EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY
Founded 1906 by J. M. Dent (d. 1926)
Edited by Ernest Rhys (d. 1946)
ESSAYS & BELLES-LETTRES
SARTOR RESARTUS and ON HEROES
BY THOMAS CARLYLE · INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR W. H. HUDSON
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
All rights reserved
Made in Great Britain
at The Temple Press Letchworth
for
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Aldine House Bedford St. London
First published in this edition 1908
Last reprinted 1948
One of the most vital and pregnant books in our modernliterature, “Sartor Resartus” is also, in structure andform, one of the most daringly original. It defies exactclassification. It is not a philosophic treatise. It is notan autobiography. It is not a romance. Yet in a senseit is all these combined. Its underlying purpose is toexpound in broad outline certain ideas which lay at theroot of Carlyle’s whole reading of life. But he does notelect to set these forth in regular methodic fashion, afterthe manner of one writing a systematic essay. He presentshis philosophy in dramatic form and in a picturesque humansetting. He invents a certain Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh,an erudite German professor of “Allerley-Wissenschaft,” orThings in General, in the University of Weissnichtwo, ofwhose colossal work, “Die Kleider, Ihr Werden undWirken” (On Clothes: Their Origin and Influence), herepresents himself as being only the student and interpreter.With infinite humour he explains how this prodigiousvolume came into his hands; how he was struckwith amazement by its encyclopædic learning, and the depthand suggestiveness of its thought; and how he determinedthat it was his special mission to introduce its ideas to theBritish public. But how was this to be done? As a merebald abstract of the original would never do, the would-beapostle was for a time in despair. But at length the happythought occurred to him of combining a condensed statementof the main principles of the new philosophy with someaccount of the philosopher’s life and character. Thus thework took the form of a “Life and Opinions of HerrTeufelsdröckh,” and as such it was offered to the world.Here, of course, we reach the explanation of its fantastictitle—“Sartor Resartus,” or the Tailor Patched: the tailorbeing the great German “Clothes-philosopher,” and thepatching being done by Carlyle as his English editor.
As a piece of literary mystification, Teufelsdröckh andviiihis treatise enjoyed a measure of the success which nearlytwenty years before had been scored