Note that Carlyle was born in the year after Robespierre's execution.
According to The Independent: "On the face of it, Carlyle is doing no more than to manufacture a soubriquet out of the colour of Robespierre's favourite coat; 'The Incorruptible' was the title given to him by his contemporaries. Most politicians would be proud to bear the name 'Incorruptible' (though it would be tempting fate today); but adding the epithet 'sea–green' has, as Carlyle intended, a slyly subversive effect: it evokes something from the depths, something slimy, something reptilian. And since Robespierre presided over the most bloodthirsty period of the French Revolution, the idea of him as The Incorruptible comes to suggest, not so much the decency of a politician who could not be bribed or deflected from his goals by self–interest, but other, quite different extremes: implacable, immovable, inflexible, inhuman".
© Haydn Thompson 2021