To most modern readers this passage will naturally suggest a comparison with some parts of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus . There are not wanting signs that Swift was in Carlyle's mind when he wrote; and not a few sentences in the Sartor are certainly suggested by the passage now before us. Carlyle's quotations from Hudibras are curious when we remember how full the Tale of a Tub is of allusions to that poem. Swift is actually quoted once (at the end of ch. 8. Part I). Carlyle's word 'virtuosity' is suggested by Swift. The superiority which Carlyle finds in the equine race, in one passage of Sartor (contradicted by another in ch. 4 of Part II), reminds us of Gulliver. The description of a Judge, as an arrangement of clothes (ch. 9 of Part II), is evidently borrowed from Swift; and so, also, the description of the Tailor as God (ch. 11 of Part II). The proposal of Carlyle to use the poor as food (ch. 4 of Part II) owes its suggestion to Swifts Modest Proposal. But when we have traced these coincidences, due to suggestion or accident alone, we have come to an end of the resemblance. Swift sneers at all human conventions, contemptible because they are the creation of human vanity. Carlyle preaches that all the visible conditions of our life are, of necessity, but a dream-like phantasmagoria, behind which the real mystery of the latent spirit is hidden. Not customs, traditions, institutions only, but even Time and Space, which condition our thought, are, to Carlyle, merely Clothes. He aims at Poetry, Philosophy, Prophecy; Swift begins and ends with Satire.