'A great man,' says Hegel, 'condemns the world to the task of explaining him.' Emphatically does the remark apply to Thomas Carlyle. When he began to leave his impress in literature, he was treated as a confusing and inexplicable element. Opinion oscillated between the view of James Mill, that Carlyle was an insane rhapsodist, and that of Jeffrey, that he was afflicted with a chronic craze for singularity. Jeffrey's verdict sums up pretty effectively the attitude of the critics of the time to the new writer:--'I suppose that you will treat me as something worse than an ass, when I say that I am firmly persuaded the great source of your extravagance, and all that makes your writings intolerab…
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