Contents

Thomas Carlyle and His Works

1847 essay by Henry David Thoreau

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this articlebyintroducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Thomas Carlyle and His Works" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2018) This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Thomas Carlyle and His Works" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Henry David Thoreau
Core works and topics Civil Disobedience Herald of Freedom The Last Days of John Brown Life Without Principle Paradise (to be) Regained A Plea for Captain John Brown Reform and the Reformers Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown The Service Sir Walter Raleigh Slavery in Massachusetts Thomas Carlyle and His Works Walden A Walk to Wachusett A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau Thoreau Society
Related topics Abolitionism Anarchism Anarchism in the United States Civil disobedience Concord, Massachusetts Conscientious objection Direct action Ecology Environmentalism History of tax resistance Individualist anarchism John Brown Lyceum movement Nonviolent resistance Ralph Waldo Emerson Simple living Tax resistance Tax resisters Transcendentalism The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail Walden Pond
v t e

"Thomas Carlyle and His Works" is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau that praises the writings of Thomas Carlyle.

The essay demonstrates a few themes that show up elsewhere in Thoreau's writings. First of these is Thoreau's eagerness to find a hero. Carlyle wrote On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, which Thoreau considered his crowning achievement.

While Thoreau as a young man was still looking for a hero to model himself after, he knew that ultimately he would have to cast models aside. He felt that the problem with religion was that when a Christ or a Buddha discovered something magnificent and important, people then spent their lives celebrating (or arguing about) the discovery but never bothering to try and discover it themselves. Thoreau appreciated the attitude of those who would not settle to think pre-conceived thoughts, but who instead wished to break out of the box of religious tradition and think independently for oneself. In Carlyle's case, Thoreau used this same appreciation to praise the "Carlylisms" that others found to be ostentatious: "He does not go to the dictionary, the word-book, but to the word-manufactory itself, and has made endless work for the lexicographers." Thoreau thought Carlyle to be of the "Reformer class" and that he had greatly contributed to humanity through his writings.

"The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it be the noblest," Carlyle wrote, and Thoreau sums up Carlyle's philosophy in this way:

One thing is certain – that we had best be doing something in good earnest henceforth forever; that's an indispensable philosophy.

Reception[edit]

Carlyle reported to Emerson that it was "carefully read, as beseemed, with due entertainment and recognition." He went on:

A vigorous Mr Thoreau, . . . recognises us, and various other things, in a most admiring greathearted manner; for which, as for part of the confused voice from the jury-box (not yet summed into a verdict, nor likely to be summed till Doomsday, nor needful to sum), the poor prisoner at the bar may justly express himself thankful!^[1]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• A complete collection of Thoreau's essays, including Thomas Carlyle and His WorksatStandard Ebooks
• Thomas Carlyle and His WorksatThe Picket Line.
• Collected Essays and Poems by Henry David Thoreau (ISBN 978-1-88301195-6)