In his course of lectures entitled Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), he considers The Hero as Prophet, The Hero as Poet, The Hero as Priest, and The Hero as King, and shows how history has been molded by men like Mohammed, Shakespeare, Luther, and Napoleon.  It is such men as these whom Carlyle calls “kings,” beside whom “emperors,” “popes,” and “potentates” are as nothing.  He believed that there was always living some man worthy to be the “real king” over men, and such a kingship was Carlyle’s ideal of government.

Oliver Cromwell was one of these “real kings.”  In the work entitled Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations, Carlyle was the first to present the character of the Protector in its full strength and greatness and to demonstrate once for all that he was a hero whose memory all Englishmen should honor.

The Life of John Sterling (1851) is a fair, true, and touching biography of Carlyle’s most intimate friend, the man who had introduced him to Jane Welsh.  After reading this book, George Eliot said she wished that more men of genius would write biographies.

Carlyle’s next attempt at biography grew into the massive History of Friedrich II. (1858-1865), which includes a survey of European history in that dreary century which preceded the French Revolution.  “Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods.”  He is “to the last a questionable hero.”  However, “in his way he is a Reality,” one feels “that he always means what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has nothing of the Hypocrite or Phantasm.”  Despite his tyranny and his bloody career, he, therefore, is another of Carlyle’s “real kings.”  While this work is a history of modern Europe, Friedrich is always the central figure.  He gives to these six volumes a human note, a glowing interest of personal adventure, and a oneness that are remarkable in so vast a work.

General Characteristics.—­Carlyle’s writings must be classed among the great social and democratic influences of the nineteenth century, in spite of the fact that he did not believe in pure democracy.  It was his favorite theory that a great man, like Oliver Cromwell, could govern better than the unintelligent multitude.  However much he rebelled against democracy in government, his sympathies were with the toiling masses.  His work entitled Past and Present (1843) suggests the organization of labor and introduces such modern expressions as “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.”  In Sartor Resartus, he specially honors “the toilworn Craftsman, that with earthmade implement laboriously conquers the Earth and makes her Man’s.”

Carlyle had a large fund of incisive wit and humor, which often appear in picturesque setting, as when he said to a physician:  “A man might as well pour his sorrows into the long hairy ear of a jackass.”  As the satiric censor of his time, Carlyle found frequent occasion for caustic wit.  He lashed the age for its love of the “swine’s trough,” of “Pig-science, Pig-enthusiasm and devotion.”  Although his intentions were good, his satire was not always just or discriminating, and he was in consequence bitterly criticized.  The following Dutch parable is in some respects specially applicable to Carlyle:—­