Carlyle echoes Burke

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

[Home —> Authors —> Thomas Carlyle —> Works —> Carlyle and the Search for Authority]

[Chapter 3, note 48, 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. indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

Once again, Carlyle echoes Burke, who had written "let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us" (Reflections, 6667). Unlike Carlyle, however, Burke does not equate the building of the state with the Bastille, nor does he regard it as having become a prison.

Contents last modified 26 October 2001