Carlyle on Irving

Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

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[Chapter 3, note 18, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. not in print version indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

In another letter, he described a visit during which Irving gave him an article by one Thomas Carlyle (!) that he claimed was "'given him'by the spirit!" Carlyle found it "to be simply the insanest Babble, without top bottom or centre, that ever was emitted even from Bedlam itself " (CL, 6:132; see also Rem., 298ff.; Skabarnicki, "Annandale Evangelist").

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Last modified 5 October 2001