'The Diogenes of the Modern Corinthians without his Tub' — Thomas Carlyle

Carlo Pellegrini's plate from Vanity Fair's 'Men of the Day' series presents Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and prophet of Victorian conservatism, as a stooped, glowering elder statesman of letters. The caption — 'The Diogenes of the Modern Corinthians without his Tub' — casts him as a cynical sage dispensing contempt without even the philosopher's barrel to retreat to. Pellegrini exaggerates Carlyle's forward hunch, beetling brow, and ragged straw hat into a study in crabbed misanthropy, walking-stick in gloved hand. The caricature is comic rather than cruel, though it winks at Carlyle's notorious dyspepsia and his defense of authoritarianism — views that had by 1870 alienated him from liberal England.