Thomas Carlyle 'you are there' 19c writing style: Explain

[No_Wikipedia_Cites]

I got a hold of Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, he uses a ‘you are there’ present tense and specific images to tell the story. He uses formal and sometimes archaic, poetic style prose.

How can I write like this? Does anyone else write like this? (or did?) Is it good? What kind of style is this called? I don’t get it. Explain.

A sample, writing about the impending brankruptcy of Ancien Regime

Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment,- -with the answer, No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.

Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny and his Majesty come also to have their ‘real quarrel.’ Such is the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.

But with a Fortunatus’ Purse in his pocket, through what length of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust, offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then better, a wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature’s ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to all women and all children, it is now indutiable that your Arrangement was false. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven- high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.

[Claverhouse]

Tam’s style is practically unique — although I would perversely argue that he owes a lot in developing it to Jean-Paul Richter, who is even more obscure and difficult to grasp ( Carlyle, like Emerson, was strongly influenced by German modes of thought ) — it can only be described as Grotesquery; if to continue with a German metaphor, if ‘Architecture is Frozen Music’ , Carlyle’s prose is what the gargoyles on Notre Dame might be in type.
It is good because it is strong and unique, and he was a powerful thinker, but I find it valueless because even in expounding his dodgy opinions, let alone conveying history or events, it is confused, ambiguous and bombastic. However, it did break from the purely narrative histography of the past and to many gave a feeling of immediacy as if present at the time described. The difficulty might be that his endless unstoppable allusiveness meant one had to have studied the people and events beforehand to get what he was alluding to ( as in the ‘Duke de Coigny’ above ). This though would be very valuable in impressing gullible people ignorant of facts. The whirlwind of words suffices for the simple.
I would describe him as a Victorian Carnival Snake-Oil Salesman Fatally Addicted to His Own Fake Medicament.

[infinitii]

I would say Tom Wolfe is somewhat like this, but I don’t think he was necessarily influenced by Carlyle so I’m not sure.

[TruCelt]

I’ve never read Carlyle before, but the quote reminds me of Finengan’s Wake.