He loved to emphasize the superiority of history over fiction as
dramatic material. The third of the three essays mentioned was a
Jeremiad on the morbid self-consciousness of the age, which shows
itself, in religion and philosophy, as skepticism and introspective
metaphysics; and in literature, as sentimentalism, and "view-hunting."
But Carlyle's epoch-making book was _Sartor Resartus_ (The Tailor
Retailored), published in _Fraser's Magazine_ for 1833-1834, and first
reprinted in book form in America. This was a satire upon shams,
conventions, the disguises which overlie the most spiritual realities of
the soul. It purported to be the life and "clothes-philosophy" of a
certain Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, Professor _der Allerlei
Wissenschaft_--of things in general--in the University of Weissnichtwo.
"Society," said Carlyle, "is founded upon cloth," following the
suggestions of Lear's speech to the naked bedlam beggar: "Thou art the
thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare,
forked animal as thou art;" and borrowing also, perhaps, an ironical
hint from a paragraph in Swift's _Tale of a Tub_: "A sect was
established who held the universe to be a large suit of clothes....If
certain ermines or furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a
judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a
bishop.
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