Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 12.djvu/19



vast historical project which was in its execution to occupy nearly the whole remaining portion of Carlyle's working life may first have suggested itself to him as early as 1844, a good many years, that is to say, before it took definite shape as a determined plan. For, as we know from his distinguished biographer, it was in 1844, that he first came across Preuss's work upon Frederick, and he had thoughts of an expedition to Berlin after finishing Cromwell. In the interval, however, between the birth of his conception and the beginnings of his attempt to realise it, he had still much literary work to do. It was during these years that he published the Latter Day Pamphlets, the most vehemently controversial of all his writings, and the Life of Sterling, which, on the other hand, is perhaps the one among them all which divides readers the least. Not until this last-named volume had been got off his hands did he at length resolve upon undertaking the great biography and settle resolutely down to the collection and arrangement of his mountainous materials. From that time forth until the appearance of the last volume—fourteen years later—his life, according to his own incessant complaints, was a continuous martyrdom, in which Mrs. Carlyle too often involuntarily shared. It was at the end of 1851 that he set seriously to work, commencing by six months of steady reading, during which he cut himself almost entirely from his wife's society, and was only at last driven from his seclusion by the 'maddening' noise of the workmen engaged in the repairs of his house. A tour in Germany followed in the autumn of 1852, and, returning enriched with fresh materials for his biography, Carlyle applied himself doggedly to his task in