Dolphins to kick a game-winning field goal, but then went on to win their remaining five games. In the season finale against the New York Giants, with the Cowboys desperately trying to clinch the NFC East title and a first-round bye in the playoffs, Aikman showed he was at full health, completing 24 of 30 passes with no interceptions, while for Smith it was his career signature game. He suffered a first-degree separation in his right shoulder during the first half, but still finished with 229 total yards (168 yards rushing, 10 passes caught for 61 yards, and the team's only touchdown) in a 16–13 overtime win which enabled Dallas to finish with an NFC-best 12–4 record.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Though not as dynamic as the previous year, Dallas' offense remained incredibly efficient, led by Aikman, who finished the regular season completing 271 out of 392 passes for 3,100 yards, 15 touchdowns, and six interceptions. Smith recorded 1,486 rushing yards and nine touchdowns, while catching 57 passes for 414 yards and another touchdown, earning him his third consecutive NFL rushing title and the NFL Most Valuable Player Award. Fullback Daryl Johnston was also a reliable backfield threat, scoring four touchdowns and contributing a career-high 50 receptions for 371 yards. Pro Bowler Michael Irvin was once again the team's leading wide receiver, catching 88 passes for 1,330 yards and seven touchdowns. Wide receiver Alvin Harper caught 36 passes for 777 yards and five touchdowns, while Pro Bowl tight end Jay Novacek had 44 receptions for 445 yards and one touchdown. Pro Bowlers Mark Stepnoski, Erik Williams, and Nate Newton anchored the offensive line. On special teams, rookie receiver Kevin Williams ranked seventh in the NFL with 381 yards on 36 punt returns, while also gaining 689 kickoff return yards and catching 20 passes for 151 yards.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The Cowboys' defense was anchored by such Pro Bowlers as lineman Russell Maryland, and Ken Norton Jr., and defensive backs Thomas Everett and Kevin Smith, who intercepted six passes during the season. Defensive end Tony Tolbert led the team with 7.5 sacks, while Charles Haley added 4 and Chad Hennings had 5.5.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The Bills finished at the top of the AFC by clinching the conference's best regular season record, winning 7 of their first 8 games and finished the season at 12–4. Quarterback Jim Kelly once again led Buffalo's no-huddle offense by passing for 288 out of 470 regular season completions for 3,382 yards, 18 touchdowns, with 18 interceptions. Kelly was joining an elite class by starting his fourth Super Bowl. The only other quarterbacks to start four were Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana, with John Elway, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning later doing so. Kelly is the only one to start four consecutive Super Bowl games.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Running back Thurman Thomas led the AFC with 1,315 rushing yards and six touchdowns, while also catching 48 passes for 387 yards. Running back Kenneth Davis rushed for 391 yards and six touchdowns, while also recording 21 receptions for 95 yards. Pro Bowl wide receiver Andre Reed caught 52 receptions for a team-leading 854 yards and six touchdowns; wide receiver Bill Brooks had 60 receptions for 714 yards and five touchdowns; and wide receiver Don Beebe recorded 31 receptions for 504 yards and three touchdowns. Also, tight end Pete Metzelaars led the team with 68 receptions (a higher amount than his last four seasons combined) for 609 yards and four touchdowns. Pro Bowl offensive lineman Howard Ballard anchored the line.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Buffalo's defense was the team's weakness, ranking 27th (second-to-last) in the league, giving up 5,554 total yards. The defense did have a few good contributors, such as Hall of Fame lineman Bruce Smith (14 sacks, one fumble recovery), Pro Bowl linebacker Cornelius Bennett (five sacks, two fumble recoveries), linebacker Darryl Talley (101 tackles, two sacks, two fumble recoveries, three interceptions) and cornerback Nate Odomes, who led the NFL with nine interceptions and one fumble recovery. Linebacker Marvcus Patton, who had moved up to the starting lineup to replace departed Pro Bowler Shane Conlan, was also an impact player, intercepting two passes and recovering three fumbles.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: In the NFC, Dallas' first opponent in the playoffs was the Green Bay Packers, who were coming off a thrilling 28–24 win over the Detroit Lions in the Wild Card Game, in which quarterback Brett Favre had thrown the winning touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe with only 55 seconds left in the game. In this game, the Packers scored first with a field goal, but Dallas stormed back with 17 consecutive points in the second quarter. First, Aikman threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Harper. Then with time running out the period, Dallas scored again on an Eddie Murray field goal. Green Bay then fumbled the ensuing kickoff, allowing the Cowboys to score again with Aikman's 6-yard pass to Novacek. The Cowboys went on to stave off an attempted Packers comeback in the second half and win the game, 27–17. Aikman finished the game with 28 of 37 completions for 302 yards and 3 touchdowns, with 2 interceptions. Irvin recorded 9 catches for 126 yards and 2 touchdowns.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: One week later, Dallas faced the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game for the second year in a row in what was, at the time, the last NFL game to air on CBS. The 49ers had the NFL's highest scoring offense with 473 points, 97 more than the runner-up Cowboys. The last time the two teams played for the NFC title, Dallas won when Aikman thwarted an attempted 49ers comeback with a touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter. But this time, the game was extremely one-sided. The Cowboys scored touchdowns on four of their five first-half possessions. By the end of the half, Dallas had a commanding 28–7 lead. Aikman completed 14 of 18 passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions, while also rushing for 25 yards, but was knocked out of the game with a concussion in the third quarter. Then San Francisco scored a touchdown, making the score 28–14 with plenty of time left for a comeback. However, their hopes were soon dashed as backup quarterback Bernie Kosar, who had already played in three conference championship games and was unable to advance to the Super Bowl each time, led the Cowboys 82 yards to go up 35–14 on his 42-yard touchdown pass to Alvin Harper. Murray then put the finishing touches on San Francisco with a 50-yard field goal, while all the 49ers could do was score a useless touchdown in "garbage time" to make the final score 38–21. Smith rushed for 88 yards, caught seven passes for 85 yards, and scored two touchdowns. Meanwhile, the Dallas defense held 49ers running back Ricky Watters, who rushed for over 100 yards and scored 5 touchdowns in the divisional round, to just 37 yards on 12 carries.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Buffalo's first opponent was the Los Angeles Raiders, led by quarterback Jeff Hostetler, who had led the New York Giants to victory over the Bills in Super Bowl XXV three years earlier. The Raiders had also edged out the Bills 25–24 in week 14 of the regular season. In this game, the Raiders built up a 17–13 halftime lead, but Buffalo stormed back with 16 second half points. First, they scored on Kelly's 25-yard touchdown pass to Brooks. Then on their next drive, kicker Steve Christie kicked a 29-yard field goal to give the Bills a 23–17 lead. Los Angeles managed to respond with an 86-yard scoring strike from Hostetler to receiver Tim Brown, but Buffalo stormed right back with Brooks' 22-yard touchdown reception in the fourth quarter. The Bills ended up winning the game 29–23, having scored 16 points in a span of 6:18 in the second half. Kelly threw for 287 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: One week later, the Bills took on the Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC title. Led by 4-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Joe Montana, Kansas City had defeated the Bills 23-7 during the regular season, and were coming off thrilling narrow wins against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Oilers in the playoffs. In the days leading up to the game, many sports writers and fans were eager for the possibility of a Super Bowl in which Montana took on the San Francisco 49ers led by Steve Young, who had replaced Montana as their starting quarterback, or the Dallas Cowboys, who had displaced the 49ers to become the most dominant team in the NFC. However, Buffalo quickly crushed this prospect, burying Kansas City with a dominating 30–13 victory in the AFC Championship Game. Thomas rushed for 186 yards and three touchdowns, and caught two passes for 22 yards. On defense, the Bills limited Montana to just 9 of 23 completions for 125 yards and no touchdowns, with one interception. In addition, Kansas City's future Hall of Fame running back, Marcus Allen, was held to just 50 rushing yards on 18 carries.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Both Dallas and Buffalo were the top seeded teams in their respective conferences, earning home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Until the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts qualified for Super Bowl XLIV, this was the last time that both number one seeds advanced to the Super Bowl.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Many sportswriters and fans were a bit upset that the Bills advanced to their fourth consecutive Super Bowl. They were distressed with Buffalo having lost the three previous Super Bowl games and did not want to see them lose again. Some Bills fans appeared to be defensive about their team's presence in the game; during Buffalo's victory in the AFC Championship Game a week earlier, one fan displayed a banner defiantly proclaiming, "We're back; deal with it, America!"


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Therefore, the Super Bowl hype was more focused onto Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones and head coach Jimmy Johnson. Although the two rebuilt the team with young talent that eventually won the previous year's Super Bowl, both men had huge egos that conflicted with each other. Both had different ideas on the future personnel plans for the Cowboys, and both wanted equal credit for the team's recent success. The dispute became so ugly that Super Bowl XXVIII became Johnson's final game coaching the Cowboys after his feud with Jones boiled over. Johnson would join Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, and Bill Parcells on the short list of coaches who won a Super Bowl in what turned out to be their last games with the winning franchise; like Lombardi and Parcells but unlike Walsh, Johnson would later return to coach another team, helming the Miami Dolphins between 1996 and 1999 before retiring from coaching for good.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: This was the fourth rematch in Super Bowl history, and the first time that both teams met in consecutive years. Both the Bills, as the designated home team in the AFC/NFC annual rotation, and the Cowboys wore the same uniforms as the previous year, with the Bills donning the home blue jersey/white pants set and the Cowboys wearing the white jersey/silver pants set.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Before the game, the Super Bowl became the target of protests over the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the Confederate battle flag and was seen as offensive by the African-American community. Several high-profile Georgia politicians got involved, including state senator Ralph D. Abernathy. The NFL tried to duck the issue, with spokesman Greg Aiello stating, "We're not a political-advocacy group. It's not our role to get involved in political issues that have nothing to do with the Super Bowl." However, the NFL had cancelled plans to hold the Super Bowl in Phoenix three years earlier after a referendum to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day an Arizona state holiday was defeated. Ultimately, the flag was not flown inside the Georgia Dome, but was mounted on a pole outside the stadium.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The game was broadcast in the United States by NBC, with play-by-play announcer Dick Enberg and color commentator Bob Trumpy. Jim Lampley hosted all the events with the help of analysts Mike Ditka and Joe Gibbs and sideline reporters O. J. Simpson (on Buffalo's sideline) and Will McDonough (on Dallas' sideline). While Lampley was busy covering the trophy presentation, Bob Costas (who also interviewed Dallas head coach Jimmy Johnson and Dallas owner/general manager Jerry Jones together prior to the game) covered for Lampley at the host and analysts' desk (and signed off the broadcast for NBC). This would be Simpson's last "NFL on NBC" appearance before being charged with murder later in 1994.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: It was the first (and, to date, only) time a single network had held consecutive Super Bowls outright. The five-year NFL contract signed in 1989 had a provision where the last Super Bowl in the contract (XXVIII) would not be rotated, but would go to the highest bidder. NBC, which had held XXVII (according to the original rotation, NBC would have had XXVI and CBS XXVII, but the NFL allowed the networks to switch the two games in order to allow CBS a significant lead-in to its coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics), was the only network to bid on XXVIII. Less than two weeks before the game was aired, NBC aired a Peanuts special, "You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown", in which the character Melody-Melody wins the Punt, Pass & Kick contest wearing a Dallas Cowboys uniform. For this game, NBC introduced a new theme for NFL broadcasts by composer John Colby that would be retained for the 1994 season.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Previously, the league alternated the Super Bowl broadcast among its television networks, except for Super Bowl I in which both NBC and CBS televised it simultaneously. CBS broadcast Super Bowl II, then the league rotated the broadcast between CBS and NBC until 1985 when ABC entered the rotation when they broadcast Super Bowl XIX.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: NBC aired the fifth episode of "The Good Life" and the premiere of "The John Larroquette Show" following the game.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The pregame show held before the game was titled "Georgia Music Makers" and featured performances by the rap music duo Kris Kross, the rock band The Georgia Satellites, country musician Charlie Daniels, and the Morehouse College Marching Band.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The United States Trampoline Association (USTA) performed on 4 trampolines during "Jump" performed by Kris Kross.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Later, singer Natalie Cole, accompanied by the Atlanta University Center Chorus, sang the national anthem with elements of America the Beautiful.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: To honor the 25th anniversary of the New York Jets' upset win in Super Bowl III, that game's MVP, former Jets quarterback Joe Namath joined the coin toss ceremony.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The halftime show was titled "Rockin' Country Sunday" and featured country music stars Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, and Wynonna Judd. The show's finale included a special appearance by Naomi Judd, who joined Wynonna in performing The Judds' single "Love Can Build a Bridge", to which everyone eventually joined in.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: This was the first Super Bowl halftime show in which the main stadium lights were turned off for the performance. The show included dancers with yard-long light sticks.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Though the Bills had a lead at halftime, Super Bowl XXVIII would have an identical outcome to the three preceding Super Bowls and end with a Buffalo loss.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Dallas kick returner Kevin Williams returned the opening kickoff 50 yards to the Buffalo 48-yard line. The Cowboys began the drive with quarterback Troy Aikman's 20-yard pass to wide receiver Michael Irvin. But on third down and six from 24-yard line, Aikman threw an incomplete pass, and the Cowboys had to settle for kicker Eddie Murray's 41-yard field goal.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: The Bills then responded with a 7-play, 43-yard scoring drive. Quarterback Jim Kelly's 24-yard pass to running back Thurman Thomas advanced the ball across the Dallas 40-yard line. After a 3-yard run by running back Kenneth Davis, however, Kelly threw two straight incompletions. The Bills then tied the game, 3–3, with Steve Christie's 54-yard field goal, the longest field goal in Super Bowl history.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Buffalo then forced Dallas to punt, but on the first play of the Bills' ensuing possession, Dallas safety James Washington forced Thomas to fumble, and safety Darren Woodson recovered the ball at midfield. Aided by wide receiver Alvin Harper's 24-yard reception, the Cowboys drove to the Bills' 7-yard line, but once again were forced to settle for a field goal; a 24-yarder by Murray to regain the lead, 6–3.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: After receiving Murray's kickoff, the Bills could only reach their own 41-yard line before being forced to punt. However, Dallas cornerback Dave Thomas was penalized for running into punter Chris Mohr on the play, giving Buffalo a first down.


title: Super Bowl XXVIII

text: Taking advantage of their second chance, the Bills marched down the field with runs by Thomas and short completions by Kelly. Thomas eventually finished off the 17-play, 80-yard drive with a 4-yard touchdown run, giving the Bills a 10–6 lead early in the 2nd quarter.