It is a fiery, historical
drama rather than a history; full of rhapsodies, startling rhetoric,
disconnected pictures. It has been fitly called "a history in flashes of
lightning." No one could learn from it the history of that momentous
period; but one who has read the history elsewhere, will find great
interest in Carlyle's wild and vivid pictures of its stormy scenes.
In 1839 he wrote, in his dashing style, upon _Chartism_, and about the
same time read a course of lectures upon _Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the
Heroic in History_, in which he is an admirer of will and impulse, and
palliates evil when found in combination with these.
In 1845 he edited _The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell_, and in
his extravagant eulogies worships the hero rather than the truth.
FREDERICK II.--In 1858 appeared the first two volumes of _The Life of
Frederick the Great_, and since that time he has completed the work. This
is doubtless his greatest effort. It is full of erudition, and contains
details not to be found in any other biography of the Prussian monarch;
but so singularly has he reasoned and commented upon his facts, that the
enlightened reader often draws conclusions different from those which the
author has been laboring to establish.
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