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 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
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 'THB treasury of modern BIOGRAPHV,' ' HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCOVERY, 
 'the ENGLISH ESSAYISTS,' ETC 
 
 LADV GRIZELL BAILLIB. 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF GRIZEL COCHRANE. 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 SIR HENRY HAVELOCK. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 W. P. NIMMO, HAY, & MITCHELL. 
 
 1889.
 
 Morrison and Gibb, Edinburgh , 
 Printers to licr ALije-ity's Statto7ttry Office.
 
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 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 jT is hoped that the present collection of examples 
 of Notable Men and ^^'omen may form a suitable 
 companion to the volumes of biographical reading 
 with which it is associated. It is doubtless stimulating, and 
 ofttimes instructive, to mingle with our elders and betters in 
 real life, to note their ways of looking at things, to defer to 
 their views and opinions, and treasure up every scrap of 
 \v'isdom they may have to impart. iXs this association with 
 them is not always possible, intellectual association through 
 the medium of the printed page may still be possible, and 
 is perhaps the next best thing. And so with the present 
 Gallery of Notables the judicious reader may interest himself 
 in, and keep company with, whom he will, keeping in view 
 the fact that the space is limited, and the desire of the com- 
 piler to make the book as varied as possible. 
 
 87245'?
 
 ? drdfdrJr^^i^rJj^^r ^r=Jf=Ji^riJ^^^/ ;Vtt ^H 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FACa 
 
 Lady Grizell Baillie, . . * 5 
 
 GRiziiL Cochrane, 29 
 
 Thomas de Quincey, 37 
 
 Sir Henry Havelock, 126 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, 157 
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay, • . » ^02
 
 
 l#.^^§^Ei:-i-T-iTi;ii-i-i-iri-ri-ii-i->^^T77f^ 
 
 GALLERY OF NOTABLE M E N 
 AND WO M E N. 
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 
 
 ;HE never knew what it was to find herself indls- 
 i^J posed to do anything she thought proper to be 
 -^ done,' is the eulogy passed upon the Lady Grizell 
 Lai Hie by her daughter, Lady Murray of Stanhope, who, in the 
 middle of the last century, wrote the story of the eventful life 
 ot her mother. And beautiful is the character she has drawn 
 of a wise, brave, ready-witted, and affectionate child, and of a 
 life full of self-devotion for the good of others. 
 
 The Lady Grizell was the daughter of Sir Patrick Hume, 
 and the eldest of a family of eighteen children. Her father 
 got seriously involved in the political troubles of the reign of 
 Charles ii., to whose Government he was opposed. The 
 Government on their side did not allow Sir Patrick to remain 
 long ignorant of the light in which they regarded him ; he was 
 soon made to feel the effects of their resentment, and learn 
 from bitter experience that it is no light matter to run counter 
 to the actions and intentions of despotic power. Thus his 
 eldest child was, as it were, nursed in the lap of trouble and 
 
 6
 
 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 anxiety. But from her earliest years she appears to have 
 exhibited the traits of a somewhat remarkable character, and 
 was the comfort and almost idol of her parents, who, even 
 during the tender years of her early girlhood, learned to place 
 implicit reliance upon her ready wit, and unlimited confidence 
 in her judgment and discretion. 
 
 One of the most intimate friends of Sir Patrick Hume was 
 Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode, whose son Grizell afterwards 
 married. There Avere many bonds of union between them, — 
 they thought alike in politics, and they were alike sharers in 
 the troubles and dangers of the time ; and there is nothing 
 like misfortune to cement closely the bonds of friendship. 
 But in his political undertakings Mr. Baillie proved less 
 fortunate than his friend : one lived to see the triumph of his 
 party and principles, while the other laid his head upon the 
 block, a victim to the power he opposed. When her father's 
 friend was first imprisoned, Grizell, although at the time only 
 twelve years of age, was entrusted with a secret mission to 
 him : she was sent from her parents' country-seat to Edin- 
 burgh, a long and weary journey, to visit him in prison, so as 
 to convey to him a letter of advice and information, and to 
 bring back with her whatever news he might have to com- 
 municate in return. It was hoped that the tender years of the 
 young girl would exempt her from suspicion, and that she 
 would be allowed to pass into the prisoner's cell without being 
 previously searched. So well did Grizell succeed in her 
 embassy, and so overjoyed was her father to see his child 
 exhibit such a readiness of resource and expedient in moments 
 of emergency, such activity and judgment, that when similar 
 occasions arose, as they but too frequently did, he ever after 
 unhesitatingly employed her in preference to any one else.
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 
 
 Soon after this first exploit of Grizell, Sir Patrick himself 
 was imprisoned; and although no definite charge was urged 
 against him, he remained in close confinement for fifteen 
 months, at the end of which time he regained his liberty, 
 much to his own satisfaction and the joy of his family. Yet a 
 period of great inquietude and anxiety followed ; and many 
 were the secret missions with which the father entrusted his 
 child, and many were the perils the dutiful and brave girl ran 
 in successfully accomplishing them. At home she was the 
 good genius of the place, the presiding spirit of the household. 
 Ever active and cheerful, she did much to sustain the courage 
 of her mother, to whom the cares of a numerous family, and 
 the ever constant fear for her husband's safety, seemed a 
 weight almost too heavy to be borne. 
 
 Fresh dangers pressed around Sir Patrick ; his friends 
 became apprehensive for his safety, and told him it was 
 necessary for him to secrete himself as the only real chance of 
 preserving his life from a Government apparently bent upon 
 compassing his destruction. Sir Patrick acquiesced in the 
 decision of his friends, urged thereto not only by the evident 
 wisdom of the proposition, but by the tears and entreaties of 
 his wife and children. The movement was only just made in 
 time. He had barely efiected his escape from the house and 
 secreted himself in his asylum when a company of soldiers 
 made their appearance, and proceeded to search the house 
 from roof to cellar, interrogate the servants, and examine the 
 wife and daughter, leaving indeed no stone unturned to effect 
 the object of their visit ; but all their labour proved fruitless, 
 and they were finally compelled to return as empty-handed as 
 they came. From this time, however, the house was never 
 secure from a visit ; at the most unexpected times would the
 
 8 . NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Government emissaries make their appearance, much to the 
 alarm of the household. But in all the cross-examinations to 
 which the servants were subjected, no item of news, no single 
 clue was ever elicited as to where their master lay in hiding : 
 they imagined him to be far away, and out of the reach of 
 danger. His place of concealment, however, was much nearer 
 than they fancied ; but the secret was alone known to the wife, 
 daughter, and one man upon whose fidelity they could depend, 
 a carpenter, but no member of the household. However 
 faithful the servants might be, it was deemed too unsafe to 
 entrust to their keeping so important a secret. 
 
 About a mile from the house stood Polwarth Church, and in 
 a vault beneath lay Sir Patrick concealed. This dwelling was 
 dismal and gloomy enough, for it was only through a narrow 
 open slit at one end that any light managed to struggle in ; 
 fortunately the slit was so situated that no curious person from 
 ■without could gain a glimpse of the inside and thus descry its 
 tenant With the assistance of the carpenter, in secret and in 
 the darkness of night, a bed and bedding had been conveyed 
 into this asylum so as to make it a little more habitable. After 
 this piece of service, however, had been successfully achieved, 
 Grizell was her father's only visitor. Every night at the hour 
 of midnight, when all in the household were safe in bed and 
 there was no fear of interruption, she would load herself with 
 provisions and set off on her dark and lonely walk to the old 
 church vault. The tales she had heard from superstitious 
 servants during her nursery days, of ghosts and dread phantoms 
 haunting churchyards, had until now been to her a source of 
 terror; but in the present emergency her courage was proof 
 against all the terrors of the unseen world; and rose to the 
 occasion ; and as every night she stumbled and groped her
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 
 
 way amid the gravestones of Pohvarth churchyard, only one 
 fear gave her agitation and alarm, and that was lest any 
 unguarded noise should arouse the vigilance of the soldiers, 
 who were stationed for miles round about, and who were 
 constantly on the alert to discover Sir Patrick's hiding-place. 
 Having successfully accomplished her hazardous journey, the 
 brave girl would stay chatting with her father, to help to 
 hearten him. in his enforced solitude, until the near approach 
 of day warned her it was time to hasten homeward. Then 
 would she bid the prisoner an affectionate farewell, and swiftly 
 and deftly thread her way through the churchyard, run speedily 
 along the road till the house was once more gained; then, 
 silently entering, would walk softly to her mother's bedroom 
 door, — who in the meantime had been anxiously listening for 
 her footsteps, — whisper all was safe, and then go to bed to 
 secure a little rest and sleep before it was necessary to maKe 
 her appearance once more in the family circle. 
 
 Sir Patrick Hume was of a cheerful disposition, and bore 
 his voluntary seclusion and imprisonment with an amount of 
 heartiness scarcely to be expected from one so surrounded 
 with peril. His daughter inherited from him this same happy 
 spirit of content and cheerfulness, and it w^as now brought 
 into active play both to help to sustain his and her own 
 courage ; and often at night, in that gloomy abode, would the 
 father and daughter laugh heartily over the various accidents 
 which had occurred during the day, and which she narrated 
 in a quaint and droll manner for his amusement. During his 
 retreat, the occupation that afforded Sir Patrick the greatest 
 consolation was the reading and committing to memory 
 Buchanan's Latin version of the Psalms ; he made himself so 
 perfect in them that he could repeat them from beginning to
 
 lo NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 end, and so indelibly were they impressed on his mind that 
 he retained them in his memory till his dying day. At a good 
 old age, and just before his death, he declared they had been 
 the one great comfort of his life, by day and by night, on all 
 occasions; and he desired his daughter to take the book and 
 try if he had forgotten them, and she found that he could 
 repeat perfectly every one she called for. 
 
 Near to Polwarth Church stood the house in which the 
 minister resided. The minister himself was a quiet, inoffen- 
 sive man, but was somewhat fond of dogs, several of which he 
 kept about his premises ; so that when Grizell paid her first 
 visit to her father, hearing her footsteps, they immediately 
 commenced to bark loudly. This gave her great alarm. 
 On the following morning, therefore. Lady Hume sent for the 
 minister, and confided to him her fear of mad dogs, and how 
 apprehensive she was lest his own should become rabid. 
 In reply, the good-natured man told her to banish her fears, 
 for as soon as he reached his own house he would order all his 
 dogs to be hanged ; and as he was as good as his word, there 
 was no further danger of their bringing the soldiers upon 
 them. 
 
 That the servants might entertain no suspicion of their 
 master being concealed in the immediate neighbourhood of 
 the house, it was necessary that the provisions conveyed to 
 him should be taken without their knowledge, and to do this 
 Grizell had recourse to various expedients ; but the safest 
 seemed to be for her to watch her opportunity during dinner, 
 and pilfer the contents of the dishes oft" the table into her lap. 
 \\\ tlu's sleight-of-hand work she became very skilful; and 
 years after, when surrounded with children of her own, she 
 used to amuse them by recounting her feats of dexterity in this
 
 LAD V GRIZELL BAILLIE. i \ 
 
 particular service. One day they had for dinner the national 
 dish of sheep's head, and knowing how partial her father was 
 to it, she determined to secure it for him ; so, while the 
 children were intent upon their broth, she contrived, unob- 
 served by all, to convey it from the dish into her lap. When 
 her brother Sandie had devoured his broth, he looked up for 
 a portion of the head, but to his amazement it had entirely 
 vanished, and he exclaimed : ' Mother, will you look at 
 Grizell? While we have been eating our broth, she has ate 
 up the whole sheep's head ! ' This ludicrous incident was the 
 source of considerable mirth to Sir Patrick when informed of 
 it the same night by his daughter, and he desired that 
 poor disappointed Sandie should have his share of the next 
 head. 
 
 In spite of the bed and bedding, the vault proved to be, 
 as the reader may easily conceive, a most unpleasant place 
 of concealment, and only to be tolerated from necessity. Sil 
 Patrick did not like it, and the devoted wife and daughter set 
 their wits to work to contrive a refuge which should be equally 
 safe but far more comfortable. They conceived the plan of 
 bringing him back again to his own house ; and in order that 
 he might have a sure place of retreat in case of a surprise by 
 the enemy, they determined to conceal a box large enough for 
 him to lie in under the boards of a room on the ground floor. 
 To carry this into execution the services of the faithful 
 carpenter were again called into requisition to raise the boards, 
 and when this was done it was necessary to remove the earth 
 which lay beneath. They were afraid to use a spade or any 
 other implement, fearful that the noise made should betray 
 them. So Grizell and her companion set to work and scraped 
 it away with their hands — not the most ingenious mode of
 
 12 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 digging, but love gave strength to the young girl's hands and 
 made the toil seem light; yet before the hole was deemed 
 sufficiently large, she had actually worn away her finger-nails. 
 The dirt was put into a sheet and conveyed by the carpenter 
 out of the window. He made the box at his own house, and 
 one night introduced it into the apartment ; it was then placed 
 in the prepared hole, the bed and bed-clothes comfortably 
 arranged, and a number of holes bored in the flooring, that 
 the future occupant might be enabled to breathe, and not 
 suffer from want of air. Then all was ready. 
 
 Grizell was exceedingly glad when her arduous labours were 
 ended, and the hiding-place ready for her father ; she looked 
 upon her contrivance as perfectly safe, and that once in the 
 box, no foe would be able to discover him. There was one 
 fear, however, which gave her a little uneasiness, and that was 
 lest the water should ooze into the refuge and render it unin- 
 habitable ; and there were good grounds for this fear, as the 
 situation was both low and damp ; but after a daily examina- 
 tion of some weeks, it was at length pronounced dry and safe, 
 and one night Sir Patrick returned again to his own house. 
 His strange bed-place was used only as a last resort ; he lived 
 in the room above it, and on the alarm of danger the boards 
 were raised and in he slipped. 
 
 For a few weeks all went on well, till one morning, when 
 Grizell lifted the boards to examine the bed, it bounced to the 
 top : her fear was fully realized — the box was full of water. 
 The noble girl was nearly overpowered by this sudden disaster, 
 and almost swooned away. To see the labour of so many 
 weeks spoiled in a single niglit was certainly vexatious and 
 disheartening ; but a far more serious consideration presented 
 itself to her mind, in the fact that her father was now totally
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 13 
 
 unprovided with a refuge. To add to her uneasiness and that 
 of her parents, that very evening the carrier called with the 
 news of the execution of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode at the 
 Cross of Edinburgh. 
 
 With the loss of his hiding-place and the execution of his 
 friend, Sir Patrick felt that home was no longer a place for 
 him ; he therefore informed his wife and daughter that his 
 only remaining chance of safety consisted in immediate flight. 
 Although grieved exceedingly to hear this, they yet felt it was 
 true ; and stifling their sorrow as much as possible, instantly 
 began to make preparations for his departure ; and Grizell's 
 nimble fingers plied night and day in making the necessary 
 alterations in her father's dress, so that he might as nearly as 
 possible look the character he meant to assume. It was found 
 necessary at the very last moment to take into their confidence 
 the bailift' of the family, as his aid was required to carry out 
 their design. When the man heard that his master was still 
 an inmate of the house, and that he would have to accompany 
 him on horseback before daybreak, he was as nearly overcome 
 as his young mistress had been when she discovered her 
 father's refuge filled with water; but he speedily recovered 
 himself, and entered heart and soul into the part assigned 
 him. 
 
 The parting between husband and wife, and father and 
 daughter, was a very sorrowful one ; yet both Lady Hume and 
 Grizell felt in a measure a sense of relief when they saw the 
 object of so much anxious thought and solicitude ride away. 
 They hoped he would soon be in a place of far greater safety 
 than they were able to command for him ; and though tears 
 were shed and hearts ached to say good-bye, and the long, 
 lingering kiss was given again and yet again, they each felt
 
 (4 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 that safety could alone be secured by the absence of the 
 loved one. 
 
 Sir Patrick had not ridden many miles from his house 
 before he met a party of soldiers on their way, if possible, to 
 arrest him : it was only the cool and unconcerned manner in 
 whicli he rode past them, aided by his disguise as a village 
 surgeon, that saved him from being recognised and captured. 
 When his enemies, however, were once out of sight, he clapped 
 spurs to his horse, and speedily increased the distance between 
 them. By avoiding the highway and only stopping at villages, 
 v.'here he invariably gave himself out to be a surgeon, he 
 reached London without further molestation. From London 
 he escaped to France, and made the journey from Bordeaux 
 to Holland on foot. From Holland he wrote for his wufe and 
 cliildren to join him. 
 
 The prey having escaped from their clutches, the Govern- 
 ment wreaked upon Sir Patrick the only punishment it was in 
 their power to inflict : they forfeited his estates and gave them 
 to Lord Seaforth. By this act Lady Hume and her ten 
 children were left destitute. It was no use, however, to sit 
 still and waste precious time in grieving ; so the mother, 
 accompanied by her daughter, instantly took boat and went 
 by sea to London, to solicit Government for some allowance 
 for herself and her family. At first no listening ear was 
 inclined to the pitiful appeal, although they were assisted by 
 many kind and influential friends ; it was only after repeated 
 solicitations and long waiting that the small sum oi ^Qi'^o a 
 year was granted. 
 
 On her return to Scotland to make preparations for her 
 voyage to Holland, Lady Hume found that during her absence 
 one of licr younger daughters had become seriously ill, and in
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 15 
 
 her present state was quite unfit to undertake the contem- 
 plated journey. It became necessary, therefore, to leave the 
 invalid behind; but the invaluable services of Grizell could 
 not be dispensed with in the transporting of so large and 
 helpless a party from one shore to another. She therefore 
 promised her sister that when she had seen her mother and 
 the children comfortably settled in Holland, she would return 
 and accompany her back. 
 
 When Grizell returned for her sister, she spent a few days 
 in transacting some necessary business for her father, and in 
 collecting some small sums of money that were owing him. 
 The invalid was still very weak after her illness, but was glad 
 to have her strong, brave-hearted sister once more by her 
 side, who, seeing her weakly condition needed all attention, 
 engaged for her use the cabin bed in the vessel which was to 
 convey them over, and also laid in an ample supply of 
 provisions. But sea captains and masters of vessels in those 
 days were but too often a rude, rough, heartless, and cruel 
 set of men ; and if one section of them was rather worse than 
 any other, it was the Dutch. And the one with whom the two 
 lonely sisters embarked proved himself to be no better than 
 the rest of his class — if anything, rather worse ; for they found 
 upon going on board that he had let the very bed Grizell had 
 hired to two or three other lady passengers ; and then, that 
 there might be no quairelling as to who had the most right to 
 it, the knave took possession of it himself. At the same time 
 he laid unlawful hands upon our heroine's Uttle store of pro- 
 visions, and devoured them with avidity. 
 
 The invalid and her guardian were landed at Brill, from 
 whence the same night they were compelled to set out for 
 Rotterdam on foot. A gentleman who had shown them many
 
 i6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 little attentions on the voyage, himself a refugee, accompanied 
 them. It was a miserable night for a journey — cold and wet 
 — the roads as bad as in a civilised country they could well be, 
 muddy and full of holes, which the rain had turned into 
 miniature lakes. The poor invalid soon became tired, she 
 could scarcely put one foot before the other, and finally lost 
 both her shoes in the mire. The noble-hearted Grizell had 
 cheered and encouraged her sister on by word and example, 
 and now, in this dilemma, she took her upon her back and 
 carried her the rest of the way, their companion carrying their 
 little luggage. At Rotterdam they found their father and 
 eldest brother awaiting their arrival to conduct them to 
 Utrecht, where the rest of the family were settled. It was 
 doubtless a joyful meeting; the happy circle was once more 
 complete, and great was the amusement derived and the 
 admiration excited when the various incidents of the journey 
 were made known. 
 
 The Humes lived three years and a half in Holland, during 
 which Grizell made another voyage to Scotland. Their house 
 in the land of their refuge was their principal expense, half 
 their income being absorbed by it ; they were therefore unable 
 to keep any servant, save only a little girl to perform the most 
 menial offices. The duties of the household devolved entirely 
 upon Grizell, and right nobly and cheerfully did she fulfil 
 them, sitting up two nights every week to accomplish the 
 work she was unable to perform during the day. Every 
 morning she went to market to buy the necessary provisions 
 for the day's consumption ; always went to the mill to see 
 their corn ground with her own eyes ; she cleaned the house, 
 prepared dinner, dressed the linen, mended the younger 
 children's clothes^ and even found time to make some of
 
 Z/iDY GRIZELL BAILLIh. 17 
 
 theai. In short, she was, as we have before said, the good 
 genius of the household Her sister Christian, a year younger 
 than herself, appears to have been of no assistance to her 
 in discharging her multifarious duties. She was of a lively 
 disposition, and had a strong turn for humour, but none for 
 business; she also displayed considerable talent for music, 
 and thought she did her share of duty in amusing the family, 
 and many were the harmless jokes which passed between the 
 sisters concerning their diverse occupations. But Grizell 
 possessed musical talent and poetical tastes, and had as great 
 a turn for mirth and society as her sister, and was very happy 
 in indulging them when she could do so without neglecting 
 more serious duties ; she sometimes found time to take 
 lessons in French and Dutch, and practised music with her 
 brothers and sisters. Her music-books were preserved in the 
 family for many years, and in them were songs half written, 
 and sentences broken off in the middle, and other indications 
 of the frequency with which these studies were interrupted. 
 One pretty little song of her own composition has been pre- 
 served, sunny and bright like her own heart, the burden of 
 which, ' Werena my heart licht I wad die ! ' is very character- 
 istic of the brave young creature. 
 
 About this time the thoughts of our Grizell frequently 
 reverted to one outside the family circle, an exile like herself 
 from his native country. This was the son of her father's old 
 friend, Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode. Their first place of meeting 
 had been in the cell of the young gentleman's father, just 
 previous to his execution, and from that moment their affec- 
 tions had been engaged, and time only seemed to strengthen 
 them. But they were silent on the subject ; a union in exile 
 seemed so hopeless, neither possessing a shilling of their own 
 
 /«*« VI. 13
 
 1 8 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMF^ 
 
 uith which to commence housekeeping, that they deferred 
 telling Sir Patrick and Lady Hume of their mutual attach- 
 ment until brighter days should smile upon them. In the 
 meanwhile two offers were made for our heroine's hand from 
 gentlemen of fortune and character in the neighbourhood of 
 the old home in Scotland ; but these were firmly rejected, and 
 yet no reason assigned. Her parents, however, half suspected 
 the cause of their daughter's rejection of such suitors, one of 
 whom they had urged her to accept ; and although they highly 
 respected young Baillie, and frequently entrusted Grizell to 
 his care when she had to go out on business, they looked with 
 disapprobation upon his suspected suit. Their only objection 
 was the ruinous condition of his circumstances ; but this 
 consideration did not affect the heart of their daughter. She 
 trusted in the future with a cheerful, confiding faith ; and at 
 the worst, if brighter days did not dawn, she would never 
 marry at all, but devote her whole life to her own family, and 
 die an old maid. 
 
 Her eldest and favourite brother, Patrick, was her lover's 
 most intimate friend ; together they entered the Prince of 
 Orange's guards, and there ziiatured a friendship which ended 
 only with their lives. It was Grizell's greatest pride that her 
 brother's dress and appearance should not disgrace his rank ; 
 and many were the hours robbed from sleep in order to devote 
 them to the mending of his point cravats and cuffs, that they 
 might pass muster among those of his comrades. 
 
 Although their circumstances were indeed straitened, and 
 they were often at a pass for money wherewith to meet the 
 expenses of the household, the family yet practised a wide 
 hospitality ; perhaps tlie power to do this was the result of 
 Grizell's excellent management.
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 19 
 
 This period of her life in Holland she always remembered 
 as one of the happiest of her life ; true, there were heaps of 
 distresses and trials, but these were all met with a brave 
 cheerfulness which made light of them, regarding them as 
 subjects of amusement, and to be laughed over rather than 
 grieved for. The learned pundits of the University of Utrecht 
 frequently paid her father a visit His means would not allow 
 him to regale them with costly fare, but such as he had he 
 willingly bestowed. He usually set before them a superior 
 kind of beer called alabast, and during one of these visits Sir 
 Patrick sent his son Andrev/ down into the cellar to draw 
 some. The boy, eager to show his father how quick he could 
 be, soon returned, bearing the beer in one hand and in the 
 other the spigot of the barrel. ' Why, Andrew ! ' exclaimed Sir 
 Patrick, ' what have you got there ? ' The boy no sooner saw 
 what he held than he hastened back to the cellar to remedy 
 the mischief he had so thoughtlessly done, but it was too 
 late ; before he got there, all the beer had run from the cask. 
 This proved a great subject of mirth, although at the time 
 they little knew where to get more, and poor Andrew was 
 often twitted about the spigot. They were often reduced to 
 their last coin by the delay of remittances, and frequently 
 found themselves compelled to put their small quantity of 
 plate in pawn till the ships arrived. One day, when the 
 collector for the poor was heard ringing his bell, there was no 
 more money in the house than a single doit, the smallest of 
 all coins. No one had sufficient courage to hand the man so 
 small a sum, and they kept passing it one to another, with 
 ♦ Do you go ! ' At length Sir Patrick said, ' Well, then, I'll go 
 with it ; we can do no more than give all we have.' 
 
 But the time to which Grizell had looked so hopefully
 
 20 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 forward came at last. James ii. was compelled to flee from 
 England, and the Prince of Orange accepted the invitation to 
 ascend the vacant throne. Yet the joy of the family in these 
 events was considerably overshadowed by the death of the 
 bright, merry-hearted Christian. No political affairs had any 
 attraction for our heroine further than they concerned and 
 affected her friends. Her chief interest was centred in her 
 home, her family, and those she loved ; hence the death of her 
 sister was far more to her than the triumph of her father's 
 party. Still these events brightened the fortunes of the 
 family; and when all was settled in England, the younger 
 members of the family were sent to Scotland, while Grizell 
 and her mother came over in the Princess' suite. 
 
 Her daughter, the Lady Murray of Stanhope, has given us 
 a picture of her mother (Grizell) as she appeared about this 
 time. She says : ' Her actions show what her mind was, and 
 her outward appearance was no less singular. She was middle- 
 sized, well made, clever in her person, very handsome, and 
 with a light and sweetness in her eyes very uncommon, and 
 great delicacy in all her features ; her hair was chestnut, and 
 to her last she had the finest complexion, with the clearest red 
 on her cheeks and lips that could be seen in one of fifteen, 
 which, added to her natural constitution, might be owing to 
 the great moderation she had in her diet throughout life. 
 Pottage and milk was her greatest feast, and by choice pre- 
 ferred them to anything, though nothing came vnong to her 
 that others could eat. Water she preferred to any liquor; 
 though often obliged to take a glass of wine, she always did it 
 unwiUingly, thinking it hurt her, and did not like it.' Upon 
 her arrival in England she was offered the appointment of one 
 of the new queen's maids of honour. Lut, as may be easily
 
 LADY GRIIELL BAILLIE. 21 
 
 gathered from the above description, her tastes were averse to 
 court life; she therefore decUncd the proposed honour, and 
 went back to Scotland with the rest of her family. Prosperity 
 now dawned upon the Humes, the forfeited estates were 
 recovered, and Sir Patrick raised to the peerage by the title of 
 Earl of JMarchmont. 
 
 In due time the fidelity of the two lovers was rewarded; 
 Mr. Baillie regained his lost estate, then openly acknowledged 
 his attachment to Grizell, and solicited her hand from her 
 parents, and two years after the Revolution of 16S8 they 
 were married. From this time Mr. Baillie's career was a 
 distinguished one ; he became a most diligent member of 
 Parliament, both in Scotland and in London after the Union ; 
 he held office during three consecutive reigns, those of WiUiam, 
 Anne, and George i. 
 
 Some few years after her marriage, the mother of our 
 heroine died. The family were all assembled round the dying- 
 bed to take their last farewell of one whom all loved so dearly, 
 when, looking round upon them, she missed her dear eldest 
 daughter, who, overcome with grief, had hidden herself in the 
 curtains of the bed. 'Where is Grizell?' said the dying 
 woman. She came from her hiding-place and bent over her 
 mother, who, taking her hand, said, ' My dear Grizell, blessed 
 be you above all ; for a helpful child have you been to me.' 
 
 Our heroine had a most happy married life ; her husband 
 well knew how to appreciate her worth, and loved her dearly 
 for her many sterling qualities of head and heart She was 
 also blessed with loving and dutiful children ; and one of her 
 daughters has given us a very interesting summary of her 
 character. ' I should never,' writes this daughter, ' have done 
 if I related or could remember all the particulars I have heard
 
 2 2 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 my mother tell of those times, a subject she never tired of^ 
 but must now come to what immediately concerns herself, 
 though most incapable am I of giving but very imperfect 
 hints. She deserved so much, and from me in particular, I 
 never can say enough ; and yet certain I am, no one that knew 
 her well will be satisfied with anything I can say. I will 
 mention facts as they daily appeared to me, as I was never 
 in my life from her above two months at a time, and that 
 very seldom, and always unwillingly; she having from our 
 infancy treated my sister and me like friends as well as chil- 
 dren, and with an indulgence that always anticipated our 
 wishes. She always used us with an openness and confi- 
 dence that begat the same in us, that there never was any 
 reserve amongst us, nor any secret from one another, to which 
 she had used us from our early years. 
 
 'When we were more advanced, my mother was pleased 
 to hear whatever we could inform her of; and to whatever 
 company or diversion we went, never thought ourselves so 
 happy as in the relating it all to her, on which she would 
 either approve or tell us how to do otherwise another time. 
 Nor did we think anything right to be done, to the smallest 
 trifle, on which we had not her advice and approbation ; and 
 she always condescended to ask ours, though none could better 
 than herself know what was most proper to be done upon any 
 occasion ; of which my father was so convinced, that I have 
 good reason to believe he never did anything of consequence 
 throughout his whole life without asking her advice. She 
 had a quickness of apprehension and sagacity that generally 
 hit upon the fittest thing to be done. Though she had a 
 quick and ready wit, yet she spoke little in company ; but 
 where she was quite free and intimate, she used often to
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 23 
 
 wonder at a talent she met with in many that could entertain 
 their company with numberless words, and yet say nothing. 
 
 ' She greatly disliked either bestowing or receiving flattery. 
 I have often seen her out of countenance at speeches made 
 to her, and had not a word to say. Her integrity of heart 
 made her silent on such occasions, and she could not use 
 fair words, even where she thought they were deserved ; the 
 want of which is generally a great abridgment of conversation. 
 And this was joined with a modesty which was singular. To 
 her last, she had the bashfulness of a girl, and was as easily 
 put out of countenance. Though she had the greatest reason, 
 from the deference that was always paid to her judgment, 
 she was void of the least self-conceit, and often gave up her 
 own opinion to that of others ; not that it proved better, but 
 that they were more positive and self-sufficient. If it was to 
 those she loved, she did it from a desire of preferring their 
 pleasure to her own ; and, of any I ever knew, was the most 
 entirely void of the smallest ingredient of selfishness; at all 
 times ever considered herself in the last place, or rather never 
 thought of herself at all, but how she might please and make 
 everything easy and agreeable to those about her, even by 
 often doing what could not otherwise be pleasing to herself, 
 but that others liked it, often to the straitening of herself, and 
 obliging her to the strictest and best management in her affairs. 
 No mortal was so easily contented and satisfied in every- 
 thing for herself; her moderation was not greater in diet than 
 in other things ; her expenses were for the credit or pleasure 
 of her family and friends ; and great trouble she took for their 
 wishes, though it never appeared to be any to her. 
 
 ' After fatiguing many hours in a day for weeks together 
 in business and accounts, she always came out to her family
 
 24 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 as easy and cheerful as if she had been only diverting herself, 
 and was ready to enter into anything they proposed to 
 amuse her, or because she thought it would please them. 
 In nothing did the capacity of her mind appear more than in 
 this, that whatever she did, she could apply herself so strongly 
 and thoroughly to it that a bystander would imagine that to 
 be her particular attachment. And yet the things of greatest 
 moment did not make her forget trifles that were fit to be 
 thought of, which she often warned us of, and, if neglected, 
 would prove things of moment. She had a power of passing 
 from great things to small ones with a readiness that was sur- 
 prising. Whatever she did, whether it was playing a game 
 of backgammon, or an affair of moment to her family, there 
 was the same character appearing in it — sprightliness, attention, 
 and good humour. She possessed herself so thoroughly, that 
 I have often heard her say she never knew what it was to find 
 herself indisposed to do anything she thought proper to be 
 
 done. 
 
 ' She was blessed with a good and healthy constitution : 
 though she sometimes had fevers, and violent and dangerous 
 illnesses, she soon threw them off, and had no notion of those 
 depressions that most people labour under. She was an early 
 riser, and often recommended it to us as the best time to per- 
 form our duty either to God or man. Though it was her own 
 constant practice, she often said she never in her life got up 
 willingly ; that none could have a greater temptation for lying 
 in bed ; yet she did it not, though it was sometimes neces- 
 sary for her health to recruit her strength. But had she not 
 taken that time to do her business while my father lived, it 
 could not have been done at all ; for he would scarce ever 
 have her out of his sight, especially the latter part of his life.
 
 ZADV GRIZELL BAILLIE. 25 
 
 Often have I wondered how she found the way to compass 
 so much business, since she was called from it every moment, 
 and got to it but by starts ; but she was indefatigable at all 
 times, and even at a great age able to set everything in a clear 
 light for the ease of them that were to come after her. 
 
 ' In her family, her attention and economy reached to the 
 smallest things; and though this was her practice from her 
 youth, there never appeared in her the least air of narrowness ; 
 and so far was she from avarice, the common vice of age, tliat 
 often has my father said to her : " I never saw the like of you, 
 goodwife : the older you grow, you grow the more extrava- 
 gant; but do as you please, provided I be in no debt." Nor 
 did he ever ask her another question about the whole manage- 
 ment of his private affairs; but, "if his debt was paid." She 
 had a cheerful and open cordiality, that made every one 
 cheerful and happy about her. Her reigning principle ap- 
 peared here very much. She took all that pains that she 
 might have more and better things to please other people with. 
 For her own part, upon her own account, she often said she 
 had known so well what it was to live upon little, that what 
 by many would be esteemed poverty, she could be highly con- 
 tented with, and think affluence. She had the art of conferring 
 obligations in a high degree. In this she followed the great 
 precept — "Give, hoping for nothing." I have been often 
 witness to her being uneasy even at being thanked for very 
 great services. She was far from assuming over people on that 
 account : the more any one was obliged to her, the closer her 
 affection was tied to do still further service.' 
 
 Many years after her marriage. Lady Baillie found herself 
 once more in the familiar town of Utrecht. She and her 
 family were on the wa}- to Naples with an invalid son-in law.
 
 66 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 She had not forgotten the place of her former exile, but found 
 great pleasure in taking her children to every corner of it with 
 which she was acquainted. She wished greatly to walk again 
 through the rooms of the old house where she had lived, but 
 no arguments of words or money could persuade the then 
 tenants to allow her this pleasure ; they were afraid she tvoicld 
 dirty it ! She even offered to put off her shoes if they would 
 grant her the favour ; but all concession to the housewife's 
 prejudice against dirt was of no avail, and the applicant was 
 obliged to turn away disappointed. 
 
 It was at Oxford that she lost her husband, with whom, 
 during her whole married life, she had never had a quarrel or 
 misunderstanding ; to the last moment of his life she cherished 
 the same ardent affection and tender love for him, and the 
 same desire to please him in the smallest trifle, as when in her 
 young days he had won her affection. And when she lost 
 him, her grief was so great that it threw her into a dangerous 
 illness. Years after, in looking over her mother's papers, her 
 daughter found the following little affecting entry made in one 
 of her books : — 'The best of husbands, and delight of my life 
 for forty-eight years, without one jar betwixt us, died at Oxford 
 (where we went for the education of his grandson), the 6th of 
 August 1738, and was sent home to his burying - place at 
 Mellerstain.' 
 
 As she had been a dutiful and loving daughter, a faithful, 
 affectionate, and attached wife, a tender, devoted mother, so, 
 in her old age, she became an indulgent but wise grandmother. 
 ' To her grandsons,' says her daughter, ' she could not deny 
 anything, and was fain they should appear in the world with 
 distinction, and omitted nothing she could devise to further 
 them this way ; but yet, whenever she spoke about them, the
 
 LADY GRIZELL BAILLIE. 27 
 
 great thing she expressed herself with most concern about was, 
 that they might become virtuous and rehgious men.' That 
 they were not insensible to the beauty of their grandmother's 
 character is manifest from the fact that, when the troubles in 
 Scotland cut off for a time the transmission of her usual 
 supplies, she was sometimes reduced to severe straits, such as 
 must have vividly recalled to mind her old Utrecht days ; one 
 of her grandsons hearing this, and possessing a horse of which 
 he was exceedingly fond, sold it unknown to any one for ^18, 
 and carried her the money. 
 
 It was at this period, when no money was coming, and no 
 certainty whether it ever would again, that she summoned her 
 tradespeople— butcher, baker, grocer, etc. — to her presence, 
 and told them plainly of her present destitute condition, and 
 that she was unable to pay her bills, and perhaps never might 
 be able to pay them. After making this pretty clear, she 
 added she thought it no more than just that they should 
 know this, so that they might choose whether they would 
 continue to serve her. They one and all desired her to be 
 under no anxiety, but to take from them whatever she needed, 
 because they were sure that if ever she was able to pay them, 
 she would; and if she was not, well, they were content to 
 remain losers. 
 
 She survived her husband seven years. The Rebellion of 
 1 745 disturbed her last years, and affected her very deeply. 
 In the unhappy affair of 17 15, her husband had been very 
 active in relieving the unfortunate sufferers ; and now, unaided 
 by him, she did all she could for those of the present. And 
 even so late as the week before her death she sent her servant 
 with assistance to a gentleman in Newgate, with whose name 
 alone she was acquainted.
 
 28 NOTABLE MEN AND IVOMEN. 
 
 Her last illness was but of brief duration : she caught an 
 epidemic cold and was confined to her bed for a week. She 
 retained her senses to the last. Two days before her death 
 she desired the last chapter of Proverbs to be read to her, in 
 allusion to the wish for her grandson's happy marriage, and 
 which to the last lay near to her heart. Those standing round 
 the bed, listening with her to the words being read, could not 
 but think the picture given was that of herself. The following 
 day she gave many calm and thoughtful directions to her 
 daughter about her funeral, and then saying, ' I have now no 
 more to say or do,' tenderly kissed her daughter, and laid her 
 head down upon the pillow and spoke little after. She was 
 laid by the side of her husband at Mellerstain, according to 
 her own wish. 
 
 And so closed the life of the noble, brave, unselfish, and 
 devoted Lady Grizell Baillie. Eighty-one years she had lived 
 in the world, and during the greater portion of that time had 
 sacrificed herself to the service of others ; unmindful of self, 
 she had performed in a brave, loving manner what she con- 
 sidered her duty to those round about her. To her, surely, 
 we may ai)ply the words of the wise man, and say : ' Ma?}y 
 daughters have done virtuously^ hut thou e.xcellest them ail.'
 
 S^^^^M^ 
 
 : ^^>//n 
 
 ^^. v^ v.'^"N«:^>-y.xv.\y.\>->v:/-N> 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF 
 GRIZEL COCHRANE. 
 
 HEN the tyranny and bigotry of the last James 
 drove his subjects to take up arms against him, 
 one of the most formidable enemies to his danger- 
 ous usurpations was Sir John Cochrane, ancestor of the present 
 Earl of Dundonald. He was one of the most prominent 
 actors in Argyle's rebellion ; and for ages a destructive doom 
 seemed to hang over the house of Campbell, enveloping in a 
 common ruin all who united their fortunes to the cause of its 
 chieftains. The same doom encompassed Sir John Cochrane. 
 He was surrounded by the King's troops ; long, deadly, and 
 desperate was his resistance, but at length, overpowered by 
 numbers, he was taken prisoner, tried, and condemned to die 
 upon the scaffold.' He had but a few days to live, and his 
 gaoler waited but the arrival of his death-warrant to lead him 
 forth to execution. His family and his friends had visited him 
 in prison, and exchanged wath him the last, the long, the 
 heart-yearning farewell. 
 
 But there was one who came not with the rest to receive 
 his blessing, — one who was the pride of his eyes and of his 
 house, — even Grizel, the daughter of his love. Twilight was 
 casting a deeper gloom over the gratings of his prison-house ; 
 
 20
 
 JO NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 he was mourning for a last look of his favourite child, and his 
 head was pressed against the cold, damp walls of his cell, to 
 cool the feverish pulsations that shot through it like stings of 
 fire, when the door of his apartment turned slowly on its un- 
 willing hinges, and his keeper entered, followed by a young 
 and beautiful lady. Her person was tall and commanding, 
 her eyes dark, bright, and tearless ; but their very brightness 
 spoke of sorrow — of sorrow too deep to be swept away ; and 
 her raven tresses were parted over an open brow, clear and 
 pure as the poHshed marble. The unhappy captive raised his 
 head as they entered. 
 
 • My child ! my own Grizel ! ' he exclaimed, and she fell 
 upon his bosom. 
 
 • My father ! my dear father ! ' sobbed the miserable maiden, 
 and she dashed away the tear that accompanied the words. 
 
 * Your interview must be short, very short,' said the gaoler 
 as he turned and left them for a few minutes together. 
 
 * God help and comfort thee, my daughter ! ' added the 
 unhappy father as he held her to his breast and printed a 
 kiss upon her brow. ' I had feared that I should die without 
 bestowing my blessing on the head of my own child, and that 
 stung me more than death. But thou art come, my love ! thou 
 art come ! and the last blessing of thy wretched father ' — 
 
 * Nay ; forbear ! forbear ! ' she exclaimed ; ' not thy last 
 blessing ! not thy last ! My father shall not die ! ' 
 
 • Be calm, be calm, my child ! ' returned he. ' Would to 
 heaven that I could comfort thee ! — my own ! my own ! But 
 there is no hope : within three days, and thou and all my little 
 ones will be ' — 
 
 Fatherless, he would have said ; but the words died on his 
 tongue.
 
 GRIZEL COCHRANE. 31 
 
 'Three days!' repeated she, raising her head from his 
 breast, but eagerly pressing his hand ; ' three days ! Then 
 there is hope — my father shall hve ! Is not my grandfather 
 the friend of Father Petre, the confessor and the master of the 
 King? From him he shall beg the life of his son, and my 
 father shall not die.' 
 
 ' Nay, nay, my Grizel,' returned he, ' be not deceived. 
 There is no hope ! Already my doom is sealed, already the 
 King has signed the order for my execution, and the messenger 
 of death is now on the way.' 
 
 * Yet my father shall not, shall not die ! ' she repeated 
 emphatically, and clasping her hands together. ' Heaven 
 speed a daughter's purpose ! ' she exclaimed ; and turning to 
 her father, said calmly, ' We part now, but we shall meet 
 again.' 
 
 * What would my child ? ' inquired he eagerly, gazing 
 anxiously on her face. 
 
 ' Ask not now,' she replied. ' My father, ask not now ; but 
 pray for me and bless me— but not with thy last blessing.' 
 
 He again pressed her to his heart, and wept upon her neck. 
 In a few moments the gaoler entered, and they were torn from 
 the arms of each other. 
 
 On the evening of the second day after the interview we 
 have mentioned, a wayfaring man crossed the drawbridge at 
 Berwick, from the north, and, proceeding down Marygate, sat 
 down to rest upon a bench by the door of a hostelry on the 
 south side of the street, nearly fronting where what was called 
 the ' main guard ' then stood. He did not enter the inn, for 
 it was above his apparent condition, being that which Oliver 
 Cromwell had made his headquarters a few years before ; and 
 where, at a somewhat earlier period, James vi. had taken up
 
 32 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 his residence when on his way to enter on the sovereignty of 
 England. The traveller wore a coarse jerkin fastened round 
 his body by a leathern girdle, and over it a short cloak, com- 
 posed of equally plain materials. He was evidently a young 
 man ; but his beaver was drawn down so as almost to conceal 
 his features. In the one hand he carried a small bundle, and 
 in the other a pilgrim's staff. Having called for a glass of wine, 
 he took a crust of bread from his bundle, and, after resting 
 for a few minutes, rose to depart. The shades of night were 
 setting in, and it threatened to be a night of storms. The 
 heavens were gathering black, the clouds rushing from the 
 sea; sudden gusts of wind were moaning along the streets, 
 accompanied by heavy drops of rain, and the face of the 
 Tweed was troubled. 
 
 * Heaven help thee, if thou intendest to travel far in such 
 a night as this ! ' said the sentinel at the English gate, as the 
 traveller passed him and proceeded to cross the bridge. 
 
 In a few minutes he was upon the borders of the wide, 
 desolate, and dreary muir of Tweedmouth, which for miles 
 presented a desert of whins, fern, and stunted heath, with here 
 and there a dingle covered with thick brushwood. He slowly 
 toiled over the steep hill, braving the storm, which now raged 
 in wildest fury. The rain fell in torrents, and the wind howled 
 as a legion of famished wolves, hurling its doleful and angry 
 echoes over the heath. Still the stranger pushed onward, 
 until he had proceeded about two or three miles from Berwick, 
 when, as if unable longer to brjiye the storm, he sought shelter 
 amidst some crab and bramble bushes by the wayside. Nearly 
 an hour had passed since he sought this imperfect refuge, and 
 the darkness of the night and the storm had increased 
 together, when the sound of a horse's feet was heard, hurriedly
 
 GRIZEL COCHRANE. 
 
 33 
 
 plashing along the road. The rider bent his head to the blast. 
 Suddenly his horse was grasped by the bridle, the rider raised 
 his head, and the traveller stood before him, holding a pistol 
 to his breast. 
 
 ' Dismount ! ' cried the stranger sternly. 
 
 The horseman, benumbed and stricken with fear, made an 
 effort to reach his arms ; but in a moment, the hand of the 
 robber, quitting the bridle, grasped the breast of the rider, and 
 dragged him to the ground. He fell heavily on his face, and 
 for several minutes remained senseless. The stranger seized 
 the leathern bag which contained the mail for the north, and 
 flinging it on his shoulder, rushed across the heath. 
 
 Early on the following morning, the inhabitants of Berwick 
 were seen hurrying in groups to the spot where the robbery 
 had been committed, and were scattered in every direction 
 around the muir, but no trace of the robber could be 
 obtained. 
 
 Three days had passed away, and Sir John Cochrane yet 
 lived. The mail which contained his death-warrant had been 
 robbed ; and, before another order for his execution could be 
 given, the intercession of his father, the Earl of Dundonald, 
 with the King's confessor, might be successful. Grizel now 
 became almost his constant companion in prison, and spoke to 
 him words of comfort. Nearly fourteen days had passed since 
 the robbery of the mail had been committed ; and protracted 
 hope in the bosom of the prisoner became more bitter than 
 his first despair. But even that hope, bitter as it was, 
 perished. The intercession of his father had been unsuccess- 
 ful; and a second time the bigoted and would-be despotic 
 monarch had signed the warrant for his death, and within little 
 more than another day that warrant would reach his prison. 
 
 VI. c
 
 34 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 ' The will of Heaven be done ! ' groaned the captive. 
 
 ' Amen !' returned Grizel with wild vehemence; 'but my 
 father shall not die ! ' 
 
 Again the rider with the mail had reached the muir of 
 Tweedmouth, and a second time he bore with him the doom 
 of Cochrane. He spurred his horse to its utmost speed ; he 
 looked cautiously before, behind, and around him ; and in his 
 right hand ne carried a pistol ready to defend himself. The 
 moon shed a ghostly light across the heath, rendering desola- 
 tion visible, and giving a spiritual embodiment to every shmb. 
 He was turning the angle of a straggling copse, when his horse 
 reared at the report of a pistol, the fire of which seemed to 
 dash into its very eyes. At the same moment his own pistol 
 flashed, and the horse rearing more violently, he was driven 
 from the saddle. In a moment the foot of the robber was 
 upon his breast, who, bending over him, and brandishing a 
 short dagger in his hand, said : 
 
 ' Give me thine arms, or die ! ' 
 
 The heart of the King's servant failed within him, and, 
 without venturing to reply, he did as he was commanded. 
 
 * Now go thy way,' said the robber sternly, * but leave with 
 me the horse, and leave with me the mail, lest a worse thing 
 come upon thee.* 
 
 The man therefore arose, and proceeded towards Berwick, 
 trembling ; and the robber, mounting the horse which he had 
 left, rode rapidly across the heath. 
 
 Preparations were making for the execution of Sir John 
 Cochrane, and the officers of the law waited only for the 
 arrival of the mail with his second death-warrant, to lead him 
 forth to the scaffold, when the tidings arrived that the mail 
 had again been robbed. For yet fourteen days, and the life
 
 GRIZEL COCHRANE. 
 
 35 
 
 of the prisoner would be again prolonged. He again fell on 
 the neck of his daughter, and wept, and said : 
 ' It is good — the hand of Heaven is in this !' 
 
 * Said I not,' replied the maiden — and for the first time she 
 wept aloud — ' that my father should not die ? ' 
 
 The fourteen days were not yet past, when the prison doors 
 flew open, and the old Earl of Dundonald rushed to the arms 
 of his son. His intercession with the confessor had been at 
 length successful ; and after twice signing the warrant for the 
 execution of Sir John, which had as often failed in reaching its 
 destination, the King had sealed his pardon. He had hurried 
 with his father from the prison to his own house — his family 
 were clinging around him shedding tears of joy — and they 
 were marvelling with gratitude at the mysterious Providence 
 that had twice intercepted the mail, and saved his life, when 
 a stranger claimed an audience. Sir John desired him to be 
 admitted, and the robber entered. He was habited, as we 
 have before described, with the coarse cloak and coarser 
 jerkin ; but his bearing was above his condition. On enter- 
 ing, he slightly touched his beaver, but remained uncovered. 
 
 ' When you have perused these,' said he, taking two papers 
 from his bosom, ' cast them into the fire ! ' 
 
 Sir John glanced on them, started, and became pale — they 
 were his death-warrants. 
 
 ' My deliverer ! ' exclaimed he, ' how shall I thank thee — 
 how repay the saviour of my life? My father — children — 
 thank him for me ! ' 
 
 The old earl grasped the hand of the stranger; the children 
 embraced his knees ; and he burst into tears. 
 
 * By what name,' eagerly inquired Sir John, ' shall I thank 
 my deliverer ? '
 
 46 
 
 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 The stranger wept aloud ; and raising his beaver, the raven 
 tresses of Grizel Cochrane fell upon the coarse cloak. 
 
 * Gracious heaven ! ' exclaimed the astonished and enrap- 
 tured father ; ' my own child ! — my saviour ! — my own 
 Grizel ! ' 
 
 It is unnecessary to add more — the imagination of the 
 reader can supply the rest ; and we may only add, that Grizel 
 Cochrane, whose heroism and noble affection we have here 
 hurriedly and imperfectly sketched, was, tradition says, the 
 grandmother of the late Sir John Stuart of Allanbank, and 
 great-grcat-grandmother of Mr. Coutts, the celebrated banker.
 
 of /'K^^:^ 
 
 I'l'i'i'i'i'i'tS't I'i't'i' 
 
 Vvy o/'/^v." 
 
 L'L^i'iil 
 
 !/'0'v'\;/\>\>'v)'v'»; 
 
 THOMAS D E Q U I N C E Y. 
 
 HE father of the English opium-eater was a Man- 
 l/<^ Chester merchant, carrying on a large trade with 
 ■i'l America and the West Indies. His son afterwards 
 described him as cultured and intelligent, and as possessing 
 literary tastes. His mother, whose maiden name was Penson, 
 was the daughter of an English officer, with the gift of writing 
 letters, which displayed strong and masculine sense, and a 
 power over pure mother English. ^ Thomas was the fifth child 
 and second son, and was born at Greenheys, near Manchester, 
 on 15th August 1785. Not long after his birth, his father fell 
 into ill health, when he was compelled to reside abroad. 
 Reason dawned early, and memory in after-years carried him 
 back to the time when he was only two years of age. Then, 
 too, his dream-life began, when his imagination at this imma- 
 ture age conjured up a ' remarkable dream of terrific grandeur 
 about a favourite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this 
 reason, that it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have 
 been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum j and, 
 
 ' The main facts in this sketch are drawn from TJwmas de Qttincey ; 
 
 Ills Life and Wriiings. By II. A. Page. London : John Hogg & Co., 
 
 1S77. 
 
 87
 
 38 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of 
 pathos with the reappearance, very early in the spring, of some 
 crocuses.' The death of his sister Jane, which also happened 
 about this time, made a deep impression upon him. The death 
 of another sister, called Elizabeth, while in his sixth year, 
 produced even a more profound impression upon him. ' For 
 thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as 
 often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I 
 fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola, in token of thy 
 premature intellectual grandeur — thou whose head, for its 
 superb development, was the astonishment of science — thou 
 next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert 
 summoned away from our nursery ; and the night, which for 
 me gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life ; 
 and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill 
 that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire, that didst 
 go before me to guide and to quicken — pillar of darkness, 
 when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst 
 too truly reveal to my dawning fears the secret shadow of 
 death — by what mysterious gravitation was it that my heart 
 was drawn to thine ? ' While she was lying a corpse, he 
 kissed the cold lips in a passion of grief. His father came 
 home to die when young De Quincey was in his seventh year. 
 When his death took place, \n his thirty-ninth year, it was 
 found that their former way of living could not be maintained. 
 The family estate amounted only to ;Q\(ioo a year, with 
 an allowance to the two boys of ;j^i5o a year. Young De 
 Quincey's elder brother, who had been with his father at 
 Lisbon, and who had also passed through the ordeal of a 
 grammar school at Louth, in Lincolnshire, now began to 
 lord it over him and to torment him. ' Physically, there-
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 39 
 
 fore, and intellectually,' said he, ' he looked upon me as 
 below notice ; but, morally, he assured me that he would give 
 me a written character of the very best description whenever I 
 chose to apply for it. Both the boys were sent to study 
 classics under the Rev. Samuel Hall, at Salford, near Green- 
 heys. His elder brother was never on good terms with the 
 factory boys, and so the way to and from school was the scene 
 of many a skirmish, in which young De Quincey was obliged 
 to help. The progress of the latter in Latin had been so 
 remarkable that he was sent, while in his eleventh year, to 
 Bath grammar school. Here his passion for books had mani- 
 fested itself, so much so that he got into debt to the extent 
 of three guineas. The master was in the habit of praising his 
 Latin verses before the elder boys, which only excited a species 
 of hatred or contempt towards him. At thirteen he could 
 write Greek with ease, and at fifteen he had gained such 
 thorough command of the language that he could compose 
 Greek verses in lyric metres, and also converse fluently in the 
 same language. One of the masters said of him in the 
 presence of a stranger, ' That boy could harangue an Athenian 
 mob better than you or I could address an English one.' An 
 illness caused his removal from Bath, when he was sent to 
 another school at Winkfield, in the county of Wilts, principally 
 because of ' the religious character of the master.' Llere he 
 was a great favourite, and assisted the other boys in their 
 lessons during the twelvemonth which he spent at this school. 
 We find him next at Eton, drawn thither to join his friend, 
 Lord Westport, for a tour in Ireland. On his return, he 
 parted with Lord Westport at Birmingham, and started for 
 Northamptonshire on a visit to Lady Carberry at Laxton. 
 Here he was questioned by her regarding many difficulties in
 
 40 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Greek, and she also provided tutorage for him. He was 
 obHged also to surrender himself for two hours daily for lessons 
 in horsemanship by the principal groom. 
 
 His guardians, in iSoi, decided to send him to Manchester 
 grammar school for three years. He entered this school some- 
 what against his will, when we find him expressing marked 
 contempt towards the classical teacher. Lady Carberry passed 
 the Christmas and winter of that year in Manchester, and he 
 also made the acquaintance of the Rev. John Clowes, A.M., 
 rector of St. Mar)''s, Manchester, a disciple of Swedenborg. 
 The attractions of home life, which were freely enjoyed by 
 young De Quincey in the dwelling of Mr. Clowes, are said to 
 have kept him longer in Manchester than he might otherwise 
 have been. De Quincey has described Mr. Clowes as ' the 
 most spiritual-looking, the most saintly in outward aspect, of 
 all human beings whom I have known throughout life. He 
 was rather tall, pale, and thin ; the most unfleshly, the most 
 sublimated spirit, dwelling already more than half in some 
 purer world, that a poet could have imagined.' Amongst the 
 other literary spirits met with at this time were Dr. Currie, the 
 biographer of Burns; Mr, Roscoe, a translator from the 
 Italian ; and Mr. Shepherd, who had also done something in 
 literature. Mr. Clarke, the gentleman with whom De Quincey 
 stayed at this time, was wealthy and well travelled. He 
 amused himself by studying Greek, for which purpose he and 
 De Quincey would meet at sunrise every summer morning. 
 Wlien in the company of Dr. Currie, in 1801, De Quincey 
 took the liberty of differing from him as to Burns having been 
 ungracious to his patrons, ungrateful, and with pride falsely 
 directed. In a letter written to his mother at this time, he 
 complained bitterly of the routine at Mr. Lawson's school,
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 41 
 
 which deprived him of health, society, amusement, Hberty, 
 congeniahty of pursuits, and as also admitting of no variety. 
 This letter had no effect on his mother's feelings ; it was, 
 indeed, decided that he must either choose a profession 01 
 remain where he was. This decided him ; he determined not 
 to face the drudgery of a lawyer's office, and determined to 
 leave school behind him for ever. Applying to Lady Carberry 
 for money, she sent him a remittance of ^10. This sum, with 
 jQz he had in hand, was all his available cash at the time. 
 His own private income amounted to about ^^150 a year. 
 He left ^2) out of the twelve in the hands of a fellow-scholar, 
 to be given in gratuities to the servants. All the incidents of 
 ' that morning, from which, and from its consequences, my 
 whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its 
 colouring,' are very minutely set down in the Confessions of 
 an English Opium-Eater, in inimitable language. We may be 
 excused giving what is the most interesting episode in his 
 life in his own words. 
 
 Narrative of De Quincey's Life up to 1816-17, from 
 THE ' Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,' 
 
 My father died when I was about seven years old, and left 
 me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various 
 schools, great and small ; and was very early distinguished for 
 my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of 
 Greek. At thirteen, I wrote Greek with ease ; and at fifteen 
 my command of that language was so great, that I not only 
 composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in 
 Greek fluently, and without embarrassment — an accomplish- 
 ment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my
 
 42 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of 
 daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could 
 furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory 
 and invention, for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic 
 expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations 
 of things, etc., gave me a compass of diction which would 
 never have been called out by a dull translation of moral 
 essays, etc. ' That boy,' said one of my masters, pointing the 
 attention of a stranger to me, — ' that boy could harangue an 
 Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English 
 one.' He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, 
 * and a ripe and good one,' and of all my tutors was the only 
 one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunate for me (and, 
 as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), 
 I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in 
 a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, 
 finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great 
 school on an ancient foundation. This man had been 
 
 appointed to his situation by College, Oxford, and was a 
 
 sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have 
 known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A 
 miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian 
 brilliancy of my favourite master ; and besides, he could not 
 disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness 
 of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and 
 to know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge 
 or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded 
 knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys 
 who jointly with myself composed the first form were better 
 Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant 
 scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces.
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 43 
 
 When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles ; 
 and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned 
 triumvirate of the first form, to see our ' Archididascalus ' (as 
 he loved to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, 
 and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for 
 blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found 
 in the choruses ; whilst we never condescended to open our 
 books until the moment of going uj), and were generally em- 
 ployed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such 
 important matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and 
 dependent for their future prospects at the university on the 
 recommendation of the head-master; but I, who had a small 
 patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to 
 support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. 
 I made earnest representations on the subject to my guardians, 
 but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and 
 had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a 
 distance ; two of the otlier three resigned all their authority 
 into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth, with whom I had 
 to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, 
 obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After 
 a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found 
 that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the 
 matter, from my guardian ; unconditional submission was what 
 he demanded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other 
 measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and 
 my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching ; after which 
 day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be 
 numbered amongst school-boys. Money being what I chiefly 
 wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young 
 herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated
 
 41 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 me Avith great distinction, requesting that she would 'lend' me 
 five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; and I 
 was beginning to despond, when, at length, a servant put into 
 my hands a double letter, with a coronet on the seal. The 
 letter was kind and obliging ; the fair writer was on the sea- 
 coast, and in that way the delay had arisen ; she enclosed 
 double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that 
 if I should 7iever repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. 
 Now, then, I was prepared for my scheme ; ten guineas, added 
 to about two which I had remaining from my pocket-money, 
 seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length of time ; and at 
 that happy age, if no definite boundary can be assigned to one's 
 power, the spirit of hope and pleasure makes it virtually infinite. 
 It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often 
 be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never 
 do anything consciously for the last time (of things, that is, 
 which we have long been in the habit of doing) without 
 sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply when I came to 
 
 leave , a place which I did not love, and where I had not 
 
 been happy. On the evening before I left for ever, I 
 
 grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded 
 with the evening service, performed for the last time in my 
 hearing; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was 
 called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped 
 forward, and, passing the head-master, who was standing by, 
 I bowed to him and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to 
 myself, ' He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not 
 see him again.' I was riglit ; I never did see him again, nor 
 ever shall He looked at me complacently, smiled good- 
 naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather, my valediction), 
 and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE V. 45 
 
 reverence him intellectually ; but he had been uniformly kind 
 to me, and had allowed me many indulgences, and I grieved 
 at the thought of the mortification I should inflict upon him. 
 
 The morning came which was to launch me into the world, 
 and from which my whole succeeding life has, in many 
 important points, taken its colouring. I lodged in the head- 
 master's house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, 
 the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a 
 sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and 
 
 gazed with deep emotion at the ancient towers of , 
 
 *drest in earliest light,' and beginning to crimson with the 
 radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and 
 immoveable in my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of 
 uncertain danger and troubles ; and, if I could have foreseen 
 the hurricane and perfect hailstorm of affliction which soon 
 fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this 
 agitation the deep peace of the morning presented an affecting 
 contrast, and in some degree a medicine. The silence was 
 more profound than that of midnight ; and to me the silence 
 of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, 
 because, the light being broad and strong, as that of noonday 
 at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect 
 day, chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and thus the 
 peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems 
 to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man, 
 and his restless and unquiet spirit, are not there to trouble its 
 sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and 
 lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half 
 this room has been my ' pensive citadel ; ' here I had read and 
 studied through all the hours of night ; and, though true it 
 was that for the latter part of this time I, who was framed for
 
 46 KO TABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness 
 during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian, 
 yet, on the other hand, as a boy, so passionately fond of 
 books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail 
 to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general 
 dejection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, 
 writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly 
 that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write 
 this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I see 
 distinctly as if it were yesterday the lineaments and expression 
 of the object on which I fixed my parting gaze : it was a 
 
 picture of the lovely , which hung over the mantelpiece ; 
 
 the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole 
 countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity, 
 that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to 
 gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint 
 
 Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones of clock 
 
 proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I went up to the picture, 
 kissed it, and then gently walked out, and closed the door for 
 ever. 
 
 So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of 
 laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling 
 an incident which occurred at that time, and which had nearly 
 put a stop to the immediate execution of my plan. I had a 
 trunk of immense weight ; for, besides my clothes, it contained 
 nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get this removed 
 to a carrier's; my room was at an aerial elevation in the 
 house, and (what was worse) the staircase, which communi- 
 cated with this angle of the building, was accessible only by a 
 gallery, which passed the head-master's chamber door. I was 
 a favourite with all the servants; and, knowing that any of
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 47 
 
 tlicm would screen me, and act confidentially, I communicated 
 
 my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The 
 
 groom swore he would do anything I wished, and, when the 
 
 time arrived, went upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I 
 
 feared was beyond the strength of any one man ; however, the 
 
 groom was a man 
 
 Of Atkntian shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies ; 
 
 and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly 
 he persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood 
 waiting at the foot of the last flight in anxiety for the event 
 For some time I heard him descending with slow and firm 
 steps ; but, unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he drew 
 near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, 
 his foot slipped, and the mighty burden, falling from his 
 shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the 
 descent, that, on reaching the bottom, it trundled, or rather 
 leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the 
 very bedroom door of the Archididascalus. My first thought 
 was that all was lost, and that my only chance for executing a 
 retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, I 
 determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost 
 alarm, both on his own account and on mine ; but, in spite of 
 this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this 
 unhappy contretemps taken possession of his fancy, that he 
 sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that 
 might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound 
 of this resonant merriment, within the very ears Cf insulted 
 authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it ; subdued to 
 this not so much by the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by 
 the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a
 
 48 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 matter of course, that Dr. would sally out of his room ; 
 
 for in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a 
 mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this 
 occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no sound, or 
 
 rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Dr. had 
 
 a painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, 
 made his sleep, perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. 
 Gathering courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his 
 burden again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent 
 without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a 
 wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier's; then, 'with 
 Providence my guide,' I set off on foot, carrying a small 
 parcel, with some articles of dress, under my arm, a favourite 
 English poet in one pocket, and a small i2mo volume, con- 
 taining about nine plays of Euripides, in the other. 
 
 It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmore- 
 land, both from the love I bore to that countrj- and on other 
 personal accounts. Accident, however, gave a diffe\ent direction 
 to my wanderings, and I bent my steps towards North Wales. 
 
 After wandering about for some time in Dei\bighshire, 
 Merionethshire, and Caernarvonshire, I took lodgings in a 
 
 small neat house in B . Here I might have staj?d with 
 
 great comfort for many weeks; for provisions were cheap at 
 
 B , from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus 
 
 produce of a wide agricultural district An accident, however, 
 in which perhaps no offence was designed, drove me out to 
 wander again. I know not whether my reader may have 
 remarked, but / have often remarked, that the proudest 
 class of people in England (or at any rate, the class whose 
 pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen 
 and their children carry about with them, in their very titles, a
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 49 
 
 sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names 
 (and this appHes also to the children of many untitled houses) 
 are often, to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth 
 or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, 
 and scores of others tell their own tale. Such persons, there- 
 fore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims already 
 established, except among those who are ignorant of the 
 world, by virtue of their own obscurity : ' Not to know ihenij 
 argues oneself unknown.' Their manners take a suitable 
 tone and colouring, and, for once, they find it necessary to 
 impress a sense of their consequence upon others ; they meet 
 with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering this 
 sense by acts of courteous condescensioa With the families 
 of bishops it is otherwise : with them it is all up-hill work to 
 make known their pretensions; for the proportion of the 
 episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time 
 very large, and the succession to these dignities is so rapid, 
 that the public ear seldom has time to become familiar with 
 them, unless where they are connected with some literary 
 reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops carry 
 about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of 
 claims not generally acknowledged, — a sort of 7ioli me taiigere 
 manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and 
 shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all 
 contact with the ot ttoAAoi. Doubtless, a powerful under- 
 standing or unusual goodness of nature will preserve a man 
 from such weakness, but, in general, the truth of my repre- 
 sentation will be acknowledged ; pride, if not of deeper root 
 in such families, appears, at least, more upon the surface of 
 their manners. This spirit of manners naturally communicates 
 itself to their domestics and other dependants. Now, my 
 
 VI. D
 
 50 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, in the family of 
 
 the Bishop of , and had but lately married away and 
 
 ' settled ' (as such people express it) for life. In a little town 
 
 like B , merely to have lived in the bishop's family 
 
 conferred some distinction ; and my good landlady had rather 
 more than her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. 
 What 'my lord' said, and what 'my lord' did, how useful he 
 was in Parliament, and how indispensable at Oxford, formed 
 the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore very well, for I 
 was too good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could 
 make an ample allowance lor the garrulity of an old servant. 
 Of necessity, however, I must have appeared in her eyes very 
 inadequately impressed with the bishop's importance; and, 
 perhaps to punish me for my indifference, or possibly by 
 accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in which 
 I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the 
 palace to pay her respects to the family, and, dinner being 
 over, was summoned into the dining-room. In giving an 
 account of her household economy, she happened to mention 
 that she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop, 
 it seemed, had taken occasion to caution her as to her selec- 
 tion of inmates ; ' for,' said he, ' you must recollect, Betty, that 
 this place is in the high road to the Head ; so that multitudes 
 of Irish swindlers, running away from their debts into England, 
 and of English swindlers, running away from their debts to the 
 Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route.' This 
 advice certainly was not without reasonable grounds, but rather 
 fitted to be stored up. for Mrs. Betty's private meditations than 
 specially reported to me. What followed, however, was some- 
 what worse. ' Oh, my lord,' answered my landlady (according 
 to her own representation of the matter), ' I really don't think
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE V. 5 1 
 
 this young gentleman is a swindler, because' — 'You 
 don't t/iifik me a swindler ? ' said I, interrupting her, in a 
 tumult of indignation ; ' for the future I shall spare you the 
 trouble of thinking about it.' And without delay I prepared 
 for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed 
 disposed to make ; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, 
 which I fear that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, 
 roused /ler indignation in turn, and reconciliation then became 
 impossible. I was, indeed, greatly irritated at the bishop's 
 having suggested any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, 
 against a person whom lie had never seen ; and I thought of 
 letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same time 
 that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, 
 would also, I hoped, compel the bishop to reply in the same 
 language, in which case I doubted not to make it appear that 
 if I w^as not so rich as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian. 
 Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish design out of my 
 mind ; for I considered that the bishop was in the right to 
 counsel an old servant, that he could not have designed that 
 his advice should be reported to me, and that the same 
 coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the 
 advice at all, might have coloured it in a way more agreeable 
 to her own style of thinking, than to the actual expressions of 
 the worthy bishop. 
 
 I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out 
 a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living hence- 
 forward at inns, I was drained of my money very rapidly. In 
 a fortnight I was reduced to short allowance ; that is, I could 
 allow myself only one meal a day. From the keen appetite 
 produced by constant exercise and mountain air acting on a 
 youthful stomach, I soon began to sufier greatly on this slender
 
 52 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 regimen ; for the single meal which I could venture to order 
 was coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length with- 
 drawn; and afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I 
 subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, etc., or on the 
 casual hospitalities which I now and then received, in return 
 for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. 
 Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers, who 
 happened to have relatives in Liverpool or in London ; more 
 often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women 
 who had lived as servants in Shrewsburj', or other towns on 
 the English border. On all such occasions I gave great 
 satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated 
 with hospitality; and once, in particular, near the village of 
 Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a sequestered part of 
 Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of three days 
 by a family of young people, with an affectionate and fraternal 
 kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet 
 impaired. The family consisted, at that time, of four sisters 
 and three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for 
 elegance and delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so 
 much native good breeding and refinement, I do not remember 
 to have seen before or since in any cottage, except once or 
 twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke English, 
 an accomplishment not often met with in so many members 
 of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. 
 Here I wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize 
 money, for one of the brothers, w^ho had served on board an 
 English man-of-war; and more privately, two love-letters for 
 two of the sisters. They were both interesting-looking girls, 
 and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their 
 confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE Y. 53 
 
 general instructions, it did not require any great penetration 
 to discover that what they wished was that their letters should 
 be as kind as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I 
 contrived so to temper my expressions as to reconcile the 
 gratification of both feelings, and they were as much pleased 
 with the way in which I had expressed their thoughts, as (in 
 their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily 
 discovered them. The reception one meets with from the 
 women of a fomily generally determines the tenor of one's 
 whole entertainment. In this case I had discharged my con- 
 fidential duties as secretary so much to the general satisfaction, 
 perhaps also amusing them with my conversation, that I was 
 pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had little inclination 
 to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed 
 standing in the apartment of the young women ; but in all 
 other points they treated me with a respect not usually paid to 
 purses as hght as mine — as if my scholarship were sufficient 
 evidence that I was of ' gentle blood.' Thus I lived with them 
 for three days, and great part of a fourth ; and, from the 
 undiminished kindness which they continued to show me, I 
 believe I might have stayed with them up to this time, if their 
 power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last 
 morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as 
 they sat at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant com- 
 munication which was at hand ; and soon after one of the 
 brothers explained to me that their parents had gone, the day 
 before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held 
 at Caernarvon, and were that day expected to return ; ' and if 
 they should not be so civil as they ought to be,' he begged, 
 on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it 
 amiss. The parents returned, with cliurlish faces, and Dym
 
 54 A' TABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Sassenach (no English) in answer to all my addresses. I saw 
 how matters stood ; and so, taking an affectionate leave of my 
 kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way. For 
 though they spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and 
 often excused the manner of the old people by saying it was 
 ' only their w^ay,' yet I easily understood that my talent for 
 writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with 
 two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek 
 Sapphics or Alcaics ; and what had been hospitality when 
 offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, 
 would become charity when connected with the harsh 
 demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is 
 right in his notions about old age ; unless powerfully counter- 
 acted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable 
 corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human 
 heart. 
 
 Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must omit 
 for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now 
 began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings — with- 
 out using a disproportionate expression I might say, of my 
 agony. For I now suffered for upwards of sixteen weeks the 
 physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity, 
 but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have 
 suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass 
 my reader's feehngs by a detail of all that I endured; for 
 extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest 
 misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in descrip- 
 tion, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural good- 
 ness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this 
 occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the 
 breakfast table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill,
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE Y. 5 5 
 
 but did not know of my being in utter want), and these at 
 uncertain intervals, constituted my whole support. During the 
 former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and 
 always for the first two months in London), I was houseless, 
 and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant 
 exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not 
 sink under my torments. Latterly, however, when colder and 
 more inclement weather came on, and when, from the length 
 of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into a more languishing 
 condition, it was, no doubt, fortunate for me that the same 
 person to whose breakfast table I had access allowed me to 
 sleep in a large unoccupied house, of which he was tenant — 
 unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or establish- 
 ment in it, nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a 
 few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of my new 
 quarters, that the house already contained one single inmate, 
 a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old ; but she 
 seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make 
 children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I 
 learned that she had slept and lived there alone for some time 
 before I came, and great joy the poor creature expressed when 
 she found that I was in future to be her companion through 
 the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from the 
 want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious 
 echoing on the spacious staircase and hall ; and, amidst the 
 real fleshly ills of cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child 
 had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the 
 self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against 
 all ghosts whatsoever ; but, alas ! I could offer her no other 
 assistance. 'We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed 
 law papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort
 
 56 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 of large horseman's cloak ; afterwards, however, we discovered 
 in a garret, an old sofa cover, a small piece of rug, and some 
 fragments of other articles, which added a little to our warmth. 
 The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security 
 against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than 
 usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in general, she 
 •was tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not; for 
 during the last two months of my sufferings, I slept much in 
 the day-time, and was apt to fall into transient dozings at all 
 hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my watching ; 
 for, beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only 
 not so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter 
 as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is 
 called dog-sleep, so that I could hear myself moaning, and wvis 
 often, as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own 
 voice ; and, about this time, a hideous sensation began to 
 haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since 
 returned upon me at different periods of my life, viz, a sort of 
 twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region 
 of the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out 
 my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on 
 as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it con- 
 stantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion ; 
 and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was 
 constantly falling asleep, and constantly awaking. Mean- 
 time, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us 
 suddenly, and very early, sometimes not till ten o'clock, 
 sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of baihffs ; 
 improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in 
 a different quarter of London ; and I observed that he never 
 failed to examine, through a private window, the appearance
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 57 
 
 of those who knocked at the door before he would allow it to 
 be opened. He breakfasted alone ; indeed, his tea equipage 
 would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to 
 a second person — any more than the quantity of esculent 
 materiel, which, for the most part, was little more than a roll 
 or a few biscuits, which he had bought on his road from the 
 place where he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as I 
 once learnedly and facetiously ' observed to him, the several 
 members of it must have stood in the relation to each other 
 (not sat in any relation whatever) of succession, as the meta- 
 physicians have it, and not of a co-existence — in the relation 
 of the parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his 
 breakfast I generally contrived a reason for lounging in, and, 
 with an air of as much indifference as I could assume, took 
 up such fragments as he had left — sometimes, indeed, there 
 were none at all. In doing this I committed no robbery 
 except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) 
 now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; for, as 
 to the poor child, she was never admitted into his study (if I 
 may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law 
 writings, etc.) : that room was to her the Blue-beard room of 
 the house, being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, 
 about six o'clock, which was usually his final departure for the 
 night. Whether this child were an illegitimate daughter of 
 
 Mr. , or only a servant, I could not ascertain : she did not 
 
 herself know ; but certainly she was treated altogether as a 
 menial servant. No sooner did Mr. make his appear- 
 ance, than she vrent below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, etc. ; 
 and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she 
 never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, etc. to 
 the upper air, until my welcome knock at night called up her
 
 58 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during 
 the day-time, however, I knew little but what I gathered from 
 her own account at night ; for, as soon as the hours of business 
 commenced, I saw that my absence would be acceptable ; and 
 in general, therefore, I went off and sat in the parks, or else- 
 where, until nightfall. 
 
 But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house 
 himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners 
 in lower departments of the law, who — what shall I say? — 
 who, on prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves 
 all indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience (a 
 periphrasis which might be abridged considerably, but that I 
 leave to the reader's taste). In many walks of life a conscience 
 is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage ; 
 and just as people talk of ' laying down ' their carriages, so I 
 
 suppose my friend Mr. had ' laid down ' his conscience 
 
 for a time, meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he 
 could afford it. The inner economy of such a man's daily life 
 would present a most strange picture, if I could allow myself 
 to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited 
 opportunities for observing what went on, I saw m.any scenes 
 of London intrigues and complex chicanery, 'cycle and 
 epicycle, orb in orb,' at which I sometimes smile to this day, 
 and at which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. My 
 situation, however, at that time, gave me little experience 
 
 in my own person of any qualities in Mr. 's character 
 
 but such as did hnii honour; and of his whols strange 
 composition, I must forget everything but that towards 
 me he was obliging, and, to the extent of his power, 
 generous. 
 
 That power was not, indeed, very extensive. However, in
 
 TIIOMA S DE Q UJNCE Y. 59 
 
 common with the rats, I sat rent free; and as Dr. Johnson 
 has recorded that he never but once in his Hfe had as much 
 wall-fruit as he could cat, so let me be grateful that on that 
 single occasion I had as large a choice of apartments in a 
 London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the Blue- 
 beard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all 
 others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service; 
 'the world was all before us,' and we pitched our tent for the 
 night in any spot we chose. This house I have already 
 described as a large one ; it stands in a conspicuous situation, 
 and in a well-known part of London. Many of my readers 
 will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of reading 
 this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws 
 me to London; about ten o'clock this very night, 15th August 
 1S21, being my birthday, I turned aside from my evening 
 walk down Oxford Street purposely to take a glance at it. It 
 is now occupied by a respectable family ; and by the lights in 
 the front drawing-room I observed a domestic party, assembled 
 perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay — marvellous 
 contrast in my eyes to the darkness, cold, silence, and desola- 
 tion of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly 
 occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child 1 
 Her, by the bye, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. 
 Apart from her situation, she was not what would be called an 
 interesting child ; she was neither pretty, nor quick in under- 
 standing, nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank 
 God, even in those years I needed not the embeUishments of 
 novel accessories to conciliate my affections. Plain human 
 nature in its humblest and most homely apparel was enough 
 for me ; and I loved the child because she was my partner in 
 wretchedness. If she is now living, she is probably a mother,
 
 6o NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 with children of her own ; but, as I have said, I could never 
 trace her. 
 
 [The young dreamer was destined to sink still deeper, and 
 endure still further the pangs of hunger and poverty. While 
 pacing 'stony-hearted' Oxford Street, he had turned into 
 Soho Square, where he sank on a door-step, overpowered by 
 the hardships he had undergone, and might have died there 
 but for the noble conduct of an unknown and friendless 
 woman named Anne, v.-ho supplied him with a stimulant at a 
 time when most required to recruit his exhausted strength. 
 His preserver he never saw after leaving London for Eton, 
 but he has preserved the memory of her deed in the im- 
 perishable language of the English Opium-Eater.'] 
 
 Soon after the period of the last incident recorded, I 
 met, in Albemarle Street, a gentleman of his late Majesty's 
 household. This gentleman had received hospitalities, on 
 different occasions, from my family, and he challenged me 
 upon the strength of my family likeness. I did not attempt 
 any disguise. I answered his questions ingenuously, and, on 
 his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me 
 to my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend the 
 attorney's. The next day I received from him a ^lo bank- 
 note. The letter enclosing it was delivered with other letters 
 of business to the attorney ; but though his look and manner 
 informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to 
 me honourably and without demur. 
 
 This present, from the particular service to which it was 
 applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had 
 allured me up to London, and which I had been (to use a 
 forensic word) soliciting from the first day of my arri\al in 
 London to that of my final departure.
 
 THOMAS DE Q UlNCE K 6 r 
 
 In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my readers 
 that I should not have found some means of staving off the 
 last extremities of penury ; and it will strike them that two 
 resources at least must have been open to me — viz., either 
 to seek assistance from the friends of my family, or to turn 
 my youthful talents and attainments into some channel of 
 pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe 
 generally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the 
 chance of being reclaimed by my guardians ; not doubting 
 that whatever power the law gave them would have been 
 enforced against me to the utmost, that is, to the extremity of 
 forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted — a 
 restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a dis- 
 honour even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when 
 extorted from me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes 
 and efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than 
 death, and which would indeed have terminated in death. I 
 was, therefore, shy enough of applying for assistance even in 
 those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at the risk of 
 furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me. But, 
 as to London in particular, though doubtless my father had in 
 his lifetime had many friends there, yet, as ten years had 
 passed since his death, I remembered few of them even by 
 name ; and never having seen London before, except once for 
 a few hours, I knew not the address of even those few. To 
 this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the difficulty, but 
 much more the paramount fear which I have mentioned, 
 habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I 
 now feel half inclined to join my reader in wondering that I 
 should have overlooked it As a corrector of Greek proofs (if 
 in no other way), I might doubtless have gained enough for
 
 62 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 my slender wants. Such an office as this I could have dis- 
 charged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would 
 soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. But it 
 must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it 
 was necessary that I should first of all have an introduction 
 to some respectable publisher, and this I had no means of 
 obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had never once 
 occurred to me to think of literary labours as a source of 
 profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had 
 ever occurred to me but that of borrowing it on the strength 
 of my future claims and expectations. This mode I sought 
 by every avenue to compass ; and amongst other persons I 
 
 applied to a Jew named D . 
 
 To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some 
 of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself 
 with an account of my expectations; which account, on ex- 
 amining my father's will at Doctors' Commons, they had ascer- 
 tained to be correct. The person there mentioned as the 
 
 second son of , was found to have all the claims (or more 
 
 than all) that 1 had stated ; but one question still remained, 
 which the faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested, Was 
 / that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me as a 
 possible one ; I had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends 
 scrutinized me keenly, that I might be too well known to be 
 that person, and that some scheme might be passing in their 
 minds for entrapping me and selling me to my guardians. It 
 was strange to me to find my own self, materialiter considered 
 (so I expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of distinc- 
 tions), accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own 
 self, formaliter considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, 
 I took the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales,
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 63 
 
 I had received various letters from young friends ; these I pro- 
 duced, for I carried them constantly in my pocket — being, 
 indeed, by this time, almost the only relics of my personal 
 encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore) which I had not 
 in one way or other disposed of. INIost of these letters were 
 
 from the Earl of , who was at that time my chief (or rather 
 
 only) confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. 
 
 I had also some from the Marquis of , his father, who, 
 
 though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an 
 Etonian himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs 
 to be, still retained an affection for classical studies and for 
 youthful scholars. He had accordingly, from the time that I 
 was fifteen, corresponded with me, — sometimes upon the great 
 improvements which he had made, or was meditating, in the 
 counties of M and SI since I had been there; some- 
 times upon the merits of a Latin poet, and at other times 
 suggesting subjects to me on which he wished me to write 
 verses. 
 
 On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to 
 furnish me with two or three hundred pounds on my personal 
 security, provided I could persuade the young Earl, who was, 
 by the way, not older than myself, to guarantee the payment 
 on our coming of age ; the Jew's final object being, as I now 
 suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect to make by me, 
 but the prospect of establishing a connection with my noble 
 friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. 
 In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, about 
 eight or nine days after I had received the ;£'i.o, I prepared to 
 go down to Eton. Nearly jQT) of the money I had given to 
 my money-lending friend, on his alleging that the stamps must 
 be bought, in order that the writings might be preparing whilst
 
 64 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 I was away from London. I thought in my heart that he was 
 lying ; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging 
 his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my 
 friend the attorney (vrho was connected Vv'ith the money-lenders 
 as their lawj^er), to which, indeed, he was entitled for his un- 
 furnished lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had employed in 
 re-establishing (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of 
 the remainder, I gave one-quarter to Anne, meaning on my 
 return to have divided with her whatever might remain. These 
 arrangements made, soon after six o'clock on a dark winter 
 evening I set off, accompanied by Anne, towards Piccadilly; 
 for it was my intention to go down as far as Salt Hill on the 
 Bath or Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the 
 town which has now all disappeared, so that I can no longer 
 retrace its ancient boundaries — Swallow Street, I think it was 
 called. Having time enough before us, however, we bore 
 away to the left until we came into Golden Square; there, 
 near the corner of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing 
 to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her 
 of my plans some time before ; and I now assured her again 
 that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with any, 
 and that I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to 
 protect her. This I fully intended, as much from inclination 
 as from a sense of duty ; for, setting aside gratitude, which in 
 any case must have made me her debtor for life, I loved her 
 as affectionately as if she had been my sister, and at this mo- 
 ment with seven-fold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her 
 extreme dejection. I had, apparently, most reason for dejec- 
 tion, because I was leaving the saviour of my life; yet I, 
 considering the shock my health had received, was cheerful 
 and full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting with
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 65 
 
 one who nad had httle means of serving her, except by kind- 
 ness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow ; so 
 that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put her arms 
 about my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hoped 
 to return in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on 
 the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, she would 
 wait for me at six o'clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield 
 Street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of 
 rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great 
 Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This and other measures of 
 precaution I took ; one only I forgot. She had either never 
 told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten, 
 her surname. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of 
 humble rank in her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading 
 women of higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss 
 Douglass, Miss Montague, etc., but simply by their Christian 
 names, Mary, Jane, Frances, etc. Her surname, as the surest 
 means of tracing her hereafter, I ought now to have inquired ; 
 but the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting 
 could, in consequence of a short interruption, be more difficult 
 or uncertain than it had been for so many weeks, I had 
 scarcely for a moment adverted to it as necessary, or placed it 
 amongst my memoranda against this parting interview; and, 
 my final anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, 
 and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medi- 
 cines for a violent cough and hoarseness with which she was 
 troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late to recall 
 her. 
 
 It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester 
 Coffee-house ; and, the Bristol mail being on the point of 
 going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion 
 
 VI. K
 
 66 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 of this mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable, 
 that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for 
 some months was on the outside of a mail-coach — a bed which, 
 at this day, I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this 
 sleep was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others 
 did at that time, to convince me how easily a man who has 
 never been in any great distress may pass through life without 
 knowing, in his own person at least, anything of the possible 
 goodness of the human heart — or, as I must add with a sigh, 
 of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of inannen is drawn 
 over the features and expression of men's natures, that, to the 
 ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of 
 varieties which lie between them, are all confounded — the vast 
 and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced 
 to the meagre outline of differences expressed in the gamut or 
 alphabet of elementary sounds. The case was this : for the 
 first four or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow- 
 passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against him when 
 the coach gave a lurch to his side ; and, indeed, if the road had 
 been less smooth and level than it was, I should have fallen off 
 from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as 
 perhaps, in the same circumstances, most people would. He 
 expressed his complaint, however, more morosely than the 
 occasion seemed to waiTant ; and, if I had parted with him at 
 that moment, I should have thought of him (if I had con- 
 sidered it worth while to think of him at all) as a surly and 
 almost brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that I had 
 given him some cause for complaint, and therefore I apolo- 
 gized to him, and assured him I would do what I could to 
 avoid falling asleep for the future ; and at the same time, in 
 as few words as possible, I explained to him that I was ill and
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 67 
 
 ill a weak state from long suffering, and that I could not afford 
 at that time to take an inside place. This man's manner 
 changed upon hearing this explanation in an instant; and 
 when I next woke for a minute from the noise and lights of 
 Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I had fallen 
 asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken 
 to him), I found that he had put his arm round me to proect 
 me from faUing off; and for the rest of my journey he behaved 
 to me with the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I 
 almost lay in his arms; and this was the more kind, as he 
 could not have known that I was not going the whole way to 
 Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did go rather farther 
 than I intended ; for so genial and refreshing was my sleep, 
 that the next time after leaving Hounslow that I fully awoke, 
 was upon the sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post 
 office), and, on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maiden- 
 head — six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salt HiU. Here 
 I alighted, and for the half-minute that the mail stopped, I 
 was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the 
 transient glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to 
 me to be a gentleman's butler, or person of that rank) to go to 
 bed without delay. This I promised, though with no intention 
 of doing so ; and, in foct, I immediately set forward, or rather 
 backward, on foot. It must then have been nearly midnight, 
 but so slowly did I creep along, that I heard a clock in a 
 cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from Slough 
 to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me, but 
 I was weary nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious 
 enough, and which has been prettily expressed by a Roman 
 poel) which gave me some consolation at that moment under 
 my poverty. There had been some tlaie before a murder
 
 68 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 committed on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot 
 be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person 
 was Steele, and that he was the owner of a lavender plantation 
 in that neighbourhood. Every step of my progress was 
 bringing me nearer to the heath ; and it naturally occurred 
 to me that I and the accused murderer, if he were that night 
 abroad, might at every instant be unconsciously approaching 
 e:ich other through the darkness; in which case, said I, — 
 supposing I, instead of being (as indeed I am) little better 
 than an outcast, 
 
 'Lord of my learning and no land beside,' 
 
 were, like my friend Lord , heir by general repute to 
 
 ^70,000 per annum, — what a panic should I be under at this 
 moment about my throat ! Indeed, it was not likely that 
 
 Lord should ever be in my situation. But, nevertheless, 
 
 the spirit of the remark remains true, that vast power and 
 possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying ; and I am 
 convinced that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by 
 fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural 
 courage, would, if at the very instant of going into action news 
 were brought to them that they had unexpectedly succeeded 
 to an estate in England of ^^50,000 a year, feel their dislike 
 to bullets considerably sharpened,^ and their efforts at per- 
 fect equanimity and self-possession proportionably difficult. 
 So true it is, in the language of a wise man whose own experi- 
 
 ^ It will be objected that many men of the highest rank and wealth, 
 have in our own day, as well as throughout our histoiy, been amongst the 
 foremost in courting danger in battle. True, but this is not the case 
 supposed ; long familiarity with power has to them deadened its effect and 
 its attractions.
 
 THOMAS r>E QUINCE Y. 69 
 
 dice had made him acquainted wiih both fortunes, that riches 
 are better fitted 
 
 ' To slacken virtue, and abate her age, 
 Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise.' 
 
 Paradise Regained. 
 
 I dally with my subject because, to myself, the remembrance 
 of these times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall 
 not have any further cause to complain, for I now hasten to 
 its close. In the road between Slough and Eton, I fell asleep; 
 and just as the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by 
 the voice of a man standing over me and surveying me. I 
 know not what he was ; he was an ill-looking fellow, but not 
 therefore of necessity an ill-meaning fellow; or, if he were, I 
 suppose he thought that no person sleeping out-of-doors in 
 winter could be worth robbing. In which conclusion, how- 
 ever, as it regarded myself, I beg to assure him, if he should 
 be among my readers, that he was mistaken. After a slight 
 remark he passed on ; and I was not sorry at his disturbance, 
 as it enabled me to pass through Eton before people were 
 generally up. The night had been heavy and lowering ; but 
 towards the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the 
 ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped 
 through Eton unobserved ; washed myself, and, as far as 
 possible, adjusted my dress, at a little public-house in Windsor; 
 and about eight o'clock went down towards Pote's. On my 
 road I met some junior boys of whom I made inquiries. An 
 Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby 
 
 habiliments, they answered me civilly. My friend. Lord , 
 
 was gone to the University of . 'Ibi omnis effusus 
 
 labor ! ' I had, however, other friends at Eton ; but it is not 
 to all who wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing
 
 70 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself, how- 
 ever, I asked for the Earl of D , to whom (though rny 
 
 acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with some 
 others) I should not have shrunk from presenting myself under 
 any circumstances. He was still at Eton, though I believe on 
 the wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and 
 asked to breakfast. 
 
 Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from 
 any erroneous conclusions ; because I have had occasion 
 incidentally to speak of various patrician friends, it must not 
 be supposed that I have myself any pretension to rank and 
 high blood. I thank God that I have not. I am the son of 
 a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for his great 
 integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he 
 was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived, it was 
 expected that he would have been very rich ; but, dying 
 prematurely, he left no more than about ^^30,000 amongst 
 seven different claimants. My mother I may mention with 
 honour, as still more highly gifted. For though unpretending 
 to the name and honours of a literary woman, I shall presume 
 to call her (what many literary women are not) an intellectual 
 woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be col- 
 lected and published^ they v.'ould be thought generally to 
 exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as 
 pure ' mother English,' racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, 
 as any in our language — hardly excepting those of Lady M. 
 W. Montague. These are my honours of descent ; I have no 
 others ; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, 
 because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too 
 eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the 
 most favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities.
 
 THOMAS BE QUINCEY. 71 
 
 Lord D placed before me a most magnificent breakfast 
 
 It was really so ; but in my e}es it seemed trebly magnificent, 
 from being the first regular meal, the first 'good man's 
 table,' that I had sat down to for months. Strange to say, 
 however, I could scarce eat anything. On the day when I first 
 received my ;^io bank-note, I had gone to a baker's shop and 
 bought a couple of rolls ; this very sliop I had two months or 
 six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it 
 was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the 
 story about Otway, and feared that there might be danger in 
 eating too rapidly. But I had no need for alarm : my appetite 
 was quite sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of 
 what I had bought. This effect from eating what approached 
 to a meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or, when I did not 
 experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, some- 
 times with acidity, sometimes immediately, and without any 
 
 acidity. On the present occasion, at Lord D 's table, I 
 
 found myself not at all better than usual ; and, in the midst of 
 luxuries, I had no appetite. I had, however, unfortunately, at 
 all times a craving for wine ; I explained my situation, there- 
 fore, to Lord D , and gave him a short account of my late 
 
 sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and called 
 for wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure, and 
 on all occasions when I had an opportunity, I never failed 
 to drink wine, which I worshipped then as I have since 
 worshipped opium. I am convinced, however, that this 
 indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my malady ; for 
 the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a 
 better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps efifectuaHy, have 
 been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine 
 that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends ; I
 
 72 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of 
 
 Lord D , on whom I was conscious I had not sufficient 
 
 claims, the particular service in quest of which I had come 
 down to Eton. I was, however, unwilling to lose my journey, 
 
 and— I asked it. Lord D , whose good - nature was 
 
 unbounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been 
 measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my condition, 
 and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, 
 than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own 
 direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He 
 acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings with 
 money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction might come 
 to the ears of his connections. Moreover, he doubted whether 
 his signature, whose expectations were so much more bounded 
 
 than those of , would avail with my unchristian friends. 
 
 However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an 
 absolute refusal ; for after a httle consideration, he promised, 
 under certain conditions which he pointed out, to give his 
 
 security. Lord D was at this time not eighteen years of 
 
 age ; but I have often doubted, on recollecting since the good 
 sense and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with 
 so much urbanity of manner (an urbanity which in him wore 
 the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any statesman— the 
 oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy — could have 
 acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most 
 jjeople, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business with- 
 out surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as 
 those of a Saracen's head. 
 
 Re-comforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to 
 the best, but far above the worst that I had pictured to myself 
 as possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to London three
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 73 
 
 days after I had (quitted it. And now I come to the end of 
 
 my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord D 's terms ; 
 
 whether they would in the end have acceded to them, and 
 were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; 
 but many delays were made — time passed on — the small 
 fragments of my bank-note had just melted away ; and before 
 any conclusion could have been put to the business, I must 
 have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. Suddenly, 
 however, at this crisis, an opening was made, almost by 
 accident, for reconciliation with my friends. I quitted London 
 in haste for a remote part of England; after some time 
 I proceeded to the university, and it was not until many 
 months had passed away that I had it in my power again to 
 revisit the ground which had become so interesting to me, 
 and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of my youthful 
 sufferings. 
 
 Meantime, what had become of poor Anne ? For her I 
 have reserved my concluding words. According to our agree- 
 ment, I sought her daily, and waited for her every night, so 
 long as I stayed in London, at the corner of Titchfield Street. 
 I inquired for her of every one who was likely to know her ; and, 
 during the last hours of my stay in London, I put into activity 
 every means of tracing her that my knowledge of London 
 suggested, and the limited extent of my power made possible. 
 The street where she had lodged I knew, but not the house ; 
 and I remembered at last some account which she had given 
 me of ill-treatment from her landlord, which made it probable 
 that she had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She 
 had few acquaintances ; most people, besides, thought that the 
 earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved 
 their laughter or their slight regard ; and others, thinking I
 
 74 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were 
 naturally and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, 
 if, indeed, they had any to give. Finally, as my despairing 
 resource, on the day I left London I put into the hands of the 
 only person who (I was sure) must know Anne by sight, from 
 having been in company with us once or twice, an address to 
 
 in shire, at that time the residence of my family. 
 
 But, to this hour, I have never heard a syllable about her. 
 This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this 
 life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless 
 we must have been sometimes in search of each other, at the 
 very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London ; 
 perhaps even within a few feet of each other — a barrier no 
 wider, in a London street, often amounting in the end to a 
 separation for eternity ! During some years I hoped that she 
 did live ; and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical 
 use of the word myriad^ I may say that on my different visits 
 to London, I have looked into many, many myriads of female 
 faces, in the hope of meeting her. I should know her again 
 amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a moment ; for, though 
 not handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance, 
 and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought 
 her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years ; but now I 
 should fear to see her ; and her cough, which grieved me 
 when I parted with her, is now my consolation. I now wish 
 to see her no longer, but think of her, more gladly, as one 
 long since laid in the grave — in the grave, I would hope, of a 
 Magdalen ; taken away before injuries and cruelty had blotted 
 out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of 
 ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun.
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 75 
 
 So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother ! thou tliat 
 listenest to the sighs of ori;lians, and drinkest the tears of 
 children, at length I was dismissed from thee ; the time was 
 come at last that I no more should pace in anguish thy never- 
 ending terraces — no more should dream, and wake in captivity 
 to the pangs of hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and 
 Anne, have, doubtless, since then trodden in our footsteps — 
 inheritors of our calamities ; other orphans than Anne have 
 sighed; tears have been shed by other children; and thou, 
 Oxford Street, hast since, doubtless, echoed to the groans cf 
 innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm which I 
 had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long fair- 
 weather ; the premature sufferings which I had paid down, to 
 have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a 
 price of long immunity from sorrow ; and if again I walked in 
 London, a solitary and contemplative man (as oftentimes I 
 did), I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. 
 And although it is true that the calamities of my noviciate in 
 London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution 
 that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew 
 into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened 
 my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were met 
 with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a 
 maturer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathizing 
 affection — how deep and tender ! 
 
 Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were 
 far asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering 
 derived from a common root. x\nd herein I notice an instance 
 of the short-sightedness of human desires, that oftentimes on 
 moonlight nights, during my first mournful abode in London, 
 my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from
 
 •J 6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces 
 through the heart of Mar}'lebone to the fields and the woods ; 
 for that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which 
 lay part in light and part in shade, ' that is the road to the 
 
 North, and therefore to ; and if I had the wings of a 
 
 dove, that way I would fly for comfort.' Thus I said, and 
 thus I wished, in my blindness ; yet, even in that very northern 
 region it was, even in that very valley,— nay, in tliat very house 
 to which my erroneous wishes pointed,— that this second birth 
 of my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to 
 besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for 
 years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly 
 phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an Orestes ; and in 
 this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a 
 respite and a restoration, and to him especially as a blessed 
 balm for his wounded heart and his haunted brain, visited me 
 as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires ; 
 yet, if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man 
 and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their 
 alleviations ; and a grief which had not been feared is met by 
 consolations which had not been hoped. I, therefore, who 
 participated, as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting 
 only in his agitated conscience), participated no less in all 
 his supports : my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, 
 and stared in upon me through the curtains ; but, watching by 
 my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company 
 through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra : for 
 thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou 
 wast my Electra ! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long- 
 suffering affection, wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should 
 excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 77 
 
 stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations 
 of tendcrest affection ; to wipe away for years the unwhole- 
 some dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when 
 parched and baked with fever; nor, even when thy own 
 peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with 
 the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy 
 enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more ! '—not even 
 then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor with- 
 draw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, 
 more than Electra did of old. For she too, though she was a 
 Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet 
 wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe. 
 
 But these troubles are past ; and thou wilt read these records 
 of a period so dolorous to us both as the legend of some 
 hideous dream that can return no more. Meantime, I am 
 again in London, and again I pace the terraces of Oxford 
 Street by night ; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by 
 anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of 
 thy presence to support, and yet remember that I am separated 
 from thee by three hundred miles, and the length of three 
 dreary months, I look up the streets that run northwards 
 from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my 
 youthful ejaculation of anguish ; and remembering that thou 
 art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very 
 house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years 
 ago, I think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the 
 winds of late, the promptings of my heart may yet have had 
 reference to a remoter time, and may be justified if read in 
 another meaning ; — and, if I could allow myself to descend 
 again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say 
 to ni} self, as I look to the north, ' Oh that I had the wings of
 
 78 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 a dove ' — and with how just a confidence in thy good and 
 gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejacula- 
 tion : ' And that way I would fly for comfort.' 
 
 The Pleasures of Opium. 
 
 It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a 
 trifling incident in my life I might have forgotten its date ; but 
 cardinal events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances 
 connected with it I remember that it must be referred to the 
 autumn of 1S04. During that season I was in London, 
 having come thither for the first time since my entrance at 
 college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following 
 way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my 
 head in cold water at least once a day. Being suddenly 
 seized with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation 
 caused by an accidental intermission of that practice, jumped 
 out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and 
 with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I 
 need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of 
 the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for 
 about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, 
 and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets; rather to 
 run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct 
 purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who 
 recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimaginable 
 pleasure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of 
 ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at 
 that time ! What solemn chords does it now strike upon my 
 heart ! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy 
 remembrances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 79 
 
 mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances 
 connected with the place and the time, and the man (if man 
 he was) that first laid open to me the Paradise of Opium- 
 eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless ; and a 
 duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy 
 Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford 
 Street ; and near ' the stately Pantheon,' as Mr. Wordsworth 
 has obligingly called it, I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist, 
 — unconscious minister of celestial pleasures I — as if in sym- 
 pathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as 
 any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday ; 
 and wlien I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me 
 as any other man might do ; and furthermore, out of my 
 shilling returned to me what seemed to be real copper half- 
 pence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in 
 spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed 
 in my mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent 
 down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it confirms 
 me in this w'ay of considering him, that, when I next came up 
 to London, I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found 
 him not ; and thus to me, who knew not his name (if indeed 
 he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford 
 Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The 
 reader may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a 
 sublunary druggist. It may be so ; but my faith is better : I 
 believe him to have evanesced or evaporated, so unwillingly 
 would I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and 
 place, and creature, that firot brought me acquainted with the 
 celestial drug. 
 
 Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a 
 moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily
 
 8o NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium taking ; and 
 what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it ; 
 and in an hour, oh, heavens ! what a revulsion ! What an 
 upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit ! What an 
 apocalypse of the world within me ! That my pains had 
 vanished was now a trifle in my eyes. This negative effect 
 was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects 
 which had opened before me — in the abyss of divine enjoy- 
 ment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea— a 
 ffidpiJLaKov v-qTrevO^'i for all human woes. Here was the secret 
 of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so 
 many ages, at once discovered. Happiness might now be 
 bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; 
 portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint botde; 
 and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail 
 coach. But if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am 
 laughing ; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long 
 who deals much with opium. Its pleasures even are of a 
 grave and solemn complexion; and in his happiest state the 
 opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of F Allegro 
 — even then he speaks and thinks as becomes // Penseroso. 
 Nevertheless I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times 
 in the midst of my own misery; and unless when I am checked 
 by some more powerful feeling, I am afraid I shall be guilty of 
 this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or 
 enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm 
 nature in this respect ; and with a few indulgences of that 
 sort, I shall endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a 
 theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so 
 drowsy as it is falsely reputed. 
 
 And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects ; for
 
 THOMAS BE QUINCE Y. 8i 
 
 upon all that has been hitherto written on tlie subject of 
 opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their 
 privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors 
 of medicine writing ex cathedra, I have but one emphatic 
 criticism to pronounce : Lies ! lies ! lies ! I remember once, 
 in passing a bookstall, to have caught these words from a page 
 of some satiric author : * By this time I became convinced that 
 the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz. 
 on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon 
 
 for the list of bankrupts.' In like manner, I do by no 
 
 means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world 
 in regard to opium. Thus it has been repeatedly affirmed by 
 the learned, that opium is a dusky brown in colour ; and this, 
 take notice, I grant Secondly, that it is rather dear, which 
 also I grant ; for in my time East Indian opium has been 
 three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight. And, thirdly, that 
 if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must — do what 
 is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. 
 die.^ These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true. 
 I cannot gainsay them. And truth ever was, and will be, 
 commendable. But in these three theorems I beheve we 
 have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by 
 man on the subject of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, 
 as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside 
 and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter. 
 
 ^ Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted ; for in a 
 pirated edition of Buchan's Domestic ]\Iedicine, which I once saw in the 
 hands of a farmer's wife who was studying it for the benefit of her health, 
 the doctor was made to say : ' Be particularly careful never to take above 
 five-and-twenly oiiitccs of laudanum at once ; ' the true reading being 
 probaljy five-and-twenty diops, which are held equal to about one grain of 
 crude opium, 
 
 VI. F
 
 82 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, 
 by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that 
 it does, or can, produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure 
 yourself, meo periculo, that no quantity of opium ever did or 
 could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly 
 called laudanum), that might certainly intoxicate if a man 
 could bear to take enough of it But why ? Because it con- 
 tains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so 
 much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is 
 incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling 
 that which is produced by alcohol ; and not in degree only 
 incapable, but even in kind: it is not in the quantity of its 
 effects merely, but in the quality that it differs altogether. 
 The pleasure given by wine is always mounting, and tending 
 to a crisis, after which it declines ; that from opium, when 
 once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours. The first, 
 to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of 
 acute, the second the chronic pleasure — the one is a flame, 
 the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction 
 lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, 
 opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), intro- 
 duces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and 
 harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession ; opium 
 greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judg- 
 ment, and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid 
 exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, the loves 
 and the hatreds of the drinker. Opium, on the contrary, 
 communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, 
 active or passive ; and with respect to the temper and moral 
 leelmgs in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth 
 v.-hich is approved by the judgment, and which would probably
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 83 
 
 always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or ante- 
 diluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives 
 an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections ; but 
 then with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden 
 development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebria- 
 tion, there is always more or less of a maudlin character, 
 which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men 
 ihake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears, no 
 mortal knows why ; and the sensual creature is clearly upper- 
 most. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to 
 opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that 
 state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal 
 of any deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and 
 quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and 
 good. True it is that even wine, up to a certain point, and 
 with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the 
 intellect. I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, 
 used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously 
 affected the faculties — brightened and intensified the con- 
 sciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of homg ponderilms 
 librata suis; and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular 
 language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on 
 the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and it is 
 when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in 
 Athenoeus) that men la.vrov<s e/A^avt^ovo-tv otTtve9 dcriv, display 
 themselves in their true complexion of character, which surely 
 is not disguising themselves. But still wine constantly leads a 
 man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance ; and beyond 
 a certain point it is sure to volatilize and to disperse the 
 intellectual energies ; whereas opium always seems to compose 
 what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been
 
 84 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is 
 inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in 
 a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, 
 too often the brutal part of his nature ; but the opium-eater (I 
 speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other 
 remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of his 
 nature is paramount — that is, the moral affections are in a 
 state of cloudless serenity, and over all is the great light of the 
 majestic intellect. 
 
 This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of 
 opium, of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only 
 member — the alpha and the omega ; but then it is to be recol- 
 lected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound 
 personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific authors 
 who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have 
 written expressly on the materia niedica, make it evident, from 
 the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge 
 of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknow- 
 ledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to 
 its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity; 
 for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. 
 I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) 
 charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his 
 friends apologized for him, by suggesting that he was con- 
 stantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accu- 
 sation, said I, is not prima facie and of necessity an absurd 
 one ; but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he insisted 
 that both his enemies and his friends were in the right. * I 
 will maintain,' said he, 'that I </<7talk nonsense; and secondly, 
 I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or 
 with any view to profit, but solely and simply,' said he — 'solely
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 85 
 
 and simply — solely and simply ' (repeating it three times over), 
 'because I am drunk with opium, and i/iat daily.' I replied 
 that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be 
 established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the 
 three parties concerned all agree in it, it did not become me 
 to question it ; but the defence set up I must demur to. He 
 proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons ; 
 but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which 
 must have presumed a man mistaken in a point belonging to 
 his own profession, that I did not press him even when his 
 course of argument seemed open to objection; not to mention 
 that a man who talks nonsense, even though * with no view to 
 profit,' is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dis- 
 pute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, 
 that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a 
 good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice ; but still 
 I must plead my experience, which was greater than his 
 greatest by 7000 drops a day ; and, though it was not possible 
 to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic 
 symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet struck me that be 
 might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication 
 with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes 
 of nervous excitement, instead of restricting it as the expres- 
 sion for a specific sort of excitement connected with certain 
 diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, 
 that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical 
 student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I 
 have reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day 
 that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on 
 a beef-steak. 
 
 Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in
 
 86 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a 
 third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by 
 opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, 
 and that the natural and even immediate consequence of 
 opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first 
 of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying, 
 assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took 
 opium at inten^als, the day succeeding to that on which I 
 allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually 
 good spirits. 
 
 With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if 
 we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium- 
 eaters) to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that 
 also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, 
 and some such effect it may produce in the end ; but the 
 primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, 
 to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its 
 action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, for upwards 
 of eight hours ; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater 
 himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to 
 speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic in- 
 fluence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, 
 it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian 
 statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that the 
 reader may judge of the degnree in which opium is likely to 
 stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of 
 treating the question illustratively rather than argumentatively) 
 describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium 
 evening in London, during the period between 1804 and 181 2. 
 It will be seen, that at least opium did not move me to seek 
 solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. F7 
 
 of self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account 
 at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary ; 
 but I regard t/iat little. I must desire my reader to bear in 
 mind that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all 
 the rest of my time, and certainly I had a right occasionally to 
 relaxations as well as other people ; these, however, I allowed 
 myself but seldom. 
 
 The late Duke of used to say, ' Next Friday, by the 
 
 blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk ; ' and in like 
 manner I used to fix beforehand how often, within a given 
 time, and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This 
 was seldom more than once in three weeks ; for at that time I 
 could not have ventured to call every day (as I did afterwards) 
 for 'a glass 0/ laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar.'' 
 No; as I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, 
 more than once in three weeks. This was usually on a Tues- 
 day or a Saturday night ; my reason for which was this. In 
 those days Grassini sang at the opera, and her voice was 
 delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I know 
 not what may be the state of the opera-house now, having 
 never been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that 
 time it was by much the most pleasant place of public resort 
 in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted 
 one to the gallery, which was subject to far less annoyance 
 than the pit of the theatres. The orchestra was distinguished 
 by its sweet and melodious grandeur from all English orches- 
 tras, the composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to 
 my ear, from the predominance of the clamorous instruments, 
 and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were 
 divine to hear ; and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, 
 as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as
 
 88 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Andromache at the tomb of Hector, etc., I question whether 
 any Turk, of all that ever entered the Paradise of Opium-eaters, 
 can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour 
 the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any 
 pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. 
 For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to 
 the temperament of him who hears it. And, by the bye, with 
 the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in 
 Twelfth Night, I do not recollect more than one thing said 
 adequately on the subject of music in all literature. It is a 
 passage in the Religio Medici of Sir T. Brown ; and, though 
 chiefly remarkable for its suWimity, has also a philosophic 
 value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical 
 effects. The mistake of most people is to suppose that it is 
 by the ear they communicate with music, and therefore that 
 they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so ; it is 
 by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear (the 
 matter coming by the senses, the form from the mind) that the 
 pleasure is constructed ; and therefore it is that people of 
 equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another. 
 Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind 
 generally, increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its 
 activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw 
 material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. 
 But, says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me like 
 a collection of Arabic characters ; I can attach no ideas to 
 them. Ideas ! my good sir ? There is no occasion for them ; 
 all that class of ideas which can be available in such a case 
 has a language of representative feelings. But this is a subject 
 foreign to my present purposes ; it is sufficient to say, that a 
 chorus, etc of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 89 
 
 a piece of arras work, the whole of my past Hfe, — not as if 
 recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated 
 in the music ; no longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail 
 of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, 
 and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this 
 was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the 
 music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, 
 in the intervals of the performance, the music of the Italian 
 language talked by Italian women ; for the gallery was usually 
 crowded with Italians, and I listened with a pleasure such as 
 that with which Weld, the traveller, lay and listened in Canada 
 to the sweet laughter of Indian women : for the less you 
 understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the 
 melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, 
 therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian 
 scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor 
 understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken. 
 
 These were my opera pleasures. But another pleasure I 
 had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occa- 
 sionally struggled with my love of the opera j for, at that time, 
 Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera nights. On this 
 subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but I can assure 
 the reader, not at all more so than Marinus in his life of 
 Proclus, or many other biographers and autobiographers of 
 fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had 
 only on a Saturday night. Wliat then was Saturday night to 
 me more than any other night? I had no labours that I 
 rested from, no wages to receive ; what needed I to care for 
 Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear 
 Grassini? True, most logical reader, what you say is un- 
 answerable. And yet so it was and is, that, whereas different
 
 90 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 men throw their feeUngs into different channels, and most 
 are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor 
 chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with 
 their distresses and sorrows, I, at that time, was disposed to 
 express my interest by sympathizing with their pleasures. The 
 pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of — more than 
 I wished to remember; but the pleasures of the poor, their 
 consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can 
 never become oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night 
 is the season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest 
 of the poor. In this point the most hostile sects unite, and 
 acknowledge a common link of brotherhood : almost all 
 Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest introductory 
 to another rest, and divided by a whole day and two nights 
 from the renewal of toil. On this account, I feel always on a 
 Saturday night as though I also were released from some yoke 
 of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury' of 
 repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon 
 as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sym- 
 pathy was so entire, I used often on Saturday nights after I 
 had taken opium to wander fortli, without much regarding the 
 direction or the distance, to all the markets and other parts of 
 London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night for 
 laying out their wages. Many a fariily party, consisting of a 
 man, his wife, and sometimes one oi two of his children, have 
 I listened to as they stood consulting on their ways and means, 
 or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household 
 articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their 
 difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be 
 heard murmurs of discontent, but far oftener expressions on 
 the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 91 
 
 tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say that, in this 
 point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich 
 — that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to 
 what they consider as irremediable evils or irreparable losses. 
 Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it witliout appearing 
 to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion 
 upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, 
 was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, 
 or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it 
 was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I 
 was glad ; yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium 
 some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, 
 that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from 
 the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into compliance 
 with the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great 
 distances ; for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the 
 motion of time. And sometimes in my attempts to steer 
 homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the 
 pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, 
 instead of circumnavigating all the capes and headlands I had 
 doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such 
 knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such 
 sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I 
 conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the 
 intellects of hackney coachmen. I could almost have believed 
 at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these 
 terrcR incognita, and doubted whether they had yet been laid 
 down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, 
 I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face 
 tyrannized over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps 
 in London came back and haunted my sleep, with the feeling
 
 92 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 of perplexities moral or intellectual, that brought confusion to 
 the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience. 
 
 Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity pro- 
 duce inactivity or torpor, but that, on the contrary, it often 
 led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, I will 
 admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts 
 of the opium-eater when in the divinest state incident to his 
 enjoyment. In that state crowds become an oppression to 
 him ; music, even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks 
 solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those 
 trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and 
 consummation of what opium can do for human nature. I, 
 whose disease it was to meditate too much, and to observe too 
 little, and who, upon my first entrance at college was nearly 
 falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on 
 the sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was suffi- 
 ciently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all 
 I could to counteract them. I was, indeed, like a person who, 
 according to the old legend, had entered the cave of Tro- 
 phonius ; and the remedies I sought were to force myself into 
 society, and to keep my understanding in continual activity 
 upon matters of science. But for these remedies I should 
 certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In 
 after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully 
 re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a 
 solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries 
 upon taking opium ; and more than once it has happened 
 to me, on a summer night, when I have been at an open 
 \\indow, in a room from which I could overlook the sea at 
 a mile below me, and could command a view of the great 
 town of L , at about the same distance, that I have sat,
 
 THOMAS BE QUINCE V. 93 
 
 from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to 
 move. 
 
 I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, 
 etc, but ihat shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, 
 was one of our wisest men ; and let my readers see if he, in 
 his philosophical works, be half as unmystical as I am. I say, 
 then, that it has often struck me that the scene itself was 
 somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The 
 
 town of L represented the earth, with its sorrows and its 
 
 graves left behind, yet not out of sight nor wholly forgotten. 
 The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded 
 over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind 
 and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me 
 as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar 
 of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife were sus- 
 pended ; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the 
 heart ; a Sabbath of repose ; a resting from human labours. 
 Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life 
 reconciled with the peace w^hich is in the grave; motions of 
 the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties 
 a halcyon calm ; a tranquillity that seemed no product of 
 inertia, but as if resulting from miglity and equal antagonisms ; 
 infinite activities, infinite repose. 
 
 Oh ! just, subtle, and mighty opium ! that to the hearts of 
 poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and 
 for 'the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel,' bringest an 
 assuaging balm ; eloquent opium ! that with thy potent rhetoric 
 stealest away the purposes of wrath ; and to the guilty man 
 lor one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands 
 washed pure from blood ; and to the proud man, a brief 
 oblivion for
 
 94 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 * \^'rongs unredress'd, and insults unavenged ; ' 
 
 that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs 
 of suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest per- 
 jury; and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges; 
 thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic 
 imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of 
 Phidias and Praxiteles — beyond the splendour of Babylon and 
 Hekatdmpylos ; and ' from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,' 
 callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and 
 the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the ' dis- 
 honours of the grave.' Thou only givest these gifts to man ; 
 and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and 
 mighty opium I 
 
 Introduction to the Pains of Onuaf. 
 
 Courteous and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all f/ij readers 
 must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I shall shock them too 
 much to count on their courtesy), having accompanied me 
 thus far, now let me request you to move onwards for about 
 eight years; that is to say, from 1804 (when I have said that 
 my acquaintance with opium first began) to 181 2. The years 
 of academic life are now over and gone — almost forgotten ; — ■ 
 the student's cap no longer presses my temples ; if my cap 
 exist at all, it presses those of some youthful scholar, I trust, 
 as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge. 
 My gown is by this time, I daresay, in the same condition 
 with many thousand of excellent books in the Bodleian, viz. 
 diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms ; or 
 departed, however (which is all that I know of its fate), to that 
 great reservoir of somezc/icre, to which all the tea-cups, tea-
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCRY. 95 
 
 caddies, teapots, tea-kettles, etc. have departed (not to speak 
 of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, 
 etc.), which occasional resemblances in the present generation 
 of tea-cups, etc. remind me of having once possessed, but of 
 whose departure and final fate I, in common with most gowns- 
 men of either university, could give, I suspect, but an obscure 
 and conjectural history. The persecutions of the chapel bell, 
 sounding its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins, 
 interrupts my slumbers no longer ; the porter who rang it, 
 upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I 
 wrote, in retaliation, so many Greek epigrams whilst I was 
 dressing, is dead, and has ceased to disturb anybody ; and I, 
 and many others, who suffered much from his tintinnabulous 
 propensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and have 
 foreiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity; it 
 rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a day, and cruelly annoys, 
 I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace 
 of mind; but, as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its 
 treacherous voice no longer (treacherous, I call it, for, by 
 some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery 
 tones as if it had been inviting one to a party) ; its tones have 
 no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit as 
 favourable as the malice of the bell itself could wish ; for I am 
 250 miles away from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. 
 And what am I doing among the mountains ? Taking opium. 
 Yes; but what else? Why, reader, in 181 2, the year we are 
 now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, I have been 
 chiefly studying German metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, 
 Fichte, Schelling, etc. And how and in what manner do I 
 live ? in short, what class or description of men do I belong 
 to? I am at this period, viz. in 181 2, living in a cottage, and
 
 96 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 with a single female servant (Jioni soit qui mal y pense), who, 
 amongst my neighbours, passes by the name of my 'house- 
 keeper.' And, as a scholar, and a man of learned education, 
 and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume to class myself 
 as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called gentle- 
 men. Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps ; partly 
 because, from my having no visible calling or business, it is 
 rightly judged that I must be living on my private fortune, 
 I am so classed by my neighbours ; and by the courtesy of 
 modern England, I am usually addressed on letters, etc. 
 Esquif-e, though having, I fear, in the rigorous construction of 
 heralds, but slender pretensions to that distinguished honour ; 
 yes, in popular estimation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not 
 Justice of the Peace, nor Gustos Rotulorum. Am I married ? 
 Not yet. And I still take opium ? On Saturday nights. 
 And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since ' the rainy 
 Sunday,' and ' the stately Pantheon,' and 'the beatific druggist' 
 of 1804? Even so. And how do I find my health after all 
 this opium-eating ? in short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, 
 I thank you, reader ; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, ' as 
 well as can be expected.' In fact, if I dared to say the real 
 and simple truth, though, to satisfy the theories of medical 
 men, I ought to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the 
 spring of 181 2; and I hope sincerely that the quantity of 
 claret, port, or ' particular Madeira,' which, in all probability, 
 you, good reader, have taken, and design to take, for every 
 term of eight years during your natural life, may as little 
 disorder your health as mine was disordered by the opium I 
 had taken for eight years, between 1804 and 181 2. Hence 
 you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice 
 Aom Anastasiiis ; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 97 
 
 be a safe counsellor, but not in medicine. No ; it is far 
 better to consult Dr. Buchan, as I did ; for I never forgot that 
 worthy man's excellent suggestion, and I was 'particularly 
 careful not to take above five-and-twenty ounces of laudanum.' 
 To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may 
 ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least {i.e. in 181 2), I am 
 ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium 
 has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, 
 it must not be forgotten that hitherto I have been only a 
 dilettante eater of opium ; eight years' practice even, with the 
 single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every 
 indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary 
 to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a different 
 era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer 
 of the year we have just quitted, I had suffered much in bodily 
 health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy 
 event This event, being no ways related to the subject now 
 before me, further than through the bodily illness which it 
 produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this 
 illness oi 1812 had any share in that of 1S13, I know not; 
 but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most 
 appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as 
 that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and 
 accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the 
 point 01 my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justifica- 
 tion, the whole of what ioUows may be said to hinge. And here 
 I find myself in a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one 
 hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience, by such a detail 
 of my malady, and of my struggles with it, as might suffice to 
 establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with 
 
 irritation and constant suffering ; or, on the other hand, by 
 VL G
 
 9S NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 passing lightly over this critical part of my storj', I must 
 forego the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of 
 the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstruction 
 of having slipped, by the easy and gradual steps of self- 
 indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium- 
 eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking 
 predisposition in most readers, from my previous acknow- 
 ledgments). This is the dilemma, the first horn of which 
 would be sufficient to toss and gore any column of patient 
 readers, though dra^\^l sixteen deep and constantly relieved 
 by fresh men ; consequently that is not to be thought of. It 
 remains, then, that I postulate so much as is necessary for my 
 purpose. And let me take as full credit for what I postulate 
 as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the expense of 
 your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me 
 suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and 
 regard for your comfort. No ; believe all that I ask of you, 
 viz. that I could resist no longer — believe it liberally, and as 
 an act of grace, or else in mere prudence ; for, if not, then in 
 the next edition of my Opium Confessions revised and enlarged, 
 I will make you believe and tremble ; and a force d 'ennuyer, 
 by mere dint of pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine 
 from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall think 
 fit to make. 
 
 This then, let me repeat, I postulate — that, at the time I 
 began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. 
 Whether, indeed, afterwards I might not have succeeded in 
 breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all 
 efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the in- 
 numerable efforts which I did make, might not have been 
 can-ied much farther, and my gradual reconquests of ground
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 99 
 
 lost might not have been followed up much more energetically, 
 —these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might 
 make out a case of palliation ; but shall I speak ingenuously ? 
 I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too 
 much of an Eudxmonist; I hanker too much after a state of 
 happiness, both for myself and others ; I cannot face misery, 
 whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness, and 
 am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of 
 any reversionary benefit. On some other matters I can agree 
 with the gentlemen in the cotton trade at Manchester in 
 affecting the Stoic philosophy ; but not in this. Here I take 
 the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, and I look out for some 
 courteous and considerate sect that will condescend more to 
 the infirm condition of an opium-eater; that are 'sweet 
 men,' as Chaucer says, 'to give absolution,' and will show 
 some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts 
 of abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself An 
 inhuman moralist I can no more endure in my nervous state 
 than opium that has not been boiled. At any rate, he who 
 summons me to send out a large freight of self-denial and 
 mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement, 
 must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a 
 hopeful one. At my time of life (six-and-thirty years of age) 
 it cannot be supposed that I have much energy to spare ; in 
 fact, I find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I 
 have on my hands ; and, therefore, let no man expect to 
 frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any part of 
 it upon desperate adventures of morality. 
 
 Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle 
 in 1 8 13 was what I have mentioned; and from this date, the 
 reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-
 
 loo NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had 
 or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs 
 had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. 
 You understand now, reader, what I am ; and you are by this 
 time aware, that no old gentleman, ' with a snow-white beard,' 
 will have any chance of persuading me to surrender ' the little 
 golden receptacle of the pernicious drug.' No; I give notice 
 to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that, whatever be their 
 pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they 
 must not hope for any countenance from me, if they think to 
 begin by any savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadan of 
 abstinence from opium. This then being all fully understood 
 between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now 
 then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been 
 sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk 
 forward a few years more. Now draw up the curtain, and 
 you shall see me in a new character. 
 
 If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us 
 what had been the happiest day in his life, and the why and 
 the wherefore, I suppose that we should all cry out, ' Hear 
 him ! hear him!' As to the happiest day, that must be very 
 difficult for any wise man to name ; because any event that 
 could occupy so distinguished a place in a man's retrospect of 
 his life, or be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any 
 one day, ought to be of such an enduring character as that 
 (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the same 
 felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many years 
 together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or even to the 
 happiest year, it may be allowed to any man to point without 
 discountenance from wisdom. This year in my case, reader, 
 was the one which we have now reached ; though it stood, I
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. lor 
 
 confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. 
 It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of 
 jewellers), set as it were, and insulated, in the gloom and 
 cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had 
 a little before this time descended suddenly, and without any 
 considerable effort, from 320 grains of opium (i.e. eight ^ 
 thousand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or one- 
 eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud 
 of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like 
 some black vapours that I have seen roll away from the sum- 
 mits of mountains, drew off in one day (vvxdi]iJ-^pov) ; passed 
 off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that 
 has been stranded, and is floated off by a spring-tide, 
 
 • That moveth altogether, if it move at all.' 
 
 Now, then, I was again happy ; I now took only 1000 drops 
 of laudanum per day ; and what was that ? A latter spring 
 had come to close up the season of youth ; my brain performed 
 its functions as healthily as ever before ; I read Kant again ; 
 and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my 
 feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me ; 
 and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, 
 had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I 
 should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as 
 
 ' I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain 
 of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as both 
 may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in 
 strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no infinitesimal accu- 
 racy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as 
 opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops ; so that 8000 
 drops are about eighty times a lea-spoonful. The reader sees how much I 
 kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
 
 I02 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a 
 wise man's happiness, — of laudanum I would have given him 
 as much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, 
 now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember, about 
 this time, a little incident, which I mention because, trifling 
 as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, 
 which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. 
 One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a 
 Malay could have to transact amongst English mountains, 
 I cannot conjecture ; but possibly he was on his road to a 
 seaport about forty miles distant. 
 
 The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl 
 born and bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an 
 Asiatic dress of any sort ; his turban, therefore, confounded 
 her not a little ; and as it turned out that his attainments in 
 English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, 
 there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all com- 
 munication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess 
 any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed 
 learning of her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a 
 knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, perhaps, 
 a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand 
 that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly 
 imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did 
 not immediately go down ; but when I did, the group which 
 presented itself, arranged as it was by accident, though not 
 very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way 
 that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets 
 at the Opera House, though so ostentatiously complex, had 
 ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall 
 with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak,
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 103 
 
 and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, 
 stood the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of dingy white 
 relieved upon the dark panelling. He had placed himself nearer 
 to the girl than she seemed to relish ; though her native spirit 
 of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple 
 awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the 
 tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could 
 not be imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl 
 and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and inde- 
 pendent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin 
 of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by 
 marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish 
 gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious-looking 
 Malay, was a little child from a neighbouring cottage who had 
 crept in after him, and was now in the act of reverting its head, 
 and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath 
 it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young 
 woman for protection. My knowledge of the oriental tongues 
 is not remarkably extensive, being indeed confined to two 
 words — the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for 
 opium {inadjooii), which I have learned from Anastasius. 
 And as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's 
 Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words, I 
 addressed him in some lines from the IHad, considering that, of 
 such languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, 
 came geographically nearest to an oriental one. He worshipped 
 me in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose 
 was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my 
 neighbours ; for the Malay had no means of betraying the 
 secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and 
 then pursued his journey. On his departure 1 presented him
 
 104 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded 
 that opium must be familiar ; and the expression of his face 
 convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with 
 some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his 
 hand to his mouth, and (in the schoolboy phrase) bolt the 
 whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The 
 quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses ; 
 and I felt some alarm for the poor creature ; but what could 
 be done ? I had given him the opium in compassion for his 
 solitary life, on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot 
 from London, it must be nearly three weeks since he could 
 have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could 
 not think of violating the laws of hospitality, by having him 
 seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him 
 into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some 
 English idol. No ; there was clearly no help for it : he took 
 his leave, and for some days I felt anxious ; but as I never 
 heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced 
 that he was used to opium ; and that I must have done him 
 the service I designed, by giving him one night of respite from 
 the pains of wandering. 
 
 This incident I have digressed to mention, because this 
 Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to 
 frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for 
 some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought 
 other Malays with him worse than himself, that ran ' a-muck ' 
 at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But to quit this 
 episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I 
 have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as 
 happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man'? 
 experience or experiments, even though he were but a plough-
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 105 
 
 boy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep into 
 such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, 
 or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened 
 principles. But I, who have taken happiness, both in a solid 
 and a liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India 
 and Turkey — who have conducted my experiments upon this 
 interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, 
 for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, 
 with the poison of 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just for 
 the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately 
 with cancer ; an English one, twenty years ago, with plague ; 
 and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), I 
 (it will be admitted) must surely know what happiness is, if 
 anybody does. And, therefore, I will here lay down an 
 analysis of happiness ; and as the most interesting mode of 
 communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped 
 up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every 
 evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though 
 taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. 
 This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether, and 
 pass to a very different one — the pains of opium. 
 
 Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles 
 from any town — no spacious valley, but about two miles long, 
 by three-quarters of a mile in average width; the benefit of 
 which provision is, that all the family resident within its circuit 
 will compose, as it were, one larger household personally 
 familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your 
 affections. Let the mountains be real mountains, between 
 three and four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real 
 cottage, not (as a witty author has it) ' a cottage with a double 
 coach-house ; ' let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual
 
 io6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so 
 chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, 
 and clustering round the windows through all the months of 
 spring, summer, and autumn — beginning, in fact, with May 
 roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not be 
 spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but winter in his sternest 
 shape. This is a most important point in the science of 
 happiness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, and 
 think it matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if 
 coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I 
 put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost, or 
 storm, of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly afford us. 
 Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend 
 a winter fireside : candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, 
 tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample 
 draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging 
 audibly without, 
 
 ' And at the doors and windows seem to call, 
 As heav'n and earth they would together mell ; 
 Yet the least entrance find they none at all ; 
 Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.' 
 
 Castle of Indolence. 
 
 All these are items in the description of a winter evening 
 which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high 
 latitude. And it is evident that most of these delicacies, like 
 ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere 
 to produce them ; they are fruits which cannot be ripened 
 without weather stormy or inclement, in some way or other. 
 I am not '■particular^ as some people say, whether it be snow, 
 
 or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. says) ' you 
 
 may lean your back against it like a post.' I can put up even
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 107 
 
 with rain, provided it rains cats and dogs ; but something of 
 the sort I must have ; and, if I have it not, I think myself in 
 a manner ill-used, for why am I called on to pay so heavily for 
 winter in coals and candles, and various privations that will 
 occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good 
 of its kind ? No ; a Canadian winter for my money, or a 
 Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the 
 north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so 
 great an epicure am I in this matter, that I cannot relish a 
 winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas' day, and 
 have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appear- 
 ances ; no, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights 
 from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks 
 of October to Christmas eve, therefore, is the period during 
 which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters 
 the room with the tea-tray 3 for tea, though ridiculed by those 
 who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from 
 wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so 
 refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of 
 the intellectual ; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. 
 Johnson in a helium inter7iecinum against Jonas Hanway, cr 
 any other impious person who should presume to disparage it. 
 But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal 
 description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions 
 for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, 
 unless a good deal weather-stained ; but as the reader now 
 understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be 
 required, except for the inside of the house. 
 
 Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and net 
 more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is some- 
 what ambitiously styled, in my famil}', the drawing-room ; but,
 
 io8 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 being contrived ' a double debt to pay,' it is also, and more 
 justly, termed the library ; for it happens that books are the 
 only article of property in which I am richer than my neigh- 
 bours. Of these I have about five thousand, collected 
 gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put 
 as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with 
 books ; and, furthermore, paint me a good fire, and furniture 
 plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a 
 scholar. And, near the fire, paint me a tea-table ; and (as it is 
 clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy 
 night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray ; and, if 
 you know how to paint such a thing symbolically, or otherwise, 
 paint me an eternal teapot — eternal d, parte ante, and d, parte 
 post ; for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four 
 o'clock in the morning. And as it is very unpleasant to make 
 tea, or to pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young 
 woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and 
 her smiles like Hebe's. But no, dear M., not even in jest, let 
 me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests 
 upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that 
 the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of an 
 earthly pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to something 
 more within its power; and the next article brought forward 
 should naturally be myself — a picture of the Opium-Eater, with 
 his ' little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug ' lying 
 beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have no objec- 
 tion to see a picture of that, though I would rather see the 
 original ; you may paint it if you choose, but I apprize you 
 that no 'little' receptacle would, even in 1816, answer 7ny 
 purpose, who was at a distance from the 'stately Pantheon,' 
 and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No ; you may as well
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 109 
 
 paint the real receptacle, ^vhich was not of gold, but of glass, 
 and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you 
 may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum, — that, and a 
 book of German metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently 
 attest my being in the neighbourhood; but, as to myself — 
 there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the 
 foreground of the picture ; that, being the hero of the piece, or 
 (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had 
 into court. This seems reasonable; but why should I confess, 
 on this point, to a painter? or why confess at all? If the 
 public (into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering 
 my confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance to 
 have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium- 
 Eater's exterior — should have ascribed to him, romantically, an 
 elegant person or a handsome face, why should I barbarously 
 tear from it so pleasing a delusion — pleasing both to the public 
 and to me ? No ; paint me, if at all, according to your own 
 fancy; and, as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful 
 creations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And now, 
 reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my 
 condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of 
 which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man ; 
 and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to 
 place before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a 
 scholar's library, in a cottage among the mountains on a 
 stormy winter evening. 
 
 Here we close De Quincey's own narrative, and take up the 
 broken threads overlooked or omitted. Resuming the story of 
 his education, we find that he was sent to Worcester College, 
 Oxford, where he is said to have studied hard, but not
 
 no NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 in the lines which lead to university honours. A perusal of 
 tlie Lyrical Ballads published by Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 had at this time no small influence in the unfolding of his 
 mind. In 1804, his second year at college, he began to 
 use opium to subdue a neuralgic affection, brought on no 
 doubt by his sufferings in London. As may be seen from 
 the conclusion of De Quincey's paper on Coleridge, he was 
 no great admirer of Goethe; however, in 1805, he turned 
 his attention to the German language, and speedily mastered 
 it. His life at college was varied by visits to friends at Liver- 
 pool and Everton. A notable student, John Wilson by name, 
 was at this time well known at Magdalen College, but De 
 Quincey seems to have been so self-absorbed as never to 
 have heard of one who was afterwards to exercise a very con- 
 siderable influence for good over his own life. In 1803 he 
 had commenced a correspondence with Wordsworth, which 
 continued for some years. Later he had gone to Westmore- 
 land to visit the poet, but, between reverence and shyness, 
 he turned back within a short distance of Wordsworth's 
 door without making himself known. Drawn, too, towards 
 Coleridge by reverence and intellectual sjonpathy, he had 
 made inquiries regarding him in 1S05, and saw him for the 
 first time in 1807, at Bridgewater. The article on Cole- 
 ridge contains a minute record of their first meeting. He 
 accompanied Mrs. Coleridge and her family to the north 
 country, where the family were to visit Wordsworth, and after- 
 wards to be taken in charge by Southey. Reaching the door 
 of Wordsworth's cottage, ' never before or since,' he says, ' can 
 I reproach myself with having trembled at the approaching 
 presence of any creature that is born of woman, excepting 
 only, for once or twice in my life, woman herself. . . .
 
 THOMAS DE Q UlNCE Y. 1 1 1 
 
 Tlirough the little gate I pressed forward ; ten steps beyond 
 it lay the principal door of the house. To this, no longer 
 clearly conscious of my own feelings, I passed on rapidly ; I 
 heard a step, a voice, and, like a flash of lightning, I saw the 
 figure emerge of a tallish man, who held out his hand, and 
 saluted me with most cordial expressions of welcome.' He 
 accompanied the Wordsworths in a common farmer's cart to 
 Ambleside, about three and a half miles distant. He also 
 visited Robert Southey. On his return to Bristol, and learning 
 that Coleridge was in embarrassed circumstances, he generously 
 placed ;;^3oo at his disposal. This transaction was accom- 
 plished by the mediation of Joseph Cottle, the well-known 
 Bristol bookseller, and is highly honourable as displaying the 
 unworldly side of De Quincey's character. Returning to 
 Oxford for a short time, he left again, and spent the earlier 
 part of 1808 in London, where he had repeated opportunities 
 of seeing Coleridge. The reader will be apt to wonder how a 
 past generation of bookbinders would be able to comprehend 
 the following directions for binding a Bible. It occurs in a 
 letter written to his sister, loth June 1808: — 'On further 
 examination it seems to me a very excellent Bible, both for 
 use and appearance. It has marginal references (as I think 
 your Christmas letter directed). I gave the fullest directions 
 for the binding, as that it should have an open back (which I 
 suppose you forgot to mention), ribbons, etc., and that he 
 must be frugal in his gilding, with which the binders absolutely 
 yellow-wash books that they mean to make fine. I summed 
 up, or perorated, by impressing on his misguided mind that it 
 was to be " simply elegant," or " chastely magnificent," if he 
 could understand those words, and, if he could not, he was to 
 take as his analogical model (or bright ideal) my coat; i.e., that
 
 112 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 as my coat was to the ephemeral generations of coats, so was 
 the binding to be in relation to all tawdry bindings.' Further 
 * it was to look massive and monumental, and anti-fugitive, 
 and more like an inheritance than a purchase.' We find 
 him again at Oxford at the close of 1808, He remained in 
 Wordsworth's cottage till February 1809, when, as Wordsworth 
 had lately left it, he made arrangements for taking a lease of 
 the cottage. He next went to Somersetshire, and also visited 
 London. While in London he saw The Convention of 
 Cintra, a pamphlet, through the press for Wordsworth. In 
 November 1809 he took up his abode in his cottage in West- 
 moreland. ' Cottage immortal in my remembrance ! ' he has 
 written, • as well it might be, for this cottage I retained through 
 just seven-and-twenty years : this was the scene of struggles the 
 most tempestuous and bitter within my own mind : this the 
 scene of my despondency and unhappiness : this the scene of 
 my happiness — a happiness which justified the faith of man's 
 earthly lot as upon the whole a dowry from heaven ! ' 
 
 While at Grasmere he made the acquaintance of Professor 
 Wilson, Charles Lloyd, and Southey, and his intimacy with 
 Wordsworth w^as strengthened. While Coleridge was Words- 
 worth's guest in 1809 and t8io, De Quincey was a frequent 
 visitor on the latter. The friendship then formed with Pro- 
 fessor Wilson continued through life. Sometimes he would 
 join an angling excursion, and sometimes he would enjoy a 
 wander after nightfall, with the chance of being taken for a 
 lunatic. The death of little Catherine Wordsworth, to whom 
 he was passionately attached, was a terrible blow to him. 
 This event took place in June 181 2. Professor Wilson, on 
 the partial loss of his fortune, betook himself to Edinburgh to 
 practise at the Scottish bar. De Quincey visited him during
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE Y. 113 
 
 the winter of 18 14 and 18 15. He was well received by the 
 best society of the Scottish capital, and his wonderful talk and 
 equally wonderful memory, so richly stored with knowledge, 
 made a powerful impression on all who heard and knew him. 
 He was united by marriage, about the end of 1816, to Margaret 
 Simpson, the daughter of a Westmoreland fanner. She was 
 only eighteen at the time, and is described by those who ought 
 to know her, as a gracious and beautiful lady. Before this 
 event he had limited his supplies of opium, but we find him 
 in 1S18 again overmastered by the old enemy. His opium 
 dreams at this time are fully recorded in his Confessions. His 
 wife was his unwearied companion and nurse through all his 
 illnesses and night visions : ' Thou wast my Electra ! and 
 neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering aflection, 
 wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an Eng- 
 lish wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to 
 humble ofilices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of 
 tenderest affection, to wipe away for years the unwholesome 
 dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched 
 and baked with fever ; nor even when thy own peaceful 
 slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the 
 spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy 
 enemies, that oftentimes bade me " sleep no more ! " not even 
 then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw 
 thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more 
 than Electra did of old.' Towards the close of 181 9, we find 
 him, contrary to all precedent, engaged as non-resident editor 
 of a Kendal newspaper. He was obliged to keep a clerk on 
 the salary allowed, which reduced his own remuneration to 
 about one guinea a week. The newspaper was called the 
 
 Westniorda7id Gazette^ and was established to counteract the 
 VI. ti
 
 IT4 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 influence of Lord Brougham's levelling doctrines. This post 
 he filled for the greater part of a year. At this time also 
 Blackzvood's Magazine, as he calculated, would allow him to 
 write as much as would produce sixty guineas a year, and the 
 Quarterly Review as much as would yield him 120 guineas a 
 year. We find him, however, writing to his uncle, Colonel 
 Penson, to relieve him from monetary embarrassments, and in 
 1821 his patrimony was exhausted, and himself in difficulties. 
 Removing to London in the same year to seek employment as 
 a \vriter, he was made welcome by Charles Lamb. He has 
 left a pen-and-ink sketch of him, whom he described as * a 
 man in a sense more eminent than would be conceivable by 
 many people, prificely — nothing short of that — in his bene- 
 ficence.' Lamb was the means of introducing De Quincey 
 to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the London 
 Magazine. With the exception of an occasional trip to West- 
 moreland, we find him settled at York Street, Covent Garden. 
 His Confessions ' were written in a little room at the back of 
 what afterwards became Mr. H. G. Bohn's premises, No. 4 
 York Street, Covent Garden, and where De Quincey resided, 
 in comparative seclusion, for several years. He had previously 
 lived in the neighbourhood of Soho Square, and for some years 
 was a frequent visitor at the shop of Mr. Bohn's father, then the 
 principal dealer in German books.' The first two portions of 
 the Confessions of an English Opiuni-Eater appeared in the 
 London Magazine for October and November 1821. Few 
 magazine articles, says his biographer, have ever produced a 
 deeper or a more general impression. His other contributions 
 were various German translations and ' Letters to a Young 
 ]\Ian whose Education has been neglected.' These letters 
 drew from Charles Lamb the 'Letter to an Old Man
 
 Til O MA S DE Q UINCE Y. 1(5 
 
 whose Education liacl been neglected,' Charles Knight, 
 the eminent publisher, with whom De Quincey resided for 
 some time in London, tells the following story regarding him : 
 • Vast as were his acquirements, intuitive as was his apprecia- 
 tion of character and the motives of human action, unembar- 
 rassed as was his demeanour, pleasant and even mirthful his 
 table-talk, De Quincey was as helpless in every position of 
 responsibility as when he paced " stony-hearted Oxford Street," 
 looking for the lost one. He was constantly beset by idle 
 fears and vain imaginings. His sensitiveness was so extreme, 
 in combination with the utmost ultra-courtesy of a gentleman, 
 that he hesitated to trouble a servant with any personal request 
 without a prefatory apology. My family were in the country 
 in the summer of 1S25, when he was staying at my house in Pall 
 Mall, East. A friend or two had met him at dinner, and I 
 had walked part of the way home with one of them. When I 
 returned, I tapped at his chamber door to bid him good-night. 
 He was sitting at the open window habited as a prize-fighter 
 when he enters the ring. " You will take cold ! " I exclaimed. 
 " Where is your shirt ? " "I have not a shirt — my shirts are 
 unwashed." " But why not tell the servant to send them to the 
 laundress ? " " Ah ! how could I presume to do that in Mrs. 
 Knight's absence ? " ' 
 
 Professor Wilson, in the Nodes Ambfosiajice in Blackwood 
 in October 1823 and 1825, spoke very highly of De Quincey, 
 which was a proof that his fame was spreading. In November 
 1825, Wilson wrote him a pressing letter for some contributions 
 to Blackwood. This was all required at the time to brighten 
 his lot, as we find him in London in the beginning of 1826 
 well-nigh overpowered with difficulties. In November 1826 
 appeared the first of a series of papers in Blackwood^ entitled,
 
 ii6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 'Gallery of the German Prose Writers,' beginning with 
 
 * Lessing.' This was followed by the ' Last Days of Kant,' 
 
 * Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts,' and the ' Toilette 
 of the Hebrew Lady.' Removing to Edinburgh in 1828, he 
 contributed to the Edinburgh Literary Gazette, and made 
 fresh engagements with Blackwood. He was joined by Mrs. 
 De Quincey and the younger children in 1830. Klosterheim, 
 a novel, was issued by Blackwood in 1832, AVith Tait's 
 Magazine De Quincey succeeded in forming a profitable con- 
 nection at this time ; many of his most valuable and interesting 
 papers appeared in its pages. From 1S32 to 1834 his con- 
 tributions to Blackwood comprised a series of articles on the 
 Caesars, on Hannah More, and Animal Magnetism. His 
 autobiographic sketches were begun in Taifs Magazine in 
 1834. The close, personal nature of his remarks on Words- 
 worth and Coleridge offended both families. Meanwhile, 
 though very successful from a literary point of view, the hand 
 of death entered his family. First, his son Julius died in 
 1833, aged four years; then his eldest son William, scarcely 
 eighteen, brilliant and talented, passed av/ay in 1835, from 
 brain disease. Mrs. De Quincey's own health broke down 
 also ; she died in 1837, and was buried in St. Cuthbert's Church- 
 yard, Edinburgh. From 1830 till the year 1834, he lived with 
 his family either in King Street, Forres Street, or Dudding- 
 ston. In 1840 they removed to a small retired cottage, near 
 Lasswade, called ' Mavis Bush.' Previous to this time, and 
 after his wife's death, he had taken lodgings in Lothian Street, 
 Edinburgh, in a house kept by Mrs. Wilson and her sister Miss 
 Stark. This was the same house in which he died. The 
 character of his eldest daughter, although not herselt past the 
 need of a mother's care, rapidly developed itself at the spur of
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE V. t 1 7 
 
 circumstances. As her younger sister afterwards remarked 
 regarding her : ' She became the able and ui)right mistress of 
 the household almost immediately, and her and her next 
 brother's wise resolution it was — the two being still little 
 beyond childhood — which removed the family from the 
 expensive and undesirable life of a town to the quiet and 
 wholesome little home near Lasswade, she sacrificing much 
 personal enjoyment and companionship at the time to secure 
 what she felt to be for the honour of the family — the power to 
 live within our small means.' 
 
 Between 1837 and 1840, De Quincey was busy and pro- 
 ductive, contributing largely to Blackivood and Tait. He also 
 wrote several of the biographies for the Encydopcedia Britan- 
 nica, of which 'Shakespeare' was the most notable. From 
 1 841 to 1843 we find De Quincey restless, and again a victim 
 to his passion for opium. He was much in Glasgow between 
 the dates just mentioned, residing sometimes in lodgings and 
 sometimes with his friends Professor Nichol or Professor 
 Lushington. During 1 844 the daily allowance of his pernicious 
 drug reached something like five thousand drops of laudanum. 
 By a strong effort he gradually unwound this accursed chain, in 
 so far as his indulgences in opium were very limited, and he 
 enjoyed greater quiet and repose. His income was now more 
 than sufficient to maintain himself and family in quiet comfort. 
 Two of his sons, Horace and Frederick, went into the army ; 
 a third, Francis, became a medical man. In the early part 
 of 1847 hs was again in Glasgow, occupying lodgings in 79 
 Renfield Street. From this address he regularly wrote to and 
 received letters from the different members of his family. 
 Returning to Lasswade at the end of 1847, we are told that, 
 whether residing at Lasswade or in Lothian Street, Edinburgh,
 
 ii8 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 his habits were more regular, while he continued steadily 
 active. His habits were now simple almost to asceticism. 
 The early neuralgic affection having ruined his teeth, from 
 the delicacy of his system, a little coffee or soup would often 
 prove the whole of his dinner. While dressing or undressing, 
 should a thought strike him, * he would stop with his coat just 
 tiken off or not put on, without stockings at all, or with one 
 ofif and one on, and becoming lost in what grew out of this 
 thought, he would work on for hours, hardly even noticing the 
 coffee, which was his chief support at such times.' The following 
 sketch of his personal habits is by one of his daughters : — 
 
 *His other extravagance grew out of the morbid value he 
 set upon his papers and their not being disturbed. He was 
 in the habit of accumulating these till, according to his own 
 description, he was " snowed up," which meant when matter' 
 came to such an extremity that there was not a square inch 
 of room on the table to set a cup upon, that there was no 
 possibility of making his bed for the weight of papers gathered 
 there, that there was no chair which could be used for its legiti- 
 mate purpose, and that the track from the door to the fireplace, 
 which had always to be considered, had been blotted out, even 
 for his own careful treading. Then he locked the door upon 
 this impracticable state of things, and turned elsewhere, leav- 
 ing his landlady, if simple and honest, fearfully impressed with 
 the mysterious sin of meddling with his papers ; but, if dis- 
 honest, with such a handle for playing upon his morbid 
 anxieties as was a source of livelihood. At his death there 
 were, I believe, about six places where he had these deposits ; 
 it may be imagined at what expense. Such a thing has been 
 known as his gradually in this way papering his family out of 
 a house. But in later years his daughters in the home at
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE Y. i r 9 
 
 I asswade were wary, and the smallest deposit of papers was 
 carefully handed down into the one irrecoverable desert in 
 which he worked when he left them after spending the evening 
 with them, which he almost always did. These evenings were 
 very pleasant. The newspaper was brought up, and he, 
 telling in his own delightful way rather than reading the 
 news, would, on questions from this one and that of the 
 party — often including young friends of his children, neigh- 
 bours, or visitors from distant places — illuminate the subject 
 with such a wealth of memories, of old stories, of past or 
 present experiences, of humour of suggestion, even of pro- 
 phecy, as by its very wealth makes it impossible to give any 
 taste of it. It was the happiest flow of real conversation 
 growing out of the circumstances of the moment, in which 
 the youngest and shyest of the party, encouraged by his 
 gentleness and power of sympathy, that made him catch in a 
 moment what the stammering youth or maiden might wish 
 to say, took their part. 
 
 ' He was not a reassuring man for nervous people to live 
 with, as those nights were exceptions on which he didn't set 
 something on fire, the commonest incident being for some 
 one to look up from work or book to say casually, " Papa, 
 your hair is on fire," of which a calm, "Is it, my love?" and 
 a hand rubbing out the blaze, was all the notice taken. One 
 evening a maid rushed in upon two quiet girls with a horrified 
 face, and in a burst of smoke, to announce that Mr. De 
 Quincey's room, by this time on the point of being " snowed 
 up," was on fire. Some important papers and a little money 
 were secured, and then they descended to the scene of action, 
 to find that a hard frost had taken away all chance of help 
 from water ; but the Mississippi might have flowed past his
 
 I20 NOTABLE MEN AND W OATEN. 
 
 door, and Mr. De Quincey would have had none of it, as it 
 would have ruined the beloved papers. He therefore deter- 
 mined to conquer the fire without water, or to perish Avith 
 them. All he would take in was a heavy rug, and he locked 
 the door in dread of the abhorred water being poured in in 
 spite of the injury the fire might cause. Presently we were 
 assured that all danger was over, though, in the presence 
 of occasional bursts of smoke, and a very strong smell of 
 fire, it argued an extraordinary confidence in his power of 
 manoeuvring with that dread element that we all went to 
 bed and slept.' 
 
 As in the case of some of Carlyle's better-known works, 
 De Quincey's miscellaneous writings were first collected and 
 published in America. Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing to J. 
 T. Fields, remarked the shortcomings of an article in a British 
 periodical regarding De Quincey : * The article is pretty well, 
 but does nothing like adequate justice to De Quincey; and, 
 in fact, no Englishman cares a pin for him. We are ten times 
 as good readers and critics as they.' An issue of his ' Collected 
 Writings 'was begun in 1849 by Mr. James Hogg, the pub- 
 lisher. Mr. Hogg, in describing his personal appearance on 
 his first introduction to him, says : ' It was some time before 
 the extreme refinement of the face was noticed— not, indeed, 
 till the voice, gentle, clear, and silvery, began to be heard; 
 when the eye ceased to be diverted by a certain oddity in the 
 general appearance, and was attracted by the brow, which, 
 from its prominence, gave an aspect of almost childlike small- 
 ness to the under-face, and by the eyes, which combined a 
 singular power of quiet scrutiny with a sort of dreamy soft- 
 ness that suggested something of weariness.' He proved 
 himself an excellent pedestrian while the printing of. his
 
 THOMAS DE Q UINCE V. 121 
 
 collected works was going forward, regularly walking between 
 Lasswade and Edinburgh. 'Even at seventy years of age,' 
 says Mr. Hogg, ' he was active and vigorous, and easily out- 
 walked me, though I was a much younger man.' Some of 
 the dilemmas into which he was plunged, amusing enough 
 to read of, must have been distracting enough to both author 
 and printer. For instance, take the following : — 
 
 * My DEAR Sir, — It is useless to trouble you with the t'/is 
 and ou/s of the process — the result is that, working through 
 most parts of the night, I have not yet come to the missing 
 copy. I had fancied that when the press sent for the notes, 
 this implied that the whole of the text was received. But as 
 it turns out that I was mistaken, I am going on with the search 
 yet, — being walled in by superfluous furniture in so narrow an 
 area (not larger than a post-chaise, as regards the free space), 
 I write with difficulty, and the stooping kills me. I greatly fear 
 that the entire day will be spent in the search.' 
 
 Some of his letters display a delightful humour. Writing to 
 his daughter Emily, in Ireland, who was at Pegsboro', Tip- 
 perary, on the occasion of the birth of a daughter, on learning 
 it was to be named Eva, he reasons thus : ' This name naturally 
 throws back one's thoughts upon the original person who bore 
 it — that unhappy lady, the fairest of her own daughters, but 
 also, one must suppose, the most woe-begone, if she knew the 
 extent of her own trespass. " For this we may thank Adam ! " 
 is the dreadful cry of reproach ascending from billions of 
 generations which the Miltonic Adam figures to himself in sad 
 anticipation. But, begging his pardon, he had himself, like a 
 veritable sneak, forestalled that reproach. He had, in the 
 language of London villains, " split " on his partner — the very 
 last baseness even amongst our domestic rogues, that final and
 
 122 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 crowning step which, being forborne, leaves even to the thief 
 a conscious arrearage of nobility and possible redemption. A 
 man that should have stolen a pocket-handkerchief might, I 
 conceive, by some memorable act of public service, redeem 
 
 himself, but . . . This whole matter of naming, however, 
 
 if we cast a backward glance at its earliest beginnings, though 
 an inscrutable, would, were it not so, be an interesting theme 
 for investigation. It is not only a pre-historic, but a pre- 
 mythical ; not only a pre-mythical, but even a pre-fabulous and 
 a pre-traditional thesis. My thesis ends by indicating in Eve 
 one feature of intellectual delicacy which places her in advance 
 of her species by perhaps a myriad of generations, and to this 
 recent baptismal epoch in the first year of dear little Eva's 
 experience it is a most appropriate feature — renewing and 
 reverberating from a modern case echoes of the very same 
 solicitude in the proper choice of a name as naturally displayed 
 itself in the very earliest cases. Eve, hke the council of 
 Pegsboro', put forth an earnest anxiety (for earnest it must 
 have been to secure any commemoration at all in a record 
 necessarily so austerely condensed as the Mosaic) in order to 
 construct a significant name for her sons. . . . Eve sought 
 for a name that should, by a sort of shorthand, express signi- 
 ficantly any pathetic circumstantialities connected with the 
 birth (or with the immediate antecedences to the birth) of the 
 particular son concerned in the nomination. Events or 
 changes externally attached to the biography of the child were 
 naturally contemplated as the key-notes for the several names ; 
 so that the bare names of Eve's sons composed a solemn 
 register — cryptical and shadowy, as being abstracts so severely 
 condensed, but to herself fearfully significant, as secret memen- 
 toes of sad or joyous revolutions.'
 
 THOMA S BE Q UINCE Y. 123 
 
 Another break in the family occurred when his second 
 daughter, Florence, went out to India and was married to 
 Colonel Baird Smith, a gentleman who was afterwards distin- 
 guished for his achievements in civil engineering. In the 
 autumn of 1857 he paid a visit to Pegsboro', at the cost of 
 much trouble and inconvenience, to see his daughter and 
 son-in-law there. 
 
 But the end of a long and chequered life was drawing near. 
 Any little work became wearisome and a worry to him. Dr. 
 Warburton Begbie was sent for towards the end of October 
 1859, and attended him in his last illness. The medical 
 attendant was unable to discover the presence of any specific 
 disease, and death may be said to have been the result of a 
 decay of the vital powers. During the last fourteen years of 
 his life he had relinquished the excessive use of opium. He 
 was kind and gentle and considerate to the last. One of his 
 daughters, who attended him in his last illness, has left a 
 graphic picture of how he passed away. 
 
 • I saw my father was anxious about something, and I went 
 and sat down beside him to listen. He then treated me to 
 one of those curious turns that his passing attacks of deUrium 
 would take. " I am grieved," he said, *' at the coarse manners 
 that some rough fellows displayed." I said, " Why ? What 
 have they done ? " " Well, you know, I and the children were 
 invited to the great supper. Do you know what supper I 
 mean ? " " No," I said. " Well, I was invited to come, and 
 to bring the children to the great supper of Jesus Christ. So, 
 wishing the children to have suitable dresses for such an 
 occasion, I had them all dressed in white. They were dressed 
 from head to foot in white. But some rough men in the 
 streets of Edinburgh, as we passed on our way to the supper,
 
 124 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 seeing the little things in white, laughed and jeered at us, 
 and made the children much ashamed." We had rarely 
 heard him mention his father's name during his hfe, he 
 having died early. But one day he said, " There is a thing 
 I much regret, that is, that I did not know more of my dear 
 father, for I am sure that a juster, kinder man never 
 breathed." He then went on to tell me many traits of his 
 father's character which he had learned from clerks and 
 servants, and which he had treasured up for years in his 
 memory. At length his illness became so serious that we 
 thought it better to telegraph to his only daughter within 
 reach, viz. Mrs. Craig. She came over from Ireland the 
 day before his death. Great was his pleasure at seeing her, 
 though for some time we fancied that he did not know her. 
 Such was his constant thought of children, that he viewed her 
 simply as connected with his grandchildren. " How is 
 mamma ? " he said when he saw her ; nor did he address her 
 as anything else but mamma again. Towards the evening 
 his w^eakness became extreme, and he said to my sister, 
 " Mamma, I cannot bear the weight of clothes upon my feet." 
 My sister at once pulled off the heavy blankets, and wrapped 
 a light shawl round his feet. "Is that better?" she asked. 
 *' Yes, my love, much better ; I am better in every w^ay — I 
 feel much better. You know these are the feet that Jesus 
 washed." As the night wore on, our kind friend Dr. War- 
 burton Begbie came and sat with us as my father's life slow^ly 
 ebbed away. Twice only was the heavy breathing interrupted 
 by words. He had for hours ceased to recognise any of us, 
 but we heard him murmur, though quite distinctly, " My dear, 
 dear mother. Then I was greatly mistaken." Then as the 
 waves of death rolled faster and faster over him, suddenly out
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 125 
 
 of the abyss we saw him throw up his arms, which to the last 
 retained their strength, and say distinctly, and as if in great 
 surprise, " Sister ! sister ! sister ! " The loud breathing became 
 slower and slower, and as the world of Edinburgh awoke to 
 busy work and life, all that was mortal of my father fell asleep 
 for ever.' 
 
 A writer in Blaclauood remarks : ' As the curious, and 
 the cultivated, and those who really loved literature, and 
 those who pretended to love it, sought his company while 
 he lived, and listened rapt to his silver tongue, so to the 
 world of readers who love a delicate excitement, but not to be 
 wearied or undergo any strain of their attention, his works are 
 always welcome, and will continue to be so. It is still a silver 
 tongue to which we listen, with nothing in it resonant or 
 penetrating, but sweet with the softest tinkle as of water, or 
 the chiming of far-away bells. What a wonderful brotherhood 
 it was that died out finally with De Quincey ! Coleridge, 
 more dreamy still than he, his own rival in that obscure and 
 vision-haunted path ; Wordsworth, serene as one of his own 
 mountains ; kind Southey, laborious and learned ; Charles 
 Lamb, whom we all love by instinct ; John Wilson, the strong 
 yet laughing Jupiter of the band, the most living and splendid 
 personality of all. The world has fallen upon a smaller 
 generation, a race of meaner stature now.' 
 
 His death took place in December 1S59, when in his 
 seventy -fifth year, and all that was mortal of Thomas De 
 Quincey was laid to rest in the West Kirk Churchyard, 
 beneath the shadow of the Castle Rock, wliere his wife and 
 son were laid many years before.
 
 o Lnl=iLiL-il=iUTl=r 
 
 L;ibLnl=iLnbnl=n=[I= 
 
 rJ[=lr=J[=JpJr:]f=Tf=I 5 
 
 ■fT 
 
 p'r-J^--irJrJ^-^r'f-J^JHrJr^rdn=^r=i^J^^^= 
 
 SIR HENRY HAVELOCK. 
 
 \F Danish lineage, Sir Henry Havelock was bom at 
 Bishop Wearmouth, Sunderland, on 5th April 
 1795. On his father's removal to Ingress Park, 
 near Dartford, along with his elder brother he was placed 
 under the tuition of the Rev. J. Bradley, curate of Swans- 
 combe. Two stories are told of his life at this time which 
 record his brave disposition. In climbing up a tree to secure 
 a bird's nest, a branch broke and he was thrown to the ground. 
 On being asked by his father if he was not frightened, he 
 replied, ' No, I had too much to think of to feel terrified. I 
 was thinking of the bird's nest I had lost.' His master one 
 day noticed that he had a black eye, and wished to know 
 how he had come by it. In reality he had been defending a 
 younger boy from the tyranny of a bully, and had been struck 
 for his pains; he preferred, however, to remain silent regarding 
 it, and rather to receive punishment than implicate his fellow- 
 scholar. He attended Mr. Bradley's seminary for five years, 
 reading the newspapers with interest, which at that time con- 
 tained a record of Napoleon's movements and successes. 
 From his mother he received his earliest religious impressions ; 
 she was in the habit of assembling her children around her for
 
 SIR HENR V HA VEL CK. 1 2 7 
 
 Bible reading and devotional exercises. This early religious 
 teaching, and these good impressions, remained with him 
 through life. Havelock, before the age of ten, was next sent 
 to the Charter House School, where he remained for seven 
 years. He applied himself diligently to whatever work he 
 might have on hand, and became a fair Latin and Greek 
 scholar. Though subject to the ridicule of some of his com- 
 panions, he joined in devotional exercises in one of the 
 sleeping rooms at school. 
 
 The sudden death of his mother in February 1809 gave him 
 a shock from which he did not recover for years. At the 
 close of 181 1, Havelock left Charter House School. The 
 following is his own memorandum of some of his contem- 
 poraries there : — 
 
 ' My most intimate friends were Samuel Hinds, William 
 Norris, and Julius Charles Hare. Plinds, a man of taste and 
 a poet, spent his early years in travelling, married in France, 
 distinguished himself in one of the colonial assemblies of his 
 native island, Barbadoes, at the period of slave emancipation, 
 and died at Bath about 1847. Norris, now Sir William Norris, 
 was called to the bar, appointed successively Advocate-Fiscal 
 or Queen's Advocate, Puisne Judge, and Chief Justice of 
 Ceylon, and successively Recorder of Penang. Hare went to 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, in 18 12, graduated B.A. in 1815, 
 and subsequently as M.A., and became a Fellow and Tutor of 
 Trinity. He is well known to the literary and religious world 
 by his joint translation with Cannop Thirlwall of part of the 
 Roman History of Niebuhr, by some volumes of sermons, and 
 several polemical pamphlets. Nearly contemporary with me 
 and the boys just named were Cannop Thirlwall, now Bishop 
 of SL David's; George Waddington, Dean of Durham, distin-
 
 128 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 guished as a scholar and a man of letters ; George Grote, the 
 historian of Greece; Archdeacon Hale, now Master of the 
 Charter House ; Alderman Thompson, Member for Northum- 
 berland; Sir WiUiam Macnaghton, the talented but unfortunate 
 Envoy at Cabul; the Right Hon. Fox-Maule, now Secretary 
 of War ; Eastlake, the painter ; and Yates, the actor.' 
 
 His father's fortunes were on the decline about 1812; so 
 much so, that Ingress Park was sold and purchased by 
 Government for ;^5 0,000. The family then removed to 
 Clifton, and it became more than ever apparent that Have- 
 lock must make choice of some profession. His mother had 
 favoured the law; and in 1813 he entered as a student of the 
 Middle Temple, where he was associated in his studies with 
 Sir Thomas Talfourd, the poet and dramatist. This intimacy 
 grounded in Havelock a love for the' poetry of the Lake 
 school which never left him. Through some misunderstanding 
 vv-ith his father, his legal studies ceased after one twelvemonth. 
 Through the influence and interest of his brother William, of 
 the 43d, who had just returned from Waterloo, at the age of 
 twenty Havelock became a soldier, and in the year 18 15 was 
 appointed second lieutenant in the 95th, or Rifle Brigade. 
 For the next eight years he set himself to master the details 
 of the military art, reading military memoirs and handbooks 
 while others were enjoying the leisure of barrack life. He 
 became familiar with the history of every British regiment 
 The knowledge thus gained was of great importance to him in 
 his after military operations in India. In the year 1821, he 
 made a pedestrian tour through France, Italy, and a part 
 of Germany. Following the example of his elder brother 
 William, and of his younger brother Charles, he embarked for 
 India in January 1823, having obtained a lieutenancy in the
 
 S/J^ IIENR y IIA VEL CK. 1 2 9 
 
 13th Light Infantry, which had been ordered for Calcutta. 
 
 His biographer, Mr. John Clark Marshman, describes him at 
 
 this time as ' diminutive in stature, but well built, with a noble 
 
 expanse of forehead, an eagle eye, a countenance remarkably 
 
 comely, which exhibited that union of intellect and energy 
 
 which never fails to command deference.' 
 
 Havelock was troubled with religious doubts on the voyage, 
 
 which were happily dealt with and resolved by Lieutenant 
 
 Gardner, who entered into religious conversation with him, 
 
 and who lent him the Life of Henry Martin and Scott's Force 
 
 of Truth to read. Remarking on this crisis in his life, he 
 
 wrote : ' It was while the writer was sailing across the wide 
 
 Atlantic towards Bengal, that the Spirit of God came to him 
 
 with its offer of peace and mandate of love, which, though for 
 
 some time resisted, at length prevailed. Then was wrought 
 
 that great change in his soul which has been productive of 
 
 unspeakable advantage to him in time, and he trusts has 
 
 secured him happiness in eternity.' On their arrival in 
 
 Calcutta in May 1823, Havelock was quartered for a time 
 
 with Lieutenant Gardner. On parting to occupy a separate 
 
 suite of apartments, he said : ' Give me your hand ; I owe 
 
 you more than I owe to any man living.' During his eleven 
 
 months' residence at the Fort, Calcutta, he assembled for 
 
 religious instruction as many men of his regiment, the 13th 
 
 Light Infantry, as cared to attend. A war with the King of 
 
 Burmah was now imminent, owing partly to the seizure of an 
 
 island belonging to Britain on the Aracan coast, and to the 
 
 capture of a European pilot. Havelock was nominated to the 
 
 post of Deputy-Assistant- Adjutant-General; while the army, 
 
 consisting of 10,000 men, was under the command of Sir 
 
 Archibald Campbell. Through some mismanagement in some 
 VI. 1
 
 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 of the departments, he missed being present at the beginning 
 of the campaign. As there was no chaplain with the British 
 force at this time, Havelock himself conducted religious 
 services in one of the cloisters of the Great Pagoda, Rangoon, 
 for the benefit of the men. Little images of Boodha might be 
 seen arranged round the room where they had met ; and in the 
 lap of each of these figures a little oil lamp had been placed 
 by the soldiers'. For a time Havelock was entrusted with the 
 command of the troops. They endeavoured to dislodge the 
 Burmese from the stockades in the neighbourhood of Rangoon. 
 While fairly successful, he was prostrated by liver complaint 
 and ordered home. Instead of coming to Europe, he took 
 a short sea voyage, and visited Poonah, where his brother 
 William was then stationed. This re-established his health, 
 and he joined the army at Prome in August 1826. The 
 Burmese were defeated, and peace was ratified in February 
 1827. Havelock was employed by Sir Archibald Campbell to 
 receive the ratification of the treaty at Ava. In this war, the 
 missionaries Dr. Price and Mr. Judson had been treated with 
 great severity during their captivity at Ava. The troops were 
 embarked from Rangoon to Calcutta and Madras, and Have- 
 lock's appointment as Deputy- Assistant- Adjutant -General 
 ceased. This same year he issued an account of the Campaigns 
 in Ava, which was published at Serampore in 1828. In the 
 previous year Havelock had been appointed to the adjutancy 
 of the King's depot at Chinsurah. His biographer and friend, 
 Mr. Marshman, who assisted in the issue of the work, remarks 
 that in this, ' his maiden work, he exemplified the remark of 
 one of his most distinguished commanders in after days, that 
 more knowledge was to be obtained of the real position of 
 affairs from six sentences of Havelock than from as many
 
 S/J^ IlENR V HA VEL CK. 1 3 1 
 
 pages of another writer. . . . The book made many enemies, 
 and created a prejudice against him not favourable to his 
 professional prospects.' And so, as bis biographer curtly 
 remarks further, his book brought him neither profit nor 
 promotion. 
 
 He was a frequent visitor at Serampore, where he enjoyed 
 the society of several emirient missionaries, Dr. Carey, Dr. 
 Marshman, and others. On the 9th of February 1829, he was 
 married to Hannah Shepherd, youngest daughter of the Rev. 
 Dr. Marshman. His married life, extending for twenty-nine 
 years, was singularly happy. One of the rules he adopted on 
 his arrival in India, which he kept up after marriage, was his 
 devoting a tenth part of his income to objects of piety and 
 benevolence. After due inquiry and study, and from con- 
 scientious motives, Havelock became a member of a Baptist 
 chapel at Serampore. When his post of adjutancy of King's 
 troops of the depot at Chinsurah was abolished, at the 
 beginning of 1831, he was obliged to live on the pay of a 
 subaltern. At Dinapore, where he was settled for a time, he 
 resumed the religious instruction of his men, sometimes 
 preaching sermons prepared and composed by himself. This 
 same year his regiment was ordered to the cantonment at 
 Agra, where a second son was born to him. His exertions for 
 the spiritual good of his regiment were here continued, and 
 his biographer quotes the testimony of one who knew him, 
 that ' he was, in the highest and best sense of the word, a 
 noble Christian missionary, recommending, both by precept 
 and example, the gospel of Christ to all around. In him the 
 military character was so clear and so fully developed, he was 
 such a stern and such a rigid disciplinarian, and his command 
 over his soldiers was so absolute, that worldly men easily
 
 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 tolerated the saint in their admiration of the soldier,' Through 
 Lord William Bentinck he was appointed to an adjutancy in 
 the 13th Light Infantry, when he proceeded from Cawnpore, 
 where he had been residing, to Agra. A temperance society 
 was formed, and a coffee-room was built through his efforts, to 
 assist in promoting sobriety amongst the men. At last pro- 
 motion reached him ; after remaining in the grade of subaltern 
 for nearly twenty-three years, and in that of lieutenant for 
 seventeen, he w-as promoted to the grade of captain when in 
 his forty-third year, Havelock was concerned in the war in 
 Afghanistan, caused by Russian and Persian encroachment; 
 and after the fall of Ghuznee, the British arms were victorious. 
 He wrote a history of the campaign, which was published by 
 Colburn, of London, but which, however, fell still-born from 
 the press. The presence of the British in Afghanistan was a 
 source of continual annoyance to the natives, A revolt took 
 place which led to a disastrous warfare with the Afghans. 
 Two of the chief episodes of the campaign are thus related by 
 Mr. Marshman : * The garrison of Jellalabad, after having been 
 isolated in a hostile country for five months, surrounded with 
 infuriated enemies, and constantly menaced with destruction, 
 achieved its own relief, unaided except by its own good sword. 
 In our previous history in India, there had been no example 
 of such a siege or such a deliverance. In the contemplation 
 of this triumph, it is impossible to avoid contrasting the events 
 at Jellalabad with those at Cabul, In the one case 5000 
 British troops, with every advantage on their side, were 
 beleaguered by an armed rabble in their own cantonment on 
 the third day of the insurrection; entered into a disgraceful 
 capitulation at the end of six weeks, and were eventually 
 annihilated. In the other, 2000 troops of the same mettle,
 
 S/Ji IIENR Y HAVEL OCR. 1 3 3 
 
 after sixteen days of severe condict in the most tremendous 
 mountain defiles, took up a position in a dilapidated fortress, 
 and, after having repelled every assault for five months, 
 accomplished their own deliverance. The cause of disaster 
 at Cabul, and of success at Jellalabad, is to be attributed 
 exclusively to the character of the commanders. At Cabul 
 there was a chief conspicuous for his personal intrepidity, but 
 enfeebled in mind and body by disease to a degree which 
 incapacitated him to act with the vigour which the crisis 
 demanded. With him was associated Colonel Shelton, an 
 officer of rare courage and many military virtues, but dis- 
 qualified by infirmity of temper from acting in concert with 
 others. There was therefore discord where unanimity was 
 essential to safety. So completely was the force demoralized 
 by the incapacity and dissensions of the leaders, that even the 
 presence of the heroic defender of Herat could not arrest its 
 fate. On the other hand, the garrison of Jellalabad was 
 under a leader who, though he sometimes exhibited a morbid 
 diffidence when under the pressure of responsibilities, had the 
 good sense to avail himself of the counsels of the noble spirits 
 around him. It is no disparagement of the merits of others to 
 say, that the successful defence of Jellalabad was due in the 
 first instance to the surpassing genius of Broadfoot, and then 
 to the judicious and bold counsels of Havelock.' The tide of 
 affairs was turned, however; Havelock gained a signal \ictory 
 at Istaliff. The loss to the Indian exchequer during the 
 Afghan war was estimated at thirteen millions. There was, 
 however, no recognition of Havelock's services on the part of 
 the Government; so he had to rejoin his corps, and assume 
 ' the oversight of the shirts and stockings of No. 4 Company 
 of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry.' Havelock was next
 
 134 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 recommended to the post of Persian interpreter to the new 
 commander-in-chief on his arrival in Calcutta. After eight 
 months' rest he was again involved in opposing the Mahrattas in 
 the Gwalior campaign, in which the rising was subdued. The 
 battle of Maharajpore was fought by Sir Hugh Gough ; the 
 native army was disbanded, and its artillery transferred to 
 British arsenals. 
 
 Premonitions of a mutiny appeared amongst the Sepoys of 
 the native army in 1844. Unfortunately, lenient measures 
 were adopted, which only gave encouragement to the native 
 troops. The prestige of the British troops had been lost in 
 the Afghan campaign. A Sikh army, estimated at 60,000 
 men, crossed the Sutlej, and established themselves on 
 British territory, and threatened to take possession of the 
 Ferozepore cantonment. This led to a severe engagement, 
 in which Havelock had a horse, and then a pony, shot from 
 under him, near Ferozeshahur. This engagement cost us 909 
 killed, and 2378 wounded; of these, 1875 belonged to the 
 eight European regiments engaged. Havelock lost two of his 
 most intimate friends. Sir Robert Sale and Major Broadfoot, 
 in this engagement. ' Havelock,' says Mr. Marshman, ' always 
 considered Broadfoot the foremost man of his age, both as a 
 soldier and a statesman. Though differing in their religious 
 views, they both possessed the same nobleness of soul, the 
 same indomitable energy and courage, and the same strength 
 of character ; the tie which bound them to each other was the 
 sympathy of great and kindred minds. Both were formed to 
 act a prominent part in great events.' The Sikhs, after being 
 driven across the Sutlej, again returned a third time to cross 
 the river, and establish themselves in British territory near the 
 village of Sobraon. This led to another severe engagement, in
 
 SIR HENRY HAVELOCK. 135 
 
 \i'hich they were again driven back with fearful slaughter ; the 
 British loss was 2400, Havelock had a narrow escape : a ball 
 struck the saddle-cloth on his horse, killing the animal ; it 
 passed within an inch of his thigh. This was the last of four 
 battles on the Sutlcj, and placed the Punjaub under British 
 control. Havelock was now appointed to the post of Deputy- 
 Adjutant-General of Queen's troops at Bombay. He embarked 
 for Bombay in January 1847, where he continued for about 
 three years, discharging the duties of his office with great 
 punctuality and promptitude. Another Sikh war took place 
 in 1848, which was brought to a decisive and triumphant issue 
 by the battle of Goojerat. ' Compared,' says Havelock, ' with 
 any of the conflicts and achievements of Clive, of Coote, of 
 Cornwallis, or any other commander, it stands out in very bold 
 relief indeed, not only as regards the importance of its results, 
 the utter quelling and quenching the power and spirit of 
 Ranjeet Sinh's great armament, terrible in the death-throes of 
 its expiring wrath, but with reference to the magnitude of the 
 forces arrayed on either side, and the great confidence which 
 had been imparted to the enemy by preceding events. The 
 most striking point of contrast in which it can be viewed is 
 with some of the previous actions of the same noble and 
 distinguished commander. For here the ground had been 
 deliberately and effectively reconnoitered, an early hour in the 
 morning was chosen for the period of attack, the troops were 
 brought up fresh to the mighty contest ; and if in their disposi- 
 tion there was nothing of the originality of genius, if there was 
 none of that combination which doubles the power of every 
 soldier in the field, yet the imposing array of the British took 
 the field in a grand and magnificent manner, and the means 
 employed were all calculated to produce the desired effect,
 
 136 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 and did produce it. Above all, the arm in which the English 
 host had, beyond a dispute, a preponderating power, the 
 artillery, was well posted, and allowed ample time to develop 
 its irresistible strength. In fact, by it this battle was won. . . . 
 Goojerat had smitten the rebellion with paralysis. Civilised 
 nations which have fortresses and organized military establish- 
 ments are often seen to rally and to prolong the contest after 
 the most stupefying defeats. There is a principle of cohesion 
 in the European character which renders this possible. 
 Asiatics, more easily excited by success, sink into utter pros- 
 tration by calamity. Goojerat had driven the rebels to 
 despair. Indeed, it was no small glory to them to have so 
 long resisted the British power ; but a review of the last events 
 of the campaign fully corroborates the opinion, that though 
 more caution at its commencement might not have shortened 
 the duration of the struggle by a day, it would have diminished 
 the British losses by more than one-half, and saved their army 
 from disaster little short of defeat.' 
 
 In the beginning of 1849, Havelock was a second major in 
 the 53d Regiment. He had, as he himself expressed it, been 
 * wearing mind and body to rags with over-hard work in a bad 
 climate,' and, obeying the doctor's orders, he embarked for 
 England in October 1849, reaching London on 5th November. 
 During his two years' residence in England his health rapidly 
 improved. 'England,' he writes, 'appears to me more 
 intensely aristocratic than ever. The great changes are, the 
 rapidity of communication by locomotives, the extraordinary 
 increase of the power of the press, the improved morality and 
 decency of habits of the middle and lowest classes, and the 
 accumulation of unions for the promotion of industry, comfort, 
 and decidedly of religion. . . . The wealthy and the great,
 
 S//^ HENR V HA VEL OCK. 137 
 
 under any pretext, are entirely wrapt up in themselves and 
 their own interests. Avarice is the great idol, greater even 
 than fame just now.' Havelock, with a heavy heart, returned 
 to Bombay in December 1852. His wife, and two of his 
 daughters, whose education was not finished, and his youngest 
 son, whose education had not begun, were left behind liim in 
 England. His health was greatly improved, and he resumed 
 his duties in good spirits. In the month of April of this year 
 he was cheered by hearing of his son Harry's nomination to 
 the adjutancy of the loth Foot. 'He may,' he remarked, 'be 
 glad to get that before twenty-two, which I gladly accepted at 
 forty.' A vacancy occurring, the Adjutant-Generalship of the 
 Queen's troops in India, Havelock had some hopes of succeed- 
 ing to it ; but this hope was doomed to disappointment, as 
 Colonel Markham received the appointment, Havelock, how- 
 ever, was made Quartermaster-General of the troops, on a 
 salary of nearly ;^3ooo a year. He was next promoted to the 
 rank of brevet-colonel. Colonel Markham was shortly after- 
 wards promoted, when his post of Adjutant-General was 
 bestowed upon Havelock. On the anniversary of his wedding 
 day in 1855, he wrote thus to his wife : 'My submission to the 
 " yoke " has been the source of nearly all the satisfaction and 
 happiness which retrospect presents to me on the chequered 
 map of my sixty years' existence. So, madam, all hail ! best 
 of mothers, and not worst of wives ; accept my congratulations, 
 and give me credit for the sincerity and warmth of the affec- 
 tion which urges me this day to pray for your temporal and 
 eternal blessedness, and points to you as the foundation of 
 my best recollections and hopes.' When Havelock was 
 touring with the commander - in - chief in the North - West 
 Provinces, he was nominated in command of a division, under
 
 138 A^OTABLE MEN AND WOAIEN. 
 
 General Outram, in an expedition which Government was 
 sending to Persia. The town of Herat had again been 
 occupied by Persian soldiers. The Persian army was com- 
 pletely subdued at Mohumra. The following is Havelock's 
 account of the engagement : — ■ 
 
 ' Our expedition against this place has been entirely success- 
 ful, but the victory was won by the Indian navy ; the troops of 
 my division, which landed in the best order and in the highest 
 spirits, had not a shot to fire. The Persians were commanded 
 by the Shahzada — a prince of the blood — and their works were 
 formidable ; but in three hours and a half they were so 
 hammered by our war-ships that the enemy abandoned them 
 in dismay, suffering great loss ; and before my regiments and 
 cannons could be landed in the date groves, intersected by 
 watercourses, and my columns formed, they were in full retreat, 
 followed by a handful of cavalry. I had not a single casualty 
 in my crowded troopship, and in the Scitidian, in which Harry 
 v.-as embarked, the only man killed was his head servant. I 
 had hoped that my troops would have won laurels, but Provi- 
 dence decreed it otherwise. We must be ever thankful for the 
 preserving mercies of this day, the 26th of March, The 
 cannonade was warm, and my steamer, the Beretiice, crowded 
 with Highlanders, led the troopships to the point where w'e 
 landed. I felt throughout that the Lord Jesus was at my side. 
 . . . The work inspires and animates me, and God is with me. 
 I never felt better in my Hfe, praised be God. ... Sir James 
 Outram commands in chief, both naval and military forces, the 
 troops being all under my immediate orders. He and I are 
 the best friends,' Just three days after this engagement, an 
 expedition was sent to Ahwaz, to which the enemy had 
 retreated ; 7000 Persian infantry, v.ith five or six guns, and a
 
 S//^ HENR V II A VEL CK. 1 3 9 
 
 host of cavalry, were put to flight before a small Eritish force 
 of only 300 men, with three steamers and three gunboats. 
 The announcement of a treaty of peace between England and 
 Persia was shortly afterwards made. When Havelock reached 
 Bombay, on the 29th of May 1857, he heard the intelligence 
 that the native regiments at Meerut, Ferozepore, and Delhi 
 had mutinied ; also that the fortress of Delhi was in the hands 
 of the military insurgents. This was the commencement of 
 the revolt of an army of a hundred thousand men against a 
 well-established Government, by whom they had been treated 
 with too much leniency. It was reported that the immediate 
 cause of the revolt was the issuing of greased cartridges to the 
 Sepoys. The native troops believed that the British Govern- 
 ment intended to break down their religion by compelling 
 them to apply their lips to a cartridge saturated with animal 
 grease. It is sacrilege to the Hindoo, who venerates the cow, 
 to touch with his lips the animal he holds sacred ; while the 
 Mohammedan holds the flesh of the pig in abomination. The 
 mutiny burst forth most unmistakeably at Berhampore on the 
 19th February 1S57. It was, however, smothered without 
 bloodshed, but only for a time. The 3d Cavalry, at Meerut, 
 on the 8th May, refused the cartridges which had been served 
 out to them, although it had been explained to them that they 
 were not smeared with grease. Eighty-five of these men weis 
 tried by court martial, and sentenced to imprisonment with 
 hard labour for a period varying from five to ten years. On 
 the nth of May, at six o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the 
 irons of these men were struck off, and they were liberated by 
 their comrades. The Sepoys and the convicts, helped by the 
 mob, rushing to the houses of the Europeans, massacred and 
 insulted all whom they could seize ; plundering and destroying
 
 I40 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 and setting fire to the property, soon the whole cantonment 
 was in a blaze. Then the mutineers prepared themselves to 
 take the road to Delhi, distant about forty miles. General 
 Hewitt, old and nearly imbecile, could not stop their march. 
 Reaching Delhi, they persuaded the two regiments there to 
 join them. Every European in the city, with few exceptions, 
 was put to death with great barbarity. The arsenal, too, fell 
 into their hands. The King of Delhi, previously pensioned, 
 was next proclaimed Emperor of India, The regiments 
 gathered from the surrounding districts, until a body of over 
 twenty thousand mutineers was collected within the walls of 
 Delhi. 
 
 Havelock embarked on the ist June from Bombay for 
 Calcutta, but was wrecked off Ceylon, and transferred to 
 another vessel. His leisure on board he employed in drawing 
 up a memorandum on the best means of meeting the rebellion. 
 This draft, his biographer remarks, although written only 
 three weeks after the mutiny had broken out, ' affords strong 
 evidence of that grasp of mind which enabled him habitually 
 to comprehend at a glance the full bearing of a mihtary 
 question, and, on this occasion, of his clear perception of the 
 exigencies of the present crisis. Three days after his arrival 
 in Calcutta he was selected to command a moveable column, 
 which might be used to overawe the lower provinces. This 
 consisted of the 64th and 78th Highlanders, the same gallant 
 soldiers he had commanded on the Euphrates. 'There is,' 
 Havelock wrote, ' a fine spirit in the ranks of this regiment. . . . 
 I am convinced the regiment would be second to none in the 
 service, if its high military qualities were drawn forth. It is 
 proud of its colours, its tartan, and its former achievements.' 
 
 Nana Sahib was the title of Dhundu Punt, the adopted son
 
 SIR IIENR V HA VEL OCK. 1 4 1 
 
 of Maharajah Baju Rao, the last chief of the Mahrattas, who 
 died in 1851, and who had been heavily pensioned by the 
 Government. Because the annuity was not continued to the 
 son, he nursed a spirit of bitter hostility against the Government. 
 In a hypocritical spirit, when signs of disaffection appeared 
 amongst the native troops at Cawnpore, he maintained the 
 most friendly relations with Sir Hugh Wheeler. But when the 
 Sepoys at Cawnpore openly revolted, he assumed the leader- 
 ship, and boldly threw off the mask he had worn. All the 
 European and native Christians were now indiscriminately 
 murdered. One hundred and twenty-six fugitives who had 
 escaped from the barbarians at Futtyghur, and were proceeding 
 down the river to Allahabad, were murdered by the Nana's 
 followers at Bithoor. The Nana had possession of immense re^ 
 sources in the Cawnpore magazine, which enabled him to hold 
 out. The Europeans in that town were obliged to retire into 
 the badly-garrisoned and ill-provided entrenchments at hand. 
 The greater number of these were massacred in cold blood. 
 Their quarters were stormed with incessant showers of balls 
 and red-hot shot, but of the 870 persons who survived the 
 three weeks' cannonade, 330 were women and children. When 
 Sir Hugh Wheeler reluctantly accepted terms of capitulation 
 from Nana Sahib, boats were provided to convey the women 
 and children and save them from a lingering death. No 
 sooner, however, was the company embarked in the boats, 
 tlian they were mercilessly shot from the river's banks by the 
 rebels. On the 12th July 1857, Havelock gained an advan- 
 tage over the rebels at Futtehpore. ' Futtehpore,' Havelock 
 wrote in his despatch, 'constitutes a position of no small 
 strength. ... I estimate his number at 3500, with twelve 
 brass and iron guns. ... I might say that in ten minutes the
 
 142 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 action was decided, for in that short space of time the spirit of 
 the enemy was entirely subdued.' In a note to his wife he said : 
 ' We fought, and I may say that in ten minutes the aftair was 
 decided, for in that short time our Enfield rifles and cannon 
 had taken all conceit of fight out of the mutineers. Among 
 them was the 56th, the very regiment which I led at 
 Maharajpore. I challenged them: "There's some of you 
 that have beheld me fighting ] now try upon yourselves what 
 you have seen in me." But away with vainglory ! Thanks to 
 Almighty God, who gave me the victory. I captured in four 
 hours eleven guns, and scattered the enemy's whole force to 
 the winds. I now march to retake Cawnpore, where, alas ! 
 our troops have been treacherously destroyed, and to succour 
 Lawrence at Lucknow. Norris would have rejoiced, and so 
 would dear old Julius Hare, if he had survived to see the da}'. 
 Harry was in the thickest of the fight, but, God be praised, 
 escaped unhurt.' The first order which General Havelock 
 issued, thanked the soldiers for their arduous exertions, and 
 ascribed their success to the fire of British artillery, exceeding 
 in rapidity anything he had previously witnessed, to British 
 pluck, 'and to the blessing of Almighty God on a most 
 righteous cause — the cause of justice, humanity, truth, and 
 good government in India.' A sharp encounter with the 
 enemy was experienced at the bridge over the Pandoo nuddee, 
 or river, which was fought by the tired British troops. An 
 engagement had also taken place at Aoug on the same day. 
 The enemy's outposts at Cawnpore were reached on the i6th 
 July, when Havelock, with all the information at command, 
 rapidly made up his mind as to his point of attack. Marching 
 forward, the enemy's left was speedily taken and their guns 
 silenced. A gallant charge was made by the 78th High-
 
 S//^ IIENR Y HA VEL CK. 143 
 
 landers, under Colonel Hamilton. 'Tlie opportunity,' wrote 
 Havelock, ' had arrived for which I have long anxiously 
 waited, of developing the powers of the ySlh Highlanders. 
 Three guns of the enemy were strongly posted behind a lofty 
 hamlet, well entrenched. I directed this regiment to advance, 
 and never have I witnessed conduct more admirable. They 
 were led by Colonel Hamilton, and followed him with sur- 
 passing steadiness and gallantry under a heavy fire. As they 
 approached the village, they cheered and charged with the 
 bayonet, the pipes sounding the pibroch. Need I add that 
 the enemy fled, and the village was taken, and the guns were 
 captured?' Several other positions were as bravely and 
 successfully taken, and the enemy was soon in retreat to 
 Cawnpore, when w^hat Havelock has called the final crisis 
 arrived. * My artillery cattle, wearied by the length of the 
 march, could not bring up the guns to my assistance, and 
 the Madras Fusiliers, the 64th, 84th, and 78th detach- 
 ments, formed in line, were exposed to a heavy fire from the 
 24-pounder on the road. I was resolved this state of things 
 should not last; so calling upon my men, who were lying 
 down in line, to leap on their feet, I directed another steady 
 advance. It was irresistible. The enemy sent round-shot 
 into our ranks until we were within three hundred yards, 
 and then poured in grape with such precision and deter- 
 mination as I have seldom witnessed. But the 64th, led by 
 Major Stirling and by my aide-de-camp, who had placed 
 himself in their front, were not to be denied. Their rear 
 showed the ground strewed with wounded ; but on they 
 steadily and silently came, then with a cheer charged and 
 captured the unwieldy trophy of their valour. The enemy 
 lost all heart, and after a hurried fire of musketry gave way m
 
 144 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 total rout. Four of my guns came up, and completed their 
 discomfiture by a heavy cannonade ; and as it grew dark the 
 roofless barracks of our artillery were dimly descried in 
 advance, and it was evident that Cawnpore was once more in 
 our possession.' In this battle of Cawnpore looo British 
 soldiers and 300 Sikhs routed a body of 5000 native troops, 
 skilled and disciplined by British officers. ' It is no exaggera- 
 tion,' says his biographer, ' to say that in no engagement ever 
 fought by us in India was there a greater combination of heroic 
 valour and consummate generalship. With 10,000 such 
 troops, under such a leader as Havelock, whose glance 
 sufficed to rouse the enthusiasm of his soldiers, the Mutiny 
 would scarcely have survived the year in which it arose.' The 
 troops entered Cawnpore on the 17th, when the full extent of 
 the horrible atrocities committed by the mutineers was re- 
 vealed. In General Wheeler's encampment, where most of 
 the women and children had been confined, a scene of horror 
 presented itself. The pavement was swimming in blood, and 
 fragments of ladies' and children's dresses were floating in it. 
 The walls were indented with bullets. The well in the court- 
 yard was found to be choked up with the bodies of the victims, 
 which had been thrown in promiscuously, the dead and the 
 wounded. Two hundred unresisting women and children had 
 tlius, in revenge for the defeat of 15th July, been massacred 
 by Nana Sahib's guard. 
 
 General Havelock, for the defence of Cawnpore, ordered the 
 construction of 9,n entrenchment, in which he left three hundred 
 men, — all he could spare at the time. He pushed on to the relief 
 of Lucknow, and after making a difficult passage of the Ganges, 
 which at that time w\is swollen with the rains, he assembled 
 his whole force of fifteen hundred men at Mungulwar on the
 
 S//^ ITRNR V IT A VEL O CK. 1 4 5 
 
 28th. A sharp fight took place at Onao, where the mutineers 
 were driven out of a remarkably strong position with the loss 
 of three hundred men. Another victorious engagement took 
 place on the same day at Busseerutgunge. The following 
 morning the General penned an order to this effect : — 
 
 ' Soldiers, your General thanks you for your exertions to-day. 
 You have stormed two fortified villages, and captured nineteen 
 guns. But he is not satisfied with all of you. Some of you 
 fought as if the cholera had seized your minds as well as your 
 bodies.' Then he went into particulars regarding Private 
 Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who was hocked to pieces 
 while setting a brave example to his comrades. Lieutenant 
 Bogle, Major Stephenson, and Lieutenant Dangerfield were all 
 likewise highly commended. On the evening of the 4th of 
 August another engagement took place at Busseerutgunge, one 
 of the strong positions which must be taken before he could 
 reach Lucknow. His loss in the action was only twenty-five 
 men, of whom two were killed, while the rebels lost about 
 two hundred and fifty men. General Havelock now deter- 
 mined to retire to Mungulwar and await reinforcements, as he 
 believed to move forward to Lucknow at that time would mean 
 nothing less that the annihilation of his troops. 
 
 About this time he wrote to his wife : ' I know not when I 
 may have leisure to write a line to you again, so I shall avail 
 myself, — not of a Sabbath day's rest, for that I have not, — but 
 of an accidental cessation of work, to give you my views. I 
 have fought seven fights with the enemy, and by God's blessing 
 have beat him in every one of them. . . . Things are in a 
 most perilous state. If we succeed at last in restoring any- 
 thing, it will be by God's special and extraordinary mercy. 
 Harry is safe and well He is my Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant- 
 
 VI. K
 
 146 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN, 
 
 General, and my right hand. His talents, courage, activity, 
 and energy exceed everything that I ever witnessed at his 
 age. ... I must now write as one whom you may never see 
 more, for the chances of war are heavy at this crisis. Thank 
 God for my hope in the Saviour. We shall meet in 
 heaven.' 
 
 On the 14th August, Brigadier-General Neill communicated 
 with him regarding the defence of Cawnpore, suggesting his 
 return that he might reinforce him in that town, as four 
 thousand men had assembled at Bithoor and threatened the 
 place. His men, enfeebled by long marching and fighting, 
 their numbers decreasing daily through disease and sun- 
 stroke, dispersed the rebels at Boorhiva and Bithoor. At the 
 latter place, one of the strongest positions in India, the enemy 
 was driven back with the loss of two hundred and fifty killed 
 and wounded. The rebels stood only one hour in the presence 
 of his troops. 
 
 'With the battle of Bithoor,' says his biographer, 'the 
 General's first campaign for the relief of Lucknow may be said 
 to have closed. With it also terminated his independent 
 command, and the freedom of acting on his own individual 
 and unfettered judgment. This brief campaign, extending 
 from the 12th of July to the i6th of August, has no parallel in 
 the military history of British India. On no former occasion 
 had European troops been required to march and fight in 
 circumstances so adverse, under a deadly sun or amidst 
 torrents of rain, often fasting for twenty-four hours, and gene- 
 rally without tents, with no bed after their victories but the 
 saturated ground, and no shelter but that which the trees 
 afforded, carrying with them their sick and their wounded, and 
 all their supplies, and suffering more from pestilence than from
 
 SIR IIENR Y HA VEL OCK. 147 
 
 the weapons of the enemy. It was under all these disadvan- 
 tages that, in this brief period of five weeks, they had fought 
 nine actions against overwhelming odds, with troops disciplined 
 and for the most part armed like themselves, and had been 
 everywhere victorious, without a single check. A large portion 
 of the Fusiliers consisted of raw recruits, who had never before 
 heard the whistle of an enemy's bullet, but such marching and 
 such fighting had turned the survivors into hardy veterans, 
 ready for any exigency. So great was the confidence the men 
 had acquired in themselves, in their comrades, and in their 
 leader, that they never considered a discomfiture possible, and 
 never marched to action without the confident assurance of 
 victory. These men have truly been described, by one of the 
 officers who served under him, as " Havelock's Ironsides." 
 With a sufficient body of such troops, he would probably have 
 been enabled to justify the remark made to the writer by Lord 
 Hardinge, when returning to England in 1848: "If ever India 
 should be in danger, the Government have only to place 
 Havelock at the head of the army, and it will be saved." This 
 great opportunity did not fall to his lot ; still, the spectacle of 
 this little band of British heroes, which never exceeded four- 
 teen hundred, isolated in the centre of revolted provinces, 
 pressed by a mutinous and successful army, yet victorious in 
 every encounter, and nobly sustaining the national honour in 
 this fiery trial, was calculated to fill every British bosom with 
 exultation, and to give renewed animation to the Government 
 in this contest Nothing, moreover, served more effectually 
 to impress the natives of the North- Western Provinces with a 
 conviction of the superiority of the English race, and of the 
 certainty of its ultimate triumph, than the attitude and the 
 victories of General Havelock, by which the prestige of British
 
 143 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 power, which they supposed to have become for ever extinct, 
 was not only restored but augmented,' 
 
 The Victoria Cross was conferred on Lieutenant Haveloclc, 
 of the loth Foot, son of Sir Henry, in March 1858, and was 
 affixed to his breast by Her Majesty in person, at Buckingham 
 Palace, on the 8th June 1S59. Sir Colin Campbell, the 
 military veteran, had been appointed to the office of Com- 
 mander-in-chief of the Indian arm}'. On his arrival in 
 Calcutta, 13th August 1857, Havelock telegi'aphed to him 
 regarding his successes, and made plain his present position. 
 At this time he was also superseded in command by an officer 
 of superior rank, Sir James Outram. This has been considered 
 in no sense a wise step on the part of the Government, as it 
 decidedly fettered his zealous spirit to be placed under the 
 control of another. Still he made every effort in his power to 
 secure reinforcements, which were granted to him by Sir Colin 
 Campbell. Havelock received the intelligence that the 5 th 
 and the 90th had been despatched to his aid. While waiting 
 the arrival of these reinforcements, Havelock expressed him- 
 self thus on the situation : — 
 
 ' I consider that the whole Bengal army, the contingents 
 included, has mutinied; that the Bombay army will mutiny; 
 and that the Madras army has a good mind to mutiny, which 
 it will do or not, as things are managed here. ... If I could 
 get 4000 men together, and move up the AUyghur road, I 
 should not despair of changing the face of affairs. But my lot 
 is cast for Lucknow. The enterprise of crossing the Ganges, 
 opposied by double my number, is not without hazard. But it 
 has to me, at sixty-three, all the charm of a romance. I am as 
 happy as a duck in thunder. 
 
 * I conceive the causes of this grand mutiny to be pretty
 
 SIR IlENR Y II A VEL CK. 1 49 
 
 much as your letter describes them. The fact stated in a few 
 words is, that this vast body of mercenary soldiery felt its 
 power, and formed the guilty determination of using it. It 
 was met with words when it should have found bayonets and 
 grape-shot, and the peril of its temporary successes has been 
 and is great. 
 
 ' I know it is proposed, when the danger is over, to recon- 
 struct the native army. The attempt is ridiculous. British 
 troops can keep the field, as we have shown. So they can 
 hold India.' 
 
 Sir James Outram, with his last division of the reinforce- 
 ments, arrived at Cawnpore on the 15th September, and the 
 meeting of the two generals was cordial. Sir James restored 
 the command of the troops to Havelock, in gratitude for and 
 admiration of his previous gallant services, and indicated that 
 after the relief of Lucknow he would resume his position at the 
 head of the force. 
 
 The force now collected did not number more than 2500 
 men, besides 400 left to guard the entrenchments. They took 
 fifteen days' provisions with them. 
 
 * Havelock had determined,' writes Mr. J. T. Headley, 
 'when he started in the morning, to relieve the anxiously 
 waiting garrison that night or not survive the attempt ; and 
 the soldiers, who at first were glad to olitain a moment's rest, 
 became impatient at delay. They had fought their way for 
 nearly a hundred miles to rescue their beleaguered comrades, 
 with their wives and children, and they could not rest till they 
 thundered at the gates of their prison. 
 
 ' The gaiTison in the meantime were anxiously listening for 
 their arrival. They had heard the heavy firing in the morning, 
 and noticed that there was a great sensation in tlie city.
 
 I50 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Towards noon they could see the smoke of battle as it rolled 
 upwards over the houses; and, a little later, people hurrying 
 out of the city, carr}nng bundles of clothes on their heads, 
 followed by large bodies of cavalry and infantry. Although 
 the enemy kept up a steady fire upon them, they were too 
 excited to pay much heed to it, but listened with beating 
 hearts to the hea%7 cannonade as it wound hither and thither 
 through the streets. 
 
 ' By four o'clock some officers on the look-out reported that 
 they saw, far away, near a palace, a regiment of Europeans and 
 a bullock batter}'. Soon after the rattle of musketry was heard 
 in the streets. 
 
 ' While they stood listening, a rifle ball went whistling over 
 their heads, and never before was the sound of a bullet so 
 sweet to the ear. It was a voice from their friends, and 
 whispered of deliverance. Five minutes later, and the High- 
 landers were seen streaming through one of the principal 
 streets ; and although they dropped rapidly under the fire 
 from roofs, windows, and doors, there was no faltering. Then 
 the long-restrained excitement burst forth in cheer upon cheer 
 — " from every fort, trench, and battery ; from behind sand- 
 bags piled on shattered houses ; from every post still held by a 
 {t\s gallant spirits, rose cheer on cheer." The thrilling shouts 
 penetrated even to the hospital, and the wounded crept out 
 into the sun, a ghastly throng, and sent up their feeble voices 
 to swell the glad shout of welcome ! 
 
 * The conversation between Outram and Havelock was long 
 and earnest The former was at first firm in his opinion that 
 they should remain in the palace court and other sheltered 
 places till morning, and Havelock as firmly determined to 
 push on. He said that the garrison might even then be
 
 S/J^ IIENR V 11 A VEL CK. 1 5 r 
 
 exposed to the final assault, and if it were not, that the enemy 
 could concentrate such a force around them before morning 
 that it would be almost impossible to advance. At length it 
 was agreed to leave the wounded, the heavy guns, and a 
 portion of the army behind, and with only two regiments, the 
 78th Highlanders and the Sikhs, to attempt to reach the 
 Residency. 
 
 * Outram had been wounded in the arm by a musket-ball 
 early in the morning ; but, though faint from loss of blood, he 
 refused to leave the saddle, and even now would not dismount. 
 Enduring as he was bold and chivalric, he resolved to accom- 
 pany Havelock, and share with him the danger, and, if need 
 be, death, in this last perilous advance to the relief of the 
 garrison. 
 
 ' Everything being ready, these two gallant commanders put 
 themselves at the head of the slender column, and moved out 
 of the place of shelter. As soon as they entered the street, 
 the houses on either side shot forth flame ; while, to prevent 
 the rapid advance of the troops, and hold them longer under 
 the muzzles of their muskets, the enemy had cut deep trenches 
 across the street, and piled up barricades. 
 
 ' Passing under an archway that streamed with fire, the 
 gallant Neill fell from his horse — dead. His enraged followers 
 halted a moment to avenge his death ; but the stern order of 
 Havelock — " Forward ! " — arrested their useless attempt, and 
 the column moved on. Each street as they entered it became 
 an avenue of flame, through which it seemed impossible for 
 anything living to pass. Every door and window was ablaze, 
 while an incessant sheet of fire ran along the margin of the flat 
 roofs, which were black with men. 
 
 *At each angle batteries were placed, and as soon as the
 
 152 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 head of the column appeared in view the iron storm came 
 drifting down the street, pihng it with the dead. The rattUng 
 of grape-shot and musket-balls against the walls and on the 
 pavement was like the pattering of hail on the roof of a house. 
 From out those deep avenues the smoke arose as from the 
 mouth of a volcano, while shouts and yells rending the air on 
 every side, made still more appalling the night, which had now 
 set in. Between those walls of fire, through that blinding rain 
 of death, Havelock walked his horse composedly as if on 
 parade, his calm, peculiar voice now and then rising over the 
 clangour of battle. That he escaped unhurt seems a miracle, 
 for in the previous eleven hours he had lost nearly one-third 
 of his entire force, while of the two other generals one was 
 dead and the other wounded. At length the gates of the 
 Residency were reached. A little time was spent in removing 
 the barricades, during which the bleeding column rested, while 
 the moon looked coldly down on the ruins by which they were 
 surrounded. When the passage was cleared, the soldiers, 
 forgetting their weariness, gave three loud cheers, and rushed 
 forward, 
 
 * Cheers without and cheers within, cheers on every side, 
 betoken the joy and excitement that prevailed, while over all 
 arose the shrill pipes of the Highlanders. The "column of 
 relief" and the garrison rushed into each other's arms; and 
 tlien the officers passed from house to house to greet the 
 women and children. The stern Highlanders snatched up the 
 children and kissed them, with tears streaming down their 
 faces, thanking God they were m time to save them.' 
 
 A force of 5000 men under Sir Colin Campbell arrived in 
 the neighbourhood of Lucknow on loth November; and the 
 final relief and occupation of the town was well-nigh accom-
 
 SIR IIEXR V HA VEL O CK. 1 5 3 
 
 l)lished on tlie 17 th. The news that he was elevated to the 
 Commandership of the Bath reached Havelock about this 
 time, to cheer him before the end approached. It had been 
 predicted by those wlio liad seen Havelock leave Calcutta on 
 the 23d of June, that his spare and emaciated frame would 
 never be able to stand the fatigues of the campaign. Symptoms 
 of weakness appeared on the 20th, in the shape of an attack of 
 diarrhoea. He was removed outside the city and placed under 
 medical treatment. On the 23d it was found that he was 
 growing rapidly worse, and that his case was hopeless. He 
 exclaimed more than once throughout the day, ' I die happy 
 and contented.' At another time he called his son and said, 
 *See how a Christian can die.' He would allow no one save 
 his wounded son to minister to his wants. He remarked to 
 .Sir James Outram, who had come to visit him in the after- 
 noon : ' I have for forty years so ruled my life that when death 
 came I might face it without fear.' At half-past nine o'clock 
 on the morning of the 24th he resigned his spirit to God who 
 gave it. ' On the low plain by the- Alumbagh,' says a certain 
 writer, ' they made his humble grave ; and Campbell, and 
 Outram, and Inglis, and many a stout soldier who had followed 
 him in all his headlong march, and through the long fatal 
 street, were gathered there to perform the last rites to one of 
 England's noblest dead. As long as tlie memory of great 
 deeds, and high courage, and spotless self-devotion is cherished 
 amongst his countrymen, so long will Havelock's lonely tomb 
 in the grave beneath the scorching eastern sky, hard by the 
 vast city, the scene alike of his toil, his triumph, and his death, 
 be regarded as one of the most holy of the many spots where 
 her patriot soldiers lie.' His death took place in his sixty- 
 third year; and it seemed for a time to eclipse the gaiety
 
 154 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 of England, and every prominent journal in the country spoVe 
 warmly in praise of his virtues. Honours were crowded 
 thickly upon him during the last few weeks of his life. He 
 received first the distinction of Knight Commander of the 
 Bath, was next raised to the rank of Major-General, and two 
 days after his death, which was then unknown in England, 
 Her Majesty sent a message to the House of Commons 
 recommending a pension of ^i coo per annum for the term of 
 his natural hfe, in recognition of his eminent and distinguished 
 services in India. This annuity was afterwards secured for his 
 widow, and an equal amount bestowed on his son Sir Henry. 
 It was also resolved to erect a public statue to his memory. 
 
 ' The case of General Havelock was indeed in many respects 
 a remarkable one. He was a soldier from his youth upwards ; 
 every thought of his clear mind, every emotion of his energetic 
 will for forty years had been devoted to the discharge of the 
 duties of his profession. He had not attained to high rank or 
 high command, for he had no family influence nor political 
 interest at his back. It seemed pretty certain that he had 
 reached the limits of any advancement possible under the 
 circumstances of his peculiar case. In the early part of last 
 year Colonel Havelock was already far advanced in life, and 
 India was to all appearance profoundly tranquil He could 
 have little expectation that any great responsibility or any 
 command of special importance would ever devolve on him. 
 Duty, however, supplied the motive which ambition denied. 
 AVhat he had been when a humble subaltern, that he remained 
 till the last The great idea which ruled his life was to dis- 
 charge his duty without sloth or stint. It was not very 
 material to him that his capacity should ever be recognised,
 
 SIR IIENR V HA VEL CK. 1 5 5 
 
 or his faithful service rewarded; the one point was, that his 
 duty should be discharged, and that he should ever be found 
 ready for action when summoned to the work, ... It is idle 
 to suppose that any desperate effort of frantic valour would 
 have achieved the results which were obtained by this great 
 soldier when the pinch arose and the pressure came. It was 
 by consummate skill that Havelock turned the tide of battle in 
 India. It was by an intimate knowledge of the duties of his 
 profession in the highest and in the minutest points. . . . 
 It is mournful to think that even that spare sinewy frame, 
 hardened, not weakened by forty years of military service 
 under an Indian sun, should at last have sunk under the 
 anxiety of a struggle so prolonged. If Havelock did not 
 actually fall under the death-shot of the enemy, he perished by 
 disease aggravated by unsparing exertion. We must think of 
 him upon his death-bed at the Dil-koosha, when he was about 
 to resign his devout and fearless spirit into the Creator's 
 hands, as we think of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham, of 
 Abercrombie on the Egyptian sands, of Moore on the cliffs of 
 Corunna. Never was there a more glorious death than that of 
 this most gallant soldier when he sank to his long rest, his 
 duty discharged to the last.' — Times. 
 
 * A true soldier in the highest sense of the word was Have- 
 lock. Severe in discipline and rigid in command, he looked 
 for and exacted from all the full performance of their duty. 
 When hardships were to be endured, he expected that they 
 should be met without a murmur. Oftentimes regarded as 
 unpitying by his men, he yet ever strove to alleviate their 
 sufferings and improve their condition. Thoroughly acquaint 
 with the principles of military science, he was able to combine
 
 156 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 the gi-eatest daring with the greatest prudence; and greater 
 was his merit when, heedless of the clamours of his soldiers, 
 he refused to move upon Lucknow until joined by Outram's 
 reinforcements, than when, at the head of their united force, 
 he poured along his " march of fire." For he, too, was assailed 
 by the voice of calumny, and taunted with prudence and faint- 
 heartedness by men who could neither emulate his courage nor 
 fathom the high motives of his conduct Though victorious 
 in every action during his first advance, as soon as he becamr; 
 convinced that the masses with which he was hurtling were too 
 numerous for his little band, he drew them back \ and when 
 the Gwalior Contingent first set out on their march towards 
 Calpee, he was prepared, had he not been promised instant 
 support, to have fallen back on Allahabad, rather than risk the 
 fate of the empire which was entrusted to his keeping. In that 
 resohition he showed a greater moral courage than, and equally 
 great military genius as when, bursting through the iron barrier 
 of Lucknow, he wrested the sinking garrison from the hand of 
 fate. Worn in body, high of courage, pure in heart, of an 
 energy which no difficulties could daunt, of a resolution which 
 no disasters could shake, he sealed his devotion to his country 
 by his blood ; and when the good labourer's work was done, 
 he went to receive his reward in the far distant land' — 
 Blacktcood's Ma^azifu.
 
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 I'«IaIeTalgT«ItfI»-Igl«i-gi».l9 1 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I HE life of an author by profession seldom furnishes 
 ^^ mucli of startling incident to the biographer; and 
 the life of the greatest writer of modern times has 
 been so evenly balanced, so free from vagrant foUies, that the 
 publication of his various books from time to time may be 
 looked upon as marking the principal epochs of his career. 
 He has described himself as a ' writer of books ' by profession ; 
 and for over fifty years he has given his working energies to 
 literature, having spent more intellectual force on any one of 
 his productions than any two other writers in general literature. 
 There is a legitimate curiosity to satisfy, however, in the case 
 of a writer who may have pleased or instructed us ; and there 
 is the fact of circumstance so colouring ideas and life-work, 
 that the details of the life and the life found in an author's 
 books are often best placed over against one another by way of 
 self-iaterpretation. We do not set ourselves to decide as to 
 the moral influence of all Carlyle's works, but would think it 
 best to say that those readers who cannot fully sympathize 
 with such a writer might succeed better in a perusal of his 
 works if they would bring to the reading of them, possess in 
 their own minds, the very qualities which they deem to be
 
 158 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 awanting in Carlyle. In this way, if in no other, their profit 
 would be greater. ' A hundred years hence,' says Mr. Froude, 
 ' perhaps people at large will begin to understand how vast a 
 man has been among them.' Charles Kingsley furnishes an 
 example of how a Christian pastor may make the best and 
 most of our author. He was able, throughout a hard-working 
 life, to draw knowledge and inspiration from his works. * No 
 man,' says the Rev. Cunningham Geikie, ' of any recent age 
 has moved the hearts of this generation, and, through the 
 young men, that of the generations rising, wave behind wave, 
 as Carlyle has through a long lite. I confess to a profound 
 respect for him, and gratitude to him, for no man has more 
 powerfully quickened my nature. If I have had to write a line 
 in which conviction has forced me to differ from so grand a 
 man, I have done so only because, though Cato be dear, truth 
 is dearer.' These tributes might be multiplied. 
 
 The father of Thomas Carlyle, originally a stone-mason, 
 rented a small farm, and afterwards a larger, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. He was a man 
 of energy and decision, and of more than ordinary intelli- 
 gence. ' I think,' says his celebrated son, ' of all the men 
 I have ever known, my father was quite the remarkablest. 
 Quite a farmer sort of person, using vigilant thrift and 
 careful industry ; abiding by veracity and faith, and with the 
 extraordinary insight into the very heart and things of men. 
 I can remember that from my childhood I was surprised 
 at his using many words of which I knew not the meaning ; 
 and even as I grew to manhood I was not a Httle puzzled by 
 them, and supposed they must be of his own coinage. But 
 later, in my black-letter reading, I discovered that every one of 
 them I could recall was of the sound Saxon stock, which had
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 
 
 lain buried, yet fruitful withal, in the quick memory of the 
 humbler sort of folk. He was an elder of the Kirk, and it was 
 very pleasant to see him in his daily and weekly relations with 
 the minister of the parish. They had been friends from youth. 
 That parish minister was the first person that ever taught me 
 Latin, and I am not sure but that he laid a very great curse 
 upon me in so doing. I think it is likely I should have been 
 a wiser man, and certainly a godlier one, if I had followed in 
 my father's steps, and left Greek and Latin to the fools that 
 wanted them. The last time that ever I saw my father was on 
 my journey from Caigenputtoch to London. It was on my 
 way to this modern Babylon, with a manuscript in my hand. 
 Sartor Resartus by name, which I wished to get into print. I 
 came upon my fool's errand, and I saw my father no more, for 
 I had not been in town many days when tidings came that he 
 was dead. He had gone to bed at night as well as usual, it 
 seemed ; but they found in the morning that he had passed 
 from the realm of sleep to that of day. It was a fit end for 
 such a life as his had been. He was a man into the four 
 corners of whose house there had shined through the years of 
 his pilgrimage, by day and by night, the light of the glory of 
 God. Like Enoch of old, he had walked with God ; and at 
 the last he was not, for God took him.' 
 
 His mother was of a like mind, and to her influence, or 
 spiritual instinct, is generally ascribed the view of Cromwell 
 which her celebrated son afterwards gave to the world. Both 
 parents were members of the Secession Church. Thomas 
 Carlyle was born on Tuesday, 4th December 1795. On the 
 occasion of his eightieth birthday, it might be remarked, he 
 was presented by a numerous circle of literary friends and 
 admirers with a gold medal and an address. His name and
 
 i6o NOTABLE AIEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 bust occupied one side of the medal, and on the other were 
 the words, ' In commemoration, Dec. 4, 1875.' Having been 
 sent to the parish school for several years, in 18 10, after some 
 further training in the burgh school of Annan, he came to the 
 University of Edinburgh. While at Annan school, he formed 
 a friendship with Edward Irving. "Wlien Carlyle entered the 
 University of Edinburgh, he had not completed his fifteenth 
 year. He was a hard student, applying himself diligently to 
 classics, but making mathematics his principal study. In 
 prosecuting this branch of study too closely, he first injured his 
 naturally robust health. Speaking to the Edinburgh students 
 in 1866, he naturally sounded a very serious warning to them 
 on this very subject, and asked them to give the consideration 
 and care of their health a first place. Besides his ordinary 
 studies, his reading in all kinds of literature was assiduous and 
 extensive. His parents had designed him for the Church, but 
 a change of views when he was twenty-one made this im- 
 practicable. In May 18 14 he left Edinburgh, having gone 
 through the usual art curriculum, and gained the teachership 
 of mathematics in the burgh school of Annan. Remaininc: 
 two years in Annan, he was promoted to the teachership of 
 mathematics and classics in an academy at Kirkcaldy. Here 
 he also remained for two years, when, towards the end of 1818, 
 he went across to Edinburgh, with no definite prospects before 
 him, but with decided leanings towards literature. 
 
 The next three years were spent in Edinburgh, during which 
 time he read as assiduously as ever, and began to contribute 
 to that ill-fated commercial adventure, Brewster's Edinburgh 
 Encydop(Edia, also to the Edinburgh Review. In 182 1 he 
 became tutor to Charles Buller. In 1823 the first instalment 
 of his Life of Schiller was sent to the London Magazine. In
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. i6i 
 
 the following year he produced a translation of Legendre's 
 Geometry, with an original essay on Proportion, also his trans- 
 lation of IVilJielm Meister. About this period he is said to 
 have visited Germany, acquiring an accurate knowledge of the 
 German language, increasing his knowledge of the literature, 
 and establishing a familiar intimacy with Goethe. His Life of 
 Schiller appeared in a separate form in 1825, In 1826 he 
 married Miss Jane Welsh, daughter of Dr. John Welsh of 
 Haddington, a lineal descendant of John Knox. He remained 
 with his wife in Edinburgh, residing at Comely Bank, in the 
 extreme north side of the town, until he had completed and 
 published four volumes of translations from German romance. 
 He did not set a very high value on these translations, but 
 spoke of them as 'honest journey-work in defect of better.' 
 In 1828 he retired to the farm of Craigenputtoch, in Dumfries- 
 shire, a property belonging to his wife, an4 there he remained 
 until his removal to London in 1834. 
 
 He had now voluntarily devoted himself to literature, and 
 began to contribute to various periodicals, — the Edinburgh 
 Revieiv, the Foreign Quarterly, Eraser's Magazine, these not- 
 able contributions being afterwards issued in his Miscellanies. 
 The essay on Burns (1828), on Boswell's Johnson, and his 
 estimates of Richter, Werner, Goethe, Heyne, Novalis, Schiller, 
 Voltaire, Diderot, were all the fruit of this period. His first 
 great original work, which, like De Quincey's English Opium- 
 Eater, became the diploma of his genius, entitled, Sartor 
 Resartus (' The Tailor Done Over ') was also the product of 
 this solitude. After being rejected by several London pub- 
 lishers, it was at length accepted by Eraser's Magazine, and 
 appeared in its pages, 1833-34. The most casual reader of 
 the remarkable essay on Robert Burns may be led to notice 
 
 VI. L
 
 t62 notable men and WOMEN. 
 
 in it a slight difference in style as compared with some of his 
 other more characteristic productions, * I observed,' said 
 Charles Sumner to Lord Jeffrey, * that I thought Carlyle had 
 changed his style very much since he wrote the article on 
 Burns. " Not at all," said he ; "I will tell you why that is 
 different from his other articles — / altered it."^ The best 
 picture of Carlyle's life at Craigenputtoch is to be gained from 
 his own letters. We give two, also an account of a visit paid 
 to him by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 F?-om a Letter to Goethe, 
 
 ' Craigenputtoch, 25//? September 1828. 
 'You inquire with such warm interest respecting our present 
 abode and occupations, that I am obliged to say a few words 
 about both, while there is still room left. Dumfries is a 
 pleasant town, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, 
 and to be considered the centre of the trade and judicial 
 system of a district which possesses some importance in the 
 sphere of Scottish activity. Our residence is not in the town 
 itself, but fifteen miles to the north-west of it, among the 
 granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward 
 through Galloway, almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness 
 of heath and rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract 
 of ploughed, partly enclosed and planted ground, where corn 
 ripens and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea- 
 mews and rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, 
 have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling ; 
 here, in the absence of a professional or other office, we 
 live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and 
 in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to 
 the roses and flowers of our garden; we hope for health
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 163 
 
 and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, 
 are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already 
 in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and 
 the mountain air, are the best medicine for weak nerves. This 
 daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, is my only 
 recreation ; for this nook of ours is tlic loneliest in Britain — 
 six miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here 
 Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of Saint 
 Pierre. My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to 
 a similar disposition, and forebode me no good result. But I 
 came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, 
 and to secure the independence through which I could be 
 enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our 
 own ; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases our- 
 selves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the 
 monarch of literature. Nor is the solitude of such great 
 importance ; for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, 
 which we look upon as our British Weimar. And have I not, 
 too, at this moment, piled upon the table of my little library 
 a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English 
 journals and periodicals — whatever may be their worth ? Of 
 antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our 
 heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the 
 hill where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. 
 At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother 
 still live to love me. And so one must let time work. But 
 whither am I wandering? Let me confess to you, I am 
 uncertain about my future literary activity, and would gladly 
 learn your opinion respecting it; at least, pray write to me 
 again, and speedily, that I may ever feel myself united to you. 
 . . . The only piece of any importance that I have written
 
 i64 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 since I came here is an " Essay on Burns," Perhaps you 
 never heard of him, and yet he is a man of the most decided 
 genius ; but born in the lowest rank of peasant life, and 
 through the entanglements of his peculiar position, was at 
 length mournfully wrecked, so that what he effected is com- 
 paratively unimportant. He died in the middle of his career, 
 in the year 1796. We English, especially we Scotch, loved 
 Burns more than any poet that lived for centuries. I have 
 often been struck by the fact that he was born a few months 
 before Schiller, in the year 1759, and that neither of them ever 
 heard the other's name. They shone like stars in opposite 
 hemispheres, or, if you will, the thick mist of earth intercepted 
 their reciprocal light.* 
 
 To Thomas de Qidncey, 7vho had recently cotne to reside in 
 
 Edinburgh. 
 ' Craigenputtoch, wih December \%2%. 
 
 ' My dear Sir, — Having the opportunity of a frank, I 
 cannot resist the temptation to send you a few lines, were it 
 only to signify that two well-wishers of yours are still alive in 
 these remote moors, and often thinking of you with the old 
 friendly feelings. My wife encourages me in this innocent 
 purpose ; she has learned lately that you were inquiring for 
 her of some female friend; nay, even promising to visit us 
 here, a fact of the most interesting sort to both of us. I am 
 to say, therefore, that your presence at this fireside will diffuse 
 no ordinary gladness over all members of the household ; that 
 our warmest welcome, and such solacements as even the desert 
 does not refuse, are at any time and at all times in store for 
 one we love so well. Neither is this expedition so impractic- 
 able. We lie but a short way out of your direct route to
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 165 
 
 Westmoreland ; communicate by gravelled roads with Dum- 
 fries and other places in the habitable globe. Were you to warn 
 us of your approach, it might be all made easy enough. And 
 then such a treat it would be to hear the sound of philosophy 
 and literature in the hitherto quite savage wolds, where, since 
 the creation of the world, no such music, scarcely even 
 articulate speech, had been uttered or dreamed of! Come, 
 therefore, come and see us ; for we often long after you. Nay, 
 I can promise, too, that we are almost a unique sight in the 
 British Empire; such a quantity of German periodicals and 
 mystic speculation embosomed in plain Scottish Peat-?noor 
 being nowhere else that I know of to be met with. 
 
 ' In idle hours we sometimes project founding a sort of 
 colony here, to be called the "Misanthropic Society;" the 
 settlers all to be men of a certain philosophic depth, and 
 intensely sensible of the present state of literature ; each to 
 have his own cottage, encircled with roses or thistles as he 
 might prefer; a library and pantry within, a huge stack of 
 turf-fuel without ; fenced off from his neighbours by fir woods, 
 and, when he pleased, by cast-metal railing, so that each might 
 feel himself strictly an individual, and free as a son of the 
 wilderness ; but the whole settlement to meet weekly over 
 coffee, and there unite in their Miserere, or what were better, 
 hurl forth their defiance, pity, expostulation, over the whole 
 universe, civil, literary, and religious. I reckon this place a 
 much fitter site for such an establishment than your Lake 
 country — a region abounding in natural beauty, but blown on 
 by coach-horns, betrodden by picturesque tourists, and other- 
 wise exceedingly desecrated by too frequent resort; whereas 
 here, though still in communication with the manufacturing 
 world, we have a solitude altogether Druidical — grim hills
 
 1 66 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 tenanted chiefly by wild grouse, tarns and brooks that have 
 soaked and slumbered unmolested since the deluge of Noah, 
 and nothing to disturb you with speech, except Arcturus and 
 Orion, and the Spirit of Nature, in the heaven and in the 
 earth, as it manifests itself in anger or love, and utters its 
 inexplicable tidings, unheard by the mortal ear. But the 
 misery is the almost total want of colonists. Would you come 
 hither and be king over us, then indeed we had made a fair 
 beginning, and the " Bog School " might snap its fingers at 
 the " Lake School " itself, and hope to be one day recognised 
 of all men. 
 
 ' But enough of this fooling. Better were it to tell you in 
 plain prose what little can be said of my own welfare, and 
 inquire in the same dialect after yours. It will gratify you to 
 learn that here in the desert, as in the crowded city, I am 
 moderately active and well ; better in health, not worse ; and 
 though active only on the small scale, yet in my own opinion 
 honestly, and to as much result as has been usual with me at 
 any time. We have horses to ride on, gardens to cultivate, 
 tight walls and strong fires to defend us against winter ; books 
 to read, paper to scribble on, and no man or thing, at least in 
 this visible earth, to make us afraid ; for I reckon that so 
 securely sequestered are we, not only would no Catholic 
 rebellion, but even no new Hengist and Horsa invasion in 
 anywise disturb our tranquillity. True, we have no society ; 
 but who has, in the strict sense of that word ? I have never 
 had any worth speaking much about since I came into this 
 world ; in the next, it may be, they will order matters better. 
 Meanwhile, if we have not the wheai in great quantity, we are 
 nearly altogether free from the chaff, which often in this matter 
 is highly annoying to weak nerves. My wife and I are busy
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 167 
 
 learning Spanish ; far advanced in Don Quixote already. I 
 purpose writing mystical reviews for somewhat more than a 
 twelvemonth to come ; have Greek to read, and the whole 
 universe to study (for I understand less and less of it) ; so that 
 here as well as elsewhere I find that a man may " dree his 
 weird" (serve out his earthly apprenticeship), with reasonable 
 composure, and wait what tlie flight of years may bring him, 
 little disappointed (unless he is a fool) if it bring him mere 
 nothing save what he has already — a body and a soul — more 
 cunning and costly treasures than all Golconda and Potosi 
 could purchase for him. What would the vain worm, man, be 
 at ? Has he not a head, to speak of nothing else, — a head (be 
 it with a hat or without one) full of far richer things than 
 Windsor Palace or the Brighton teapot added to it? What 
 are all Dresden picture-galleries and magazines, des arts et des 
 metiers, to the strange painting and thrice wonderful and thrice 
 precious workmanship that goes on under the cranium of a 
 beggar ? What can be added to him or taken from him 
 by the hatred or love of all men? The grey paper or 
 the white silk paper in which the gold ingot is wrapped : 
 the gold is inalienable ; he is the gold. But truce also 
 to this moralizing. I had a thousand things to ask concern- 
 ing you ; your employments, purposes, sufferings, and plea- 
 sures. Will you not ^vrite to me? Will you not come to 
 me and tell ? Believe it, you are well loved here, and none 
 feels better than I what a spirit is for the present eclipsed 
 in clouds. For the present it can only be ; time and chance 
 are for all men ; that troublous season will end ; and one day 
 with more joyful, not deeper or truer regard, I shall see you 
 "yourself again." 
 
 • Meanwhile, pardon me this intrusion, and write if you have
 
 1 68 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 a vacant hour which you would fill with a good action. Mr. 
 Jeffrey is still anxious to know you ; has he ever succeeded ? 
 We are not to be in Edinburgh, I believe, till spring ; but I 
 will send him a letter to you (with your permission) by the 
 first conveyance. Remember me with best regards to Pro- 
 fessor Wilson and Sir W. Hamilton, neither of whom must 
 forget me ; not omitting the honest Gordon, who I know will 
 not. 
 
 ' The bearer of this letter is Henry Inglis, a young gentle- 
 man of no ordinary talent and worth, in whom, as I believe, 
 es steckt gar viel. Should he call himself, pray let this be an 
 introduction, for he reverences all spiritual worth, and you also 
 will learn to love him. With all friendly sentiments, I am 
 ever, my dear sir, most faithfully yours, T. Carlyle.' 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist, 
 called at Craigenputtoch with a letter of introduction, in 
 August 1833. 
 
 ' I came from Glasgow to Dumfries,' writes Emerson, ' and 
 being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from 
 Rome, inquired for Craigenputtoch. It was a farm in Niths- 
 dale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No 
 public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from 
 the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where 
 the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a 
 man from his youth, an author who did not need to hide from 
 his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and 
 exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding in his own terms what is 
 best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-Hke brow, 
 self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of con- 
 versation in easy command ; clinging to his northern accent
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 169 
 
 with evident relish ; full of lively anecdote, and with a stream- 
 ing humour, which floated everything he looked upon. His 
 talk playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion 
 at once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and 
 it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a 
 pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, 
 " not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the 
 minister of Dunscore ; " so that books inevitably made his 
 topics. 
 
 * He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his 
 discourse. Blacktvood's was the "sand magazine;" Eraser's 
 nearer approach to possibility of life was the " mud magazine ;" 
 a piece of road near by that marked some failed enterprise 
 was "the grave of the last sixpence." When too much praise 
 of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the 
 talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time and con- 
 trivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his 
 pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how 
 to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he 
 still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, 
 and he liked Nero's death, " Qualis artifex pereo ! " better than 
 most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth 
 to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good deal 
 about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and 
 that he feared was the American principle. The best thing he 
 knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat for 
 his labour. He had read in Stewart's book, that when he had 
 inquired in a New York hotel for the boots, he had been 
 shown across the street, and had found Mungo in his own 
 house dining on roast turkey. 
 
 * We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he dis-
 
 I70 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 paraged Socrates ; and, when pressed, persisted in making 
 Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from 
 the old world to the new. His own reading had been multi- 
 farious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after 
 Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America, an early favourite. 
 Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was not a 
 dunce ; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, 
 by the advice of a man who had told nim he would find in 
 that language what he wanted. 
 
 ' He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this 
 moment ; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by 
 the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no 
 newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the book- 
 sellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. 
 
 * He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded 
 country, the selfish abdication by public men of all that 
 public persons should perform. " Government should 
 direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come wander- 
 ing over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give 
 to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants 
 to the next house. But here are thousands of acres which 
 might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish 
 go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so 
 found a way to force the rich people to attend to them." 
 
 * We went to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, 
 then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. 
 There we sat down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. 
 It was not Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he 
 had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise 
 itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no 
 step can be taken. Dut he was honest and true, and cognisant
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 171 
 
 of the subtle links that bind ages togetlier, and saw how every 
 event affects all the future. " Christ died on the tree : that 
 built Dunscore kirk yonder : that brought you and me together. 
 Time has only a relative existence." 
 
 ' He was already turning his eyes towards London with a 
 scholar's appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he 
 said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He 
 liked the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. The 
 baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every 
 day, and that is all the Londoner knows, or wishes to know, 
 on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named 
 certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his friends, 
 the best mind he knew, whom London had well served.' ^ 
 
 ' Carlyle,' he further says, ' was already turning his eyes 
 towards London,' and a few months after the interview just 
 described he did finally fix his residence there, in a quiet street 
 in Chelsea, leading down to the river side. Here, in an old- 
 fashioned house, built in the reign of Queen Anne, he has 
 lived ever since. Daniel Maclise, the distinguished artist, 
 lives but a few doors off, round the corner at No. 4 Cheyne 
 Walk. The artist made a portrait-sketch of his neighbour for 
 Fi-aser in 1835. 
 
 I'his removal to London took place in 1S34. Writing to 
 Sir William Hamilton after this event, he says : ' We have 
 broken up our old settlement, and, after tumult enouj.'h, formed 
 a new one here under the most opposite conditions. From 
 the ever-silent whinstones of Nithsdale to the mud-rattling 
 pavements of Piccadilly, there is but a step. I feel it the 
 strangest transition, but one uses himself to all. Our up- 
 holsterers, with all their rubbish and clippings, are at length 
 * English Traits, by R. W. Emerson. First visit to England.
 
 172 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 handsomely swept out of doors. I have got my little book- 
 press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here 
 awaiting what time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall 
 make out between us.' Sartor Resartus was much admired in 
 America, and, along with some of his other essays, was re- 
 printed at Boston in 1836. He began to lecture to crowded 
 but select audiences in London. In 1837 he gave a course of 
 six public lectures on German literature; in 1838, a course of 
 twelve, on ' The History of Literature, or the Successive 
 Periods of European Culture;' in 1839, a course on 'The 
 Revolutions of Modern Europe;' in 1840, a course on 
 ' Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.' The 
 last course only has been published. These lectures created 
 a great sensation in literary circles, but his success as a 
 lecturer does not seem to have emboldened him or to have 
 given him confidence to continue them. 
 
 * I heard Carlyle lecture the other day,' said Charles 
 Sumner ; ' he seemed like an inspired boy ; truth and 
 thoughts that made one move on the benches came from his 
 apparently unconscious mind, couched in the most grotesque 
 style, and yet condensed to a degree of intensity, if I may so 
 write.' 
 
 Harriet Martineau, in her autobiography, gives the following 
 account of these lectures : ' It was our doing — that friend's 
 and mine — that he gave lectures for three or four seasons. He 
 had matter to utter, and there were many who wished to hear 
 him ; and in those days, before his works had reached their 
 remunerative point of sale, the earnings by his lectures could 
 not be unacceptable. So we confidently proceeded, taking the 
 management of the arrangements, and leaving Carlyle nothing 
 to do but to meet his audience and say what he had to say.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 173 
 
 Whenever I went, my pleasure was spoiled by his unconcealed 
 nervousness. Yellow as a guinea, with downcast eyes, broken 
 speech at the beginning, and fingers which nervously picked 
 at the desk before him, he could not for a moment be sup- 
 posed to enjoy his own effort ; and the lecturer's own enjoy- 
 ment is a prime element of success. The merits of Carlyle's 
 discourses were, however, so great, that he might probably have 
 gone on year after year till this time with improving success 
 and perhaps ease ; but the struggle was too severe. From the 
 time that his course was announced till it was finished, he 
 scarcely slept, and he grew more dyspeptic and nervous every 
 day, and we were at length entreated to say no more about his 
 lecturing, as no fame and no money or other advantange could 
 counterbalance the misery which the engagement caused him.'' 
 In the year 1837 appeared one of his master-works. The 
 French Eetwlulion, bearing his name on its title-page. In this 
 • storm ' of a book all his wonderful powers are seen to full 
 advantao-e. He is profoundly critical, imaginative, dramatic, 
 keenly sympathetic, or full of withering sarcasm. The life and 
 intensity of the book are perhaps some of its recommenda- 
 tions; in no other modern book do we find the same vivid 
 historical portraiture. The leading characters who figured in 
 the French Revolution of 1789 are painted as by a flash of 
 lightning. 
 
 The following in his own words tells how the second volume 
 of his French Revolution was accidentally burned : — 
 
 ' A sad story enough, sir, and one that always makes me 
 shudder to think of I had finished the second volume of the 
 book called The French Revolution : A History, and as it lay in 
 manuscript, a friend desired that he might have the reading of 
 it, and it was committed to his care. He professed himself
 
 174 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 greatly delighted with the perusal, and confided it to a friend 
 of his own, who had some curiosity to see it as well. This 
 person sat up, as he said, perusing it far into the wee hours of 
 the morning ; and at length recollecting himself, surprised at 
 the flight of time, laid the manuscript carelessly upon the 
 library table, and hied to bed. There it lay, a loose heap of 
 rubbish, fit only for the waste-paper basket or for the grate. 
 So Betty, the housemaid, thought when she came to light the 
 library fire in the morning. Looking round for something 
 suitable for her purpose, and finding nothing better than it, 
 she thrust it into the grate, and applying the match, up the 
 chimney with a sparkle and roar went The French Revolution, 
 thus ending in smoke and soot, as the great transaction itself 
 did more than half a century ago. 
 
 ' At first they forbore to tell me the evil tidings ; but at 
 length I heard the dismal story, and I was as a man staggered 
 by a heavy blow. Ah, sir, it's terrible when you have been 
 struggling for months and years with dim confusion and wild 
 anarchy ; when all about you is weltering chaos and unbroken 
 darkness, and you have at length gained some victory, and 
 built a highway that will bear the pressure of your own foot, 
 and perhaps the feet of generations yet to come ; and the 
 morning has dawned, and you can see some way at least into 
 the realm of Limbo — suddenly to find that you are in the 
 centre of pitchy darkness, in the whirl of commingling 
 elements, and that chaos has come again, 
 
 ' I was as a man beside myself, for there was scarcely a page 
 of manuscript left. I sat down at the table and strove to 
 collect my thoughts, and to commence the work again. I 
 filled page after page, but ran the pen over every line as the 
 page was finished. Thus was it, sir, for many a weary day,
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 175 
 
 until at length, as I sat by the window, half-hearted and 
 dejected, my eye wandered along over acres of roofs, I saw a 
 man standing upon a scaffold engaged in building a wall — the 
 wall of a house. With his trowel he'd lay a great splash of 
 mortar upon the last layer, and then brick after brick would be 
 deposited upon this, striking each with the butt of his trowel, 
 as if to give it his benediction and farewell ; and all the while 
 singing or whisthng as blithe as a lark. And in my spleen I 
 said within myself, " Poor fool ! how canst thou be so merry 
 under such a bile-spotted atmosphere as this, and everything 
 rushing into the regions of the inane ? " 
 
 * And then I bethought me, and I said to myself, " Poor 
 fool thou, rather, that sittest here by the window whining and 
 complaining. What if thy house of cards falls ? Is the 
 universe wrecked for that ? The man yonder builds a house 
 that shall be a home perhaps for generations. Men will be 
 born in it, wedded in it, and buried from it ; and the voice of 
 weeping and of mirth shall be heard within its walls ; and may- 
 hap true valour, prudence, and faith shall be nursed by its 
 hearthstone. Man ! symbol of eternity imprisoned into time ! 
 it is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and 
 the greatest no greater than the least, but only the spirit thou 
 workest in whic?i can have worth or continuance. Up, then, 
 at thy work, and be cheerful." 
 
 • So I arose and washed my face and felt that my head was 
 anointed, and gave myself to relaxation — to what they call 
 " light literature." I read nothing but novels for weeks. I 
 was surrounded by heaps of rubbish and chaff. I read all the 
 novels of that person who was once a captain in the ro5'al navy 
 — and an extraordinary ornament he must have been to it : 
 the man that wrote stories about dogs that had their tails cut
 
 176 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 off, and about people in search of their fathers ; and it seemed 
 to me that of all the extraordinary dunces that had figured 
 upon this planet, he must certainly bear the palm from every 
 one save the readers of his books. And thus refreshed, I took 
 heart of grace again, applied me to my work, and in course of 
 time The French Revolution got finished, as all things must, 
 sooner or later.' 
 
 Sartor Resartus and the first edition of his Mtscellajiies were 
 published in 1838. We may most conveniently give the dates 
 of publication of his other works here. In 1839 appeared 
 Chartism, an attack on the corruptions of society, and the 
 inefficiency of all extant methods of reform. Fast and Fresent, 
 a sequel to the foregoing, appeared in 1843 ; it presents a vivid 
 contrast between the state of English society in the Middle Ages 
 and English society of the present day. CromwelVs Letters 
 and Speeches was published in 1845, and met with a quicker 
 sale than any of his previous works. Latte7--Day Famphlets, 
 issued in 1850, treat of some modern abuses. His bio- 
 graphy of John Sterling, which contains a good deal of 
 autobiographical matter, was issued in 1851. After this time 
 he was absorbed in writing his great historical work, The 
 History of Frederick LL., commonly called the Great. The 
 publication began in 1858, and was completed in 1865. 
 
 With all their defects, we can point to no list of modern 
 books in which in the critical essays we find such grand even- 
 handed justice and deep insight, and in the historical works 
 such vivid historical portraiture. In 1867 he sent a contribu- 
 tion to Macmillan's Magazine, entitled, ' Shooting Niagara, and 
 After,' which prophesied gloomy consequences from the 
 Reform Bill. His latest work is entitled. Early Kings of 
 Nonvay, with an Essay on the Fortraii^ of John Knox.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 177 
 
 He was elected, in the session of 1865-66, to be Lord 
 Rector of Edinburgh University, and succeeded Mr. Gladstone 
 in that office. His public appearance excited great interest 
 amongst the intelligent public on the occasion of the delivery 
 of his installation address. The following account of his 
 appearance, and of the great occasion, is by David 
 Macrae : — 
 
 * At five minutes past two there is a sudden stir and buzz 
 of excitement behind, towards which all faces instantly turn, 
 most of the people swarming up upon the seats to get a better 
 view. A glittering object borne aloft, and slowly threading its 
 way down the passage, indicates that the bedellus, with the 
 mace on his shoulder, is heading the procession to the plat- 
 form. On its reaching the foot of the hall, up steps Sir David 
 Brewster, Principal of the University, in his robes. The 
 appearance, next, of a spare old man, slightly bent with age, 
 and wearing on his shoulders the spangled robe of the Lord 
 Rector, is the signal for a tremendous outburst of applause, 
 repeated again and again like peals of thunder. Thomas 
 Carlyle at last ! There he is before us, the grand old hero, 
 grey-headed now and frail, with a certain dreary, dreamy haze 
 about his eye that only vanishes afterwards when his soul is 
 stirred. Uncouth, too, with antiquated dress -coat, black 
 stock not unlike a policeman's, and high old-fashioned collar 
 hedging in his face on both sides. Altogether a singular 
 figure, as of som.e old prophet who has been living for half a 
 century in the wilderness. His huge collar seems to give him 
 considerable uneasiness. You can see him adjusting his 
 cheeks between the tall white blades, and then hitching his 
 head up and rolling his eyes as if his spirit were fretting over 
 them. 
 
 VI. M
 
 178 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 'Preliminaries over — Huxley and some others invested in 
 doctor's robes — Carlyle rose, and, before commencing, threw 
 off the gown. 
 
 * He had not been speaking two minutes before it became 
 evident that his voice would not fill the hall. It was painful 
 at first to see the efforts which the old hero made to rouse his 
 voice to what it had done a quarter of a century ago. But 
 after a few unsuccessful attempts, he settled down into his 
 ordinary tone, and addressed those who could hear, speaking 
 out of the fulness of his heart as a father might speak to his 
 children. No attitudinizing, no rhetorical tricks, no attempt 
 at fine speaking. It was simple, quiet, earnest talk — what he 
 might himself have called the authentic utterance of his heart. 
 Many of the people, too far back to hear, were ebbing away, 
 having satisfied their curiosity. But great numbers, though 
 too far back to hear distinctly, stood crowded together, leaning 
 forward eagerly with bated breath to catch any word that might 
 reach so far. It was a wonderful speech — such as no man but 
 Thomas Carlyle would or could have delivered — full of the 
 same wisdom that pervades his books ; the same terrible irony 
 darting down like forked lightning upon its object ; the same 
 grotesque mingling of humour and sad pathos ; and every- 
 where the same abhorrence of " unveracities " and shams. 
 Back to truth, back to simplicity, back with holy reverence to 
 whatsoever is nobler and purer than ourselves, in order that 
 we may become more like it — this was the gist of Carlyle's 
 speech, as it has been the utterance of the man's whole 
 life.' 
 
 He had not returned to London when the news was sent 
 to him that Mrs. Carlyle had died there on Saturday, April 2 1. 
 Her remains were conveyed to Scotland and laid in the family
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 179 
 
 burying-ground at Haddington, in the centre of the old 
 cathedral. Carlyle afterwards caused the following inscription 
 to be placed on his wife's tombstone : — 
 
 * Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of 
 Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Hadding- 
 ton, 14th July 1801 ; only child of the above John Welsh and 
 of Grace Welsh, Caplegell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her 
 bright existence she had more sorrows than are common, but 
 also a soft invincibility, a capacity of discernment, and a noble 
 loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the 
 true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word 
 unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy 
 that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April 
 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his 
 life as if gone out.' 
 
 When moved to it, Carlyle has from time to time written 
 with powerful efiect letters on current events to the columns 
 of the newspaper. The most recent of these contributions 
 were letters on the Franco-Prussian war and the Russo-Turkish 
 war. Even more honourable, because so deeply helpful and 
 sympathizing, have been his earnest words sent to young men 
 who might apply to him for counsel and guidance. Besides, 
 we hear of many benefactions, and much encouragement given 
 to struggling authors, who valued any token of encouragement 
 from such a high quarter. Letters of his, thoughtful, valuable, 
 all containing the real gold dust, and not the sweepings of the 
 intellectual laboratory, come to light from time to time. He 
 is as painstaking and sincere a correspondent as Kingsley 
 seems to have been. Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Ruskin, J. A. 
 Froude, Charles Kingsley, and a host of unnamed celebrities, 
 men and women, known or unknown to the world on both
 
 i8o NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 sides of the Atlantic, have confessed their obligations to him. 
 His writings have been fruitful in stimulus, and in suggesting 
 ideas. He has not only preached the dignity of labour, but 
 his whole life is an example of it. His critical, and 
 biographical, and historical methods of writing have all had a 
 powerful influence in moulding the thoughts and the line of 
 work of many of our most useful literary men. 
 
 A letter wnritten in 1843 to a young man, as to a proper 
 choice of reading, may be taken as a favourable specimen of a 
 wise and helpful letter : — • 
 
 * Dear Sir, — Some time ago your letter was delivered me ; 
 I take literally the first free half-hour I have had since to write 
 you a word of answer. 
 
 ' It would give me true satisfaction could any advice of mine 
 contribute to forward you in your honourable course of self- 
 improvement, but a long experience has taught me that advice 
 can profit but little ; that tliere is a good reason why advice is 
 so seldom followed; this reason, namely, that it so seldom, 
 and can almost never be, rightly given. No man knows the 
 state of another ; it is always to some more or less imaginary 
 man that the wisest and most honest adviser is speaking. 
 
 ' As to the books which you — whom I know so little of — 
 should read, there is hardly anything definite that can be said. 
 For one thing, you may be strenuously advised to keep read- 
 ing. Any good book, any book that is wiser than yourself, 
 will teach you something — a great many things, indirectly and 
 directly, if your mind be open to learn. This old counsel of 
 Johnson's is also good, and universally applicable : " Read the 
 book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read." The 
 very wish and curiosity indicates that you, then and there, are
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. i8i 
 
 the person likely to get good of it. " Our wishes are presenti- 
 ments of our capabilities : " that is a noble saying, of deep 
 encouragement to all true men ; applicable to our wishes and 
 efforts in regard to reading as to other things. Among all the 
 objects that look wonderful or beautiful to you, follow with 
 fresh hope the one which looks wondcrfullcst, beautifuUest. 
 You will gradually find, by various trials (which trials see tliat 
 you make honest, manful ones, not silly, short, -fitful ones), 
 what is for you the wonderfullest, beautifuUest — what is your 
 true element and province, and be able to profit by that. True 
 desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. 
 But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between true 
 desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what 
 we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have 
 an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true ; 
 and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to 
 foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all — are 
 not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their 
 superficial, false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for 
 their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, 
 though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food ? 
 With these illustrations, I will recommend Johnson's advice 
 to you. 
 
 ' Another thing, and only one other, I will say. All books 
 are properly the record of the history of past men — what 
 thoughts past men had in them — what actions past men did : 
 the summary of all books whatsoever lies there. It is on this 
 ground that the class of books specifically named History can 
 be safely recommended as the basis of all study of books, the 
 preliminary to all right and full understanding of anything we 
 can expect to find in books. Past history, and especially tlie
 
 iS2 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 past history of one's own native country, — everybody may be 
 advised to begin with that. Let him study that faithfully ; 
 innumerable inquiries will branch out from it ; he has a broad- 
 beaten highway, from which all the country is more or less 
 visible ; there travelling, let him choose were he will dwell. 
 
 * Neither let mistakes and wrong directions — of which every 
 man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many — discourage 
 you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that 
 we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, 
 he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the 
 condition which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our 
 very walking is an incessant falling, — a foiling and a catching 
 of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement ! It is 
 emblematic of all things a man does. 
 
 ' In conclusion, I will remind you that it is not books alone, 
 or by books chiefly, that a man becomes in all points a man 
 Study to do faithfully whatsoever thing in your actual situation, 
 there and now, you find either expressly or tacitly laid to your 
 charge. That is your post ; stand in it like a true soldier. 
 Silently devour the many chagrins of it, as all human situations 
 have many ; and see you aim not to quit it without doing all 
 that //, at least, required of you. A man perfects himself by 
 work much more than by reading. They are a growing kind 
 of men that can wisely combine the two things, — wisely, 
 valiantly can do what is laid to their hand in their present 
 sphere, and prepare themselves withal for doing other wider 
 things, if such lie before them. 
 
 ' With many good wishes and encouragements, I remain, 
 yours sincerely, 
 
 * Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 ' Chelsea, 13//; March 1843.'
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 183 
 
 The following letter will be regarded by some as especially 
 interesting. It was addressed to the late Mr. Erskine of 
 Linlathen, and dated 12th February 1869 : — ■ 
 
 ' I was agreeably surprised by the sight of your handwriting 
 again, so kind, so welcome ! The letters are as firm and 
 honestly distinct as ever. The mind, too, in spite of its 
 frail environments, as clear, plump-up, calmly expectant as in 
 the best days. Right so ! So be it with us all till we quit this 
 dim sojourn, now grown so lonely to us, and our change 
 come. *' Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy 
 name. Thy will be done." What else can we say ? The other 
 night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more 
 and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand prayer, 
 came strangely into my mind with an altogether new emphasis; 
 as if written and shining for me in mild, pure splendour on the 
 black bosom of the night there ; when I, as it were, read them 
 word by word, with a sudden check to my imperfect wander- 
 ings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much 
 unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once 
 formally repeated that prayer; nay, I never felt before how 
 intensely the voice of man's soul it is ; the inmost aspiration of 
 all that is high and pious in poor human nature ; right worthy 
 to be recommended with an " After this manner pray ye.'" 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter by Thomas Carlyle, 
 written to Dr. Carlyle, of Toronto, many years ago, and 
 published for the first time in the Toro7ito Globe. Dr. Carlyle 
 had been seeking advice from the Chelsea sage as to improving 
 himself in his profession of school teacher : — 
 
 * There are few or no subjects on which a man of real sense 
 ■ — real industry, honesty, and stedfast perseverance — cannot 
 make his own way ; and if you do make it, it is better in many
 
 1 84 NOTABLE ME A AND WOMEN 
 
 respects, and far more productive for you, than if a teacher had 
 helped. So be not afraid or discouraged ; diligent hewing will 
 cut through the hardest and biggest rock. Whatsoever thing 
 you do decide on learning, it is in general certain that if you 
 have diligence enough, patient energy enough, you can learn it. 
 For English grammar, if you are not already quite irrefragable 
 in that department, let me recommend to you Cobbett's little 
 book on this subject (though any tolerable book will do to 
 help you) ; Cobbett's is one of the clearest and best — and 
 Cobbett is otherwise a great example to you. He began life 
 here in London as a wandering lad, barely able to read, who 
 was obliged to enlist. As a private soldier he took to study, 
 while others were idling and drinking ; and he ended as a 
 man of solid cultivation, and of high mark in the world. 
 Pinkerton's Geography, or even Guthrie's, or almost any book 
 you can pick up on that subject, will open a wide field of 
 inquiry and improvement for you. I recommend that, and all 
 the astronomy you can acquire, as very useful. Beyond and in 
 advance of all these subjects, the foreign languages, especially 
 French (which I advise you to attempt), and Latin, which is 
 more difficult ; those are of first-rate consequence for a school- 
 master who will at all rise in his profession, and, indeed, for 
 every man who aspires to cultivate himself by reading. 
 Cobbett learned French with hardly any master (except, 
 perhaps, a chance hint about the pronunciation). Your own 
 uncle, my brother John, had very little help or guidance in 
 acquiring Latin, and is, nevertheless, perfectly expert in it 
 These things, whatever else they may lead to, belong to you as 
 part of the business you are at; these claim your first and 
 chief care for the present 
 
 * With regard to reading for general improvement, I need
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 185 
 
 rot much enter upon giving you directions. I calculate you 
 will diligently, and of your own accord, devote most of your 
 hours of relaxation, when severer pursuits are over, to reading 
 whatever good books you can find ; and I stipulate only that 
 they be good, — written by men of talent and wisdom, not by 
 men of flimsy sham-talent and iolly (called "amusing," etc., 
 by fools), — in which essential particular there is nothing but 
 your own good sense, growing better daily by the honest use of 
 it, to which one can apply for the selection and order in which 
 you read. Read no fool's book if you can help it ; fly from a 
 fool as you would from poison, in your reading and in all other 
 pursuits of yours ! For the rest, I will assure you, on very 
 good experience, it is far less important to a man that he read 
 many books than that he read a {q.\^ well, and with his whole 
 mind awake to them. This is indisputably certain. A very 
 small lot of books will serve to nourish a man's mind if he 
 handle them well; and I have known innumerable people 
 whose minds had gone all to ruin by reading carelessly too 
 many books. It is like omnivorous feeding; the rooks in 
 Scotland, in plentiful seasons, are said to " eat themselves out 
 of ply" — they become thoroughly uneatable by too much 
 eating. The wisest men I have knov;n in this world were by 
 no means great readers — good readers, I should rather say, of 
 a few books that were wise, and having an abhorrence of all 
 books they found to be foolish. A man gathers wisdom only 
 from his own sincere exertions and reflections ; and in this it is 
 really not very much that other men can do for him ; but 
 whatever help there is he will find with the wise alone, whether 
 as writers or oral counsellors and companions; and will get 
 nothing but hindrance, confusion, and final ruin and failure 
 from associating with the foolish. Read well whatever books
 
 1 86 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 you can get that you understand to be good ones ; try them 
 well with your own judgment, — earnestly, but yet humbly and 
 loyally ; you will get more light at every step, and see better 
 what country, what path is ahead of you, if you do this as you 
 ought As to subjects for reading, so far as under these con- 
 ditions you have a choice of subjects — I recommend in general 
 all kinds of books that will give you real information about 
 men, their works and ways, past and present, in this world. 
 History is evidently the grand subject a student will take to. 
 If you can get histories of England, Scotland, and other 
 countries (Hume, Robertson, Watson, etc., are not uncommon 
 books), especially histories of America or your own country, 
 I recommend you to read them with all diligence ; and there 
 is one precept very useful — never read any such book without 
 a map beside you ; endeavour to seek out every place the 
 author names, and get a clear idea of the ground you are 
 on ; without this you can never understand him, much less 
 remember him. Mark the dates of the chief events and 
 epochs; write them, get them fixed into your memory — 
 chronology and geography are the two lamps of history'.' 
 
 Table-Talk, Characteristics, etc 
 
 I have seen Carlyle's face under all aspects, from the 
 deepest gloom to the most reckless or most genial mirth ; and 
 it seemed to me that each mood could make a totally different 
 portrait. The sympathetic is by far the finest in my eyes. 
 His excess of sympathy has been, I believe, the master pain of 
 his life. He does not know what to do with it, and with its 
 bitterness, seeing that human life is full of pain to those who 
 look out for it ; and the savageness which has come to be a
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 1S7 
 
 main characteristic of this singular man is, in my opinion, a 
 mere expression of his intolerable sympathy with the suffering. 
 He cannot express his love and pity in natural acts, like other 
 people ; and it shows itself too often in unnatural speech. 
 But to those who understand his eyes, his shy manner, his 
 changing colour, his sigh, and the constitutional pudeur which 
 renders him silent about everything that he feels the most 
 deeply, his wild speech and abrupt manner are perfectly 
 intelligible. I have felt to the depths of my heart what his 
 sympathy was in my days of success and prosperity, and 
 apparent happiness without drawback ; and again in sickness, 
 pain, and hopelessness of ever being at ease again. I have 
 observed the same strength of feeling towards all manner of 
 sufferers ; and I am confident that Carlyle's affections are too 
 much for him, and the real cause for the 'ferocity' with which 
 he charges himself, and astonishes others. It must be such a 
 strong love and honour as his friends feel for him that can 
 compensate for the pain of witnessing his suffering life. When 
 I knew him familiarly, he rarely slept, was woefully dyspeptic, 
 and as variable as possible in mood. When my friend and I 
 entered the little parlour in Cheyne Row, our host was usually 
 miserable. Till he got his coffee, he asked a list of questions, 
 without waiting for answers, and looked as if he was on the 
 rack. After tea he brightened and softened, and sent us home 
 full of admiration and friendship, and sometimes with a hope 
 that he would some day be happy. . . . 
 
 In 1837 he came to me to ask how he should manage if he 
 accepted a proposal from Fraser to publish his pieces as a 
 collection of Miscellanies. After discussing the money part 
 of the business, I begged him to let me undertake the proof 
 correcting, supposing, of course, that the pieces were to be
 
 iSS NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 simply reprinted. He nearly agreed to let mc do this, but 
 afterwards changed his mind. The reason for my offer was 
 that the sight of his proofs had more than once really alarmed 
 me, — so irresolute, as well as fastidious, did he seem to be as 
 to the expression of his plainest thoughts. Almost every word 
 was altered, and revise followed upon revise. I saw at once 
 that this way of proceeding must be very harassing to him ; 
 and also that profit must be cut off to a most serious degree 
 by the absurdly expensive method of printing. I told him that 
 it would turn out just so if he would not allow his Miscellanies 
 to be reprinted just as they stood, in the form in which people 
 had admired, and now desired to possess them. As might be 
 expected, the printing went on very slowly, and there seemed 
 every probability that this simple reprint would stand over to 
 another season. 
 
 One day, while in my study, I heard a prodigious sound 
 of laughter on the stairs ; and in came Carlyle, laughing 
 loud. He had been laughing in that manner all the way from 
 the printing office in Charing Cross. As soon as he could, he 
 told me what it was about. He had been to the office to urge 
 on the printer ; and the man said, ' Why, sir, you really are so 
 very hard upon us with your corrections. They take so much 
 time, you see ! ' After some remonstrance, Carlyle observed 
 that he had been accustomed to that sort of thing; that he 
 got works printed in Scotland, and — 
 
 * Yes, indeed, sir,' interrupted the printer. ' We are aware 
 of that. We have a man here from Edinburgh, and when he 
 took up a bit of your copy, he dropped it as if he had burned 
 
 his fingers, and cried out, " have mercy, have you got 
 
 that man to print for.? Who knows when we shall get done — ■ 
 with all his corrections ? " ' Carlyle could not reply for laugh-
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 
 
 ing, and he came to tell me that I was not suigular in my 
 opinion about his melhod of revising. 
 
 He has now been a very long time about his Frederick the 
 Great, which I must, therefore, like a good many more, die 
 without seeing. I could never grow tired of his biographies. 
 From the time when I first knew him I am not aware that he 
 has advanced in any views, or grown riper in his conclusions ; 
 and his mind has always seemed to me as inaccessible as Words- 
 worth's, or any other constitutionally isolated like theirs ; and 
 therefore it is that I prefer to an outpouring of his own notions, 
 which we have heard as often as he has written didactically, 
 and which were best conveyed in his Sartor Resartus, a com- 
 mentary on a character, as in biography, or on events, as in a 
 history. For many reasons, I prefer his biographies. I do 
 not think that he can do any more effectual work in the field 
 of philosophy or morals, but I enjoy an occasional addition to 
 the fine gallery of portraits which he has given us. I am now 
 too much out of the world to know what is the real condition 
 of his fame and influence, but for my own part I could not 
 read his Latter-Day Pamphlets, while heartily enjoying his life 
 of his friend Sterling, and, in the main, his Cromwell. No 
 one can read his Cromwell without longing for his Frederick 
 the Great, and I hope he will achieve that portrait and others 
 after it. However much or little he may yet do, he certainly 
 ought to be recognised as one of the chief influences of his 
 time. Bad as our political morality, and grievous as our social 
 shortcomings, we are at least awakened to a sense of our sins ; 
 and I cannot but ascribe this awakening mainly to Carlyle. 
 "What Wordsworth did for poetry in bringing us out of a 
 conventional idea and method to a true and simple one, 
 Carlyle has done for morality. He may be himself a most
 
 190 NOTABLE MEN AND women: 
 
 curious opposition to himself, he may be the greatest 
 mannerist of his age while denouncing conventionalism, the 
 greatest talker while eulogizing silence, the most woeful com- 
 plainer whilst glorifying fortitude, the most uncertain and 
 stormy in mood while holding forth serenity as the greatest 
 good within the reach of man, but he has nevertheless infused 
 into the mind of the English nation a sincerity, earnestness, 
 healthfulness, and courage, which can be appreciated only by 
 those who are old enough to tell what was our morbid state 
 when Byron was the representative of our temper, the Clapham 
 Church of our religion, and the rotten-borough system of our 
 political morality. If I am warranted in believing that the 
 society I am bidding farewell to is a vast improvement upon 
 that which I was born into, I am confident that the blessed 
 change is attributable to Carlyle more than to any single 
 influence besides. — Harriet Marti/lean's ^Autobiography.^ 
 
 The tongue has the ' sough ' of Annandale — an echo of the 
 Solway, with its compliments to Old Father Thames. A keen, 
 sharp, singing voice, in the genuine Border key, and tranquil 
 and sedate withal, neighbourly and frank, and always in 
 unison with what is uttered. In his conversation he sees the 
 very thing he speaks of — it breathes and moves palpable to 
 him, and hence his words form a picture. When you come 
 from him, the impression is like having seen a great brilliant 
 panorama : everything has been made visible and naked to 
 your sight. But more, and better far than that, you bear 
 home with you an indelible feeling of love for the man — deep 
 at the heart, long as life. No man has ever inspired more of 
 this personal affection. Not to love Carlyle when you know 
 him is something unnatural, as if one should say they did not
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 191 
 
 love the breeze that fans their cheek, or the vine-tree which 
 has refreshed them both with its leafy shade and its exuberant 
 juices. — James Dodds. 
 
 Margaret Fuller on Carlyle. 
 
 From a Letter dated Paris, \6th November 1846. 
 
 Of the people I saw in London, you will wish me to speak 
 first of the Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and 
 appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first 
 time, I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet 
 humour — full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or 
 oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his 
 discourse, and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal 
 being brought back the charm which once was upon his 
 writing before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way 
 of singing his great full sentences, so that each one was like 
 the stanza of a narrative ballad. He let me talk now and 
 then, enough to free my lungs and change my position, so 
 that I did not get tired. That evening he talked of the 
 present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches 
 of the men of the day, fanatics and others ; and some sweet, 
 homely stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch 
 peasantry. 
 
 Of you he spoke with hearty kindness, and he told, with 
 beautiful feeling, a story of some poor farmer or artisan in the 
 country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that 
 dirty English world, and sits reading the essays and looking 
 upon the sea. 
 
 I left him that night, intending to go out very often to their 
 house. I assure you there never was anything so witty as
 
 192 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Carlyle's description of . It was enough to kill one with 
 
 laughing. I, on my side, contributed a story to his fund of 
 anecdote on this subject, and it was fully appreciated. Carlyle 
 is worth a thousand of you for that ; he is not ashamed to 
 laugh when he is amused, but goes on in a cordial, human 
 fashion. 
 
 The second time Mr. C. had a dinner-party, at which was 
 a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of 
 rJiUosophy^ and now \\Titing a Life of Goethe, a task for which 
 he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can 
 make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed 
 sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, 
 for that night he was in his more acrid mood, and though 
 much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew weari- 
 some to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything 
 he said. 
 
 For a couple of hours he was talking about poetry, and the 
 whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects 
 in his own mind. Tennyson wrote in verse because the 
 schoolmasters had taught him that it was great to do so, and 
 had thus, unfortunately, been turned from the true path for a 
 man. Burns had, in like manner, been turned from his 
 vocation. Shakespeare had not had the good sense to see 
 that it would have been better to write straight on in prose j 
 and such nonsense, which, though amusing enough at first, he 
 ran to death after a while. 
 
 The most amusing part is always when he comes back to 
 some refrain, as in the French Revolution of the sea-green. In 
 this instance, it was Petrarch and Laura, the last word pro- 
 nounced with his ineffable sarcasm of drawl. Although he 
 
 ' George Henry Lewes,
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 193 
 
 said this over fifty times, I could not lielp laughing when 
 Laura would come ; Carlyle running his chin out when he 
 si)oke it, and his eyes glancing till they looked like the eyes 
 and beak of a bird of prey. Poor Laura ! Luckily for her 
 that her poet had already got her safely canonized beyond the 
 reach of this Teufelsdrockh vulture. 
 
 The worst of hearing Carlyle is, that you cannot interrupt 
 him. I understand the habit and power of haranguing have 
 increased very much upon him, so that you are a perfect 
 prisoner when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him 
 is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate 
 for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down. True, 
 he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration, 
 sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally 
 delinquent ; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it. 
 The latter part of the evening, how^ever, he paid us for this, by 
 a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of 
 modern French literature ; not one of them, perhaps, perfectly 
 just, but all drawn with the finest, boldest strokes, and, from 
 his point of view, masterly. All were depreciating, except that 
 of B^ranger. Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because 
 with hearty sympathy. 
 
 I had afterwards some talk with Mrs. C, whom hitherto I 
 had only seen, for who can speak while her husband is there ? 
 I like her very much ; she is full of grace, sweetness, and 
 talent. Her eyes are sad and charming. 
 
 December 1846. — Accustomed to the infinite wat and 
 exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amaze- 
 ment and a splendour scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. 
 He does not converse — only harangues. It is the usual 
 
 misfortune of such marked men — happily not one invariable or 
 VI. N
 
 194 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 inevitable — that they cannot allow other minds room to 
 breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus 
 miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never 
 cease to need from the experience of the humblest. 
 
 Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposi- 
 tion, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their 
 sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical 
 superiority — raising his voice, and rushing on his opponent 
 with a torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwill- 
 ingness to allow freedom to others. On the contrary, no man 
 would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought. But it 
 is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own 
 impulse, as the han'k its prey, and which knows not how to stop 
 in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing ; 
 but in his arrogance there is no littleness, no self-love. It is 
 the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror ; it 
 is his nature, and the untameable impulse that has given him 
 power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, 
 nor revere ; and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if 
 you did ; but you like him heartily, and like to see him the 
 powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his 
 furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you, if you 
 senselessly go too near. 
 
 He seems to me quite isolated — lonely as the desert ; yet 
 never was a man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one 
 to match his mood. He finds them, but only in the past. 
 He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of 
 satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and 
 generally catching up near the beginning some singular 
 epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, 
 or with which, as with a knitting needle, he catches up
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 195 
 
 the stitches, if he has chanced, now and then, to let fall 
 a row. 
 
 For the higlier kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk 
 on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He 
 sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins 
 anew with fresh vigour ; for all the spirits he is driving before 
 him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he 
 can but make them turn about ; but he laughs that they seem 
 to others such dainty Aiiels. His talk, like his books, is full 
 of pictures ; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point 
 of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. 
 I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it ; his 
 works are true, to blame and praise him — the Siegfried of 
 England — great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and 
 of a might rather to destroy evil than legislate for good.^ 
 
 Carlyle and Leigh Hunt. 
 
 At a small party Leigh Hunt had said something about the 
 islands of the blest, or El Dorado, or the Millennium, and was 
 flowing on his bright and hopeful way when Carlyle dropped 
 some heavy tree-trunk across Hunt's pleasant stream, and 
 banked it up with philosophical doubts and objections at every 
 interval of the speaker's joyous progress. But the unmitigated 
 Hunt never ceased his overflowing anticipations, nor the 
 saturnine Carlyle his infinite demurs to those finite flourishings. 
 The listeners laughed and applauded by turns ; and had now 
 fairly pitted them against each other, as the philosopher of 
 hopefulness and of the unhopeful. The contest continued 
 with all that ready wit and philosophy, that mixture of 
 * Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Boston, 1S52), vol. iii. pp. 96 104.
 
 196 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 pleasantry and profundity, that extensive knowledge of books 
 and character, with their ready application in argument or 
 illustration, and that perfect ease and good nature which 
 distinguished both of these men. The opponents were so well 
 matched that it was quite clear the contest would never come 
 to an end But the night was far advanced, and the party 
 broke up. They all sallied forth, and, leaving the close room, 
 the candles, and the arguments behind them, suddenly found 
 themselves in presence of a most brilliant starlight night. 
 They all looked up. ' Now,' thought Hunt, ' Carlyle's done 
 for ! He can have no answer to that ! ' ' There ! ' shouted 
 Hunt, ' look up there ! Look at that glorious harmony, that 
 sings with infinite voices an eternal song of hope in the soul of 
 man.' Carlyle looked up. They all remained silent to hear 
 what he would say. They began to think he was silenced at 
 last — he was a mortal man. But out of that silence came a 
 few low-toned words in a broad Scotch accent. And who on 
 earth could have anticipated what the voice said ? ' Eh, it's 
 a sad sight!' Hunt sat down on a stone step. They all 
 laughed — then looked very thoughtful Had the finite 
 measured itself with infinity, instead of surrendering itself up 
 to the influence ? Again they laughed — then bade each other 
 good-night, and betook themselves homeward with slow and 
 serious pace. — R. H. Horne. 
 
 Mental Struggles and Dyspepsia. 
 
 In answer to the question : ' You seem to suffer from 
 dyspepsia. How did this come about ? Did you inherit it, or 
 have you acquired it ? ' Carlyle replied : — 
 
 ' I am sure I can hardly tell, sir. I only know that for
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 197 
 
 one or two or three and twenty years of my mortal existence I 
 was not conscious of the ownership of that diabohcal arrange- 
 ment called a stomach. I had grown up the healthy and hardy 
 son of a hardy and healthy Scotch dalesman ; and he was the 
 descendant of a long line of such, men that had tilled their 
 paternal acres, and gained their threescore years and ten,— or 
 even, mayhap, by reason of strength, their fourscore years, — 
 and had gone down to their graves never a man of them the 
 wiser for the possession of this infernal apparatus. 
 
 * And the voice came to me, saying, " Arise, and settle the 
 problem of thy life ! " And so I entered into my chamber and 
 closed the door, and around me there came a trooping throng 
 of phantasms dire from the abysmal depths of nethermost 
 perdition. Doubt, Fear, Unbelief, Mockery, and Scorn were 
 there. And I arose and wrestled with them in travail and 
 agony of spirit. Whether I ate I know not; whether I slept I 
 know not ; I only know that when I came forth again it was 
 with the direful persuasion that I was the miserable owner of a 
 diabolical arrangement called a stomach ; and I have never 
 been free from that knowledge from that hour to this, and I 
 suppose that I neyer shall be until I am laid away in my grave.' 
 — A. H. Guernsey. 
 
 As the morning mists clear from the Thames, various figures 
 may be seen strolling about with that peculiar air which 
 indicates expectation in its possessor. The pilgrim is some- 
 times a broad-shouldered Scot, sometimes a little townsman 
 from the Midlands, now and then an obvious artisan, long- 
 limbed and bowler-hatted. They can all read, these lingerers 
 by the Thames. They diligently peruse the morning papers, 
 and now and then cast an eager look towards the end of
 
 198 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Chejne Row ; for they have come many a weary mile to look 
 upon their hero, v.ho has taught them, in round terms, to 
 appreciate their betters. At last emerges a tall, slightly-bowed 
 figure, surmounted by a wide-awake of ample brim ; and as 
 Thomas Carlyle takes his early morning stroll, they gaze, 
 neither curiously nor impertinently, but reverently. Unheeding 
 he passes on, as one whose spirit is not stirred by public 
 observation. This before-breakfast promenade is part of a 
 regular programme, through which the inventor of the clothes 
 philosophy works daily. Breakfast over, work comm.ences; 
 and here be it observed that Mr. Carlyle does not qualify 
 reading and study as work, reserving the latter term for actual 
 production. In this he differs widely from the great army of 
 literary nihilists, — the men of letters who pass their days in the 
 reading-room of the British Museum, and take their full value 
 out of the London Library, but never produce anything. His 
 hours of work are short — from half-past ten or eleven till two ; 
 the rest of the afternoon being devoted to exercise, either in 
 the form of a long walk with an old friend and congenial com- 
 panion, or of a jaunt up to town in a Chelsea omnibus. The 
 last-named dissipation is a great favourite with Mr. Carlyle. 
 He believes that the shaking, from which the effeminate 
 hansom is comparatively free, but which may be thoroughly 
 enjoyed in an omnibus, is a peculiarly wholesome species of 
 exercise. Till within a few years he rode and drove a great 
 deal. Making a rapid calculation one day, he said that during 
 the time he was engaged in the production oi Friedrich II., he 
 rode twice round the world. On alighting from the omnibus, 
 he v.-ill stroll in any direction, not bent entirely upon exercise, 
 but observing keenly the human comedy visible on a London 
 afternoon. His tastes would not occur to one who met him
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 
 
 for tlie first time, during his afternoon stroll, as being of a 
 literary complexion. He is no loiterer at bookstalls or 
 grubber among curiosities. Returning home from his after- 
 noon promenade, he reposes until dinner-time. This im- 
 I)ortant ceremony over, he again wanders out for a short space, 
 and then sits down, not to work, as he puts it, but to read till 
 two o'clock in the morning. . . . 
 
 The reading preferred by the author of Hero Worship is 
 almost entirely confined to books. It has been said that it is 
 general enough in character, but the reader is imbued with 
 a certain preference for works in a bound and otherwise 
 complete condition. Of newspapers he, despite his many 
 commendations of the ' able editor,' is no lover. They occupy 
 too much space, and their perusal too much time. Public 
 Opinioji and All the Year Round are the only periodical 
 publications welcomed within the walls of the house in Cheyne 
 Row, and the rhetoric of the leading journals is for the most 
 part lost on the historian of the Seven Years' War. Books, 
 too, apart from a few companions of early life, are valued by 
 him not as books, as choice editions, and so forth, but simply 
 as shells which, when the kernel is extracted, may be flung 
 away. The smallness of Mr. Carlyle's library — perhaps the 
 smallest, saving mere books of reference, that ever belonged 
 to a great man of letters — is explained by his magnificent 
 memory. When a book is read, read with that intensity of 
 attention which he brings to bear upon it, it is no longer of 
 value. He has made it his own. Whatever of fact and truth 
 and life is in it, it is absorbed, and the husk is valueless. — The 
 World,
 
 200 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Carlyle's Portrait. 
 
 You can see that fine old face, snowed up by the winter of 
 time, rugged and lined with channels of thought, in most 
 photographic shops and in many albums. The earnest eyes 
 still flash beneath the rugged brows. He wears such a beard 
 'as youth gone out has left in ashes;' there is something 
 scoriae about the face, as if the fires of a volcano had nearly 
 burnt themselves out and yet reserved some force. Age has 
 added to it, not subdued it. Compare it with earlier portraits 
 and you will recognise the truth that, wherever wisdom dwells 
 age steals not, but reveals true beauty. No ruin of a strong 
 tower clothed with ivy is more fine and touching than that 
 head. The portrait, leaning thoughtfully on the hand that has 
 laboured so long and so well with the pen, presents the vera 
 (ffigies of a true king of men. ' Here at least,' cries the gazer, 
 'is no phantasm, no sham captain, but a man.' — J. H. 
 Friswell. 
 
 I am no worshipper of force. I see nothing to admire in 
 mere power, i.e. in its quantity apart from its quality. Carlyle's 
 earnestness is very touching and noble; but it seems to me 
 that, according to his teaching, if you could conceive an 
 omnipotent devil, you ought to worship him as much as 
 Israel's Jehovah. 
 
 [So that he is in one sense a modern Manichee.] 
 I suspect so. And an omnipotent militia of darkness would 
 be the very horror of horrors. . . . The connection between 
 Carlylism and despotism I see, but the link is nowhere 
 explicitly avowed. Carlyle is sometimes difficult to under- 
 stand, and very difficult iojiiJ;^e. Why did he call Chalmers
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 201 
 
 the last of the Christians ? I suppose he forgets what he has 
 written elsewhere. Hero-worship ! ah, well, he and I have to 
 meet a strange hero yet, — ©di/aros, — the greatest that I know 
 of, next to Him who overcame him. Carlyle has great faith in 
 the devil; but I suspect he always appreciates quantity of 
 being and of power more than quality. — Dr. John Duncan. 
 
 ]\rr. Carlyle, in September 1879, was able to attend the 
 marriage of his niece and amanuensis. Miss Mary Carlyle 
 Aitken, which took place at the house of her parents in 
 Dumfries. The bridegroom was one of her Canadian cousins, 
 Mr. Alexander Carlyle, B.A., of the Bield, Brentfield, Ontario. 
 The marriage was solemnized by the Rev. James A. Campbell, 
 parish minister of Troqueer; and after the ceremony Mr. 
 Carlyle entered into lively conversation with Mr. Campbell, 
 expressing gratitude to Almighty God for having spared him 
 so many years, and speaking much about the work of John 
 Knox. 
 
 Carlyle died on sth February 18S1, and his remains were 
 laid to rest beside his ancestors at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. 
 His Life was written on an extensive scale by James Anthony 
 Froude, who also supervised the publication of a Selection of 
 Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, and two volumes of Reminiscences 
 written by Carlyle himself.
 
 THOMAS BABINGTCN MACAULAY. 
 
 !E\V names are more familiar to the English reading 
 ^fj' public than that of Lord Macaulay, poet, essayist, 
 
 and historian. His biography by his nephew, Mr. 
 Trevelyan, shows a successful life, happy, industrious, and 
 beneficent. Macaulay was descended from a Une of Scotch 
 parish ministers, his great-grandfather being minister of Tiree 
 and Coll ; his grand-uncle, of Ardnamurchan ; his grand- 
 father, John Macaulay, was successively the minister of 
 Barra, South Uist, Inveraray, and Cardross. One of his 
 uncles, becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, 
 made the acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Babington, owner 
 of Rotheley Temj)le, Leicestershire. He afterwards married 
 one of Macaulay's aunts, and presented his brother-in- 
 law to the living of Rotheley. His father, Zachary 
 Macaulay, born in 1768, had been sent out to Jamaica by a 
 Scotch house of business as book-keeper on an estate, where 
 he became sole manager. His close contact with and know- 
 ledge of the evils of negro slavery caused him to throw up his 
 situation when he was four-and-twenty, from conscientious 
 scruples, and return to his native country. He became the 
 
 colleague of Granville Shari), Wilberforce, and Thornton, as a 
 
 202
 
 THOMAS BALING TON MA CA ULA Y. 203 
 
 slave abolitionist. For some time he resided at Sierra Leone, 
 promoting various philanthropic objects ; afterwards he became 
 a thriving merchant, but neglecting his business in his over- 
 zeal as a reformer, he brought poverty on the family. He 
 married Miss Mills, a Quakeress. Thomas Macaulay was 
 born in the house of his aunt, Mrs. Babington, at Rotheley 
 Temple, on 25th October 1800. While still very young, he 
 remembered standing by his father's side looking out of the 
 nursery window at a cloud of black smoke which was pouring 
 out of a tall chimney, and asking if that were the mouth of 
 hell. His early years were spent at Clapham, where his pre- 
 cocity and his command of language were equally remarkable. 
 His childhood was quiet and happy, and from three years of 
 age he read incessantly. His memory retained the bookish 
 phraseology. Here are three anecdotes regarding this period : 
 
 * His father took him on a visit to Lady Waldegrave at Straw- 
 berry Hill, and was much pleased to exhibit to his old friend 
 the fair bright boy, dressed in a green coat with red collar and 
 cuffs, a frill at the throat, and white trousers. A servant who 
 was v.aiting upon the company in the great gallery spilt some 
 hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and 
 compassion, and when, after a while, she asked how he was 
 feeling, the Httle fellow looked up in her face, and replied, 
 *' Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." 
 
 * He had a little plot of ground at the back of the house, 
 marked out as his own by a row of oyster- shells, which a maid 
 one day threw away as rubbish. He went straight to the 
 drawing-room, where his mother was entertaining some visitors, 
 walked into the circle, and said very solemnly, " Cursed be 
 Sally ; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neigh- 
 bour's landmark."
 
 204 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 * Mrs. Macaulay explained to Tom that he must learn to 
 study without the solace of bread and butter, to which he 
 replied, " Yes, mamma, industry shall be my bread and atten- 
 tion my butter." ' 
 
 He went to school at first with extreme reluctance. In his 
 
 eighth year he was a busy young author. He had prepared a 
 
 compendium of universal history, written a paper to persuade 
 
 the people of Travancore to embrace the Christian religion, 
 
 and, fired with the perusal of Scott's Lay and Marmion, he 
 
 commenced writing a poem in six cantos, to be called the 
 
 Battle of Cheviot. Three cantos of this work only were 
 
 finished. He had also composed several hymns. At a later 
 
 date he wrote Fingal, a poem, in twelve books. Hannah 
 
 More and her sister made a companion of him during his visits 
 
 at Barley Wood, where he would read prose and declaim 
 
 poetry by the hour to these w^orthy ladies. Till her death 
 
 Hannah More was his admirer and friend. In 1812 the young 
 
 historian, having outgrown his Clapham school, was sent to a 
 
 private school at Little Shellford, near Cambridge. ' He was 
 
 not unpopular among his fellow-pupils, who regarded him with 
 
 admiration, tempered with the compassion which his utter 
 
 inability to play at any sort of game would have excited in 
 
 every school, public or private alike.' Here he read widely, 
 
 unceasingly, and rapidly, his powerful memory enabling him 
 
 to take in almost at a glance the contents of a printed page. 
 
 The letters he wrote at this time have a bookish tone. In 
 
 the eyes of his sisters, who regarded him with passionate love 
 
 and devotion, he could do no wrong, and they enjoyed his 
 
 unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, and 
 
 his amusing talk. Strangers he cared little for, and while at 
 
 home with his sisters working around him, he would read
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CA ULA Y. 205 
 
 aloud from a novel, or, by way of variety, they would take a 
 walk together outside. Poetry and novels, unless when he 
 was at home for the holidays, were forbidden in the daytime in 
 the Macaulay family, and were referred to as ' drinking drams 
 in the morning.' Zachary Macaulay entirely disapproved of 
 novel reading; but the young people had their way, and 
 became confirmed novel readers. While editor of the 
 Christian Observer, an anonymous letter was inserted, which he 
 afterwards discovered was written by his own son. This letter 
 eulogized Fielding and Smollett, and drew down upon him 
 the wrath of many of the contributors. Young Macaulay 
 nevertheless continued to be reverent, devoted, and respectful 
 towards his father, and eventually became the mainstay and 
 support of the whole family. 
 
 Macaulay took up his residence at Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, in October 1818. He was the author of two prize 
 poems, was elected to the Craven scholarship in 182 1, and 
 became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1822. He detested 
 the labour of manufacturing Greek and Latin verse, cared 
 little for mathematics, and his advice to writers of Latin prose 
 was, ' Soak your mind with Cicero.' He distinguished him- 
 self in debating, and began to take an interest in politics. 
 He still continued to read novels, good, bad, and indifferent, 
 and he would cry over the pathetic passages. His first 
 public appearance as a speaker was at a meeting of the Anti- 
 Slavery Society in June 1824. The Duke of Gloucester was 
 in the chair, and his speech was highly successful. His father 
 made but one remark on the speech, to the effect that ' it 
 was ungraceful in so young a man to speak wdth folded arms 
 in the presence of royalty.' Macaulay was called to the bar 
 in 1826, and joined the northern circuit at Leeds, but he did
 
 2o6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 not look seriously upon tlic law as a profession, and he got 
 little business either in London or on circuit. When Charles 
 Knight started his Quarterly Magazine, IMacaulay was one of 
 its most reliable and attractive contributors. His father, 
 however, disapproved of the whole publication from be- 
 ginning to end, and Macaulay withdrew his name for a 
 time from the list of contributors. His father having 
 withdrawn his objections after the issue of the second 
 number, Macaulay continued to be a contributor until the 
 premature death of the periodical. Macaulay's connection 
 with the Edinburgh Review began in August 1825, with the 
 publication of his article on Milton. Like Lord Byron, says his 
 biographer, he awoke one morning and found himself famous. 
 Murray, the London publisher, declared it would be worth the 
 copyright of C/iilde Harold to have him on the staff of the 
 Quarterly. His breakfast-table was covered with cards of 
 invitation to dinner, while his father foresaw that the law would 
 be less to him than it had ever previously been. Lord Jeffrey 
 liad some time before this shown himself anxious to secure 
 fresh blood for the Edinburgh Revie^v. Writing to a friend in 
 London he said : ' Can you not lay your hands on some clever 
 young man who would write for us ? The original supporters 
 of the work are getting old, and either too busy or too stupid, 
 and here the young men are mostly Tories.' In acknowledg- 
 ing the receipt of Macaulay's manuscript, he said : ' The more 
 I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style.' 
 In personal appearance, Praed's description of him in Knighi^s 
 Quarterly Magazine is" said to be correct : ' There came up a 
 short, manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, 
 and one hand in his waistcoat pocket.' His wardrobe was 
 always overstocked. Later in life he indulged in a succession
 
 TIIC MAS BA BING TON MA CA ULA Y. 207 
 
 of cmbroide ed waistcoats. When outside he wore new kid 
 gloves, into which his fingers were usually slipped only hall- 
 way. He was destitute of bodily or athletic accomplish- 
 ments, "he exercise in which he most excelled was in 
 walking rapidly, and perhaps reading rapidly at the same 
 time, through some of the London thoroughfares. Indoors 
 he was mostly on his feet, moving rapidly up and down 
 the room as he talked. Crabb Robinson gave the fol- 
 lowing note of his appearance and manners in society in 
 1S26 : — 'I had a most interesting companion in young 
 Macaulay, one of the most promising of the rising generation 
 I have seen for a long time. He has a good face — not the 
 delicate features of a man of genius and sensibility, but the 
 strong lines and well-knit limbs of a man sturdy in body and 
 mind. Very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with words, 
 and not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, but no Radical. 
 He seems a correct as well as a full man. He showed a 
 minute knowledge of subjects not introduced by himself.' 
 With people whom he really did not like, it may be noted, he 
 would not even live on terms of apparent intimacy. The 
 Macaulay family had settled in 50 Great Ormond Street in 
 1823, and these years were years of intense happiness to young 
 Macaulay and to his sisters, by whom he was still looked up 
 to and idolized. Between the years 1829 and 1834, his 
 income from his Trinity fellowship brought him ^300, 
 and his income from the Edinburgh Review rather less. A 
 commissionership of bankruptcy, bestowed upon him by Lord 
 Lyndhurst in consideration of his Tory antecedents, while he 
 held it, brought his income up to about ^i^iooo. 
 
 When the Cambridge Senate resolved to petition against the 
 Catholic claims, a majority in lavour of emancipation was
 
 2o8 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 gained by carrying down a stage-coach ful of young ^^'hig 
 Masters of Arts, who were afterwards described by their 
 opponents as ' godless and briefless barristers,' He visited 
 Edinburgh in 1828, establishing a friendship with Lord Jeffrey, 
 which ceased only with life, Mr. Trevelyan describes the will 
 of the nation in 1830 as paralyzed within the senate, effectual 
 care being taken that its voice should not be heard without. 
 ' The press was gagged in England, and throttled in Scotland.' 
 Macaulay entered Parliament as member for Calne in 1830, 
 and on the 5th of April addressed the House of Commons on 
 the second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's bill for the removal 
 of Jewish disabilities. In the autumn of this year he had his 
 first taste of Continental travel, enjoying a visit to Paris. This 
 visit was saddened by the news of the death of his sister Jane ; 
 his mother never recovered the shock, and died in 1832. An 
 epitomized history of a joeriod of French history was com- 
 menced by him for Lardner's Cabinet Cydopcsdia, but was 
 never finished. When he entered Parliament his commissioner- 
 ship of bankruptcy was swept away, and with it his income. 
 The produce of his pen brought him some ;^6o or j[^io a 
 quarter, while he had the support of the family mainly thrown 
 upon him. At the height of his Parliamentary fame, he was 
 reduced to sell his gold medals gained at Cambridge ; he 
 was, however, never in debt, and never wrote or published 
 anything contrary to his literary or political conscience. In a 
 letter to a lifelong friend, Thomas Flower Ellis, he described 
 what took place in the memorable division in the House of 
 Commons on the second reading of the Reform Bill, which was 
 carried by a majority of one : 'The "ayes" and " noes " were Uke 
 two volleys of cannon from opposite sides of a field of battle. 
 When the Opposition went out into the lobby, an operation
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CA ULA V. 209 
 
 which took up twenty minutes or more, we spread ourselves 
 over the benches on both sides of the House, for there were 
 many of us who had not been able to find a seat during the 
 evening. When the doors were shut we began to speculate on 
 our numbers. Everybody was desponding. " We have lost it. 
 We are only 280 at most I do not think we are 250. They 
 are 300. Alderman Thomson has counted them. He says 
 they are 299." This was the talk on our benches. I wonder 
 that men who have been long in Parliament do not acquire 
 a better couji i'ml for numbers. The House, when only the 
 " ayes " were in it, looked to me a very fair House — much fuller 
 than it generally is even on debates of considerable interest. 
 I had no hope, however, of 300. As the tellers passed along 
 our lowest row on the left-hand side, the interest was insupport- 
 able; 291, 292 — we were all standing up and stretching forward, 
 telling with the tellers. At 300 there was a short cry of joy ; 
 at 302 another — suppressed, however, in a moment ; for we 
 did not yet know what the hostile force might be. We knew, 
 however, that we could not be severely beaten. The doors 
 were thrown open and in they came. Each of them, as he 
 entered, brought some difterent report of their numbers. It 
 must have been impossible, as you may conceive, in the lobby, 
 crowded as they were, to form any exact estimate. First we 
 heard that they were 303 ; then that number rose to 310, then 
 went down to 307. Alexander Barry told me that he had 
 counted, and that they were 304. We were all breathless wittt 
 anxiety, when Charles Wood, who stood near the door, jumped 
 up on a bench and cried out, "They are only 301." We set 
 up a shout that you might have heard to Charing Cross, 
 waving our hats, stamping against the floor, and clapping our 
 
 hands. The tellers scarcely got through the crowd, for the 
 VI. o
 
 2 TO NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 House was thronged up to the table, and all the floor was 
 fluctuating with heads like the pit of a theatre. But you 
 might have heard a pin drop as Duncannon read the numbers. 
 Then again the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears. 
 I could scarcely refrain. And the jaw of Peel fell ; and the 
 face of Twiss was as the face of a damned soul ; and Herries 
 looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the last operation. 
 We shook hands, and clapped each other on the back, and 
 went out laughing, crying, and huzzaing into the lobby. And 
 no sooner were the outer doors opened than another shout 
 answered that within the House. All the passages and the 
 stairs into the waiting-rooms were thronged by people who had 
 waited till four in the morning to know the issue. We passed 
 through a narrow lane between two thick masses of them, and 
 all the way down they were shouting and waving their hats, till 
 we got into the open air. I called a cabriolet, and the first thing 
 the driver asked was, "Is the bill carried?" "Yes, by one." 
 " Thank God for it, sir." And away I rode to Gray's Inn ; 
 and so ended a scene which will probably never be equalled 
 till the reformed Parliament wants reforming ; and that, I hope, 
 will not be till the days of our grandchildren — till that truly 
 orthodox and apostolical person, Dr. Francis EUis, is an arch- 
 bishop of eighty.' 
 
 He recommended his sister Hannah at one time to 'get 
 Blackwood' s new number. There is a description of me in it. 
 What do you think he says that I am ? " A little, splay-footed, 
 ugly dumpling of a fellow, with a mouth from ear to ear." 
 Conceive how such a charge must affect a man so enamoured 
 of his own beauty as I am.' He thus spoke of his own defects 
 as an orator : — 
 
 * I said a few ^^■ords the other night. They were merely in
 
 TIIOMA S BASING TON MA CA ULA V. 211 
 
 reply, and quite unpremeditated, and were not ill received. I 
 feel that much practice will be necessary to make me a good 
 debater on points of detail, but my friends tell me that I 
 have raised my reputation by showing that I was quite equal 
 to the work of extemporaneous reply. My manner, they say, 
 is cold and wants care. I feel this myself. Nothing but 
 strong excitement and a great occasion overcomes a certain 
 reserve and viauvaise honte which I have in public speaking ; 
 not a inauvaise honte which in the least confuses me or makes 
 me hesitate for a word, but which keeps me from putting any 
 fervour into my tone or my action. This is perhaps in some 
 respects an advantage ; for when I do warm, I am the most 
 vehement speaker in the House, and nothing strikes an audience 
 so much as the animation of an orator who is generally cold. 
 
 ' I ought to tell you that Peel was very civil, and cheered 
 me loudly, and that impudent leering Croker congratulated the 
 House on the proof which I had given of my readiness. He 
 was afraid, he said, that I had been silent so long on account 
 of the many allusions which had been made to Calne. Now 
 that I had risen again he hoped that they should hear me 
 often. See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for him 
 in the next number of the blue and yellow. I detest him more 
 than cold boiled veal.' 
 
 In a letter to his sister Hannah he described a first visit to 
 Holland House, where he became a favourite with Lord and 
 Lady Holland. He concludes a description with the words : 
 * But, for all this, I would much rather be quietly walking with 
 you ; and the great use of going to these fine places is to learn 
 how happy it is possible to be without them.' Samuel Rogers 
 at this time, in trying to dissuade him from writing reviews, 
 paid him a high compliment : ' You may do anything, Mr.
 
 212 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 Macaulay.' An amusing tribute to the fame of Sir Walter Scott 
 is related in his biography ; all the servant maids, in a house 
 where he was dining, asked leave to stand in the passage and 
 see him pass. IMacaulay, in his usual direct way, condemned 
 the character of Lord Byron, one of his principal reasons 
 being that he 'never heard a single expression of fondness 
 for him fall from the lips of any of those who knew him well.' 
 
 Writing to Ellis, he remarked regarding his review of 
 Croker's Boszvell in the EdinhurglL Revieiv : ' My article on 
 Croker has not only smashed his book, but has hit the JVes^- 
 minster Review incidentally. The utilitarians took on them- 
 selves to praise the accuracy of the most inaccurate writer that 
 ever lived, and gave as an instance of it a note in which, as I 
 have shown, he makes a mistake of twenty years and more. 
 John Mill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse 
 scrape than Croker ; John Murray says that it is a nuisance ; 
 and Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with 
 a leer of hatred which I repay with a gracious smile of pity.' 
 
 When the Reform Bill at last became law, Macaulay was 
 appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of Control. 
 He was triumphantly returned for the borough of Leeds in 
 1832. Writing in this same year he says : — 
 
 'The attachment between brothers and sisters, blameless, 
 amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be superseded by 
 other attachments, that no wise man ought to suffer it to 
 become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the 
 home of their birth, and contract ties dearer than those of 
 consanguinity, is a law as ancient as the first records of the 
 history of our race, and as unchangeable as the constitution of 
 the human body and mind. To rei:)ine against the nature of 
 things, and against the great fundamental law of all society,
 
 THOMA S BASING TON MA CA ULA Y. 213 
 
 because, in consequence of my own want of foresiglit, it 
 happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most 
 absurd selfishness. 
 
 ' I have still one more stake to lose. There remains one 
 event for which, when it arrives, I shall, I hope, be prepared. 
 From that moment, with a heart formed, if ever any man's 
 heart was formed, for domestic happiness, I shall have nothing 
 left in this world but ambition. There is no wound, how'ever, 
 which time and necessity will not render endurable ; and, after 
 all, what am I more than my fathers, — than the millions and 
 tens of millions who have been weak enough to pay double 
 price for some favourite number in the lottery of life, and who 
 have suffered double disappointment when their ticket came 
 up a blank ? ' 
 
 When he received the new^s that his sister Margaret was to 
 be married to Mr. Edward Cropper of Liverpool, he wrote 
 thus from Leeds : — * I am sitting in the midst of two hundred 
 friends, all mad with exultation and party spirit, all glorying 
 over the Tories, and thinking me the happiest man in the 
 world. And it is all that I can do to hide my tears, and to 
 command my voice, when it is necessary for me to reply to 
 their congratulations. Dearest, dearest sister, you alone are 
 now left to me. Whom have I on earth but thee ? But for 
 you, in the midst of all these successes, I should wish that I 
 were lying by poor Hyde Villiers. But I cannot go on. I am 
 wanted to write an address to the electors, and I shall lay it on 
 Sadler pretty heavily. By what strange fascination is it that 
 ambition and resentment exercise such power over minds 
 which ought to be superior to them ? I despise myself for 
 feeling so bitterly towards this fellow as I do. But the separa- 
 tion from dear Margaret has jarred my \vhole temper. I am
 
 214 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 cried up here to the skies as the most affable and kind-hearted 
 of men, while I feel a fierceness and restlessness within me quite 
 new and almost inexplicable.' 
 
 Macaulay offered to resign his office of Commissioner of the 
 Board of Control when the Slavery Emancipation Bill came up 
 before Parliament, but the difficulty was removed by the 
 members departing from their first proposal. In the autumn 
 of 1834 he was offered a membership of the Supreme Council 
 of Calcutta, to draw up a new code of Indian laws, which he 
 accepted, because it would allow him to secure a competence. 
 Political thraldom was hateful to him. ' I went to India,' he 
 said afterwards, ' to get an independence, and I have got it.' 
 His sister Hannah accompanied him, but she had not been 
 long in Calcutta when she married ]\Ir., afterwards Sir Charles 
 Trevelyan. He read as industriously as ever in the new 
 country. ' Calcutta,' he wrote to Mr. Macvey Napier, * is 
 called, and not without some reason, the city 01 palaces ; but 
 I have seen nothing in the East like the view from the Castle 
 Rock [Edinburgh], nor expect to see anything like it till we 
 stand there together again.' On his return home in 1838 he 
 found that his father was dead. While in India he saved 
 about ;j^20,ooo ; this, with the legacy of ;;^io,ooo left him by 
 General Macaulay, his uncle, made him independent for life. 
 The essays which he afterwards wrote on Lord Clive and 
 Warren Hastings had the most extensive sale on separate 
 publication, as compared with the others. 
 
 When asked to write a review of Lockhart's Life of Scott by 
 the editor of the Edinburgh Review, the following were some 
 of his reasons for not undertaking that work : — ' I have not, from 
 the little that I know of him, formed so high an opinion of his 
 character as most people seem to entertain, and as it would be
 
 Til MA S BASING TON MAC A UL AY. 215 
 
 expedient for the Edinburgh Review to express. He seems to 
 me to have been most carefully, and successfully, on his guard 
 against the sins which most easily beset literary men. On that 
 side he multiplied his precautions, and set double watch. 
 Hardly any writer of note has been so free from the petty 
 jealousies and morbid irritabilities of our caste. But I do not 
 think that he kept himself equally pure from faults of a very 
 different kind, from the faults of a man of the world. In 
 politics a bitter and unscrupulous partisan ; profuse and osten- 
 tatious in expense ; agitated by the hopes and fears of a 
 gambler ; perpetually sacrificing the perfection of his composi- 
 tions, and the durability of his fame, to his eagerness for 
 money ; writing with the slovenly haste of Dryden, in order 
 to satisfy wants which were not, like those of Dryden, caused 
 by circumstances beyond his control, but which were produced 
 by his extravagant waste or rapacious speculation ; — this is the 
 wMy in which he appears to me. I am sorry for it, for I 
 sincerely admire the greater part of his works ; but I cannot 
 til ink him a high-minded man, or a man of very strict prin- 
 ciple.' Accordingly he recommended that Lord Jeffrey be 
 asked to write the article. 
 
 Macaulay had no admiration for Lord Brougham; and 
 when the latter quarrelled with his party, and tried to use the 
 Edinburgh Review, then under the editorship of Mr. Macvey 
 Napier, towards the punishment of his old friends, he wTote 
 regarding him to Ellis, in September 1S38: — 'Empson brings a 
 sad account of poor Napier ; all sorts of disquiet and trouble, 
 with dreadful wearing complaints which give his friends the 
 gravest cause for alarm. And, as if this were not enough, 
 Brougham is persecuting him with the utmost malignity. I 
 did not think it possible for human nature, in an educated,
 
 2i6 NOTABLE MEN AND WOAIEN. 
 
 civilised man, — a man, too, of great intellect, — to have become 
 so depraved. He writes to Napier in language of the most 
 savage hatred, and of the most extravagant vaunting. The 
 ministers, he says, have felt only his little finger. He will now 
 put forth his red right hand. They shall have no rest. As to 
 me, he says that I shall rue my baseness in not calling on him. 
 But it is against Empson that he is most furious. He says that 
 he will make it the chief object of his life to prevent Jeffrey 
 from ever being Lord President of the Court of Session. He 
 thinks that there is some notion of making Empson editor of 
 the Revieiv. If that be done, he says he will relinquish every 
 other object in order to ruin the Review. He will lay out his 
 last sixpence in that enterprise. He will make revenge on 
 Fmpson the one business of the remaining years of his life. 
 Empson says that nothing so demoniacal was ever written in 
 the world.' In the autumn of this same year Macaulay started 
 for a tour in Italy. Although he never went into rhapsody over 
 a fine landscape, either in real life or in the printed page, yet 
 he could quickly detect the fine points of a scene. He viewed 
 everything with the eye of the historian ; the associations and 
 traditions of the places which he visited rose up at once to his 
 wonderful memory. Writing in Rome of the Papal Govern- 
 ment, he says : — ' The Government treats us very well. The 
 pope winks at a Protestant chapel, and indulges us in a 
 reading-room, where the Times and Morning Chro7iicle make 
 their appearance twelve days after they are published in 
 London. It is a pleasant city for an English traveller. He 
 is not harassed or restrained. He hves as he likes, and reads 
 what he likes, and suffers little from; the vices of the adminis- 
 tration ; but I can conceive nothing more insupportable than 
 the situation of a layman who should be a subject of the pope.
 
 THOMAS BABING TON MA CA ULAY. 217 
 
 In this Government there is no avenue to distinction for any 
 but priests. . . . Corruption infects all the public offices. 
 Old women above, liars and cheats below, — that is the papal 
 administration. The states of the pope are, I suppose, the 
 worst governed in the civilised world.' The following criticism 
 of Bulwer occurs in his Italian journals : — * He has considerable 
 talent and eloquence ; but he is fond of writing about what he 
 only half understands, or understands not at all. His taste is 
 bad, and bad from a cause which lies deep and is not to be 
 removed, — from want of soundness, manliness, and simplicity 
 of mind.' At Rome he met W. E. Gladstone, with whom he 
 had some conversation, characterizing him afterwards as both 
 a clever and an amiable man. In 1839 Macaulay accepted 
 the Secretaryship of War: many of the leading journals bearing 
 a grudge against him made distinct enough expression of it. 
 In 1840 he was elected M.P. for Edinburgh. 
 
 The great historian was in the habit of picking up street 
 ballads and preserving them. He left behind him a scrap- 
 book containing eighty ballads. In 1842 his Lays of Ancient 
 Rome were issued by Longman, without any preliminary 
 puffing, and became instantly popular. Professor Wilson, in 
 Blackwood, gave the book a most cordial welcome. Up till 
 1875 upwards of 100,000 copies had been sold. The American 
 publishers, quick to discern a profitable literary scheme, especi- 
 ally when there is no copyright in the question, had, as in the 
 case of Carlyle and De Quincey's essays, reprinted a selection 
 of Macaulay's essays from the Edinburgh Review. As copies 
 of this American edition were finding their way into the 
 English market, by way of self-defence Messrs. Longman 
 urged upon Macaulay the necessity of setting about an 
 authorized edition of his essays. Early in 1843 '^2 began the
 
 2i8 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 ^York. When published, they were immensely successful, and 
 have continued to be increasingly in demand ever since. In 
 spite of the applause and profit gained by their publication, he 
 said, in writing to Napier, that ' there are few of them which I 
 read with satisfaction. These few, however, are generally the 
 latest, and this is a consolatory circumstance. The most 
 hostile critic must admit, I think, that I have improved 
 greatly as a writer. The third volume seems to me worth two 
 of the second, and the second worth ten of the first' In 
 revising these essays for pubKcation, he was careful to remove 
 the passing strictures made on the author from that which 
 was of permanent literary value. In 1841 Serjeant Talfourd 
 brought in a measure into the House of Commons for extend- 
 ing the term of copyright in a book to sixty years from the 
 death of the author. A speech made by Macaulay induced 
 the House to reject this bill. Lord Mahon, in the following 
 year, introduced a scheme giving protection to authors for 
 twenty-five years from the date of death. Macaulay unfolded 
 a counter scheme, giving protection for forty-two years from 
 the date of publication, and backed by a terse and vigorous 
 speech. The bill was remodelled in accordance with the 
 principle of giving forty-two years of copyright from the date of 
 publication, and this was adopted by a large majority. The 
 fact remains, that Macaulay's own essays, coming under the 
 scope of the Act which he helped to create, have been re- 
 printed in several rival editions by different publishers. After 
 the rising of the session of Parliament in 1843, Macaulay 
 started for a trip up and down the Loire. His letters to his 
 sister, says his biographer, abundantly prove that he could 
 have spoken off a very passable historical handbook for Central 
 France, without any special training for the subject. In 1845,
 
 TITO MA S BASING TON MA CA ULA K 219 
 
 what between attendance on the House of Commons and 
 writing articles, Macaulay had dropped his connection with the 
 Edinburgh Review. In 1846 he acted as Paymaster-General 
 of the Army ; and in July of the same year went down to 
 Edinburgh to seek re-election, when he was successful. In 
 the following year, at a general election, he lost his seat for 
 Edinburgh, ' The vague charge,' says Mr. Trevelyan, ' of 
 being too much of an essayist, and too little of a politician, 
 was the worst that either saint or sinner could find to say of 
 him.' Writing to his sister Hannah after the result had been 
 declared, he mentioned that ' Radicals, Tories, Dissenters, 
 Voluntaries, Free Churchmen, spirit drinkers, who are angry 
 because I will not pledge myself to repeal all taxes on whisky, 
 and great numbers of persons who are jealous of my chief 
 supporters here, and think that the patronage of Edinburgh 
 has been too exclusively distributed among a clique, have 
 united to bear me down. I will make no hasty resolutions ; 
 but everything seems to indicate that I ought to take this 
 opportunity of retiring from public life.' His table was after- 
 wards covered with letters of condolence from friends, and 
 with invitations to stand for other constituencies. 
 
 His attitude and conversational manner are thus sketched 
 by Mr. Trevelyan : — ' Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on 
 the arms of his chair, or folded over the handle of his walking- 
 stick; knitting his great eyebrows if the subject was one 
 which had to be thought out as he went along, or brightening 
 from the forehead downwards when a burst of humour was 
 coming; his massive features and honest glance suited well 
 with the manly, sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his 
 pleasant, sonorous voice, and in his racy and admirably 
 intelligible language. To get at his meaning, people had never
 
 2 20 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 the need to think twice; and they certainly had seldom the 
 time. And with all his ardour, and all his strength and energy 
 of conviction, he was so truly considerate towards others, so 
 delicately courteous, with the courtesy which is of the essence 
 and not only in the manner. However eager had been the 
 debate, and however prolonged the sitting, no one in the 
 company ever had personal reasons for wishing a word of his 
 unsaid, or a look or a tone recalled.' AMiile his historical 
 studies were engrossing more and more of his attention, it 
 became difficult to induce him to step outside into society 
 beyond his own more immediate circle of friends and relations, 
 where he was always happiest and most at home. The society 
 of his sister Hannah's children was thoroughly enjoyed by 
 him : he was an inimitable playfellow — inventing games and 
 dramas for their amusement. When absent from his nieces 
 he would write them playful letters. He was himself easily 
 moved at whatever appealed to his sentiment of pity in a 
 novel or in real life. He was never happier than in spending 
 an afternoon with his nephews and nieces sight-seeing in 
 London. During the Easter holidays he would also often 
 take them on a brief visit to some of the cathedral towns of 
 England, varied sometimes by a trip to the Continent. 
 
 When the first volumes of Macaulay's great work, the History 
 of England^ were published, congratulations flowed in upon 
 him from all quarters. Before it appeared, he had ^mtten to 
 his publishers : ' When I compare my book with what I 
 imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and ashamed ; 
 but w'hen I compare it with some histories which have a high 
 repute, I feel reassured.' The fortune of the book was secure 
 in three days. Thirteen thousand copies were sold in less 
 than four months. ' It was greeted by an ebullition of national
 
 TIIOMA S BA BING TON MA C A ULA Y. 221 
 
 pride and satisfaction, which dcHghtcd Macaulay's friends, and 
 reconciled to him most who remained of his old political 
 adversaries.' Lord Jeffrey wrote: 'My dear Macaulay, the 
 mother that bore you, had she been yet alive, could scarcely 
 have felt prouder or happier than I do at this outburst of your 
 graver fame. I have long had a sort of parental interest in 
 your glory, and it is now mingled with a feeling of deference 
 to your intellectual superiority which can only consort, I take 
 it, with the character of a female parent.' He was delighted 
 with the pleasure which he gave to Miss Edgeworth. A 
 gentleman near Manchester read the volume every night after 
 work to his poorer neighbours. At the close of the last 
 meeting, one of the audience rose and proposed a vote of 
 thanks to Mr. Macaulay ' for having written a history which 
 working men can understand.' In his journal, Macaulay 
 commented on the fact by saying, ' I really prize this vote.' 
 Rival editions of the work soon also appeared in America 
 and on the Continent 
 
 He was much amused in passing through the streets of 
 London to see a copy of Hume's History of England exposed 
 for sale in a bookseller's window, with the label, ' Only;^2, 2s., 
 Hume's History of Engla?id, in eight volumes, highly valuable 
 as an introduction to Macaulay.' \\\ 1S48 he was elected 
 Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. In his inaugural 
 address he gave a retrospect of the history and condition of 
 the University at the commencement of each successive century 
 of its existence. In 1849 he was offered the professorship of 
 history at Cambridge, by the Prince Consort, which he 
 declined. The half of August of this year he spent in Ireland, 
 studying the literature of the country. In 1850 Macaulay 
 dined at the Palace, and was presented to royalty, and in
 
 222 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 January 1851 he was again at Windsor Castle. 'When we 
 went into the drawing-room,' he says, ' the Queen came to me 
 with great animation, and insisted on my telUng her some of 
 my stories, which she had heard at second hand from George 
 Grey. I certainly made her laugh heartily. She talked on 
 for some time, most courteously and pleasantly. Nothing 
 could be more sensible than her remarks on German affairs.' 
 In 1852 Macaulay was returned Member of Parliament for 
 Edinburgh, the enthusiasm of his election not being confined 
 to his own party. 
 
 In 1S53, on the occasion of an imperfect and pirated edition 
 of his speeches having been issued by a London publisher, 
 in self-defence he himself prepared an authorized edition. 
 Shortly after its pubHcation, he applied himself to his History, 
 a work which was now the business and the pleasure of his 
 life. He ceased to be a member of Parliament, and formally 
 resigned his seat in 1856. In November 1855 another instal- 
 ment of the History was finished. The following entry is from 
 his journal of 23d November : — ' Longman came. All the 
 25,000 copies are ordered. Monday, the 27th of December, 
 is to be the day. But on the evening of the preceding Satur- 
 day, those booksellers who take more than a thousand are to 
 have their books. The stock lying at the bookbinder's is 
 insured for ^^i 0,000. The whole weight is fifty-six tons. It 
 seems that no such edition was ever published of any work of 
 the same bulk. I earnestly hope that neither age nor riches 
 will narrow my heart.' 
 
 The sale of Macaulay's History, within but a generation of its 
 first appearance, is stated to have been 140,000 copies. Its 
 sale in the United States was immense, rivalling that of the 
 Bible and one or two very popular school-books. Six trans-
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CA ULA V. 223 
 
 lators were at one time busy translating rival editions into the 
 (lerman language. Honours were plentifully bestowed upon 
 him. He was made a member of the Academies of Utrecht, 
 Munich, and Turin. He was named a knight of the Order of 
 Merit by the King of Prussia, He was elected a member of 
 the Institute of France, and the Oxford University conferred 
 upon him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, In 1854 he was 
 chosen President of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. 
 Longman reported to him on the last day of February 1856 
 that 26,500 copies of his History were sold in ten weeks, 'I 
 should not wonder,' he remarks in his diary on this success, 
 ' if I made ^20,000 this year by literature. Pretty well, con- 
 sidering that twenty-two years ago I had just nothing when my 
 debts were paid ; and all that I have, with the exception of a 
 small part left me by my uncle the general, has been made by 
 myself,' When the ^20,000 had been paid over to his 
 account by his publisher, he further remarked : ' What a sum 
 to be gained by one edition of a book ! I may say gained in 
 one day, but that was harvest-day. The work had been near 
 seven years in hand.' 
 
 In 1856 Macaulay, after a farewell address to his Edinburgh 
 constituents, settled down in retirement and well-earned 
 leisure in Holly Lodge, a villa at Kensington, the garden and 
 surroundings of which he thoroughly enjoyed. He went into 
 society less than ever, but still enjoyed a tour to the Continent. 
 Macaulay never was a speculator in money affairs, his judg- 
 ment was always sound in any investments he made, and his 
 economical maxims were to treat official and literary gains as 
 capital, and to pay all his bills within the twenty-four hours. 
 Prompt payment he looked upon as a moral duty, when he 
 reflected on the evils caused by deferred payment. He spent
 
 2 24 NOTABLE MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 freely on others, and he was generous to the last to those who 
 sought his aid, even when he knew absolutely nothing regard- 
 ing them. In August 1857 he was elevated to the peerage, 
 with the title of Baron Macaulay of Rotheley. On ist October 
 1856, his journal showed that he was again at work on the 
 fifth volume of his History. 
 
 In the autumn of 1859 he visited Scotland and the north of 
 England. While travelling he was made the subject of much 
 honour and attention. The close of the year was saddened 
 by the thought of losing the companionship of his sister 
 Hannah by her removal to India, in February of the following 
 year. He drowned these thoughts in absorbing study in his 
 library. But his health was failing rapidly. Four volumes of 
 his Hisfory were issued during his lifetime ; the fifth, upon 
 which he had been working, and which had not received his 
 final revision, was published after his death, which took place 
 at Holly Lodge, in his sixtieth year, 28th December 1859. 
 He died peacefully in his library, dressed and seated in his 
 easy-chair, having ceased to breathe when in that posture, 
 with the first number of the Cornhill Magazine lying on the 
 table beside him. ' He died,' says Mr. Trevelyan, ' as he had 
 always wished to die, without pain, without any formal fare- 
 well, preceding to the grave all whom he loved, and leaving 
 behind him a great and honourable name, and the memory of 
 a life every action of which was as clear and transparent as 
 one of his own sentences.' His funeral took place on the 9th 
 January i860, and he was buried in Poets' Corner, West- 
 minster Abbey. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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