Thomas Carlyle and D. H. Lawrence: A Parallel

F. R. Leavis has spoken contemptuously of the notion that there are strong resemblances between Thomas Carlyle and D. H. Lawrence. For him the parallel is one likely to be made only by such organs of unreason as the New Statesman and the Sunday papers. Dr. Leavis' caveat, as all his readers will know, is intended to protect the reputation of Lawrence and not that of Carlyle. For Dr. Leavis is embarrassed by Carlyle, as are most people attracted to the Victorian age. They are embarrassed not merely by what Carlyle was and said, but by the influence he exercised even over people as committed to sanity and rationality as Arnold and Mill were. Leavis, in his line introduction to Mill's essays on Bentham and Coleridge, has even made Carlyle the symbol of the forces of unintelligence in the Victorian period.