2-982-452 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mr. Thomas Carlyle - from a photograph, 1858. Scottish thinker and writer. At the University of Edinburgh, '...Carlyle contrived to pick up whatever of knowledge was there attainable..."I indeed learned better perhaps than the most...by instinct and happy accident I took less to rioting than to thinking and reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay, from the chaos of that library I succeeded in fishing up more books, perhaps, than had been known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a literary life was hereby laid. I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently, in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences."...About the middle of 1834 Mr. Carlyle exchanged his Craigenputtoch hermitage for, in a literary sense, the more congenial atmosphere of London, and took a house in Cheyne-row, Chelsea, close to his friend Leigh Hunt, where he has remained ever since...Mr. Carlyle has been incessantly engaged on a "Life of Frederick the Great of Prussia," the two first volumes of which have just been published, and are to be followed, we hope ere many months, by two more'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.