Once Again on Carlyle and Lucian

Abstract:Following up another article published in the Scottish Literary Review in Spring/Summer 2020, this short essay offers some further considerations on Thomas Carlyle's reading and appropriation of the ancient Syrian satirist Lucian of Samosata. Having read Lucian in 1849, Carlyle referred to him explicitly in two manuscripts entitled 'Scavenger Age' and 'Leave it Alone; Time Will Mend It'. Indeed, an awareness of Carlyle's reading of Lucian enables us to date both of these manuscripts to late 1849, a fact that has eluded previous scholars. Furthermore, the article suggests that Lucian's 'The Life's-End of Peregrinus' provided a model for Carlyle's notorious denunciation of Ignatius of Loyola in 'Jesuitism' (1 August 1850), the last of his Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850).