But when all is said, since some be good, some bad, let's put it to the venture. Marry while thou mayest, and take thy fortune as it falls. Be not so covetous, so distrustful, so curious and nice, but let's all marry; to-morrow is St. Valentine's Day. Since, then, marriage is the last and best cure of heroical love, all doubts are cured and impediments removed; God send us all good wives!
Take this for a corollory and conclusion; as thou tenderest thine own welfare in love-melancholy, in the melancholy of religion, and in all other melancholy; observe this short precept--Be not solitary; be not idle.
This is the last of four series of lectures which Carlyle (see Vol. IX, p. 99) delivered in London in successive years, and is the only series which was published. The "Lectures on Heroes" were given in May, 1840, and were published, with emendations and additions, from the reporter's notes in 1841. The preceding series were on "German Literature," 1837; "The Successive Periods of European Culture," 1838; and "The Revolutions of Modern Europe," 1839. Carlyle's profound and impassioned belief in the quasi-divine inspiration of great men, in the authoritative nature of their "message," and in their historical effectiveness, was a reaction against a way of writing history which finds the origin of events in "movements," "currents," and "tendencies" neglecting or minimising the power of personality. For Carlyle, biography was the essential element in history; his view of events was the dramatic view, as opposed to the scientific view. It is idle to inquire which is the better or truer view, where both are necessary. But Carlyle is here specially tilting against a prejudice which has so utterly passed away that it is difficult even to imagine it. This was to the effect that eminent historical figures have been in some sense impostors. This work suffers a good deal from its origin, but, like others of Carlyle's writings, it has had great effect in discrediting a barren and flippant rationalism.
We have undertaken to discourse on great men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, and what work they did. We are to treat of hero-worship and the heroic in human affairs. The topic is as wide as universal history itself, for the history of what man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the history of the great men who have worked here.