II. Carlyle and the French Revolution

Abstract

Carlyle entered the field of Revolutionary studies when the Revolution was transforming itself from politics to history, and he himself played an important part in this transition. His older contemporaries belonged to the Revolutionary generation and his younger friends, like John Mill, were products of it. William Smyth was at that time lecturing on the French Revolution in Cambridge and looking out upon it ‘as from a College window’. Smyth was extricating himself from the spirit of the pamphleteers through wide reading and a conscious training in academic impartiality. John Wilson Croker, from the midst of the political scene, was fighting the phantom of the Revolution, and at the same time delving deep into the Revolutionary sources. For him the Revolution had become a subject of historical inquiry only in the sense that he was able to investigate it from records. Alison's book came out after Carlyle had begun his studies. It stole Croker's thunder but left Carlyle unmoved. Alison knew the sources but not how to use them. His bibliographical prefaces are now the best part of his book, which Carlyle had not read when Mill asked whether it was worth reviewing.1 Carlyle glanced at it, saw that the ‘margin bears marks of great enquiry’, knew that Alison had been to France, and advised Mill to review it but to tell his own story, without fear or favour.2 ‘It is a thing utterly unknown to the English and ought to be known.’ When Mill read the book himself, he found that Alison was ‘inconceivably stupid and twaddling...has no research’,3 and that the references were to compilations. Alison's book, pervaded by political principle, tried to throw ‘ true light’ on the Revolution, was tremendously successful and is now forgotten. His sort of history is soon superseded. As he modestly realized, his success was due to his being first in the field.