Each of his subsequent works was highly regarded throughout Europe and North America, including On Heroes (1841), Past and Present (1843), Cromwell's Letters (1845), Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), and History of Frederick the Great (1858–65).

[36] In December 1819 and January 1820, Carlyle made his second attempt at publishing, writing a review-article on Marc-Auguste Pictet's review of Jean-Alfred Gautier's Essai historique sur le problème des trois corps (1817) which went unpublished and is lost.

[40] By the autumn, Carlyle had also learned Italian and was reading Vittorio Alfieri, Dante Alighieri and Sismondi,[41] though German literature was still his foremost interest, having "revealed" to him a "new Heaven and new Earth".

Carlyle completed the Legendre translation in July 1822, having prefixed his own essay "On Proportion", which Augustus De Morgan later called "as good a substitute for the fifth Book of Euclid as could have been given in that space".

He began corresponding with Goethe and made his first trip to London in 1824, meeting with prominent writers such as Thomas Campbell, Charles Lamb, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and gaining friendships with Anna Montagu, Bryan Waller Proctor, and Henry Crabb Robinson.

In Hoddam Hill, Carlyle found respite from the "intolerable fret, noise and confusion" that he had experienced in Edinburgh, and observed what he described as "the finest and vastest prospect all round it I ever saw from any house", with "all Cumberland as in amphitheatre unmatchable".

Emerson (and other like-minded Americans) had been deeply affected by Carlyle's essays and determined to meet him during the northern terminus of a literary pilgrimage; it was to be the start of a lifelong friendship and a famous correspondence.

At the end of the year, Carlyle reported to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense that his earlier efforts to popularise German literature were beginning to produce results, and expressed his satisfaction: "Deutschland will reclaim her great Colony; we shall become more Deutsch, that is to say more English, at same time.

"[84] The French Revolution fostered the republication of Sartor Resartus in London in 1838 as well as a collection of his earlier writings in the form of the Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, facilitated in Boston with the aid of Emerson.

Carlyle spoke extemporaneously on several subjects, concluding his address with a quote from Goethe: "Work, and despair not: Wir heissen euch hoffen, 'We bid you be of hope!'"

[117][118] From December 1866 to March 1867,[119] Carlyle resided at the home of Louisa Baring, Lady Ashburton in Menton, where he wrote reminiscences of Irving, Jeffrey, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth.

[120] In 1868, he wrote reminiscences of John Wilson and William Hamilton, and his niece Mary Aitken Carlyle moved into 5 Cheyne Row, becoming his caretaker and assisting in the editing of Jane's letters.

In March 1869, he met with Queen Victoria, who wrote in her journal of "Mr. Carlyle, the historian, a strange-looking eccentric old Scotchman, who holds forth, in a drawling melancholy voice, with a broad Scotch accent, upon Scotland and upon the utter degeneration of everything.

[122] In the spring of 1874, Carlyle accepted the Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste from Otto von Bismarck and declined Disraeli's offers of a state pension and the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath in the autumn.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1875, he was presented with a commemorative medal crafted by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm and an address of admiration signed by 119 of the leading writers, scientists, and public figures of the day.

[a] "Early Kings of Norway", a recounting of historical material from the Icelandic sagas transcribed by Mary acting as his amanuensis,[123] and an essay on "The Portraits of John Knox" (both 1875) were his last major writings to be published in his lifetime.

Another letter to the Times in May 1877 "On the Crisis", urging against the rumoured wish of Disraeli's to send a fleet to the Baltic Sea and warning not to provoke Russia and Europe at large into a war against England, marked his last public utterance.

[133] In Sartor Resartus and in his early Miscellanies, he developed his own philosophy of religion based upon what he called "Natural Supernaturalism",[134] the idea that all things are "Clothes" which at once reveal and conceal the divine, that "a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one",[135] and that duty, work and silence are essential.

[139] In works of social criticism such as Past and Present and Latter-Day Pamphlets, he attacked utilitarianism as mere atheism and egoism,[140] criticised the political economy of laissez-faire as the "Dismal Science",[141] and rebuked "big black Democracy",[142] while championing "Heroarchy (Government of Heroes)".

His head was extremely long, with the chin thrust forward; his neck was thin; the mouth firmly closed, the under lip slightly projecting; the hair grizzled and thick and bushy.

"[155] Paul Elmer More found Carlyle "a figure unique, isolated, domineering—after Dr. Johnson the greatest personality in English letters, possibly even more imposing than that acknowledged dictator.

"[156] George Eliot summarised Carlyle's impact in 1855:It is an idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence: if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttees on his funeral pile, it would be only like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest.

[179] Carlylean influence is also seen in the writings of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Leopoldo Alas,[180] Marcu Beza, Jorge Luis Borges, the Brontës,[181] Arthur Conan Doyle, Antonio Fogazzaro,[174] E. M. Forster, Ángel Ganivet, Lafcadio Hearn, William Ernest Henley, Marietta Holley, Rudyard Kipling,[182] Selma Lagerlöf, Herman Melville,[183] Alfredo Panzini,[174] Edgar Quinet, Samuel Smiles, Tokutomi Sohō,[184] Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Miguel de Unamuno, Alexandru Vlahuță, and Vasile Voiculescu.

Du Bois,[208][209] and Martin Luther King Jr.[210] More recently, figures associated with neoreaction and the alt-right have claimed Carlyle as an influence, notably Curtis Yarvin,[211] Jonathan Bowden,[212] and Kerry Bolton.

[214][215] Carlyle's medievalist critique of industrial practice and political economy was an early utterance of what would become the spirit of both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts movement, and several leading members recognised his importance.

[221] Phoebe Anna Traquair depicted Carlyle, one of her favourite writers, in murals painted for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh.

Dickens recounted Carlyle's vision of Queen Victoria summoning Rothschild before her and threatening to pull the teeth out of his "Mosaic head" unless he repaid his "millions of ill gotten Money".

He felt they had contributed nothing to the "wealth" of mankind, contrasting "the Jews with their morbid imaginations and foolish sheepskin Targums" with "The Norse with their steel swords guided by fresh valiant hearts and clear veracious understanding".

Prussian statesmen had identified Carlyle's "gospel of force" with their doctrine of Weltmacht oder Untergang (World Power or Downfall) in order to "make their own side respectable."

Herbert L. Stewart defended Carlyle's memory by arguing that besides a shared opposition to democracy, his belief that "Right makes Might"[d] is "far removed" from "the ethic of militarism", and his "Puritan Theodicy" has nothing to do with the "Immoralism of German Kriegsherren" (Warlords).