Books in Brief: Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle, by Ian Campbell (Scribner’s, 210 pp., illus., $10). Thomas Carlyle was such a quarrelsome, feverish sort of man that he frequently gave himself (not to mention those around him) indigestion. Fortunately, there was plenty of bile left for his writing and, if the highly charged pages of his French Revolution and Frederick the Great can no longer be taken seriously as history, they still amuse as samples of a quirky but brilliant literary style that was often—but never successfully—imitated. Ian Campbell, a lecturer in English Literature at Edinburgh University (I suppose this makes him a latter-day Scotch reviewer of English bards), has a deep, calm understanding of his turbulent and occasionally shallow subject, and a genuine feel for the Scotland that formed Carlyle as a writer long before he set foot in Chelsea. As the author is also an editor of Carlyle’s correspondence, the volume is filled with excellent quotes. Unlike some Carlyle enthusiasts, Campbell also has no trouble coming to grips with the other overpowering presence of the Carlyle household, Jane, whom he depicts fairly and with perception. A fine example of what a popular biography with scholarly moorings should be, and a well-deserved appreciation of one of the most unusual genius/cranks of nineteenth-century British letters.