And early in 1831
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third.
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third.
Thomas Carlyle
was without question the
greatest single interpreter of German literature, and his activ-
ity, culminating about 1830, may justly be considered the crest
of the highest wave of German influence that ever passed over
England" (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 52). When Professor Morgan
wrote that opinion, he had not seen Carlyle's manuscript vol-
ume of 1830. Though by 1830 Carlyle was the finest interpreter
of things German and may have been the best-qualified man in
Britain to write a comprehensive account of German literature,
his preparation was of course not uniformly strong at all points.
Undoubtedly his strongest point--as well as the strongest interest
of his contemporaries--lay in the modern field.
For a decade, from 1820 to 1830, Carlyle had read widely
and deeply in German writers, chiefly modern. 5 And during that
decade he had come to know much about the developments that
have just been sketched of Britain's interest in German writings.
But until he neared the age of twenty-five, neither the writings
themselves nor the development of British interest in them meant
much to him. Himself a child of the Scottish eighteenth century--
at least in the first period of his thought--he had had first to pass
Religiose Wurzel, p. 5), even in Germany itself only one ade-
quate history of German literature had been published by that
time: Koberstein's, in 1827. Though Carlyle was better in-
formed than one would be likely to suppose, he seems not to
have known that German work.
5 Elaboration of the point is unnecessary here, since much
space in the Notes is devoted to the examination of Carlyle's
German readings and since the Notes are easily accessible
through the Index. Carlyle's early reading is one of the most
useful keys to his intellectual development. If further bio-
graphical material than here given is desired, various studies
are available: for example, the one-volume account by Pro-
fessor Neff and the detailed account by D. A. Wilson. Best
of all the biographies--and always indispensable to Carlyle
scholarship--is the work by Froude. Harrold's Carlyle and
German Thought, which marks an epoch in Carlyle scholar-
ship, is basic in any full consideration of Carlyle's relation
to Germany.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxiii
through various phases of intellectual, religious, and esthetic
development before he could arrive at a hard-won understand-
ing of certain important aspects of the new German culture.
After acquiring through private study in 1819 the rudiments
of the German language, partly for scientific uses, Carlyle in
the next year was able to read into some of the meanings of
Schiller and Goethe. That was only the beginning. Naturally
Schiller's poetry was for a while intellectually more accessible
to him than Goethe's. But in 1820-1821 he found a new heaven
and new earth--first through emotional sympathy and then through
intellectual understanding--in the works of Goethe. As early as
1822, he began his published interpretations of German litera-
ture with a critique on Goethe's Faust I, in the upstart New Edin-
burgh Review. Already he had read Meisters Lehrjahre,with"
memorable results. His understanding of the ethical significance
of Entsagung, which he attributed largely to Meisters Lehrjahre,
was to have a deep and lasting effect upon the rest of his life and
thought. 6 And from about 1825 henceforth for Carlyle--as for
the later Tolstoy's Pierre and Levin--life had mystical meaning:
and its most meaning was clearest in the least self-conscious
moments. Meanwhile Schiller's writings too had their further
effects. From Schiller, Carlyle gained growing insight into
(and phrasing for) the progressive notion that Truth is process
rather than accomplishment (immer wird, nie ist). That writer's
esthetic essays, in addition to deepening and broadening Carlyle's
critical and historical viewpoint, led him gradually toward trans-
cendental philosophy. And his Life of Schiller, first published
by installments in the London Magazine for 1823-1824 (and, after
revisions, in book form in 1825), was the first full-length Eng-
lish biography of a German man of letters in the nineteenth cen-
tury. That work and his concurrently translated Wilhelm Meis-
ter's Apprenticeship (published 1824) were followed in 1825-1826
by the grateful labor of translating four volumes of Specimens
of German Romance. Those volumes, published in 1827, con-
tained distinguished biographical and critical introductions. Miss
Stockley (p. 258) thinks the sketch of Goethe in Volume IV was the
first approach to an adequate English account of that great writer.
As already suggested, Carlyle's study of Schiller's esthetics
based upon Kantian thought had for some time beckoned the young
Scot toward German transcendental philosophy. Though he never
proceeded in his philosophic interests far enough to satisfy a sys-
tematic student of that subject, he did read some of Kant, and
much of Kant's interpreters. When, through an unsystematic dis-
tinction between Vernunft and Verstand, he arrived at a viewpoint
that enabled him to do away once for all with his earlier material-
6 On the validity of this statement, see Lectures of 1838, pp.
186-88, along with Meister, II, 129 (that is, Meisters Lehr-
jahre, Bk. VIII, Ch. V).
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? xxiv
INTRODUCTION
ism and scepticism, he had penetrated as far as he felt the need
to go in what he called metaphysics. And he turned attention
gradually to other and, as he thought, more pressing interests.
Partly through a reading of Herder's great Ideen at the end of
1826, he gained additional clarity upon a philosophy of progress
that was to help him understand his own changing time, and the
vast changing and continuing traditions that come out of the past,
run through the present, and extend into the boundless future.
Thus by 1827 when he began publishing his periodical essays on
German literature and thought in the well-established Edinburgh
Review, he had found--largely through the Germans--much of
the ethical, esthetic, philosophic, religious, and historiographical
insight that was to make him an important figure in his generation.
The German writings, he firmly believed, had led him out of his
early darkness and had literally saved his life. And missionary
that Carlyle essentially was, he proceeded in his attempt to show
the light to others.
In that effort, during the three years from 1827 to 1830, he
published in the Edinburgh Review and (more numerously) in the
Foreign Review nine long essays on German writings. Those
essays ranged from a survey of the then state of German litera-
ture and an attack upon certain playwrights whom he regarded
as poetasters, to an account of the classical scholar C. G. Heyne,
and to biographical and critical interpretations of such varied
figures as Richter (two essays), Zacharius Werner, Goethe (two
essays), and the mystical Novalis. It is important to observe
that all these essays dealt with modern German literature and
literary figures. Not until he approached the History of German
Literature had he occupied himself with comparable seriousness
in the other great period of German literature, the Middle Ages.
And it was not until 1831, after the original plans for the History
had collapsed, that he salvaged certain medieval parts of it and
published them in the Westminster Review, the Foreign Quarterly
Review, and the Edinburgh Review. His systematic study of
medieval German literature had thus been brief.
Though a year and a half still remained to him before his peri-
od of literary criticism chiefly devoted to German literature was
ended, Carlyle assayed no new figures from the German scene
past or present. He turned first of all to the writing of Sartor
Resartus. And later, in 1832, when he wrote his last great ar-
ticle on German literature, it concerned the Goethe whom he had
known and loved so long, and who had just died. Already, with
his History of German Literature in 1830, he was on his path away
from German literature as his main interest, and on his way to-
ward the writing of history. But as yet, in 1830, he was unaware
of such a change.
Carlyle's way toward the writing of history, running as it did
through the History of German Literature, was a hard way, for
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? INTRODUCTION
XXV
a variety of reasons. In his writings up to 1830 on modern
German literature, Carlyle had distinguished himself for his
moral and ethical basis, his biographical approach, his esthetic
critical insight, and his ability to show in historical milieu the
subjects under discussion. His methods--when applied to mod-
ern giants or when applied even to lesser men who possessed
sharply delineated characteristics in well-comprehended cir-
cumstances--had enabled him to do more than any other Briton
to focus attention of the rising generation upon certain impor-
tant aspects of German literature. When, however, in 1830 he
attempted to extend his province to include the early literature
of Germany, he found himself embarrassed at various turns.
Mention of a few of the most striking difficulties will suffice
here. In the first place, with many of the early materials he
was not thoroughly familiar. Indeed, perhaps no one in Britain
was; for as already suggested, medieval studies had progressed
more slowly among British scholars than among the Germans.
Though Carlyle had neither the knowledge nor the wish to make
his first volume a pedantic exercise in antiquarianism, his iso-
lated position--isolated geographically, intellectually, socially,
and financially at Craigenputtock--made certain materials inac-
cessible to him. In the second place, his philosophy of history
and historiography, by no means fully developed as yet, had to
be articulated with this difficult and scanty material. As his
philosophy of history did develop, with what, a few years later,
was to become a decided list toward post-Reformation religion
and morals, the medieval religion and morals implicit in much
of the early material tended to complicate his difficulty. And,
finally, his already well-developed biographical approach in his
modern studies could find relatively little traction or purchase
in the medieval period. In what was then to considerable extent
"dark backward and abysm of time, " where literary anonymity
and communality and convention and inadequately motivated ac-
tion were so frequently the rule, his biographical-critical ap-
proach could be applied to only a few exceptional characters in
a few of the pieces, and to only a few makers, whose outlooks
on life he seldom dared do more than shadow forth hypothetically
from fleeting bits of internal evidence. In the face of such dif-
ficulties we may wonder that he succeeded as well as he did in
the first volume of his History.
His Progress in the Attempt to Produce a History
of German Literature
From the outset of Carlyle's work upon the History, there
were vaguenesses and difficulties. 7 The proposal that he en-
1 Since no detailed account of Carlyle's step-by-step activities
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? xxvi
INTRODUCTION
gage upon the work came to him in October, 1829, in a round-
about way, from "some London booksellers" -- apparently Whit-
taker's--through William Fraser of the Foreign Review (Napier
Correspondence, p. 77; Goethe Correspondence, p. 159; Early
Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, pp. 154-55). From the time of
that first proposal, Carlyle, knowing the limitations of his own
knowledge as well as the limitations of his readers' interests,
expected to put his main stress upon the comparatively brief
modern period of German literature (Goethe Correspondence,
p. 163). And he soon set about gathering materials and matur-
ing his plans. The agreement, finally reached late in January,
1830, called for four small volumes. Therein, instead of giv-
ing minute chronicle details, he hoped to stress the broadest
and most prominent features of German literature. The first
volume of the set, if it proceeded according to his early 1830
plans, would rise through certain of the medieval productions
to a culminating point in the Reformation (Early Letters of Jane
Welsh Carlyle, pp. 161-65). Though the London sponsors of
the undertaking had promised to provide the German books need-
ed for the work, the actual book supply came so slowly and
proved so undependable that Carlyle was left much to his own
resources (Letters of Carlyle, pp. 151, 157, 159, 161-62;
Two Note Books, p. 148).
In his need for books, Carlyle was aided by such Scottish
friends as the Reverend David Aitken, Henry Inglis, and George
Moir, and also perhaps by Macvey Napier, the new editor of
the Edinburgh Review. Thus by various means he procured what
he could. In addition to valuable works by Koch, JSrdens, Brock-
haus, FISgel, Eichhorn, Bouterwek, Leonhard Meister, and Horn
-- some of which would have been most useful in the modern stud-
ies ahead of him--he appears to have procured and used in his
medieval studies during these busy months, and those to come,
such works as DilSchneider's Deutsche Sprache, Docen's Mis-
cellaneen. the collaboratively produced Illustrations to Northern
Antiquities by Weber and Jamieson (and Scott), several works
by the Grimm brothers, some half a dozen works by BCtsching
and Von der Hagen (some produced separately and some collabora-
tively), Lessing's studies on proverbs and the early sagas, and
Tieck's Minnelieder, with its valued introduction. And Tacitus'
writings on early Germany and Mascov's histories furnished him
some of the necessary background materials. 8
with respect to the History has heretofore been published, the
present section is documented more fully than other sections
of this introduction.
8 Leopold's "Carlyle's Handbooks" discusses the eight works
named first in this list. That useful English account (1934) is
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? INTRODUCTION
xxvii
As preparations went forward, Carlyle's plans naturally
underwent some changes and developments. By the beginning
of spring, he intended that Volume I should be of antiquarian
nature, including The Nibelungen Lied, the Minnesingers, and
the Meistersingers, and should end with Hans Sachs; that Vol-
ume II should include Luther and the Reformation satirists, and
should extend up as far as Thomasius, Gottsched, and the Swiss
writers; and that the last two volumes should be devoted to re-
cent literature, because of its great importance to British read-
ers (Goethe Correspondence, pp. 171-72). Finally, by late May,
with Volume I just completed and sent off to London, he had work-
ed out--partly on paper and partly only in his mind--a threefold
periodic arrangement of materials. That is, Volume I traced
German developments from crude beginnings on through the first
poetic period and its culmination in the Minnesingers. Volume
II, as he now planned, would begin with certain didactic writings
(including Hugo von Trimberg, Reinecke Fuchs, and Sabastian
Brandt), would rise to a second poetic period under Luther and
Hutten, and would then sink again into the disputation (didactic
again) and the superficial refinements of Thomasius and Gottsched
and their Swiss opponents. And Volumes III and IV, beginning
with the earnest sceptic Lessing and with Wieland, would continue
tracing the development of German literature to its most recent
climax, when, under Goethe and Schiller,
a Third grand (Poetic] Period had evolved itself, as yet fairly
developed in no other Literature, but full of the richest pros-
pects for all; namely, a period of new Spirituality and Belief;
in the midst of old Doubt and Denial; as it were, a new revela-
tion of Nature, and the Freedom and Infinitude of Man, wherein
Reverence is again rendered compatible with Knowledge, and
Art and Religion are one. This is the Era which chiefly con-
cerns us of England, as of other nations; the rest being chiefly
remembrance, but this still present with us. How I am to
bring it out will require all consideration.
(Goethe Correspondence, pp. 187-91)
Thus Carlyle had at length devised an interesting general plan,
which, under favorable circumstances, he might have prosecuted
satisfactorily through four volumes with rising significance to an
end in the great literature of his own time.
Meanwhile, as has already been suggested, the actual writing
out of his plan was proceeding. As he began writing in the early
mainly derived from an earlier account in Die Religiose Wur-
zel (1922), pp. 3-11. Of course when writing those studies
Leopold was not able to utilize the evidence now made accessi-
ble. Indications of various aspects of Carlyle's connections
with the reference works used in his History will be found in
the respective Notes that are part of the present edition (see
the Index).
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? xxviii
INTRODUCTION
days of spring, his own lack of clarity in his broad new under-
taking caused him to work out and write down his creed concern-
ing history. But soon after finishing the credo, he found his
elaborate statement of it unsuitable for the present book. There-
fore on April 12 he cut it out and laid it aside (Two Note Books,
p. 154). This statement of his credo, henceforth entirely di-
vorced from its original context as the introductory section of
the History, eventually became known as the essay "On History. "
Having thus removed what had become an incumbrance, Carlyle
could proceed more rapidly. By May Day, he was writing on the
fifth chapter of Volume I. With purposes now clarified, he was
sometimes able to write as much as three or four of his long, full
pages daily (Letters of Carlyle. p. 164). And toward the end of
that same month he finished Volume I. Then, after brief rest, he
began, on June 8, his Volume II (Two Note Books, p. 156). But
he was interrupted two weeks later by the death of his favorite
sister, Margaret. Consequently he had written only the first half
of what he intended as Volume II when in July the publishing ar-
rangements at London collapsed. One obvious reason for the col-
lapse was the shift of public interest from literature to politics
and other nonliterary issues during the agitation attendant upon
the introduction of the First Reform Bill. Particulars in the case
are wanting. But early in August--after having worked at his task
with energy, under difficulties, for many months--Carlyle sus-
pended writing, with his project a fragment.
A little more than one third, but less than one half, of what he
had planned was done. In the space of a volume and a half, he
had brought his account up to (not through) Luther (Froude, II, 95,
97; Goethe Correspondence, pp. 207-10). Actually he was only
just arriving at the point where, in his original plans, he had
meant his first main stress to come; it was the point where, in
his more carefully considered plans, he had meant his second
main stress to come. This stress point itself (Luther and His
Times: The Reformation), however, and a final main stress point
(Goethe and His Times: The Present), with all the many falling
and rising minor points between the two, lay still in prospect--
with progress toward them stopped, or at least suspended tem-
porarily.
Deeply disappointed at the frustration of his plans, Carlyle
was nevertheless financially unable to leave the unfinished work
unused. So as soon as possible he recalled the manuscript of
Volume I from William Fraser in London (Froude, II, 94). If
the project as a whole should henceforth fail to interest any re-
sponsible publisher enough to warrant its continuation, Carlyle
hoped that parts already written might be converted into review
articles for immediate disposal to cover current living expenses
(Letters of Carlyle, pp. 165-66; Froude, II, 95-96). Before the
month of August was ended, still another ingenious though complex
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? INTRODUCTION
xx ix
plan suggested itself to him. That is, he might collect the peri-
odical essays he had already printed on various aspects and fig-
ures of German literature, might write a few more such essays
--for example, on Luther, Lessing, Herder--for incorporation
with them, might use the present manuscript volume and a half
of medieval materials as an introduction to that main body of
modern German materials, might write a circumspective con-
clusion to round out the whole, and might eventually publish the
composite result as a Zur Geschichte (if not a genuine Geschichte)
of German literature (Froude, II, 96-97; Goethe Correspondence,
pp. 209-10). Such a plan of eventually articulating his manu-
script materials with his already published essays would in no
way hinder his quarrying now from the mass of manuscript ma-
terials in hand a number of review articles for immediate pub-
lication. So, after Francis Jeffrey had failed to interest the pub-
lisher Longman in the original project, Carlyle set about arrange-
ments to convert parts of the manuscript into articles for cash
(Letters of Carlyle, p. 171; Froude, II, 101).
And early in 1831
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third. As later reprinted in Essays, II, the three articles are
now known by the following titles: "The Nibelungen Lied, " "Early
German Literature, '* and "Taylor's Historic Survey of German
Poetry" (see Letters of Carlyle, pp. 178, 180, 189, 191, 194;
Two Note Books, pp. 181-83; Napier Correspondence, p. 101;
Froude, II, 114, 122).
The fragmentary work, even after parts of it were utilized in
those review articles, did not drop at once out of Carlyle's mind.
Late in 1831 and early in 1832 he still hoped and planned to sup-
plement it and eventually to publish it as a Zur Geschichte (Two
Note Books, pp. 196, 231, 254-55; Napier Correspondence, pp.
113-14; Letters of Carlyle, pp. 278, 286). But as those pros-
pects failed one by one and as his interest in German literature
was gradually superseded by other interests after the death of
Goethe, his critical estimate of the History? which estimate had
never been extravagant--dropped lower. Only a little more need
be said concerning Carlyle's efforts to utilize the work. One point
is especially interesting. That is --if a rather uncertain note that
Carlyle wrote in 1866 across the last page of the manuscript can
be trusted--he may have read over some of the materials while
he was rapidly preparing for his unpublished first series of lec-
tures (Six Lectures on German Literature) in 1837, and he may
have taken some part of the manuscript with him to the platform
to serve as notes (presumably not needed) for the first lecture
(see Note 231). And finally, two years later (in 1839), in order
to suggest that the fragmentary History (along with certain other
manuscripts) would not be suitable for Emerson to publish in
America, Carlyle made what we may here consider his own ter-
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? INTRODUCTION
minal critical comment upon the work:
[It is] a long rigamorole dissertation (in a grabbed sardonic
vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wrig-
gling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore,
and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a
kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost
ten years ago, and never contented me well. . . . [it is] a
thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though
I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratch-
ings and scrawlings. (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28)
As Carlyle commented thus casually upon the manuscript that had
cost him dear in many ways, perhaps neither he nor his American
correspondent was aware of what may now be clear to any Car-
lyle student who considers the case with care. Though the evi-
dence cannot be elaborated here, Carlyle's work at that project
in 1830 had had some important effects upon his development in-
to a historian. And his disappointment at its failure had co-oper-
ated with various other -- at the time seemingly unrelated--develop-
ments to alienate him from his long-loved German literature.
Ill: The Actual Manuscript of the History: Description
and Provenience
The Yale Manuscript Volume I of this History is all that
is known to exist in manuscript form. It consists of ninety
long sheets, closely written in black ink on one side only. Its
six chapters, one of them fragmentary, are paginated from 1 to
68 and from 89 to 110. (The missing twenty pages were removed
by Carlyle in 1831 from Chapter V for use in a review article. )
Many of the ninety pages show alterations. Most frequently, per-
haps, the changes were made for what may be termed stylistic
reasons. 9 The fact that there is only occasional evidence of ba-
sic reorganization of materials suggests that most of this manu-
script was written from some cruder form or from notes. That
is, presumably this particular copy was meant for the printer.
Though the presence of numerous crossed-out expressions and
many interlinings would not be hard to account for in printer's
copy from such a careful revisionist as Carlyle was, the omission
of all but one of the chapter headings in the manuscript is a some-
what more puzzling problem. Nevertheless, all--or all except a
very few words--of this long manuscript can be read and under-
stood. Four of the chapters (I, II, III, and VI) have never before
been printed.
9 Much information about Carlyle's practice of revision can
be found in Miss Calder's recent study of the two extant manu-
scripts of Past and Present.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxi
The manuscript has had only one owner outside the Carlyle
family. About 1875, its author gave it, along with many other
papers, to his niece and faithful amanuensis Mary Carlyle Ait-
ken (Wilson, II, 195). And during more than half a century
thereafter, it remained her property and, after her death, the
property of her cousin Alexander Carlyle, whom she had mar-
ried in 1879. In 1901, this Alexander Carlyle, a nephew of the
author, sent a typescript copy of the four unpublished chapters
to Charles Eliot Norton, the American editor of many of Car-
lyle's papers. Possibly Norton considered publishing it, ^ust as
Froude was considering publication at the time of Max Muller's
advice to him (see pp. xxxii-xxxiii); but its lack of direct bearing
upon the bitter controversy then in the ascendant may have had
some effect in the decision. The typescript, with Alexander
Carlyle's annotations, has long been in the Harvard University
Library. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself remained, as before,
in the Carlyle family. It was sold by Sotheby's in 1932, after
the death of Alexander Carlyle. The purchaser, apparently the
late Gabriel Wells of New York, must have been acting merely
as a friendly agent of Yale University, for neither he nor his
firm retained record of any part in this particular transaction.
Soon after the sale, the document passed into the permanent
possession of Yale University.
IV: Evaluation of the History
Although Carlyle's History would have been the best English
account of medieval German literature available in 1830, it is
of course not likely to be used by many present-day seekers of
information concerning medieval German literary history. Much
of the work is avowedly compilation to improve the then state of
knowledge about German literature. It was produced by a man
who (by present standards of scholarship) would seem inadequate-
ly grounded in this particular part of his field; and it would seem
(by present standards for such a work) weak in source materials.
The amount of time that Carlyle devoted to this part of the under-
taking would today seem inadequate for such a task. Moreover,
during that time, he was groping his way under untoward cir-
cumstances. Furthermore, the work is fragmentary. And it is
a fragment from which some of the best literary criticism was
early selected by Carlyle himself for publication in periodical
form.
Nevertheless, when all deductions are allowed, the work does
have real significance. In the first place, though only two chap-
ters (IV and V) of Volume I influenced his contemporaries, the
volume is a record of the status of German medieval studies in
Britain just as the first generation of romantics was ending. The
most obvious significance in that connection is, however, that it
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? xxxii
INTRODUCTION
supplements--as it alone can do--our knowledge of Carlyle's
own interest in medieval German culture, as he arrived at the
middle of his fourth decade. Reference to this work will show
him more sympathetic in his interpretation of that early era of
culture and more cognizant of some important points of view
concerning it than heretofore he has been considered, and will
facilitate a fuller and fairer estimate than has before been pos-
sible of his place in medieval studies at a critical time in their
development and in his. Parts of the work show too, better
than they can be found elsewhere in so small a compass, his
interest in various aspects (sometimes comparative) of folklore
and etymology, and an early interest in Scandinavian and Norse
materials. The work elaborates his faith in the future, as well
as in the past, of the Teutonic race. It shows his concept of the
social and political, as well as the cultural, bearings of world
literature. It documents in an important way the development
of his philosophy of history. Many phases in the work show too
his organizing mind, able to give shape to stubborn matter and
to endow hidden purpose with a name. Furthermore, it shows
passages of his mature critical insight. It reveals aspects of
the ethical and moral and esthetic profundity that had character-
ized and distinguished Carlyle to the venerable Goethe's mind in
1828. And, especially notable to students of the later Carlyle,
that earnest depth was then harmoniously coupled with the broad
tolerance that in 1831 was to strike even the young John Stuart
Mill as the widefet he had known. Worthy too of at least men-
tion in this connection, the work shows in a few places some of
the images and figures and stylistic turns that hint the Sartor
Resartus soon to come. Of these significances--and of various
other significances that will be found by careful reading of the
present work--the common denominator is obvious. Here is a
record of Carlyle's mind at work during some of the finest and
most imaginative months of his mature life--the months immedi-
ately preceding Sartor Resartus.
Directly in line with what has just been said about the impor-
tance of this History of German Literature, a comment by Max
Mtiller is worth careful consideration. When in 1880, Froude
submitted the manuscript to Mtiller and asked his advice about
whether or not to publish it, Mtiller replied thus:
I have only to-day finished Carlyle's MS. It is very pleasant
reading--here and there I feel sure there are pages which I
had read elsewhere--in his Miscellanies, I think. What a pity
he did not finish it and publish at the time. Now you could only
publish it as a curious fragment showing the state of knowledge
of German Literature at the time:--but it was a time before
Grimm and Lachmaxgg and others, and therefore much of it has
a historical interest only. It is all strong and sound--much
better than thousands of books that are printed every day--yet
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxiii
I doubt whether you could publish it as coming from Carlyle.
However you know best. I should like to have it in print,
but I should not print it myself--except for private circulation.
(Wilson, II, 195)
Of course part of Muller's caution sprang from the fact that Car-
lyle, known then very widely as an authoritative writer on German
literature and history, was still alive in 1880. To publish the
work then as coming from the biographer of Schiller, the trans-
lator and interpreter of Goethe, and the historian of Frederick
the Great might thus have been an imposition upon, and to some
degree an impediment to, general readers seeking the most help-
ful guidance then available on medieval German literature. From
that viewpoint, at the end of half a century of great progress in
medieval studies, Muller properly judged the then fifty-year-old
work as a treatise that was out of date. Nevertheless, Muller
pointedly suggested the other value of the work. And today, sev-
enty years after Miiller's wise judgment, Carlyle scholarship
will consider the work no longer just a treatise on German liter-
ature but primarily a Carlyle document from the year 1830.
V: Notice concerning Editorial Method
In the manuscript, as already mentioned, Carlyle usually
omitted analytical chapter headings; presumably he intended to
insert them later, in the proofs. Since such aids are legitim-
ately desired by all readers, I have inserted in the proper places
in the text my own approximations, worked out from the chapters
themselves and conforming as much as is practical to the patterns
Carlyle used in Chapter I and in his letter of May 23, 1830, to
Goethe. These interpolations and all other interpolations--they
are few in number--are enclosed in brackets. And whenever ex-
planations are needed, they are given in notes.
The editorial notes are placed after the text. This arrange-
ment is not an arbitrary one: two sets of circumstances dictated
it. In the first place, Carlyle himself used footnotes to his text
-- some of them long footnotes, extending more than one page.
And occasionally those Carlyle footnotes require some editorial
annotation. The confusion that would ensue between two systems
of footnoting, the author's and the editor's, would be indefensible.
In the second place, it seems desirable to include in this hereto-
fore inaccessible record of Carlyle's thought, certain explanations,
some comparisons in textual matters, and frequent accounts of
what his literary allusions meant to him in 1830. A few of these
editorial additions, especially the accounts dealing with Carlyle's
early readings and establishing the contexts of his 1830 allusions,
are too long for inclusion as footnotes. To condense them to smal-
ler compass would render them less useful. And to omit them en-
tirely would defeat one of the purposes of this edition--that of il-
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? xxx iv
INTRODUCTION
luminating as far as possible Carlyle's intellectual development
up to his thirty-fifth year. For those reasons, the notes are
placed after the text.
The notes are numbered consecutively throughout. Usually
Carlyle's first allusion to any particular author, work, or idea
is the one annotated. As already indicated, some of these notes
are extensive enough to suggest Carlyle's earlier relations with
an author or idea, and to suggest important tendencies that may
have emerged during those relations. Cross reference is not
elaborate, for the index is frequently a sufficient guide.
An index to the volume enables a reader to trace the authors
and some of the ideas alluded to in the text and in the introduction
and notes. The page numbers in arabic type ranging from 1
through 87 refer to Carlyle's text and his footnotes. All other
numbers, roman and arabic, refer to pages in the editorial in-
troduction and notes.
The bibliography is alphabetically arranged under key abbre-
viations. Such abbreviations are employed in the introduction
and notes in order to save space. Experienced readers will have
little difficulty with this system of abbreviated documentation,
which is expanded in the bibliography.
VI: Hypothetical Reconstruction of the Original Volume
and a Half That Carlyle Is Known to Have Written
To reconstruct what Carlyle worked out in the stone farm-
house at Craigenputtock during the spring and summer of 1830,
one may piece together six sections of material, all of which
are now available. They will assume the following order: (1)
the essay "On History" (Essays, II, 83-95), which was origin-
ally written to introduce the History; (2) the History itself, as
printed in the present volume, from the beginning of the text
down to the break in Chapter V (pp . 1-67); (3) most of the
last half of the essay "The Nibelungen Lied" (Essays, II, from
the bottom of p. 242 through p. 273, omitting only pp. 265-70);
(4) the remainder of the History, as printed in the present vol-
ume (Chapter VI, pp. 68-87); (5) the essay "Early German
Literature" (Essays, II, 274-332), which is presumably most
of what was written in the only half-finished and now lost Vol-
ume II of the manuscript; and (6) parts of the essay "Historic
Survey of German Poetry" (Essays, II, 333-73), which essay
contains here and there elements pertaining to the time before
Luther. This reconstruction will no longer be difficult, for it
involves the use of only one volume of Carlyle's Essays (Vol.
II) to supplement the present volume. 10
lOSince some of the materials mentioned above are not parts
of the extant manuscript History and therefore are not printed
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? INTRODUCTION
XXXV
VII: Acknowledgments
The final place in this introduction is reserved for acknow-
ledgments of various kinds of indebtedness not specifically noted
elsewhere. The debt to Yale University and its officials is a
basic one, for allowing me a decade ago to study the manuscript,
for granting permission to edit it, and for providing a microfilm
copy of it. Harvard University Library has furnished a micro-
film copy of the Norton Typescript of the manuscript. MacMur-
ray College Library, University of Illinois Library, and Univer-
sity of Kentucky Library have provided, sometimes by inter-library
loans, the reference materials needed for the editorial work.
LawrenceS. Thompson -- German scholar, linguist, and biblio-
grapher, as well as director of Libraries at the University of
Kentucky -- has been kind enough to examine critically the whole
of the present volume; and many of his suggestions for improve-
ment have been utilized. Helen Chadwick Shine at all stages of
or annotated in the present volume, certain facts about them
are worth notice here. "On History, " of which no manuscript
is known, was first printed as "Thoughts on History" in Fra-
ser's Magazine (II, No. 10, November, 1830, 413-18). The
reprinted version (Essays, II, 83-95) shows many changes in
mechanics but none in meaning. "Early German Literature, "
which belonged to the unknown manuscript of the only half-
finished Vol. II of the History, was first printed as "German
Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" in the
Foreign Quarterly Review (VIII, No. 16, October, 1831, 347-
91). Carlyle himself in 1839 specifically said that this essay,
which he called Reinecke Fox, was part of his unfinished His-
tory (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28). The reprinted
version (Essays, II, 274-332) shows relatively few changes in
punctuation, one in paragraphing, four corrections of spellings
that might have been misleading, and the omission of part of a
footnote; but there is no basic change in meaning. "Historic
Survey of German Poetry, " which deals extensively with the
modern period and therefore owes perhaps relatively little to
any part of the manuscript, was first printed as "Taylor's
Historic Survey of German Poetry" in the Edinburgh Review
(LIII, No. 105, March, 1831, 151-80). The reprinted ver-
sion (Essays, II, 333-73) contains many changes in mechanics
but none in meaning. Finally, an heretofore unmentioned bit,
"Luther's Psalm, " which was first printed in Fraser's Maga-
zine (II, No. 12, January, 1831, 743-44) and was reprinted in
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History. Though on August 6, 1830,
Carlyle quoted in German a stanza of this hymn (Froude II,
94), he perhaps did not make the English translation until about
October 10 (Letters of Carlyle, p. 173). And his brief intro-
duction to it may date from even later.
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? xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
the task has patiently transcribed and advised and encouraged.
The Research Fund Committee of the University of Kentucky
has subsidized the publication. And the officials and staff of
the University of Kentucky Press have given careful and respon-
sible attention to the production. To them -- institutions and
individuals -- I wish to indicate in these few words my grateful
sense of obligation.
? ?
greatest single interpreter of German literature, and his activ-
ity, culminating about 1830, may justly be considered the crest
of the highest wave of German influence that ever passed over
England" (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 52). When Professor Morgan
wrote that opinion, he had not seen Carlyle's manuscript vol-
ume of 1830. Though by 1830 Carlyle was the finest interpreter
of things German and may have been the best-qualified man in
Britain to write a comprehensive account of German literature,
his preparation was of course not uniformly strong at all points.
Undoubtedly his strongest point--as well as the strongest interest
of his contemporaries--lay in the modern field.
For a decade, from 1820 to 1830, Carlyle had read widely
and deeply in German writers, chiefly modern. 5 And during that
decade he had come to know much about the developments that
have just been sketched of Britain's interest in German writings.
But until he neared the age of twenty-five, neither the writings
themselves nor the development of British interest in them meant
much to him. Himself a child of the Scottish eighteenth century--
at least in the first period of his thought--he had had first to pass
Religiose Wurzel, p. 5), even in Germany itself only one ade-
quate history of German literature had been published by that
time: Koberstein's, in 1827. Though Carlyle was better in-
formed than one would be likely to suppose, he seems not to
have known that German work.
5 Elaboration of the point is unnecessary here, since much
space in the Notes is devoted to the examination of Carlyle's
German readings and since the Notes are easily accessible
through the Index. Carlyle's early reading is one of the most
useful keys to his intellectual development. If further bio-
graphical material than here given is desired, various studies
are available: for example, the one-volume account by Pro-
fessor Neff and the detailed account by D. A. Wilson. Best
of all the biographies--and always indispensable to Carlyle
scholarship--is the work by Froude. Harrold's Carlyle and
German Thought, which marks an epoch in Carlyle scholar-
ship, is basic in any full consideration of Carlyle's relation
to Germany.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxiii
through various phases of intellectual, religious, and esthetic
development before he could arrive at a hard-won understand-
ing of certain important aspects of the new German culture.
After acquiring through private study in 1819 the rudiments
of the German language, partly for scientific uses, Carlyle in
the next year was able to read into some of the meanings of
Schiller and Goethe. That was only the beginning. Naturally
Schiller's poetry was for a while intellectually more accessible
to him than Goethe's. But in 1820-1821 he found a new heaven
and new earth--first through emotional sympathy and then through
intellectual understanding--in the works of Goethe. As early as
1822, he began his published interpretations of German litera-
ture with a critique on Goethe's Faust I, in the upstart New Edin-
burgh Review. Already he had read Meisters Lehrjahre,with"
memorable results. His understanding of the ethical significance
of Entsagung, which he attributed largely to Meisters Lehrjahre,
was to have a deep and lasting effect upon the rest of his life and
thought. 6 And from about 1825 henceforth for Carlyle--as for
the later Tolstoy's Pierre and Levin--life had mystical meaning:
and its most meaning was clearest in the least self-conscious
moments. Meanwhile Schiller's writings too had their further
effects. From Schiller, Carlyle gained growing insight into
(and phrasing for) the progressive notion that Truth is process
rather than accomplishment (immer wird, nie ist). That writer's
esthetic essays, in addition to deepening and broadening Carlyle's
critical and historical viewpoint, led him gradually toward trans-
cendental philosophy. And his Life of Schiller, first published
by installments in the London Magazine for 1823-1824 (and, after
revisions, in book form in 1825), was the first full-length Eng-
lish biography of a German man of letters in the nineteenth cen-
tury. That work and his concurrently translated Wilhelm Meis-
ter's Apprenticeship (published 1824) were followed in 1825-1826
by the grateful labor of translating four volumes of Specimens
of German Romance. Those volumes, published in 1827, con-
tained distinguished biographical and critical introductions. Miss
Stockley (p. 258) thinks the sketch of Goethe in Volume IV was the
first approach to an adequate English account of that great writer.
As already suggested, Carlyle's study of Schiller's esthetics
based upon Kantian thought had for some time beckoned the young
Scot toward German transcendental philosophy. Though he never
proceeded in his philosophic interests far enough to satisfy a sys-
tematic student of that subject, he did read some of Kant, and
much of Kant's interpreters. When, through an unsystematic dis-
tinction between Vernunft and Verstand, he arrived at a viewpoint
that enabled him to do away once for all with his earlier material-
6 On the validity of this statement, see Lectures of 1838, pp.
186-88, along with Meister, II, 129 (that is, Meisters Lehr-
jahre, Bk. VIII, Ch. V).
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? xxiv
INTRODUCTION
ism and scepticism, he had penetrated as far as he felt the need
to go in what he called metaphysics. And he turned attention
gradually to other and, as he thought, more pressing interests.
Partly through a reading of Herder's great Ideen at the end of
1826, he gained additional clarity upon a philosophy of progress
that was to help him understand his own changing time, and the
vast changing and continuing traditions that come out of the past,
run through the present, and extend into the boundless future.
Thus by 1827 when he began publishing his periodical essays on
German literature and thought in the well-established Edinburgh
Review, he had found--largely through the Germans--much of
the ethical, esthetic, philosophic, religious, and historiographical
insight that was to make him an important figure in his generation.
The German writings, he firmly believed, had led him out of his
early darkness and had literally saved his life. And missionary
that Carlyle essentially was, he proceeded in his attempt to show
the light to others.
In that effort, during the three years from 1827 to 1830, he
published in the Edinburgh Review and (more numerously) in the
Foreign Review nine long essays on German writings. Those
essays ranged from a survey of the then state of German litera-
ture and an attack upon certain playwrights whom he regarded
as poetasters, to an account of the classical scholar C. G. Heyne,
and to biographical and critical interpretations of such varied
figures as Richter (two essays), Zacharius Werner, Goethe (two
essays), and the mystical Novalis. It is important to observe
that all these essays dealt with modern German literature and
literary figures. Not until he approached the History of German
Literature had he occupied himself with comparable seriousness
in the other great period of German literature, the Middle Ages.
And it was not until 1831, after the original plans for the History
had collapsed, that he salvaged certain medieval parts of it and
published them in the Westminster Review, the Foreign Quarterly
Review, and the Edinburgh Review. His systematic study of
medieval German literature had thus been brief.
Though a year and a half still remained to him before his peri-
od of literary criticism chiefly devoted to German literature was
ended, Carlyle assayed no new figures from the German scene
past or present. He turned first of all to the writing of Sartor
Resartus. And later, in 1832, when he wrote his last great ar-
ticle on German literature, it concerned the Goethe whom he had
known and loved so long, and who had just died. Already, with
his History of German Literature in 1830, he was on his path away
from German literature as his main interest, and on his way to-
ward the writing of history. But as yet, in 1830, he was unaware
of such a change.
Carlyle's way toward the writing of history, running as it did
through the History of German Literature, was a hard way, for
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? INTRODUCTION
XXV
a variety of reasons. In his writings up to 1830 on modern
German literature, Carlyle had distinguished himself for his
moral and ethical basis, his biographical approach, his esthetic
critical insight, and his ability to show in historical milieu the
subjects under discussion. His methods--when applied to mod-
ern giants or when applied even to lesser men who possessed
sharply delineated characteristics in well-comprehended cir-
cumstances--had enabled him to do more than any other Briton
to focus attention of the rising generation upon certain impor-
tant aspects of German literature. When, however, in 1830 he
attempted to extend his province to include the early literature
of Germany, he found himself embarrassed at various turns.
Mention of a few of the most striking difficulties will suffice
here. In the first place, with many of the early materials he
was not thoroughly familiar. Indeed, perhaps no one in Britain
was; for as already suggested, medieval studies had progressed
more slowly among British scholars than among the Germans.
Though Carlyle had neither the knowledge nor the wish to make
his first volume a pedantic exercise in antiquarianism, his iso-
lated position--isolated geographically, intellectually, socially,
and financially at Craigenputtock--made certain materials inac-
cessible to him. In the second place, his philosophy of history
and historiography, by no means fully developed as yet, had to
be articulated with this difficult and scanty material. As his
philosophy of history did develop, with what, a few years later,
was to become a decided list toward post-Reformation religion
and morals, the medieval religion and morals implicit in much
of the early material tended to complicate his difficulty. And,
finally, his already well-developed biographical approach in his
modern studies could find relatively little traction or purchase
in the medieval period. In what was then to considerable extent
"dark backward and abysm of time, " where literary anonymity
and communality and convention and inadequately motivated ac-
tion were so frequently the rule, his biographical-critical ap-
proach could be applied to only a few exceptional characters in
a few of the pieces, and to only a few makers, whose outlooks
on life he seldom dared do more than shadow forth hypothetically
from fleeting bits of internal evidence. In the face of such dif-
ficulties we may wonder that he succeeded as well as he did in
the first volume of his History.
His Progress in the Attempt to Produce a History
of German Literature
From the outset of Carlyle's work upon the History, there
were vaguenesses and difficulties. 7 The proposal that he en-
1 Since no detailed account of Carlyle's step-by-step activities
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? xxvi
INTRODUCTION
gage upon the work came to him in October, 1829, in a round-
about way, from "some London booksellers" -- apparently Whit-
taker's--through William Fraser of the Foreign Review (Napier
Correspondence, p. 77; Goethe Correspondence, p. 159; Early
Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, pp. 154-55). From the time of
that first proposal, Carlyle, knowing the limitations of his own
knowledge as well as the limitations of his readers' interests,
expected to put his main stress upon the comparatively brief
modern period of German literature (Goethe Correspondence,
p. 163). And he soon set about gathering materials and matur-
ing his plans. The agreement, finally reached late in January,
1830, called for four small volumes. Therein, instead of giv-
ing minute chronicle details, he hoped to stress the broadest
and most prominent features of German literature. The first
volume of the set, if it proceeded according to his early 1830
plans, would rise through certain of the medieval productions
to a culminating point in the Reformation (Early Letters of Jane
Welsh Carlyle, pp. 161-65). Though the London sponsors of
the undertaking had promised to provide the German books need-
ed for the work, the actual book supply came so slowly and
proved so undependable that Carlyle was left much to his own
resources (Letters of Carlyle, pp. 151, 157, 159, 161-62;
Two Note Books, p. 148).
In his need for books, Carlyle was aided by such Scottish
friends as the Reverend David Aitken, Henry Inglis, and George
Moir, and also perhaps by Macvey Napier, the new editor of
the Edinburgh Review. Thus by various means he procured what
he could. In addition to valuable works by Koch, JSrdens, Brock-
haus, FISgel, Eichhorn, Bouterwek, Leonhard Meister, and Horn
-- some of which would have been most useful in the modern stud-
ies ahead of him--he appears to have procured and used in his
medieval studies during these busy months, and those to come,
such works as DilSchneider's Deutsche Sprache, Docen's Mis-
cellaneen. the collaboratively produced Illustrations to Northern
Antiquities by Weber and Jamieson (and Scott), several works
by the Grimm brothers, some half a dozen works by BCtsching
and Von der Hagen (some produced separately and some collabora-
tively), Lessing's studies on proverbs and the early sagas, and
Tieck's Minnelieder, with its valued introduction. And Tacitus'
writings on early Germany and Mascov's histories furnished him
some of the necessary background materials. 8
with respect to the History has heretofore been published, the
present section is documented more fully than other sections
of this introduction.
8 Leopold's "Carlyle's Handbooks" discusses the eight works
named first in this list. That useful English account (1934) is
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? INTRODUCTION
xxvii
As preparations went forward, Carlyle's plans naturally
underwent some changes and developments. By the beginning
of spring, he intended that Volume I should be of antiquarian
nature, including The Nibelungen Lied, the Minnesingers, and
the Meistersingers, and should end with Hans Sachs; that Vol-
ume II should include Luther and the Reformation satirists, and
should extend up as far as Thomasius, Gottsched, and the Swiss
writers; and that the last two volumes should be devoted to re-
cent literature, because of its great importance to British read-
ers (Goethe Correspondence, pp. 171-72). Finally, by late May,
with Volume I just completed and sent off to London, he had work-
ed out--partly on paper and partly only in his mind--a threefold
periodic arrangement of materials. That is, Volume I traced
German developments from crude beginnings on through the first
poetic period and its culmination in the Minnesingers. Volume
II, as he now planned, would begin with certain didactic writings
(including Hugo von Trimberg, Reinecke Fuchs, and Sabastian
Brandt), would rise to a second poetic period under Luther and
Hutten, and would then sink again into the disputation (didactic
again) and the superficial refinements of Thomasius and Gottsched
and their Swiss opponents. And Volumes III and IV, beginning
with the earnest sceptic Lessing and with Wieland, would continue
tracing the development of German literature to its most recent
climax, when, under Goethe and Schiller,
a Third grand (Poetic] Period had evolved itself, as yet fairly
developed in no other Literature, but full of the richest pros-
pects for all; namely, a period of new Spirituality and Belief;
in the midst of old Doubt and Denial; as it were, a new revela-
tion of Nature, and the Freedom and Infinitude of Man, wherein
Reverence is again rendered compatible with Knowledge, and
Art and Religion are one. This is the Era which chiefly con-
cerns us of England, as of other nations; the rest being chiefly
remembrance, but this still present with us. How I am to
bring it out will require all consideration.
(Goethe Correspondence, pp. 187-91)
Thus Carlyle had at length devised an interesting general plan,
which, under favorable circumstances, he might have prosecuted
satisfactorily through four volumes with rising significance to an
end in the great literature of his own time.
Meanwhile, as has already been suggested, the actual writing
out of his plan was proceeding. As he began writing in the early
mainly derived from an earlier account in Die Religiose Wur-
zel (1922), pp. 3-11. Of course when writing those studies
Leopold was not able to utilize the evidence now made accessi-
ble. Indications of various aspects of Carlyle's connections
with the reference works used in his History will be found in
the respective Notes that are part of the present edition (see
the Index).
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? xxviii
INTRODUCTION
days of spring, his own lack of clarity in his broad new under-
taking caused him to work out and write down his creed concern-
ing history. But soon after finishing the credo, he found his
elaborate statement of it unsuitable for the present book. There-
fore on April 12 he cut it out and laid it aside (Two Note Books,
p. 154). This statement of his credo, henceforth entirely di-
vorced from its original context as the introductory section of
the History, eventually became known as the essay "On History. "
Having thus removed what had become an incumbrance, Carlyle
could proceed more rapidly. By May Day, he was writing on the
fifth chapter of Volume I. With purposes now clarified, he was
sometimes able to write as much as three or four of his long, full
pages daily (Letters of Carlyle. p. 164). And toward the end of
that same month he finished Volume I. Then, after brief rest, he
began, on June 8, his Volume II (Two Note Books, p. 156). But
he was interrupted two weeks later by the death of his favorite
sister, Margaret. Consequently he had written only the first half
of what he intended as Volume II when in July the publishing ar-
rangements at London collapsed. One obvious reason for the col-
lapse was the shift of public interest from literature to politics
and other nonliterary issues during the agitation attendant upon
the introduction of the First Reform Bill. Particulars in the case
are wanting. But early in August--after having worked at his task
with energy, under difficulties, for many months--Carlyle sus-
pended writing, with his project a fragment.
A little more than one third, but less than one half, of what he
had planned was done. In the space of a volume and a half, he
had brought his account up to (not through) Luther (Froude, II, 95,
97; Goethe Correspondence, pp. 207-10). Actually he was only
just arriving at the point where, in his original plans, he had
meant his first main stress to come; it was the point where, in
his more carefully considered plans, he had meant his second
main stress to come. This stress point itself (Luther and His
Times: The Reformation), however, and a final main stress point
(Goethe and His Times: The Present), with all the many falling
and rising minor points between the two, lay still in prospect--
with progress toward them stopped, or at least suspended tem-
porarily.
Deeply disappointed at the frustration of his plans, Carlyle
was nevertheless financially unable to leave the unfinished work
unused. So as soon as possible he recalled the manuscript of
Volume I from William Fraser in London (Froude, II, 94). If
the project as a whole should henceforth fail to interest any re-
sponsible publisher enough to warrant its continuation, Carlyle
hoped that parts already written might be converted into review
articles for immediate disposal to cover current living expenses
(Letters of Carlyle, pp. 165-66; Froude, II, 95-96). Before the
month of August was ended, still another ingenious though complex
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? INTRODUCTION
xx ix
plan suggested itself to him. That is, he might collect the peri-
odical essays he had already printed on various aspects and fig-
ures of German literature, might write a few more such essays
--for example, on Luther, Lessing, Herder--for incorporation
with them, might use the present manuscript volume and a half
of medieval materials as an introduction to that main body of
modern German materials, might write a circumspective con-
clusion to round out the whole, and might eventually publish the
composite result as a Zur Geschichte (if not a genuine Geschichte)
of German literature (Froude, II, 96-97; Goethe Correspondence,
pp. 209-10). Such a plan of eventually articulating his manu-
script materials with his already published essays would in no
way hinder his quarrying now from the mass of manuscript ma-
terials in hand a number of review articles for immediate pub-
lication. So, after Francis Jeffrey had failed to interest the pub-
lisher Longman in the original project, Carlyle set about arrange-
ments to convert parts of the manuscript into articles for cash
(Letters of Carlyle, p. 171; Froude, II, 101).
And early in 1831
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third. As later reprinted in Essays, II, the three articles are
now known by the following titles: "The Nibelungen Lied, " "Early
German Literature, '* and "Taylor's Historic Survey of German
Poetry" (see Letters of Carlyle, pp. 178, 180, 189, 191, 194;
Two Note Books, pp. 181-83; Napier Correspondence, p. 101;
Froude, II, 114, 122).
The fragmentary work, even after parts of it were utilized in
those review articles, did not drop at once out of Carlyle's mind.
Late in 1831 and early in 1832 he still hoped and planned to sup-
plement it and eventually to publish it as a Zur Geschichte (Two
Note Books, pp. 196, 231, 254-55; Napier Correspondence, pp.
113-14; Letters of Carlyle, pp. 278, 286). But as those pros-
pects failed one by one and as his interest in German literature
was gradually superseded by other interests after the death of
Goethe, his critical estimate of the History? which estimate had
never been extravagant--dropped lower. Only a little more need
be said concerning Carlyle's efforts to utilize the work. One point
is especially interesting. That is --if a rather uncertain note that
Carlyle wrote in 1866 across the last page of the manuscript can
be trusted--he may have read over some of the materials while
he was rapidly preparing for his unpublished first series of lec-
tures (Six Lectures on German Literature) in 1837, and he may
have taken some part of the manuscript with him to the platform
to serve as notes (presumably not needed) for the first lecture
(see Note 231). And finally, two years later (in 1839), in order
to suggest that the fragmentary History (along with certain other
manuscripts) would not be suitable for Emerson to publish in
America, Carlyle made what we may here consider his own ter-
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? INTRODUCTION
minal critical comment upon the work:
[It is] a long rigamorole dissertation (in a grabbed sardonic
vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wrig-
gling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore,
and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a
kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost
ten years ago, and never contented me well. . . . [it is] a
thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though
I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratch-
ings and scrawlings. (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28)
As Carlyle commented thus casually upon the manuscript that had
cost him dear in many ways, perhaps neither he nor his American
correspondent was aware of what may now be clear to any Car-
lyle student who considers the case with care. Though the evi-
dence cannot be elaborated here, Carlyle's work at that project
in 1830 had had some important effects upon his development in-
to a historian. And his disappointment at its failure had co-oper-
ated with various other -- at the time seemingly unrelated--develop-
ments to alienate him from his long-loved German literature.
Ill: The Actual Manuscript of the History: Description
and Provenience
The Yale Manuscript Volume I of this History is all that
is known to exist in manuscript form. It consists of ninety
long sheets, closely written in black ink on one side only. Its
six chapters, one of them fragmentary, are paginated from 1 to
68 and from 89 to 110. (The missing twenty pages were removed
by Carlyle in 1831 from Chapter V for use in a review article. )
Many of the ninety pages show alterations. Most frequently, per-
haps, the changes were made for what may be termed stylistic
reasons. 9 The fact that there is only occasional evidence of ba-
sic reorganization of materials suggests that most of this manu-
script was written from some cruder form or from notes. That
is, presumably this particular copy was meant for the printer.
Though the presence of numerous crossed-out expressions and
many interlinings would not be hard to account for in printer's
copy from such a careful revisionist as Carlyle was, the omission
of all but one of the chapter headings in the manuscript is a some-
what more puzzling problem. Nevertheless, all--or all except a
very few words--of this long manuscript can be read and under-
stood. Four of the chapters (I, II, III, and VI) have never before
been printed.
9 Much information about Carlyle's practice of revision can
be found in Miss Calder's recent study of the two extant manu-
scripts of Past and Present.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxi
The manuscript has had only one owner outside the Carlyle
family. About 1875, its author gave it, along with many other
papers, to his niece and faithful amanuensis Mary Carlyle Ait-
ken (Wilson, II, 195). And during more than half a century
thereafter, it remained her property and, after her death, the
property of her cousin Alexander Carlyle, whom she had mar-
ried in 1879. In 1901, this Alexander Carlyle, a nephew of the
author, sent a typescript copy of the four unpublished chapters
to Charles Eliot Norton, the American editor of many of Car-
lyle's papers. Possibly Norton considered publishing it, ^ust as
Froude was considering publication at the time of Max Muller's
advice to him (see pp. xxxii-xxxiii); but its lack of direct bearing
upon the bitter controversy then in the ascendant may have had
some effect in the decision. The typescript, with Alexander
Carlyle's annotations, has long been in the Harvard University
Library. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself remained, as before,
in the Carlyle family. It was sold by Sotheby's in 1932, after
the death of Alexander Carlyle. The purchaser, apparently the
late Gabriel Wells of New York, must have been acting merely
as a friendly agent of Yale University, for neither he nor his
firm retained record of any part in this particular transaction.
Soon after the sale, the document passed into the permanent
possession of Yale University.
IV: Evaluation of the History
Although Carlyle's History would have been the best English
account of medieval German literature available in 1830, it is
of course not likely to be used by many present-day seekers of
information concerning medieval German literary history. Much
of the work is avowedly compilation to improve the then state of
knowledge about German literature. It was produced by a man
who (by present standards of scholarship) would seem inadequate-
ly grounded in this particular part of his field; and it would seem
(by present standards for such a work) weak in source materials.
The amount of time that Carlyle devoted to this part of the under-
taking would today seem inadequate for such a task. Moreover,
during that time, he was groping his way under untoward cir-
cumstances. Furthermore, the work is fragmentary. And it is
a fragment from which some of the best literary criticism was
early selected by Carlyle himself for publication in periodical
form.
Nevertheless, when all deductions are allowed, the work does
have real significance. In the first place, though only two chap-
ters (IV and V) of Volume I influenced his contemporaries, the
volume is a record of the status of German medieval studies in
Britain just as the first generation of romantics was ending. The
most obvious significance in that connection is, however, that it
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? xxxii
INTRODUCTION
supplements--as it alone can do--our knowledge of Carlyle's
own interest in medieval German culture, as he arrived at the
middle of his fourth decade. Reference to this work will show
him more sympathetic in his interpretation of that early era of
culture and more cognizant of some important points of view
concerning it than heretofore he has been considered, and will
facilitate a fuller and fairer estimate than has before been pos-
sible of his place in medieval studies at a critical time in their
development and in his. Parts of the work show too, better
than they can be found elsewhere in so small a compass, his
interest in various aspects (sometimes comparative) of folklore
and etymology, and an early interest in Scandinavian and Norse
materials. The work elaborates his faith in the future, as well
as in the past, of the Teutonic race. It shows his concept of the
social and political, as well as the cultural, bearings of world
literature. It documents in an important way the development
of his philosophy of history. Many phases in the work show too
his organizing mind, able to give shape to stubborn matter and
to endow hidden purpose with a name. Furthermore, it shows
passages of his mature critical insight. It reveals aspects of
the ethical and moral and esthetic profundity that had character-
ized and distinguished Carlyle to the venerable Goethe's mind in
1828. And, especially notable to students of the later Carlyle,
that earnest depth was then harmoniously coupled with the broad
tolerance that in 1831 was to strike even the young John Stuart
Mill as the widefet he had known. Worthy too of at least men-
tion in this connection, the work shows in a few places some of
the images and figures and stylistic turns that hint the Sartor
Resartus soon to come. Of these significances--and of various
other significances that will be found by careful reading of the
present work--the common denominator is obvious. Here is a
record of Carlyle's mind at work during some of the finest and
most imaginative months of his mature life--the months immedi-
ately preceding Sartor Resartus.
Directly in line with what has just been said about the impor-
tance of this History of German Literature, a comment by Max
Mtiller is worth careful consideration. When in 1880, Froude
submitted the manuscript to Mtiller and asked his advice about
whether or not to publish it, Mtiller replied thus:
I have only to-day finished Carlyle's MS. It is very pleasant
reading--here and there I feel sure there are pages which I
had read elsewhere--in his Miscellanies, I think. What a pity
he did not finish it and publish at the time. Now you could only
publish it as a curious fragment showing the state of knowledge
of German Literature at the time:--but it was a time before
Grimm and Lachmaxgg and others, and therefore much of it has
a historical interest only. It is all strong and sound--much
better than thousands of books that are printed every day--yet
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxiii
I doubt whether you could publish it as coming from Carlyle.
However you know best. I should like to have it in print,
but I should not print it myself--except for private circulation.
(Wilson, II, 195)
Of course part of Muller's caution sprang from the fact that Car-
lyle, known then very widely as an authoritative writer on German
literature and history, was still alive in 1880. To publish the
work then as coming from the biographer of Schiller, the trans-
lator and interpreter of Goethe, and the historian of Frederick
the Great might thus have been an imposition upon, and to some
degree an impediment to, general readers seeking the most help-
ful guidance then available on medieval German literature. From
that viewpoint, at the end of half a century of great progress in
medieval studies, Muller properly judged the then fifty-year-old
work as a treatise that was out of date. Nevertheless, Muller
pointedly suggested the other value of the work. And today, sev-
enty years after Miiller's wise judgment, Carlyle scholarship
will consider the work no longer just a treatise on German liter-
ature but primarily a Carlyle document from the year 1830.
V: Notice concerning Editorial Method
In the manuscript, as already mentioned, Carlyle usually
omitted analytical chapter headings; presumably he intended to
insert them later, in the proofs. Since such aids are legitim-
ately desired by all readers, I have inserted in the proper places
in the text my own approximations, worked out from the chapters
themselves and conforming as much as is practical to the patterns
Carlyle used in Chapter I and in his letter of May 23, 1830, to
Goethe. These interpolations and all other interpolations--they
are few in number--are enclosed in brackets. And whenever ex-
planations are needed, they are given in notes.
The editorial notes are placed after the text. This arrange-
ment is not an arbitrary one: two sets of circumstances dictated
it. In the first place, Carlyle himself used footnotes to his text
-- some of them long footnotes, extending more than one page.
And occasionally those Carlyle footnotes require some editorial
annotation. The confusion that would ensue between two systems
of footnoting, the author's and the editor's, would be indefensible.
In the second place, it seems desirable to include in this hereto-
fore inaccessible record of Carlyle's thought, certain explanations,
some comparisons in textual matters, and frequent accounts of
what his literary allusions meant to him in 1830. A few of these
editorial additions, especially the accounts dealing with Carlyle's
early readings and establishing the contexts of his 1830 allusions,
are too long for inclusion as footnotes. To condense them to smal-
ler compass would render them less useful. And to omit them en-
tirely would defeat one of the purposes of this edition--that of il-
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? xxx iv
INTRODUCTION
luminating as far as possible Carlyle's intellectual development
up to his thirty-fifth year. For those reasons, the notes are
placed after the text.
The notes are numbered consecutively throughout. Usually
Carlyle's first allusion to any particular author, work, or idea
is the one annotated. As already indicated, some of these notes
are extensive enough to suggest Carlyle's earlier relations with
an author or idea, and to suggest important tendencies that may
have emerged during those relations. Cross reference is not
elaborate, for the index is frequently a sufficient guide.
An index to the volume enables a reader to trace the authors
and some of the ideas alluded to in the text and in the introduction
and notes. The page numbers in arabic type ranging from 1
through 87 refer to Carlyle's text and his footnotes. All other
numbers, roman and arabic, refer to pages in the editorial in-
troduction and notes.
The bibliography is alphabetically arranged under key abbre-
viations. Such abbreviations are employed in the introduction
and notes in order to save space. Experienced readers will have
little difficulty with this system of abbreviated documentation,
which is expanded in the bibliography.
VI: Hypothetical Reconstruction of the Original Volume
and a Half That Carlyle Is Known to Have Written
To reconstruct what Carlyle worked out in the stone farm-
house at Craigenputtock during the spring and summer of 1830,
one may piece together six sections of material, all of which
are now available. They will assume the following order: (1)
the essay "On History" (Essays, II, 83-95), which was origin-
ally written to introduce the History; (2) the History itself, as
printed in the present volume, from the beginning of the text
down to the break in Chapter V (pp . 1-67); (3) most of the
last half of the essay "The Nibelungen Lied" (Essays, II, from
the bottom of p. 242 through p. 273, omitting only pp. 265-70);
(4) the remainder of the History, as printed in the present vol-
ume (Chapter VI, pp. 68-87); (5) the essay "Early German
Literature" (Essays, II, 274-332), which is presumably most
of what was written in the only half-finished and now lost Vol-
ume II of the manuscript; and (6) parts of the essay "Historic
Survey of German Poetry" (Essays, II, 333-73), which essay
contains here and there elements pertaining to the time before
Luther. This reconstruction will no longer be difficult, for it
involves the use of only one volume of Carlyle's Essays (Vol.
II) to supplement the present volume. 10
lOSince some of the materials mentioned above are not parts
of the extant manuscript History and therefore are not printed
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? INTRODUCTION
XXXV
VII: Acknowledgments
The final place in this introduction is reserved for acknow-
ledgments of various kinds of indebtedness not specifically noted
elsewhere. The debt to Yale University and its officials is a
basic one, for allowing me a decade ago to study the manuscript,
for granting permission to edit it, and for providing a microfilm
copy of it. Harvard University Library has furnished a micro-
film copy of the Norton Typescript of the manuscript. MacMur-
ray College Library, University of Illinois Library, and Univer-
sity of Kentucky Library have provided, sometimes by inter-library
loans, the reference materials needed for the editorial work.
LawrenceS. Thompson -- German scholar, linguist, and biblio-
grapher, as well as director of Libraries at the University of
Kentucky -- has been kind enough to examine critically the whole
of the present volume; and many of his suggestions for improve-
ment have been utilized. Helen Chadwick Shine at all stages of
or annotated in the present volume, certain facts about them
are worth notice here. "On History, " of which no manuscript
is known, was first printed as "Thoughts on History" in Fra-
ser's Magazine (II, No. 10, November, 1830, 413-18). The
reprinted version (Essays, II, 83-95) shows many changes in
mechanics but none in meaning. "Early German Literature, "
which belonged to the unknown manuscript of the only half-
finished Vol. II of the History, was first printed as "German
Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" in the
Foreign Quarterly Review (VIII, No. 16, October, 1831, 347-
91). Carlyle himself in 1839 specifically said that this essay,
which he called Reinecke Fox, was part of his unfinished His-
tory (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28). The reprinted
version (Essays, II, 274-332) shows relatively few changes in
punctuation, one in paragraphing, four corrections of spellings
that might have been misleading, and the omission of part of a
footnote; but there is no basic change in meaning. "Historic
Survey of German Poetry, " which deals extensively with the
modern period and therefore owes perhaps relatively little to
any part of the manuscript, was first printed as "Taylor's
Historic Survey of German Poetry" in the Edinburgh Review
(LIII, No. 105, March, 1831, 151-80). The reprinted ver-
sion (Essays, II, 333-73) contains many changes in mechanics
but none in meaning. Finally, an heretofore unmentioned bit,
"Luther's Psalm, " which was first printed in Fraser's Maga-
zine (II, No. 12, January, 1831, 743-44) and was reprinted in
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History. Though on August 6, 1830,
Carlyle quoted in German a stanza of this hymn (Froude II,
94), he perhaps did not make the English translation until about
October 10 (Letters of Carlyle, p. 173). And his brief intro-
duction to it may date from even later.
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? xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
the task has patiently transcribed and advised and encouraged.
The Research Fund Committee of the University of Kentucky
has subsidized the publication. And the officials and staff of
the University of Kentucky Press have given careful and respon-
sible attention to the production. To them -- institutions and
individuals -- I wish to indicate in these few words my grateful
sense of obligation.
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