Thomas Carlyle

• Scottish
• Satirical writer, essayist, historian.
• His work was highly influential in the Victorian era.

Carlyle branched out into a wider ranging commentary on modern culture in his
influential essays Signs of the Times and Characteristics.

AO4

Read the following quotation from Signs of the Times.

“We have a faith in the imperishable dignity of man; in the high vocation
to which, throughout his earthly history, he has been appointed.
However it may be with individual nations, whatever melancholic
speculators may assert, it seems a well-ascertained fact, that in all times
. . . the happiness and greatness of mankind at large have been
continually progressive. . . . That admiration of old nobleness, which now
so often shows itself as a faint dilettantism, will one day become a
generous emulation, and man may again be all that he has been, and
more than he has been”

The full text is available on ‘The Victorian Web’ – it might be useful for further
reading.

Discuss and make notes with your group about how you can link Carlyle’s
quotation to the poem ‘Morte d’Arthur’.

Thomas Carlyle

• Scottish
• Satirical writer, essayist, historian.
• His work was highly influential in the Victorian era.

Carlyle branched out into a wider ranging commentary on modern culture in his
influential essays Signs of the Times and Characteristics.

AO4

Read the following quotation from Signs of the Times.

“We have a faith in the imperishable dignity of man; in the high vocation
to which, throughout his earthly history, he has been appointed.
However it may be with individual nations, whatever melancholic
speculators may assert, it seems a well-ascertained fact, that in all times
. . . the happiness and greatness of mankind at large have been
continually progressive. . . . That admiration of old nobleness, which now
so often shows itself as a faint dilettantism, will one day become a
generous emulation, and man may again be all that he has been, and
more than he has been”

The full text is available on ‘The Victorian Web’ – it might be useful for further
reading.

Discuss and make notes with your group about how you can link Carlyle’s
quotation to the poem ‘Morte d’Arthur’.