A. J. P. Taylor on Thomas Carlyle

“Carlyle senses the masses, as no other writer has ever done; he expressed their outlook against his own conscious convictions... In the French Revolution there is no fault or weakness at all; it is a book without peer.”

“You do not read his books; you experience them, and what you experience in them is the storm of the world. He was a nihilist, a destroyer, despite his doctrine of toil and the heroic virtues. He once found a perfect subject, the French Revolution. That really was the end of a world, and Carlyle wrote of it like a man possessed.”

“Carlyle regarded liberty as an aristocratic fad which would be blown away when the people came into their own. Liberty is indeed the touchstone of every man's career. Do you respect the judgements of others as much as your own? Or are you so confident of your own judgement that you would trample that of everyone else under foot? Macaulay gave the answer for liberty, Carlyle for tyranny. The worse cause had the more powerful advocate. All the same, it was the worse cause.”