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THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
UK 17 BE SIT r 
 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 2Han anb \s Books, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, 
 
 TABLE-TALK, AND ANECDOTES OF 
 
 HIMSELF AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 BY WM. HOWIE WYLIE. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 sEsSsRSKai 
 
 ^^pis^P 
 
 gSIVBESITYT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 MARSHALL JAPP AND COMPANY 
 i 8 8 i 
 
" A true Great Man ; great in intellect, in courage, aflY 
 one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a he w 
 an Alpine mountain, nest, spontancou . : liable 
 
 fisof it fou! :. 
 iauliful valleys with flu.. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS attempt to give an account of Thomas Carlyle and 
 his Works that might be of some slight service as a guide 
 to the study of his writings was printed before the appear- 
 ance of the posthumous Reminiscences edited by Mr 
 Froude. These throw much new light on the early life 
 of their Author, some chapters of which had previously 
 been obscure ; but this fresh information does not 
 materially affect what appears in the following pages. 
 For the first time, however, it is now possible to state 
 with precision that Carlyle went to the Grammar School 
 at Annan in 1806, and to Edinburgh University in 1809. 
 In 1814 he was usher at Annan, in 1816 schoolmaster 
 at Kirkcaldy, and in 1818 he took pupils at Edinburgh. 
 In 1822 he became the private tutor of Charles 
 Buller, and after his marriage he lived for eighteen 
 months near Edinburgh before removing to Craigen- 
 puttoch. Into one misapprehension respecting the 
 burnt MS. of the French Revolution, I was beguiled 
 by the report of Mr Milburn, of America, whose state- 
 ment I accepted as a correction of my own previous 
 
VI PREI 
 
 information; the latter now turns out to have ' 
 accuse. It was the MS. of the lir.st, not of the 
 second, volume that >yed by fire. 
 
 It will be observed that I have had the good fortune 
 to (. what I believe to be a hitherto unkn 
 
 n by Carlyle ; and the : the 
 
 him have now received an accession in the 
 account which he gives in the posthumous / 
 of 1 :<>n with the building of the Br; 
 
 at Auldgarth. 
 
 :;i, . \.R.A., the friend of Carlyle, my 
 acknowledgments are due for his kind and 
 cour: to allow the use of his Statue- 
 
 rait of tl ' of this volume, and also of the 
 
 by him to commemorate the Kightieth 
 'iday of the immortal Sartor. Tlu 
 
 thought highly of by him \\ ' 
 truthfulK ill be content and grateful 
 
 ould 
 
 :nend i' 'her un- 
 
 worthy the 
 genii: life. 
 
 \v. n. u*. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. THE CARLYLES AND THEIR COUNTRY, . i 
 
 II. CARLYLE'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE, . n 
 
 III. His HOME TRAINING, .... 23 
 
 IV. His SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS, . 34 
 V. THE SECESSION KIRK, . . . . 41 
 
 VI. ENTERS THE UNIVERSITY : EDINBURGH LIFE, 49 
 
 VII. SCHOOLMASTER AT ANNAN AND KIRKCALDY, 62 
 
 VIII. PIONEER OF GERMAN LITERATURE, . 77 v 
 
 IX. His MARRIAGE : His WIFE'S ANCESTORS, 90 
 
 X. His LIFE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCH, . . 103 
 
 XL THE GENESIS OF "SARTOR RESARTUS," . 134 
 
 XII. REMOVAL TO LONDON : His LECTURES, . 157 > 
 
 XIII. His POLITICAL WRITINGS : MAZZINI, . 187 v 
 
 XIV. His LIFE OF CROMWELL, . . .206 
 
 XV. FRIENDSHIP WITH LEIGH HUNT : AN UN- 
 KNOWN POEM, 223 
 
 XVI. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES AND JOURNALIST 
 
 FRIENDS, 244 
 
Mil 
 
 \\ II. Tin. ' 1.. 
 
 \viil. LORD Ki- 1^ ' 
 
 \\i iTH, 
 
 i-.LEM OF THE NEGRO, 
 
 iiiii.iii 1 KS, 3 6 
 
 \\1. I 1 
 
 322 
 
 M>, .uo 
 
 \1H, 
 
 I 
 I'll, 
 
 A 1' P 1 N D 
 
 1. i l 
 
 11. liil < 
 
 111. |)\viD Hni ' 39 s 
 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COUNTRY OF THE CARLYLES WHAT SCENERY OWES 
 TO NOBLE LIVES THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF CARLYLE 
 A CARLYLE BROTHER OF THE BRUCE THE LORDS 
 OF TORTHORWALD LORD SCROPE AT ECCLEFECHAN 
 DECLINE OF THE FAMILY THE FARMERS OF HODDAM. 
 
 FIFTY years ago the words, " Thomas Carlyle, Nutholm," 
 painted by a village artist on a rustic cart as homely as 
 his letters, would not have been likely to attract any 
 particular notice from the passing pilgrim who had just 
 emerged from the pastoral valley of the Clyde into that 
 comparatively level, well cultivated, and sylvan country 
 from which you first descry the sparkling waters of the 
 Solway. Yet it was with a positive thrill that, on a 
 summer day a little more than twenty years ago, two 
 young students from Edinburgh, making their first tour 
 on foot into England, read the name on that old, battered 
 cart, as it went jolting painfully past a clump of pines, in 
 whose shade they had lain down to rest, away from the 
 heat of the noonday sun. That name was the first strong 
 reminder that we were now actually on the confines of a 
 
 region which we had greatly desired to see. It told us 
 
 A 
 
2 Thomas Cat 
 
 that we must be nearing the village ve years 
 
 before the dawn of the present century, there was born to 
 imble, but industrious, intelligent, and God fearing 
 couple members of that peasant class which has fur- 
 < 1 Scotland with a majority of her greatest names 
 a son who was destined to grow up into an illustrious 
 guide and b <f men. From these hedges of 
 
 thorn guarding our j>ath, Thomas Corlyle, as a boy, had 
 e sprigs of "may" in the early 
 summer, and tin- not luscious, fruit in the 
 
 autumn. In this very fir wood, who knows, he may 
 > schoolmates, or rested, book in 
 hand, on his 1< .bles. These very fields 
 
 lanes n. - eager converse with his 
 
 : MCIU! Edward Irving, when there was " nothing 
 hojicfulncjis without end " in their 
 Acre the reflections suggested b;. 
 the old courr .ow glory 
 
 difT the landscape; for \\ 
 
 scenes in t! l i had been nun 
 
 greatest of all ; sons of the Scottish soil ? 
 
 in would be lessened t -\ the 
 
 of our n :rh less potent w 
 
 be the influence of that i of 
 
 iOllt tlK- 
 
 sical bca 1 count : .ira- 
 
 the mo ;<! prospc> 
 
 assert but a limited power mind until t' 
 
 been linked to the story of noble 
 
 or good for grow; 
 ,\cd iv no memories ( 
 
Scenery and Noble Lives. 3 
 
 that are songless but for their own natural music? the 
 mountains that are no more associated with human life 
 than are the clouds which mantle round their summits ? 
 Even the sky-cleaving peaks that rise from the Yosemite 
 Valley, and the groves of that marvellous region, must, 
 after all, be comparatively tame, since, with all their 
 material magnitude, they have no story to tell about 
 man. The figure of Columba, emerging from the mists 
 of a venerable antiquity, glides with us as we sail among 
 the Hebridean isles, and the grey old evangelist and his 
 school of the prophets rise upon our view as we cast 
 anchor under the Cyclopean walls of Elachnave, or set 
 foot on the sacred soil of lona; the savage gloom of 
 Glencoe is deepened by the song of Ossian, which comes 
 moaning down every corrie, like the sighing of the night- 
 wind among the hills ; a whole west country, from Eld- 
 erslie to Lochryan, is transfigured by the memories of 
 Wallace, and Bruce, and Burns ; and, go where you may 
 in the land of Walter Scott, every hill, and valley, and 
 stream has felt the touch of the magician's wand. Not 
 merely for their natural loveliness do we visit those lakes 
 on whose woody shores dwelt Southey and Coleridge, 
 De Quincey and Arnold, Wilson and Wordsworth. 
 Sheffield, with its clang of hammers, and thick smoke 
 curtain, looks less grim when we think of Ebenezer 
 Elliott and James Montgomery. Byron and Kirke White 
 deepen the romance of Sherwood Forest, and send a 
 pathos through Wilford Grove; the whole of woody 
 Warwickshire becomes like fairyland at thought of Shake- 
 speare; even the dull banks of the sleepy Ouse are 
 glorified by the Farmer of St Ives and the Bedford 
 Tinker the one the doer of the greatest deeds, the 
 
4 THoma* Cat 
 
 other the dreamer of the grandest dream, that fill 
 so much meaning the name of England. 
 
 Although the man who was to add a fresh charm to 
 the lovely shire in which the Brace was born, and where 
 Hums found his grave, did not appear in the world till 
 the eighteenth century was nearly ended, the name he 
 bore had long been one of the most illustrious in Annan- 
 dale. The Carlylcs, indeed, were among the very oldest 
 families in that richly-storied province of Scotland ; and 
 before they came thither, they had been one of the most 
 jiowcrful houses in Cumberland, where, at the time of 
 man Conquest, they possessed large estates. 1 
 
 c Carlyle family is a subject in which its 
 most distinguished member naturally felt a keen interest, 
 and on which, as we have reason to know, he had be- 
 stowed considerable attention so much, indeed, that a 
 rumour was at on t to the effect, that he was 
 
 collecting materials for a history of the House.* The 
 
 i \Icdcscended from this grand stock, there can 
 be no soft of doubt, but his genealogical tree was too imperfect to 
 establish the connection. In a letter to a kinsman some yean ago, 
 Mr ( ited how, when Nicholas Carlisle, the antiquarian, 
 
 paid them a visit, while searching for materials for a family history, 
 Miher and uncle gave the distinguished visitor audience in a 
 field where they were bosiiy engaged in ploughing."-/*, Gl*t* 
 AVtw/s;/v 1 he castle of Torthorwald, the chief 
 
 seat of the Carlylcs, is supposed to have been built in the thirteenth 
 century. It has been placed in the second class of Border castles, 
 not because of its size, but on accoun : cngth and accessory 
 
 defences, in which respect it was not exceeded by some of the first- 
 class fonrcsacs. It is supposed to have been Ust repaired about 
 1630. " An ancient man now (1789) living at Lochmaben," writes 
 Cap(. Grose, "remembers the roof of this building on it Mr 
 M'Dowall, writing in 1872, says : "The appearance of the ruin at 
 the prcsc: !c from the picture of it given by Grose, the 
 
A Brother-in-Law of the Bruce. 5 
 
 Annandale Carlyles trace their descent from Crinan, 
 Abthane of Dunkeld, whose son, Maldred, married 
 Beatrice, daughter of King Malcolm II. About 1124, 
 Robert de Brus, who had come into Scotland with David 
 I., received a grant of Annandale from his royal friend 
 and patron; and his grandson, also named Robert, on 
 entering upon his inheritance, was created Lord of 
 Annandale, or, as it was then called, Estrahannent. 
 Under this third of the Scottish Bruces, and about the 
 year 1185, the Carlyles held lands in Annandale. They 
 also owned property in Cumberland, deriving their sur- 
 name, in all probability, from the ancient capital of that 
 picturesque region. By the daughter of the king, 
 Maldred had a son, named Uchtred ; and the eldest son 
 of the latter was Robert of Kinmount. Uchtred's second 
 son, Richard, received the lands of Newbie-on-the-Moor 
 from his grandfather. Eudo de Carlyle, grandson of 
 Richard, witnessed a charter to the monastery of Kelso, 
 about 1207. The next head of the Carlyle family, Adam, 
 had a charter of various lands in Annandale from William 
 de Brus, second lord of the district, who died in 1215. 
 Gilbert, son of Adam, who had joined in the disastrous 
 Baliol revolt, swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296. 
 
 Sir William de Carlyle, grandson of Gilbert, rose so 
 high in the favour of his liege lord, Robert, Earl of 
 Carrick, that the latter gave him his daughter Margaret 
 in marriage ; thus the head of the house of Carlyle 
 became brother-in-law to the greatest and best of the 
 
 lapse of eighty-two years having made scarcely any impression upon 
 it." The parish of Torthorwald, which contains the three villages 
 of Torthorwald, Collin, and Rowcan, lies near the foot of Nithsdale, 
 and is separated from Dumfries parish by Lochar Water. 
 
6 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 Scottish mor famous Robert the Bruce. This 
 
 upon them the lands of Crumanston, in which the 
 of Sir William is designated "our dearest sister 
 
 further confirmed by a charter in r William de 
 
 Carlyle's son received a grant i the 
 
 n and Roucan, near Dumfries; the red] 
 is designated " William Karlo, the King's sister's son." 
 
 im Carl) nhorwald was slain at the : 
 
 battle of Ixx:hm; n Edward III. of England was 
 
 I> the ])crfidious pupj>ct Edward Baliol 
 on the Scottish throne ; and it is well worthy of note 
 that, in the same engager 1C fell Sir Humj/ 
 
 de Bois of Dryfesdale, supposed to be an ancestor of 
 
 i), and S: 
 the head of that ' le house whi< h in the pri 
 
 nry produced Sir William Jardine, : rnt 
 
 naturalist, lew battle fields can boast of an incident 
 like ' 
 
 ic battle of N Cross, Thomas Cnrlyle of 
 
 Torthonvald fell while -.ill.m:! :ig the person of 
 
 the n the latter was i 
 
 ed a grateful re< 
 
 October 18, 
 
 >f "Coulyn and Rowcan to our 
 
 beloved coi^ nah Cai inas de 
 
 Tor; was killed <! our person at the 
 
 nd to Robert Corrie, her spouse, 
 belonging formerly to out de Carh 
 
 When t of James I. crossed to France 
 
 6 to be married to Louis the Daunhin. William 
 
Lord Carlyle of Torthorwald. 7 
 
 Carlyle was one of the train of knights who attended 
 the Princess Margaret. It was this Carlyle who gave a 
 bell for the parish kirk of Dumfries, which is not only 
 still extant, but which, according to the worthy historian 
 of the burgh of Dumfries, Mr William M'Dowall, was 
 employed till about twenty years ago in u the secular 
 duty of warning the lieges when fires broke out in the 
 burgh." It hangs on the bartizan of the Mid Steeple, 
 and bears a Latin inscription, which, when Englished, 
 runs thus : " William de Carlyle, Lord of Torthorwald, 
 caused me to be made in honour of St Michael. The 
 year of our Lord 1433." I n I 455? at the battle of Lang- 
 holm, which sealed the doom of the rebellious house of 
 Douglas, one of the leaders of the victorious royal army 
 was Sir John Carlyle of Torthorwald, who, along with the 
 head of the house of Johnstone, took Hugh, Earl of 
 Ormond, prisoner, for which service he received from 
 the King a grant of the forty-pound land of Pettinain in 
 Clydesdale. Ennobled in 1470, he sat as Lord Carlyle of 
 Torthorwald* in the parliament of 1475 ; an< 3 he was sub- 
 sequently sent on an embassy to France, in recompence 
 for the great expense attending which he received several 
 grants of land from the Crown in 1477, though one of these 
 grants was revoked by the succeeding monarch, James IV. 
 After the battle of Pinkie and the engagement at Annan, 
 among the landholders of Annandale who were driven to 
 
 * If the Prime Minister who, when it was too late, offered a small 
 titular distinction to Thomas Carlyle had been acquainted with the 
 history of the country which for a time he was permitted to rule, 
 perhaps it might have occurred to him that it would have been more 
 seemly to suggest to Her Majesty the revival of this ancient title in 
 favour of the greatest of all the Carlyles, instead of insulting him 
 with the offer of a G.C.B. 
 
8 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 swear allegiance to Edward VI. we find the Ix>rd Carlyle, 
 with 101 follower <> whom on the record comes 
 
 In ing of Coveshaw, with 102 followers, who may have 
 been a progi I aught we know, of Thomas Car- 
 
 lyle's bosom friend, Edward Irving. 
 
 In 1570, whrn the tnends of Mary Stuart in Dumfries- 
 shire were assailed by an English force under Lord 
 Scrope, Lord Carlyle was one of the leaders who mustered 
 
 tollowers and took part in the battle, in which he was 
 taken prisoner. Lord Scrope's account of the engage-. 
 
 it opens with the statement that on entering Scotland 
 he encamped at '* Heclefeaghan," by whi h his lordship 
 did his best to reproduce on paper the troublesome name 
 of Ecclefechan the village destined to be made for ever 
 
 norable as the birth-place of Thomas Carlyle. When 
 we come to the momentous struggle of the seventeenth 
 cerr h has tnrcn nowhere described with so much 
 
 of insi-ht and graphic force as in Carlyle's Cromwell^ we 
 find that the Irvings of Bonshaw and of Drum, as well 
 as their relations in the luir-h of Dumfries, espoused the 
 Royalist and an: ; but as to the part 
 
 e<l ty the ( arlyles at that period the local records 
 are silent. The family had apparently degenerated, or 
 at least fallen into decay. In 1580, their peerage passed 
 to a daughter of the house, Elizabeth, who carried the 
 
 states over to a Douglas. lest son, 
 
 James Douglas, was created I .< 
 in 1609, and by his son the title was resigned in 1638 to 
 
 Earl of Queensberry, who had acquired the es- 
 A George Carlyl A ales, turned up as a clain 
 
 of the estate, and got it, too, by a decree of the House 
 i ;;o. It was thought that in him also lay 
 
The Farmers of Hoddam.. 9 
 
 the right to the peerage, but after dissipating his estate 
 at Dumfries, which he accomplished in a few years, 
 he vanished into Wales. A professor of Arabic at Cam- 
 bridge, the Rev. Joseph D. Carlyle, who died in 1831, 
 was said to be the next heir ; and it is worthy of note 
 that a branch of the family, the Carlyles of Bridekirk, 
 who also fell upon evil days, had for their male repre- 
 sentative that minister of Inveresk whose Autobiography 
 has sufficient vitality as a picture of manners to preserve 
 the memory of the Rev. Alexander Carlyle as perhaps 
 the crowning example of the Scottish " Moderate." 
 
 No one who has read the family history of the Glad- 
 stones, who declined from the position of territorial 
 magnates of old renown in Lanarkshire to that of humble 
 burgesses in Biggar, and who have again risen by the 
 force of character and genius to a place second to that 
 of no family in Britain, will regard our story of the Dum- 
 friesshire Carlyles as an impertinence, though we are 
 unable directly to connect the greatest man who has ever 
 borne the name with the ancient lords of Torthorwald. 
 He was of the same stock, beyond question ; and, if all 
 the truth were known to us to-day, it might be found 
 that he had as good a claim as any to such a preface as 
 this to the story of his life. In the opening years of the 
 seventeenth century we discover Carlyles among the 
 merchant burgesses of Dumfries, one of them figuring as 
 Bailie (Alderman) William Carlyle in the municipal 
 records ; and we have only to enter such a burial-ground 
 as that of Hoddam, on the roadside, a mile and a-half to 
 the south of Ecclefechan, to find from the gravestones 
 that Carlyles have for many generations been settled as 
 farmers in the district. When we visited the place, the 
 
io Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 first inscription that met our eye was in memory of a 
 mas Carlyle who died at Eaglesficld in 1821 ; and 
 near it was the memorial of a still earlier Thomas Cat 
 of Sornsisyke, who died in the last century, two years 
 before tlie i>hil"s,,ph c r was born. This quaint little < 
 of the Dead, not more than 35 feet square, is shrouded 
 by a thorn hedge on one hand and a strip of dark fir 
 quite by accident that we lit uj*> 
 
 and not without some diflirr. 1 -ve discovered an 
 
 .ince. Once within the enclosure, nothing outside 
 
 was to be seen hut a jat h of blue sky overhead There 
 
 ..inil you of the living amid 
 
 ubstones, tin nted, you are alone 
 
 with the dead. No more skilful chisel than that of the 
 
 ison has bee: <! . but when we read the 
 
 onnected the peasants sleeping bem 
 our feet with th< the 
 
 spot be< in its jn' 
 
 than thr : eater than the proud- 
 
 -prang from the ranks 
 ioddam. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BIRTH OF CARLYLE AND DEATH OF BURNS BIRTH-PLACE 
 
 AND PARENTAGE ANECDOTES OF HIS FATHER AND 
 
 MOTHER. 
 
 THE month of December 1795, which was darkened by 
 national distress consequent on a failure of that year's 
 harvest, and by political agitation of excessive violence 
 resulting from the stringent Sedition Bill passed by the 
 dominant party to restrict the expression of public senti- 
 ment, is perhaps even more memorable as having wit- 
 nessed the one meeting in the struggle of public life that 
 took place between the two greatest Scotsmen of the 
 period. While Robert Burns was upholding with his pen 
 the cause of freedom as represented by the Liberal leader 
 Henry Erskine, Walter Scott was voting in the Parliament 
 House at Edinburgh for the reactionary Dundas. But 
 what we now care most to remember was the sore trouble 
 that had entered the humble home of the poet at Dum- 
 fries. For four months the life of his youngest child, 
 " a sweet little girl," as he described her in a letter written 
 on one of those sad December days to Mrs Dunlop, had 
 been trembling in the balance ; his own health was giving 
 way ; poverty held him in its grip so tightly that he was 
 obliged to write to a friend for the loan of a guinea ; and 
 in the anxious, sleepless hours of the night he was 
 incessantly asking himself, "What will become of my 
 
i 2 Thomas Car 
 
 poor wife and bairns \\l \ 
 
 seven months had come and gone after that bleak 
 
 December, the "awkward squad M aptly symbolising a 
 
 nation that knew not the value of the gift till it was gone 
 had fired their farewell shots over the grave of Bi: 
 It was while the great light of the Scottish nation was 
 .j; to extinction at Dumfries that its successor 
 in a still humbler domicile in an obscure ha: 
 not more than sixteen miles distant from the burgh in 
 which Uurns breathed his last Thomas Carlyle was 
 born at Ecclefechan,* in the parish of Hoddam, on 
 
 the 4th Deceml>er 1795.! 
 
 -as the first child of James Carlyle and Margaret 
 
 been married on the 5th March in the 
 
 sanv Like Hugh Miller, his father v. -.ally 
 
 the time of his son's birth he had 
 
 hed the mature age of thirty-seven the very same 
 
 age . : the poet who was then (!;, ! Dumfries. 
 
 Tru D the sta: 
 
 published (1 , Ixith as to the 
 
 tion occi James < .hen he 
 
 bee; 1 also as to his resid that 
 
 . According to the account that might fairly em 
 
 * It has been stated in some of the newspaper obituaries of < 
 that ;c was also the Mrt! ; hut the 
 
 biographr :^t saw the light rick- 
 
 in the same con: : it her 
 
 t The coir worth noting th.it the still surviving Leopold 
 
 .ikin 
 
 ., was bor: 
 Thurin-i.i in the same tr o same year as his Scottish 
 
 
 
Tkt A **/ Hunt- 
 
 *f Tktmmt C 
 
His Birth- Place. 13 
 
 be deemed the best accredited, since it came from the 
 pen of a personal friend of Carlyle's, and was printed in 
 a volume which he had himself authorised, he was born 
 " in the parish of Middlebie, about half a mile from the 
 village of Ecclefechan," and it is added that " his father 
 was a small farmer in comfortable circumstances."* But 
 there is every reason to believe that the father, presently 
 to become a small farmer and by and by a pretty exten- 
 sive one, was at the date of his marriage still following 
 his original occupation as a stonemason, being also a bit 
 of an architect, and that at the time of Thomas's birth 
 his parents were resident in the village. James Carlyle 
 had come into possession of two small one-storeyed 
 cottages in Ecclefechan, between which a lane ran con- 
 ducting to some houses at the back, and over this lane 
 he thriftily threw an arch, thus connecting the cottages, 
 besides adding a storey to their height. He let the 
 ground floor to a baker, and, with his young wife, occu- 
 pied one-half of the top floor, containing two rooms. It 
 was in the smaller of these, the room immediately over 
 the arch, a mere cupboard, nine feet by five, that Thomas 
 Carlyle (according to this story) was born. To this day 
 nothing is changed in the inner or outer aspect of the 
 house, which is now inhabited by the gravedigger of the 
 village and his family, f 
 
 The father was the second of five brothers, sons of 
 Thomas Carlyle, tenant of Brownknowe, a small farm 
 
 * Biographical Memoir by Thomas Ballantyne, prefixed to Passages 
 selected from the Writings of Thomas Carlyle. London : Chapman 
 & Hall. 1855. P. i. 
 
 t The Biographical Magazine. No. I, June 1877. London: 
 Triibner & Co. 
 
Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 in Annandale, all of whom, it is said, followed the same 
 occupation of stonemason ; and who have left behind 
 them, in the locality, a reputation for great strength, as 
 well as eccentricity of chara< les were 
 
 no other j>eople, M we have been told by more than 
 one person who knew them. Strongly marked were their 
 features, both of mind and body; and t :ual 
 
 powers and moral force, much above the average, t 
 would seem to have united a pugilist 
 
 i a " fractiousncss," to borrow a i mi, that 
 
 sometimes dcvelojxxl peculiar forms. " Pithy, 
 
 r-speaking bodies, and awfu' i'< 
 
 :em given by one neighbour; 
 Dp in a few words the most of the opinion : 
 i handed down I I to the 
 
 present L ., and w! md floating to-da> 
 
 ics appear 
 
 >st notable, both in n kill 
 
 ison, and his general sagacity, as well as in 
 
 A other respects. The local tra him, 
 
 > akin to that ot 
 illustrious so: root of a bodie ! 
 
 \vn him 
 
 well t>cat this warld A 
 
 l.odie; h coat tails, t 
 
 could tell ! .too! Si< 
 
 he would give to things and folk ! Sic wor- 1 as 
 
 well as a great talker. " It was a murklc treat to IK 
 
 he was ] old bodie, and could I 
 
 no contradiction." Mr Dallantvnc de> 
 
His Father. 15 
 
 man possessing great force of character, of an earnest, 
 religious nature, and much respected throughout the 
 district, not less for his moral worth than for his native 
 strength of intellect." He seems to have had many of 
 the good qualities, the intelligence, earnestness, and 
 moral purity, that shone conspicuous in the father of 
 Burns ; and we have sometimes thought, that when de- 
 lineating the peasant-saint in the third Book of Sartor 
 Resartus* Carlyle had the figure of his own father vividly 
 before his mind. But the elder Burns, we should say, 
 though he could be stern on occasion and was of a 
 sombre temperament, had a gentleness and a quiet 
 dignity that did not pertain to the more active-minded, 
 self-assertive, and even rather contentious Borderer. 
 Annandale, we must bear in mind, had been for many 
 centuries the arena of incessant warfare ; and the fighting 
 quality, brought to a high pitch of perfection in all the 
 old families of the " Debateable Land,"f descended with 
 much of its mediaeval vigour to the eighteenth century 
 Carlyles. Truth to tell, there seems to have been in 
 Carlyle's father at least a touch of what his son found, 
 and describes so well, in a second Ayrshire worthy, " Old 
 
 * "Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint. 
 Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the 
 splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of the 
 Earth, like a light shining in great darkness." Sartor Resartus, 
 Book iii. Chap. 4. 
 
 t The Debateable Land is the title of a Dumfriesshire local history, 
 or historical pamphlet rather ; said to be a valuable little work in 
 its way, manifesting considerable research. It was written by 
 a Thomas Carlyle, described as "of Waterbeck." No student of 
 the history of England and Scotland needs to be told the origin of 
 the name which gave a title to his pamphlet. 
 
1 6 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 Sulphur Brand," the irascible father of Boswell, known in 
 the Parliament Hmiv: -urgh as Lord Auchinleck, 
 
 and who, being a staunch Whig, proved more 
 match even for Dr Johnson, when the two got on 
 
 \yrshire. 
 
 Of Carh iany anecdotes are still current 
 
 Some of these, as we might expect, are 
 
 apocryphal, especially a set of stories that represent him 
 
 as noted pugilist 
 
 however, there may be a grain of truth in the anecdote 
 that, while working as a mason, he, in order to evince 
 for a "pup" (that is, a dandy) who was 
 passing, let fall ii|>on him, from the top of the ladd< 
 huge mass of mortar. A venerable native of Ec< 
 (alive and resident in Cilasgow the other day), who is old 
 
 uemher him, tells of the unfailing regula 
 and almost soldier lik ipline with w: 
 
 1C patriarch i. family into the front 
 
 pew of the Kirk, where : 
 
 hij>l>ed; and one little i- he relates is not 
 
 without significance. The windows of the meeting-house 
 ^ destitute of Mi; . of the congregation were 
 
 inc< n the warm summer days by the bur: 
 
 roposal was made to proem 
 
 a subscription started The collectors called on 
 rated their case, expressing a hope that 
 he would give something. he c-vlaimed, 
 
 "you want siller to shut C.od's blessed lirht out o' 
 ain house? Na, na, 11 >u nothing for si 
 
 had was. -Id have 
 
 been a different mat: I mirht : 
 
 subscrintiun." So the ,1! .d to co away as they 
 
Anecdote of his Father. 1 7 
 
 came. Another story, though homely and even gro- 
 tesque, illustrates his hatred of all deceit. One of his 
 children there were nine in all was about to be 
 married, and the young folks concluded, in view of the 
 festive occasion, that it would be seemly to have the 
 doors and walls of the house adorned with a coating of 
 paint. But the father refused to listen to this proposal, 
 holding that it was better to let the old walls remain in 
 their native integrity than to pollute them with what he 
 regarded as the brush of falsehood. The rest of the 
 household, however, remained resolute in their deter- 
 mination, and gave the painters instructions to proceed 
 with the work, meanwhile bringing all their batteries of 
 persuasion to bear on their father, in which effort they 
 were probably assisted by the gentle mother. The com- 
 bined pleadings, however, were all urged in vain. On 
 the appointed day came the painters, whereupon the old 
 man, who had planted himself in the doorway of his 
 domicile, demanded to know what had brought them 
 thither. To pent the hoose," they replied. " To pent 
 the hoose!" he exclaimed; "ye can just slent the bog 
 (that is, retrace your steps) wi j yer ash-backet feet, for 
 ye'll pit nane o' yer glaur (mud) on my door." 
 
 As he advanced in life, he became more decidedly 
 religious, and one proof of this was furnished by the 
 gradual mellowing of hi<= dis n. Mr Carlyle once 
 
 told a friend that his special fondness for 
 
 reading theology, and \ en was his favourite 
 
 author. "He could n\ '.ything fictitious in 
 
 books," said his son, " a. a man in the full 
 
 presence of Heaven, and Judgment." Mr 
 
 Carlyle thought his father, \sidered, the best 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Thomas Carfylc. 
 
 man whom he had ever known. On one occasion he 
 said to a friend, " He was a far cleverer man than I 
 or ever will be." her time he described hiu. 
 
 one who, "like Kn<xh of old, walked with Go 
 was much in the habit of using old fashioned words . 
 >es, with which he had become familiar in his rea< 
 of the purita: re was a rare pungency, to< 
 
 speech; and ;s," according to one 
 
 arp, ran through the 
 
 cour Edwar-: while pa the 
 
 y, was greatly impressed with the bright and \ 
 
 iseology of the old man ; and, after conversing f 
 
 while with the sire, he turned to the son, 1 
 
 Hi acquired t liar, 
 
 original, and forcible manner of expressing your i(! 
 I have dixovLTcd t': an inhcritani 
 
 father." The old man died in 1832, at the agi 
 1 four sons Thomas, James, A 
 ander, John Aitken, the last named well k 1 >r 
 
 fnftrno 
 
 one of t years of 
 
 century, he < 
 
 lull, in the parish of Hoddam, and at thr 
 
 noved to Scotsbrig, in the parish of 
 
 so or three him 
 
 acre occupied by V :ily-surviving 
 
 brother JamCfc 
 
 If Irving was right, as he seems to have Iven, in the 
 notion that the father had talc had be 
 
 mit: tnr the laying <>n cf nicknames 
 
 that would sti< k lx:ing on.* that cvidcntl;. that 
 
 iiit* J\j ice/ .-*e*A u.>tt)i *>/ini1 if nrf rrrrit/r 
 
His Mother. 19 
 
 confidence, that Carlyle owed very much that was best, 
 in his nature and even in his writings, to his mother. 
 She was her husband's second wife; for James Carlyle, 
 at the age of thirty-two, had married a distant cousin of 
 his own, Jannet Carlyle, the daughter of a small farmer. 
 But this first wife died in 1792, in her twenty-fifth 
 year, leaving one son. About three years afterwards, the 
 widower who had meanwhile built for himself the quaint 
 little dwelling known as "The Arched House" married 
 Margaret Aitken, a native of Whitestanes, in the parish of 
 Kirkmahoe. Her parents, though belonging to the upper 
 section of the working class, were not in such circum- 
 stances as enabled them to keep their family at home; 
 and so Margaret was sent out to domestic service. " She 
 could read, but, like most of the members of her class at 
 that time, and even down to a much later period, she 
 was not able to write. It is a remarkable fact that, like 
 Janet Hamilton the Coatbridge poetess, she taught her- 
 self writing when she was well advanced in life, with the 
 care of a large family resting upon her ; and she did so 
 with the sole object of being able to correspond with her 
 eldest son. All the accounts we have got of this woman go 
 to prove that, though originally a domestic servant, she was, 
 in the best sense of the word, a lady. In person she was 
 a little woman, of a slender make, and endowed with the 
 gift of beauty. As a housewife she was careful and 
 hardworking, and an admirable manager; but in her 
 the qualities of Martha were blended with those of the 
 meditative Mary: for she was a great reader, deeply 
 religious, and endowed with a very sweet temper, in 
 which last-named respect she furnished a contrast to her 
 fiery and, at times, tempestuous husband. The quality 
 
20 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 mind, both as to its strength and independence, 
 ifficiently attested by the fact the most remarkable 
 we know concerning her that it was she who first sug- 
 gested to her son that new theory as to the characu 
 Cromwell which he was the fir before the world 
 
 It was through her spiritual instincts, we are told, that 
 she had discovered that the then prevailing cstim.v 
 the Protector was incorrect ; and more than this we do 
 not require to know, son was 
 
 indeed justified in indulging that tone of personal 
 
 ilation which may be detected in one of his aph- 
 to the effect that no able man ever had a fool 
 for a mother. To strength 01 he united a u 
 
 ome tenderness of heart ; and there can be no doubt 
 
 ht, and poetic sensibility, 
 was fond of 
 dwelling on -s, he would confess that 
 
 tirely too peaceable and pious and 
 
 he was \sont humorously to deplore some s. tl of 
 
 her enjoining non-resibtam e upon him at school 1 
 love kind of worship, and tradi 
 
 handed down many touching little anecdotes that 
 about her learning to write being one of the number 
 which go to prove that the affection of the son was 
 
 1 to the full. 
 
 n we know that it was she who suggested that 
 '.ication of Cromwell, which many regard as 
 greatest, and nost satisfactory work, 
 
 we are not si <> be told that, though the 
 
 subjects uiK.>n which her son wrote were new to 
 
 are, and particularly read 
 nnd rr-ri .id // Resolution. One of his 
 
Anecdote of his Mother. 2 1 
 
 friends, like himself an Ecclefechan man, used often to 
 call on Mrs Carlyle and get an early reading of her son's 
 latest book, which, with filial attention, was always for- 
 warded to her at the earliest possible moment. This 
 gentleman would read the book aloud to the old lady, 
 doing his best, no doubt, to help her over the difficulties ; 
 for it was her frequent, if not invariable, salutation, " I 
 hae gotten anither o' Tarn's buiks, but I can mak' naeth- 
 ing o't" We suspect, however, that she generally con- 
 trived to master them. It is said that she was at first 
 somewhat disturbed by the new religious views she met 
 with in the books, but when she found that her son was 
 in earnest, and steadfast, she cared for no more. The 
 first anecdote that we remember to have heard concerning 
 Carlyle, was one relating to the visit he paid to his 
 mother, for the purpose of spending a few days with her 
 before he set off for Germany to procure materials for his 
 Life of Frederick. On the morning when he had to take 
 his departure, a little group of friends all of whom, we 
 fear, must now be gone were gathered on the railway 
 platform at Ecclefechan to see him off. On entering the 
 booking office he happened to put his hand into his coat 
 pocket, where he discovered something bulky, of whose 
 presence he did not seem to have been aware. He at 
 once took it out, and on unfolding the mysterious parcel, 
 he discovered it to contain some nice home-made Dum- 
 friesshire bannocks, which his mother just as when he 
 was a little boy at school had stowed away in his pocket, 
 that he might use them on his journey. The discovery 
 was too much for him. The simple circumstance had 
 transported him to the days of childhood ; and when his 
 friends came forward to grasp his hand, his eyes were 
 
22 
 
 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 suffused with tears, and his voice trembled One of the 
 two saddest \ ever j.aid to Scotsbrig was in the 
 
 last hours of 1853, when his venerable mother \\ 
 the grave. She died on Christmas I ' 
 
 her husband twenty-one years. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ETCHINGS OF ECCLEFECHAN VILLAGE CULTURE AND 
 
 GREAT MEN THE HOME TRAINING OF CARLYLE HIS 
 MOTHER'S LESSON HOW HIS FATHER DIED ANEC- 
 DOTES OF HIS CHILDHOOD. 
 
 FEW writers of even a professed autobiography have given 
 a fuller, and none a more vivid, history of their early life 
 than Carlyle supplies in the second book of Sartor 
 Resartus. The more narrowly we investigate the subject 
 on the spot, the plainer does it appear that those wonder- 
 ful opening selections from the paper bags of Diogenes 
 Teufelsdrockh are not only a spiritual record of the 
 childhood of Thomas Carlyle, but that they are also a 
 scrupulously faithful picture of the actual scenes and 
 society in the midst of which he was reared. Under the 
 thinnest possible veil, woven by richly humorous fancy, 
 we find portraits of his parents in Father Andreas and 
 Gretchen ; and Entepfuhl is a picture of Ecclefechan as 
 accurate as if it had been written for a guide book or a 
 gazetteer. Mrs Oliphant, as the biographer of Edward 
 Irving, visited the place not so many years ago ; and she 
 gives a graphic view of the scene where " the low grey 
 hills close in around the little hamlet of Ecclefechan, 
 forgotten shrine of some immemorial Celtic saint ; a 
 scene not grandly picturesque, but full of sweet pastoral 
 freedom and solitude; the hills rising grey against the 
 sky, with slopes of springy turf, where the sheep pastured, 
 
Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 and she; an antique type pondered the ways of 
 
 God to man." But more lovingly minute are the etchings 
 of the village and the surrounding country that have been 
 executed by vho spent there the ha 
 
 years which were as ages, when the young spirit, 
 ed out of Eu ot yet learned wh; 
 
 ;e when *ai yet Time was no fast-hurr. 
 stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean." 
 
 in the opening < ccond 
 
 book of Sartor is the fry it qf^the^iiugn 
 those plastic >, when the whole soul 
 
 : the invisible seed-grain will grow to be an 
 all overshadowing tree." We are told how the village 
 stood, as it still K mgement, among 
 
 the woody slopes;" and "the little Kuhbarh gu^l 
 kindly 1 ugh river after river, 
 
 of t' \Vhen we 
 
 SEW it upwards t | . years ago, on a :ner 
 
 cemed ra 1 gp*h little stream ; and it was 
 
 crossed in the village by a multitude of bridges. It was 
 open at that time; but U greater ; 
 
 to the sanitary ad. 
 
 was effected, at his own sole c<> t, 
 
 a native of the village, over whose giave, in the .south-caN'. 
 
 .irish ch headstone \ing 
 
 .irk- 
 
 COOncll Hall; Lorn i 6lh July i Arnolt w.> 
 
 many yean sut . . Egypt, Maidi, 
 
 i, throughout the 1'eninsular War, a: 
 na he was the n. 
 
 esteem he won, and whose last moments he soothed. The remain - 
 most useful and cxcn nt in the reiireuicnt 
 
 nf hi n.itivr flr\rr_ hnnriirr<1 nml lmlnvr<! hv .ill who knrw him." 
 
Changes at Ecclefechan. 25 
 
 tage and the convenience of the inhabitants ; though the 
 good work has involved a sacrifice of the picturesque 
 charm which the burn had for Carlyle in his early days. 
 The pilgrim to his shrine will be pleased to note that, in 
 front of the tenement in which he was born, the streamlet 
 still flows in an open channel ; and traces may be seen 
 on its margin of the ash and beech trees with which it 
 was formerly fringed. 
 
 Though so many of the lines in Carlyle's picture of the 
 place are as true to-day as they were eighty years ago, 
 some others, like that of the gushing Kuhbach, have been 
 either altered or wholly blotted out. The swineherd's 
 horn, and the spectacle of the " hungry happy quadrupeds 
 starting in hot haste " to answer its welcome morning call, 
 to say nothing of their humorous but orderly return in 
 the evening, when each, " topographically correct," trotted 
 off " through its own lane to its own dwelling," are no 
 longer to be heard or seen. The last swineherd of Eccle- 
 fechan long since doffed for ever his " darned gabardine 
 and leather breeches, more resembling slate or discoloured- 
 tin breeches," and now sleeps peacefully in the same kirk- 
 yard with the bright-eyed boy who was to send the memory 
 of him down through the ages. The Postwagen that used 
 to wend through the village northwards from London to 
 Glasgow "in the dead of night, slow-rolling under its 
 mountains of men and luggage," and which passed " south- 
 wards visibly at eventide," has given place to the railway 
 train. And the woodman's axe has been laid years 
 ago to the root of the grand old tree, so long the 
 pride of the villagers, which stretched "like a parasol 
 of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and 
 clumps ; " but there are many people yet alive who 
 
26 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 remember the time when, under its shadow, " in the 
 glorious summer twi ;e ciders of the hamlet 
 
 sat talki: .is they had done when little The: 
 
 was one of their most attentive auditors, "often greedily 
 listening,'' as he himself : to their stories and 
 
 debates, while " the wearied labourers i and the 
 
 unu ;>orted, and the young men and 
 
 \\ danced to flute-music." The annual cattle 
 fair, however, " undoubtedly the grand summary (A 
 tepfuhl's child-culture," though now shorn of much of 
 its pristine glory, as is the case with all similar institu- 
 tions in this age of railways, still gathers into a field close 
 by "the elements of an unshakable hurly-burly;" and 
 looking out and up from any point of 'vantage in the 
 hollow where the village lies we see how faithful rein 
 the uire of the " upland irregular wold, where 
 
 valle\s in comflex branching . .ddenly or sl< 
 
 . their descent towards every quarter of the 
 
 Sucl scenic and social environments of Carlyle 
 
 in his childhood. We may add that the village was then, 
 
 what it has latterly ceased to be, a seat of the gingham 
 
 ufacture ; so that eighty years ago tl :ion was 
 
 composite, including a large proportion of n 
 
 light at the loom. In-icci!. then is an 
 old tombstone in the :nory of a Ro 
 
 Peal, who lived in K< B, and wl. -i 1749 at 
 
 the age of 57, coi whom the local tradition asserts 
 
 that he was either the great 
 
 ul-uncle of Sir Robert Peel ; and it is further st. 
 by the sanu 
 statesma: 1 to I .an- 
 
Ecclefechan and England. 27 
 
 cashire to engage in the cotton trade.* Now the popula- 
 tion, which numbers about 900, is exclusively agricultural. 
 The older one-storeyed cottages were for the most part 
 built by Carlyle's father and uncle; and as they are regu- 
 larly whitewashed once a year, on the approach of the 
 annual fair, they have a much tidier appearance than one 
 is accustomed to find in villages farther north. The 
 winsome aspect of the hamlet is enhanced by the more 
 modern tenements being faced with the red sandstone 
 that abounds in the district. This outward neatness is 
 not the only token which tells the stranger passing through 
 from the north that he is leaving Scotland behind him. 
 The country has become more level, the verdure richer ; 
 if you ask your way at any roadside cottage, ten to one 
 but you are answered in the dialect of Cumberland or of 
 Lancashire by an English tongue, which wags cheerily to 
 the music of pattens on the clean stone floor ; the very 
 tavern signboards proclaim that England is near by inti- 
 mating " ale and spirits " an inversion of the Scotch 
 order or by leaving out altogether what in Scotland is 
 the leading article. 
 
 A man's parentage and early surroundings, according 
 to Carlyle's view, are the grand factors in determining the 
 nature of his life ; and we have his own authority for con- 
 cluding that his early position was, in both respects, 
 " favourable beyond the most." Certain sapient editors, 
 with the spirit of provincial self-complacency that is 
 
 * ' ' There is a short cross street in the village which used to be 
 known as Peal's Wynd, where lived an old lady, Betty Peal, who 
 is said to have been the recipient of Sir Robert Peel's bounty, on 
 the ground that she was considered by him to be a relative." 
 Scotsman Newspaper, Feb. II, 1881. 
 
28 V/f. 
 
 nowhere found to such j>erfe< turn as in a metropolis, 
 have remarked that few educational advantages were to 
 be found in the obscure hamlet where Carlyle was l> 
 
 The mere mention <>! might have led thei 
 
 pause before expressing such an opinion ; and 
 forgot the case of Burns, whose opportunities, from : 
 
 w, were smaller still The scholar whose 
 un:. ony farm of Mount Oliphant, who 
 
 had .u M i IK i 'uses 
 
 of Kyle, did he not become the interpreter of Scotland to 
 
 elf and to the world? The two great 
 of 1 . and almost t' 
 
 be said of Shakspeare himself. ^ een how for- 
 
 tunate Carlyle was in his parentage ; and t! 
 already made is deep- 
 fl his personal history that are revealed in Sitr' 
 
 ng of the :.o doubt owing to the 
 
 the 
 
 mot ng gentleness, : 
 
 dls< more than the child could 
 
 hear. liven M thingl uir, li.e ii:;. ::./:!!-, i::<; <-ol were 
 pro-' arly 
 
 per 
 
 in ; of which misfortune how .rC8 yet abide '- 
 
 1 to realise the w! u of 
 
 the misfortune. It is cxident that James Carlyle, who, as 
 we have seen. rather la: 
 
 ing over him, hovering round him, eager to 
 
 slig! hand to avert his anger: "assidu- 
 
 CO<>' '-hat have 
 
 a good d .caning. .er was a pious i: 
 
His Home Training. 29 
 
 but before time had mellowed him his piety was of a some- 
 what different sort from that of the mother. His attend- 
 ance at church partook of the character of parade-duty, "for 
 
 which he in the other world expected pay with arrears, 
 
 as, I trust, he has received." But the mother, " with a 
 true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, 
 was in the strictest acceptation religious." She rendered 
 an altogether invaluable service to her boy by teaching 
 him, " less by word than by act and daily reverent look 
 and habitude, her own simple version of the Christian 
 Faith." For any defects in the parental training Carlyle 
 was not the man to whimper. Instead of being disposed 
 to quarrel with his upbringing, he was devoutly thankful as 
 he looked back upon it, and saw that even out of its 
 excessive austerity good had come. In an age that has 
 witnessed a sad and often disastrous relaxation of parental 
 control, the words in which Carlyle congratulates himself 
 on his rigorous training cannot be too earnestly pondered. 
 The bond of obedience imposed upon him was, he tells 
 us, strait and inflexible. " I was forbid much : wishes in 
 any measure bold I had to renounce." Often he shed 
 bitter tears as the lessons were administered which taught 
 him how Freewill comes in painful collision with Neces- 
 sity. But, if his father erred, it was on the right side j 
 for, in the habituation to obedience, " it was beyond mea- 
 sure safer to err by excess than by defect." That habit 
 laid for him "the basis of worldly discretion, nay of morality 
 itself." It was "the root of deeper earnestness, of the 
 stem from which all noble fruit must grow." Tender and 
 true are the last loving touches in the picture of the 
 domestic culture which left its mark indelibly on Thomas 
 Carlyle. " Above all, how unskilful soever, it was 
 
30 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 loving, it was well meant, honest; whereby every defi- 
 :icy was helped" 
 
 How faithfully the son returned that love! He was 
 r weary of sounding the praises of the father who had 
 been so sternly faithful ; and when he mentioned 
 
 he was a grey old man of more 
 :i fourscc tender emo; 
 
 One day in London, when he was within n few months of 
 
 le was walking in company with an Amer 
 stranger who had that day called to see him. 
 
 When half way o 
 
 Carlyle suddenly stopped, and stooping down kicked 
 
 something out of the mud, at the risk of being run over 
 
 one of the many carriages that \\ ng past 
 
 : ushed the mud off and placed 
 
 the white sul^tanre in a clean sjxrt on tl me, 
 
 said he, in a tone as sweet and in words as 
 
 had ever heard, " is only a crust 
 
 of bread. Yet I w.i> b my mother never to waste, 
 
 : above all bread, more pn .in gold, 
 
 Stan- the same to the tx>dy that the i the 
 
 1 the little si*.- dog will 
 
 get nourishment G 
 bear in his heart till 1 ays on earth the homeliest 
 
 I learnt from the lips <: 
 
 a fact worth noting that the la .rlyle ever 
 
 saw his father was on his journey from CraigenputUx ' 
 Ixmdon, when he went to the modem Bab\ 
 MS. of Sartor for the purpose of p I 
 
 "Thomas Carlylr a! ! ncc \YinthfOp Bowen, i 
 
 Tht Independent ( 
 
Anecdotes of his Childhood. 31 
 
 came upon my fool's errand," said he once to Milburn, 
 the blind Methodist preacher from America, " 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 seems ; 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 at 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." And, after a pause, he 
 added : " If I could only see such men as were my father 
 and his minister, men of such fearless and simple faith, 
 with such firmness in holding on to the things that they 
 believed, and saying and doing only what they thought 
 was right, in seeing and hating the thing that they felt to 
 be wrong, I should have far more hope for this British 
 nation, and indeed for the world at large." 
 
 Some of the anecdotes of Carlyle's childhood are signi- 
 ficant as well as amusing. It is evident that he was pre- 
 cocious. " In some fifteen months," baby Thomas "could 
 perform the miracle of Speech !" Even earlier than that 
 he seems to have begun to realise the great truth that 
 Silence is Golden. He was " noted as a still infant, that 
 kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or 
 never cried. He already felt that time was precious ; that 
 he had other work cut out for him than whimpering." A 
 profound impression seems to have been made upon his 
 mind by his investiture in his first short-clothes of yellow 
 serge ; " or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for 
 the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to 
 
32 Thomas Car 
 
 ank 1 :th four limbs," a fashion of child 
 
 altirc that long < j. arts of Scot- 
 
 land, though now probably qui '. Very prcf 
 
 .-rs on the on-hard wall, whithc: 
 the . he was wont to < 
 
 brea Ik : having cither got up himself by climbing, 
 
 or been assisted 1 any 
 
 I, looking at the distant \s< un- 
 
 tains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal 
 Those hues of gold hush of 
 
 cctation as I). was still a Hebrew Speech 
 
 1 looking at the fair illumii. 
 
 :or their gilding." He was on 
 ;th all r and poultry, thereby 
 
 uiring "a certain ith anin. 
 
 nat use of humour was awakened within him 
 
 , trustful " of the 
 
 poor pigs obeying th ns of the swineherd ; 
 
 the Mug-lodged in our cottage lobby," with 
 
 the littl- l>lumb under the nest 
 
 MI from the 1 
 
 so that t, nimble creatures taught him m.t 
 
 was abo years old wh- 
 
 im that the stagecoach "could be other than 
 some terrestrial moon, rising . 
 
 nature, like the heavenly one; t' me on i 
 
 hig! es; weaving them 
 
 like :ous shuttle into < ; 
 
 hild of the same age would ]>rol)ably have ki 
 that but to how few would ' 
 
 come that arose in the mind of this littl- nan- 
 
 d " and a hist< : 
 
The First Glimpse of His Work. 33 
 
 ndency given him," a fact specially worthy of note by 
 le narrative habits of his paternal grandfather (though in 
 artor he ascribes these to Father Andreas). The old 
 ian had been of an adventurous turn, had travelled even 
 ; far as London ; and eagerly the child " hung upon his 
 les, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth." 
 ^ith amazement he began to discover that Ecclefechan 
 stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; that 
 tere was such a thing as History, as Biography ; to 
 hich I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might con- 
 ibute." Thus, at the tender age of eight, the Vindicator 
 r Cromwell and the most brilliant historian of the French 
 .evolution got the first glimpse of the work that had been 
 ven him to do. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BOY BOOKWORM- <ST SCHOOLMASTER CLAS- 
 
 SICAL I \r THE MANSE THE HI 
 
 ILJM AT ANNAN AT BURNs's CRA 
 
 BEFORE the first-born of James Carlyle had entered 
 second year, the improving circumstances of the fa 
 led him to move from the small house over the 
 ':, Of " Ptend," U it i baOed in Scotland, to a n. 
 commodious dwelling a two-storeyed cottage, a\ 
 
 :<>ad, in a lane whjph used to be ca' 
 k - Matthew Murray's Close," but \ now kr. 
 
 Close." In this house all the oil 
 children were born, and here Thomas was brought up. 
 
 uiinber of changes, the tenet; 
 become the village butcher)', or "slaughter 
 house," as they phra.se it in the North. Almost from his 
 :icy Carlyle was a great reader. In a cottage close by 
 there lived until a year or two ago an aged won 
 Million, \vh>, when a girl, :i nursed Thomas, and 
 
 "given him many a ride upon her luck ;" and, accord 
 to her testimony. iced with that of other con: 
 
 por. was always a thoughtful and studious child, 
 
 mixed little with tl idren, or even with 
 
The Boy Bookworm. 
 
 35 
 
 own brothers or sisters, having a greater relish for the 
 society of his grandfather and other grown up people, and 
 who was fond of roaming about the fields and hills, always 
 with a book in his hand. In Sartor he himself tells us 
 that he could not remember ever to have learned 
 reading ; " so perhaps had it by nature." What printed 
 thing soever he could meet with, he read; and all his 
 pocket money, never more than copper, he laid out on 
 stall literature, by which is signified, we presume, those 
 penny chap-books that were then the sole literature for 
 the people ; which, as they accumulated, he with his own 
 hands sewed into volumes. "By this means was the 
 young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of 
 things and shadows of things : History in authentic 
 fragments lay mingled with fabulous chimeras, wherein 
 also was reality ; and the whole not as dead stuff, but as 
 living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so 
 peptic." He was early noted for his extraordinary 
 memory. At the age of five he could repeat the heads 
 and particulars of any sermon he heard, a greater feat, in 
 those days of "painful" preachers and long sermons, 
 than it would be in our more superficial time. As a 
 boy he exhibited considerable ability as an orator, and 
 on one occasion, at some local public discussion, he 
 astonished the audience, including even his own father, 
 by an extraordinary burst of eloquence. 
 
 Of his schoolmasters, using the word in its technical 
 sense, he does not speak very respectfully. "Of the 
 insignificant portion of my education which depended 
 on schools, there need almost no notice be taken." He 
 must have been little more than an infant when he was 
 sent to the parish school, then taught by a poor dominie 
 
36 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 of tl ^cnus, one William Gullcn bj \ 
 
 name, whose ponrait makes a pathetic passage in 
 
 and :. y of whose life might be worth tcl 
 
 had it been preserved in an authentic form. According j 
 
 to the local .he seems, like too many of 
 
 kind, to have l>ccn harshly used by the parish i; 
 
 and this is so far borne out by Carlyle's account of him 
 
 down-be:/ -it man;. 
 
 if he did lit- ;-il, had at least "the mer; 
 
 discovering that he could do little;" and whom we 
 bound to think of resj>ectfully, since he had the insigl 
 dis< 
 
 in the little Carlyle, whom he pronounced "a gen. 
 itation, he declared that he w. 
 
 
 
 School, and one day to the I" njggling 
 
 don. 'ie i>crsecution of the 
 
 minister, to i be tO America, il 
 
 : him at 1 
 
 close to the Road a 
 
 long cor building. l^ir, 
 
 ^f|hurch of St I'echan, fmm v.: 
 
 more commodious schoolhouse was erected, old 
 
 one now serves the purpose of a poorhouse for the n. 
 tion of "casi: 
 
 le had j year when he was 
 
 the Aca ar School, Ot 
 
 her had once been a pupil, and up 
 wa the ll name of M .tcrschlag 
 
 Gymnasium." According to all accounts, it must ' 
 
His First Classical Tutor. 
 
 37 
 
 well deserved the unsavory title, for the master, even at 
 that period of educational brutality, was distinguished for 
 the unmerciful severity of his punishments. Adam Hope 
 was his rather inappropriate name ; he knew syntax 
 enough, " and of the human soul thus much that it had 
 a faculty called memory, and could be acted on through 
 the muscular integument by appliance of birch rods." 
 Hope was also the teacher of Edward Irving, and it is 
 only doing justice to his memory to say, that Irving used 
 to ascribe to his tutor's severity the scholarship which his 
 own disposition would not have led him to acquire. He 
 often had his ears pinched by the master till they bled. 
 Young as he was, it would seem that Carlyle had acquired 
 the elements of Latin before going to Annan, having been 
 assisted in the task by a student son of the Secession 
 minister of Ecclefechan, who taught a class in his father's 
 manse when he was at home during the University recess. 
 There is a local tradition that it was the mother who 
 insisted on her eldest boy having the advantage of this 
 classical training. Old James wished little Thomas to 
 " gang and work," which set the child book-worm a-crying 
 bitterly. He told his mother that he wanted to keep to 
 his " buiks ; " and her gentle influence prevailed, against 
 the paternal decision, in securing for her first-born the 
 greatest wish of his heart. It is a story that has been 
 repeated in many a humble Scottish home. Young 
 Johnston, the minister's son, was wont to tell in after 
 years how he discovered that the boy (not yet eight years 
 old) had been privately studying his Latin Rudiments 
 with great industry, but that his grammar and construc- 
 tion were in a chaotic state. After three months' drill, 
 however, little Thomas had succeeded in grasping the 
 
38 Thomas Carfylc. 
 
 intricacies of both, and could translate Virgil and Horace 
 with an case that astonished his tutor.* 
 
 The precocity of the rhild is attested by the mar- 
 vellous!;. : impression which he retained of that 
 41 red sunny \\ 1 morning," when, trotting the 
 intervening miles, full of hope, by his father's sic! 
 
 entered the 
 
 clock (then striking eight) and jail, and the aproned or 
 ned burghers moving in to breakfast" A little 
 dog was rushing pa id terror, with a tin \. 
 
 which some human imps had tied V) its tail ; this, and all 
 the oilier details of the scene, fix then D his 
 
 memory, and arc reproduced nearly thirty years after- 
 wards with the quaint fidelity of a Dutch jointer. 
 bullies of the school were cruel to the little boy 
 intagc of u his small per 
 ure, M and al>o of the unwillingness to fight v 
 mother ::i planting in him as a funda- 
 
 mental prin< action; and In often i. 
 
 their tyranny ki that 1. mcd the Tearful, which 
 
 epithet, til was not quite 
 
 unmer: , however, i4 the young soul 
 
 t on ' writes : "Carlylc continued 
 
 :i a warm I ' ' 
 
 ;cd a Pre> 
 They frequently conrespondi copy of 
 
 .e-i the tendencies of ( 
 
 wv, sometimes with regret, and sometimes with pleasure, 
 
 \\hen he f..rwan!cl his ' Letters and Speeches of mwell,' 
 
 > nit on wrote, thanking him, aiul cn . him for his 
 
 . 
 
 .1; this grc.i 1 biograph) 
 
 which ^ hopes conccniing the 
 
 Id pupil's relit;. 
 
A Nephew of Burns. 39 
 
 Durst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness 
 mder which the boldest quailed," he asserted his rights, 
 n defiance of his mother's law. 
 
 Even in his purchasing of chap-books before he left 
 lome, it is hardly possible that he could have observed 
 rvith strictness the rigid rule laid down by his father 
 igainst all works of fiction ; but, under the milder sway 
 }f the cooper in whose house he lodged at Annan, the 
 paternal injunctions were no doubt set aside with even 
 greater freedom, for he tells how "he remembered 
 : ew happier days than the one on which he ran off into the 
 lelds to read Roderick Random, and how inconsolable he 
 ras that he could not get the second volume." "To 
 ;his day," he added, "I think few writers equal to 
 Smollett " an estimate that may be ascribed, in part at 
 east, to the sweet memory of that day in which he drank 
 ;he stolen waters. So far as the school was concerned, 
 bis time at Annan, according to his own report, was 
 utterly wasted, the teaching being purely mechanical; but 
 tie " went about, as was his wont, among the craftsmen's 
 workshops, there learning many things," and he also got 
 good from " some small store of curious reading " 
 probably including that fragment of the forbidden Smollett 
 which he found at the house where he lodged. It con- 
 firms our faith in the strictly autobiographical character 
 of Sartor when we learn that it was actually a cooper's 
 house, the cooper being a relation of his father's. 
 
 It is, perhaps, not unworthy of note that one of Car- 
 lyle's school-fellows at Annan was Thomas Burns, a 
 nephew of the poet, who subsequently became parish 
 minister of Monkton, in Ayrshire, and died at Dunedin, 
 where he was Free Church minister and Chancellor of 
 
40 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 the University of Otago, in 1871. \\ i ;. at M -nkton he 
 
 .:>like to any mention of his illustrious u: 
 being made in his presence. The good man came to know 
 
 the years went \>y ; and at the antipodes heenjo 
 the lusta is reflected upon him from the chief of 
 
 Scottish song. It was probably during the Annan days 
 that Carlyle went to Dumfries to see the grave of Burns. 
 
 npsc of his boyhood, a 
 
 forth be treasured in the Scottish heart, he gave to an 
 Anu itor a few years ago during a walk from 
 
 < Isea to Piccadilly. He told of his early a. 
 of Burns how he used to creep into the churchyard of 
 Dm .1 little boy, and find the tomb of 
 
 poet. the simple inscription by the hour. 
 
 it was," said he, "in the midst of poor fellow- 
 labourers and ait :;d the name Robert 1 
 At morn, at noon, and eventide, he loved to go and read 
 that name. Thus were thoughts dimly suggested to the 
 mind of the l>oy, that quickened and grew, till at length, 
 in his manhood, they found expression in what was the 
 first and seems likely to be the last worthy and all- 
 sufficing u of the life and works of the Scu: 
 bard. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SECESSION KIRK CARLYLE'S PORTRAIT OF DR LAW- 
 SON LETTER TO A PASTOR'S WIDOW ANOTHER 
 
 LINK WITH BURNS. 
 
 CARLYLE'S parents were Nonconformists; and it was in 
 the Secession Church at Ecclefechan, of which his father 
 and mother were members, that he received such nutri- 
 ment as the Scottish pulpit was destined to bestow upon 
 him in his early years. Those who know what that partic- 
 ular branch of the Church was at the dawn of our century, 
 and especially the character of its leading lights, will have 
 no difficulty, as they read his works, in discerning the 
 permanent mark which this part of his youthful culture 
 left upon his mind and heart. It was a Church which 
 had its origin in the attachment of the best part of the 
 Scottish nation to two things without which a true Church 
 is simply impossible purity of doctrine and life, and 
 freedom of administration. Its chief founders were 
 Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, the former of whom, along 
 with three other parish ministers, had been expelled from 
 their ministerial charges by the General Assembly in 1733 
 for their faithful protest against the worldly policy which 
 had degraded the doctrine and the life of the Established 
 Church, besides annihilating the rights of the people by 
 the infliction of the tyrannical Law of Patronage. In 
 1747 the new communion, which, however, represented 
 
42 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 the old spirit of t: \vas unhappily broken 
 
 into two sections l>y a difference of opinion with respect 
 to the burgess oath, which imposed on all who swore it a 
 pledge "to profess and allow the true religion presently 
 professed within this realm, and authorised by the laws 
 thereof." Some held that the swearing of this oath was 
 virtual approval of the Establishment with all its corrup- 
 
 - ; others maintained that the oath referred only to 
 the true as professed, but did not involve any 
 
 approval of the mode of its settlement by the State. The 
 controversy led to a separation. The party which ob- 
 
 d to the taking of the oath formed itself into the 
 ral Associate Synod; the other section 
 the original title of Associate Synod The former body 
 were popular rghers, the latter the 
 
 ,;hers names that remained in use long at 
 had ceased to represent any living reality. 
 
 The church at Fxxlefechan belonged to the Burgher 
 branch of the Secession, Its pastor, the Rev. John 
 Johnston, was a notable man, an excellent scholar, and 
 in every other essential respect the model of what a 
 Christian minister ought to be. He had studied theology 
 under Professor Brown of Haddington ; and he was him- 
 self the first classical tutor of a carpenter's son in Peebles- 
 :e, who made his mark on the spiritual history of 
 Scotland as Professor Lawson of Selkirk. The lim 
 Sartvr that may be construed as bearing at least some 
 
 rence to the church \\huh Carlyle attended with 
 parents are few, but they are impressive. " The highest 
 whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed down, with awe 
 
 ;>eakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such things, 
 especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very con 
 
The Burgher Minister. 
 
 your being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies buil 
 itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps ; and Reve\ 
 rence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from its x 
 mean envelopment of Fear." 
 
 The United Presbyterian Church,* in which all sections 
 of the Seceders are now happily included, is represented 
 at Ecclefechan to-day by a handsome Gothic edifice, 
 situated close by the churchyard, with a square clock 
 tower the most conspicuous object in the village ; but it 
 was in a rude little meeting-house, in no wise differing 
 from the cottages of the peasantry, and which the pilgrim 
 may still see standing by the roadside as he walks from 
 the railway station to the village, that the young soul was 
 impressed with the awe to which he has given such 
 memorable utterance. 
 
 More fully, both in conversation and in letters, did 
 Carlyle, down to his closing years on the earth, testify to 
 the depth and duration of that hallowed ^influence. 
 Oftener than once he was heard to declare, " I have 
 seen many capped and equipped bishops, and other 
 episcopal dignitaries; but I have never seen one who 
 more beautifully combined in himself the Christian and 
 the Christian gentleman than did Mr Johnston." To the 
 blind preacher Milburn, from America, he said (in 1860) 
 that " it was very pleasant to see his father in his daily 
 and weekly relations with the minister. They had been 
 friends from youth. That minister (he must have said the 
 
 * " We had the pleasure of visiting the locality in the month of 
 August last, and found several relatives of Mr Carlyle, all in com- 
 fortable circumstances, and mostly connected with the United 
 Presbyterian Church." Thomas Carlyle: the Man and Teacher. 
 By David Hodge, M. A. Ardrossan : Ar^u^^jhiie. 1873. 
 
44 '"as Car. 
 
 minister's son) w:i >t person that ever taught me 
 
 I^itin, and I am not sure but that he laid a very ^ 
 curse upon me in so doing. I think it is likely I should 
 
 nly a godlicr one, if I 
 
 had followed in my father's steps. cek and 
 
 Latin to the fools that wanted r 
 
 uner communions came round there often 
 stood by the village pastor in the pulpit at E< 
 
 , now the learned and pious Pro- 
 fessor from the little Secession Academy at Selkirk ; 
 that these occasions were not forgotten by at least one 
 youthful hearer has been put beyond dispute by the t 
 mony of Carlyle himself. ite Dr John V 
 
 of Glasgow, latterly of Clapham, published 
 nu-moir of Lawson, he sent a copy of the book to the 
 aged philosopher at Chelsea, and -in 1870) an 
 
 nowledgment which was probably the most fon 
 
 I guerdon for what had been his labour of love. 
 
 our Biography of Dr Lawum? wrote < 
 
 interested me not a little, bringing present to me from 
 
 much that it is good to be reminded of; strangely 
 
 awakening many thoughts, ones and recollections 
 
 of forty, of sixty yean ago all now grown very sad to 
 
 me, but also very beautiful and solemn. It seems to me 
 
 I gather ive and from his own letters a 
 
 Thomas Car/ Bocks, kit Tkvrift. By Alfred 
 
 II. ... -.scy. New uc<! the r 
 
 lections of his conversations u icmsey, makes 
 
 Carlyle s. was "an cMcr .f the Kirk," at 
 
 pastor was "minister of (he parish." The reporter most have 
 forgotten the exact words that were really used by Carlyle. The 
 report throughout is evidently a very free one, though bearing the 
 marks of general authentic 
 
His Portrait of Dr Lawson. 45 
 
 perfectly credible account of Dr Lawson's character, 
 course of life, and labours in the world ; and the reflec- 
 tion rises in me that perhaps there was not in the British 
 Island a more completely genuine, pious- minded, diligent, 
 and faithful man. Altogether original too, peculiar to 
 Scotland, and, so far as I can guess, unique even there 
 and then. England will never know him out of any book 
 or, at least, it would take the genius of a Shakspere 
 to make him known by that method ; but if England did, 
 it might much and wholesomely astonish her. Seen in 
 his intrinsic character, no simpler-minded, more perfect 
 4 lover of wisdom,' do I know of in that generation. Pro- 
 fessor Lawson, you may believe, was a great man in my 
 boy circle ; never spoken of but with reverence and 
 thankfulness by those I loved best. In a dim but 
 singularly conclusive way I can still remember seeing 
 him, and even hearing him preach (though of that latter, 
 except the fact of it, I retain nothing) ; but of the figure, 
 face, tone, dress, I have a vivid impression (perhaps 
 about my twelfth year, i.e., summer of 1807-8); it seems 
 to me he had even a better face than in your frontispiece 
 more strength, sagacity, shrewdness, simplicity, a 
 broader jaw, more hair of his own (I don't much re- 
 member any wig) ; altogether a most superlative steel- 
 grey Scottish peasant (and Scottish Socrates of the 
 period) ; really, as I now perceive, more like the twin 
 brother of that Athenian Socrates who went about, 
 supreme in Athens, in wooden shoes, than any man I 
 have ever ocularly seen. Many other figures in your 
 narrative were, by name or person, familiar to my eyes or 
 mind, in that far-off period of my life." 
 
 Not unworthy to be ranked with this is the letter 
 
46 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 addressed in 1868 to the widow of a United Presbyterian 
 minister, who had ed volume of her husba: 
 
 .ions, and sent a copy to Carlylc. " Your gentle, sad, 
 and modest gilt," he rcplit iournful and . 
 
 to me. I i it with thanks, and it shall be among 
 
 Well do I understand your deso 
 
 feelings ; and what pious beauty was in the noble labours 
 
 you undertook for the sake of him that is gone; the fruit 
 
 iich is this book, which I doubt not will be a spirit- 
 
 iKrncfit to many. May it be a blessing to many : 
 
 to yourself, I cannot doubt, it ha been ! An 
 
 iticult, and at 
 
 possible perhaps to you alone of the living! I know 
 
 well what ot and sacred a nt to a 
 
 r sorrow must have Ixx-n in it, and much approve of 
 
 lorn, and still augur well of \ 
 uin sympathy, alas, cannot help; only time and 
 >ut reflection and above all, strenuous employment 
 in doing what remains to be done. Only or I see 
 
 the rtner whom \ t ; but I marked 
 
 ::i him the features of a faith: 
 
 k-en taught 
 to i re, and pious mother 
 
 M of him I loss, I see how imme: 
 
 and hov. it. I will <.n!v say, may 
 
 \vn faithful, brave, 
 
 and loving soul, inspired (we may well say) f: _;her 
 
 sour. 
 
 Dear a sermon preach cstminster 
 
 >ey on t 1 ith, assc: 
 
 that Carlyle " still dun-, amidst all the vi i^itiuies of 
 * "the Church of Scotland. 
 
Another Link with Burns. 47 
 
 Dean is so intimately conversant with Scottish ecclesi- 
 astical history, that he ought to have perceived the 
 misleading tendency of such a phrase. It may not 
 be out of place here to note that Dean Stanley, in his 
 entertaining Lectures on the History of the Church of 
 Scotland, describes Burns as "the prodigal son of the 
 Church of Scotland," and alleges that "the kindly and 
 genial spirit of the philosophic clergy and laity saved 
 him from being driven, by the extravagant pretensions 
 of the popular Scottish religion, into absolute unbelief." 
 The lecturer does not seem to have known the fact, that 
 what the poet really thought of " the philosophic clergy " 
 of the Establishment was placed beyond all doubt by 
 the selection he made at Dumfries, when he took seats 
 for himself and his family in the Secession Kirk, of which 
 the Rev. William Inglis was pastor. When Burns was 
 asked by some one, in a taunting tone, why he conde- 
 scended to listen to the preaching of a Seceder, he 
 replied, " I go to hear Mr Inglis because he preaches 
 what he believes, and practises what he preaches." We 
 have been told by a grandson of Mr Inglis, of a circum- 
 stance not noticed in any of the biographies of Burns. 
 Mr Inglis was the Christian pastor who attended the poet 
 on his death-bed; and to him Burns "expressed the 
 deepest penitence for his immorality, and for his profane 
 and licentious writings." This fact our informant had 
 from his father, who, when a youth, frequently saw Burns. 
 Mr Inglis, though he had been settled in his ministerial 
 charge at Dumfries as early as 1765, performed all its 
 duties till 1810, and was able to preach till the time of 
 his death, in 1826. Though he was an Anti-Burgher, 
 it is not improbable that he may have had amongst his 
 
48 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 occasional h 1 in the neighbouring village, 
 
 who was, so : fterwards, to r i an 
 
 able port: .iwson ol 
 
 the case, that old Dumfries Seceder is doubly worth; 
 
 embrancc. is lot to preach the gospel 
 
 needed by all men and that in lowly meeting-houses, 
 upon which the world hardly bestowed a look, or, at the 
 
 jost, only a glance of scorn to Robert Burns and 
 Thomas Carlyle, 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 MEETS EDWARD IRVING ENTERS THE UNIVERSITY THE 
 
 LITERARY AND SOCIAL LIFE OF EDINBURGH HIS 
 TEACHERS : BROWN, PLAYFAIR, LESLIE THE SPI- 
 RITUAL CRISIS TURNS FROM THE PULPIT HIS 
 
 FATHER'S GRIEF ORIGIN OF HIS DYSPEPSIA 
 POVERTY AND LONELINESS. 
 
 THOUGH the Ecclefechan boy must have spent two 
 years, at least, in the native town of a contemporary 
 who was to be his first friend, outside the domestic 
 precinct, Carlyle had entered his thirteenth year before 
 he met Edward Irving. That in so small a town he had 
 got earlier glimpses of him, is extremely probable; but 
 they did not come together till 1808. In the exquisitely 
 tender obituary of his friend, a tribute that stands un- 
 rivalled in the whole compass of our prose literature, 
 written for the Fraser of January 1835, ne savs : "The 
 first time I saw Irving was six-and-twenty years ago, in 
 his native town, Annan. He was fresh from Edinburgh, 
 with College prizes, high character and promise ; he had 
 come to see our Schoolmaster, who had also been his. 
 We heard of famed Professors, of high matters, classi- 
 cal, mathematical, a whole Wonderland of Knowledge : 
 nothing but joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked 
 
50 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 out from the blooming young man."* That meeting was 
 
 hied with momentous issues for Carlylc. *' 
 for Irving, I had never known what the communion of 
 man with man means." And it was through Irving that 
 
 was to meet the future partner of his life, the : 
 helpmate to whom, when his work was nearly done, 
 ascribed all of worth that he had been able to achieve in 
 the world. 
 
 It was not long after that first meeting till Carlyle 
 followed Irving to tlv ' lie was but a 
 
 boy of fourteen when, in 1809, he matriculated at Edin- 
 burgh. His extreme youth may account, in part at K 
 for the scantiness of the information that we possess 
 ".g his student life at the :y, and also 
 
 for the compara 1 ness of the impression w! 
 
 the :id social characteristics of the city seem to 
 
 have nu.k- upon him. It was, perhaps, the most bril- 
 liant epoch in the history of the Scotti 
 who! of the place was richly 
 
 .ocial life at that 
 
 >d has been < orksasM her's 
 
 Autobiography 
 
 with even greater s of 
 
 Lord Cockburn. The ^reat Tory rival of the E+ 
 
 i accounts concur 
 
 in representing him as perhaps the noblest-looking youth in At 
 dale. Allan Cunningham said be could not enter a village but he 
 caught the adn >th old and young, "o 
 
 when a boy, "said a resident in Annan to 1 nring's earliest biogra; 
 poor Washington \\Y I Kcclcfcchan my 
 
 fath' ne was looking at a very tall young m.v 
 
 pony. I asketl my father who it was, and he said, 'Irving, the 
 tanner's s 4 to be a prcaci. 
 
Edinburgh Society in 1810. 51 
 
 burgh Review had been started in the year preceding that 
 in which Carlyle entered the city of Sir Walter Scott and 
 Jeffrey ; the Lady of the Lake was but newly issued from 
 the press. Brougham had not long left for London ; but 
 Harry Erskine, a purer patriot and a greater lawyer, as 
 well as the most brilliant wit of his day, was still adorning 
 the Scottish bar. Old Henry Mackenzie, author of 
 The Man of Feeling, and of the first critical essay 
 recognising the genius of Burns, remained as a relic of 
 the generation which had Hume and Robertson among 
 its central figures, and was still able to enliven the 
 conversation with reminiscences of men and manners 
 gone by. Old Sir Harry Moncreiff, the successor of 
 Dr John Erskine as leader of the Evangelicals, was 
 reminding visitors to the General Assembly of Jupiter 
 among the lesser gods ; and the polished and persuasive 
 Alison, father of the coming historian of Europe, was 
 worthily representing the " church of deportment " in the 
 city of John Knox. Mrs Grant of Laggan and Mrs 
 Elizabeth Hamilton were each centres of most agreeable 
 society, in which one was sure to find the ladies listening 
 to the brilliant talk of the little dictator who was 
 controlling the public taste and policy through the 
 lately-invented medium of the great Whig Review. 
 In the University, Dr Thomas Brown, most poetical 
 of philosophers, was just stepping into the chair vacated 
 by Dugald Stewart; Playfair, the tutor of Lord John 
 Russell, was the professor of Natural Philosophy; and 
 Leslie, who, the year before, had issued his Elements of 
 Geometry, was teaching mathematics. 
 
 But the seat of the most popular poetry and the most 
 influential criticisms of the time does not seem to have 
 
52 Thomas Car/yle. 
 
 stirred the blood of the singular boy from EccU 
 
 no doubt true that, when he addressed the stud< 
 as their Lord Rector in 1866, he spoke kindly of 
 "dear old Alma Mn: \ told ho 
 
 bef<<: 'h feelings of wor 
 
 and awe struck expe< ^s, howc 
 
 he does not appear long to have retained ; and they had 
 
 inly vanished when he was writing Sartor. 
 he gives a description of hi 
 
 than the account of his school c.\ 
 native village and at Annan. "Out of England and 
 
 h, " ours was the worst or 
 
 hitherto discovered I V The professc 
 
 tinned at the gates, to declare aloud that it w; 
 Un and exact consideraM ion fees," he 
 
 han the "hide-bound pedants" and 
 < ders" of Dumfr 
 
 ! already declared th. 
 
 quent century, teachers will be 
 
 iberg out of wood and leather." In 
 the atx ess he did not name one of 
 
 old teachers; and it was only too evident that he hur 
 
 with the place as 
 
 quickly as possible. It was the <>; : some of 
 
 content V-rant eloqiu 
 
 ijn-rior < : lecessor; but this 
 
 was not 
 
 fessor of that day he ritingsis 
 
 I Higald Stewart- 
 say to none more div han our- 
 Of Br< hand, h ;>oke 
 in t under the derisive title of * 4 
 
His University Life. 53 
 
 Brown," or " the little man who spouted poetry." Even 
 the most enthusiastic admirers of Stewart's successor 
 acknowledged that his manner was strongly marked by 
 affectation, and that while his poetry (as Dr Gregory 
 observed) was too philosophical, his philosophy was too 
 poetical. Carlyle turned away from his too liquid and 
 musical diction with disgust. Against Playfair it is well 
 known that he bore a grudge, and not without a cause ; 
 for, after having worked hard in that professor's class, the 
 certificate he got was exceedingly cold and reserved. As 
 Lord Rector, Carlyle counselled the students to be dili- 
 gent in their attention to what their teachers told them ; 
 but, according to all accounts, he had not himself 
 observed this rule very strictly in the case of some at 
 least of his own professors. Though we hear of his 
 having secured one honour, he was far too discursive a 
 reader to be one of the model prize-taking class of 
 students. Indeed, he is said to have been the most 
 omnivorous reader who ever passed within the portals of 
 the University. In Sartor the library is described as 
 " small " and " ill-chosen ;" but he adds that from its 
 chaos he " succeeded in fishing up more books, perhaps, 
 than had been known to the very keepers thereof." 
 These, indeed, did not suffice to satiate his craving for 
 books ; and it is alleged that, after having exhausted the 
 University library, he did the same by several circulating 
 libraries in the city, including the one which had been 
 founded by Allan Ramsay. Yet it would be a mistake to 
 suppose that he was not a real student, though he failed 
 " to concentrate his attention upon any one special subject or 
 set of subjects, and left the University without a degree. 
 Nay, it is likely that he profited more than most by the 
 
54 Thomas Carl} It. 
 
 < nit the place afforded " What vain jargon of 
 
 metaphysics, etymology, and mechanical 
 manipulation, falsely named science, was current there 
 indeed, learned \ > haps, than the most Among 
 
 eleven hundred youths, there will not be wanting some 
 
 en eager to learn. By collision with such, a cer 
 warmth, a certain j>olish, was communicated 
 
 happy accident, I took less to rioting than to thinking 
 and reading, which latter, also, I was free to do." In the 
 same passage of Sartor he states that he learned, on 
 own strength, to "read fluently in almost all cultiv 
 
 uages, on almost all subjects and sciences," Almost 
 in the same words, he told the students in 1866 that 
 what he had found the University do for him was, that it 
 
 it him to read " in various languages and 
 sciences," so that he could go into the books that treated 
 of these things, and try anything he wanted to make him- 
 self master of gradually, as he found it suit him. In I 
 of the vast extent of his reading, it was probably from the 
 outset discrimin.i 1 as he began to discover the 
 
 h he coul :ul work to most pur- 
 
 pose, it no doubt became more so. His teachers, with 
 one exception, do not seem to have very clearly perceived 
 
 I slie, who possessed some 
 
 qualities nkin to those of the cr 1 thoroughly 
 
 in<! pupil, was the only one of rofessors 
 
 who formed the that Carlyle was a youth of 
 
 inary ca; that he possessed a 
 
 genius for n :rs and natural philosophy, Leslie 
 
 rted him to devote himself to the cultivation 
 science. 
 
 m counter, not indeed to his own grow- 
 
Turns from the Pulpit. 55 
 
 ing inclinations, but certainly to the purpose of his 
 parents, whose fondly-cherished wish it had been to see 
 their son a minister. To the students in 1866 he said, 
 " Pursue your studies in the way your conscience calls 
 honest. Count a thing known only when it is stamped on 
 your mind, so that you may survey it on all sides." To 
 this he added, " Gradually see what kind of work you 
 can do ; for it is the first of all problems for a man to 
 find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. 
 In fact, morality, as regards study, is, as in all other 
 things, the primary consideration, and overrides all others. 
 A dishonest man cannot do anything real ; and it would 
 be greatly better if he were tied up from doing any such 
 thing." Herein, doubtless, he was but repeating in words 
 what he had himself wrought out in his own personal 
 action half a century before \ and the inquiries which he 
 pursued in the spirit of stern fidelity to conscience, led 
 him to abandon the design that had been formed for him 
 by his parents, and into which he had probably never 
 personally entered with completeness of sympathy. 
 Filial piety, we cannot doubt, prolonged the struggle in 
 his own spirit. It is said that, at the close of his arts 
 curriculum, extending over four years, he went through 
 the greater part of the course of study prescribed for 
 aspirants to the ministerial office ; nay, there is a dark 
 tradition that he went farther in his theological course 
 so far, indeed, that it had been arranged in what church 
 he was to appear as a "probationer"; but this must be 
 pure fiction. He had, perhaps, taken two or three 
 "partial sessions," as they are locally termed, in the 
 Theological Hall of the University ; but he had not so 
 much as entered the Secession Academy. One thing is 
 
5 6 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 certain. A day came, when he finally concluded thn- 
 vocation, about which he had not yet succeeded in 
 making up his mind, did not, at all events, lie in the 
 direction of the pulpit What he might turn to, was, as 
 
 far from being plain to him ; but one thing was < 
 enough he could not be a Church of the 
 
 Confession, or indeed in any other Church 
 then existing. There were many then, and it is to 
 be feared the number has gone on increasing ever 
 since, who did not allow themselves to be troubled by 
 scruples of conscience. But he was not content to 
 undertake the task of pretending to throw light upon the 
 
 .way of other ile he was still himself stum- 
 
 bling on in the darkness. He realised the worse than 
 absurdity of the blind presuming to become the lea- 
 of the blind. He would not add another unit to the 
 already too numerous host who, in hollow-sounding 
 pulpits, were teaching 1 lessons which they 
 
 not first mastered themselves, or, perhaps, teaching what 
 they actually in their se< ret heart disbelieved. 
 decision, when it was intimated to his parents, caused 
 them no small amount of sorrow; his father, esjecially, 
 seen ve taken it greatly to heart The watchful 
 
 mother, with a keener inMjht, had prob.i ^cen 
 
 what was coming, and her loving heart would there i 
 be prepared t ome. But the father 
 
 found it hard to accept the bitter disappointment A 
 story is told, on what seems to be good authority, of a 
 
 hbouring farmer one day finding old James sitting on 
 a gravestone in the churchyard near his home in a veiy 
 despondent frame of mind, and learning on inquiry 
 the cause of his grief was, the receipt, that day, of the 
 
The Spiritual Conflict. 57 
 
 intelligence from his son in Edinburgh, that he had 
 finally determined not to become a minister. 
 
 The sorrowing father, though he knew it not at the 
 time, had reason to be grateful that he had a son capable 
 of arriving at such a decision. The severity of the struggle 
 through which Carlyle had passed in reaching that 
 resolve is, perhaps, at least partially indicated in the reply 
 which he gave forty years afterwards to the question of 
 the blind preacher from America, already named. Mil- 
 burn, bolder than most people in the enjoyment of their 
 sight, ventured to ask Carlyle whether his dyspepsia was 
 hereditary or acquired. " I am sure I can hardly tell," 
 was the reply. " I only know that for one or two or 
 three-and-twenty years of my mortal existence I was not 
 conscious of the ownership of that diabolical arrangement 
 called a stomach. I had grown up the healthy and hardy 
 son of a hardy and healthy Scottish 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 posses- 
 sion of this infernal apparatus. And the voice came 
 to me, saying, * Arise, and settle the problem of thy 
 life !' I had been destined by my father and my father's 
 minister to be myself a minister. But now that I had 
 gained man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the 
 doctrines of my father's kirk; and it was needful I 
 should now settle it. 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, 
 
58 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 and Scorn wore there; and I arose and wrestled with 
 them in travail and agony of spirit. Whether I :r 
 know not; v i I <>w not; I only k: 
 
 that when I came forth again it was with the direful per- 
 son that I w owner of a diabolical 
 arrange! <1 a stomach; and 1 . . 
 from that knowledge from that hour to this, and I suppoec 
 that I never shall he until I am \ in my gr. 
 
 That tli is struggle, which so shook him to the very 
 ./, had a : 1 effect on his bodily 
 
 iost likely thing ; but 
 
 only reasonable to suppose that the vast amount of reading 
 this So " went through in his boyhood, and 
 
 whi h at Edinburgh amazed all the librarians as a pheno- 
 
 !el in tl.t 
 
 !ed to unden naturally vigorous constitution. 
 
 psia that was to accompany him hence- 
 forth through life was, we i 
 of one spiritual conflict confined to. riodof ti: 
 
 been the gradual work of years. Had he 
 not a more than ordinary share of the 
 
 ity inherent i hardly possible tocono 
 
 that a youth, almost constantly reading f: 
 
 '..id probably read 
 re books than all B Edinburgh put 
 
 , would :rible str. 
 
 sed at that }>eri(>d of life when the body, as well as 
 the mind, is in a : told 
 
 the Kdinburgh s: he was an old man. 
 
 you are going to do a: oj>cration 
 
 if you are going to write a book at least I never could 
 do it without getting deck! had 
 
His Mode of Life in Edinburgh. 59 
 
 begun early to realise that fact, when he was crushing the 
 reading of years into months. Nor is it at all unlikely 
 that inattention to diet, perhaps partly the result of 
 limited means, may have had something to do with the 
 physical evil that was to dog his footsteps through all the 
 remaining days of his earthly pilgrimage. Not without 
 significance is the acknowledgment in Sartor, that his 
 upbringing had been "too frugal;" and the impression 
 made by these words is deepened when we find it delicately 
 hinted that " even pecuniary distresses " were not wanting 
 in the lowly home, and that it was in "an atmosphere of 
 Poverty and manifold Chagrin " that the brave young soul 
 struggled onwards. To an American visitor, in 1875, 
 when speaking of his admiration of Goethe, he said that 
 he was filled with an intense desire, when he was a young 
 man, to visit him. " But," he added, " his parents were 
 too poor to send him to Germany, and he received, instead, 
 a few precious letters from the great poet." 
 
 This view of the limitations imposed by poverty receives 
 support from one little glimpse, apparently quite authentic, 
 into Carlyle's mode of life while attending the University. 
 It is furnished by a gentleman who, when he published 
 the reminiscence, was one of the representatives of the 
 city of Sydney in the Parliament of New South Wales. 
 " When coming from the West Indies to England, I met 
 on board a Dr Nicholson, who in course of conversation 
 informed me that he was a student with Mr Carlyle at the 
 Edinburgh University, and that they lived together in 
 lodgings, along with another young student, and that the 
 whole three slept in the same bedroom. Dr Nicholson 
 added, that Mr Carlyle took the dux prize in the mathe- 
 matical class, and that their other bedroom companion 
 
60 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 took the second prize; but he observed, that while Mr 
 Carlyle seemed to he subject without much effort 
 
 or application, the other lad laboured at his probK 
 witli e zeal, sometimes sitting up all night at the 
 
 task. I happened to mention this (about 1869) to 
 Mr Cftdjkj >ered Dr Nicholson well, and 
 
 described him accurately. He also remembered their 
 Edinburgh; but he said that Dr Nicholson 
 was greatly deceived if he thought he mastered his ma 
 matical difficulties with ease, or that it did not cost him 
 much exertion. He said that he laboured most intensely 
 at the study of mathematics, and that he has gained 
 nothing in this world worth speaking about without the 
 
 of labour."* The fact that a sharer of 
 humble lodging could be so much in the dark as to 
 modes of working, is an indication of the self-contar 
 nature of young Carlyle ; and therefore we need not be 
 surprised to find few reminiscences of his student lit 
 personal acquaintances cither at Edinburgh or near 
 father's home, \vl of the long summer 
 
 vacations that cv the Scottish I'nr. 
 
 April to November. There is but one anecdote of that 
 period of his life which throws : > College 
 
 k. To some con t likely 
 
 classical tutor, Mr Johnston, he so far unbosomed bin. 
 on returning to I \\ at the close of a sessior 
 
 to intimate, with justii n, that the Pr 
 
 were "all prostn: 
 been irregular in his a; 
 
 Olstnxtiions on thi Public Affair* ami PMie Mm of EmgUu*. 
 By David Buchanan. Sytli 
 
His Loneliness in Youth. 61 
 
 classes, turning to it only at intervals, and then with 
 desperate energy ; but this was a great thing for a youth 
 to be able to say who left the University in his nineteenth 
 year. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add, that Carlyle never entered 
 into the social life of the University. None of its associ- 
 ated societies, formed for the cultivation of oratory, is 
 able to boast that his name stands on its list of members ; 
 though the Dialectic, which had been founded in 1787, 
 included at the time more than one fellow-student from 
 his own district of country, and had among the rest Mac- 
 diarmid, who became a journalist of note at Dumfries. 
 If he was too young to become connected with these 
 debating clubs, there was a social bar, as well as that of 
 youth, to hinder his admission to the Speculative Society, 
 which had, and probably still has, a standard of gentility 
 to maintain. But even if the door had been open, Carlyle 
 would not have chosen to enter ; for the testimony of each 
 of the few contemporaries who had any knowledge of 
 him, goes to show that he was lonely and contemplative 
 in his habits. When his University career had come to 
 a close, we see the solitary youth, already with a stamp 
 of sadness on his countenance that was never to leave 
 it in this life, turning to his native hills. There, free at 
 last from the "neck halter" which had " nigh throttled 
 him, till he broke it off," he will in solitude face the 
 problem that yet remains to be solved 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 BECOMES A SCHOOLMASTER Ai 
 
 FRIENDSHIP WITH ED WAR! A SE\ 
 
 Dl -INDIGNATION OF THE MOTHERS- 
 
 CONTEMPLATES EMIGRATING SECOND 
 
 A NEW plan of life had to be formed, and it was no easy 
 task getting under way. It was, doubtless, only 
 
 that he turned to the occupation of school- 
 master. When he went home to Annandale from the 
 University, or soon thereafter, the post of Mail 
 
 in the Burgh School <>: . where he hin 
 
 i a pupil, happened to become for 
 
 i as a candid iving the 
 
 appoint: : a comj>etitive trial, ! to 
 
 Dumfries. The young man who 
 
 mastered Ne t to 
 
 be the superior of his teachers in t 
 versity, must I the stirrings of a lofty ami-: 
 
 within him. Yet we cannot doubt that he gratefully 
 accepted rl that offered itM K .ough it was 
 
 that of the j>edagogue in an obscure provincial town, 
 yielding small honour in the eye of the world, and, 
 best, bread and water wages," as is stated by Teufelsdn > 
 
 , although it in ^/r/<>r that the work "was 
 
 >rmed ill, at best unpleasantly," are ti\ 1 to 
 
Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. 63 
 
 accept this view of the result as other than fictitious; 
 for the young man was in earnest, and, in spite of the 
 transcendentalism that had already begun to dominate 
 his being, he cherished a reverence the most profound 
 for all learning, and especially for the branch he had been 
 appointed to teach to his successors in the school at 
 Annan. More than thirty years afterwards, conversing 
 one autumn day in a little company in Yorkshire, at a 
 time (1847) when the Education controversy was waxing 
 furious, he went in strongly for education in any or all 
 forms, " saying, among Other characteristic things," as we 
 are told by one who was present, " that the man who had 
 mastered the 47th proposition of Euclid, stood nearer to 
 God than he had ever done before." So that this new 
 mathematical master at Annan must have been cheered 
 at his work by the reflection, that it was indeed of a 
 sacred character. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that it is difficult to 
 gather from such materials as are available, any definite 
 notion of Carlyle as a schoolmaster. Even the dates are 
 somewhat obscure. It would seem, from all we can 
 learn, that he remained in his Annan situation only two 
 years, if so long; and it is certain that, having been 
 recommended by his friend Professor Leslie, he was, 
 in 1816, appointed Rector of their Burgh School by the 
 Town Council of Kirkcaldy. At this date Edward 
 Irving had been four years the teacher of what was 
 called "The Subscription School," a genteel private 
 academy for the superior families in the same Fifeshire 
 burgh a place noted for its great length, and as the 
 birthplace of Adam Smith. Though Mrs Oliphant makes 
 no allusion to the circumstance of Carlyle's advent and 
 
64 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 residence in Kirkcaldy, beyond saying that he came to 
 
 be the mast >chool "set up in opposition" to 
 
 Irving's;* there can be no doubt that 
 
 .ds were now brought more closely into contact, and 
 that, in the little Fife-shire seaport, their intercourse 
 
 igthened that attachment which has caused some 
 writers to speak of them as David and Jonathan. T 
 were frequently seen walking together on the beach. 
 
 There is some significance in the local tradition that 
 Carlyle, in spite of the contemptuous picture he has 
 drawn of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium at Annan, was 
 himself too much * the evil practice of acting on 
 
 the memory through the "muscular integument." In 
 
 respect he resembled his friend Irving; and st 
 
 MI at Kirkcaldy respecting the severity of the 
 
 :hey both administered. One of these 
 
 i>y Mrs Oliphant. A joiner, the deacon 
 
 of his tr m of great strength, aji>eared one day 
 
 at the door of Irving's schoolroom, while shrieks were 
 
 resounding from within, with his shirt-sleeves rolled 
 
 up to his elbows and an axe on his shoulder, and with 
 
 idful irony inquired, "Do 
 Mr Irving ? " We are also told of i 
 that wa ' the mothers of the pupils on more 
 
 than one occasion by the exccssh 
 
 This remark is calculated to convey a distinctly false impres- 
 sion, for it was with the heartiest gooi .ing's part tint 
 Carlyle had exchanged Annan for Kirkcaldy. An anonymous 
 r says : " Kirkc.iidy seem* at this time to have 
 1 matters, cntir \nnan influences, since there were no 
 less than six teach* ;ng from that place. Whether 
 they were all as fin m the efficacy of the birch rod as 
 Irving, tradition say 
 
A Severe Disciplinarian. 65 
 
 children. Alexander Smith, indeed, who had apparently 
 devoted some little attention to the matter, asserted in 
 the Argosy of May 1866 that Carlyle was actually chased 
 out of the " Lang Toun " by the angry matrons, his 
 severity having risen to a pitch which they could no 
 longer endure. For the accuracy of these statements we 
 cannot vouch; and, even if they had a substratum of 
 truth, it is not unlikely that they came to be considerably 
 exaggerated during their repetition as the years went by. 
 We may safely conclude, however, that Carlyle in school 
 was a rigid disciplinarian ; nor should we be disposed to 
 question the justice of the remark, made by more than 
 one critic, that this was the earliest exhibition of a quality 
 which was destined in after days to exert a prejudicial 
 influence on his practical teaching of men. He had set 
 up an ideal standard of excellence to which the poor 
 bairns of Kirkcaldy must attain ; and, in his impetuous 
 insistance upon this, he betrayed a want of consideration 
 for the weakness of the large number of pupils who could 
 not possibly reach the master's ideal. A gentleman of 
 Kirkcaldy informs us that Carlyle was little known to the 
 public generally during his residence there, " being then, 
 as afterwards, moody and retiring in his disposition." The 
 school in which he taught was situated in the Kirk Wynd. 
 It has been incorporated in a line of warehouses for the 
 storage of flax, belonging to Mr Swan, Provost of the 
 burgh, who is now the only surviving pupil of Mr Carlyle. 
 Though using the schoolroom for storing purposes, he 
 has kept it unaltered out of respect for the memory of 
 his old teacher " an act of hero-worship," says Alexander 
 Smith, " for which the present and other generations may 
 be thankful." The school, we are told, is wonderfully 
 
66 Thomas Cany It. 
 
 roomy and commodious for the time in which it was 
 built. In the September of 18; 
 
 he had been a schoolmast x yean 
 
 id it was with his old pupil, now th 
 magistrate of the burgh, that he ma One 
 
 , " he fell back on his 
 
 reminiscences of St Andrews Un fesson 
 
 in tlh he himse'.: r in Ki: 
 
 memory iself in 
 
 mined many names 
 
 and i: with Ire - y, with now and 
 
 again a touch of loitering wonder about what had 
 of all these lives?"* 
 
 It was in tL r of 1818 that Irving gave up his 
 
 school at Kirkcaldy and TL. 
 
 the i Carlyle also r nally from the 
 
 schoL aving found that it 
 
 he could devote 1 Not long aftei 
 
 the two Iriends had l>cl.ikm t' . ity, we 
 
 find Irving (in iSn;) writing thus out cloudy 
 
 : unsucces^" in which they 
 
 irlyle goesxi lorrow, 
 
 and Ilrown t! I .iore or 
 my own i 
 
 swell the < r the soli 
 
 this Carlyle is better fitted 
 
 than i d, that IK 
 
 should IK want of -untry ; 
 of course, lik man of talent, he has gathered 
 
 , Journal, by its cdito 
 
 Mr \\ 
 
The Prospect of Exile. 67 
 
 around this Patmos many a splendid purpose to be ful- 
 filled, and much improvement to be wrought out." The 
 writer proceeds to represent Carlyle as saying, " I 
 have the ends of my thoughts to bring together, which 
 no one can do in this thoughtless scene. I have my 
 views of life to reform, and the whole plan of my con- 
 duct to new-model ; and withal I have my health to 
 recover. And then once more I shall venture my bark 
 upon the waters of this wide realm, and if she cannot 
 weather it, I shall steer west and try the waters of another 
 world." " So he reasons and resolves," says Irving ; " but 
 surely a worthier destiny awaits him than exile." 
 
 Irving himself, not long afterwards, was only prevented 
 from seeking an outlet for his powers in a distant land, 
 after he had made a farewell tour round the coast of 
 Ayrshire, by the letter from Dr Chalmers which heralded 
 an opening at home; and it is a further coincidence 
 worthy of being remembered in this connection that a 
 trivial incident, at the last moment, saved Robert Burns 
 from becoming an exile, when "hungry ruin had him 
 in the wind," and he had actually secured a steerage pas- 
 sage in the first ship that was to sail for the West Indies 
 from the Clyde. Had Carlyle gone to the United 
 States, as appears to have been for at least a little while 
 an incipient purpose in his mind, what would the 
 issue have been to himself and to the world? How- 
 ever idle, it is hardly possible to refrain from speculating 
 on the problem. His was a home-loving nature, how- 
 ever, that could not possibly regard with complacency the 
 idea of leaving his native country ; we have seen a letter 
 he wrote to a valued friend, a brother Scotsman of dis- 
 tinguished merit in the field of philosophy, who had been 
 
68 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 invited to a chair at !, and one of the first of 
 
 several reasons urged by < gainst the acceptance 
 
 of the invitation was th that it would in\ 
 
 The patriotic t thus exprt 
 
 recent date was probably not less strong in the heart 
 be writer when he was a young man ; for had he 
 his parents still in the Annandale home where he had 
 been nurtured? And, m not feeling, with 
 
 added emphasis as each d. lling lay 
 
 direction that would make the literary resources of 
 the old country more tha the perform - 
 
 <>rk? During the four years he had 
 schoolmaster at Annan and Kirk< had 
 
 been applying himself assiduously not only to mathe- 
 
 is at that period he translated the gn 
 part of Legendre's Geometry * but also to the stud 
 
 nifnts of Gfomftry and Trigonomttry, with Notts. ] 
 Uted fm: Edited by I > 
 
 Brew v rr. I. !..!>. With Nt< and an Introdu. 
 
 Edinburgh : Oliver & Boyd. 1824. 
 
 1 be olwcrvcd that Brewster's name alone 
 
 was i the title-page, though his conn \\ the book 
 
 was t !, as he appears to have done nothing I 
 
 beyond writing a preface of a page and a half. Carlyle reo 
 50 for his work. He was always proud of his essay on Proper 
 us exposition in three theorems 
 
 corollaric ;> a notion," says Professor De Morgan in 
 
 his Para<i : abridge in 1825, that the 
 
 translator of Legend re was t: raiih, then known 
 
 at Edinburgh as a writer and t was 
 
 quite a different person, and one destined to shine in quite a <!ii: 
 walk. It was a young man named Thomas Carlyle. He prefixed 
 
 ,;cnious essay on Proportion, as good a 
 
 substitute h book of Euclid as could be given in speech, 
 
 and quite enough to show have been a dUt 
 
 teacher anil t!. !cs ; but he left the field irame- 
 
Candidate for a Chair of Astronomy. 69 
 
 the language and literature of Germany ; and in propor- 
 tion as he began to feel the work of tuition irksome, and 
 the school experiment hopeless, he must also have felt 
 that a new country, requiring the manual worker rather 
 than the man of letters, the farmer instead of the philo- 
 sopher, was no fitting place for him. 
 
 It had at length become clear to him that Literature 
 was his true vocation. Able and accomplished as he had 
 proved himself to be in the field of mathematics, his 
 strong bent was not for science or scientific research. He 
 did indeed become a candidate, we are told, for the 
 chair of Astronomy in Glasgow University; and it has 
 been suggested that the mutilated note with " huge blot " 
 given in Sartor is a sardonic memorial of an actually 
 existing document received by Carlyle in connection with 
 this candidature. There is certainly such a stamp of 
 reality upon it as forbids the notion that it is purely 
 imaginary, and has no connection with the career of 
 Teufelsdrockh's editor while he was getting under way. 
 The Inkblot was, we can well believe, some self-important 
 personage of established repute and influence, perhaps 
 connected with the Western University; and, on the 
 whole, we cannot regret that he was so " tied-down by 
 previous promise " that he felt himself unable, " except 
 by best wishes," to forward the views of the young man 
 from Ecclefechan who aspired to teach astronomy in St 
 Mungo's town. It was just as well that "the cruel 
 necessity" was laid upon the Inkblot of " forbearing, for the 
 present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in 
 
 diately." Meritorious as it was, the larger part of the issue of this 
 work is said to have remained in the publishers' hands as dead 
 stock ; and the volume is now rarely to be seen. 
 
70 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 opening the man of genius, on whom 
 
 higher trium: .pliment was 
 
 indeed triumph came, t : 
 
 the >tri 'i meek accept 
 
 much preliminary drudgery, without which no veritable 
 triumph is ever i D this world. No Westmii. 
 
 Confession lurred the entrance t 
 
 Inn the to be kept from the do 
 
 involved the nece 
 
 of . as he could nUuin. He was 
 
 poo; Sread. Nor was this the only 
 
 : he was but an 
 
 rentirc, and i trade. He had 
 
 to find out the k: rk he was bt 
 
 of the vast field that h iltivate with i 
 
 , was a 
 
 with 
 
 liu- :sed 
 
 Ifth numl>er 
 
 'Mied in of 1831; so that although it 
 
 to be the ^ he wrote, it was not the 
 
 ritin-s whiih procured the h .11.. ur of print* 
 
 earliest essays in auti < rlyle that rea 
 
 tlu vies on topographical 
 
 Brewster's Edin- 
 1 ~idy 
 
 Mai ! nt- 
 
 son, 
 
 iccount nf the story, with quoUtioos, was given in Fraxr 
 forj he last n .m Allinj; 
 
 y received the information from Mr Car- 
 
Articles in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. 71 
 
 Netherlands, Newfoundland, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, 
 Northumberland, Mungo Park, Lord Chatham, William 
 Pitt. They are to be found in the fourteenth and two 
 succeeding volumes of Brewster's work, the first of the three 
 bearing the date 1820, and the last 1823. Most of the 
 articles are distinguished by the initials "T. C," but 
 they are all credited to Carlyle in the list of the authors 
 of the principal articles prefixed to the encyclopaedia on 
 its completion. None of these essays have ever been 
 republished; and, although it has been said that "they give 
 but faint, uncertain promise of the author's genius and of 
 those gifts which made his later works as individual as a 
 picture by Albert Diirer or Rembrandt," they are cer- 
 tainly not altogether destitute of the characteristic traits 
 of their author's subsequent work. Indeed, when we 
 take into account the nature of the publication for which 
 they were prepared, along with the youth and inexperi- 
 ence of the writer, as well as the standard of taste at the 
 time, they must be considered strikingly indicative of 
 original power, as ' well as of the patient research, in- 
 dustry, and minute attention to details which few authors 
 have ever exhibited to the same degree as Carlyle. 
 Though an encyclopaedia did not offer any scope for 
 imaginative work, but rather imposed a strict exclusion 
 of it, we find here and there in the articles a play of 
 fancy that lights them up very pleasantly, and gives 
 token that the compiler is no ordinary hack of the Grub 
 Street species. The humour, and the peculiar style of 
 expression that we now regard as Carlyle's own, are both 
 exemplified, for example, even in the article on New- 
 foundland, where we might least expect to find them. 
 There is no mistaking the pen that describes one of the 
 
72 Thomas Car/y/e. 
 
 few Newfoundland authors, Mr. Anspnch, as "a clerical 
 person, who lived in the island s< .irs, and 
 
 since written and very confused book, \\hich 
 
 he Cf This is by no means according 
 
 rn for topograpl :ri a 
 
 work of ftO today ; still less was it in the 
 
 conventional mode of ars ago. Other germs of 
 
 the that was ! , to been 
 
 familiar to the world may be detected in some of the 
 Other ai: '!y in that on M- :. The 
 
 philosopher's theory as to the influence o; on 
 
 race in a manner thoroughly 
 
 nervous vigour and a confide: 
 
 that are truly as: o young a writer ; and it 
 
 teen justly remarked by an able critic that, in the 
 vivid picture of Montesquieu as a cheerful and benign 
 sage. with the peasants under the oak at 
 
 Brc< .It to rc< ithor of 
 
 . OfNt 'old that ! 
 
 bined, " in a singular union, the fervour of the 
 
 ice of the sa. : in some of the 
 
 other biographical articles there are strokes of equal 
 Those I said that these brief encyclo- 
 
 pflBil gave small in -ure 
 
 bri! with sutt the \- 
 
 that distinguish them from the production*; of the rest 
 of Brewster's con: nor have they made sufficient 
 
 alU the limital: ^ed by the natui 
 
 the work in \vh: eared. It i. r be 
 
 regarded as creditable to Sir David Brewster that 
 had the pi esc ieiice to discover the ability whi< h led him 
 to invite the unt: one of tl 
 
His First Critical Articles. 73 
 
 for his Encyclopedia, and that he had sufficient confi- 
 dence in the young man's judgment to allow its free exer- 
 cise in criticisms that were thoroughly original and 
 expressed in a tone of the utmost confidence.* 
 
 To the same period belong a couple of critical articles 
 contributed to the New Edinburgh Review in 1821-22, 
 the one on Joanna Baillie's Metrical Legends, the other 
 on Goethe's Faust, neither of which has been republished. 
 In 1823 he began some slight experiments in verse ; and, 
 although he seems to have felt that his strength did not 
 lie in that direction, so that these trials were not pursued 
 with any great earnestness of purpose, he succeeded in 
 producing at least three pieces that are marked by genuine 
 poetic power, two of these being also invested with an 
 autobiographic interest. The Tragedy of the Night Moth 
 bears the impress of one of the many dark hours through 
 which he had to pass in the years of painful endeavour 
 and of waiting for his proper work, when he was oppressed 
 with gloomy apprehensions of failure : 
 
 * When, after the lapse of more than forty years, Carlyle came 
 to Edinburgh to address the students as Lord Rector, the Principal 
 of the University was Sir David Brewster. " Seeing him sit beside 
 the venerable Principal," wrote Alexander Smith, in the happi- 
 est of all the sketches of that memorable day, " one could not help 
 thinking of his earliest connection with literature. Time brings 
 men into the most unexpected relationships. When the Principal 
 was plain Mr Brewster, editor of the Edinburgh Cydop&dia, little 
 dreaming that he should ever be Knight of Hanover, and head of 
 the Northern Metropolitan University, Mr Carlyle just as little 
 dreaming that he should be the foremost man of letters of his day, 
 and Lord Rector of the same University was his contributor, 
 writing for said Cyclopedia biographies of Voltaire, and other 
 notables. And so it came about that, after years of separation 
 and of honourable labour, the old editor and contributor were 
 brought together again in new relations." 
 
74 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles : 
 
 'oo a restless asking mind 
 I lath sent on far and weary rambles, 
 
 To seek the good I ne'er shall find. 
 
 Li'. 
 
 i humMc joys and vulgar fate, 
 I might have lived and ne'er lamented, 
 
 Moth of a larger size, a longer date ! 
 
 The Adieu strengthens the impression that poor Teu- 
 
 I Jlumine was no merely imaginary maiden. 
 a reality, who did indeed announce the dawn of Dooms- 
 
 nulous voice, to her unhappy 
 
 m, ''They were to meet no more." So he turns his 
 sorrow into song : 
 
 Hard fate will not allow, allow, 
 fate will not allow ; 
 leased were as the angels are, 
 Adieu forever now, 
 
 My fa* 
 ti forever now. 
 
 Of the poetical fragments, however, the most spon- 
 taneous is the little gem, Today ^ a genuine poetic birth ; 
 though The S0u>er*s So*g also is a lyric- that deserves to 
 
 The poems -.ted with C'.erman fee: 
 
 and may have b vn while Carlylc was 
 
 the poetry of Schiller, whose Life he was shortly about to 
 publish. By this time he had thoroughly familiarised 
 himself with < . the paj. t st being 
 
 apparently hi n the field wherein he was 
 
 to win his first laurels. His brother was studying in 
 Germany, and the letters he received from Dr Cai 
 
 nterest wl. It in the 
 
 language and literature of : 
 
 he of his being now a man, we know almost as 
 
Second Sojourn in Edinburgh. 75 
 
 little of his life in Edinburgh during this second sojourn 
 there as we do of the first, when he was only a boy. 
 Irving, after his return from Kirkcaldy, had resumed 
 attendance at the University ; and it is thought that Car- 
 lyle may have done the same, since we find him speaking 
 of 1819-20 being "well onward in my student life at 
 Edinburgh." It has also been suggested that the crown- 
 ing feats in the voracious use of the University Library 
 are connected with this period. Under the lead of 
 Irving a Philosophical Society was set on foot, specially 
 intended for the students who had completed their arts 
 course ; and Carlyle was one of its members. But it was 
 short-lived. Carlyle's lodgings were in Bristo Street; and 
 one surviving contemporary, a college acquaintance in the 
 habit of visiting him in the evenings, testifies that he 
 "always found him a queer-spoken fellow." The dialogues 
 between Irving and Carlyle are said to have left their 
 mark in the memory of casual hearers, as they were likely 
 to do ; but none of these hearers have given us the oppor- 
 tunity of sharing their privilege. We are only told that 
 Irving usually stood on the defensive in support of the 
 orthodox views, and that Carlyle was " always eloquent," 
 and always on the other side. Carlyle's principal resort 
 was the Advocates' Library, of which he says, " Lasting 
 thanks to //, alone of Scottish institutions." He read 
 literature of every description, from romance to the most 
 abstruse theology. As he seems to have maintained him- 
 self by literary work, it is probable that he wrote some 
 things for the press that have never been heard of; other- 
 wise, his living must have been a poor one, and we need 
 not wonder that he speaks in Sartor of "those obstructed, 
 neglectful, and grimly-forbidding years," during which no 
 
7 6 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 work in the right direction was to be had, " whereby he 
 becan . natural i of 
 
 manner, hut ill express the keen ardoi:: 
 
 igs," was pro 1 time aggravated into 
 
 a seeming hardness, made more oflVn <se who 
 
 did not know hii panoply of sarcasm" 
 
 he had elf for reasons pat' 
 
 an anecdote that bears out this view. Or 
 afternoon, some t ^22, Edward Irving introd 
 
 house at of shy and gruff 
 
 spoke little, and who was otherwise 
 prepossessing. No name had been mentioned, and the 
 mcmlxjrs of the household concluded that he was s 
 stranger who had bcc up on the road by 
 
 and brought with him to tea. They only learned wh< 
 iff" stranger was when one c>: ily had 
 
 cd out to her, years after, as Thomas Carlyle. 
 
CHAPTER VI I L 
 
 THE PIONEER OF GERMAN LITERATURE IN BRITAIN 
 
 HIS LIFE OF SCHILLER TRANSLATION OF GOETHE'S 
 
 " WILHELM MEISTER " ATTACKS BY JEFFREY AND 
 
 DE QUINCEY LETTER FROM GOETHE CLOSE OF 
 
 JOURNEY-WORK CHARLES BULLER TRIBUTE TO HIS 
 
 OLD PUPIL. 
 
 ACCORDING to the dictum of Bulwer Lytton, it was Cole- 
 ridge who first made England aware of the riches of 
 German philosophy and German song, and to him, we 
 are told, must be ascribed the merit of originating what- 
 ever influences the higher spirit of German genius has 
 exercised upon the English mind. This statement 
 ought to have been qualified by mention of William 
 Taylor of Norwich, who published his version of Burger's 
 Lenore (the recitation of which led to the production of 
 that of Sir Walter Scott) as early as the year following 
 the one in which Carlyle was born, and who by his sub- 
 sequent translations " did much in the beginning of the 
 century to reveal to cultured Englishmen the mine of 
 intellectual wealth that lay awaiting them in the regener- 
 ated German literature."* While according the meed of 
 
 * German Life and Literature. By Alexander Hay Japp, LL.D. 
 A work that should not be overlooked by any student of Carlyle, 
 respecting whom it contains some acute and admirably-sustained, 
 as well as incisive, criticism. 
 
78 Thomas Cat 
 
 praise that is due to these pioneers (and also to De 
 Quinccy) in the good work of opening up that i 
 English n .'.<! -r*. it must still be asserted that the great 
 larly efi' >neer was Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 The review of Goethe's Faust in that New Edinburgjk 
 did not live long enough to Mie its name, was 
 the 6 nowledge greatly exceeding even 
 
 e, and which was united to a perseverance 
 ready power of working that were cons; 
 their alienee in the So hgate. T le was 
 
 followed in 1823 by the first part of tf Schiller^ 
 
 the title of "Schiller's Life and 
 Writings " in the London Magazine for October 
 ne was attached to the contribute 
 those who secret of its auth tl who 
 
 personal acquaintance of CarlyK 
 least kiu be a young man, were 
 
 pressed with r i\\vr. 
 
 great things f r 
 
 o had con- 
 .Iced in those times, 
 
 ond part of t! ler appeared in 
 the numl : January 1824, ;r 
 third part in the numl nd Scptern- 
 
 f the same year. The vivacious A :i who 
 
 1 the London, \\\ Scutt 
 with Ix>ckhnr. 
 
 had ;. m a staff of brilliant writers DC 
 
 and Gary, 
 
 s Carlyl aest Allan Cunning- 
 
 ham ; 
 
 .ipablc men the memoir of the German |>oct 
 
Attacks by De Quincey and Jeffrey. 79 
 
 quite unknown Scottish youth was received with special 
 marks of favour, to such an extent indeed that the pub- 
 lishers of the magazine felt encouraged to reprint it in 
 the form of a book in 1825. 
 
 Before this, however, Carlyle had made his debut 
 as a " Maker of "Books " by the publication, in 1824, of 
 a translation of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which 
 was issued from the press of Messrs Oliver & Boyd, 
 of Edinburgh, and was his first book, if we except the 
 translation of Legendre's Geometry, which Charles Lamb 
 would probably have classified with those printed volumes 
 he did not consider to be books at all. The name of the 
 translator was not given on the title-page ; and this has 
 suggested the reflection that he may have had some mis- 
 givings as to how his countrymen would receive a work 
 so repugnant in many ways to English notions of taste, 
 and even of morality a work in which Goethe has 
 violated his own axiom, that "there are some things 
 which, though all know them, should yet be treated as 
 secrets, because it favours modesty and good morals." 
 Carlyle's translation was the first really effective introduc- 
 tion of Goethe to the English people. Though its sale was 
 at first very slow, its reception by the general body > of 
 readers was more favourable than that accorded to it by 
 the professional critics. Both De Quincey and Jeffrey, 
 who well knew who the translator was, fell upon it with 
 almost savage delight, the attack of the former appearing 
 in the pages of the London Magazine, where just then 
 Carlyle's sketch of Schiller was in course of publication. 
 The editor of the Edinburgh Review, who was really as 
 incapable at the time of forming a just conception of the 
 work of Goethe as he had proved himself sixteen years 
 
8o Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 before to be of appreciating the poetry of Wordsworth, 
 only succeed nstrating his own ignorai 
 
 nost deliberate consideration/' he set out by 
 pronouncing the work u eminently absurd, pueri! 
 gruous, and affected/ 1 and "almost from begir 
 end one flagrant offence against e\ tste 
 
 ever)- rule of compo.v 
 
 opened with this unqualified denun< >sed with an 
 
 admission that proved the onslaught in tin 
 
 ^ve been written before the book had been 
 
 passages to v. 
 
 v alluded arc executed with great talent, and 
 very sensible are better worth extracting than those 
 we have too late now to change our 
 
 sdc( 1 less afford to add to them. 
 
 On c close the book with son 
 
 .ults and . -:on to a! 
 
 if i ome part of the censure we were impelled 
 
 to besto 
 
 descended to :>.e was "a per 
 
 1 to be s preface;" and the 
 
 ewer gra< pan of the work also 
 
 ordinal ast 
 
 of one <ii lie has to deal 
 
 onl;, n loan unwo: 
 
 access of m< o was igr the 
 
 >ok was wTitten by its air 
 
 DC Quir was about, though he 
 
 spared in-itl >lator ; and those who 
 
 : the Opi s adverse- 
 
 of 1 f ill-humour" can hardly themselves 1 
 
 1 on the iscd a sufficient amount of 
 
The Verdict of the Critics. 81 
 
 attention to justify their expression of an opinion. The 
 fact must not be passed over without notice that Carlyle's 
 translation of Wilhelm Meister gives in a perfectly unmodi- 
 fied form passages that do not appear in any other English 
 translation, not even in Bonn's, where they are either given 
 partially or wholly omitted. The alternative is forced 
 upon us, which Dr Japp has suggested, " that Mr Carlyle 
 was either all too faithful to the text of his author, or all 
 too little concerned for that English domestic purity which 
 others had found was not likely to profit by such sugges- 
 tions from German literature." It is worth while noting 
 that the Monthly Magazine, a periodical honourably 
 distinguished for its careful attention to foreign literature, 
 declared that the translation was " executed in a masterly 
 way," and with '* much strength, originality, and raciness 
 about it, which cannot fail to please the reader." The 
 verdict of the critics caused the demand for the book to 
 become lively; and it is probable that the attacks fur- 
 thered this end even to a greater extent than the two 
 favourable notices which the work received.* 
 
 * The second appeared in Blackwood t whose critic, with greater 
 discernment than the editor of the Whig review had exhibited, said : 
 "The translator is, we understand, a young gentleman in this city 
 who now for the first time appears before the public. We con- 
 gratulate him on his very promising debitt, and would fain hope to 
 receive a series of really good translations from his hand. He has 
 evidently a perfect knowledge of German. He already writes 
 English better than is at all common, even at this time ; and we 
 know no exercise more likely to produce effects of permanent 
 advantage upon a young mind of intellectual ambition." Dr 
 Maginn, at a later date, complained that Goethe had been translated 
 from "the Fatherlandish dialect of High Dutch to the Allgemeine 
 Mid Lothianish of Auld Reekie," and that Carlyle was seeking 
 to acclimatize "the roundabout, hubble-bubble, rumfustianish 
 (hilbble-bubblen, rumfusteanischen\ roly-poly, gromerly of style, dear 
 to the heart of a son of the Fatherland. " 
 
 F 
 
82 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 The Life of SchilUr, published in book form by Taylor 
 and Hesscy, in London, in 1825, established itself at 
 once as a public favourite, passing rapidly through se\ 
 editions. But more grateful to the author than even 
 success at home, the first that had come to lighten his 
 struggling pathway, was the publication in the poet's own 
 country of a German translation of the work, with a 
 
 ly laudatory introduction by Goethe himself, 
 young Scottish pupil of the sag iken the 
 
 master's heart by storm. With unerring 
 perceived that this man was to be his interpreter to the 
 1 nations of the world ; nor was it merely 
 
 on his own account that he hailed his advent with grateful 
 He saw that German literature would now have 
 me it in England. He wrote to Carlylc, making 
 occupations, etc, the commence 
 
 >rrespon<: it ceased only with the death of 
 
 Goethe ; an<; a bust of Carlyle exec : set 
 
 up in his study, that he might have always before him 
 the image of the living countenam i ;reat Scot 
 
 The good fortune that Carlyle at this turning- 
 
 point in d with a name that occupies a 
 
 position of honour and mournful i ical 
 
 ry of our century. Through the suggestion of 
 faithful friend Edward Irving, who had now enterc<! 
 that ministry in Ix)ndon, the brilliancy of whirh tl 
 beginning was only equalled by the tragic gloom of its 
 close, Carlyle in 1822 became the private tutor of Charles 
 Bullcr. This took him away from Edinburgh to London, 
 
 a twofold influence was now at work stimulating 
 y. Though he did not fail to do justk 
 
His First Sojourn in London. 83 
 
 his pupil, he had a good deal of spare time on his hand ; 
 and as there was no longer any pressing necessity to 
 write for money, he was free to devote his leisure to the 
 kind of work which had the greatest attraction for him, 
 and in the performance of which he felt that he could do 
 full justice to his powers. Thus he had secured at 
 length a vantage-ground which some have sought for a 
 lifetime to reach, but have never attained. Besides, 
 residence in London brought him into contact with men 
 who both stirred his literary impulse into greater activity 
 and were able to provide or help him to the medium 
 through which he might speak to the public. Now he 
 gave up hack-work, and his life as a man of letters, in the 
 true sense of the term, began. Brief as was his first 
 sojourn in London, it was laden with blessing for him 
 and had momentous issues that coloured the whole of his 
 after life. His last piece of compulsory work had now 
 been finished, though it did not appear till 1827, when it 
 was issued by genial William Tait of Edinburgh, in four 
 volumes, under the title of Specimens of German Romance. 
 " This was a book of translations," said Carlyle himself 
 thirty years afterwards in the preface to a republication of 
 some of them, " not of my suggesting or desiring, but of 
 my executing as honest journey work in defect of better. 
 The pieces selected were the suitablest discoverable on 
 such terms : not quite of less than no worth (I considered) 
 any piece of them ; nor, alas, of a very high worth any, 
 except one only. Four of these lots, or quotas to the 
 adventure, Musaus's, Tieck's, Richter's, Goethe's, will be 
 given in the final stage of this series: the rest we willingly 
 leave, afloat or stranded, as waste driftwood, to those 
 whom they may farther concern." The Specimens ', which 
 
84 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 included Wilhelm J ///r^, the sc 
 
 to t , were as well received by the publ 
 
 the translate r works. Earnest wis! 
 
 expressed from all sides that he would devote his whole 
 attention to the cultivation of German literature, so that 
 gradual cest flowers should be transplar 
 
 the: into the English soil This, however, he 
 
 declined. He was to be much more than a me 
 planter of foreign flowers more than a conduit through 
 ie literary waters of Germany should flow to 
 hen the 1 it part of his service was 
 
 r ; new and h: k was about to be begun. 
 
 which he had been fulfilling during those 
 I of jour: urgh was not one to be 
 
 despised ; and the memor less thought of in his 
 
 own country- than the greater ach: 
 
 life, was fresh in Germany that day when th -lew 
 
 all - crland that Thou 
 
 "Not on 'iy also, i 
 
 first thoroi: 
 understood t rman literature and n 
 
 nas Car- 
 
 AYJI Courier, " w.. 
 1 herctofor 
 
 tual treasures ot < jK^try. He made known to 
 
 them Goethe ttn Master in an excellent 
 
 tran 1 and that per 
 
 the biography of a German JK 
 
 was full of enthusiasm, in the 
 ars during which these \\ the 
 
 great \Veim.- : so familiar- 
 
 ised hi: > the cnthusiasn 
 
His Influence on Charles Buller. 85 
 
 England brings to mind the account which Sir Walter 
 Scott has given of the intoxication that was excited 
 amongst his Edinburgh contemporaries by their first 
 draught from the general literature of Germany ; but it 
 was as nothing compared with the fuller and deeper 
 enthusiasm that pervaded the succeeding generation when 
 they had the privilege of reading those translations that 
 first made the name of Carlyle known to his countrymen. 
 With pardonable pride, the leading Edinburgh journal 
 recalls the work which he began in that city sixty years 
 ago. " His function as guide of his countrymen into the 
 new world of German poetry and thought is by no means 
 the least of his claims to remembrance. It is difficult to 
 realise the magnitude of the revolution he effected. At a 
 time when the flippant criticism of the Edinburgh Review 
 marked the general ignorance, and when only Coleridge 
 and De Quincey in their own mazy fashion had dropped 
 a few hints of the undiscovered literary continent, the 
 young Carlyle rose and measured German thought and 
 literature, and especially Goethe, in their true significance 
 for the modern world."* 
 
 With his pupil Charles Buller, Carlyle formed a friend- 
 ship that lasted until the lamented death of the younger 
 of the two in 1848. Not only did Carlyle prepare him 
 for Cambridge, where he achieved a success that he 
 always attributed to his tutor, their intimate connection 
 was continued after the pupil entered Parliament. This 
 was evident from the strikingly original views on pauper- 
 ism, emigration, and colonisation which the young states- 
 man so effectively advocated in the House of Commons, 
 
 * The Scotsman Newspaper, Feb. 7, 1881. 
 
86 >nas CarlyU. 
 
 and many of which have since his death been embodied 
 in practical legislation. In everything to which Cha 
 Duller put his hand, it was easy to trace the influence of 
 his illustrious teacher ; and when he died at the early age 
 of 42 none of the numerous tributes to his memory 
 moved the heart of England like the one uttered by 
 Carlyle : 
 
 :tiful soul has suddenly been summoned 
 from among us ; one of the clearest intellects and most 
 aerial activities in England, has unexpectedly been 
 (ailed away. Charles Duller died on Wednesday morn- 
 ing last, without previous sickness, reckoned of import- 
 ance, till a day or two before. An event of unmixed 
 
 less, which has created a just sorrow, private and 
 public. The light of many a social circle is dimmer 
 henceforth, and will miss long a presence which 
 
 ivs gladdening and beneficent ; in the coming storms 
 of political trouble, which heap themselves more and 
 more in ominous clouds on our horizon, one rad 
 element is to be want in- now. 
 
 * v Mr r,;;ller MM in his forty third year, and had sat in 
 
 'iament some twenty of those. A man long k 
 under by the peculiarities of his endowment and posi- 
 tion, but ri>ing rapidly into importance of late ye. 
 beginning to reap the fruits of long j..r :ul to see 
 
 an ever wider field open round him. He was what in 
 party language is called a l K from hi 
 
 h ; and never sv. :om that faith, nor could 
 
 swerve. His luminous sincere intellect laid bare to him 
 in all its abject incoherency the thing that was un: 
 which thenceforth became for him a thing that was not 
 tenable, that it v. >candalous to attempt 
 
His Tribute to Charles Buller. 87 
 
 maintaining. Twenty years in the dreary weltering lake 
 of parliamentary confusion, with its disappointments and 
 bewilderments, had not quenched this tendency, in 
 which, as we say, he persevered as by a law of nature 
 itself, for the essence of his mind was clearness, healthy 
 purity, incompatibility with fraud in any of its forms. 
 What he accomplished, therefore, whether great or little, 
 was all to be added to the sum of good ; none of it to 
 be deducted. There shone mildly in his whole conduct 
 a beautiful veracity, as if it were unconscious of itself; a 
 perfect spontaneous absence of all cant, hypocrisy, and 
 hollow pretence, not in word and act only, but in thought 
 and instinct. To a singular extent it can be said of him 
 that he was a spontaneous clear man. Very gentle, too, 
 though full of fire ; simple, brave, graceful. What he 
 did, and what he said, came from him, as light from a 
 luminous body, and had thus always in it a high and rare 
 merit, which any of the more discerning could appreciate 
 fully. 
 
 " To many, for a long while, Mr Buller passed merely 
 for a man of wit, and certainly his beautiful natural 
 gaiety of character, which by no means meant levity ', was 
 commonly thought to mean it, and did for many years 
 hinder the recognition of his intrinsic higher qualities. 
 Slowly it began to be discovered that, under all this 
 many-coloured radiancy and coruscation, there burnt a 
 most steady light ; a sound, penetrating intellect, full of 
 adroit resources, and loyal by nature itself to all that was 
 methodic, manful, true ; in brief, a mildly resolute, 
 chivalrous, and gallant character, capable of doing much 
 serious service. 
 
 " A man of wit he indisputably was, whatever more, 
 
88 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 amongst the wittiest speech, and mar 
 
 of being, played everywhere like soft brilliancy of lambent 
 fire round tl ->n objects of the hour, and \ 
 
 nd all or <xuety could show, 
 
 to the u was spontaneous, 
 
 else in him, gem::- .; play of the 
 
 man. To hear him, the most seriou 
 
 D might think within hiniM ':. How beautiful 
 human gau-ty too! 1 Alone of wits, Huller never is. 
 wit ; he could be silent, or grave enough, where b< 
 was going; often rather liked to l>e silent, if permits: 
 and always was so where needful His wit, more* 
 was ever the ally of wisdom, not of folly, or unkindness, 
 or injusti. . ; no soul was ever hurt by it ; never, we 
 Inrlieve, 'y any man, and 
 
 n have we se<. relieve one re. 
 
 to be offend light up a pausing < irrle all ; 
 
 harmony again. In truth, it was beautiful to see i 
 
 r, alino*: > of heart co-exist; 
 
 the s, and long experiences, of a man 
 
 oft H..n.n:r to human worth in v. 
 
 we find it ! This man was r | friends, true to 
 
 .ind true without effort, as the ma, 
 north. He was ever found on the right v 
 helpful to it, not obstructive of it, in all he attei 
 
 formed 
 
 y indeed brilliant, rle. 
 
 not in dcj , or in any kind of active 
 
 valour, but wanting the stern energy that could long 
 endure to continue in the deep, in tin 
 
 cd out for him hi 
 whi >s with regrets enough, his natural ver. 
 
His Tribute to Charles Butter. 89 
 
 and practicality would lead him quietly to admit and 
 stand by. He was not the man to grapple, in its dark 
 and deadly dens, with the Lernaean coil of social Hydras ; 
 perhaps not under any circumstances : but he did, un- 
 assisted, what he could ; faithfully himself did something 
 nay, something truly considerable ; and in his patience 
 with the much that by him and his strength could not be 
 done let us grant there was something of beautiful too ! 
 
 " Properly, indeed, his career as a public man was but 
 beginning. In the office he last held, much was silently ex- 
 pected of him ; he himself, too, recognised well what a fear- 
 ful and immense question this of Pauperism is; with what 
 ominous rapidity the demand for solution of it is pressing 
 on ; and how little the world generally is yet aware what 
 methods and principles, new, strange, and altogether con- 
 tradictory to the shallow maxims and idle philosophies 
 current at present, would be needed for dealing with it ! 
 This task he perhaps contemplated with apprehension; 
 but he is not now to be tried with this, or with any task 
 more. He has fallen, at this point of the march, an 
 honourable soldier; and has left us here to fight along 
 without him. Be his memory dear and honourable to 
 us, as that of one so worthy ought. What in him was true 
 and valiant endures for evermore beyond all memory or 
 record. His light, airy brilliancy has suddenly become 
 solemn, fixed in the earnest stillness of Eternity. There 
 shall we also, and our little works, all shortly be."* 
 
 * The Examiner Newspaper, Dec. 2, 1848. 
 
I AFTER IX. 
 
 MARRIAGE JANE WELSH OF HADD1NGTON AXECDOTE 
 OK MI'HOOD EDWARD IRV 
 
 TORS WELSH CM D JOHN I 
 
 < LAIR CHARLOTTE 
 ICTUREOP MRS CARLYLE HER HUS1 
 1HEQUK1 RLD. 
 
 I was in 1826 that Carlyle took the most momentous, 
 it also proved the most fortunate, step of his life. It 
 would be difficult to name another equally eminent man 
 of lette: o was so per: Q his 
 
 marriage. To his wife, in perhaps the most tout: 
 inscription that has been placed by a husband over 
 tomb of his departed helpmate, he ascribed all 
 success; and there is every reason to believe that 
 was no more than the simple truth. Jane \\YMi was, 
 in every respect, a woman worthy to be the wife of 
 
 all those qualities of 
 
 rt that form the first essential, she was not less 
 
 nguished for vigour of intellect, and for a richly 
 
 d culture a: f nature that caused 
 
 to be regarded, by those in the best position for 
 
 judging, as one of the most remarkable women of her 
 
 Born at Haddington in 1801, she was the only 
 

The Childhood of Jane Welsh. 91 
 
 child of Dr John Welsh, a medical practitioner in that 
 town, and of Grace Welsh, of Caplegill, Dumfriesshire, his 
 wife. In her girlhood she had Edward Irving for a 
 tutor; and it was through Irving that Carlyle became 
 acquainted with her. While yet a mere child, she had 
 overheard domestic discussions with respect to her future 
 training, in which her father expressed the resolution to 
 have her educated like a boy, since she was his only 
 child ; the mother, on the contrary, hoping " for nothing 
 higher in her daughter than the sweet domestic com- 
 panion most congenial to herself:" and who that has 
 read can ever forget the charming story, that touches 
 at once the spring of laughter and of tears, how the child, 
 her ambition roused, secretly acquired a copy of the Latin 
 Rudiments, and, after conning it for many days alone, 
 suddenly from her place of concealment under the table, 
 when the good doctor was sitting at leisure after dinner, 
 burst forth in breathless steadiness with her first lesson, 
 " Penna, penncz, pennam!" The wish of both the 
 parents was realised. Recommended by Professor Leslie, 
 of whom it is pleasant to remember that he made himself 
 the early patron of both Carlyle and Irving, the latter, 
 who had just gone to Haddington to be master of the 
 Mathematical School in the birthplace of John Knox, was 
 chosen by Dr Welsh to become the teacher of his little 
 girl, then aged nine years. Tutor and pupil became fast 
 friends the friendship existing " unbroken," as Mrs 
 Oliphant informs us, " through all kinds of vicissitudes ; 
 even through entire separation, disapproval, and outward 
 estrangement, to the end of Irving's life." While in 
 Edinburgh, after the Kirkcaldy teaching days were, 
 over, Irving met once more his precocious little pupil at 
 
92 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 Haddington, now a beautiful and vivacious young la 
 and, though he had no right to be jealous, had 
 
 formed an attachment elsewhere, we are not surprised to 
 
 rn that he could not conceal the mortification with 
 which he heard falling too warmly from the young la 
 
 the praises of the friend whom he had himself ir 
 duced to Dr Welsh's hospitable home. When his little 
 ebullition was over the fair culprit turned to leave the 
 room ; but had scarcely passed the door when Irving 
 hurried after her, and called, entreating her to return for 
 a moment When she came back, she found the simple- 
 
 :ted giant standing penitent to make his confession. 
 
 e truth is, I was piqued," said Irving; "I 1 
 always been accustomed to fancy that / stood highest in 
 your good opinion, and I was jealous to hear you praise 
 another man. I am sorry for what I said just now that 
 
 he truth of it ;" and so, not pleased, but penitent and 
 candid, he let her ga* 
 
 ancestors, like those of her husband, had 
 been settled for nfriesshire, and \\ 
 
 persons of distinction, many of them having risen to 
 positions of i in the Church. As early as 1488 
 
 we find a Nicholas Welsh the Abbot of Holywood ; I > 
 William \\VMi was Virar t" Tynnm in 1530; soon a 
 the latter date, Dean Robv r of the same 
 
 and John \\ \ score, took office 
 
 in the K in 1560. After the last 
 
 arose the greatest .i'y, in the jxrrson of 
 
 another John r, and son in- 
 
 law of John man, of 
 
 Th. ng % by Mrs Oliphant. 
 
John Welsh of Ayr. 93 
 
 the same name, was Laird of Collision, and owned other 
 | estates in Dunscore and Holywood. Of a romantic and 
 adventurous disposition, young Welsh, when a mere boy, 
 ran away from his father's house, and joined a band of 
 Border robbers ; but he did not stay long in their com- 
 pany, and soon presented himself at the door of an aunt, 
 Mrs Forsyth, in Dumfries, through whose good offices he 
 was reconciled to his father. At the early age of twenty- 
 two this stirring boy had settled down as a devoted 
 Christian minister, in the parish of Kirkcudbright ; in his 
 twenty-eighth year he had his famous controversy with 
 the Commendator of Sweetheart Abbey, in which he main- 
 tained the cause of Protestantism with such signal success, 
 that the King bestowed upon him a glowing eulogium; and 
 seven years thereafter, that is, in 1605, he was the leader 
 of the famous Aberdeen Assembly, which met in defiance 
 of the same monarch, when James was seeking to subvert 
 the Presbyterian constitution of the Church of Scotland. 
 Condemned to death, Welsh's sentence was commuted 
 to transportation ; and after sixteen years of exile in 
 France he was suffered, on his health failing, to return 
 in 1622 to England. But the King would on no 
 account allow him to cross the Border when he wished 
 to get the benefit of his native air, His Majesty declaring 
 that " it would be impossible to establish Prelacy in 
 Scotland if Welsh were permitted to return." James 
 even debarred him from preaching in London till in- 
 formed that he could not long survive, and when the 
 preacher at length obtained access to a pulpit he dis- 
 coursed with his wonted fire and eloquence, but, on 
 returning to his lodging, expired within two hours. 
 This faithful witness was a lineal ancestor of Mrs Car- 
 
94 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 lyle ; indeed, the estate of Craigenputtoch, which came 
 to Carlyle though his wife, had been the property of the 
 old minister of Ayr. We can hardly wonder, then, that 
 Carlyle should at one time have thought of writing 
 v, though he ultimately gave up the project; 
 and the i".i t that his wife's most distinguished ancestor 
 married Kli/abeth Knox* probably did not tend to 
 lessen the interest with which Carlyle studied the charac- 
 ter and career of her father, the great Reformer, the 
 essay on The Portraits of John Knox being the 
 work he gave to the world Welsh would have been 
 
 iect not unworthy even of the pen that restored 
 
 r Cromwell to the English people. When the 
 s Young, of Edinburgh, informed ( 
 
 he was engaged upon a memoir of Welsh, he 
 received cordial encouragement to prosecute th 
 
 >h's BioL wrote Carlyle (8th September 
 
 1862), " if he could be made conclusively intelligible, as 
 
 Mic Church- History of his time could by 
 
 This worthy daughter of a worthy tire, by moms of some of 
 s relations at Court, obtained access to the Royal 
 Solomon when her husband lay dying in London, and pc 1 . 
 the King to grant him permission to return to Scotland. I! 
 
 s" she 
 ..ne,! the i 
 
 made such a match as 0. > right like, sir," said 
 
 Eliza!* AC never speered (asked) hit advice." Again she 
 
 urged her requev would give her husband his nat 
 
 i>lied the King; "give him the 
 that to your hungry courtiers," said 
 
 offended at his profanenesa. At last be told her, if she would 
 persuade her husband to submit to the bishops, be would grant her 
 prayer. M lifting her apron, and holding it 
 
 monau i lease ycr Majesty, I'd rather kep (receive) 
 
 -ATOiVj Uj -;jur. 
 
His Letter on Welsh of Ayr. 95 
 
 right pains, might be a very acceptable book ; the anti- 
 Presbyterian procedure of King James, and scenes one 
 has seen, of ' all the women gathered weeping on Leith 
 Sands/ I think at two in the morning, c as Welsh and 
 consorts lifted anchor for exile,' etc., etc., represent a vivid 
 state of things in what has now fallen altogether blank to 
 common Scotch readers. Mr David Laing printed some- 
 where, not many years ago, certain letters from Welsh in 
 his exile (' I dwine and dee ! ' was a phrase in one of 
 them) which to me were considerably instructive as to 
 his affairs, and him. Mr Laing, you are no doubt aware, 
 is worth all living aids put together in regard to such a 
 matter. I fear, however, there will be a great scarcity of 
 real documents as to Welsh. At Ayr, I suppose, there 
 will be nothing ; unless, perhaps his old kirk is still head 
 uppermost, in an indisputable way? In Dumfriesshire, 
 (in Glenesland, Upper Nithsdale), you will still find the 
 name of Colleston sticking to a patch of the property 
 which was his father's; but, except that, and perhaps 
 some inferences (of small moment) deducible from that, I 
 doubt nothing more whatever." In reply to this letter, 
 Mr Young wrote : " Your fear that there will be a great 
 scarcity of documents is, I am happy to inform you, with- 
 out foundation. On the contrary, there is an exuberance 
 of materials, and one great difficulty I have felt is how 
 best to arrange and compress them." The phrase of 
 Welsh's at the parting on Leith Sands which dwelt in 
 Carlyle's memory is to be found, probably, in Row's His- 
 tory or Melville's Diary ; but, in spite of the suggestive 
 reminiscence of his correspondent, Mr Young had not the 
 tact to quote it, but preferred to give his own feeble 
 paraphrase of the story. 
 
96 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 That Mrs Carlylc was worthy of the noble stock frono 
 
 i she came, and that she possessed not a littl 
 ready wit of brave Mrs Welsh of Ayr, has been attested 
 by all who knew her. Among her other gifts was that oi 
 ig a letter in no wise inferior to the choicest produc 
 i the epistolary line. Of this wt 
 v in a playful communication to Sir George 
 ir, written in 1860, shortly aft. Miami had 
 
 gone north on a visit to the baronet at Thurso Ca> 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, Aagast 
 
 " My dear Sir, Decidedly you are more thoughtful 
 n the man who is bound by vow to Move and 
 h' me; ave I received from him tc 
 
 safe arrival in your dominions. 
 
 hameful on his part, i appears bj 
 
 your i good accounts to give of himself; 
 
 and was ; :ig them. 
 
 - \\ \ 11 : now that^* have relieved me from all anxict) 
 about the effects of the journey on him, he may v, 
 his own ' reasonably good leisure.' Onl I 1 
 
 should not write till I had heard of his .. \ him 
 
 i am in the 1. 
 
 .iy Wi.nl to the letter. 
 
 thousand thanks for the primrose roots, wl ! 
 it so soon as it (airs 1 To-day we have again i 
 deluge, adding a deeper shade of horror to certain house- 
 hold operations going on under my inspection (by way o! 
 occasion ' of his absence) ! Otu bedroom 
 has got all the - bed and pillows airing them 
 
 selves out on the iloor 1 creating an atmosphere of down 
 in the house, more choking than even * cotton-ftuz.' In 
 
A Letter from Mrs Carlyle. 97 
 
 another, upholsterers and painters are plashing away for 
 their life ; and a couple of bricklayers are tearing up flags 
 in the kitchen to seek 'the solution' of a non-acting 
 drain ! All this on the one hand ; and on the other, 
 visits from my doctor resulting in ever new 'composing 
 draughts/ and strict charges to ' keep my mind perfectly 
 tranquil.' You will admit that one could easily conceive 
 situations more ideal. 
 
 " Pray, do keep him as long as you like ! To hear of 
 him 'in high spirits' and 'looking remarkably well' is 
 more composing for me than any amount of ' composing 
 draughts,' or of insistence on the benefits of 'keeping 
 myself perfectly tranquil.' It is so very different a state 
 of things with him from that in which I have seen him for 
 a long time back ! 
 
 " Oh ! I must not forget to give you the ' kind re- 
 membrance ' of a very charming woman, whom any man 
 may be pleased to be remembered by as kindly as she 
 evidently remembered you! I speak of Lady William 
 Russell.* She knew you in Germany, 'a young student,' 
 she told me, when she was Bessy Rawdon. She ' had a 
 great affection for you, and had often thought of you 
 since.' You were 'very romantic in those days; oh, 
 very romantic and sentimental] she could assure me ! 
 Pray, send me back a pretty message for her; she will 
 like so much to know that she has not remembered you 
 ' with the reciprocity all on one side.' 
 
 " I don't even send my regards to Mr C., but 
 " Affectionately yours, 
 
 " JANE W. CARLYLE." 
 
 The mother of the present Duke of Bedford a lady of rare gifts 
 
 G 
 
98 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 Surely that is a very pretty letter, with a fine arch 
 humour breathing through every line of it, under \v: 
 you can see lurking .1 yearning affection for the 
 
 absent husband, and as much of intellectual vigour and 
 good common sense as of heart Edward Irving, we 
 may rest assured, did not exaggerate when he used to 
 speak of Jane \\ : as the most powerful he 
 
 had ever seen in a woman. 
 
 In the memoirs of Charlotte Cushman, an actres 
 was descended from, and not unworthy of, one of the 
 most distinguished of the Pilgrim i of New 
 
 England, a vivid account of Mrs Carlyle, wl 
 
 American first saw at the house of Miss Jewsbury, 
 but afterwards often met in her own house in Chi 
 Row. She is described as "that wonderful woman, who 
 was able to live in the full light of Carlyle and 
 
 celebrity without being overshadowed by it; who wa 
 own way, as great as he, and yet, who lived on 
 minister to 1 .::..." Thus Miss Cushman describes their 
 
 w: "On Su: o should come 
 
 invited to meet me b one 
 
 o'clock and stayed until eight And 1 have 
 
 not known ! Clever, witty, calm, cool, unsm 
 ing, a raconteur unparalleled, a mam liable, a 
 
 beh a power invincible a 
 
 d strange exists in that plain, keen, unattrac- 
 unescapable woman ! O, I must Ull you of that 
 for I cannot write The picture of the domestic 
 
 scene at Cheyne Row. 
 
 and accomplishments who, until the time of her lamented 4f*thi at 
 an advanced age, continued to be the centre of perhaps the most 
 
 intellectually brilliant circle in the society of London. 
 
Portrait of Mrs Carlyle. 99 
 
 Then Carlyle would talk like no other mortal that ever 
 was made. " Meanwhile his wife, quiet and silent, 
 assiduously renewed his cup of tea, or by an occasional 
 word, or judicious note, struck just at the right moment, 
 kept him going, as if she wielded the mighty imagination 
 at her pleasure, and evoked the thunder and the sunshine 
 at her will. When she was alone, and herself the enter- 
 tainer, one became aware of all the self-abnegation she 
 practised, for she was herself a remarkably brilliant talker, 
 and the stories of quaint wit and wisdom which she poured 
 forth, the marvellous memory which she displayed, were, 
 in the minds of many, quite as remarkable and even more 
 entertaining than the majestic utterances of her gifted 
 husband. It was said that those who came to sit at his 
 feet remained at hers." Some good stories are told of 
 the clever way in which she would prevent her husband, 
 when absorbed in the labours he had assigned to himself, 
 from being intruded upon by bores and lion-hunters. 
 She had an excellent judgment in literary matters; 
 Charles Dickens held her critical faculty in the highest 
 esteem, and was in the habit of frequently asking her 
 advice. She also possessed considerable artistic skill as 
 well as taste; when her husband conceived the notion 
 of sending to Goethe a birthday present as a token 
 of gratitude and affection on the part of himself and a 
 few other British disciples of the master at Weimar, it 
 was Mrs Carlyle who designed the seal chosen for the 
 memento. Occasionally she did a little writing on her 
 own account; in her husband's Life of John Sterling^ 
 there is a reference to a piece from her pen, entitled, 
 "Watch and Canary Bird," and we learn, from one of 
 Dickens's letters to John Forster, dated immediately after 
 
ioo Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 death, that she was engaged upon a novel, of the 
 >ophico-analytic sort, when that event happened* 
 The gratitude felt by Carlyle : ift he 
 
 a wife was expressed in many in- 
 t and touching ways The thought of his mother 
 ht have sufficed to make him, what he always was, 
 full of a knightly courtesy to all women ; but this was no 
 doubt deeper ;>py experience as a husband, 
 
 in which he had seen realised that he 
 
 with so much of tender grace and beauty in one of 
 lett- n after his helpmate was gone. "I have 
 
 1 the true and noble function of a woman in 
 world was, is, and forever will be, that of being Wife 
 and Helpmate to a worthy man; and discharging well 
 the iluti^ th.it devolve on her in consequence, as mo - 
 of children and mistress of a Household, dudes 1 
 noble, silently imj>ortant as any that can fall to a human 
 creature: duties which, if well discharged, constitute 
 woi: soft, beautiful, and almost sacred way, the 
 
 Queen of the by her natural faculties, graces, 
 
 strengths, and weaknesses, are every way indicated as 
 specifically hers, .man, there- 
 
 fore, is to wed a man she can love and esteem ; and to 
 lead noiseles , with all the wisdom, 
 
 grace, and heroism that i the life prescribed in 
 
 consequence." t The sentiment so charmingly expressed 
 
 r school companions who still survive say, that she 
 was the only girl in the Latin das* of (he burgh school, that she 
 was very clever, and was generally at the head of it. One school 
 compani' lives, renv he and his dais fellows 
 
 v. 
 
 them.*" Stanford Ntwspafitr. ^Ji. 
 
 ,Mrr n,f !i?o nth l-'r'i lS-I i frr>m u-hirh fHi* i* r\r 
 
His Views on Female Physicians. 101 
 
 in this passage found utterance on some other occasions 
 in forms that were quaintly humorous as, for example, 
 
 was addressed to Mr Robert Lawson, a medical student at Edin- 
 burgh, in answer to a request that Mr Carlyle would state his 
 opinion on the subject of the admission of female medical students 
 to the classes in the University and the clinical teaching in the 
 Infirmary a question which had raised a furious controversy, 
 then at its height. "It is with reluctance," replied Carlyle, 
 " that I write anything to you on this subject of Female Emancipa- 
 tion, which is now rising to such a height ; and I do it only 
 on the strict condition that whatever I say shall be private, 
 and nothing of it get into the Newspapers. The truth is, the 
 topic for five-and -twenty years past, especially for the last three or 
 four, has been a mere sorrow to me ; one of the most afflicting 
 proofs of the miserable anarchy that prevails in human society ; and 
 I have avoided thinking of it, except when fairly compelled ; what 
 little has become clear to me on it I will now endeavour to tell you." 
 After laying down the principle that woman's true function is that 
 of wifehood, he continues : " It seems furthermore indubitable 
 that if a woman miss this destiny, or have renounced it, she has 
 every right, before God and man, to take up whatever honest em- 
 ployment she can find open to her in the world ; probably there 
 are several or many employments, now exclusively in the hands of 
 men, for which women might be more or less fit ; printing, 
 tailoring, weaving, clerking, etc., etc. That Medicine is intrinsic- 
 ally not unfit for them is proved from the fact that in much 
 more sound and earnest ages than ours, before the Medical Pro- 
 fession rose into being, they were virtually the Physicians and 
 Surgeons as well as Sick-nurses, all that the world had. Their 
 form of intellect, their sympathy, their wonderful acuteness of 
 observation, etc., seem to indicate in them peculiar qualities for 
 dealing with disease ; and evidently in certain departments (that of 
 female diseases) they have quite peculiar opportunities of being 
 useful. My answer to your question, then, may be that two things 
 are not doubtful to me in this matter. 1st, That Women, any 
 Woman who deliberately so determines, have a right to study 
 Medicine ; and that it might be profitable and serviceable to have 
 facilities, or at least possibilities, offered them for so doing. But, 
 2d, That, for obvious reasons, Female Students of Medicine ought 
 to have, if possible, Female Teachers, or else an extremely select 
 kind of men ; and in particular that to have young women present 
 among young men in Anatomical Classes, Clinical Lectures, or 
 
102 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 in that chivalrous defence of what all other biographers 
 had considered the crowning blunder of Dr Johnson's 
 life. Carlylc could see no matter for ridicule in the i 
 riage with the good Widow Porter, even though she was 
 old enough to be the Doctor's mother. Rather in her 
 love and Johnson, and in his love and gratitude, 
 
 he saw something that was most pathetic and sacred: 
 
 hnson's deathless affection for his Tetty was," he 
 declares, " always venerable and noble." Well mi^ht the 
 
 and of Jane Welsh regard as sacred that institute of 
 marriage which had worked so well for \. 
 
 generally udying Medicine in concert, U an incongruity of the 
 magnitude, tod hocking to think of to every pure and modest mind. 
 This U all I have to say, and I tend it to you, under the condition 
 above mentioned, as a Friend for the me of Friends," 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN HIS MOORLAND HOME THE LIFE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCH 
 LETTERS TO GOETHE, DE QUINCEY, AND CHRISTO- 
 PHER NORTH PROPOSED "BOG SCHOOL" OF PHILO- 
 SOPHERS EARLY PILGRIMS WRITES THE " MISCEL- 
 LANIES " HIS DEMOLITION OF JEFFREY THE ESSAY 
 ON BURNS. 
 
 THERE is a story of Carlyle's boy-days, told us by a friend 
 who spent his youthful years in the same neighbourhood, 
 which may be mythical, but ought to be true, since it 
 certainly answers to all that we know of the character and 
 circumstances of the persons concerned. According to 
 this local tradition, little Thomas had built in a retired 
 nook of his father's farm a kind of hut for himself to 
 study in ; but as his father preferred that he should go to 
 work instead of devoting himself exclusively to his 
 "buiks," he sent the Laird (Mr Sharpe of Hoddam),* 
 who happened to be calling, to order the boy to remove 
 his hut off the ground. But the boy rose to the occasion, 
 slammed the door on the Laird's face, and took himself 
 to his literary studies, careless of the consequences. The 
 
 * Of the same line to which Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, called 
 by Scott "the Scottish Horace Walpole," belonged, and which is now 
 extinct. Matthew Sharpe of Hoddam was the friend and corres- 
 pondent of David Hume ; perhaps it was he who went to evict " oor 
 Tarn " from the Hut. If not, it must have been his successor. 
 
104 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 resolute character of James Carlylc's eldest son has t 
 far carrit-d him on in the path whirh he had so early 
 marked out for himself; I beset l>y 
 
 rein there has hung over him 
 moment the threat i: Now at length t 
 
 cult: moved out of the way. The 1 
 
 boy of the hut threatened by Sharpe of Hoddam i 
 length himself a Laird, free to fashion his own li: 
 
 .cllt 
 
 if not large, has delivered the struggling son of the 
 pea -he nece cad 
 
 . s of compulsory drudgery, with birch-rod among 
 n the school and at hack-work for the pub- 
 lishers, are happi' at last shape- 
 course in a manner consistent with his sense of ; 
 dignity and the .t use of the pow\ 
 wh: l>een endowed 
 
 had already tasted the sweets of London 
 " Undei , and multi- 
 
 farious as Sparta had in 1824 renewed 
 
 rcourse with Edward Irving, and met tor the 
 time some men of n he was to know better in 
 
 the coming years. A ;d remembered so vividly 
 
 street of Annan that met 
 >us gaze that -ed it for the : 
 
 c, as a child . so were 
 
 mind that he had carried away with him i: 
 sojourn in the bj and twenty-six years a! 
 
 wart sat down to write the Life of John 
 
 . one of these that came back with special force 
 was the spectacle of ' ees, " the Troca- 
 
 dero swarm, thrown off in 1823," who, to the number of 
 
Removal to Craigenputtoch. 105 
 
 fifty or a hundred, perambulated, " mostly with closed 
 lips, the broad pavements of Euston Square and the 
 regions about St Pancras' new Church." Charles Buller's 
 Scotch tutor must have marked them well ; and the fact 
 that he saw them will preserve their memory. " Old 
 steel-grey heads, many of them ; the shaggy, thick, blue- 
 black hair of others struck you ; their brown complexion, 
 dusky look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic condi- 
 tion as of caged Numidian lions." That and many another 
 strange sight had the young Caledonian seen in London 
 streets, not without deep interest, as his life-like etchings 
 attest ; men of intellect, also, he had met John Stuart 
 Mill, we believe, amongst the number. But, in the 
 mean time, he did not think of settling in London, great 
 as its attractions were to the man fired by literary 
 ambition. For a little while, after his marriage, he 
 seems to have resided at Comely Bank, in the immediate 
 vicinity of Edinburgh, within easy reach of the libraries 
 and publishers, and enjoying the society (which even the 
 leaders of London life might have envied him) of such 
 neighbours as De Quincey and Sir William Hamilton. 
 At this time he was completing those translations from 
 the German which William Tait published in 1827. 
 
 In 1828, the young couple resolved to fix their abode 
 on their own property, and accordingly betook them- 
 selves to Craigenputtoch, a farm lying in a wild solitude 
 on the southern shore of Loch Urr, among the granite 
 hills of Nithsdale. Out of the world in one sense ; yet, 
 after all, not so many miles from Burns's Ellisland, on 
 the silver Nith, only fifteen miles from the town of Dum- 
 fries, and even within a comparatively manageable dis- 
 tance (about a day's journey on foot) from Carlyle's native 
 
106 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 village, where both father and mother were still alive to 
 
 >inc their son. 
 
 It was in tlttl :n"".n:ain home that Carlyle was to 
 sjxmd the next six years of his life in dec 
 on the great he had been so long 
 
 wrestling, but w' remained unsolved Here he 
 
 would enter at last on his course as an original wr 
 and achieve much while he prej>ared for the doing of 
 ire of the place, 1 life 
 
 and the purposes he \V.IN <g, is given in a 1 
 
 25th September 1828) addressed to Goeth 
 
 1 in the preface to the 
 
 nan translation of Carlyle's Life of SfhiL lied 
 
 n 1830. " You inquire," writes Carlyle, "with 
 
 ; warm interest respecting our present abode and 
 
 occupations, that I am obliged to say a few words about 
 
 both, while t : ;11 room left. Dumfries is a plea 
 
 ., containing about fifteen thousand inhabit! 
 to be considered the centre of the trade and jud: 
 
 possesses some importance 
 
 the ; Scottish activity. Our reside t in 
 
 the : If, but fifteen miles to the north-west of it, 
 
 c hills, and the black morasses, wl 
 ch westward through Galloway, almost to the Irish 
 Sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate 
 stan a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly 
 
 1 ground, where com ri] 
 
 trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews 
 : rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small e; 
 
 we built and furnished a neat, substantial <i 
 her absence of a professional or tfice, we 
 
 to culti\. according to our strength, 
 
His Letters to Goethe. 107 
 
 our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the 
 roses and flowers of our garden ; we hope for health 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 medicines for weak 
 nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, 
 is my only recreation ; for this nook of ours is the 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 St Pierre. My town friends, indeed, 
 ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and for- 
 bode me no good result. But I came hither solely with 
 the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the in- 
 dependence 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 ourselves, even 
 though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch 
 of literature. Nor is the solitude of such great import- 
 ance ; 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 
 
io8 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 your opinion concerning it ; at least, pray write to me 
 again, and speedily, that I may feel myself united to you. 
 The only piece of any importance that I have written 
 since I came here is an Essay on Bums. Perhaps you 
 never heard of him, and yet he is a man of the most 
 decided genius ; but born in the lowest ranks of peasant 
 life, and through the entanglements of his peculiar pod 
 lion was at length mournfully wrecked, so that what he 
 effected is comparatively unimportant He died in the 
 middle of his career, in the year 1796. \NV Knglish, 
 especially we Scotch, love Burns more than any poet 
 that has lived for centuries. I have often been struck by 
 the fact that he was born a few months before Schi 
 the year 1759, and that neither of them ever heard the 
 
 rti name. They shone like stars in opposite 
 spheres, or, if you will, the thirk mist of earth intercepted! 
 their reciprocal hy 
 
 In the preface which Goethe wisely lit up with this 
 memorable fragment of autobiography (and which wasj 
 fin-tin lustrated with two engravings, representing 
 
 sidence among the Scottish hilN), the great Ger- 
 man poet remarks that Burns was not unknown to him ; and 
 very warmly does he commend Carl 
 has been at in realising the life and individuality, not only 
 of Schiller, but of all the German authors whom he baa 
 introduced to the English-speaking world 1 
 efforts of ( ad been immediately fruitful is prove* 
 
 by the facts which he was able to c 
 another letter to Goethe, in the December of 1829. 
 "You will be pleased to hear," he writes, "that the 
 I appreciation of for. i especiallj 
 
 of German, literature spreads casing rapidity 
 
His Letters to Goethe. 109 
 
 wherever the English tongue rules ; so that now at the 
 antipodes, in New Holland itself, the wise men of your 
 country utter their wisdom. I have lately heard that even 
 in Oxford and Cambridge, our two English Universities 
 hitherto looked upon as the stopping-place of our peculiar 
 insular conservatism, a movement in such things has 
 begun. Your Niebuhr has found a clever translator at 
 Cambridge, and at Oxford two or three Germans have 
 already enough employment in teaching their language. 
 The new light may be too strong for certain eyes ; yet no 
 one can doubt the happy consequences that shall ulti- 
 mately follow therefrom. Let nations, as individuals, only 
 know each other, and mutual jealousy will change to 
 mutual helpfulness, and instead of natural enemies, as 
 neighbouring countries too often are, we shall all be 
 natural friends." Amongst the various records of the 
 intercourse that brought Craigenputtoch into such inti- 
 mate relations with Weimar, not the least pleasant are 
 several graceful messages in verse from Goethe to Mrs 
 Carlyle, which have been included in the collected edi- 
 tion of the poet's works. * 
 
 In the December of the same year in which he sent to 
 Goethe the graphic view of his life and surroundings at 
 Craigenputtoch, he wrote a letter to De Quincey, wherein 
 
 * It has often been asserted that Carlyle became personally inti- 
 mate with Goethe in Germany prior to the writing of the above 
 letters ; but the truth is, that Carlyle had not, as yet, visited Ger- 
 many at all. The originator of the fiction, we suspect, must have 
 been James Grant, of Random Recollections notoriety. While there 
 was some excuse for the ignorance he betrayed in 1841, there is 
 none for the recent repeaters of his idle story, since Carlyle himself, 
 in the second appendix to his Life of Schiller, expressly informed his 
 readers that he " never saw " Goethe. 
 
no Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 some striking lines arc added to the picture. We cannot 
 be too grateful for the fortunate preservation of : 
 
 ' so readily have (alien aside 
 >nd all chance of recover)* amid the frequent flittings 
 id fro of the strangely-gifted being to whom it mil 
 addressed We are told by De Quincey*s biograp! r 
 
 Carlyle, "with that generous interest in whn 
 original . llent which has so honourably di>tin- 
 
 guishcd him throughout his long career, had, in com- 
 
 hers, asked after the 'Opium i :ose 
 
 contriht drawn so much attention to the London 
 
 Magazine, and had met him, while he was on visits to I 
 h, at the houses <f Mr John Gordon and 
 that De Ouincey had come to Edinburgh at il 
 tiinr him the following let 'eels, in 
 
 :ny influences that wt 
 rig on the hitherto storm-tossed Sartor in the \\:. 
 
 hills : 
 
 igenptittoch, iith iVccmbcr, 1828. 
 
 " V the opjKirtunity of a frank. 1 
 
 ^end you a few lines, were 
 
 ify that two ers of yours are still 
 
 in these moors, and often thinking 
 
 with the old IQgfc M ourages me 
 
 in this inn.M . as learned lately that you 
 
 were inquiring for me female I \en 
 
 ere a fret of the most interesting 
 
 sort to both of us. I am to say, therefor. 
 
 presence at this fireside will diffuse no ordinary gladness 
 
 all members oi" the warmest 
 
 me, and such solaccmcnts as even the desert does 
 
Letter to De Quincey. in 
 
 not refuse, are at any time and at all times in store for 
 one we love so well. Neither is this expedition so im- 
 practicable. We lie but a short way out of your direct 
 route to Westmoreland ; communicate by gravelled roads 
 with Dumfries and other places in the habitable globe. 
 Were you to warn us of your approach, it might all be 
 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-moor 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, 
 and 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 
 
H2 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 Country a region abounding in natural beauty, but 
 blown on by coach-horns, betrodden by picturesque 
 tourists, and otherwise exceedingly desecrated by too 
 
 icnt resort ; whereas here, though still in communi- 
 cation with the manufacturing world, we have a solitude 
 Tuidical grim hills tenanted chiefly by the 
 wild grouse, tarns and brooks tl 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 u 
 ine\pli< ibk tidings, unheard by the mortal ear. But the 
 the almost total want of colonists! Would you 
 come hither and be king over us ; thtn indeed we had 
 made a fair beginning, and the ' Bog School* might s 
 
 n at the 'I -ike 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 lr >e said of my own v 
 
 '. inquiry in the same dialect after yours. It will 
 gratify you t that here, in the desert, as in the 
 
 crowded . I im moder. ell; better in 
 
 th, not worse; and though active only on the small 
 scale, yet in my < .ion hone i to as nv 
 
 It as has been usual with me at any tin have 
 
 horses to ride on, gardens to cultivate, tight walls and 
 strong fires to del against winter; books to read, 
 
 paper to scribble on ; and no man or thing, at least in 
 le earth, to make us a: - I reckon that so 
 
 securely sequestered are we, not only would no Catholic 
 rebellion, but even no : i;ist and Horsa invasion, in 
 
 anywise disturb our tranquillity. we have no 
 
Studies at Craigenputtoch. 113 
 
 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 
 wheat in great quantity, we are nearly altogether free 
 from the chaff^ which often in this matter is highly annoy- 
 ing to weak nerves. My wife and I are busy learning 
 Spanish ; far advanced in Don Quixote already. I pur- 
 pose 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) j so that here as well as elsewhere I find that a man 
 may 'dree his wierd* (serve out his earthly apprentice- 
 ship) with reasonable composure, and wait what the 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 moralising. I had a thousand 
 things to ask concerning you : your employments, pur- 
 poses, sufferings, and pleasures. Will you not write to 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 Thomas Car 
 
 me? will you not come to me and tell? 1' you 
 
 are well loved here, and none feels better tha 
 a spirit is for the present eclipsed in clouds. I >r the 
 sent it can only be; time and chance are for all i 
 that troublous season will end; and one day with i. 
 joyful, not deeper or truer regard, I shall see yo 
 self again.' Meanwhile, jardon me t! n; and 
 
 write, if you have a vacant hour which you would fill w: 
 good action. Mr Jeffrey is still anxious to know y 
 has he ever succeeded ? We are not to be in Edinburgh, 
 I believe, till spring ; but I will send him a letter to 
 (with your permission) by the first conveyance. i 
 member me with best regards to Profess* 
 \\ Hamilton, neither of whom must forget me; not 
 omitting the honest Gordon, who I know will 
 
 e bearer of oung 
 
 gentleman of no ordinary talent and worth, in whom, as 
 I IK tukt gar riil. Should he 
 
 let thU I>e an introdu. reverences all spiritual 
 
 worth, and you also will learn to love him. With all 
 I am ever, my dear sir, most faith 
 full> T. CARLYTJL" 
 
 So there was no small grudge lurking in the s 
 Goethe's translator and |>r account of that severe 
 
 castigation of WiUulm Mcister whit h 1 >e Muinccy wrote 
 a little more than three years ago ! v rest assured 
 
 that no one j>er< . -re clearly than Carlylc himself 
 
 the merit of thai 1, with the generosity of a 
 
 large na ;:her time nor in> 
 
 v quarrels, he would be ready to forgive probably 
 did not bestow a second thought, except one of mirth, 
 
Letter to Christopher North. 115 
 
 upon the touch of spleen that might be perceptible in 
 the vigorous onslaught of his critic. The only opponent 
 who had power to make him angry for a little while was 
 the man who, being really ignorant, yet pretended to 
 know ; and such a character could not be justly ascribed 
 at any time, to the marvellous scholar and man of genius 
 who was playfully invited by the greatest of his con- 
 temporaries to come and be king of the new school to 
 be founded in the moors of Nithsdale. 
 
 A third glimpse of the gladsome, though secluded, 
 life in that mountain home with its stern yet tender 
 beauties, congenial to the spirit and genius of the 
 recluse is furnished by Carlyle himself in a letter, of 
 date 1 9th December 1829, addressed to Professor Wil- 
 son. The author of the Nodes had promised to spend 
 some days at Craigenputtoch at the approaching Christ- 
 mas season ; and Carlyle writes to remind him that the 
 promise is " not forgotten here." He and Wilson had 
 met only once in the house of John Gordon, a favour- 
 ite pupil of the Professor's ; and, when we take the 
 slightness of their acquaintance into consideration, it 
 will be perceived that Carlyle was not merely genial, 
 but positively exuberant, in his friendly hospitable 
 overtures. " Come, then," he exclaims, " if you would 
 do us a high favour ^ that warm hearts may welcome in 
 the cold New Year, and the voice of poet and philo- 
 sopher, numeris lege solutis^ may for once be heard in 
 these deserts where, since Noah's Deluge, little but the 
 whirring of heath-cocks and the lowing of oxen has 
 broken the stillness. You shall have a warm fire and 
 a warm welcome ; and we will talk in all dialects, con- 
 cerning all things, climb to hill-tops, and see certain of the 
 
1 1 6 Thomas Carfylt. 
 
 kingdoms of this world,* and at nijjht gather round a 
 clear hearth, and forget that winter and the devil ar 
 our planet" The writer then proceeds to j: 
 in detail, information as to the links that connect the 
 
 e with the busy world of man from wh; 
 escaped There is a mail-coach nightly to Dumfries 
 passing dost 1 two stage-coaches every 
 
 day to Thornhil! places they are 
 
 miles distant, with a fair roa 
 
 procurable in both towns. " Could we ! 
 ng, we would send you down two horses 
 wheel carriages (except carts and barrows) we are 
 unhappily d< j>erhaps Christopher, noted 
 
 as a great pedestrian he thought nothing of a walk from 
 Oxt <lent days would be dis- 
 
 posed to do without horses and carriages or stage- 
 coa< " Nay, in any rase, tin- " 
 
 that i Dumfries or Thorn: Imt a in 
 
 walk, and this is the loveliest December weather 
 ollect of seeing." added, that 
 
 Post Office every Wednesday 
 i could hardly have been i. 
 
 English tourist would see "tax kingdoms." When 
 
 got t" t! rare thi* extraordinary &tatcmc: 
 
 c optical S <>ut in succession Cumber! 
 
 Man, once a sovereignty in the famil: 
 
 .ind ; and the ground on * 
 
 . were standing, part of Scotland. " Yes, that makes f 
 the KM- you have two more to show : 
 
 st look npaboo: 
 
 head, and that is by far the best of a* the kingdoms tha 
 
 aboon is Ilceven. i the saxth kingdom is 1 
 
 I ho|>e yc'll never gang ; but that's a poi: 
 
The Scotsman- Mercury Duel. 117 
 
 complete in any part of the British Island south of the 
 Grampians. " I have not seen one Blackwood, or even 
 an Edinburgh newspaper, since I returned hither. 
 Scarcely have tidings of the Scotsman- Mercury duel 
 reached me, and how the worthies failed to shoot each 
 other, and the one has lost his editorship, and the other 
 still continues to edit." That ridiculous duel, fought 
 between Charles Maclaren, the geologist, who was also 
 the conductor of the Scotsman, and Dr James Broune,* 
 editor of the Caledonian Mercury, had happened on the 
 1 2th November; but the news of it took close upon five 
 weeks to travel to Craigenputtoch, so that the laughter of 
 all Scotland over the incident must have been clean 
 exhausted before Carlyle had his guffaw, with sardonic 
 commentary on the fact which he, perhaps, regarded as 
 slightly calamitous that neither of the combatants had 
 succeeded in slaying the other. A delicate compliment 
 
 * Broune, who was an LL.D., seems to have been a versatile 
 creature. Originally a schoolmaster and then a preacher in his 
 native county of Perth, he passed advocate in 1826 ; took to writing for 
 Constable, edited the ancient Memiry, then started North Britain, 
 and contributed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britan- 
 nica. He is remembered as the author of a History of the Highlands 
 and the Highland Clans, and in Edinburgh as the exposer of the 
 West Port Murders, a feat accomplished a couple of years before he 
 called out Maclaren, one of the least belligerent of men. The poor 
 LL.D. wore himself out soon, dying at 48. He is all the more 
 entitled to brief notice here, since we find him again alluded to by 
 Carlyle in his reminiscences of Sir William Hamilton, contributed to 
 Professor Veitch's Life of the great metaphysician. Broune was no 
 doubt the newspaper editor, "the author of some book on the High- 
 lands," who was known in Edinburgh society by the sobriquet of 
 Captain Cloud, "from his occasionally fabulous turn." The poor 
 "Captain," who turned up at literary parties frequented by Carlyle, 
 about 1832-3, had evidently been an object of some slight interest to 
 Sartor. 
 
u8 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 closed the epistle to Wilson. Mrs Carlyle, he was told, 
 
 1 hopes against hope that she will wear her Ct 
 brooch this Christmas, a thing only done when there 
 
 " But ( 
 cr saw Craigenputtoch, and, indeed, Carlyle and 
 
 t but OOCC after the fi: -}KT 
 
 want of opportunity, or other < ire u instances," says ' 
 Ion in the Lit father, 44 prevented 
 
 '.ij>." When ' sSOT 
 
 received that (harming letter, so brimming over with the 
 humanities he had read a certain essay, now known to 
 all the world, on Burns, \vlu< h had appeared that very 
 year in the great Whig review; yet in the Nodes 
 
 re is a colloquy on 1 
 
 Car' h as named, or even alluded 
 
 while the S! owed to say, 
 
 cr about Burns yourscl', sir, nor anybody cls< brcathin\ 
 i hae I r and a' friends 
 
 of the j>oet ought to be grateful to North." 
 
 In ^30, there is a panegyric of 
 
 the London Magazine, put into the : <:ey, 
 
 in which tin orters" of that j>eriodical are 
 
 spc >t ami- 
 
 nbK- the Lay* 
 
 >-. In August Of 1834, 
 Nor 
 
 inas Carlyle and Hay ward, and all i. 
 
 a heathenish lingo worse than the unknown tongue." In 
 \ to the i ics of the Nortts, we may note 
 
 in coi name does not appear. 
 
The Work Achieved at Craigenputtoch. 119 
 
 Though neither De Quincey nor Wilson were able to 
 visit Craigenputtoch, many friends, and also strangers 
 desirous of seeing the new teacher who had so profoundly 
 touched their spirits, found their way thither from time to 
 time ; so that even in his mountain fastness Carlyle was 
 not altogether cut off from the world. In the letter to 
 Wilson, he makes incidental allusion to the circumstance 
 that " an Oxonian gigman " was coming to visit him in 
 an hour ; and such pilgrims from afar were no uncommon 
 phenomena at the farm. Of course, there would be long 
 stretches of time when the young couple had the place 
 all to themselves, and the only variety given to the day 
 would be supplied by the long walk taken together over 
 the moors, or the ride on horseback to some more distant 
 part of the vast domain beyond their little estate which 
 they might no less call their own, so far as the enjoyment 
 of its picturesque aspects was concerned. Sometimes 
 there would be the unexpected arrival of an old friend or 
 a new pilgrim, and one of the domestics, or Mrs Car- 
 lyle herself, would be obliged hastily to mount a pony and 
 go forth in search of provisions to meet the unlooked-for 
 demand. But even when these calls upon their hospitality 
 were least frequent, the time would not hang heavy upon 
 their hands ; for much work was being done in that plain 
 .apartment of the farm-house now shewn with so much 
 pride to visitors in which, as the crowning effort of 
 those quiet years, the immortal Sartor was written. It 
 has been too much the habit to speak and even write of 
 the time spent on the Dumfriesshire moors as if it were 
 merely a period of preparation and waiting ; it was, in fact, 
 a time of splendid achievement. From his settlement 
 here dates the beginning of Carlyle's course as an original 
 
120 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 writer. It was at Craigenputtoch that he wrote the essays 
 which commute much of 1 k ; and here 
 
 he began and finished the most creative effort 01 
 genius. From the letter to De Qui vould be per- 
 
 d that its writer was then in friendly commi 
 with the other leading assailant of Goethe; and 
 
 inds us that Carlyle was now enrolled on the staff of 
 
 the Edinburgh Review. The year following iage 
 
 was the one that witnessed his admission to J ora- 
 
 the apjx: the 9ist number of the " Blue 
 
 and Yellow " of that article on Richter which now stands 
 
 in the initial volume of his Critical and .\fiscfllaneOM$ 
 Essays. The publication of this essay was the beginning of 
 a connection wliii h Listed for about foi: crminat- 
 
 A-ith the publication of the article entitled Chara 
 in 1831, in the io8th number of the rgk. As 
 
 hall sec presently, the six or seven years that were 
 laigenputtoch also produced much good 
 
 k of a kindred sort for other reviews as well as for 
 
 <er*s Magazine; and, although it might be true when he 
 wrote his letter to Goethe in the September of 1828 that 
 "the only pi. \ importance 
 
 the Essay on Bur that 
 
 achievement of this ejKKh of his lii :tion 
 
 of minor imjxmance when we recollect that the N; 
 dale hermitage was the birthplace of Sar/ 
 This, in the coming years, will be what Scotch divines 
 are in the habit <>: ^rand " outstanding " 
 
 in connection with Craigenputtoch. Ixmg after our cen- 
 tury has ended, p. :nany a land will visit that 
 moorland sh ey go to look at the bridge in Bed- 
 ford town on win been thought, stood the prison 
 
Reply to Jeffrey on German Literature. 121 
 
 where John Bunyan wrote his Pilgrim; and they will 
 regard it as much more than the seed-bed of future 
 achievements, though it is doubtless true that, besides 
 being rich in fruit, the years of retirement in that wilder- 
 ness formed a preparation for the work that was yet to be 
 performed in the mighty Babel on the banks of the 
 Thames. " There he unravelled the tangled skein of his 
 thoughts. There he laid up stores of knowledge, of 
 health, of high resolutions for the work lying before him. 
 There, in a solitude peopled only by books and thoughts 
 and the companionship of his wife, and converse with 
 some congenial stranger, he laid the sure foundations of 
 a life which was destined to be so complete."* 
 
 The article on Jean Paul was followed up in the next 
 number of the Edinburgh by the essay on German 
 Literature, of which it has been said that it "at once 
 entitled the young reviewer to a place among the first 
 critics of the age" a remark that might have been 
 expressed in stronger terms without exaggeration of the 
 truth. It entitled him to a place above them all. How 
 these articles, especially the second, came to be accepted 
 by the Editor, is a problem we cannot pretend to solve. 
 Not only did they run counter to the views of Jeffrey and 
 the other members of the Whig circle gathered around 
 him ; the second of these articles, as Mr Ballantyne 
 pointed out in his brief sketch of Carlyle, actually dared 
 to attack " the prince of critics " for his abuse of Goethe, 
 and, furthermore, asserted the claims of genius in a 
 fashion that must have been deemed flat rebellion by the 
 habitues of Holland House. In his article on Wilhelm 
 
 * The Times Newspaper, Feb. 7, 1881. 
 
Thomas Cartyle. 
 
 upon the German 
 
 authors for their alleged bad taste, which he ascribed to 
 the assumed fact thai 1 not enjoy the privile. 
 
 in good socii heir works smell," he - 
 
 44 as it were, of groceries of brown pai>ers filled with greasy 
 ices of bacon and fryings in I .urs. 
 
 All the interesting recolK .f childhood turn on 
 
 remembered tit-bits, and plundering . 
 rooi The writers as well as the readers of 
 
 that country belong almost entirely to the pU-beian 
 
 .ir class. Tl <d men are almost all wofully 
 
 poor and depend i !>lc burghers, who 
 
 books by the thousand at the Fran- 
 bably agree with their auth 
 the value they set on those homely comforts to 
 which t! .tually limited by their 
 
 and enter into no jttrt of them so heart! 
 set forth their paramount and continual importance." 
 
 the Germans 
 lunderers and tl 
 : who was controlling the 
 pul 'cd a vulgar sneer at p 
 
 the h may have been co 
 
 in the London drawing-rooms of the aristocratic U niga* 
 
 i a theory as the < latcd against the German 
 
 authors canir ' grace fr- -.\ho had 
 
 pla: 'iat was then the most 
 
 > had at the < .In- 
 
 vatcd lit a little oatmeal, 1 ' and the furnishing of 
 
 >e house 
 
 I he recluv 
 
Poverty and Poetic Power. 123 
 
 puttoch, reared in the same hardy school as Burns, made 
 short work of the snobbish theory that authors who live in 
 mean houses, and are unfamiliar with " the polish of 
 drawing-rooms," must therefore think and write in a mean 
 style. He might have insinuated a contrast between Ger- 
 man poets then living who were the familiar companions 
 of princes, and the British poets who deemed themselves in 
 Elysium if permitted once a brief accidental interview with 
 the poorest creature who ever wore the name of king; 
 but he took higher ground. " Is it, then, so certain," 
 he asks, in one of the noblest passages he ever wrote, 
 " that taste and riches are indissolubly connected ? 
 That truth of feeling must ever be preceded by weight 
 of purse, and the eyes be dim for universal and eternal 
 Beauty, till they have long rested on gilt walls and costly 
 furniture ? To the great body of mankind this were 
 heavy news ; for, of the thousand, scarcely one is rich, 
 or connected with the rich ; nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine have always been poor, and must always be so. 
 We take the liberty. of questioning the whole postulate. 
 We think that, for acquiring true poetic taste, riches, or 
 association with the rich, are distinctly among the minor 
 requisites ; that, in fact, they have little or no concern 
 with the matter. Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry 
 connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to 
 truth and nobleness ; a sense to discern, and a heart 
 to love and reverence, all beauty, order, goodness, where- 
 soever or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they 
 are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condi- 
 tion, not any given external rank or situation, but a 
 finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into 
 keenness and justness of vision ; above all, kindled into 
 
1 2 \ Thomas Car 
 
 love and generous admiration. Is culture of this sort 
 found e\ among the higher ranks ? We believe 
 
 r oceeds less from without than within, in every rank. 
 The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the int. 
 loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the 
 eye of the poor ; but from the eye of the vain, the cor- 
 rupted and self-seeking, be he poor or rich. In old ages, 
 
 humble Minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing 
 but his harp and his own free soul, had intimations of 
 those glories, while to the proud Baron in his barbaric 
 halls they were unknown. Nor is there still any aristo- 
 
 mopoly of judgment more than of 
 as to that Science of Negation, which is taught peculiarly 
 
 :;un of professed elegance, we confess we hold it 
 rather cheap. It is a necessary, but decidedly a sub- 
 ordinate accomplishment ; nay, if it be rated as the 
 highest, it becomes a ruinous vice. . Are the 
 
 fineness and truth of sense manifested by the artist 
 found, in most instances, to be proportionate to 
 wealth and of acquaintance? Are they found 
 
 to have any perceptible relation cither with the one or the 
 oth not ^Vhose tast 
 
 ance, is truer and fuu-r than Claude Lorraine's? 
 was not he a poor colour-grinder ; outwardly the meanest 
 of i \Vhere, again, we i k, lay Shak- 
 
 speare's rent roll .it generous peer took him by 
 
 the hand and unfolded to him the 'open secret ' <>f the 
 Universe; teaching him that this was beautiful, and that 
 not so? Was he not a peasai h, and by fortune 
 
 something lower; and wa^ .ought much, even in 
 
 the height of his reputation, that Southampton allowed 
 
 i equal patronage with the zanies, juggK >ear- 
 
Poetic Culture and Social Rank. 125 
 
 wards of the time? Yet compare his taste, even as it 
 respects the negative side of things ; for, in regard to the 
 positive and far higher side, it admits no comparison with 
 any other mortal's, compare it, for instance, with the 
 taste of Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men 
 of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself. 
 Tried even by the nice, fastidious and in great part false 
 and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it 
 with the two parties; with the gay triumphant men of 
 fashion, and the poor vagrant linkboy ? Does the latter 
 sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the 
 former do? For one line, for one word, which some 
 Chesterfield might wish blotted from the first, are there 
 not in the others whole pages and scenes which, with 
 palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest night? 
 This too, observe, respects not their genius, but their 
 culture; not their appropriation of beauties, but their 
 rejection of deformities, by supposition the grand and 
 peculiar result of high breeding ! Surely, in such in- 
 stances, even that humble supposition is ill borne out. 
 The truth of the matter seems to be, that with the culture 
 of a genuine poet, thinker or other artist, the influence of 
 rank has no exclusive or even special concern. For men 
 of action, for senators, public speakers, political writers, 
 the case may be different ; but of such we speak not at 
 present. Neither do we speak of imitators, and the 
 crowd of mediocre men, to whom fashionable life some- 
 times gives an external inoffensiveness, often compensated 
 by a frigid malignity of character. We speak of men 
 who, from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements 
 of their everyday existence, are to form themselves into 
 harmony and wisdom, and show forth the same wisdom 
 
126 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 to others that exist along with them. To such a man, 
 high life, a.s it is called, \till be a province of human life, 
 
 nothing more. He will study to deal with it as he 
 deals with all forms of mortal being ; to do it justice, 
 and to draw instruction from it : but his light will come 
 from a loftier region, or he wanders forever in darkness ; 
 dwindles into a man of vtn d* toditi, or attains at best to 
 be a Walpole or a Caylus. Still less can we think that 
 is to be viewed as me will 
 
 be regulated by his pay. 'Sufficiently ; : r from 
 
 within, he has need of little from without :' food and 
 raiment, and an unviolated home, will he given him in 
 the rudcM l.uul ; and with these, while the kind ear: 
 round him, and the everlasting heaven b over him, the 
 le more t \\ give. Is he poor? So 
 
 also were Homer and Socrates ; so was Samuel Johnson ; 
 so was I itort Shall we reproach him with 
 
 poverty, and infer that, because he is poor, ! 
 likewise be worthless? God forbid that the time should 
 ever come when he too shall esteem riches the synor 
 of good! The spirit of Mammon has a wide 
 but it cannot, and must not, be worshipped in the Holy 
 of Holies. Nay, does not the heart of every genuine 
 disciple of 1; ever mean his sphere, ins: 
 
 .is applicable either to himself 
 
 or another? 1 : >t rather true, as IVAlcmbcrt has 
 said, that for every man of letters, who deserves that 
 name, the motto and the watchword will be FREEDOM, 
 
 i H, and even this same POVERTY ; that if he fear the 
 last, the two first can never be made sure 
 
 ness of md the depth of 
 
 their thought must have constituted the sole reason 
 
The Demolition of Jeffrey. 127 
 
 the acceptance of articles containing such unwelcome 
 revolutionary sentiments as these. They came like fresh 
 moorland breezes, laden with the fragrance of the heather, 
 into the close, sickly atmosphere of the crowded city. 
 But, though his editorial tact was sufficient to cause 
 Jeffrey not to reject contributions so valuable, the accept- 
 ance must have been made with a wry face ; and we have 
 sufficient grounds for concluding that he failed to perceive, 
 at least with the clearness that is possible to any reader 
 to-day, how completely they annihilated very much that he 
 himself had written. Could he have foreseen the terrible 
 force of the contrast that would be visible in after days, 
 between the shallow conventionalities that flowed from 
 his own pen, and the strong original criticism of this new 
 writer who was actually at the pains to ascertain, and who 
 had the courage to speak, the truth, it is scarcely possible 
 that his virtue would have sufficed to grant admission to 
 the essays of Carlyle. If he had even half-realised their 
 real nature and potentiality, in reference to his own reputa- 
 tion, his acceptance of them would have been an act of 
 self-denying heroism without a parallel in the history of 
 "able editors." There is, however, abundant evidence 
 to show that he did not apprehend their significance. It 
 has been said, and not without some reason, that Jeffrey 
 "had the courage to recant notions when he came to 
 think them wrong, and the moral principle always to 
 prefer truth to consistency ; " but, on the other hand, we 
 have the mournful assurance from his own pen, that he 
 did not comprehend Carlyle, and that, so far as he did 
 perceive his drift, he did not like him. " I fear Carlyle 
 will not do," he writes to Macvey Napier, his successor in 
 the editorship in 1832, "that is, if you do not take the 
 
128 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 
 liberties and pains with him that I did, by striking out 
 freely, and writing in occasionally. The misfortune 
 tha: obstinate, and, I am afraid, very < 
 
 d" And then the ex-dictator adds, with a < 
 passionate sigh, "It is a grea i man of 
 
 genius and industry, and with the capacity of bang an 
 elegant an * impressive writer." Four years had elapsed 
 sin< ' >f the essay on German Literal.* 
 
 and all that this " prince of critics" can see, even no^ 
 
 shaggy recluse of Nithsdale is a " person of talents, 19 
 
 seems t< he capacity " of becoming by-and-by, 
 
 if lie would only listen to the good advice of Jeffrey and 
 Macvey Napier, "an elegant and impressive writer I" A 
 worse turn for Jeffrey's memory was surely never done, 
 than \v! unfortunate priva- was 
 
 tcrrcd from the repositories of his successor; but we 
 at least may forgive the indiscretion, since it makes the 
 
 >le case of Carlyle's connection with Jeffrey so dear to 
 us to-day. 
 
 third contribution of " the very obstinate and very 
 conceited 11 c best article on its parti- 
 
 cular subject that has yet been written, and the noblest 
 on h the Edinburgh Review has ever 
 
 been honoured to convey to the world The Essay on 
 Burns appeared in the 96th number, in 1828. The < 
 trast between this and Jeffrey's own article on the same 
 subject, published in 1809, is, if possible, cvi 
 striking than that between the Goethe article of the 
 editor and the essay in which one of its raai: 
 was so effectively disposed of. The general scope 
 tendency of Jeffrey's < ritifjuc is indicated by the passage 
 in which he says "that the leading vice in the char. 
 
Jeffrey's Essay on Burns. 129 
 
 of Burns, and the cardinal deformity indeed of all his 
 productions " including, we suppose, the Cottar's Satur- 
 day Night, Tarn tf Shanter, the Vision, and all his lyrics 
 " is his contempt for prudence, decency, and regularity, 
 and his admiration of thoughtlessness, oddity and vehe- 
 ment sensibility ; that he represents himself as a hair- 
 brained sentimental soul, constantly carried away by fine 
 fancies and visions of love and philanthropy, and born to 
 confound and despise the cold-blooded sons of prudence 
 and sobriety ; that he is perpetually making a parade of 
 his thoughtlessness, inflammability, and imprudence, and 
 talking with much complacency and exultation of the 
 offence he has occasioned to the sober and correct part 
 of mankind ; that this odious slang infects almost all his 
 prose and a very great proportion of his poetry, and 
 communicates to both a character of immorality at once 
 contemptible and hateful ; and that his apology is to be 
 found in the original lowness of his situation, and the 
 slightness of his acquaintance with the world. "* Even 
 Henry Mackenzie, writing in 1786, had formed a truer 
 conception of the new-fledged poet than this, and had 
 been enlightened enough to rebut the charge that 
 Burns's works breathed a spirit of libertinism and irreli- 
 
 * It is impossible not to recall the words of the poet describing 
 how he "listened, and trembled, in blasting anticipation, at the 
 idea of the degrading epithets that malice or misrepresentation 
 might affix to his name," and how he foresaw the " future hackney 
 scribblers, who, with the heavy malice of savage stupidity, " would 
 exultingly assert " that Burns, notwithstanding the fanfaronade of 
 independence to be found in his works, was quite destitute of 
 resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, dwindled 
 into a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificant 
 existence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the lowest of man 
 kind." 
 
 I 
 
ijo Thomas Car 
 
 gior shall not look upon his 1L 
 
 the Loun&r, " as the enemy of religion, of whiih in 
 several places he eipreiscs the justest sentiments, though 
 she has sometimes been a little unguarded in 
 of hypocrisy." The tide of calumny, swollen by an eci 
 whose motives were pure and kindly, but whose judgir 
 was not strong enough to resist the prevail : lice 
 
 and do justice to the Bard ; still timber increased by 
 such articles as those of Walter Scon in the Quart 
 and Jeffrey in the Edinburgh^ was at length turned back 
 by Cariyle, who gave the interpretation of Burns th.. 
 now accepted universally by all persons of good sense 
 '. good feeling. The continued acceptance of that 
 rpretation b placed beyond doubt, not because of 
 charming style in which the essay is written, but because its 
 force and beauty as a composition are, if possible, surpassed 
 substance. It has been urged by some 
 of Carlyle's censors that he seems to think that real 
 knowledge of mankind b to be derived rather from the 
 imagination than from the understanding, and some one 
 has said that he seldom gives a complete view of 
 man whom he attempts to pourtray that hb portraits, 
 it j>owerful, are partial, and powerful just because t 
 are partial We cannot imagine a mote groundless com- 
 plaint ; and how very wide of the mark y be dis- 
 covered by a critical s hb essay on Burns. Read 
 all that has been written by and about the poet, spend 
 years in gath s respecting hi- yet 
 ling province, recall every fragment of 
 you may have derived from that now nearly 
 austed company of witnesses who personally knew 
 man ; and after you have done all this, you will be 
 
The Conversion of Jeffrey. 131 
 
 constrained to say that no more complete and just, as 
 well as striking, delineation of the Ploughman-Bard is 
 possible than we find in Carlyle's Essay on nis great 
 countryman. It has been the theme of universal praise, 
 and of the thousands of essays, articles, and orations 
 that have been written since 1828 on the same theme, it 
 may perhaps be said without injustice to them or the 
 truth, that not one of them has escaped reproducing, 
 either consciously or unconsciously, the ideas and the 
 feelings that were first uttered in his matchless Essay by 
 Carlyle. 
 
 Even Jeffrey himself was no exception to the rule. 
 He felt, if he did not expressly own, the constraining 
 power of the essay. Nearly ten years after it was pub- 
 lished, we find him sitting down at Craigcrook to study 
 anew the life and works of Burns. The result is such 
 as might have been expected if he had never seen them 
 before. He tells Empson that he has read them " not 
 without many tears." " What touches me most," he 
 continues, " is the pitiable poverty in which that gifted 
 being (and his noble-minded father) passed his early 
 days the painful frugality to which their innocence was 
 doomed, and the thought, how small a share of the 
 useless luxuries in which we (such comparatively poor 
 creatures) indulge, would have sufficed to shed joy and 
 cheerfulness in their dwellings, and perhaps to have 
 saved that glorious spirit from the trials and tempta- 
 tions under which he fell so prematurely. Oh my dear 
 Empson, there must be something terribly wrong in the 
 present arrangement of the universe, when those things 
 can happen, and be thought natural. I could lie down 
 in the dirt, and cry and grovel there, I think, for a 
 
132 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 iry, to save such a soul as Burns from the 
 ^, and the contamination, and the degradation w! 
 these same arrangements imposed upon him ; and I 
 fancy that if I could but have known him in my pro- 
 state of wealth and influence, In saved, and 
 
 <1 preserved him, even to the prest 
 He would not have been so old as my brother judge, 
 Lord Glenlee, or Lord Lynedoch, or a dozen others that 
 one meets daily in society. And what a creature, not 
 only in genius, but in nobleness of character, pot 
 ost, if right models had been put gently before 1 
 
 think of his posit: > feeling for the 
 
 ideal pen ths and Coleridgcs ; com- 
 
 hie, flattered, very spoiled, capricious, idle beings, fan- 
 tasti ued because they cannot make an t 
 
 tour to I' buy casts and cameos ; and what poor, 
 
 peddling, whining drivellers in comparison with hi. 
 re is not a word here about that " very obstinate " and 
 
 v from Craigenputtoch ; but of 
 
 thing we may rest assured th son 
 
 have been written if the lessons taught by 
 
 :ito the heart of Jeff: 
 Less worthy was the attempt of the old editor of the 
 
 some of the credit due to 
 writer of the einxh-making essay. In < 
 written in 1838, but not published till after his di 
 Charles Sumner says : ** I observed to I>ord Jeffrey, : 
 I thought Carlyle had changed his style very mi: 
 he \\rou rns. 'Not at all,' said I 
 
 will tell you why that is difiV i his other articles 
 
 / altered it.' n Soi * have professed to fin 
 
 : : nation of what they had always thoi: 
 
How he Interpreted Burns. 133 
 
 but which none of them, so far as we are aware, had ever 
 expressed till Simmer's letter was printed. A careful 
 study of Carlyle's writings does not support the theory. 
 Jeffrey may possibly have cut something out; we are 
 certain he put nothing of his own in. There is not a 
 sentence in the essay that does not bear, both as to its 
 form and substance, the signet mark of Carlyle ; more- 
 over, he was not the man ever to put his name to any bit 
 of work, however microscopic, that was not his own. 
 
 By no writer has the essay been more accurately 
 described than by one of Burns's later and most com- 
 petent editors, Alexander Smith, who declares that it 
 " stands almost alone in our literature as a masterpiece 
 of full and correct delineation." The same authority 
 gives as the main reason why it occupies this position of 
 pre-eminence, the fact that Carlyle has succeeded so 
 admirably in detecting the unconscious personal reference 
 in the literary productions of the Scottish Bard. He 
 " makes this line or the other a transparent window of 
 insight, through which he obtains the closest glimpses of 
 his subject." One other reason is doubtless to be found 
 in the fact that the essayist's own birth and upbringing 
 were, in so many respects, akin to those of the poet ; so 
 that personal experience quickened the sympathy, with- 
 out which there can be no true comprehension of the 
 life of our fellow-man, and thus provided windows of 
 insight, even more transparent than the poet's verse. 
 
CHAPTER 
 .ESIS OF "SARTOR RESARTUS" ITS REJECTION BY 
 
 IMF. i'i ! WELCOME K1CA EV 
 
 SON TO CRAIGENPUTTOCH HIS COLUXjt 
 
 \M1H CARLYLE A SKETCH 
 NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS DEPAK 
 
 MOl-VI AIN HOME HI H A LET 
 
 OF J K MRSCA 
 
 letter to Professor Wilson, Carlyle had said, I 
 have some thoughts of beginning to proph ear, 
 
 if I pr<- the best style, could one strike 
 
 into it rightly." The articles he was writing for the 
 
 > represc: 
 sehres an amount of literary activity that n/ 
 
 c sufficed, without any further prophetic husincv 
 engross the years in which they were produced ; but 
 there is reason to believe that simultaneously he had 
 been, from the very outset of his settlement at Craigen- 
 puttoch, occupied also with Sartor Rtsartus. True, he- 
 has himself told us that it was 
 
 among the mourr 1831 ;" but we appre- 
 
 hend this meant no more than that it was ! in 
 
 that year. It is said to have beer. n more than 
 
 once, which we can very well believe ; and several yean 
 
 c, according to some authorities) were at least partially 
 devoted to its composition. These stories about 
 
Sartor Standing at the Gate. 135 
 
 genesis are quite likely to have more than a grain of truth 
 in them ; thus much is certain, that its mental production 
 was not the work of one solitary year, even though that 
 year had been crushed full of the most strenuous toil 
 directed exclusively to the one end. It must ever be 
 regarded as one of the most striking facts in the literary 
 annals of this nation, that Sartor, completed in 1831, 
 could not get itself published in book form, at least in its 
 native country, till 1838 ! Its birth, therefore, as a 
 printed book, was even a more protracted agony than its 
 completion in a written form a circumstance that must 
 appear all the more remarkable to any one who is at the 
 trouble to look back and note what kind of literature was 
 being poured from the English press during those seven 
 years in which this new candidate was kept standing at 
 the gate. Yet we need scarcely marvel that the publish- 
 ers looked askance at a work that bore no resemblance 
 to any printed book extant at that hour in the English 
 tongue. It would probably be a hard task to get a 
 publisher to-day for anything so completely novel in style 
 and substance ; and the chances against the acceptance 
 of such a violent departure from the conventional stand- 
 ards were still greater fifty years ago. In that very year 
 which saw Sartor ready for the press, the Edinburgh 
 Review had felt itself compelled to give Carlyle notice to 
 quit, the essay entitled Characteristics, richly laden with 
 the loftiest thought expressed in the noblest language,* 
 
 * "It is a grand article, fuller of high thought than anything or 
 the like sort ever seen in the Edinburgh Review before or since, and 
 more closely packed with Carlylese ideas, or the germs of them, 
 than any of its author's pages elsewhere germs subsequently to be 
 seen full-blown in Sartor Resartus and his later books, and expanded 
 
Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 ng proved too m ble digestion. If an 
 
 arti< !c in the Sarforvcin frightened Professor v > 
 to do him justice, must be called a very good frien: 
 Carlyle, how much greater was the ex. the pub- 
 
 lishers who declined to undertake the ta.sk of Li 
 anentiri ha the sain .inic 
 
 '.an the v. nost 
 
 daring i>oet were taken by an author who yet had cast 
 work in the mould of prose; added to which flaj: 
 departure from the standards of the still ? 
 
 the sk-. 
 
 in the o<: Ncemed vulgar in 
 
 tlieir exceeding homeliness. It was a nev. .cnt 
 
 i langua, 
 the tnnn w.i . the pro' 
 
 who had discernment enough to perceive that 
 .uthor nv :nan of genius. There would be a 
 
 B sanity f the writer haunt .ind 
 
 oft! rity 
 
 I-) doubt whatever that ! >e mad Not 
 
 without told 
 
 how the pul>! with that 
 
 grammar wli 
 of, 'declined the . -lid ultimately get 
 
 upon the nodosities and angularities of the mature oaken Carlytoe 
 
 itcd lamentation that (he 
 
 4 Godlike has v. hat a Byron finds occupa- 
 
 tion in 'cursing 
 
 m digging well.s 
 
 gives 
 
 > has roamed all day over a silenced battle-neld, fo- 
 rcast of its dead mother "Tkt Stot$m<i* 
 /<i/vr, Feb. 7, 1 88 1. 
 
"Tasters" and Publishers on Sartor. 137 
 
 it out in book form, in 1838, he appended a grimly- 
 humorous set of " Testimonies of Authors," which many 
 readers no doubt regarded as purely fictitious ; but when 
 reprinting these, thirty years afterwards, he prefixed a 
 note, wherein it was intimated, inter alia, that they actu- 
 ally contained "some straggle of real documents." The 
 first " taster " cited admits, as Jeffrey had done in the 
 Edinburgh a few years before, that the editor of Sartor is 
 " a person of talent," but complains of his " want of 
 tact," and also of the heaviness of his wit, which "reminds 
 one of the German Baron who took to leaping on tables, 
 and answered that he was learning to be lively." He 
 wants to know if the work is really a translation. The 
 leading bookseller, echoing his taster, thinks that " only 
 a little more tact is required " by the writer to produce 
 "a popular as well as an able work." We cannot say 
 whether the newspaper criticism is authentic; but the 
 Sun points out a sentence in the work " which may be 
 read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intel- 
 ligible either way ; indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so 
 working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the 
 fairest chance of getting at its meaning." The author 
 had most likely sent the manuscript to Edinburgh, in the 
 first instance ; and the gossips have always concluded 
 that there must have been at least a couple of rejections 
 there a notion sure to be inferred from the circumstance 
 that two of his three previous books (we do not count 
 Legendre) had been issued by two separate firms in the 
 Scottish capital. Then the wider field of London was next 
 tried, with no better result, till at length the disgusted 
 author "gave up the notion of hawking his little manuscript 
 book about any further." So he wrote in 1832,- adding 
 
i3 8 >"*s Carlylt. 
 
 that for a long time it had lain quiet in a drawer waiting 
 for a bet I he bookselling trade seems on the 
 
 edge of diss he force of puffing can no fur 
 
 go, yet bankruptcy clamours at every door ; sad fate ! to 
 
 the Devil, and ^et no wages even from him! i 
 poor Bookselling Guild, I often predict to myself, will ere 
 long be found unfit for the strange pan it now play 
 our Kuropean world; and will give place to new and 
 
 ier arrangements, of whirh the coming shadows are 
 already becoming viv It helps ate the 
 
 rigo judgment against the rejectors of the volume 
 
 to learn that such a man as John Stuart Mill, who was by 
 time a personal friend of Carlyle's, at first shared 
 their inrajKicity to appreciate the book. "Even at the 
 time when en: c < ominenced," says Mr Mill, 
 
 I was not sufficiently advanced in my new modes of 
 thought to appreciate him fully ; a proof of that 
 
 on his showing me the manuscript of Sartor Jttsartus, 
 best and greatest work, which he had j hed, 
 
 1 made little of it ; though when it came out about two 
 years afterwards in /''r.ixr'sMqmiu I read it with enthu- 
 siast: the keenest <! 
 
 ublication in that periodical during 1833-34 is said 
 to have been effected through th help of Dr 
 
 John Carl) K the I Hike of Buccleuch. 1 
 
 rea <orded to it by the readers of "Regina' 
 
 :iot be described as favourable ; and the painful fact 
 was frankly acknowledged in a paragraph tagged on at 
 the do- re can the present editor, with an am- 
 
 brosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, by down 
 
 pea Well docs he know, if human testimony be 
 
 h aught, that to innumcVa! h readers likewise, 
 
Welcome by America. 139 
 
 this is a satisfying consummation ; that innumerable 
 British readers consider him, during those current months, 
 but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought 
 and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a 
 certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, 
 as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper 
 Powers ? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, 
 with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind 
 farewell." The publisher, it is said, had reported to the 
 author that the magazine was getting into trouble because 
 of the articles. The most of its readers seemed to be 
 pretty much of the same mind as the indignant nobleman 
 who inquired of Mr Fraser when " that stupid series of 
 articles by the crazy tailor " were to end, as his patience 
 was all but exhausted. Only two subscribers had written 
 in a contrary sense, the one a Roman Catholic priest at 
 Cork, the other "a Mr Emerson, in America;" about 
 the latter of whom Carlyle was to learn more presently. 
 
 The truth is that America was much quicker than his 
 own country in recognising the genius of Carlyle. Youth 
 is more open-minded and receptive than old age ; and 
 not seldom the Republic of the West has been before the 
 mother country in true perception of the merit of new 
 authors as they have arisen in the Old Home. Beyond 
 the sea the fugitive works of De Quincey and Charles 
 Lamb were collected with pious care, from our own 
 magazines and newspapers, years before they could be 
 obtained in England; and other cases might easily be 
 named in which the daughter's loving appreciation has 
 rebuked the mother's cold neglect. Less under the sway 
 of the conventional standards which he set at defiance, 
 the students of the United States were not so apt as 
 
140 
 
 those of Britain to resent the audacities of the e<: 
 of Teufv . s in the Edinb;< 
 
 and oth< 
 
 the most co: .ise, on the c> 
 
 of the sea. In the Xorth American Rwiew, so 
 v as 1835, we find its pr .:nd edit< 
 
 and' . that their air 
 
 a large space in the lit- 
 and in t: 1836, Sartor received at Bo- 
 
 d it as yet in En .'.ded by 
 
 the. :\e review of ; NiiperintL- 
 
 ossage through th young man of kin< 
 
 h \Vald< i, who wrote an intro- 
 
 tion for it, the book commanded an immediate jx>pula 
 and the name <>t ( as familiar all over the 
 
 world before it had l>e(ome much known in England. 
 " \\'e have lu-ard it insinuated," wrote Mr Everett in 
 1835, "that in ion: 
 
 \enture to assure him : 
 
 should he carry lie will meet 
 
 with a Pressing invitations had been 
 
 to him by I.: -ncl other lead :s to pay 
 
 their countr; 1 he actually had a min 
 
 accept was, indeed, on the ; the 
 
 nt to a certain m 
 :;.t volume of ' we shall 
 
 ;, and the opjwrt 
 or t iant mood rather never came back a^ 
 
 , cc jually to his ama/e- 
 . there tame ; 
 
 of his first gi >rm of a book, ar 
 
 it a kindly 1 
 
First Money for the "French Revolution}' 141 
 
 sum in payment of the right to publish Sartor in America. 
 Often, in conversation, would he revert to that incident ; 
 and in the note appended in 1868 to the edition of 
 Sartor in his collected works, after relating how the 
 " questionable little book " could not for more than 
 seven years appear as a volume in England, "and had 
 at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle 
 out, bit by bit, in some courageous magazine that 
 offered," he adds that the first English edition, of 1838, 
 had had " the way opened " for it by " an American or 
 two American."* It ought to be added that the Mis- 
 cellaneous Essays were also issued in book form in the 
 United States before they had assumed that shape in 
 England ; nor will it be out of place to insert here a note 
 of the fact that the first money Carlyle ever received for 
 his French Revolution also came from America. In 
 1838, conversing with Charles Sumner, he said, " the 
 strangest thing in the history of literature was his recent 
 receipt of fifty pounds from America, on account of his 
 French Revolution, which never yielded him a farthing 
 in Europe, and probably never would." In this expecta- 
 tion Mr Carlyle was happily disappointed, for the work 
 named must have been a source of large pecuniary 
 profit during the more than forty years that intervened 
 
 * When it at last came out as a book in England, it was stated on 
 the title-page to have been "reprinted for friends." One of the 
 most interesting letters in. the Correspondence of Macvey Napier is 
 one written by Carlyle in 1831, where, speaking of Sartor , he says : 
 " All manner of perplexities have occurred in the publication of my 
 poor book, which perplexities I could only cut asunder, not un- 
 loose ; so the MS., like an unhappy ghost, still lingers on the 
 wrong side of Styx ; the Charon of Albemarle Street durst not risk 
 it in his sutilis cymba, so it leaped ashore again." 
 
i4- Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 between its publication an in oral st 
 
 merits heard from his own lips at a later date than 
 Simmer's visit, it would apjxrar that he received fur 
 payments from America for the French R< 
 had got as much as ^130 from that source when the 
 k. had "brought him no pent It 
 
 was always a source of regret to his American fri< 
 tha: r carried out his early purpose to vi>it the 
 
 icd States; a cw of some things written t>y 
 
 him in later years, we are, perhaps, justified in the con- 
 hat the loss was more his own than theirs. At 
 time we heard it stated by \ 
 
 1 been cu: with him about their country, 
 
 that he had hinted the existence of some plan in 
 mind that would prove the reality of the gratitii' 
 he <-her y recognition he had received 
 
 .shen he was still struggling against tlu 
 / of the old country.* 
 
 On his seventy-second birthday, Mr Emerson was visited by a 
 company of Mi . Carlylc having been spoken of 
 
 ursc of conversation as no 
 
 the great " Let me tell you, 
 
 He is a \cry pod friend of the 
 
 Americans, an<i h is not to be 
 
 lie until he dies and his will appears. But some of oar 
 
 hest women ha his acquaintance, lie is a man 
 
 <>f the world. He docs not U-l-.n^ : '-..it country only. 
 
 is broad gt : he throws alxmt him, 
 
 \\% are as good as can U*. I think 
 
 le really sympathises with us. I remember his scoMing 
 
 lc in the war, afterwards. I have been in con* 
 
 slant correspon : since 1833 or '54. I think. I 
 
 a hundre ; i mning along that period, and 
 
 his sympathies are with us. Mr Norton, of Cambridge, has 
 
Emerson's Pilgrimage to CraigenputtocJi. 143 
 
 The last, as it is also the fullest and most valuable, 
 account of the life at Craigenputtoch is supplied by the 
 American friend who wrote the introduction for the 
 Boston edition of Sartor. Emerson's first visit to Britain 
 was made forty-seven years ago, when he was in his thirtieth 
 year, and he has himself put upon record two facts 
 first, that he had then felt himself greatly indebted to the 
 men of Edinburgh, Scott, Jeffrey, Playfair, and De 
 Quincey ; and, secondly, that he came to Scotland chiefly 
 that he might see the faces of three or four writers, of 
 whom Carlyle and De Quincey were two. Landing in 
 the Thames, he was soon on the Clyde, penetrated into 
 the Highlands, and on his way back he took the coach 
 from Glasgow to Dumfries, whence he proceeded to the 
 farm of Craigenputtoch to deliver a letter to its Laird 
 which he had brought with him all the way from Rome, 
 and which was probably from the Laird's brother, Dr 
 Aitken Carlyle. That first meeting of the two sages took 
 place in the August of 1833. How the American visitor 
 walked and talked with Carlyle the latter at one moment 
 expatiating on the talent shown by his pig, and the next 
 discoursing on the immortality of the soul Emerson has 
 himself related in a pleasant chapter of one of his books, 
 published many years afterwards : " 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 man of the world, 
 
 Mr Carlyle, and I have insisted that he should write them down to 
 be saved. There is great wit in his talk. He despises eveiy kind 
 of meanness, every kind of selfishness and of petty sin." 
 
'44 
 
 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 unknown and exiled on thit hill-fir 
 
 if hnldir 
 
 gaunt, wi fflike brow, self-possessed, and hole 
 
 . powers of corm m easy c 
 
 mand ; clinging northern accent with 
 
 anecdote, and with a streamin 
 hun. ! <ated everything he looked upon. 
 
 fully exalting the familiar objects, put the < 
 
 c with his Urs an 
 
 iurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what 
 
 predestined to be a th 
 
 objects and lonely the man, ' not a person to speak t 
 
 within sixteen miles except the mil. ore;' S 
 
 oks iru . 
 
 es of his own for 
 
 "He had na 
 ^course. 
 
 Win 
 
 ' 
 He ! 
 
 all the matters familiar 
 
 \\\v 
 
 to possibility of life was the 
 piece of road near by that ma: 
 
 the t. 
 
 ed Nei 
 
 it how t 
 .ill that, 
 
 plttM 
 
 a good deal al>< 
 
 ' 
 ountr 
 
On Books , Literature, and Pauperism. 145 
 
 that in it a man can have meat for his labour. He had 
 read in Stewart's book, that when he 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 disparaged Socrates ; and, when pressed, persisted in 
 making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splen- 
 did bridge from the old world to the new. His own 
 reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was 
 one of his first books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robert- 
 son'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 told him 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 booksellers 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 
 wandering 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.' 
 
Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 e went out to walk over long hills, and looV 
 :cl, then without his cap, and down into Words- 
 ountry. There we sat down, and talked of the 
 immortality of the soul. It was not Carlylc's fault that 
 we talked on that topic, for he had the natural di 
 
 nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, 
 and did not like to place himself where no step can be 
 taken. Hut he was honest a: .ind cogn 
 
 the subtle links that bind ages togeth >aw how 
 
 every event affects all the future. * Cl on the 
 
 tree; that built Dunscore kirk* yond< brought 
 
 that Kirk, in Burns'sday, there laboured a Mr i 
 aCal rrgyman of the old school, whose j hing 
 
 was in inverse ratio and dismal antithesis to his private benevolence. 
 was a blameless and good man ; but .c made Burns, 
 
 not unaccustomed to the 'blaspheme an octa\ 
 
 and to cry out, 'From Mich conceptions of my Creator, good 
 
 minister seems 
 ws had got up 
 
 a library in the pai ,n the ace c place u 
 
 the Rev. Mr Knkj./r; ,. ,.. Sinclair's great 
 
 . 
 
 was y supprev hing Borns's N 
 
 dale home, says : " A few miles from 
 west, Ke> tching towards the 1 
 
 ullage of Dun- lold 
 
 nigged range ; in th ..f a 
 
 wood, stands the monument crectc<! 
 he prototyi 
 
 the property and once t- 
 !c a gloomy place, we ar 
 
 around and melancholy moon ig vUiiors, who are 
 
 also readers, of the pine-shadowed and moated casUe where Ma 1 
 describes his dark ! ping his state, and 
 
 convening at the portals with those doomed ones who came to con- 
 sult l ..i!c all hell through his half-shut visor, as 
 
 KolU the rkh thunder of hit awful **' 
 in that 
 
The New Pilgrim's Progress. 147 
 
 you and me together. Time has only a relative exist- 
 ence.' 
 
 " 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 friend, the best mind he 
 knew, whom London had well served." 
 
 Though it had been so long utterly rejected at the out- 
 set by the publishers in the country where it was written, 
 and for some years after its appearance failed to make an 
 adequate impression save on the minds of a select few, 
 the book that will henceforth be associated with Carlyle's 
 sojourn among the grim hills of Nithsdale gradually grew 
 in favour with the English public, and came at last to be 
 regarded as the greatest work of its author, perhaps the 
 greatest of our century. The estimation in which it was 
 held by the man who wrote it was silently but impres- 
 sively indicated when, placing it out of its chronological 
 order, he made it the first volume of his collected works. 
 "Written in star fire and immortal tears," it has been 
 called by some the Pilgrim's Progress of the nineteenth 
 century ; and as a picture ofrthe conflict of the human 
 soul battling with the haggard spirits of Doubt and Fear, 
 
 and who remained his vassals and victims for ever more." Pilgrims 
 to this shrine of Sartor may, perhaps, be reminded of the saying of 
 Carlyle, that the enthusiastic minister of Dundee "painted with a 
 big brush. " 
 
148 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 hese present themselves to so many under the changed 
 conditions of modern society, it has certainly never been 
 equalled To classify this book would be no easy t. 
 As we have already seen, it is a real, though veiled, 
 autobiography much more authentic, indeed, tha 
 large number of the works that expressly call them- 
 
 i name; but it is also a romance, still n 
 an exposition of its author's mystic philosophy, and, most 
 of all, a poem, though not written in verse. It gives 
 expression to the ultimate thought of Carlyle on those 
 great problems of Religion and Life that he endeavoi 
 to work out for himself in the shadow of the mount.: 
 whither he had turned in quest of a faith that should t 
 the place of the one he had lost As he made that sear* h 
 with the carnestnets of a nature that wa 
 
 nsity, and recorded the results in a form that unites 
 the tenderness and melody of a Scottish ballad with a 
 
 cly grandeur of style that not one of the great 
 masters of Kn-lish prose has ever surpassed, we can 
 hardly wonder that the book should often lay hold 
 of other spirits, especially such as are in a state of un- 
 
 f<r<e that makes their opening of ; 
 the beginning of a new epoch in their lives. How many 
 on both sides of the sea will find a record of their 
 own experience in the words of the blind Methodist 
 In, Mill. um, when he f^la'm^ "Ah, Thomas 
 Car swer for, in sending a 
 
 upon the fog-banks such raw and inexperienced boys as 
 I was w ^hty genius found me out M 
 
 a day of miserable doubt and night of mm 
 ness have you caused me. N 1 owe you 
 
 more and love you better than any author of the t 
 
The Practical Uses of Sartor. 149 
 
 Sartor Resartus first fell in my way while I was living 
 in Washington, and I much question if Christopher 
 Columbus was more transported by the discovery of 
 America, than I was in entering the new realm which 
 this book opened to me. Everything was novel, huge, 
 grotesque, or sublime : I must have read it twenty times 
 over, until I had it all by heart. It became a sort of 
 touch-stone with me. If a man had read Sartor, and 
 enjoyed it, I was his friend; if not, we were strangers. 
 I was as familiar with the everlasting f nay, J the centre of 
 indifference, and the everlasting 'yea,' as with the side- walk 
 in front of my house. From Herr Teufelsdrockh I took 
 the Teutonic fever, which came nigh costing me so dear." 
 And happily the number is not few of those who can 
 add, in the words of the same writer, " Years have passed 
 since he led me forth to the dance of ghosts, and I have 
 learned to read him with a less feverish enthusiasm ; but, 
 I believe, with a more genuine appreciation of his rare and 
 extraordinary powers. He did me harm, but he has 
 helped me to far more good. With all his defects, to me 
 he stands first among the men of this generation."* 
 Even those for whom the spiritual guidance of John 
 Bunyan still suffices, gladly acknowledge the help they 
 have received from Teufelsdrockh, as to the conduct of 
 their lives the high practical value of the lessons he 
 communicates on domestic and social duty, on culture 
 and work, on fidelity to conscience, courage, and morality; 
 and, if they lament the vagueness of his teaching in its 
 reference to Christianity, they are yet consoled by the 
 all-pervading purity of its tone as well as by the sublime 
 
 * Ten Years oj Preacher- Life, by William Henry Milburn. 1859. 
 
150 Thomas Cartylc. 
 
 hopefulness that illumines the page when, emerging 
 No" which threatened to engulph 
 
 the iter he had lost the faith of his fathers, he 
 
 attained at length to the " everlasting Yea" of heroic 
 is able to say, "The universe is not 
 dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; but 
 God-like, and my Fatlu 
 
 To all who ha without adverse prepossessions, 
 
 and in the sympathetic spirit that is essential to the 
 
 nderstanding of any author, Sartor seems im 
 ably to have proved one of the most wholesomely 
 stimulating of books. Both Maurice and 1 
 
 dged that it did them a greater service than any 
 id ; and the latter sought to 
 
 ounding its fundaim 
 
 lessons in more than one of hi . more especially in 
 
 / and Alton Locke. The saintly Thomas Krskine of 
 I.inlathen, who was wont warmly to recommend 
 
 us nutriment in i f 
 
 iritual nature of \.. In the 
 
 year of its publi< a book, we find him writing to 
 
 I thought you would like Surf, r the chapter 
 
 on natu: > a won- 
 
 rd good "to be 
 broi ntact with a mind like Tarlyle's, so un 
 
 ional in all matters;" and 1 c <!o the 
 
 OS a real belief in the invisible, which in 
 
 is a great 
 
 He sees and condemns tl. 1 baseness of living in 
 
 r j>art of our nature instead of living in the 
 higher." Similar u minent < 
 
 teachers of our time mi-ht easily l>e multiplied. 
 
Sartor and the Working-Men. 151 
 
 these men have regarded its author with veneration as a 
 prophet recalling the Church to a sense of forgotten 
 truths, and awakening it from a false reliance on the 
 merely mechanical use of dogma, there have been other 
 classes of readers who have admired this wonderful book 
 for its philosophy, or its humour, or its literary style ; and 
 it is worthy of note that in many of the busy hives of 
 manufacturing industry it has been long a favourite with 
 the more thoughtful working-men. These have been 
 attracted not merely by the keen sympathy which it 
 exhibits with the " toil-worn craftsman," but by the 
 realism which pervades it from the first page to the last, 
 by its suggestions of radical reform in the organisation 
 of society, and the fraternal spirit of pity for the weak and 
 wayward which distinguishes it so pleasantly from some 
 of the author's later works. 
 
 That there has been, on the other hand, not a little 
 adverse criticism of the work, both on account of its 
 teaching and style, must be hereafter shewn ; but, mean- 
 while, we hasten to close that portion of the record which 
 relates to the epoch of Carlyle's life that is associated 
 with the lonely farm house in which Sartor was born. 
 How fruitful that period had been, the reader will per- 
 ceive who duly weighs, besides numbering, the essays 
 written at Craigenputtoch, not only for the periodicals 
 already named, but also for the Westminster Review, to 
 which Carlyle had begun contributing in 1831. Life had 
 been varied, of course, during the performance of all this 
 work by occasional visits to Edinburgh, and latterly to 
 London in search of a publisher for Sartor. In 1832-33 
 the little household transferred itself to Edinburgh for 
 the winter, and entered into the mild dissipations of the 
 
Thomas Carfyk. 
 
 season, attending pleasant literary parties at Cap' 
 Han and also, amongst others, at the houst 
 
 'Villiam, his brother. It was at the hospitable board 
 of the metaphysical baronet that Carlylc, one evening, 
 astonished both host and company by resolutely refusing 
 to take more for his supper than one potato ; that being 
 
 . epoch," as Carlyle himself explains, " when excellent 
 potatoes yet were." He was present at the Royal Society 
 on the evening w! Villiam read his famous paper 
 
 on Phrenology, which so completely demolished George 
 Combe, and, as we might expect, Carlyle was a cordially 
 approving auditor. In the April of 1833, lnc Carlyles 
 returned to their moorland home. But the time was 
 
 reaching when, for the reasons stated to Emerson, 
 they must hid that home farewell. Carlyle was now 
 contemplating work that could not possibly be achieved 
 >litude. He who would wi >ry of the Fn 
 
 uist have the best libraries within easy reach. 
 uc about that, on one of the opening days 
 of July 1834, Carlyle was writing to Sir William Hami 
 telling him that " the hope of ever seeing him at Craigen- 
 puttoch had now vanished into the infinite limb 
 
 le was dated from the writer's London home 
 The two friends, the greatest Scottish thinkers of t 
 generation, never met again, though mementoes occasion- 
 ally passed between them oo the ever-silent whin 
 stones of Nithsdalc to the mud rattling pavements of 
 Piccadilly, there is but a step; 99 and now that step had 
 been tak are on the threshold of a fresh epoch 
 in the career of the patient toiler, who at length is 
 recognised on all hands as one of the foremost of the 
 
 rary leaders, if not the first, of his time. 
 
His Ministrations to his Kindred. 153 
 
 One point, however, remains to be noted before we 
 close the record of the life in Nithsdale. To Carlyle, 
 we cannot doubt, one of the sweetest features of that life 
 had been the opportunity it furnished of enjoying, from 
 time to time, the society of his venerated parents, and of 
 ministering, personally, to their happiness as their years 
 declined. When the time came for his departure to 
 distant scenes, he could not repeat what he had said in 
 his letter to Goethe six years before. The mother, 
 indeed, still lived to love him ; but his good old father 
 was gone. We have already seen how bitterly Carlyle 
 lamented his absence from home at the time his father 
 died, and how the occasion of that absence a visit to 
 London in the futile hunt after a publisher for Sartor 
 added a new sting to the mortifying early story of that 
 book ; a sting which was still felt acutely by him, even 
 after he had himself become an old man. There can be 
 no doubt, however, that in the years immediately preced- 
 ing the death of his father, the son's residence in the 
 vicinity had often brought them together, to their great 
 mutual comfort. With all his relatives, indeed, even in 
 later years, and down to the time of his death, he preserved 
 a close and most affectionate intimacy ; and of the way 
 in which he entered into their affairs, sympathising keenly 
 with them in all their trials, and doing his best to further 
 their interests, we have one affecting and profoundly im- 
 pressive token before us. The first visitation of our 
 country by cholera has made 1832 one of the best re- 
 membered dates in the domestic history of the nineteenth 
 century; and nowhere did that year make a more indelible 
 impression than in the town of Dumfries. So severely 
 was it stricken, beyond any town in the kingdom in 
 
154 Thomas Car 
 
 proportion to its size, that many communities, in ! 
 
 as well as Scotland, joined in a subscrij -1st it in 
 
 iless foe. As many as forty-four deaths 
 
 took ! he scenes witnessed in the 
 
 burgh, according to the local historian, were such as it had 
 
 sed before, thougl the olden times 
 
 it been desolated by the fiends of \\ 
 
 to the horror, when the disease was at the worst, for days a 
 
 ick clouds hung over the town, like a funeral 
 
 pall let down from he. -inmate that it was doomed 
 
 to utter destruction ; and in an atmosphere so dense that 
 
 they couUl hardly breathe, the people gave themselves 
 
 iij> for lost. It was on the 4th of October that this 
 
 gha lera cloud " was dispersed at last by a 
 
 us thunderstorm. sounded M liV 
 
 of judgment from th it though the atmosp! 
 
 change sent a ray of hope into 1 at had been 
 
 oath the grief and terror of the previous 
 weeks, it was the middle of November before the fell 
 destroyer stayed his hand. Upwards of a thous. 
 persons had been attacked; and nearly seven hun 
 
 hed in that l>ur/ uburb on the 
 
 .* It w. 
 dreadful -i that Carlyle wrote the follov. 
 
 u in the devoted 
 
 nd even those who may be most disposed to 
 views of the author <: 
 ' 
 
 r a detailed ace - visitation, the sever 
 
 arose n of the (<>wn f and its previous local 
 
 ct of all sanitary law, see the History oftk* B*rgk *f D*; 
 :lliam M'Dowall. 1872. 
 
A Letter of the Cholera Year. 155 
 
 practical piety, of a faith capable of sustaining the soul 
 under the severest of earthly trials, as may well excite 
 their admiration, if not their envy also, and at least 
 mitigate the rigour of their censure. The letter was 
 addressed to "Mr John Aitken, mason, Friars' Vennel, 
 
 Dumfries :" 
 
 " Craigenputtoch, i6th October, 1832. 
 
 " My Dear Uncle, Judge if I am anxious to hear 
 from you ! Except the silence of the Newspapers I have 
 no evidence that you are still spared. The Disease, I see, 
 has been in your street : in Shaw's ; in James Aitken's ; 
 it has killed your friend Thomson : who knows what 
 farther was its appointed work ! You I strive to figure 
 in the meanwhile, as looking at it, in the universal terror, 
 with some calmness, as knowing and practically believ- 
 ing that your days and the days of those dear to you, 
 were now, as before and always, in the hand of God 
 only \from whom it is vain to fly ; towards whom lies the 
 only refuge of man. Death's thousand doors have ever 
 stood open ; this indeed is a wide one, yet it leads no 
 further than they all lead. 
 
 " Our Boy was in the town a fortnight ago (for I 
 believe, by experience, the infectious influence to be 
 trifling, and quite inscrutable to man ; therefore go and 
 send whithersoever I have business , in spite of cholera); 
 but I had forgot that he would not naturally see Shaw 
 or some of you, and gave him no letter; so got no 
 tidings. He will call on you to-morrow, and in any case 
 bring a verbal message. If you are too hurried to write 
 in time for him, send a letter next day ' to the care of 
 Mrs Welsh, Templand, Thornhill ; ' tell me only that 
 you are all spared alive ! 
 
1 5 ^ Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 c arc for Annandale after Thornhill, and may 
 possibly enough return by Dumfries. I do not parti- 
 cipate in the pan jr. We were dose beside cholera fur 
 many weeks in London : ' every ball has its b 
 
 I hear the disease is fast abating. It is likely 
 enough to come and go among us; to take uj 
 dwelling with us among our other maladies. The sooner 
 we grow to compose ourselves beside it the wiser 
 us. Man who has reconciled himself to dit need not go 
 distracted at the manner of his death. 
 
 " God make us all ready ; and be His time ours ! 
 No more to-night Ever your affectionate 
 
 "T. CARIV: 
 
 aiK-cl in this letter was the mother- 
 yle, who had retired in her widowhood 
 1 cropland. Her huslwnd had died at Haddington in 
 1819, and was succeeded in his practice there by a 
 younger brother, Dr Benjamin Welsh. Some of the 
 older inhabitants of Thornhill ami ty preserve a 
 
 Collection h, whom they describe as 
 
 an old 1 .ngular I. 1 a charming mar. 
 
 She -mpany of her daughter and sor 
 
 would come over from Craigenputtoch to pass a 
 few day-,, or even weeks, with 
 immort. atxnind in the ii. 
 
 surviving inhabitants, a professional gentleman, shewing 
 with pride a copy of Count 1 > Orgy's portrait of Car 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 HIS LONDON HOME THE CHARM OF CHELSEA ITS 
 
 jjj^Py^j^ MEMORIES SARTOR ON THE PLATFORM 
 
 '^^TCTURES ON GERMAN HISTORY, THE HISTORY OF 
 ^LITERATURE, REVOLUTIONS OF MODERN EUROPE, AND 
 
 HERO-WORSHIP SKETCHES OF HIS ORATORY BY 
 
 LEIGH HUNT, GOSSIP GRANT, CHARLES SUMNER, AND 
 MARGARET FULLER HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOL- 
 UTION HOW THE MS. OF THE SECOND VOLUME WAS 
 BURNED AND RE-WRITTEN. 
 
 WHEN Carlyle had got the length of speaking so freely, 
 especially to a visitor whom he had never seen before, of 
 his purpose to " flit " from Nithsdale, we may be sure 
 that his mind was made up on the subject ; so in a few 
 months from the date of that conversation with Emerson, 
 the hermit of Craigenputtoch had struck his tent and 
 moved away to pitch it in the great Babylon on the banks 
 of the Thames. There he took up his abode in the 
 house No. 5 (now re-numbered 24) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
 where he continued to reside down to the day of his death 
 that is, for the long space of forty-seven years. He 
 was now verging on forty, and, in spite of the longevity 
 of the race from which he sprang, it is scarcely possible 
 he could have anticipated that the larger half of his 
 earthly pilgrimage was yet to come, and that for well on 
 to half a century he would be a dweller in this new 
 Chelsea home. Nor is it easy to conceive of any spot 
 
158 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 in all the vast and varied expanse of the mighty 
 unless it be, perhaps, some of the pleasant hermitages 
 on the Northern heights about Hampstead or Hornsey 
 Rise, that would have better suited tlu 
 London who was destined soon to become known to i 
 
 h-speaking populations of the world a* "the 
 Sage of Chelsea."* Of course, this may be in s< 
 degree a fancy, springing from the fact that < 
 
 heard of him, it \ oy the a! 
 
 .'.iar sobriquet; yet, those who kn .n best, 
 
 will probably concur in th< that the site he chose 
 
 in that summer of 1834, and to which he ever afterwards 
 clung with all th< of his home-loving nature, was, 
 
 indeed, the mo>: ite on which he could have hit. 
 
 nook near the river, Kim; between Chelsea 
 
 pital and Cr. y associa- 
 
 tions of all the suburbs of London. Here dwelt the 
 author of Utopia, more than three hundred years ago, 
 
 * This title, almost oftencr applied to O any years in 
 
 newspapers than his proper name, routed the patriotic ire of 
 
 lessor Blaci \ one of his characteristic addresses, n 
 
 ing Cockney presumption, spoke of "that strong, deep-mouthed, 
 
 shaggy-breasted Titan, Thomas Carlyle, who, though now among 
 
 cms generally known as the 'Chclsc 
 
 a sturdy Dumfries peasant, and has no more to do with Chelsea than 
 I have to do with Cheltenham." If the sobriquet was incongruous 
 Carlylc's own . from Mat: 
 
 less habitually than .is. I (he 
 
 English. They ha .ison, perhaps, to resent (he phrasing 
 
 of the iril.uie to Carlyfe's memory which appeared the 
 A as apostrophised as 
 
 *l<r philosopher! old Chche* M,; 
 
 An-1 yet Scot must own that the su! 
 
 tkm raigcnjmttoch for Chelsea woi 
 
 Difficulty. 
 
The Literary Associations of Chelsea. 159 
 
 and here he held frequent discourse with his friend 
 Erasmus ; while from the days of Sir Thomas More, 
 down to our own, it has continued to be a favourite home 
 or haunt of eminent men of letters, in this respect sur- 
 passing any other spot that can be named in the British 
 islands. The great essayists of Queen Anne's time, Swift, 
 Addison, and Steele, were familiar figures in this suburb 
 when Carlyle's house was being built ; Boyle, Locke, and 
 Arbuthnot knew the region well; so did Goldsmith and the 
 Walpoles. Old Sir Hans Sloane has left his name linked 
 with the oldest square and the finest street in the district, 
 while his body lies within a stone's-throw of Carlyle's 
 house, in the little, closely-packed parish churchyard. 
 A noble plane tree and the remains of a fine Cedar of 
 Lebanon on the other side of Carlyle's house indicate the 
 site of the Botanic Gardens founded so long ago as 1674 
 by the Society of Apothecaries a little plot of ground 
 shut in on the landward side by lofty walls, within which 
 much good work has been, and still continues to be, 
 done. The tomb of Bolingbroke is to be seen across the 
 water in that ancient church of St Peter's from which 
 Battersea, by familiar processes of the vulgar tongue, 
 derives its name ; and close by the church, in the sleepy 
 little High Street, that might be a bit of a country town, 
 you see the schoolhouse that was founded by the great 
 statesman's grandfather, Sir Walter St John, with his 
 arms over the gateway and underneath them the inscrip- 
 tion, "Rather Deathe than false of Faythe." Quiet, 
 indeed we might almost say somnolent, picturesque in a 
 high degree, with charming outlooks on park and river, 
 Chelsea abounds in quaint, antique houses and dignified, 
 heart-moving associations, and, with the help of the river 
 
160 Thomas Carfyle. 
 
 and the trees and gardens, preserves even to the prc 
 hour a sort of fresh country air about it The 1 
 of the r< crraccs is cool and grateful to the an . 
 
 eye. There ig new and showy, no air of " r 
 
 ness and recency," to use a characteristic phrase of I >r 
 Chalmers's, about this suburb ; and each old house has a 
 i Lawrence Street, now peopled by very 
 poor folk, you may find traces of the mansion in * 
 Smollett found a retreat for himself, his wife, and his 
 little daughter, when he settled down as a literary 
 worker in London. This bore the name of Monmouth 
 House in those days; a detached villa, with a garden 
 extending behind it, of which Smollett has himself gi 
 a description in Humphry Clinktt 
 
 that it had been occupied in Queen Anne's 
 time by that Due hess of Buccleuch who became Duchess 
 outh l.y her alliance with the unfortunate son of 
 Charles II. It is a singular coin< .it the great 
 
 Scottish humourist of the eighteenth century should have 
 wriv nand Count Fathom and his History of J 
 
 / within a few yards of the very spot where the 
 greater Scottish Master of Humour in the nineteenth 
 cent all his greatest books except Sartor. No. 
 
 , Chcyne v :ml>le two-storeyed brick house, was 
 
 fence of the Shakespeare of English art in 
 latter years, chosen by the great painter that he in 
 give himself up to the enjoyment of the soft effects upon 
 the still reaches of the Thames (effects which probably 
 
 c part of the attraction that drew Carlyle thither too). 
 Turner added to the house a balcony that is still ex: 
 and it was in that house the forlorn old man mean 
 raMe, in spite of his greatness as a painter passed 
 
His Notable Neighbours in Chelsea. 161 
 
 away from earth. At No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Maclise, the 
 artist, lived and died. Leigh Hunt, who was attracted 
 thither by Carlyle's influence, resided in Upper Cheyne 
 Row, within a stone's-throw of Carlyle's house a con- 
 venient distance when duns or tax-collectors were press- 
 ing, and the generous Scot, after the manner of his 
 " canny" countrymen, had to come to the rescue. In 
 1877 good Mrs Senior died in Cheyne Walk, cut off in 
 the very midst of her devoted labours on behalf of the 
 prisoners and the poor ; and Frances Power Cobbe still 
 lives there, while for a little space towards the close of 
 her life it was also the home of that greatest of all the 
 female authors of England who was taken from us in the 
 same year as Carlyle. William Bell Scott, the brother of 
 David, true poet as well as artist, is an old resident in 
 the Walk ; and for a short period it could boast of 
 Whistler as a denizen, one memorial of his Chelsea days 
 that is not without interest, whatever its real value, being 
 a portrait by him of his most illustrious neighbour. Till 
 within a year or two of Carlyle's decease there lived in 
 the same King's Road region another octogenarian 
 writer, not without merit in his lines of playwright and 
 archaeologist, the vivacious Planche, who seemed as if he 
 would never grow old ; and nearer still to Carlyle's house, 
 though included in the Brompton district, is the residence 
 of his friend Mr Froude. 'The erudite Mrs Somerville 
 was once a resident in the same suburb ; and among the 
 poets who have their abode in the region at present we 
 may name Dante Rossetti, who resides at No. 16 Cheyne 
 Walk, and the Hon. Leicester Warren, son of Lord de 
 Tabley. That Carlyle was not insensible to the literary 
 associations of the region is proved by the letter which 
 
Thomas Car 
 
 - at the very outset of his London lit 
 Wi milton, in v. c house 
 
 pleases us mii< h . it is in the remnant of genuine old 
 Dutch looking Chelsea; looks out mainly into trees* 
 We ini^h: sec at half a mile's distan 
 
 tersea; could shoot a gun into .use 
 
 very time getting pulled down), where he wrote 
 Count Fathom. Don use still looks as 
 
 brisk as in Stcelc's time; N 
 
 bearing her name, has become a git pro- 
 
 in fine, Krasmus lodged with More in a spot 
 
 not five hundred yards from this. We are encompassed 
 
 a cloud of witnesses, good, bad, indiffer. 
 Serious changes, no doubt, came over the district, 
 more especially during the last decade ; but, if these 
 detracted from the charm that drew him thither, Car 
 
 ill residents had the slightest reason to c 
 since to a great c ecn, however un- 
 
 intentionally, their occasion. Hi- name imparted a f: 
 re to the ancient suburb, and this unquestion 
 led to increase the fa'. which it was vu 
 
 by new settlers in the mctroj>olis, more especially si 
 as belonged to the literary or the artistic class. AN 
 
 AT S>t poems and romances 
 
 retr lairds, was done by its sage 
 
 ea. So sensible of this were the local 
 vestrymen, that they spoke of him with as much re\ 
 as if he -een an a a man of gei. 
 
 actually, in re naming one of their finest squares, gav 
 that of Carlyle. :s house, though 
 
 ;h wall and having their entrance 
 adjoining street, a huge blcn k veilings, 
 
No. 5, Cheyne Row. 163 
 
 almost as grim as Milbank Prison, had been reared ; but 
 Cheyne Row, amid all the growth of the surrounding 
 population, still retained the monastic seclusion of a 
 cathedral close, and put one in mind of a sleepy back 
 street in some country town. For many years no small 
 proportion of the stray passengers who might be seen 
 sauntering on its pavement were people who had come, 
 often from distant parts of the country, or even from 
 the other side of the sea, to look at the dwelling- 
 place of Carlyle; and usually they had some difficulty 
 in realising that the narrow, three-storeyed, old-fashioned 
 little house marked No. 5 could indeed be the place 
 they had come so far to see. Its exceeding homeliness 
 was only relieved by the marks which proclaimed it 
 to be a relic of the reign of Anne; and those who 
 were privileged to pass within found that the interior 
 was not without a simple, old-world dignity often absent 
 in the more pretentious structures of the Victorian age, 
 while at the rear there was a large garden, with a fine 
 feeling of antiquity in its red brick walls. For many 
 years that garden was carefully tended by Mrs Carlyle, 
 who planted in it primroses from Scotland sent, as we 
 have seen, by Sir George Sinclair all the way from Thurso 
 which still bloom there as each spring comes round. 
 With all its seclusion and rusticity, the abode of Carlyle 
 was near the heart of the great city. You may walk from 
 it to Piccadilly or the Houses of Parliament in half an 
 hour, to South Kensington and Hyde Park in less ; and at 
 the Pier close by at Old Battersea Bridge, beloved of Dore 
 and Whistler, you find a brisk little steamer ready every 
 fifteen minutes to take you to the Temple or to London 
 Bridge. Carlyle knew what he was about when he chose 
 
164 Thoma$ CarlyU. 
 
 residence ; and we do not wonder that he remained 
 there through all the years of his London 111 one 
 
 time, indeed, he did think of removing, as we learn t 
 Miss Martineau, who, in her Autobiography, has left us 
 one of the roost pleasant glimpses of the Chelsea h< 
 She described it as " the house which Carl) le was per- 
 petually complaining of and threatening to leave, but where 
 still to be found" She never believed that the Carlyles 
 could flourish on that Chelsea clay, so close to the r 
 and earnestly entreated them to settle on a gravelly soil. 
 
 th Thomas did go, on a fine black horse, in scare' 
 a rural hermitage, " with three maps of Great Britain and 
 two of the World in his pocket, to explore the area within 
 twenty miles of London ;" but he came as he went ; the 
 lease, which had expired, was quietly renewed, and there, 
 
 of Miss Martincau's fears, he was spared to < 
 brate, within the old familiar walls, the eighty-fifth return 
 of the anniversary of his birth. 
 
 When he first came hither, the recluse of Craigen- 
 puttoch, now a mature man of nearly : 
 * hie fly formed among the mountains, felt it the strangest 
 transition ; " but one uses him as he remarked 
 
 in the letter written at the tim< .Villiam Hamilton. 
 
 ' \\ have broken up our old settlement, and, al 
 tumult enough, formed a new one here, under the most 
 opposite conditions. Our upholsterers, with all t 
 rubbish pings, are at length handsomely swept 
 
 out of doors. I have got my little txxA press set up, 
 table fixed firm in its place, and sit here awaiting v 
 time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make 
 
 seen us," One of the last things we should 1 
 looked for, from all that we have seen of the man, now 
 
Sartor on the Platform. 165 
 
 happened. No doubt, one of the traditions of his boy- 
 hood, picked up at Ecclefechan, speaks of a gift of 
 oratory he displayed on a certain occasion, much to the 
 astonishment of his father and all the neighbours; but 
 Sartor on the platform is an apparition for which we 
 are hardly prepared. In the summer of 1837, however, 
 he actually stood forth in that character by delivering a 
 series of six lectures on " German Literature " at Willis's 
 Rooms, the first being given on Tuesday, the 2nd of 
 May. The hall was crowded, yet the audience was 
 correctly described by the few newspapers that took notice 
 of the event as " select." Though his writings were 
 familiar to the leaders of thought, he was as yet hardly 
 known even by name to the great bulk of his countrymen. 
 At that date he would have secured a much more com- 
 posite audience at Boston or in any other New England 
 town. The daily newspapers of London were as much in 
 the dark about him as the mass of the people ; and it 
 is to the weekly Spectator, then edited by its founder 
 Rintoul, who began life as a printer's boy at Dundee, 
 and was therefore not ignorant of his great countryman, 
 that we must turn for an account of the impression made 
 by Carlyle as a lecturer. From the brief report given in 
 the number of that journal for May 6, it appears that the 
 opening lecture consisted of a history and character of 
 the Germans, whom he described as the only genuine 
 European people unmixed with strangers. The mere 
 fact of the great, open, fertile country they inhabit never 
 having been subdued, showed the masculine character of 
 the race ; indeed, the grand characteristic of the Teutonic 
 intellect was valour, by which he meant, not mere 
 animal courage, common to all races of men, but that 
 
1 66 CarlyU. 
 
 cool, dogged, onward, in< i>crseverance, ur 
 
 good and evil repute, un instances untowari 
 
 propitious, i alone great things ar -dy 
 
 icved A ual examples of this <ju.. 
 
 i Kepler . .->, Milton and 
 
 itional examples he gave t 
 1, the settlement of Aim the 
 
 the 
 colonisation of the new contiiu lie same 
 
 pie. As to the manner >: i re r, we are t 
 
 by the same journal that, wh; ,ent in t 
 
 :^m of orator), this minor vas far more 
 
 than tountcrhalaiuxil by Carlyle's "perfect master) 
 
 the originality . jier- 
 
 spicuit) anguage, his sim 
 
 qui irge and difficult 
 
 D was also expressed tha 
 
 person < or judgment could hear him wit' 
 
 feeling ' ,ian of -eniiis, deeply im! 
 
 with his great argum :i the uncouth gossip- 
 
 of the was 
 
 impressed by the strength of this strange new ora 
 
 //V Characters, u was well 
 abl- nd ; and though they s,iw in 
 
 :ig CXCCeii % ward, t! 
 
 fail to discern in the impress of a mind of 
 
 great originality . . is a fact 
 
 without sigr . as illustrating the compara 
 
 smallncss of tlu > Carlyle's fame was 
 
 yet own country, t in the 
 
 ^imincr and Spectator 
 
Leigh Hunfs Portrait of the Lecturer. 167 
 
 mention was made of the remaining lectures of the 
 series. It is stated that he had prepared ample and 
 careful notes of the first of his lectures, intending to 
 do little more than read them ; but he very soon found 
 himself stumbling among them, when, casting them 
 aside, he proceeded extemporaneously, without trouble, 
 and much to the delight of his audience. In the 
 following year, encouraged by the success of the ex- 
 perimental course, he gave a second series of lectures 
 at the Literary Institute, 17 Edward Street, Portman 
 Square ; his subject this time, " On the History of 
 Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Cul- 
 ture." The first was delivered on Monday, April 30, 
 and they were continued on the Monday and Friday 
 of each succeeding week. " He again extemporises," 
 wrote Leigh Hunt in the Examiner \ " he does not read. 
 We doubted, on hearing Monday's lecture, whether he 
 would ever attain, in this way, the fluency as well as the 
 depth for which he ranks among the celebrated talkers in 
 private ; but Friday's discourse relieved us. He strode 
 away like Ulysses himself, and had only to regret, in 
 common with his audience, the limits to which the 
 hour confined him. He touched, however, in his 
 usual masterly way, what may be called the mountain- 
 tops of his subject the principal men and themes. We 
 had Troy, Persia, and Alexander; Philip, c a managing, 
 diagrammatic man.' The Greeks in general, whose 
 character he compared with that of the French the 
 Greek religion, which he looks upon as originating in 
 the worship of heroes, 'ultimately shaped by allegory/ 
 with destiny at the back of it (a great dumb, black 
 divinity that had no pity on them, and they knew not 
 
1 68 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 \ it was, only that it pitied neither gods nor m 
 Prometheus, 4 a ort of personage,' who 'does 
 
 not knowingly howl over any trouble Homer, whose 
 .ility was undone by Wolff, in the year 1780, but 
 whose aggregate (the Homeric poets) are unequalled 
 any subsequent poets in the world /Kschylus, 'a giga 
 man,' not entirely civilised, whose poetry is 4 .u if the rocks 
 
 ic sea had begun to speak to us, and tell us what they 
 had been thinking of from eternity. 1 Sophocles, the 
 harmoniser, perhaps weakener of the musical strength 
 of A iripides, its degenerator into sec 
 
 consciousness." In the third lecture 
 
 '.escribed the earliest character of Rome as consisting 
 steady agricultural thrift, a quality which he 
 
 idered "the germ of all other virtues." Th 
 faculty in tl ns became turned into the steady 
 
 spirit of conquest, for which they soon grew famous, 
 all "by method "and "the spirit of the practical 
 ordinary objection to the early Romans, as thieves and 
 robbers, was very shallow. They were only a trih 
 a superior character, gradually, and of necessity, forcing 
 the consequences of their better knowledge upon the 
 people around them. The Carthaginians he considc 
 in comparison with the Romans, as a mere set ot 
 hur. hole 
 
 character. In the concluding lecture, a large portion of 
 u hich was autobiographical, he described the erTc 
 "Wert 1 ujK>n his own mind, and the antidote 
 
 he found to that morbid sentimentalism in the Other 
 writings of Goethe. He four. Helm Mcittcr 
 
 the Utters of several young persons who had wi 
 
 about how to attain happiness, were tossed 
 
The Proper End and Aim of Life. 169 
 
 aside unanswered, and this struck him as very strange, 
 seeing that a " recipe for happiness " was just the thing 
 that he wanted, and had at that time been anxiously 
 seeking. The seriousness of Goethe's character con- 
 vinced him that there was some deep meaning in this 
 which was worth inquiring after, and at last he began to 
 perceive that happiness was not the right thing to seek ; 
 that man has nothing to do with happiness, but with 
 the discharge of the work given him to do. The spiritual 
 perfection of his nature, a mystic and nameless aim, 
 which no man could explain, and it were better left 
 unexplained, though they were lonely, pitiable, who had 
 not glimpses of it, which heroic martyr spirits of old 
 times had called " the cross of Christ," and which Goethe 
 himself had called "the worship of sorrow;" this, he 
 began to apprehend, was the true object of search, and 
 the proper end and aim of life. It must ever be a source of 
 regret to the students of Carlyle's writings that, while the 
 reporters of the London press were, in that summer of 
 1838, busy preserving every word of the orations of men 
 who are already forgotten, this poor fragment is all that 
 has come down to us of a series of lectures which would 
 have thrown so much light on the story of Carlyle's 
 spiritual life. 
 
 " The Revolutions of Modern Europe " was the title of 
 a third course, also given at the Edward Street lecture- 
 hall, in 1839 ; and in a notice of the second lecture, 
 which had for its subject " Protestantism, Faith in the 
 Bible, Luther, Knox, and Gustavus Adolphus," Leigh 
 Hunt gave a characteristically vivid picture, both of the 
 lecturer and his audience ; the latter, as in the previous 
 seasons, including ladies as well as gentlemen. Hunt's 
 
i TO Thomas Cat 
 
 notice is specially worthy of mark, from th 
 description of the orator's style given in the first two 
 lines ; the epithets apply to everything Carlyle has written, 
 is an acci; tcterisati we think it 
 
 has never been surpassed, or even equalled " There is 
 frequi ss," wrote Hunt, "a ptiMJon 
 
 ate simpl speerh, in the language 
 
 of Mr ('. h gives startling effect to his sincerity, 
 
 evidently received by his audience, especially the 
 fashionable part of it (as one may know t reased 
 
 e), with a feeling that won 1 if it could, but 
 
 is fairly dashed into a submission, grateful for the 
 y and the ev he hard forte oft' 
 
 blows of truth. I in clcsrribin^ the Mie' wl. 
 
 Papal tyranny had be< dint of its own ol 
 
 disbelief and worldliness, he said it had come to be 'one 
 of the most melancholy spectacles which so august a 
 
 sovereign representative of a faith 
 possibly offer. None hut hy|>ocrites and formalist 
 
 uch an anomaly. Good 
 
 ;ct out of it. It ry kind r 
 
 that gets at the head of it. It 
 
 iuture a juggle, th nay be 
 
 a truth, I. I -rd, a thing 
 
 like / like these, 
 
 ithful words, and with the 
 i as if sotn 
 
 to life again, liberalised nan philosophy, and his 
 
 <>wn intense refle< nee) can be duly 
 
 appreciated or } . , manly CMC 
 
 \ the audience seems to km; : of a 
 
 hether it would 
 
The Lectures on Hero- Worship. 171 
 
 the pretty church-and-state bonnets seem to thrill through 
 all their ribbons." 
 
 In 1840, came what was unfortunately to prove the 
 last series of all the six lectures "On Heroes, Hero- 
 Worship, and the Heroic in History," which, alone of the 
 four courses, were published in a printed form, and 
 became more immediately popular than any of his 
 previous works. But they vexed the righteous soul of 
 poor James Grant,* a bitter defender of a narrow ortho- 
 doxy, who, for many years, united in his own person the 
 functions of editor of the newspaper organ of the pub- 
 licans and defender of the Christian Faith, on the 
 principle, we suppose, that religion has the same ally 
 which Burns claimed for freedom. This spiritual per- 
 sonage wanted to know if " any living man could point 
 to a single practical passage " in any of Carlyle's lectures, 
 and proclaimed Carlyle himself " but a phantasm " and 
 his teachings utterly valueless. Mr Grant was also 
 shocked by Carlyle's delivery. "In so far as his mere 
 manner is concerned, I can scarcely bestow on him a 
 word of commendation. There is something in his 
 manner which, if I may use a rather quaint term, must 
 seem very uncouth to London audiences of the most 
 respectable class, accustomed as they are to the polished 
 deportment which is usually exhibited in Willis's or the 
 Hanover Rooms. When he enters the room, and pro- 
 
 * This singular character, while editing a daily paper devoted to 
 the interests of the Pothouses of London, and which was, at the time 
 we speak of, the organ also of the Prize Ring, assured a friend that 
 he made it a point of conscience to write and publish one religious 
 book per annum, to preserve his soul from the secularising influence 
 of his professional life ! His favourite theme in these soul-saving 
 exercises was the " Glories of Heaven." 
 
i ; j Thomas 
 
 cccds to the sort of rostrum whence he delivers 
 
 practice 
 
 cases, generally received with applause ; hut he very 
 rarely takes any more notice of the mark of approbation 
 thus bestowed upon him, than if he were altogct 
 onsctous of it. And the same seeming want of respect 
 his audience, or, at any rate, the same disregard fur 
 what I believe he considers the troublesome forms of 
 !e at the commencem* ire. 
 
 Having ascended his desk, he gives a hearty rub to 
 hands, and plunges at once into his subject He reads 
 h, indeed, must be expected, considering 
 the topics which he undertakes to discuss. 
 is not prodigal of gesture with his arms or body ; but 
 there is something in his eye and countenance which 
 indicates great earnestness of purpose, and the n 
 intense inter subject You can almost fancy, in 
 
 some of his more enthusiastic and energetic monu 
 that you sec his inmost soul in his face. At times, 
 ind , he so unnatural!) .res, 
 
 as to give to his countenance a very unpleasant expres- 
 sion. On such occasions you would imagine that he was 
 
 ed with some violent paroxysms of \ 
 is one of the most ungraceful speakers I have 
 :d address a public assemblage of persons. In 
 to the awkwardness of his general manner, 
 kes moi: would of themselves be 
 
 sufficient to mar the agreeableness of his delis 
 
 > manner of speaking c ungrarefulne 
 
 v aggravated by his strong 
 Scotch accent. ie generality of So 
 
 h in no ordinary degree. 
 
His Speeech at the Freemason? Tavern. 173 
 
 Need I say, then, what it must be to an English ear ?" 
 The polished critic, though himself a Caledonian, could 
 not away with that Scotch accent. " I was present 
 some months ago, during the delivery of a speech by 
 Mr Carlyle at a meeting held in the Freemasons' Tavern, 
 for the purpose of forming a metropolitan library ; and 
 though that speech did not occupy in its delivery more 
 than five minutes, he made use of some of the most 
 extraordinary phraseology I ever heard employed by a 
 human being. He made use of the expression 'this 
 London,' which he pronounced " this Loondun,' four or 
 five times a phrase which grated grievously on the ears 
 even of those of Mr Carlyle's own countrymen who were 
 present, and which must have sounded doubly harsh in 
 the ears of an Englishman, considering the singularly 
 broad Scotch accent with which he spoke." What 
 probably increased the sensitiveness of Mr Grant's ear 
 was the circumstance, darkly hinted in the close of the 
 sketch, that " a good deal of uncertainty " prevailed as 
 to the lecturer's religious opinions in fact, it was 
 whispered that he was a Deist. However, we have to 
 thank this grotesque Scotch gossiper for being the instru- 
 ment of letting us know that the series on " Hero- 
 Worship " was the best-attended of all the four courses of 
 lectures, the audience numbering, on the average, three 
 hundred, these being, for the most part, persons of rank and 
 wealth, " as the number of carriages testified." It would 
 appear that Carlyle had only consented to lecture at the 
 urgent solicitation of many friends and admirers ; and, 
 though he stuck manfully to his bargain, when the last of 
 the four courses he undertook to deliver was completed, 
 be gave it to be clearly understood that never more 
 
Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 new the experiment Not that it had l> 
 urc, so far as cither he himself or 
 concerned the very reverse was the case; his put 
 speech more than realised the md 
 
 Audiences went on increasing every season. In . 
 years he was frequently !: ited to appear again on 
 
 came fro 
 
 as well as from provincial towns of Engk&r. 
 land, hut he stedfastly adhered : 
 never again to adopt that mode of utterance. As was 
 indicated in the tou< at the c lose 
 
 fma. he had found that there was " much i*ain 
 
 iss," though a little pleasure a! :hc 
 
 pain, no doubt, greatly prep< the 
 
 <ler of ( 
 Orthodov t>een sea! ing 
 
 l>owing a 
 
 and; r, there was assure 
 
 the most delic.no courtesy may we not also 
 modest and thankful spirit beautiful to contcm; 
 in the last words Carlyle utti 
 " \\ 
 
 IK tier (with th I <ed to break 
 
 .ml on it ; I k I have even managed 
 
 to (i I uar it up in the rudest 
 
 inai. : at all. ^ 
 
 i these abrupt utterances ut, isolated, un- 
 
 r.ince been put to the t: 
 ranee, patient candou favour and k 
 
 ness, .1 
 
 plis: , the txrautiful, the wise, soi 
 
 thir, is best in Engbi. istened patiently 
 
His Power as an Orator. 175 
 
 to my rude words. With many feelings, I heartily 
 thank you all ; and say, Good be with you all ! " As 
 we listen to the echo of that grateful valedictory strain, that 
 has come over the interval of forty years with its thrill as 
 of sweetest music unspent, we conclude that the critic 
 who pronounced the lecturer " uncouth " simply suc- 
 ceeded as so many censors do in describing himself. 
 
 No one who has heard Carlyle talk in private requires 
 to be told that he was a born orator. Nor can any such 
 have failed to wish at times that he had further prose- 
 cuted the lecturing experiment; the one reflection that 
 modifies this wish being that, if he had done so, we 
 might have been deprived of some of the great historical 
 works which he has left as a legacy to the ages. Habitu- 
 ating himself to public speaking, we can imagine Carlyle 
 swaying the multitude even as it was ruled by the voice of 
 John Knox ; and it might have saved Carlyle from some 
 mistakes if he had been brought face to face with his 
 scholars. On the other hand, we remember the fate that 
 overtook the friend of his youth, carried off his feet by 
 the intoxication of triumphs as an orator ; and we are 
 content with the decision that Sartor formed in 1840, 
 and from which he never swerved. Once in conversation 
 in Edinburgh with Alexander Scott, the Principal of 
 Owens College, who happened at the time to be lecturing 
 at the Philosophical Institution, he asked his old friend 
 how he liked the work, adding, " When I had to give 
 my lectures on Hero- Worship, I felt as if I were going to 
 be hanged." Though that was his feeling, it by no 
 means proves him to have been unfit for the business of 
 orator; since many of the greatest orators in the world 
 have shared this experience, and indeed have never sue- 
 
176 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 ceeded in shaking off the wretched sensation, down to 
 the very last It may be worth adding that amongst 
 those who heard Carlyle le< ture in 1838 was a brilliant 
 young lawyer from the United States, who subsequently 
 rose to distinction as Senator Sumner. " I heard Car- 
 lyle lecture the other day," writes he, in one of his 
 letters; "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 
 
 I may so write," In confirmation of the \ 
 we take of Carlyle as an orator, let us cite the evick 
 of a second American witness, Margaret Fuller OssolL 
 That remarkable woman did not hear him lecture, but 
 
 lege of listening to his conversation. 
 talk," she says, writing in 1846, " is an amazement and a 
 splendour scarcely to be faced with steady eyes, 
 does not converse, only harangues. It is the usual mis- 
 h marked men that they cannot allow other 
 minds room to breathe and show themselves in their 
 atmosphere, and thus miss ttu .lent and 
 
 tion greatest never cease to need from the 
 
 experience of the humblest Carlyle allows no one a 
 
 rice, but bears down all opposition, not only by 
 \vit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so 
 many luyuiuts, !>i:t ly a< tual physical Superiority, raising 
 his voice and rushing on his opponent with a torrcr 
 sounds. This is not in the least from unwillingness to 
 allow freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would 
 more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought But . 
 
 mind accustomed to follow out its own 
 impulse as the ha\\k its prey, and whit h knows not how 
 
His Eminent Auditors. 177 
 
 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 un- 
 tameable 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 power- 
 ful 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. He 
 sometimes stops a minute to laugh at 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 Ariels." 
 
 Among the eminent auditors of Carlyle, besides those 
 already named, who have left on record their impressions 
 of the lectures, was Bunsen, who describes them as "very 
 striking, rugged thoughts, not ready made up for any 
 political or religious system; thrown at people's heads, 
 by which most of his audience are sadly startled." 
 Robert Browning was also a charmed listener; and so 
 
 was Macready the actor at the lecture on " The Hero as 
 
 M 
 
1 78 Thomas Cat 
 
 het," of which he says that it was delivered with M a 
 
 eloquence that only complete convictio! 
 truth could give." The great tragedian adds that 
 was "charmed, carried away" by the lecturer. O 
 Robinson, of course, was there ; and of one lc< 
 particular we find him testifying that "it gave K 
 satisfaction, for it had uncommon thoughts, and was 
 livered with unusu.il anima' 
 
 Lecturing was not the only new channel into 
 
 talents of Carlyle were now directed under the stimu- 
 lating influence, and by the literary conveniences, of the 
 metropolis. Ix>ng tx Scotland, and in 
 
 sequence of a suggestion he fir s of 
 
 id been comv the i>ol: 
 
 religious conflict of the si mury as a 
 
 suitable for his |>cn ; but now the idea whii h had l>een 
 hauntin. 'id took a soraew 
 
 entered upon those wider studies 
 afterwards bore good fruit in the work that final!;. 
 
 egain the lost image of :ng, 
 
 \\h: o foully defaced, beyond all recognr 
 
 -cctarian bigtN .f tin- preceding times. '1 
 
 was a work that was }\ 
 
 cost him years of sir .ml K-forc it saw the 
 
 ligf other books of its author were Issi: 
 
 press. In 1837 appeared The French Revolution^ a 
 History notable, in : account, 
 
 it was the first book u ge the name 
 
 of Thomas Carlyle; wort cial mark, more* 
 
 because of its being also that straightway 
 
 that name sounding through every nook and corni 
 Great Britain. We : curiously divided 
 
The Critics and the "French Revolution" 179 
 
 both as to its merits and the sort of impression it made 
 at first upon the public mind. Some assert that it did 
 not prove at once successful. " The incongruities," says 
 one of these people, "monstrosities of style, and the 
 author's disdain for what an admirer called the ' feudali- 
 ties of literature ' struck all readers, and it was only some 
 of them who thought much more of the intrinsic beauty 
 of the jewel than of the strange setting." There is plenty 
 of evidence, however, to shew that the immediate popu- 
 larity of the book was great. One of the leading critics, 
 no doubt, expressed the opinion that " it would be 
 an interesting book were it well translated into English ; " 
 but sneers like this could not hinder it from being both 
 widely and keenly relished, not only on account of the 
 intensity of its feeling and its depth of thought, but also 
 for the graphic force and splendour of its style. It was 
 certainly hailed by all who possessed critical discern- 
 ment as the greatest historical poem in the language; 
 nor did they fail to recognise the fact that, while it was 
 a prose poem, it was at the same time characterised by 
 marvellous accuracy in its statement of facts. Landor 
 hailed it with enthusiasm as the best book published in 
 his time, and recognised the coming of a new literary 
 potentate. Sir William Hamilton got hold of the book 
 about three o'clock in the afternoon, and was so captivated 
 with it that he could not lay it aside until he had finished 
 the three volumes at four o'clock next morning. Charles 
 Dickens was in the habit of reading it through twice 
 every year ; and when he published his Tale of Two 
 Cities^ he said it had grown out of a hope to add some- 
 thing to the popular and picturesque means of under- 
 standing the terrible times of the French Revolution 
 
i8o Thomas Carfylc. 
 
 " though," he added, " no one can hope to add any- 
 thing to the philosophy of Mr i wonderful book." 
 Thomas Krskine of I.inlathen hastened to send a copy 
 to his friend Guuot ; and, il instigation, it 
 was read by Dr Macleod Campbell, who deemed it 
 valuable on account of its taking larger and dt 
 views of the events which it records than has been 
 generally taken, though he thought there was 
 to get over as to s : manner" in the book, 
 mark was delicious, coming from such a 
 source, Campbell having been t: worst st> 
 that ever wrote, even among Scottish theologians ; in 
 
 . the worthy man could not be said to have a s: 
 at all Miss Mil ford, of Our . uid been told by 
 
 Carlyle's that this was his great work. " Per- 
 
 haps it may lx-,'' said the little lady, " only I am quite 
 convinced that nobody who did not know the story 
 ould gain the slL .1 of it from Mr 
 
 Carlyle's three volumes, and that is not my theory of a 
 John Stuart Mill, like Landor and Sir Will. 
 
 (1 not agree with Miss Mitford, for he de- 
 at " no work of greater g< 
 
 ad been produced in this country f< 
 years ;" and in his Autobiography he points to the art 
 in which he expressed this opinion as one of two < 
 spicuous cast h good was done i>y his daring to 
 
 take a prompt initiate I believe," he says, "that 
 
 the early success and r of Carl nth 
 
 n were considerably accelerated !> what I wrote 
 about it in \\ I :on, 
 
 , all whose rules and 
 modes of judgment it set :KC, had time to ; 
 
The Burnt Manuscript. 181 
 
 occupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote 
 and published a review of the book, hailing it as one 
 of those productions of genius which are above all rules, 
 and are a law to themselves." Mill did not ascribe 
 the impression produced to any particular merit in his 
 Westminster article, for he did not think its execution 
 good; anybody, in a position to be read, who had 
 expressed the same opinion at the same precise time, 
 and had made any tolerable statement of the just 
 grounds for it, would, he thought, have produced the 
 same effect. How great that effect was may be judged 
 by the fact that the Times declared its readiness, " after 
 perusing the whole of this extraordinary work, to allow, 
 almost to their fullest extent, the high qualities with which 
 Mr Carlyle's idolaters endow him." Mr Mill certainly 
 owed the book a good turn, for, though he makes no 
 allusion to the circumstance, he had been the uninten- 
 tional instrument of delaying its publication and of adding 
 enormously to the toil involved in the production of the 
 book. At one time he had himself a half-formed intention 
 of writing a History of the French Revolution ; and, when 
 he learned that Carlyle was engaged on the subject, he 
 handed over his collections to him, which, he tells us, 
 proved " very useful." This naturally led to Mr Mill 
 obtaining the loan of the manuscript of the second 
 volume of Carlyle's work soon after it had been com- 
 pleted ; and he carried the treasure to Mrs Taylor, the 
 lady who subsequently became his wife. On retiring for 
 the night, with culpable heedlessness she left the manu- 
 script open on her study table, from which it accidentally 
 fell on to the floor ; and next morning an equally heed- 
 less domestic, imagining it to be waste paper, kindled the 
 
1 82 Thomas Cat 
 
 fire with it !* M those who knew the man may 
 
 fancy, was dreadfully mortified at this tragic mishap ; 
 
 :m took the a-idcnt, when he first heard of it, 
 with admirable composure, and actually succeeded by 
 and by in ri 
 
 memoiy so -,vas the form of the magnifi* 
 
 narrative in the mind of its author. Mrs Carl;. 
 ever, always >n that the r 
 
 me was not equal to the original; and, taking all 
 things into account, we can well 1 
 was right One version of the story, credited 
 Carlyle, says it was Mr Mill's cook who 
 the book. "She had occasion to bake some cakes, 
 
 ling the precious manuscript lying a! 
 con- iat she might turn it to good acco 
 
 act< jartly as fuel, and jKirtly as lining for the 
 
 cake tins, she used up the whol 
 
 been M r's cook who 
 
 . was not Mr Mi!l\. "Mr Carlyle never keeps 
 nt gets all 1 rials 
 
 ready, works till he has everything in his head, and t 
 
 out like silk from a reel i at the 
 
 on the great 
 .er happened bef< 
 
 Mr Mill. " Yes, though," answered Mr Carlyle, "NeNs 
 and his dog Didmond." "True, but Newton went 
 
 * A r> mishap befell De V "** D**f 
 
 ZdttMOM, printed at the cloe of the C**ftui**s t U bat a fragr 
 .; to the accidental destruction by fire of five or tix of 
 
 .'.r, ':;.;:.! . -. \ . : : . I . .. : : : 
 
 gration which arose from a spark of a candle falling unobserved 
 amongst a large pile of pipers in a bedroom, when De Quincey was 
 alone and reading. 
 
His Own Story of the Burnt Manuscript. 183 
 
 over it." "Well, well, we shall hardly be so bad as that," 
 said Carlyle ; and he soon afterwards began again at the 
 beginning, scarcely saying a word about his misfortune 
 at the time, but afterwards, as the work progressed, 
 grumbling about it often. Another, and a fuller, version 
 of the story is given by our American friend, Milburn, as 
 it was related to him by Carlyle himself; though the 
 report seems to us to have a little of the blind preacher 
 in it as well as the genuine article. "A sad story, 
 enough, sir; and one that always makes me shudder 
 to think of. I had finished the second volume, 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 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 [herself?], 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 
 ind 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. I was 
 as a man beside myself, for there was scarcely a page of 
 
1 84 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 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 r 
 weary day ; 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 
 
 : lay a great splash of mortar upon the last layer, and 
 then t>ri< k after brick would be deposited upon t 
 striking each with the butt of his trowel, as if to give it 
 his benediction and farewell ; and all the while sin. 
 
 ling 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 
 and everything rushing into the regions of the inn: 
 And then I bethought me, and I said to myself; ' Poor 
 fool thou, rather, that sitter here by the window whi: 
 and What if thy house of cards falls ? 
 
 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 ru 
 within its walls ; and mayhap true 
 
 faith shall be nursed by its hearthstone. Man ! symbol 
 of eternity imprisoned into time! it is not thy wo: 
 wliii h are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no 
 greater than the least, but only the spirit thou workt 
 which 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 
 
 \ation to what they call 'light literature.' I read 
 
He Seeks to Comfort Mr Mill. 185 
 
 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 royal navy and an 
 extraordinary ornament he must have been to it;* the 
 man that wrote stories about dogs that had their tails cut 
 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." 
 
 Already this incident of the burnt manuscript has 
 generated almost as many mythical contradictory tales as 
 if it had happened centuries ago. Since Carlyle's death 
 
 * This and other portions of Milburn's report are confirmed by 
 another writer, who, referring to a statement in Chambers 's Journal, 
 that Carlyle told Thomas Aird he considered the second effort better 
 than the first, says : " This is just the contrary of Carlyle 's account 
 made some four years since to the writer of this note. Sitting one 
 evening in the drawing room of the house in Great Cheyne Row, 
 myself and Carlyle were in conversation upon general subjects, when 
 I remarked, ' I have heard that the manuscript of the French Revol- 
 ution was destroyed before going to the printers. Was that so?' 
 Carlyle 'Ay, ay, it was so.' Myself 'What did you do under 
 the circumstances?' Carlyle 'For three days and nights I could 
 neither eat nor sleep, but was like a daft man.' Myself ' But what 
 did you do at last?' Carlyle 'Well, I just went away into the 
 country ;' and here he burst into a fit of loud laughter, and then said, 
 ' I did nothing for three months but read Marryat's novels ;' and 
 after a serious pause he remarked, ' I set to and wrote it all over 
 again ;' but in a melancholy tone concluded, ' I dinna think its the 
 same ; no, I dinna think it's the same.' " Mr R. H. Home says : 
 "Mr Mill was naturally in very great distress at the irreparable loss, 
 and Mr Carlyle was seen doing his utmost to console and comfort 
 him. Such nobility of heart and fortitude of mind deserve to be 
 recorded in all histories of English literature, and elsewhere." 
 
1 86 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 we have been told by leading journalists that it was the 
 mar volume 1 he disaster bx 
 
 that what became of it was never exactly known. 
 " Mr- 1 ording to the Titnts, "left it for some 
 
 her writing table; when wa >uld now: 
 
 be f >st probable i dis- 
 
 appearance was the suggestion that a servant had used 
 j>t to light the fire. Carl} < e set to 
 
 :n his notes the 1 
 
 swiftly finish-. -k, hut he always thought that the 
 
 -ft was the best" Another journal, labouring 
 under the same misconception as t 
 :ne that was destroyed, says: 
 passed the matter off with some soothing pleasantry, 
 sat down and re wrote the whole piece, page by page, 
 from memory. It was a terrible effort, but the struggle 
 brought its reward, for of the tl mes it has < 
 
 been no 1 none that can match with the 
 
 of feeling, concentration of thought, di- 
 nes- i compressed weal 
 des< authority has a quite diflfc 
 v to tell ; ;>erplexecl not without 
 SOb' n he finds the ol :ig a 
 goo refuses to yield. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ENTERS THE FIELD OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICS HIS 
 "CHARTISM" THE STUDENT'S VOCATION HIS "HERO- 
 WORSHIP" GODWIN'S IDEA "PAST AND PRESENT" 
 
 MAZZINI'S ESSAY CARLYLE's DEFENCE OF THE 
 
 EXILE SWINBURNE AND MACLEOD CAMPBELL THE 
 
 "LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS." 
 
 WITH the lectures and the collection of the multitudinous 
 materials for a history of the French Revolution, to say 
 nothing of the passing through the press of Sartor and 
 the arranging of the first English edition of the Miscel- 
 lanies a vigilant eye being meanwhile kept on Crom- 
 well and the great Puritan struggle it might be sup- 
 posed that these opening years at Chelsea were suf- 
 ficiently crowded with work. But before the close of 
 1839 we find the diligent worker, now at the very height 
 of his productive power, breaking ground in quite a new 
 direction by the publication of his little volume on 
 Chartism, which was issued from the press of James 
 Eraser. True, it may be described as a pamphlet 
 rather than a book ; and it partook of the character 
 of journalistic work, discussing the political questions of 
 the day. To very many of his warmest admirers, 
 brought bitter disappointment such as afterwards came 
 to his orthodox readers, in ecstacies over his Cromwell 
 when that apparently Calvinistic biography was sue- 
 
i88 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 ceeded by the Life <//>//// Sterling a bombshell wi. 
 suddenly turned their joy into mourning. Close 
 dents of Sartor had fancied that the man who wrote 
 it was a Radical Reformer; and so he was, doubtless! 
 but not in their sense On none of the movenv 
 in v, :., h they were then engaged with a view to heal 
 the diseases of the body politic, did he bestow the 
 slightest word of encouragement; on the contrary, he 
 spoke of them all their demands for an extended 
 frage, and other popular agitations with absolute 
 tempt Its assault upon the governing classes was too 
 strong to win for Chartism the approval of the Tory press ; 
 and the maxims laid down in it, distinctly favouring a 
 despotic rule as hard and mechanical as that of 
 Pharaohs, were condemned with entire unanimity by the 
 Liberal journals. Both parties were at one in regarding 
 the somewhat sulphurous. little book as totally unpr. 
 cal in its character. Now, however, while we detect in 
 those fiery pages the germs of a theory of government 
 that is antagonistic to our Constitutional system, even 
 the staunchest Radical must admit that two, if not three, 
 beneficial ideas of great practical importance were by that 
 book first forced upon the attention of tru two 
 
 at least of them taking root with ultimate production of 
 good fruit that we are happily enjoying, or about to 
 >y, today. The most prominent of these three ideas 
 came at once to be formulated under the title of 
 Condition of England Question, which doubtless had 
 origin in the indignant appeals of that pamphK 
 two fundamental remedies iost pressing national 
 
 wants on which Carlyle insisted were Universal Educa- 
 tion and General Emigration. 1 to see that his 
 
The Vocation of the Student. 189 
 
 advocacy of the former had not been in vain ; but his 
 notions with respect to the latter have not yet been per- 
 mitted to enter what is called, in the cant language of our 
 day, the domain of practical politics. The Adminstra- 
 tive Reform movement, unhappily abortive, and which still 
 remains to be taken up in right earnest, may also be said 
 to date its birth from Carlyle's first raid into the field 
 of politics. The " strong government " theory which he 
 then promulgated was afterwards illustrated and enforced 
 in forms that gave pain to all friends of Constitutional 
 freedom ; and a young poet of our time has attempted 
 in one of his prose essays to account for the obvious 
 degradation of Mr Carlyle's genius, as displayed in his 
 later manifestoes, by laying down the principle that no 
 student can enter the field of contemporary thought and 
 action without incurring such a loss of sanity and power. 
 It is the business of the student, this writer contends, to 
 stand apart from the turmoil of his time to seek, not 
 contemporary but eternal truth ; he is to regard the 
 heavens, not to delve in the earth : and unless he pre- 
 serves this attitude of isolation, we are told that he is 
 doomed to sink to the level of the bawling throng. We 
 may be allowed to question the validity of this theory of 
 the student's vocation when we look back to the days of 
 Milton, the deepest thinker of his time and one of our 
 two greatest poets, yet the right-hand man of Cromwell ; 
 when we see Dante not only going on embassies, but so 
 mixing himself with the affairs of Florence as to secure 
 banishment; when we call to mind the part played in 
 politics by John Knox, who, far from being weakened 
 by his active leadership in that stormy time, set a 
 mark on his nation that cannot be effaced till that nation 
 
1 90 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 has ceased to be. Emerson, whom this essayist admires 
 for his power of self-isolation, has certainly shown 
 want of sympathy with the public movements of his age 
 and nation. Though it has been the fashion to call him 
 "the Hermit of Concord," he has never been backv, 
 in throwing himself into contemporary conflicts. Indeed, 
 he has been more of a public man in Amcri* a than Car- 
 lyle ever was in England. In the controversy which 
 almost rent his country in twain he took a steady and 
 consistent jxart, so that when the strife came to a close, 
 and the \ictorv hud been won, his was the pen chosen to 
 write the \ i< toft hymn of praise for i ition : 
 
 ay ransom to the owi 
 he cup to the 1 
 
 Who is the owner? The slave is owner, 
 And always was. 1 
 
 With all deference to Mr Robert Buchanan, we are con- 
 
 med, by the experience of the dl as by 
 
 fundamental principles on which based, to de- 
 
 eptance of his postulate. :ident, to do 
 
 , must not withdraw 1 ::om that 
 
 conflict of which "only (Jod and the angels can be the 
 
 <>f our best men of thougl 
 
 this in..: are robust men of action. 
 
 The author of the Reign of / he not the : 
 
 orator in the House of Lords a; 
 administrator? Mr (, , like the 
 
 tie of our .plished scholars. uirt 
 
 Mill's too brief p: cna, and 
 
 ;it of it, i :io injury 
 
 on the powerful mind or on the calm temper of that p: 
 :er. It : in the con- 
 
 
The Lectures on Hero- Worship. 191 
 
 flicts of his own generation that we shall find the clue to 
 any weakness in the teachings of Carlyle ; and even those 
 who most lamented the attitude in which he often stood 
 in relation to the political questions of his day, cannot 
 think less of him for taking his share in the endeavours 
 to ameliorate the condition of his fellow-men. 
 
 A more favourable reception awaited his next book, 
 On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History, also 
 issued from Fraser's press, in 1841. It was simply a 
 report, with a few emendations and additions, of his 
 fourth course of lectures. Though Grant asserted that 
 they were closely read, the truth is, they were purely 
 extemporaneous delivered without a fragment of written 
 notes. The immediate popularity of the volume was 
 proved by its passing speedily through some half-dozen 
 editions ; nor was its success confined to England, for, 
 besides having a great run in the United States, it was soon 
 translated both into French and German. We suspect it 
 was the only one of his works, in addition to The French 
 Revolution, so honoured in France. This was at once the 
 fullest and clearest exposition that its author had yet pub- 
 lished of his social, political, and philosophical creed. The 
 ideas hastily indicated in the pamphlet on Chartism were 
 wrought out more carefully; and the central principle illus- 
 trated on every page was that hero-worship with which 
 Carlyle's name came to be most of all associated in the 
 minds of men. " Great men," he said, " are the fire pillars 
 in this dark pilgrimage of mankind ; they stand as heavenly 
 signs, ever-living witnesses of what has been, prophetic 
 tokens of what may still be, the revealed embodied possi- 
 bilities of human nature." Sentences like these had a 
 fair look and a subtle seductive power \ but the theory 
 
192 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 to which they gave such eloquent expression was one 
 that could not bear the critical inspection to which the 
 style might safely to subjected. It conducted to the 
 conclusion that the millions are a mere brute mass, and 
 that not in in a few select individuals of a 
 
 gifted sort alone is to be found the Spirit of God and all 
 hope of progress in the world. Tl 
 at first I iy many readers on whom the book laid hold 
 reason of its wealth of curious biographic lore, its vivid 
 portraits of great men, its generous ardour, and the 
 pass: 'ow of its rhetoric Of course, there is truth 
 
 in very much that Carlyle said about heroes; but the 
 exaggera :hat truth was sure to bring a heavy 
 
 its train. It led to a scorn of 
 
 Con 1 methods of government, and to a K 
 
 only in the " Heaven-born chief," in whom we also 
 f our instructor had only been good 
 enough to tell us of any machinery whereby to secure 
 him, apart from the ] !. in of counting heads, or " noses, " 
 phrased it. It led of necessity to 
 fs as tl the na: 
 
 condition of that the DXX : the 
 
 lessly weak are objects only of contempt and s* 
 for whom let th tt, no pity; that r 
 
 ng to be pin. 
 
 and ennobled by the means of freedom ; and that social 
 ordt mpatibK :inber of dis- 
 
 .ividual wills. The leading position in Carl 
 system, that intellect guarantees morality in other words, 
 tha n and good man are synon rms, and 
 
 re the only criminals is a the< 
 Godwin. 
 
Mazzinfs Criticism. 193 
 
 In 1843, fr m the press of Chapman & Hall, who were 
 henceforth his publishers to the end, there was issued 
 Past and Present, in which was given a graphic picture 
 of the manners and morals of the twelfth century, as 
 represented by Abbot Samson of St Edmundsbury ; this 
 picture being contrasted with the England of to-day, its 
 condition "one of the most ominous ever seen in the 
 world full of wealth in every kind, yet dying of inani- 
 tion." The author foresees, however, a happy haven, 
 "to which all revolutions are driving us that of hero- 
 kings, and a world not unheroic." The present state of 
 our own country is painted in the most sombre colours ; 
 we have an aristocracy either unable or unwilling to 
 govern, a parliament elected by bribery, which starts with 
 a lie in its mouth, and prefers profitless talk to indis- 
 pensable work, and Captains of Industry whose connec- 
 tion with their workmen is that of buccaniers and Choctaw 
 Indians. As a volume of historical etchings, executed 
 with loving patience, at once accurate in their details 
 and marvellously vivid, this work possesses imperishable 
 interest and value ; while, in its scathing exposure of the 
 rotten condition of modern society, there is only too 
 much truth. The book produced a profound impression 
 on many minds, nor is its force yet spent ; but one of the 
 most significant incidents connected with its publication 
 was the appearance of an essay "On the Genius and 
 Tendency of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle," in the 
 British and Foreign Review for October 1843. To an 
 Italian exile in England, curiously enough, must be 
 ascribed the merit of having been the first to detect 
 what is perhaps the cardinal defect in the writings of 
 Carlyle. Joseph Mazzini, the writer of the essay, pene- 
 
194 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 trated to the heart of many subjects with such a keen 
 discernment of what was unpcr y others that i. 
 
 when we turn to his collected Essays, we are amazed at 
 number of instances in which he anticipated the lag. 
 judgment of his fellows. There is an almost i 
 force in many of his speculations, and the accu 
 of his insight was equal to its swiftness. More truly 
 th.i; .it Chelsea, the apostle of I 
 
 was a Seer. In that elatx i-juc on < 
 
 written thirty-seven years ago, he hit the blot which no 
 ether student had then discovered At that date, and 
 even down to a much later period, the majority of 
 readers were in the habit of regarding Carlyle as a foe 
 to t nler of things which had so long 
 
 dominated Europe, and a friend to the Democr 
 movement that received its first grand impulse from 
 the Fremh ; i c author of Sartor was 
 
 vc. Small reverence had he 
 
 old-established institutions. His fierce attacks on 
 many of these gave immense satisfaction to thousa 
 in whose hearts the revolutionary spirit was stirring. 
 Herr TeiileNdroi kh they behekl a> they imagined, one 
 of the most vigorous allies who had ever < 
 on the good cause. And the Tories were of the same 
 
 ng in this strange new writer, n 
 :i enemy. The Stranger from Italy, how- 
 ever, did not clearly saw v 
 
 would have made the the two opposite 
 
 political camps change their estimate of C.i 
 could but have got a glimpse of the 
 
 disc be all the greater when we recall 
 
 circumstance that the two men were personal friends, 
 
Mrs Carlyle and Mazzim. 195 
 
 and that Carlyle, according to his wont, had been kind 
 to the poor exile. Gratitude and liking for the man who 
 was always glad to see and talk with him might have 
 tended, one would suppose, to make Mazzini as blind 
 to Carlyle's defect as all the English and American 
 critics, still more readers, then seemed to be. But it 
 was not so. Perhaps the vagaries of Carlyle's often 
 inconsequent and self-contradictory talk in private may 
 have assisted to put the Italian on his guard when 
 studying his writings. Perhaps the fact that he was 
 a foreigner made him more keenly watchful and dis- 
 criminative because less carried away by admiration 
 and wonder at the force and beauty of the rhetoric. 
 Or, more likely still, the perception that Carlyle, though 
 kind to him as a human being, had not the slight- 
 est faith in his mission or his plans, but looked out 
 with a sceptical, half-pitying, half-amused eye upon these, 
 may have bred distrust in the bosom of the patriot.* 
 
 * Not without significance is this paragraph in Margaret Fuller's 
 account, most admirable, we doubt not, for its fidelity to truth as 
 well as its vivacity, of her meetings with Carlyle. He and his wife 
 came to pass an evening with the American stranger. " Unluckily 
 Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I 
 enjoyed more than any one. He is a beauteous and pure music ; 
 also, he is a dear friend of Mrs Carlyle, but his being there gave the 
 conversation a turn to * progress' and ideal subjects, and Carlyle 
 was fluent in invectives on all our ' rose-water imbecilities. ' We 
 all felt distant from him ; and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to 
 remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs Carlyle said to me, ' These are 
 but opinions to Carlyle ; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and 
 helped to bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such objects, 
 it is a matter of life and death.' All Carlyle's talk that evening was 
 a defence of mere force, success the test of right ; if people would 
 not behave well, put collars round .their necks ; find a hero, and 
 let them be his slaves, &c. It was very Titanic, and anti-celestial. 
 I wish the last evening had been more melodious." One is almost 
 
196 Thomas Cat 
 
 Be these things as they may, this much is certain, that 
 Mazzini did not (all into the snare which had can 
 everybody else. * 4 Mr Carlyle," he wrote, " comprehends 
 only tru il, the true sense of the unity of 
 
 human race escapes him."* Here was a fundamental 
 source of weakness a root from v, was sun 
 
 spring; for the man who is destitute of faith in humanity 
 as a whole, can never be an efficient helper in the cause 
 of true progress. "He sympathises with all nu 
 tinues Mazzini, 44 l>ut it is with the separate life of t. 
 and not with their collective life. He readily look 
 every man as the repress the incai i a 
 
 manner, of an idea; he does not believe in 'a supreme 
 idea' represented progressively by the development of 
 mankind taken as a whole. He weaves and 
 
 unweaves his web like Penelope; he preaches by turns 
 life and nothingness; he wearies out the j>owers of 
 readers by continually carrying them from heaven to ! 
 from hell to heaven. Ardent, and almost menacing, 
 upon the ground of ideas, he becomes timid and sceptical 
 as soon as he is engaged on that of their applicat 
 He desires to progress, but shews hostility to all 
 
 to progress, dive him the past, something 
 has triumphed, and he will sec in it all that 
 see, more than others arc able to see. Bring the objc 
 near to him, and as with Dante's souls in the In/cmo^ h 
 
 tempted by fuch a i -.uke an application he did not coo- 
 
 template of one of Carlyle's sayings, reported by Lord Folkestone, 
 here is nothing to sad as to hear a man teU lies beaut 
 
 and Writing* of J**ffk Maxu* London. 1867. 
 
 There are two essays on ( hu votame^tbe one 
 
 a general review of his writings and genisj^HMber a critique of 
 the //ij/*rry of tkt Frtntk AYtW/w. 
 
Swinburne and Madeod Campbell. 197 
 
 vision, his faculty of penetration, is clouded." The essay 
 must ever be regarded by English students as the most 
 impressive monument of the rare insight of the man 
 without whom we should not have witnessed the unifica- 
 tion of Italy. Carlyle deemed him a visionary, cherishing 
 " rose-water imbecilities ;" but this mighty restorer of the 
 greatest nation of antiquity, saw more clearly into Carlyle. 
 His diagnosis detected, with unerring precision, what 
 was at this date a concealed disease. The exile's essay 
 remains, down to the present hour, the most valuable 
 criticism that has been written on the subject. 
 
 Yet, after all, Carlyle appreciated, indeed loved Maz- 
 zini a fact strangely overlooked by Mr Swinburne, the 
 too ardent worshipper of the Italian patriot, in his recent 
 letter to the Parisian democrats. The English poet, 
 though Carlyle was " not one of his friends," reminds 
 them of the service he " rendered to the English, if not to 
 the French, in writing his unequalled and powerful book 
 on the Revolution."* He invites them also to bear in mind 
 
 * If Dr Macleod Campbell rightly interpreted the tendency and 
 use of this book, it is hardly one for which Mr Swinburne should 
 give thanks. That eminent Scottish divine, by his countrymen 
 regarded as an advanced Liberal in theology, so much so that they 
 expelled him from their synagogue, but who was severely Conserva- 
 tive in politics, was delighted with Carlyle's French Revolution 
 because it was so full of warning to the Radicals, both of England 
 and the Continent. " Awful indeed," he exclaimed, " is the blind- 
 ness of the movement party, with the example afforded to them of 
 the impracticability of the theory of the people the sovereign, and of 
 the hollowness of that seeming equality and brotherhood which is 
 not the fellowship of a life in which all call God Father ; but which 
 begins with shutting out the Father, and contrives a brotherhood in 
 an outward and visible equality ; like that of sons who first killed 
 their father, impatient of distributing to them of his goods severally 
 as he willed, and then, in their jealousy of each other, and incapa- 
 
198 Thomas Car/vie. 
 
 the fact that he "always and even where branded with 
 <<mtem|.' ;>ire of Napoleon the I-ast, while 
 
 hmen, to their everlasting shame, 1 
 (1 themselves before Nero the Little Mr 
 
 likewise, and not 
 
 lied the tribute to Maz/ini spontaneously rendered in 
 the hour of need by Carlylc, at the time when the 
 dastardly as well as illegal opening of the exi 
 the English Post Office was engaging the attention of 
 
 m and of an outraged nation. The Times 1 
 (1 then to say that it knew and cared nothing about 
 Maz/ini, but that even if he were " the most worthless 
 and the most vi< ious creature in the world," that would 
 not justify the tampering with his correspondence, Car- 
 lyle at once wrote to the leading journal, to tc 
 that M.i.vini was "very far indeed from being 
 temptihle none farther, or v of living n. 
 
 I have had," he continued, " the honour to know 
 Mr Maz/ini for a series of years; and, whatever I 
 may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly 
 1 can with great freedom testify to all men 
 I r seen one such, is a man < : and 
 
 virf M of sterling veracity, humanity, and r.< 
 
 ness of mind; one of those rare men, numerable un- 
 fortunati D this wci 
 
 be called martyr-souls; who, r 
 
 . the other had, made, as robbers, equal 
 he spoil of their dead father's * ' . . . the 
 
 ich brothfrkood Without a l-atkfr" llcr. 
 
 Carlylc corresponded so c uhat 1 >r (*ampl>eU aniu-ipated 
 
 as to the course of things . he was gladdened by the book, 
 
 and in his letters of 1838 we find him earnestly commending it to 
 others. 
 
The Latter- Day Pamphlets. 199 
 
 daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that. 
 . . . Whether the extraneous Austrian Emperor and 
 miserable old chimera of a Pope shall maintain them- 
 selves in Italy, or be obliged to decamp from Italy, is not 
 a question in the least vital to Englishmen. But it is a 
 question vital to us that sealed letters in an English post- 
 office be, as we all fancied they were, respected as things 
 sacred ; that opening of men's letters, a practice near of 
 kin to picking men's pockets, and to other still -viler and 
 far fataler forms of scoundrelism, be not resorted to in 
 England, except in cases of the very last extremity. 
 When some new gunpowder plot may be in the wind, 
 some doubledyed high treason, or imminent national 
 wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open letters 
 not till then. To all Austrian Kaisers and such like, in 
 their time of trouble, let us answer, as our fathers from of 
 old have answered : Not by such means is help here for 
 you." It does not lessen the moral beauty of this letter 
 to remember that it was written on the i8th of June 
 1844, on ly some nine months after the publication of 
 Mazzini's essay. 
 
 The political creed of Carlyle found its ultimate and 
 most violent expression in the Latter-Day Pamphlets, 
 published during 1850 in numbers, entitled respectively 
 The Present Time, Downing Street, New Downing Street, 
 Parliament, and Stump Oratory. The attacks made in 
 these against the " immeasurable democracy," which was 
 characterised as " monstrous, loud, blatant, and inarticu- 
 late as the voice of chaos," at length opened the eyes of 
 the English people to that defect in Carlyle's teaching 
 which Mazzini had detected at the very outset. A few 
 articles, published in the Examiner and Spectator in 
 
200 Thomas Cat 
 
 1848, had given soni i what was coming, so 
 
 the consternation among hi 
 reactionary outburst was not so great as it must otherwise 
 
 re been. preparation, howt 
 
 were saddened by the tones of almost savage scorn 
 mcx h pervaded the new book. The newspaper 
 
 t>cen offensive enough; but in these 
 pamphlets the writer was simply outrageou ice 
 
 bad risen to an angry scream the harshest discords now 
 grat c of the melodies 
 
 diffused through all .inn 
 
 ti as we feel in listening to the song of birds, 
 who had sounded the praises of I 
 
 nburgh) who was the aut; 
 
 Burns, and, above all, who wrote the story of Sartor^ was 
 now fumishi: rs of Anu 
 
 and giving comfort to Kurop<. .c Boml 
 
 ites 
 
 of Reaction cou . h a sad spectacle as 
 
 No t: 1 assuredly no gi pression 
 
 was given to the feeling of th progress t 
 
 the at all in anger 
 
 nt and apprecia 
 .11 the critical estimates of Carlylc 
 
 had led us so far 
 
 way had himself lapsed backward 
 
 No." V 1 worse, than mere lots of was 
 
 mar; <t expression, 
 
 shadow of a , " seems to 
 
 pass over his mii least one consola- 
 
 Touseafi: was hut 
 
 the .earning love. Men n>. 
 
The Honesty of His Testimony. 201 
 
 him the Apostle of Despair, and sneer at him as a fatalist; 
 but " he is not at rest in his fatalism," as one re- 
 marked who knew him well and loved him much, " and 
 while he resists it, it is not fatalism." 
 
 The book which closed the series of political studies 
 begun more than ten years before was widely read, but 
 found few sympathisers. Almost everywhere, indeed, it 
 was condemned as the useless rhapsody of a tyro in 
 politics. The public journals spoke of him as a recluse 
 and a mere student, unacquainted with affairs, who could 
 not, therefore, be expected to understand practical poli- 
 tics. They complained that, while he was so good at 
 pointing put defects, he seemed incapable of suggesting 
 remedies ; and he was told that, though his motives 
 might not tend in that direction, he was yet practically 
 doing what in him lay to establish the savage doctrine, 
 that Might is Right, which looks upon the world as a 
 jungle, and men as beasts of prey. There was only 
 too much truth in these censures ; but, while we 
 lament that there should have been any, the extent 
 and intensity of the popular disapproval suggests one 
 consolatory reflection. The man who persisted during 
 ten weary years in publishing political theories that 
 hardly any fellow-mortal approved, and which many of 
 his oldest and best friends severely condemned, or 
 received with a sad silence that he probably felt more 
 keenly than he would have done trenchant rebuke, 
 proves at any rate that he was free from the slightest 
 taint of popularity-hunting. He would not stoop to 
 court applause ; nor would he swerve for an instant from 
 what he believed to be the path of duty though the 
 things he wrote only brought upon him the execrations 
 
202 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 of the multitude and what was harder to bearthe 
 mute protest of disappointed friends, accentuated by the 
 occasional expression of approval in quarters frum * 
 only condemnation could have given comfort to a friend of 
 humanity. However mistaken, then, his views may \. 
 been, they were those of an independent, fearless sj 
 who was ready to sacrifice in behalf of what he Mi 
 to be the truth even the esteem of his countrymen. 
 
 <>uld not be overlooked that, though as a v 
 the literary character of the Latter-Day Pamphlet* is not 
 up to the mark of his other works, they contain amidst 
 their wildest rhapsodies not a few passages of sin^ 
 
 e and beauty. It has been said with justice that 
 "even his stormiest and mo 
 
 generally bear analysis, and be found to err in nothing 
 hut redundancy of express: rror due to his int< 
 
 desir whole meaning upon his readers,"* 
 
 lily periodical whit h he was wont to designate 
 
 and whit h would seem never to 
 
 have regarded him with a favourable eye, probably per- 
 
 was essentially a Democrat, was one of 
 
 issail him for the alleged ' 
 
 ticality in his writings. "Mr Carl vie," said Blackuvod^ 
 .< ham i r -it, with show of 
 
 justice, remark, assumes to be the reformer ar 
 gat 
 an. ' n:ing its mechanical method of \\ 
 
 want of yWM, and threatening 
 pol -bstinately deaf to the voice of wistl 
 
 \vit >rrors of repeated revolutions ; and 
 
 * TV A Mm***, 1 ^Si. 
 
Mr Leslie Stephens Defence of Carlyle. 203 
 
 yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has 
 Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to 
 promulgate. He is anything but a man of practical 
 ability. Setting aside his style for the present, let us see 
 whether he has ever, in the course of his life, thrown out 
 a single hint which could be useful to his own generation, 
 or profitable to those who may come after. If he could 
 originate any such hint, he does not possess the power of 
 embodying it in distinct language. Can any living man 
 point to a single practical passage in any of these volumes ? 
 If not, what is the practical value of Mr Carlyle's writ- 
 ings? What is Mr Carlyle himself but a Phantasm, of the 
 species he is pleased to denounce?" This objection, 
 often repeated then and since in many quarters, has 
 been replied to since Carlyle's death by Mr Leslie 
 Stephen. "Some writers complain," he says, "that 
 Carlyle did not advance any new doctrine, or succeed 
 in persuading the world of its truth. His life failed, it 
 is suggested, in so far as he did not make any large body 
 of converts with an accepted code of belief. But here, 
 as it seems to me, the criticism becomes irrelevant. No 
 one will dispute that Carlyle taught a strongly marked 
 and highly characteristic creed, though not one easily 
 packed into a definite set of logical formulae. If there 
 was no particular novelty in his theories, that was his 
 very contention. His aim was to utter the truths which 
 had been the strength and the animating principle of 
 great and good men in all ages. He was not to move 
 us, like a scientific discoverer, by proclaiming novelties, 
 but to utter his protest in behoof of the permanent truths, 
 obscured in the struggle between conflicting dogmas, and 
 drowned in the anarchical shrieks of contending parties. 
 
204 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 edcd in so f n pressed the emotions and 
 
 the imagination of his fellows, not in so far as he made 
 known to them any new doctrine. *** Some would frame 
 
 in a diflfi oin that 
 
 adopted r it has been contended that 
 
 Carl tical teachings were in the highest degree p 
 
 1 led almost imn. ><>rtant IK-IK-:'. 
 
 results, with a promise of yet accomplishing more good 
 for the community. Writing in 185 is Ballarr 
 
 said: 4 ' icral recognition, during the la 
 
 of the truth of what he was condemned 
 i 1850, may in some degree console Mr Car 
 for the abuse which was heaped upon him at the former 
 >d w And there can be no question that, besides 
 
 '.e Admin: : 'efnnn movement, 
 
 , we presume, alluded to by Ballantync, it was he who 
 
 he people" to become 
 
 a subject of much wider and deeper interest \ \ all 
 
 political parties than it had ever been before. T 
 
 cased, nor is it likely that they 
 will ever be obliterated; the appc..- 
 
 re has Ixrcn a remark. 
 
 IK-IU of the sentiment irl 'ids to 1>: 
 
 togt of the most diverse 
 
 con- th a view n <f the 
 
 social and domes: 
 no exaggeration to say ours to c\ 
 
 of our toiling poor by M letter homes 
 
 and letter hal .its received a mighty im- 
 
 CornJM MagniiK for March 1881. 
 
Good Fruit from His Political Pamphlets. 205 
 
 petus from, if they were not indeed originated by, the 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets, and the two kindred works by 
 which these were preceded. "The essential truth that 
 pervaded their teachings, even in their frenzy, is now 
 recognised. Again has the testimony of the solitary 
 thinker passed into a commonplace of universal thought ; 
 while in Social Science Congresses, and a multitude 01 
 kindred agencies, individual or collective, we have in a 
 very great measure, at least, the up-springing of seed 
 sown long ago, amid wonder and scorn, by Thomas 
 Carlyle."* 
 
 * The Christian Spectator, 1859. 
 
CHAT 1 i. R X I V. 
 
 OF CROMWELL i I ORS OF 
 
 > TBCTOR- 
 
 THE "MUSI. I M Ml 
 MA* IER OF I 
 
 \ K OF DK i KIIK l 
 
 
 
 . Carl vie did not devote the whole of I. 
 
 1 that witnessed the publication of 
 , to the con- rary 
 
 affairs. On : greater part of th.r 
 
 was bestowed on the production of book 
 fuller scope for the 
 
 i sedulous care during the yi . .is protm- 
 
 :; out a 
 
 .d idea which was doul 
 
 of its ^: :<>r the cxpressif 
 
 i the great spiriti: 
 
 :ul, at the sai I fill- 
 
 a purpose dictated by fili. 
 llanted in 1 years before, 
 
 : in the mo<l< 
 
 md Spcuhts ; untk Eluddat. 
 which appeared in the DcccmlKT of 1845. ^" ot ^ on 8 
 
The Old Estimate of Cromwell. 207 
 
 before his death, John Sterling had said, in a letter to 
 Carlyle, " It is, as you say, your destiny to write about 
 Cromwell ; and you will make a book of him, at which 
 the ears of our grandchildren will tingle." The work had 
 this effect upon the generation by whom it was first read. 
 Not only did it confirm the intuition of that simple- 
 hearted and clear-sighted woman, but for whom the book 
 might never have been written ; it brought well-nigh the 
 whole of the English people round from the opposite 
 opinion to the view which she had reached in her secluded 
 home in Annandale. No such revolution of public senti- 
 ment on a great historical question of primary magnitude 
 was ever effected before by any single book; and the 
 revolution was almost as instantaneous as it was conclus- 
 ive. Is it needful to recall the evil work which sectarian 
 malignity had combined with political malice to effect in 
 blasting the reputation of Oliver Cromwell ? There is no 
 baser deed recorded in the history of England than the 
 desecration, not merely of his tomb, but of that body 
 which had been the temple of so noble a spirit torn 
 from its grave at Westminster by impious hands at the 
 Restoration, and, after nameless indignities, thrown head- 
 less into a trench under the gallows at Tyburn. The 
 unhallowed temper which wrought that infamy had sur- 
 vived through the succeeding century, and even entered 
 our own. It was still actively existent when Carlyle sat 
 down to write the biography of the Protector. Petty 
 scribblers, incompetent, even had they been industrious, j 
 contented themselves with indolently echoing the slanders 
 invented by the sacrilegious desecrators of the grave ; nor 
 was David Hume, though he professed to be a lover of ; 
 truth, one whit better in respect to veracity on this subject 
 
2o8 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 than the T.rub Street throng if possible he was worse. 
 The extent to which the tnith had been, not rm 
 obscured, but obliterated, may be estimated t>y the fact 
 that even n l.ir^e proportion of the Nonconformists of 
 1 suffered themselves to be hoodwinked into 
 acceptance of the view of the Protector which had its 
 origin in the malice of their own, as well as his, enemies.* 
 Not that efforts had been wanting on the part of se\ 
 
 N to rend< to Cromwell's memory 
 
 before Carlyle addressed himself to the task I 
 never be forgotten, that Ix>rd John Russell (the nam< 
 bore at the time he performed this work, and by * 
 we best like to remember him) was the first writer of the 
 ury who I ( 'it into print approaching an 
 
 . er can we forget the shock it gave us when, nearly twenty 
 yean after the publication of Carlyle's biography, we found c% 
 Cromwell's own county of Huntingdon, certain benighted natives of 
 that region "scene of a moral as well as a physical denudation," 
 as one of the moat distinguished of its living sons once <1 
 
 -who had (ailed to get rid of the notion that the Protector 
 was one of the most diabolical of human beings, and respor 
 
 Iced* wrought by the earlier Cromwell who 
 became Earl of Essex. Hard as it may be to believe the story, 
 nevertheless a fact that, even at the recent date we speak of, the 
 occupant of the old house at Huntingdon > Cromwell was 
 
 . would, when rom America came to tec 
 
 xin mean offices at the rear of 
 building as the place most intimately associ. 
 The only great man the town or shire has produced, his name 
 
 y a section of the popub 
 
 story of "the Farnv ." and what he did for England and 
 
 ieemed the grandest of all their local associa- 
 tions. Hut th- yet dared to raise a statue in hit honour 
 
 he soil from which he sprang, and a proposal, made a few > 
 ago, to erect some JUKB memorial in connection with the 
 Nonconformist place of worship in the county town, has not been 
 
 i .'. r i |M ' >it. 
 
Previous Vindicators of the Protector. 209 
 
 honest and impartial estimate of the merits of the Pro- 
 tector. Before his view appeared, all the references to 
 Cromwell, as we have already said, were but repetitions 
 of the calumnies invented by the partisan writers of the 
 Restoration period ; if any author ventured to say a word 
 in praise of certain acts of the Protector, they were careful 
 to water down their rare deviations into eulogy with 
 qualifications that tended to make his character, as a 
 whole, that of a deep-dyed villain. In 1840 a painstak- 
 ing and conscientious Nonconformist divine, Dr Robert 
 Vaughan, the founder and first editor of the British 
 Quarterly Review, in a historical work written by him for 
 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, gave 
 the world some true glimpses of the hero of the Common- 
 wealth. He had been preceded, eight years earlier, by Lord 
 Nugent in his Memorials of Hampden ; and earlier still, 
 in 1828, Macaulay, in his essay on Hallants Constitu- 
 tional History, had startled the readers of the Edinburgh 
 Review with a panegyric on the ruler whom he described 
 as the greatest soldier of his age and the most statesman- 
 like of English princes. Two years before Macaulay 
 dared this splendid act of high courage, William Godwin, 
 in his original survey of the Protectorate period, had 
 furnished materials for arriving at something like a fair 
 conception of Cromwell's character. But it is a remark- 
 able fact that twenty years earlier than Carlyle, nineteen 
 years before Vaughan, eleven years before Lord Nugent, 
 seven years before Macaulay, and five before Godwin, 
 Lord John Russell, truly reflecting the noble spirit of the 
 house of Bedford, had written thus manfully and discrim- 
 inatingly of the Protector : " Cromwell did much for his 
 country. He augmented her naval glory, and made her 
 
210 Thomas Cartylt. 
 
 name formidable to all the legitimate Sovereigns to whom 
 
 rth wasa subject of derision. The smile on UK 
 was checked by th . their hearts. He made use 
 
 of this wholesome intimidation to s 
 : -i Protestants, and before he died he perceiv 
 dang< the growth of the i>ower, 
 
 thenceforth determined to restrain. At home 
 he held the balance, upon the whole, evenly n: 
 he gave no sect the preponderance of State favour." 
 testimony was printed in its author's Essay on tk* 
 ry of thf English Governmtnt, published in 
 and though in the subsequi :is of the work many 
 
 jssions were made, not one word was 
 ever withdrawn or modified of the passage eulogising the 
 tor. while we bear these facts in mind, however, 
 .iains tn he work of restoring Croi: 
 
 in a really effective manner was yet to be 
 accon icse pioneers had but barely broken 
 
 ground on the subject ; and the impression ma 
 their united work was inadequate to the thorough 
 ^rcat ruler whose memory had lx 
 foully !. When Carlylc's biogi. eared, 
 
 work was done. It fr ever rescued <>: 
 the noblest spirits ever given to > m all 
 
 Hilated misrepresent.nions that had g.i 
 
 Once for all, it placed a faithful por- 
 
 
 the eyes of the wr- 
 it has !>< observed \ any idea 
 of the amount of labour that was involved in the per- 
 .sk how many thousands of books, 
 how many tens of thousands of pamphlets, of tr.i 
 
His Fidelity to Facts. 211 
 
 old newspapers, had to be perused, compared, ex- 
 cerpted, before this could be accomplished. As in all 
 his previous historical essays, and also in his biographical 
 articles, including the fine miniature portrait of the Pro- 
 tector given four years earlier than his great book in 
 Heroes and Hero- Worship, Carlyle had not now based 
 any of his conclusions respecting the character he pour- 
 trayed on the intuitions vouchsafed to a vivid imagina- 
 tion. Far from that, they were the result of the most 
 patient investigation of the right materials, pursued with 
 a diligence that was never exceeded by any German 
 Dryasdust, and informed with the discrimination of the 
 philosopher and that imaginative power of the true poet 
 which penetrates to the essence of a man's character and 
 shows what he really was. With what fidelity he touched 
 even the very minutest accessories of his subject, the 
 mere external drapery, so to speak, of his central theme, 
 the student of his Cromwell may learn if he happens to 
 be a resident for years in any of the localities connected 
 with the Protector's life. He will find that the very 
 smallest note on some old house, such as the Biggen 
 Malten at Ramsey, one of the oldest seats of the Crom- 
 well family, or on the discursive, sleepy river Ouse where 
 it lazily creeps (we cannot say of this river that it ever 
 runs) past the market-town of St Ives, or on some quite 
 subordinate local person who turns up by accident in a 
 letter of the Protector's, are all as strictly accurate as if the 
 writer had dwelt for a lifetime in the places he describes. 
 In many parts of the book, in as the descriptions of the 
 Battle of Dunbar or of the Protector's Death-Bed, the 
 biography becomes a poem, and one of the most thrilling 
 sort; but it would be a prodigious mistake to suppose 
 
212 Thomas Car 
 
 not also trustworthy history, written by one of 
 the most exact, patient, conscientious, and common sense 
 of all our historians, who would spend laborious days and 
 defy the " Museum headache " in order to verify a sig- 
 me or date, and who would not deflect a hair's 
 breadth from what he knew to be the truth to gain all the 
 ical points in the world His mode of doing his- 
 torical work was quite original He unites the f 
 
 of characteristic detail pursued by Plutarch and Bos- 
 
 i power of genera 1 ..n has never been 
 
 cd; and it has certainly not been the least of his 
 
 many services to the age, that besides vindicating Crom- 
 
 memory, he has re ;/ed this branch of 
 
 ig been the chief inspirer of that new order of 
 workmen from whom we have received such vital addi- 
 tions to our historical library a 
 
 Mr Motley's Dut h Republic, such biographies as Mr 
 Masson's Milton, Mr Spcdding's Bacon, Dean Stanley's 
 Arnold, ai al Tulloch s Leaders of tht fafirmm 
 
 Hon, works in some of which we find the conscu 
 try combined with not a little of the imagi 
 and literary power of the master. 
 
 .v many hundreds of headaches at the I 
 
 in that work on Cromwell must have cost Carlyle ! 
 
 It was this " Museum headache," as he dolefully called 
 
 it, an vas really a most serious afflu : .. -n, that led 
 
 > take pan in referred to 
 
 by Gossip Gra c establishment of a great library 
 
 n that should contain all the best books of 
 
 referi he subscribers might procure 
 
 a plentiful own homes* It 
 
 may be remembered that, on the death of the 1at< 
 
Founder of the London Library. 213 
 
 Clarendon, who had occupied the post for several years, 
 Carlyle was elected president of the London Library. 
 But comparatively few were aware how appropriate that 
 appointment was. The institution was in reality a child 
 of his own. At the British Museum he had, like many 
 other literary workers, found the inconveniences interfer- 
 ing so seriously with work that he went there as seldom 
 as he could help, for we find him confessing that he was 
 " rather a thin-skinned sort of student," and he was always 
 afflicted when he did go with that wretched " Museum 
 headache." Thus it came about that in 1840, desiring to 
 see a good reference library founded where he might feel 
 more at his ease, and get a bundle of books home with 
 him when he desired to make a leisurely survey of any, 
 he set some younger men of his acquaintance to work to 
 start such an institution ; and the result was the London 
 Library. The most of these young friends, we may note, 
 passed away from earth before Carlyle : for they included 
 John Forster, the editor of the Examiner and biographer of 
 Goldsmith; William Dougal Christie, C.B.,* the biographer 
 
 * It was to Mr Christie, an old friend of Charles Buller's, as well 
 as of Mr Buller's illustrious tutor, that we owed the privilege of 
 our introduction to Carlyle ; and we have before us a little note 
 scribbled in pencil on one of the days of June, 1870, when Carlyle 
 was very poorly in health, that we cannot resist giving here : 
 " Dear Christie, My hand is very unwilling, mutinous even, but I 
 compel it to act, in pencil. I have lately read a life of Dryden 
 which seemed to me done with rigorous fidelity. Yours always, 
 T. C." The Life of Dryden here referred to is the one prefixed to 
 the Globe edition of that poet, edited by Mr Christie ; and it is 
 indeed worthy of this characteristic commendation. Those who 
 have read Mr Christie's sketch of " Glorious John " will recognise 
 the exceeding felicity of the phrase applied to it by Carlyle. We 
 may also add that when the Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury 
 appeared, Carlyle expressed to ourselves the opinion that it was the 
 
214 Thoma* Car: 
 
 of t: of Shaftcsbury and editor of Dryden ; 
 
 and Mr Sjxrdding, the editor of Bacon. Still, though he 
 
 transferred his allegiance from fcl \\ Museum to the 
 
 Library in St James's Square, it must not be supposed 
 
 that he did not < ontinue to make an extensive use of the 
 
 form m his evidence before a Royal Commission 
 
 estified to the exceeding value of its library. He was 
 
 spec hati< when he spoke of the Thomasson 
 
 n of Tracts, as furnishing splendid materials for 
 
 hey are called the King's jamphlets," he 
 
 said, -i value, I believe, t Id could not 
 
 parallel them 1: i were to take all the collections of 
 
 ks on the Civil War, of \ I ever heard 
 
 not ire, I believe you would not get a set of works so 
 
 uible as those." Mr Robert Cowtan, one of the 
 
 assistant librarians at the 
 
 to the old li! ution, sa\ <1, quite 
 
 ally, from a lady who attended the Reading Room 
 
 about 1850, that she used to receive the most gallant 
 
 :n at the 
 
 earn Then ns were not o: : of any 
 
 personal arue, but \\c : lered to 
 
 as a lady engaged in literary investigations. Mr Cowtan, 
 in the same book, relates with honest pride how he had 
 the honour of looking out from the Thomasson Collet 
 referred to by Carlylc in h: ientary evidence 
 
 ny of the Tracts that were used by the illustrious 
 I his Cromwtli Carlyle, we may here 
 
 most faithful and c w of the jxrriod to , late* 
 
 u.rnt he embodied in a letter of some 
 
 length, which, being got in loan by a certain noble lord, was unfor- 
 tunately lost in iu re-transmission through (he post. 
 
Miss MitforcTs Criticism. 215 
 
 note, was one of several men of letters who about 1847 
 entered the lists against Mr Panizzi's management of the 
 Museum, and whose complaints led to a Parliamentary 
 investigation which issued in many decided reforms being 
 effected. Amongst the complainants was another Scots- 
 man, Mr George Lillie Craik, editor of the Pictorial 
 History of England. Mr Payne Collier, the oldest 
 literary man now alive in England for he was born in 
 1789 also joined in the assault upon the administration 
 of the Museum. 
 
 Though by some his Cromwell is regarded as Car- 
 lyle's historical masterpiece, a view which may be de- 
 fended on religious rather than on literary grounds, 
 while comparatively few deny that it is one of the 
 most satisfactory and valuable of all the contributions 
 ever made to English history, it has not escaped adverse 
 criticism. In the first of the published letters to her 
 friend, Mr Boner, the little authoress of Our Village, 
 writing in the same month in which the book was published, 
 said : " The most important book has been Carlyle's 
 Cromwell, in which the mutual jargon of the biographer 
 and his subject is very curious. Never was such Eng- 
 lish seen. The Lord Protector comes much nearer to 
 speaking plain than his historian." In another letter to 
 Boner, who was a warm admirer of Carlyle, Miss Mit- 
 ford returns to the attack : " After you have read more 
 of him, you will like him less. I am quite sure that your 
 fine taste will be repelled by the horrible coarseness of 
 some of his nicknames in the Cromwell book. He is 
 constantly talking of flunkeyism, and trades upon half- 
 a-dozen cant words of that order." There is a grain of 
 truth in this complaint about the nicknames. We can- 
 
216 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 not help thinking that poor Dryasdust fares rather hardly 
 at 1. and there is a sharp point in the question we 
 
 c seen put somewhere Would not Sir V 
 
 1 the name "Dryasdust" in his kindly 
 hun .c been ashamed to play upon it so c 
 
 and so long as Carlyle (who merely picked it up) has 
 done? occasional introduction is exceedingly 
 
 effective, cannot be denied ; but there are times when 
 
 reappearance, instead of being humoroi. a ply 
 
 tiresome. What other historian is so im: h in the habit 
 of assailing his authorities in anything like the same 
 trm ulent fashion? In reply to t!,k it may be urged, that 
 comparatively lew pr lurians have worked v. 
 
 the same, almost preternatural, minuteness of investiga- 
 
 , so that their tempers were not likely to be tried to 
 the same extent as his. Nor all that mu.^t be 
 
 taken into a \\ ; tor is there any other instance 
 
 of the union of the archaeological spirit, as we find it in 
 him, with the poetic? and how was it possible for a 
 high-strung nervous organisation like his to go through 
 the terrible drudgery to which he was constrained 
 
 acutely active conscience, and his pas 
 truth, without a great deal oi had, of 
 
 cssity, to find vent in a way characteristic of the 
 man? He went through more serious hard work 
 writing a page than little Miss Mitford would have in 
 
 never applied an c 
 
 he could not have justified by a hundred facts, hidden 
 away, it might be, in dusty, cobwebbed comers, from the 
 view of all other men. u mere like Miss Mitiord, or 
 
 Scott, on the other hand, could pepper ti 
 "copy" with epithets without a thought of anything but 
 
His Horror of Dryasdust. 217 
 
 how they would sound. We need not wonder, then, why 
 the easy-writing people should have condemned Carlyle 
 for his abuse of Dryasdust. They had not taken the 
 trouble to be as much in Dryasdust's company ; else they 
 also might have got into the habit of abusing him quite 
 as much as Carlyle did. To a visitor from Australia, 
 Mr David Buchanan, he once remarked that no one 
 would credit the prodigious labour he had undergone 
 before he even began to write Cromwell. He said he 
 laboured to gain almost as intimate a knowledge of the 
 man he was going to write about as he had of himself; 
 and this was only to be attained by a minute examination 
 and close study of every letter and document that had 
 ever emanated from him, and an intimate knowledge of 
 all the circumstances under which he acted, the events 
 by which he was controlled or impelled to action, and 
 the men who acted with him and against him, as also 
 every detail respecting the circumstances and surroundings 
 of the position or situation. All this knowledge, he said, 
 was only to be got at by enormous labour, and was valu- 
 able when attained only as it was made use of with in- 
 telligence and insight. An incidental illustration of the 
 profound sense he had of the value of all expedients for 
 escaping the society of Dryasdust, is furnished in the 
 letter he sent to the historian of Dumbartonshire, when 
 that gentleman brought out the first edition of his useful 
 compilation, The Annals of Our Time. Carlyle hastened 
 to give Mr Irving's book a good word. "To fish up," 
 said he, "and extract or extricate from the boundless 
 overflowing { Mother of Dead Dogs,' with judicious clear- 
 ness, the millionth part of something like historical which 
 may be floating past (999,999 facts mere putrescence, 
 
218 Thomas Cat 
 
 unsavoury or even poisonous more or less), especially if 
 you indicate, too, where the authentic account of that was 
 to be had this I have often thought would be an 
 culable service for serious readers of the present a: 
 more of the future generations. I exhort you to continue 
 at the work and bring it to more and more perfection." 
 
 Some other censors have complained, that the av 
 to convert the garments of men and their outward pecu- 
 liarities into historical portraits has been exaggerated in 
 this and the other historical writings of Carlyle. These 
 
 speak of him contemptuously, as belonging to the 
 school called by M. Rigault, Us Gobelins <U la Littcraturt, 
 from their servile attempts to imitate painting. Hut it will 
 generally be found, we believe, on careful inquiry, that the 
 stress he laid on the garment, or the external peculiarity, 
 was well considered, and had more reason in it than some 
 people might imagine. " His shrewdness," we are told 
 by a competent witness, "especially in juJiging ( : 
 
 small indications, 
 
 denounced, as a scoundrel, a man of business, who, at 
 the time, was in the best repute, and who, shortly after- 
 wards, turned out to deserve all that had been said 
 against him. 'How/ he was asked, 'did you find him 
 out, Mr Carlyle? 1 'Oh, 1 said he, 'I saw rogue in the 
 twist of the fal him as he went out at the door.' 
 
 He was once asked what he thought of a new a< 
 ance whom he had seen for a few minutes. ' I should 
 call him a willowy son of a man.' The unspeakable 
 et could be shown only by an unwar- 
 
 !>le breach of confidence."* Nor 1* for 
 
 St. 7*mt*tG<uituNr$p*ptr, Feb. 5, i8Sf. 
 
Canon Mozlefs Criticism. 219 
 
 gotten, that his picturesque touches were never sham 
 expedients for covering slightness of work. "No one 
 denies," says Mr Leslie Stephen, " that, whatever the 
 accuracy of the colouring in his historical studies, they 
 at least imply the most thoroughgoing and conscientious 
 labour. If Dryasdust does not invest Cromwell or 
 Frederick with the same brilliant lights as Carlyle, he 
 admits fully that Carlyle has not scamped the part of the 
 work upon which Dryasdust most prides himself. At 
 worst, he can only complain that the poetical creator is 
 rather ungrateful in his way of speaking of the labours by 
 which he has profited. It is, indeed, a subsidiary pleasure, 
 in reading all Carlyle's writings, to feel that the artist is 
 always backed up by the conscientious workman." 
 
 When he was a young Fellow of Magdalen, just turned 
 thirty, Dr J. B. Mozley contributed to the Christian 
 Remembrancer for 1846 a criticism on Carlyle's Cromwell 
 which, in spite of its High Church rancour and juvenile 
 hardihood of assertion, is still worthy of being read. It 
 has been included in the first of two volumes of Essays^ 
 Historical and Theological^ published (in 1878) since 
 Canon Mozley's lamented death. The writer who saw in 
 Stafford " as noble a man as ever England produced," 
 and who regarded Laud with unqualified admiration, of 
 course pictures Cromwell as a monstrous crocodile 
 "mighty, but unseemly; tremendous, but vile;" and no 
 effort is spared to expose the weak points of the bio- 
 grapher as well as those of his Puritan hero. Though 
 the essay overshoots the mark by its blind sectarian 
 passion, Mozley was too clever a man to fail in detecting 
 some real blemishes which mar the Protector's biography ; 
 and perhaps one of his most effective hits was that in 
 
220 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 i he hurls his sarcasm at the vague and oraculoj 
 
 he northern seer. eality, 1 
 
 says the < s a magnificent abstra< refuse 
 
 to be caught and grasped, and will give no account o 
 
 the satisfaction of sublunar)* and \- 
 
 ity. It wages an eternal war with shadows ; 
 disperser of phantoms; lies flee befor rmub 
 
 shudder at its approach This is all we know of it 
 nature and its characteristics. It carries on a great aeria 
 battle nobody knows where; and teaches with * 
 infallibility nobody knows what" Of all the advera 
 
 isms of Cromwtll that we have seen, this is perhap 
 the only one that succeeds in scoring a point against th< 
 book. 
 The immediate success of the work was greater thai 
 
 whi<h had attended any of its author's j 
 productions. A new edition was called for before man; 
 weeks aft -st was puMished ; and a third edition 
 
 ur volumes, appeared in 1849, containing larg 
 in the shape of Cromwell, and othe 
 
 matter throwing light on his biogrn; e book ha 
 
 ed for others to do in the d* 
 
 , and all subsequent writers who hav 
 bad occasion to pourtray Cromwell have shown thei 
 good sense by carefully absta 
 comjHrtition with Carh friend Mr Massoi 
 
 great work on the ///.- <;//./ Times of Milton, may hav 
 
 ,ht into a clearer light certain elements of Cromwell 1 
 character whi. h Carlyle overlooked; but he does no 
 claim tor his picture of the Protector alight els< 
 subordinate position, and when he arrives in ' 
 at si: i^ar, he content 
 
CromwelVs Service to Our Century. 221 
 
 himself with a brief statement of the main facts, referring 
 the reader to " the one full, grand, and ever-memorable 
 account " given by his illustrious predecessor. Even had 
 the political writings of Carlyle been productive of in- 
 finitely worse results in the direction .of strengthening 
 despotic ideas than they really were, he might well have 
 been forgiven by the friends of freedom on account of 
 the service he rendered to the cause of religious and 
 civil liberty when he restored the image of Cromwell, 
 freed from dust and defilement, to the admiring gaze of 
 the English people. That old name immediately became 
 a new watchword with the party of reform ; and, whether 
 he meant it or not, Carlyle was, through his biography of 
 Oliver, henceforth enrolled among the most powerful of 
 the progressive forces of his age. The spirit of the book 
 was at once transfused into the veins of modern England, 
 and became part of the very life blood of the nation. 
 The words of Cromwell and of his biographer were 
 repeated in thousands of pulpits and on every platform, 
 and potent were they in promoting many a good cause. 
 Nor has the force of the book been exhausted yet ; it 
 still goes on working like leaven, making the great 
 " uncrowned King of England " the promoter of right- 
 eousness and freedom in our own century even as he was 
 in that century which had him in the flesh to fight its 
 battles at Naseby and Dunbar. 
 
 It is pleasant to recall the fact that, on his visit to the 
 field of Naseby for the purpose of being able to describe 
 the site of the battle, Carlyle was accompanied thither by 
 Dr Arnold. The meeting of the two distinguished his- 
 torians was fated to be their last as well as their first; for 
 Arnold died within six short weeks of the happy time 
 
222 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 moured guest It was or 
 1842, that Carlylc went down to Rugb] 
 by express invitation ; and rig day host am 
 
 guest together explored the battlefield. Carlylc left th< 
 schoolhouse expressing the hope that it might " long con 
 tinuc to be what was to him one of the rarest sights ti 
 the world a temple of industrious peace." This visit gav< 
 great delight to Dr Arnold, who had long cherished ; 
 high reverence for Carlylc, and was proud of 
 received such a guest under his roof. During the fe? 
 weeks that ir between that visit and Arnold': 
 
 departure from earth, he continued full of t 
 
 <>ut the ; 
 age to Nascby with Carlylc. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH LEIGH HUNT THE APOSTLES OF 
 
 DESPAIR AND CHEERFULNESS THE POEM OF " DRUM- 
 
 WHINN BRIDGE " ITS PROBABLE AUTHORSHIP " ITS 
 
 A SAIR SIGHT ! " LEIGH HUNT'S CHARACTER OF 
 
 CARLYLE VALUE OF HUNT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE ESTRANGEMENT FROM MR MILL THOMAS COOPER 
 THE CHARTIST " OLD LANDOR'S " GIFT. 
 
 MANY were ready to say with Macaulay, " We have a 
 kindness for Mr Leigh Hunt." But it seems strange, on 
 the first view of it, that the old companion of Shelley 
 should have found one of his staunchest friends in 
 Thomas Carlyle. He was an ex-newspaper editor who 
 had been in prison for libel, though no doubt the Prince 
 Regent deserved all that the Examiner said about him, 
 and much more; his writings had a vivacity that gave 
 many readers an impression of levity ; he was as ignorant 
 of the ways of the business world as a child, as destitute 
 of decision of character as Hamlet ; and he was always 
 struggling with pecuniary difficulties, from which he had 
 to be rescued periodically by the help of friends. Holding 
 a religious creed that ignored all the stern facts of human 
 experience, he was an Apostle of Cheerfulness whose 
 gospel was calculated to make any serious spirit, with a 
 sense of realities, somewhat sad ; and he was described in 
 old age by one of his acquaintances as " the grey-headed 
 
224 Thomas Car. 
 
 Yet the man who by some people had been de- 
 Apostle of Despair took Leigh Hunt to 
 cart and cherished him there with a warmth 
 that m.ide the words of Macaulay in praise of Hunt 
 seem cold The strong-willed, prudent, thrifty, self- 
 A ho was supposed to have no patience 
 with the weak and wayward, regarded this light and 
 with deep and tender affection. One cause of 
 the s- ngruous connection, so far as Carlyle 
 
 was l>c traced to a feature of his 
 
 character whit h no one has described with so much 
 hint him I believe," wrote the 
 
 hat Mr Carlyle loves better than his fault- 
 finding, with all its eloquei .my human 
 creature that looks sufTi 
 
 ve furth e were suffering 
 
 only, and neither loving nor sincere, but had com 
 pass Of agony in ti put him at the i 
 
 r some 1. nd con- 
 
 .it the risk of loss to r 
 
 amoun n, that man, if the 
 
 him in mess, would be '1 
 
 ready seen that it was Hunt who 
 the best, of all the really 
 1 
 
 paragraph in his Autobiography proves that he understood 
 s well as waste 
 
 so happily 
 deqgnatrd "i\iri\ie\ ptnmoam ' 
 
 and denunciators out of numUr ; the glowing and gCOCfOUi dogma* 
 ttm of Carlyle has called up a boat of imitator*, who, while quite 
 
The Pathos of Leigh Hunt's Life. 225 
 
 humanity must have been powerfully appealed to by 
 the misfortunes of Hunt the cruel slanders that had 
 been heaped upon his devoted head by hireling partisans 
 both in Edinburgh and London, more especially in the 
 Scottish capital, and the poverty that perpetually dogged 
 his footsteps, causing his exquisite powers, both as poet 
 and essayist, to be monopolised by hack-work, for which 
 the pay was often wretched, and never liberal. There 
 was something pathetic in the spectacle of the poet, who 
 had written the Story of Rimini^ condemned to the 
 drudgery of writing gossip for the newspapers, which, 
 even in old age, he was often obliged to hawk about 
 among the editors before he could get a customer ; and 
 the pathos must have been deepened, rather than modi- 
 fied, especially to such an onlooker as Carlyle, by the 
 meek, sunny, hopeful, uncomplaining spirit with which 
 the victim bore it all. Nor would the sympathy of the 
 earnest worker be lessened as he noted that, with all 
 his seeming levity, Hunt was a genuine solid man of 
 letters, of vast and richly varied culture, with a literary 
 taste and insight such as no other journalist of his 
 generation possessed; as sober and industrious as he 
 was accomplished ; and who might have accumulated 
 riches if it had not been for his painstaking conscientious 
 care in securing perfect accuracy of statement and the 
 most exquisite form possible for even the most trivial bit 
 of work that he undertook.* So that, after all, there was 
 
 as positive as their master, possess neither his brain nor his heart : 
 let us also accept and reverence the Apostle of Charity the man 
 whose poems and essays were all written in the anticipation of a 
 Future of love and wisdom, such as many have dreamt of, but few 
 believed in and worked for with such constancy as he." 
 
 * " The immense amount of labour," says his eldest son, speaking 
 
 P 
 
226 Thomas Carlyk. 
 
 no mystery in the friciuUhij> whirh the grim hermit from 
 sdale conceived at fust and cherished ever afterwards 
 for this sunny-hearted creature, who, in some respects 
 closely resembling himself, was yet in others as 
 moved from him as one human being could be from 
 another. 
 
 In //:,>; Hunt's I^ndon Journal (1834-5) the dawn of 
 Carlylc's genius had been hailed with intcnsest appreciat 
 by an editor quick to perceive merit where\ 
 it, and who, to his credit, did not allow the attacks u; 
 himself which had appeared in the Edinburgh orgai 
 Tories to cool the ardour of his enthusiasm wtu 
 new star rose in the northern sky.* Turning to the two 
 
 of his faihcr'1 London Journal, " which be bestowed, particularly in 
 
 earthing out every point to elucidate and to ver 1 an out- 
 
 lay of time and of money that could scarcely be returned even by a 
 
 Urge and certainly not by a limited sale. The expenditure in 
 
 ion, and health was thus constantly in excess of the returns. 
 
 largest proportion of the labours, all that which simply 
 
 . : ;....::: 
 
 seen by the public, but was as conscientiously and arduously gone 
 through as the similar portion which resulted in print." Though 
 unpcrccived by the mass of general readers, it was clearly sec: 
 
 may rest assured ; and hence, even had there 
 lecn no other qualities to recommend the worker, Carlyle would 
 '\ esteem. 
 
 mnot glance over the file of Leigh Hunt's 
 mifto icing greatly struck by the constant recur i 
 
 of helpful, sympathetic words in favour of Scottish authors, some of 
 the numU-r till then quite unknown to southern readers, ami 
 emerging^ No sooner, for exau 
 
 had Hugh Miller's first book, the Lqautt out St*mt tf At N 
 Sc*l**4 made its appearance, than Hunt hastened to give long 
 
 -.icts from the book, at the same time expressing the com 
 opinion which the world has since seen amply verified- tru- 
 st onemason of Cromarty was a " remarkable man, who will infallibly 
 be well known." He earnestly exhorted the young author t 
 about making a second volume without delay, and adds : " i 
 
Leigh Hunfs Recognition of Carlytts Genius. 227 
 
 volumes of Hunt's charming miscellany (would that we 
 had such a magazine to-day !), we find the i9th number 
 (Wednesday, August 6, 1834) giving the place of honour 
 to an article on Goethe in which Carlyle is introduced to 
 the notice of Hunt's readers. It opens with some objec- 
 tions to the German poet's plan of life, in taking no 
 notice of the politics and public events of his time, and 
 in refusing to busy himself with the hopes of the world and 
 the advancement of society. Goethe's enemies said that he 
 thought in this matter for expedience' sake, and because 
 he happened to be comfortably situated, and, therefore, 
 had no personal interest in change. As we might expect, 
 while of too kindly a nature to echo this serious charge, 
 Hunt did not, by any means, approve the poet's theory. 
 
 ' Old Mortality ' come to life again in a younger and nobler shape ; 
 but his own pages will rescue the designation from its applicability. 
 Mr Miller, it seems, is, or has been a common stonemason, and 
 itinerant architect of tombs ; and from ' cogitations in those shades ' 
 he has issued forth a writer of pretensions that would have been 
 little expected from such a beginning, though (singularly enough 
 unless it is an Irishism to say so) not without its special precedent in 
 this remarkable age ; for Mr Allan Cunningham was of the same 
 trade. But Mr Miller, besides a poetical imagination, though not 
 yet exhibited in verse, has great depth of reflection ; and his style 
 is so choice, pregnant, and exceedingly like an educated one, that 
 if itself betrays it in any respect to be otherwise, it is by that very 
 excess ; as Theophrastus was known not to have been born in 
 Attica, by his too Attic nicety." It is significant to note the patient 
 and loving care with which Leigh Hunt, not content with these 
 liberal, but thoroughly just, words of praise, is at pains to italicise 
 all the gems of thought and expression in the extracts given from 
 the stonemason's book. As we read these characterisations of new 
 authors, so independent and generous in their spirit, so unconven- 
 tional and courageous, and always so just, we feel inclined to say 
 that there was at that time but one other man of letters in London 
 who could have written them ; and that was the friend of Leigh 
 Hunt who had just the other day pitched his tent in Cheyne Row. 
 
228 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 But he has hardly begun his argument against it, when he 
 suddenly breaks off: "We h.ul written thus far, when, 
 having become further acquainted with the Character- 
 istic "- ( essay in the Edinburgh, the one that 
 finally severed his connection with that Review "in the 
 
 rvals of our writing, our feelings of respect and admir- 
 ation for Goethe have been so increased, that we must 
 onfess we cannot proceed in the same strain of 
 objection to him." On another page of the same number, 
 an extract is printed from Carlyle's Specimens of German 
 Romances^ the editor praising the translator's "masterly 
 criticism 19 of Richter's genius, "which we have read 
 twice over for the mere pleasure received from the force 
 and abundance of the thinking." In the ^rd number, 
 
 \\\ reprints that magnificent passage, which we 1 
 already given, from Carlyle's art id 
 ature," in which he demonstrated, to use Hunt's felicitous 
 title, that " the perception of beauty and nobleness is not 
 a matter of rank." In the 341)1 number tl <mg 
 
 passage, \\ith similar complimentary allusion to Carlyle 
 as the author, from the famous essay on Hums ; and in 
 the 4 2nd, Hunt gives a portion of Carl) I 
 Edward Irving, with a charai <te, in which he 
 
 says : " It may be as well to add, considering the prevail- 
 ing tone that the article from which the 
 following passage is taken, is written in sober earnest 
 we need not add, how well" Ever and ano: 
 paragraj m the essays of Carlyle, always 
 with their author's name appended, instead of tha 
 the Review in which they had appeared; and to Carl;, 
 !m Afeister, we find him gi. 
 "our reason, our imagination, our tears." ] sant 
 
A Poem in Leigh Jfunfs London Journal. 229 
 
 miscellany had not a long life, for it expired in the last 
 month of 1835. Fifteen years afterwards, on December 
 7, 1850, there appeared a new Leigh Hunts Journal \ 
 also, alas ! short-lived, for it was discontinued on the 29th 
 March 1851. It is fondly remembered, we doubt not, 
 by some of our readers who have now reached or passed 
 middle age ; and these do not need to be reminded that 
 this delightful periodical contained three articles from 
 the pen of Carlyle, entitled, "Two Hundred and Fifty 
 Years Ago (from a Waste-Paper Bag of T. Carlyle)." 
 The introductory paper had for its title, " Hollies of 
 Haughton;" the second, " Croydon Races;" the third 
 and last, "Sir Thomas Button and Sir John Hatton 
 Cheek." These sketches have been reprinted in their 
 author's Miscellanies. But in Leigh Hunt's old periodical, 
 in which we find those frequent friendly allusions to Car- 
 lyle, there is an anonymous poem which, although no 
 one has ever called attention to it, seems to us as if it may 
 possibly have been a contribution from the editor's friend 
 in Cheyne Row. When it first met our eye, casually 
 glancing over the time-stained yellow pages of the trea- 
 sured volume, two verses at once stood out with amazing 
 distinctness as bearing the impress of no common hand, 
 and our first thought was, Can this be Carlyle? The 
 more closely we have looked into the matter the stronger 
 has the feeling of probability grown, until it is now begin- 
 ning to assume with us the shape of a settled conviction ; 
 at all events, be our guess right or wrong, we shall ven- 
 ture to lay the poem before our readers, so that they may 
 be in a position to judge for themselves. The piece is 
 contained in the 3oth number of Leigh Hunts London 
 Journal, issued on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 1834, by which 
 
230 Thomas Carlylf. 
 
 time, it will be observed, Carlyle was fixed in Ou 
 Row, where he had Ixngh Hunt as a frequent visitor. 
 The poem runs thus : 
 
 DkfMWHINN BRIDC 
 
 OVER THE RIVER ORR BUILT 
 
 Meek autumn midnight glancing, 
 The stan above hold sway, 
 
 I bend, in muse advancing, 
 To lonesome Orr my way. 
 
 Its rush in drowsy even 
 
 Can make the waste les< dead ; 
 Short pause beneath void Heaven, 
 
 Then back again to bed ! 
 
 I 1 h ' 'mong deserts moory, 
 
 Vain now, bleak Orr, thy fury, 
 On whinstone arch I stand. 
 
 Orr, thou moorland river 
 By man's eye rarely seen, 
 Thou gushest on for < 
 And wen while earth has been. 
 
 There o'er thy crags and gravel, 
 
 Thou sing'st an unknown song, 
 In tongue no clerks unm . 
 
 Thou'st sung it long and long. 
 
 From Being's Source it bounded. 
 The morn when time began ; 
 c thro* this moor has sounded, 
 
 That day they crossed the Jordan, 
 
 When I Icbrew trumpets rang, 
 Thy wave no foot was fording. 
 
 And I, while thon'st meandered, 
 
 Was not, have come to be. 
 Apart so long have wandered, 
 
 This moment meet with thee. 
 
A Parallel Passage from Sartor. 231 
 
 Old Orr, thou mystic water ! 
 
 No Ganges holier is ; 
 That was Creation's daughter, 
 
 What was it fashioned this ? 
 
 The whinstone Bridge is builded, 
 
 Will hang a hundred year ; 
 When bridge to time has yielded, 
 
 The brook will still be here. 
 
 Farewell, poor moorland river : 
 
 We parted and we met ; 
 Thy journeyings are for ever, 
 
 Mine art not ended yet. 
 
 November, 1832. 
 
 The two verses that stood out so vividly had recalled 
 to us a familiar passage in that charming picture of Car- 
 lyle's child-life at Ecclefechan which is to be found in the 
 opening pages of the second book of Sartor. " Already 
 in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness, 
 there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that 
 promised much; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, 
 thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his 
 Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of 
 that earlier period, have many readers of these pages 
 stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the 
 following? { It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, 
 one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to 
 think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, 
 through all changes of weather and of fortune, from 
 beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on 
 the morning when Joshua forded Jordan ; even as at 
 the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam 
 the Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry, this little 
 Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was 
 murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed 
 
232 Thomas Cartyk 
 
 unseen : Jisrt, foo, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, 
 is a vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation 
 
 ers, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted 
 and lasts sin Id. Thou fool! 
 
 alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; t 
 idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age. 9 
 In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there 
 lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable mcdi- 
 ns on the grandeur and mystery of Time, and 
 relation to Eternity, which play such a jxirt in this Philo- 
 sophy of Clothes?" The book in which this passage 
 occurs had been completed in 1831, but was lying in a 
 ate drawer at Craigenputtoch (when not in the hands 
 of the astonished publishers 1 "tasters") at the time the 
 above poem was written not being able to get itself into 
 Dt till Fraur opened a door for it in 1833. Then the 
 Orr Water, be it noted, is a moorland stream that flows 
 through at least one parish, if not more, marching with 
 that of Dunscore, the parish in which Carlyle was resid- 
 ing when the bridge of Drumwhinn was built. With this 
 fact we must link the curious coincidence that, while the 
 poem bears to have been written on one of the opening 
 days of November 1832, it only made its appearance 
 print in the October of 1834, not much more than three 
 months after Carlyle had set up his " little book-press 19 
 in the house in Cheyne Row, and when Leigh Hunt, we 
 know, was or him, no doubt speaking at times of 
 
 new venture, his l^ndon Journal having been started 
 \pnl, and probably suggesting the propriety of Carlyle 
 giving him a contribution for its pages. That there was 
 no good reason for refusing such a request will be all the 
 more obvious when we mention that the periodical, 
 
Further Tokens of Carlyle's Hand. 233 
 
 besides having Leigh Hunt, his friend, for its con- 
 ductor, numbered among its contributors writers of such 
 eminence as Walter Savage Landor. Could there be 
 anything more natural than that Carlyle, thus solicited, 
 should give him the little poem? That such a manu- 
 script was likely to be lying in his drawer at the time is a 
 theory seen to be quite tenable when we mark the dates 
 prefixed to the small collection of poetical " Fractions," 
 as he calls them, included in the second appendix to the 
 first volume of his Miscellaneous Essays. These dates 
 show that the seven pieces of verse there published were 
 written between 1823 and 1833, so that he had not given 
 up trying his hand at rhyme when Drumwhinn Bridge 
 was built. We have thus marshalled some of the points, 
 both in the internal and the external evidence, conduct- 
 ing us to the conclusion that this anonymous poem was 
 probably the work of Carlyle ; nor have we yet exhausted 
 all the features of the case that tend in the same direction. 
 Apart from the fact that a notable portion of the poem is 
 simply a paraphrase of the sentences we have cited from 
 Sartor, reproducing the very same allusions to the Jordan 
 and its passage by the Israelites, together with mention 
 of the Ganges, is not the whole spirit of the piece 
 Carlylean to the very core? What said the Laird of 
 Craigenputtoch to Emerson on that August day in 1833 
 as they walked and talked among the hills, looking up at 
 Criffel and down into Wordsworth's country? "Christ 
 died on the tree ; that built Dunscore kirk yonder ; that 
 brought you and me together. Time has only a relative 
 existence." So in the poem, there is at least a kindred 
 thought : 
 
-34 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 From Being's Source it bounded 
 The morn when time begin; 
 
 S - :.: . . " : ; : ', 
 
 Unheard or beard of man. 
 
 That day they crowed the Jordan, 
 
 Wben Hebrew trumpets rang, 
 Tky wave no foot was fording, 
 
 Yet here in moor it aang. , 
 
 I, while thou'st meandered, 
 Wai not, have come to be, 
 Apart ao long have wandered. 
 This moment meet with thee. 
 
 And who that stood on the whinstonc arch over t 
 moorland river in that remote corner of Scotland in the 
 November of 1832 could it have been if it was not the 
 dweller at Craigenputtoch, the Mystic,* who was heard 
 g on this wise : 
 
 GUI Orr, thou mystic wa 
 
 No Ganges holi 
 Tkat was Creation's da< 
 
 What was it fiuhiooed tius t 
 
 The very italics are significant, as any one may see who 
 marks Carlylc's corresponding use of them in his acknow- 
 ledged poem, entitled, " The Beetle;" nor will the ca; 
 
 * I attempted, in the beginning of 1831, to embody in a serin 
 of articles, headed 'The Spirit of the Age/ some of my new opinions. 
 
 and especially to point out in the character of the present age the 
 anomalies and evil characteristic* of the transition from a system of 
 opinions which had worn out to another only in process of being 
 formed. The only effect which I know to have been produced by 
 them was that Carlylc, then living in a secluded part of Scotland, 
 read them in his solitude, and saying to himself (as be afterwards 
 told me), Here is a new Mystic,' inquired on coming to London 
 that autumn respecting their authorship ; an inquiry which was the 
 immediate cause of our being personally acquainted i !c 
 
 soon found oat that I was not another Mystic'" 
 tyjtkm Stuart 
 
Leigh Hunt Invited to Craigenputtoch. 235 
 
 letters that are employed pass unobserved by any careful 
 student of Carlyle's writings. In addition to all which 
 considerations, we must likewise note the extreme sim- 
 plicity of the title ; the homeliness yet dignity of the 
 diction, conveying great thoughts in the very simplest 
 language the characteristic allusion to " the craftsman's 
 hand," and to the tongue " no clerks unravel ;" the 
 " hundred year " in the penultimate verse ; and the 
 humorously tender farewell in the last to the " poor 
 moorland river." If this be not the workmanship of 
 Carlyle, all we can say is, that no author ever came 
 nearer it ; and, be it his or not, the reader will, perhaps, 
 kindly excuse our intrusion of the certainly noteworthy 
 little poem when we recall attention to the fact that, both 
 by subject and date, it does at least have some reference 
 to the memorable sojourn of Carlyle among the hills of 
 Galloway. 
 
 Both in Leigh Hunt's Autobiography ', 1850, and his 
 Correspondence, 1862, tokens abound of the intimate 
 friendship that subsisted between Hunt and Carlyle. 
 Their acquaintance began in the February of 1832, when 
 the elder of the two men sent a copy of his Christianism 
 to the writer of " Characteristics." By the 2oth of the 
 above-named month, Carlyle, then lodging in London, 
 was inviting Hunt to tea, as the means of their first 
 meeting ; and on the 2oth of November, the month in 
 which " Drumwhinn Bridge " was composed, Carlyle was 
 writing from Craigenputtoch urging Hunt to " come 
 hither and see us when you want to rusticate a month," 
 adding, "Is that for ever impossible?" as it really was 
 with the hard-driven poet and journalist, whose circum- 
 stances were always embarrassed, so much so that on more 
 
236 Thomas Curly k. 
 
 than one occasion he was literally without bread, and 
 obliged to write to friends to get his books sold, that he 
 might have something to eat The pressure was sorest 
 upon him from 1834 to 1840; his difficulties had been 
 
 asing in that very year when Carlylc pressed hi: 
 
 hsdale, and bad as they were then they became 
 infinitely worse after he had moved from the New R 
 to Chelsea, which he seems to have done shortly before 
 Carlyle's settlement in Cheyne Row. Hunt lived in the 
 immediately adjoining street, and Carlyle had only too 
 frequent occasion to know in detail the troubles that were 
 almost daily perplexing his unfortunate neighbour. Yet 
 
 as in the very midst of those miseries that si: 
 dents would occur as the one of whirh Mr R. H. Home, 
 the poet, gives such an amusing account in his New 
 Spirit of tht Age, 1844. At a little gathering, shortly 
 after the publication of Hero- Worship, the conversation 
 turned on the heroism of man, Leigh Hunt, as was 
 wont, taking the bright side, with most musical taU 
 the inlands of the blest and the Millennium that was st: 
 hastening, Carlylc dropping heavy tree-trunks of philo- 
 sophical doubt across his friend's pleasant stream. 
 the unmitigated Hunt never ceased his overflowing 
 annexations, nor the saturnine Carlyle his infinite demurs 
 to those finite flourishing*. The opponents were so well 
 
 rhed that it was quite clear the contest would never 
 come to an end But the night was far advanced, and 
 the party broke up. Leaving the dose room, they sud- 
 denly found themselves in presence of a brilliant star- 
 light night '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. 1 
 
Carlytts Character of Leigh Hunt. 237 
 
 Carlyle looked up. They all remained silent to hear what 
 he would say. Out of the silence came a few low-toned 
 words, in a broad Scotch accent. c Eh ! it's a sair 
 sicht!'" In 1840 Hunt left Chelsea, but the fraternal 
 ministrations of Carlyle did not cease; and when at 
 length in 1847 the poor old poet got a pension from the 
 Queen of ^200 a year, at. the instance of Lord John 
 Russell, one of the most active promoters of the move- 
 ment that secured this provision was Carlyle, who drew 
 up a paper in which the claims of Leigh Hunt were set 
 forth in a manner which would have made refusal even 
 by an unsympathetic Minister impossible. The first 
 paragraph of the Memoranda ran thus : " That Mr Hunt 
 is a man of the most indisputedly superior worth; a Man 
 of Genius in a very strict sense of that word, and in all 
 the senses which it bears or implies ; of brilliant varied 
 gifts, of graceful fertility, of clearness, lovingness, truth- 
 fulness; of childlike open character; also of most pure 
 and even exemplary private deportment ; a man who can 
 be other than loved only by those who have not seen him, 
 or seen him from a distance through a false medium." 
 The statement also contained the following notable pas- 
 sages : " That his services in the cause of reform, as 
 Founder and long as Editor of the Examiner newspaper ; 
 as Poet, Essayist, Public Teacher in all ways open to him, 
 are great and evident : few now living in this kingdom, 
 perhaps, could boast of greater. That his sufferings in 
 that same cause have also been great ; legal prosecution 
 and penalty (not dishonourable to him ; nay, honourable, 
 were the whole truth known, as it will one day be) : 
 unlegal obloquy and calumny through the Tory Press ; 
 perhaps a greater quantity of baseness, persevering, im- 
 
Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 placable calumny, than any other living writer has ur 
 goni : long course of hostility (nearly .lest 
 
 conceivable, had it not been carried on in hall, or almost 
 n) may be regarded as the beginning of 
 r worst distresses! and a >wn 
 
 to this day." Carlyle added, that Ix-igh Hunt, though t 
 ing continua h passionate i! rdly 
 
 beer r the day that was passing over him, 
 
 and that none of his distresses had arisen from wasteful- 
 ness, since he was a man of humble wishes, who could 
 
 dignity on little, "bt: 1 
 call 
 
 dux own, and a guileless trustfulness of na: 
 
 the thing and things that have made him unsuccessful " 
 making him, 4t in reality, more loveabU 
 
 i dosed with a fine compliment to Lord John Russell, 
 as a h minister, " in whom great pan of i 
 
 recognises (\\ rise at s 
 
 insight, fidelity, ami Wl llunt 
 
 is Autobiography \ one of the first to con. 
 ulat is faithful >w, who 
 
 detl \t ellent good bo< the best 
 
 of t : I remember to have read in 
 
 language . iced, except it be Bosv. 
 
 of J 
 
 x)k 
 l>ccn * 4 1 exercise of cK 
 
 i assisted at any sermon, liturgy, or lit 
 this Ion .is an effect u|>on 
 
 hin . the closing para- 
 
 gra] 
 
 I am i, fellow too, as well as you." No- 
 
His Relationship with Mr Mill. 239 
 
 where do we see the great heart of Carlyle more beauti- 
 fully displayed than in the story of his relations with that 
 old Reformer, of whom it has been justly said that, long 
 before Reform was popular, " he wielded one of the most 
 vigorous lances in the forlorn hope of Liberals," and who 
 yet was one of the gentlest of mankind, as he was also 
 the sunniest, most graceful, and refined of all the essayists 
 of the Victorian age. 
 
 The magnanimity of Carlyle was, we have reason to 
 believe, not less apparent in his relationship with another 
 distinguished contemporary who has already been named 
 as an intimate friend, though in some important respects 
 there was even a greater difference, both as to tempera- 
 ment and opinion, between the two than existed in the 
 case we have just pictured. In his Autobiography we 
 find John Stuart Mill declaring, in the sadly extravagant 
 yet profoundly touching eulogy of his wife, that she was 
 more a poet than Carlyle, and more a thinker than Mill 
 himself that her mind and nature included Carlyle's, 
 and " infinitely more." There is a generous recognition 
 of Carlyle's literary power and of the influence exercised 
 by his writings upon Mill;* but the latter says nothing 
 
 * " The good his writings did me," says Mill, " was not as philo- 
 sophy to instruct, but as poetry to animate. . . . We never 
 approached much nearer to each other's modes of thought than we 
 were in the first years of our acquaintance. I did not, however, 
 deem myself a competent judge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a 
 poet, and that I was not ; that he was a man of intuition, which I 
 was not ; and that as such, he not only saw many things long before 
 me, which I could, only when they were pointed out to me, hobble 
 after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many 
 things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed 
 out. I knew that I could not see round him, and could never be 
 certain that I saw over him ; and I never presumed to judge him 
 
240 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 as to the cessation of their personal friendship. That 
 took place suddenly at the time of Mill's marriage to 
 Mr> T.ivl. r. in 1851. Mill, we believe, was chiefly if not 
 wholly responsible for the breach, though this was pro- 
 bably the result of the influence exercised over him by 
 another. An innocent joke about the marriage of the 
 philosopher had come to the can of Mill, carried to him 
 by some "candid and immediately he ceased to 
 
 be a visitor at the house in Cheyne Row, where for years 
 he had been a constant and always welcome gues* 
 
 e extreme pain to the warm-hearted < s well as 
 
 to I: ho from that hour never heard any reason 
 
 course of condu< Mill had deemed 
 
 have been told by one who 
 
 v both men intimately, and who most deeply regretted 
 
 the estrangement, that Carl vie and h: -vised a 
 
 kindly . invite Mr and Mrs Mill to dinner at 
 
 R<\v, in order that the old amicable relationship 
 
 >torcd Carlylc sallied forth one morning to 
 
 n in person, but near the India House 
 
 was passed by Mill on the pavement in such a cold, 
 
 resolute, unmi.Nt;.' i that the " < .'. to 
 
 odry 
 
 iy humbler men of letters could bear witness 
 to the truth of the tt- .m impre 
 
 fon ^h Hunt, as to < \varmthof lu 
 
 The ca> >mas Cooper, the old 
 
 Ch.r !o of many more that 
 
 1 ; and : name, as well as 
 
 'cfmitcnevs mtil he *.i* ii. to me by one greatly 
 
 the M.. hat is, by Mrs V 
 
His Kindness to Cooper the Chartist. 241 
 
 of those that have gone before, suggests the reflection 
 that, if Carlyle's political sentiments frequently gave pain 
 to the friends of Reform, he seems, somehow, all along to 
 have had an exceedingly warm side to Reformers. The 
 poem written by Cooper in jail, The Purgatory of Sui- 
 cides^ he dedicated to Carlyle, from whom he received in 
 return a kind letter, and subsequently many substantial 
 tokens of friendly consideration. " I owe many benefits to 
 Mr Carlyle," he says in the Autobiography published by 
 him in 1872. "Not only richly directoral thoughts in 
 conversation, but deeds of substantial kindness. Twice 
 he put a five-pound note into my hand, when I was in 
 difficulties ; and told me, with a look of grave humour, 
 that if I could not pay him again, he would not hang me. 
 Just after I sent him the copy of my Prison Rhyme, he 
 put it into the hands of a young, vigorous, inquiring 
 intelligence who had called to pay him a reverential visit 
 at Chelsea. The new reader of my book sought me out 
 and made me his friend. That is twenty-six years ago, 
 and our friendship has continued and strengthened, and 
 has never stiffened into patronage on the one side, or 
 sunk into servility on the other although my friend has 
 now become ' Right Honourable/ and is the Vice-Presi- 
 dent of * Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.' " 
 It was at Carlyle's house that an incident occurred which 
 Mr Cooper puts on record, because of the previous want 
 of kindness which another Mr Forster had exhibited. 
 " My novel of The Family Feud? he says, " drew a hand- 
 some critique in the Examiner from Mr John Forster 
 for a wonder ! I may as well tell how it came about. I 
 went to 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, one evening, with the 
 intent of spending a couple of hours with my illustrious 
 
 Q 
 
242 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 friend Thomas Carlyle. Hut I had not been with him i 
 than half-an-hour when Mr John Forster was announced. 
 1 met him without any high degree of pleasure. And 
 although there was no treat on earth I could have de> 
 more than t the interchange of thought between 
 
 such intellects as those of Carlyle and J ster, 
 
 I felt inclined, with the remembrance of the pjust 
 'cut my stick ! ' And I c< \c decamped 
 
 ily, had it not been for an incident worth mentioning. 
 A loaded truck stopped at the street door there was a 
 loud knock and the maid servant ran up stair- 
 less, to say that a huge parcel had been brought. 
 Carlyle seemed all wonder and muttered, 'A huge par 
 what huge parcel? but Til come down and see.' And, 
 somehow or other, we all went down to see for tl 
 was a large wooden case, evidently containing a picture. 
 A hammer and a chisel were soon brought, and I offered 
 to take them, and oj>en the case but, no! my illustr! 
 friend would open it himself. ' It's do;: :ure 
 
 from that old 1 Candor,' said he ; and he worked away 
 vigorously with his implements till there was revealed a 
 very noble picture indeed, with its fine gilded frame. It 
 was a portrait of David Hume, in full dress the dress he 
 
 aid alwas worn when he sat down to wr 
 
 so strangely were his polished style and his full dress 
 associated. 'Only think of that old Landor sending me 
 this ! ' broke out again, as we all stood 
 
 gazing on the p< .miration. '1 lent 
 
 served to 'break the ice' so far th l ed a littl 
 the conversation that followed; and when Mr Carlyle 
 quitted the room a book he wanted to show 
 
 friend, Mr John Forster said t :i a marked tone, 
 
Anecdote of John fiorster. 243 
 
 ' You have just had a novel published by Routledge do 
 you happen to know whether a copy has been sent to the 
 Examiner V I replied that I did not know; but I would 
 inquire. 'Take care that it is addressed to me, will 
 you ? ' said Mr Forster ; c you understand what I mean ? 
 Take care that it is addressed to me personally ' and he 
 nodded and smiled. ' Thank you, sir,' said I ; ' I will 
 address a copy to you, myself for I thought I did 
 understand what he meant. I rose to go soon after, and 
 my illustrious friend, with the perfect kindness he has 
 always shown me, would go with me to the street door to 
 say ' good night/ So I whispered to him, in the passage, 
 and requested him to strengthen the good intent there 
 seemed to lie in John Forster's mind towards me. Car- 
 lyle give me one of his humorous smiles, and squeezed 
 my hand, as an assurance that I might depend upon him. 
 And so the favourable critique on my Family Feud 
 appeared in the Examiner" 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 KWSPAPER ARTICLES INTEREST KMF 
 
 MOVEMENT SUPPORTS THE PERMIS 
 TEMPT FOR THE FOURTH ESTATE- 
 
 LISTS THOMAS BALLANTYNE HIS AMERIC 
 i KWERS BURLESQUES OF HIS STYLE. 
 
 "OF all priesthoods, aristocracies, governing classes 
 preset in the world, t no class < 
 
 iportance to that priesthood of the writers of books.* 
 When he penned this sentence, Carlyle included in 
 modern priesthood the writers for the newspap 
 indeed he gave them an honourable place on 
 "The writers of newspapers, pamphlets, books, 
 
 the real, porting .e Church of a 
 
 country." But the young man who had arrived at 
 
 on, was not destined to do mti 
 i state except a < 
 
 sale and vituj>crative style, as no other pul> 
 of his gi ired to adopt lie been 1 
 
 a littk- the world, it is possible he might 
 
 have escaped being drawn into the vortex of journalism j 
 but ive power was not in Carlyle's youthful < 
 
 t it has since become so the peril was one easfljl 
 avoided Poor as the pecuniary reward of the ] 
 goi: be in a country town on the Border < 
 
 was perhaps as good as any the student could 
 
His Newspaper Articles. 245 
 
 have got by contributing even to a metropolitan journal ; 
 as for the country papers in the opening quarter of the 
 century, they were generally edited by the printer with a 
 pastepot and a pair of scissors. That Carlyle had early 
 formed a plan of life, with which the incessant distrac- 
 tions of the journalist's career would not have harmonised, 
 has, we trust, been made sufficiently clear at the outset of 
 our narrative ; but it may be questioned if he would have 
 rested content with hack-work for Dr Brewster, had the 
 Edinburgh newspapers of that time been able to afford 
 the scope for his talents, and the respectable pecuniary 
 rewards which they are able to give to a brilliant young 
 writer to-day. The lightest bits of press work executed 
 by Carlyle at the beginning of his career as man of letters, 
 were the couple of book notices he wrote for that New 
 Edinburgh, which was not permitted to grow old; and 
 we hear of nothing in the way of contributions to the 
 newspapers till we arrive at the year of Charles Buller's 
 death, and no more after that till the appearance of the 
 series of articles which heralded the Latter-Day Pamphlets. 
 The number of these contributions was six in all. The 
 first appeared in the Examiner on March 4, 1848, and 
 the last in the same journal of December 2 of the same 
 year. "Louis Philippe" was the theme of the former 
 article; the latter was the tribute to the writer's old 
 pupil. On April 29, he printed in the Examiner an 
 article on "Repeal of the Union;" and on May 13 there 
 came three articles at a rush two in the Spectator and 
 one in the Examiner. The titles of these ran thus : 
 " Ireland and the British Chief Governor," " Irish Regi- 
 ments (of the New Era)," and ' " Legislation for Ireland." 
 None of the six articles has been reprinted in the Mis- 
 
246 TTiomas Car 
 
 ccllanin, and only the obituary notice of Buller is familiar 
 to the reading public of to-day. Beyond a few letters, all \ 
 
 :cm that we remember addressed to the 7V>/.Y-. Mr 
 Carlylc has since 1848 contributed nothing to the m 
 papers. More than once the temptation to write 
 i has l>een put in his way; a case occurred some 
 ve years ago, when a pr journal 
 
 said to have offered him a thousand guineas if he would 
 it a description of thr his 
 
 >uld be appended. Of course he was n< 
 
 ndeed, years before it was held 
 
 he had given up contributing even to the maga/ines and 
 reviews, for, about 1853, \v !>eing told by the 
 
 :i secretary of the Scottish League 
 
 Robert Rae, now of London), how he had ( 
 Chelsea upon Carlyle, with a view to prevail upon him 
 to write something for the Scottish Rwietv a shilling 
 League was then publishing. This was the 
 i on which we happened to h 
 t that has now for some years been fan 
 ugh to at least < n of the public how Mr 
 
 vie was pmfnur. sled in th: nee 
 
 question. He mt< red heartily into conversation with 
 ibject, perceiving at a glance, we doubt 
 ,s of his visitor. He was 
 
 greedy of ir about the progress of the work the 
 
 League ! md felt so much sympathy with it, 
 
 that he would have S*vttisk 
 
 in' Inn that he had alread> 
 
 m old fr 
 
 editors, in London. Besides, wer 
 am !ded, there would be no end to the apj 
 
Supports the Permissive Bill. 247 
 
 tions that would flow in upon him from other quarters ; 
 so, reluctantly, he had to say no. 
 
 Here it may be noted that, in the early days of the 
 temperance movement, when some of its old pioneers in 
 the Chelsea region held large open-air meetings, Carlyle 
 was a frequent and attentive listener. When a Permissive 
 Bill Association was formed in the district, its promoters 
 felt encouraged by this token of sympathy with their work 
 to invite him to attend the first public meeting; and, 
 though he was unable to accept the invitation, he sent a 
 reply that gave them great encouragement and tended 
 much to strengthen the force of their agitation. "My 
 complete conviction," he said, writing on i8th April 1872, 
 " goes, and for long years has gone, with yours in regard 
 to that matter ; and it is one of my most earnest and 
 urgent public wishes that such Bill do become law." 
 They then asked him to accept the presidency of their 
 society, and, in declining the honour in a courteous and 
 kindly note, he said, " From the bottom of my heart I 
 wish you success, complete and speedy." They had sent 
 him a bundle of their literature; "the pamphlets," he 
 told them, " shall be turned to account, though I myself 
 require no argument or evidence farther on this disgrace- 
 ful subject." It was indeed one that had long engaged 
 his thoughts ; in his Chartism perhaps the fiercest of all 
 his bursts of indignation occurred in his Dantean picture 
 of a certain class of the Glasgow operatives. " Be it 
 with reason or unreason," he there wrote, "too surely 
 they do in verity find the time all out of joint; this world 
 for them no home, but a dingy prison-house of reckless 
 unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation against them- 
 selves and against all men. Is it a green, flowery world, 
 
248 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and 
 government of a God; or a murky, simnu! 
 of copperas-fumes, t< gin-riot, wrath and toil, 
 
 created by a Demon, governed by a Demon? The sum 
 of their wretchedness, merited or unmerited, welters, 
 huge, dark, and baleful, like a Dantean Hell, visible 
 there in the statiitks of ('.in ; ( iin, justly named ti 
 authentic incarnation of the Infernal Principle in our 
 times, too indisputably an incarnation; Gin, the black 
 throat into which wretchedness of every sort, comm 
 eating itself by calling on Delirium to help it, whirls 
 down ; abdication of the power to think or resolve, as 
 too painful now, on the part of men whose lot of all 
 others would require thought and resolution ; liquid Mad- 
 ness sold at ten])cncc the quartern, all the products of 
 which are and \\\\\^\ be, like its origin, mad, miserable, 
 ruinous, and that onl\ appeal to the working- 
 
 men electors doubtles : of not a : 
 
 of the long-deluded \ 'No man oppresses tl 
 
 O free and independent franchiser; but does not : 
 stupid pewter pot oppress thee? No son of Adani am 
 bid thee come or go; but this absurd pot i wet, 
 
 tliis can and does ! Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric 
 the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites and this 
 sec 1 of liquor ; and thou pratest of thy liberty f 
 
 Years after the interview with the representative of the 
 Scottish League he did indeed, in one or two instac 
 
 depart from the ru'. laid down lor himself as we 
 
 shall ! sec, by g: iasson a couple 
 
 of articles for Macmillan, and by handing to another 
 esteemed friend, Mr William Allin^ham, then the - 
 
His Contempt for the Newspapers. 249 
 
 of Fraser, the two last historical essays he was ever to 
 publish. But for the newspapers he never did any work 
 beyond the six articles of 1848. Indeed, he often pro- 
 fessed a great contempt for them. To the Rev. Joseph 
 Cook, the Boston Monday lecturer, he said, " We must 
 destroy the faith of the public in the newspapers." The 
 Fifeshire editor, Mr Hodgson, tells us that, when he was 
 introduced to the aged philosopher by Provost Swan of 
 Kirkcaldy, Carlyle burst out in invectives against the 
 newspaper profession, declaring it to be " mean and de- 
 moralising." To Charles Boner, long the German cor- 
 respondent of a leading London daily, he spoke in the 
 same truculent fashion. We have heard of his saying 
 more than once that he never read the papers, as they 
 contained only "gutter- water;" but it sometimes struck 
 those who enjoyed the privilege of conversing with him 
 that he had a singularly extensive acquaintance with the 
 passing events of the day for a man who gave no heed 
 to the morning paper, and who only glanced now and 
 then into " a weekly print called Public Opinion, which 
 somebody was good enough to send him regularly." 
 Still, as in his relations to Reform and its advocates, so 
 was it here : whatever he might be pleased to say or to 
 write about the Fourth Estate, he was, from the com- 
 mencement to the close of his career, on the very 
 friendliest terms with gentlemen (and ladies, too Miss 
 Martineau, for example) whose main work in the world 
 consisted in writing for the papers. Quite a crowd of 
 journalists, such as Leigh Hunt and Thomas Aird, John 
 Forster and David Masson, were included in the inner- 
 most circle of his friends ; and how kind, considerate, 
 and helpful he was to a still larger number of less 
 
.250 Thomas Car 
 
 ^uished members of the press, scores at least could 
 personally testify. As we have already shewn, he was a 
 good friend to Thomas Cooper, who was a newspaper 
 : nothing could exceed his kindness to Thomas 
 Ballantyne, the quondam Paisley weaver who rose 
 editor of the Manchester Times, and who subsequently 
 started a short-lived journal in London under 
 fated title of The Statesman (to which, somehow, mis- 
 
 :ie seems ever to cling). William V .it one 
 
 time the conductor of the Critic, and, like Ballantyne, 
 hailing originally from Carlyle's own south - w 
 
 t of Scotland, was also honoured with his friend- 
 ship. To Ballantyne he gave permission to make 
 
 'time of extracts from his writings, prefaced with 
 a brief biographical memoir ; and he likewise cour 
 him to Mi-rite an autobiography, on which Ballantyne 
 was, we believe, engaged, when death cut short his 
 labours in the August of 1871, at the age of 65. An 
 earnest and sincere man, gifted with a fine taste in 
 ture, he was also an ardent politician, and as such closely 
 associated with Cobden and Bright in the Free 
 struggle. In later years he enjoyed the personal acquaint- 
 ance of Lord Palmcrston and the Earl of Clarendon ; but 
 lembered as having for thirty years been 
 on terms of affectionate intimacy with Thomas ( 
 It was amusing, however, to note that even when he was 
 speaking in his kin n of these journal; 
 
 Carlyle would almost always contrive to i. stereo- 
 
 typed sneer at the newspaper, i fjoh* 
 
 he speaks slightingly even of the Athtnaum and 
 the 7 ing of the former th;r passed out 
 
 ding's hands into those of Mr t took root, 
 
His American Interviewers. 251 
 
 and "still bears fruit according to its kind." In 1861, 
 when he sent a letter to the leading journal in favour of 
 a subscription to help the family of Inspector Braidwood, 
 who had perished while discharging his duty at a great fire, 
 he almost apologised for being aware from the newspaper 
 accounts of the tragic end of the brave fireman. He knew 
 nothing of the matter, he explained, " but what everybody 
 knew, and a great deal less than every reader of the 
 newspapers knows." As if he personally never read the 
 newspapers at all! In 1870, when poor Ballantyne pub- 
 lished what proved to be his last book, Essays in Mosaic, 
 Carlyle was asked to say a word in its favour which might 
 be inserted in the preface. " I have long recognised in 
 Mr Ballantyne," wrote Carlyle, " a real talent for excerpt- 
 ing significant passages from books, magazines, news- 
 papers (that contain any such), and for presenting them 
 in lucid arrangement, and in their most interesting and 
 readable form." The sneer is put in the parenthesis; 
 but we ought, perhaps, to call it Carlyle's little joke, 
 rather than a sneer. If such a remark were made in 
 earnest it would be simply foolish. Even Dr Johnson 
 confessed that he never picked up a newspaper in which 
 he did not find something worth remembering ; and if 
 that was true of the newspaper in its feeble infantine 
 state, how much more justly applicable would the remark 
 be to-day ! 
 
 One of the reasons for a dislike that deepened with 
 the advancing years may, perhaps, be found in the very 
 questionable habit some of his American visitors had, of 
 sending home, to newspapers in their own country, 
 reports, often imperfect and misleading, of conversations 
 they had been permitted to have with him in Cheyne Row, 
 
252 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 These, of course, soon found their way back to the old 
 country, and were generally reproduced in British jour- 
 nals. Not seldom they caused him profound an: 
 especially when the reported talk happened to relate, 
 it frequently did, to the political and social conditio: 
 the United States. In once reporting to a Cincinnatti 
 paper a strong expression of Carlyle's resentment of the 
 liberties thus taken by some of his American visitors, Mr 
 Moncurc Conway said : " Carlyle feels, as do those who 
 have been in the habit of listening to his conversation 
 
 ugh many years, that no chance expressions during 
 an hour or two ought to be held up as representing 
 full opinions on the great subje< n the political 
 
 and so. lencies of America. indeed, 
 
 opposed to demo A he looks upon the two lead- 
 
 ing Anglo-Saxon nations, America and England, as going, 
 one close after the other, upon the wrong path. And 
 that is about as much as ( casual American 
 
 ors get from him. If, however, they should be able 
 to hear all sides of the question within 1 hey 
 
 would find that he regards both countries as destined to 
 pass through the democratic or negative phase of develop. 
 
 t, to a condition of social order which the most 
 radical Republican or Democrat would probably regard 
 as a nobler ideal than his own. At no time has Carl} 
 deep interest in all that concerns America failed. As he 
 respects the C.erman longing for unity, so, even while 
 \vithholding his sympathy from the North in our late 
 war, as to its purpose, I have often heard him pay a 
 tribute to its love for the Union. rminatio 
 
 the Americans to defend that Union did not fail to ex 
 
 admiration, and in his address in Edinburgh he 
 
Burlesques of His Style. 253 
 
 named America as among 'the greatest nations/ His 
 knowledge about America is also far beyond that even of 
 the most educated Americans. I have often been amazed 
 at the exceeding minuteness of his acquaintance with the 
 whole history of America, from the date of its discovery 
 its settlement, progress, the rise of its cities, its 
 pioneers, soldiers, literary men. I have known him enter- 
 tain a room full of educated Americans with facts and 
 anecdotes about their own country, which one and all 
 afterwards confessed had been utterly unknown to them. 
 He speaks in touching terms of the way in which America 
 first took him up, and of the fact that the first book of 
 his own that he ever saw was sent him from America with 
 a good sum of money for writing it. And he still speaks 
 of Emerson as 'the clearest intellect now on the planet.'" 
 A second irritant that sometimes added vehemence to 
 his fulminations against the newspaper press was the dis- 
 relish he had for the imitations of his style that occasion- 
 ally found their way into the public journals. Even when 
 these were good-natured as well as clever, he seemed 
 unable to regard them with equanimity ; and when they 
 could neither be called kindly nor clever, they made him 
 very angry. Once, well on to twenty years ago, he was 
 made excessively indignant by a smart defence of a 
 notorious criminal, written in Carlylese, which appeared 
 in a Glasgow print. The writer of this rather gruesome 
 jeu & esprit had reproduced so happily some of the most 
 striking characteristics of his style that even intelligent 
 students of his writings were at first imposed upon.* 
 
 * In one of the earliest of the Glasgow University Albums, pub- 
 lished a quarter of a century ago, appeared the first of a series of 
 extremely clever imitations of Carlyle by the same hand. The per- 
 
254 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 attention was called t gentleman in the 
 
 neighbourhood of ithcr wanted 
 
 if the article was genuine, or wished to make Carlyle 
 acquainted with the : y people in Scotland 
 
 were accepting the production as his own. From the 
 gruff reply, it was evident that the Mast< * appre- 
 
 v, and that he was very angry indeed with 
 the too apt pupil Even in ire 
 
 >r conversed with him at Provuv. had 
 
 not forgotten that old 1 isgow Carlylese. 
 
 iie name of one (St Andrews) Profe.v 
 the primary ol, 
 
 iat of t: sor*s son. The Pro- 
 
 fessor's name he had no: hut that of the son 
 
 was somewhere embedded in his memory. It was con- 
 a Glasgow newsp. ^ forming 
 
 journal, about i 1 The gentleman 
 
 pcti ly right to add, has since done much sound literary 
 
 work, tath in prose and verse, including a graceful men 
 has also written an essay 
 
 and Carlyle, " containing what he entitles "An Occasional Discourse 
 on S MS," prefaced with the remark, M In the little 
 
 claim an offense n to 
 
 Mr Carlylc, a man whom I entirely honour, and, though with only 
 a n. as a prophet, conv . oar 
 
 greatest man of letters now living." The happiest of all the imi- 
 tations of ' umcll Lowell in the , 
 duction to the Bigtno Fafxrs ; an >ld that one, almost 
 equally felicitous appeared in an early number of Mr Miall's 
 rmijf, "which caused great joy to some who to. 
 
 irlyle hini>clf, and a proof that he had 
 ..mM-lfun-' en appearc tic banner of a 
 
 true religious : Much more unendurable to Carlyle than 
 
 these professed burlesques most have been the mountain of 1** 
 
 is who had no humorous intention to 
 1>; 
 
His Contempt for Sentimental Juries 255 
 
 I refer to warmly espoused the cause of Jessie M'Lachlan, 
 the person convicted, and a master of Mr Carlyle's style 
 wrote a letter as if from Mr Carlyle himself in which 
 the woman's case was zealously vindicated. ' Yes,' said 
 Mr Carlyle to me, ' I remember now ; some rawboned 
 blockhead mixed my name up with that parcel of lies and 
 crime; but didn't he do some honest work after?'" That 
 Carlyle was not so indifferent to the contents of the news- 
 papers as one might have supposed, is indicated by what 
 follows in Mr Hodgson's narrative : " It was an easy 
 transition from this to the Crieff murder, and to the 
 jurors who recommended the convict to mercy. His 
 gleaming satire blighted the whole proceedings as a sham 
 and a lie, in which the jurors and the murderer had 
 shares alike. He has such a contempt for the flash senti- 
 mentality which is at the bottom of what jurors usually 
 do in name of mercy, that the intimation to him that 
 fifteen of the ' Palladium ' with one of their favourites 
 had just figured on the gallows would evoke merely a 
 fleeting smile of contemptuous gratification." Let us 
 hope that this somewhat sanguinary editor's interpreta- 
 tion of the great man's talk was, in this instance, a shade 
 stronger than it ought to have been. " It is absolutely 
 necessary to Carlyle's conception of social order and 
 stable government," adds his Fife interpreter, " that the 
 gallows in these days should be in constant operation, 
 and I, for one, am an ardent believer in that doctrine." 
 Of course, the people who talk in this fashion never 
 contemplate the inclusion of themselves among the in- 
 dividuals requiring to be " worked off" by the benefi- 
 cent Calcraft. 
 
CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 K or STERLING" SECRET OF ITS POPULARITY- 
 ITS I >EFECT MACLEOD CAM 
 
 i-SSAY ON c \k! VI I. i : K OF 
 
 ANECDOTES OF ITS 
 
 MERITS AND DEFECTS CAKI VI I S SOJOURN IN GER- 
 MANY VISIT FROM THE EMPRESS OF GERMANY 
 
 1 1 was in the same epoch of his life during which he 
 
 published the political pamphlets and his Cromwdl, that 
 
 Carl prepared a small biography, which, though it 
 
 gave pain to not a few readers on account of the manner 
 
 in which it treated the highest of all themes, was 
 
 universally regarded, in respect to its form, as the moot 
 
 work of its class produced in this generation. 
 
 That fir instead off, has been deep- 
 
 <1 with each succeeding year; and there are m 
 whose judgn cd to respect, ready at this 
 
 moment, with unqualified con; u> pronounce Tk* 
 
 of John Sterling unrivalled among all the 1 
 biographies extant in our language an opinion on be- 
 half of which there is much to be said. The subjec 
 the book, though he tried his hand at several things, was, 
 according to Car v of him, appointed by nature 
 
 for and he had barely passed the age of Burns 
 
 he was summoned from earth, not only 
 eased from his toils before the hottest of the ci. 
 
His Reason for Writing Sterlings Life. 257 
 
 but before his proper work had really begun. It was in 
 1844 that he died, at the age of thirty-eight. The 
 memoir by Carlyle appeared in 1851. Sterling had 
 committed the care of his literary character and printed 
 writings to Archdeacon Hare and Carlyle, to do for both 
 what they judged fittest ; and, after consultation between 
 the joint-executors, it was agreed that the Archdeacon 
 should edit the writings and write the Life. To this 
 Carlyle consented all the more gladly, no doubt, on 
 account of the conclusion to which he had come, that 
 no biography at all was needed in this case, not even 
 according to the world's usages. Sterling's "character 
 was not supremely original, neither was his fate in the 
 world wonderful. Why had not No Biography, and the 
 privilege of all the weary, been his lot?" Yet he who 
 asked this question decided eventually that poor Sterling, 
 having already been made the subject of one biography, 
 should have a second too. The worthy Archdeacon had 
 treated Sterling as a clergyman merely, whereas the whole 
 of Sterling's clerical life had been confined to exactly 
 eight months. " But he was a man, and had relation to 
 the Universe, for eight-and-thirty years." Respect for the 
 truth demanded a second biography ; and, without the 
 slightest disrespect to Mr Hare, readers have reason to 
 be glad that he fell into the professional blunder which 
 secured for the world a new Life of his old curate by 
 Carlyle. Of course, fault was found with the latter by 
 some for the more than implied reflection on the good 
 Archdeacon ; but Carlyle believed that he had " a com- 
 mission " for doing this bit of work " higher than the 
 world's, the dictate of Nature herself," and he would there- 
 fore have been to blame had he failed to obey the behest. 
 
258 Thomas Cat 
 
 Yet we do not believe that it is the main purpose the 
 author had in view which gives to C ale book 
 
 rest and popularity, nor even its highest and 
 permanent value. Describing that literary Cons 
 
 \ caused Lord Macaulay to neglect 
 writings of his greatest contemporary,* Mr Tr 
 
 * It was certainly not because of entire ignorance of hi 
 thai Macaulay abstained from leading Carlyle's work*, 
 of coune, read mil the articles contributed by htm to the EdM; 
 Rarifw, including the one on Burns. The judgment he had for 
 of them b indicated in one ot his letters to Macvcy Napier, of 
 February 1832, in which he says : " As to Carlyle, he might as 
 write in Irving'* unknown tongue at once. The Sun newsp. 
 with del icioos absurdity, attributes his article to Lord Brough 
 Alas, it was not the poor Sun alone that was in darkness. In a 
 letter to Leigh Hunt, Macaulay described Carlyle as "a m*.n of 
 
 S though absurdly overpraised by tome of his admirers" a 
 phrase that let* in a little light on the writer's frame 
 perhaps he felt the praise to be not quite so absurd as he aflccu 
 consi adds Macaul.iy, " though I do not kr 
 
 he ceased to write (for the Edi*ktrgk Xfview), became the 
 
 ties of his diction, and his new words, compounded 4 U 7<- 
 tip*, drew such strong remonstrances from Napier." This from 
 counsellor ot Napier, ami the man who had written t 
 worthy editor that Carlyle "might as well write in Imng' un- 
 known tongue at once ! " Macaulay 's unfavourable estimate 
 le was not likely to be modified by the advice the latter ^ 
 to a friend who was in feeble health, and which somehow 
 11 the papers, to confine his reading to "the latest volum 
 Mac >r any other new novel." They met once at the 
 
 same dim. ulyle was astonished by the fluent 
 
 oi* t; : orator, and wondered who he was ; he 
 
 renuvi : wards that beseemed " a decent sort 
 
 who looked as if he had been reared on oatmeal. 
 
 y, comparing Carlyle's estimate of Leigh 
 whom he had personally ministered for years* with that forme 
 Macaulay, as giv< : he " Cynic* 
 
 of Chelsea contrasts favourably in this matter with the v 
 torian, who, though of the same political colour as the strug^ 
 
 . seems to have been content to get his knowledge ot L 
 
The Problem of Sterling's Life. 259 
 
 expresses regret " that one who so keenly relished the 
 exquisite trifling of Plato should never have tasted the 
 description of Coleridge's talk in the Life of John Sterling, 
 a passage which jdelds to nothing of its own class in 
 the Protagoras or the Symposium /" and were the passage 
 here so justly lauded, along with the vivid portrait of 
 Sterling's father, the " Thunderer " of the Times, and a 
 few other pieces of its drapery withdrawn from the book, it 
 is to be feared that the volume would instantly be deposed 
 from the high position in the esteem of the reading 
 public which it now occupies. For one who goes to it 
 that he may study the main subject of the work, a score, 
 probably, are attracted by what we may term its sub- 
 ordinate features, and especially by the masterly delinea- 
 tions of Coleridge and that astonishing unsuccessful 
 ex-farmer of Bute who found his niche at last, after many 
 wanderings, in Printing House Square. 
 
 When we turn to the problem of Sterling's life, as it is 
 unfolded by the biographer, the impression made is much 
 less satisfactory. If the Archdeacon's biography was 
 imperfect in one direction, Carlyle's is no less imperfect 
 in another. In the former, as an able and by no means 
 narrow-minded critic pointed out some years ago in the 
 Christian Spectator, there are a host of Sterling's letters 
 concerning such topics as the Divine Nature, Revelation, 
 Moral Evil, the Evidences of Christianity, Miracles, and 
 other matters on which it is generally thought important 
 to have settled views. "But in one sentence Carlyle 
 contemptuously dismisses all these discussions ! They 
 were ' immeasurable dust whirlwinds,' which while they 
 lasted only blinded poor Sterling's eyes and made him 
 miserable. It was not until he ceased to inquire into 
 
260 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 these matters, got out of their range, acted as though the 
 question had no interest for him, and dedicated hi: 
 to a * life's work ' of quite another description, that he 
 could cheerfully hoj>e and live. That life's work appears 
 to have been the composition of divers elegant t 
 
 < IKS, feebler poetry already forgotten, and fierce 
 " criticism, which, however, will scarcely be rememb 
 Surely Sterling was living more nobly, when, in the very 
 atmosphere of the questions scouted by Carlyle, he was 
 devoting himself, under the guidance of his other friend, 
 Mr Hare, to the bodies and spirits of men, as curate in a 
 country parish." A reply to this may no doubt be sug- 
 gested, to the effect that Sterling was out of his proper 
 sphere altogether as a clergyman, and that the religiou 
 cussions referred to were shallow insincerities, from which 
 nothing real could possibly come. Carlyle, it may be 
 urged, saw in Sterling a reflection of himself, with this 
 difference only, that Sterling being weaker, had gor. 
 to the pulpit, for which he had no vocation at all, since 
 
 not saint, was the real bent of his being : 
 the scorn that is poured, like lava, on the utterly unten- 
 able position which Sterling had endeavoured to oo 
 This in; n would lead to a more favourable i 
 
 r of the biography; but one other blot seems to 1 
 been hit by Dr Macleod Campbell, who confessed that, 
 while there was certainly much in the book which had 
 struck him as very beautiful, he had closed it with much 
 more regret than admiration. To his friend Erskine of 
 I.inlathen he wrote : " It is very IxMUtiful most an; 
 It has also the higher interest of making the man Carlyle 
 more known to me, and as a brother man. Vet for all 
 I have scarcely <. ad a book that has cost me 
 
The First Review of Carlyle' s Writings. 261 
 
 so much pain." This, because it seemed as if Carlyle, by 
 his superior mental force, had deliberately led Sterling 
 astray and then rejoiced in his triumph. " I cannot but 
 feel," said this critic, " that there is an unmistakable self- 
 magnifying tone in the book, and that his joy over Ster- 
 ling is a most painful, and, I would add, most instructive 
 contrast to Paul's joy over Timothy." 
 
 The volume throws many side-lights on Carlyle's own 
 life the external as well as the inner. We have a 
 description, for example, of his first meeting with Sterling, 
 an accidental one, in Mr Mill's room at the India House ; 
 we are told how Sterling's mother, " essentially and even 
 professedly Scotch," took to Mrs Carlyle " with a most 
 kind maternal relation ;" and we learn how Carlyle was 
 moved by the first review article on himself and his 
 writings. It was Sterling who wrote the essay, and it 
 appeared in the Westminster in 1839. I* ^ as ^ een 
 reprinted in Hare's edition of Sterling's works. " What 
 its effect on the public was I knew not, and know not ; 
 but remember well, and may here be permitted to 
 acknowledge, the deep silent joy, not of a weak or 
 ignoble nature, which it gave to myself in my then mood 
 and situation ; as it well might. The first generous 
 human recognition, expressed with heroic emphasis, and 
 clear conviction visible amid its fiery exaggeration, that 
 one's poor battle in this world is not quite a mad and 
 futile, that it is perhaps a worthy and manful one, which 
 will come to something yet : this fact is a memorable one 
 in every history ; and for me Sterling, often enough the 
 stiff gainsayer in our private communings, was the doer 
 of this. The thought burnt in me like a lamp, for several 
 days." There is also printed in the biography a long 
 
262 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 letter from Sterling to Carlylc, in which he reviews Sartor, 
 classifying it with the " Rhapsodico-Rc order of 
 
 books, and placing it ur of feeling, 
 
 and in power of ?> xjuence," far above the master- 
 
 pieces of Rabelais, MontaL -, and S 
 
 Carlyle had now reached his 56th year; and it was at 
 
 age that he addressed himself to the task of writing 
 
 what was destined, so Ik at least is concerned, to 
 
 be his greatest book. ./< r/, / tht Great % 
 
 complet volumes, fon third j>art of 
 
 all that he has written, represented the lat>our of upwards 
 
 of fourteen years. T . es were p 
 
 in 1858, the :th in 1862, and the last insUd- 
 
 ;t of the gi- k early in 1865. As a monu- 
 
 :it of patient industry, it 1. rallel among the 
 
 ^lish press by contt authors; 
 
 hut it may l>e qi: nee and such 
 
 ind ht not have been better 1. One 
 
 iot help hoping it is true, as we have been told, that 
 Carlyle once remarked to a friend, " I never was 
 mir I confidence, and I never cared 
 
 Soul him." We only feeling had 
 
 found a more defin; sion in the book r 
 
 not a little i 
 
 understanding of Carlyle\ real attitude towards 
 author of that Devil's l.r '.ears' 
 
 \ ay man who stole Silesia 
 
 Hy many, and more especially 
 
 : Scotsmen, it must ever be regarded as 
 
 a calam :<> ( '.ulyle's reputation and to his own 
 
 country, that, instead of cr 
 
 reared b . a book that 
 
His Unfulfilled Purpose. 263 
 
 seems to deify one of the vilest characters in the whole 
 range of history, he did not rather devote the third and 
 closing period of his active life to the fulfilment of another 
 task which he had contemplated at the outset of his 
 career. We are still destitute of such a History as would 
 have made for ever legible to all mankind the " heaven- 
 inspired seer and heroic leader of men," John Knox, even 
 as Carlyle has succeeded in picturing the great Puritan 
 statesman and soldier of England. The struggle led by 
 Knox was in itself a great one, apart altogether from its 
 hero " nearly unique in that section of European his- 
 tory," is Carlyle's own deliberate verdict on the battle 
 that was fought in his native North for the highest cause. 
 " Scottish Puritanism seems to me distinctly the noblest 
 and completest form that the grand Sixteenth Century 
 Reformation anywhere assumed. We may say also that 
 it has been by far the most widely fruitful form." Such 
 was Carlyle's solemn declaration towards the very close 
 of his life ; and, in giving it, he had to lament the fact 
 that the chief historian of the struggle is a writer " cold 
 as ice to all that is highest in the meaning of this pheno- 
 menon." Surely it must have been with a pang of self- 
 reproach that Carlyle chronicled this mournful fact. The 
 half, or even a third, of the time which he had devoted 
 to Frederick of Prussia might have sufficed to furnish the 
 world with a history of Knox and the Scottish Reforma- 
 tion that would have been by far the greatest and most 
 precious book in the literature of Scotland. Feeling this 
 strongly while the book on Frederick was being written, 
 our regret is deepened now that the hope of getting a 
 worthy and all-sufficing work on Knox and Scotland is 
 for ever gone, since the man who alone could have pro- 
 
264 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 du< .ing in his grave; and the regret necessarily 
 
 intensifies the sentiment of hostility with wh: 
 
 rt from the unworthiness of its central figure, we 
 should l>e compiled to approach the Life of Fr<d<ruk. 
 
 it would be unfair to allow this to blind us to 
 unquestioned merits as a history, or to the marvellous 
 patience and conscientious labour of wh: c monu- 
 
 ment. For the sake of describing his last hero-long, as 
 Dean Stanley truly said, Carlyle " almost made himself a 
 soldier* and a statesman \v c are told that as the work 
 in its earlier phases foreshadowed the dimensions to 
 which it must extend, he had a spc y prepared at 
 
 the top of his house, whose walls and shelves were exclu- 
 
 The eulogy of | Napier, the hero of Scindc, which 
 
 Carlyle addressed to Sir W. Napier, in a letter of <l.r i $56, 
 
 gave a description of that hero's battle pieces that is applicable to 
 those he was himself writing at the time. n had sent Car- 
 
 Administration o/Scimdt, and, I 
 
 reading the book, Carlyle sap: "The narrative moves on 
 strong, we . like a marching phalanx, with a gleam of clear 
 
 steel in it shears down the opponent objects and tramples them out 
 of sight in a very potent manner. The writ' lent, had in him 
 
 ^ image, complete in all it< parts, of the transaction 
 to be told ; an<l that is his grand sec; .^ the reader so 1. 
 
 a conception of it. I was surprised to find how much I had carried 
 away even of the Hill campaign and of Tnikkee it 
 
 though without a map the attempt to understand such a thing 
 mmed to me desperate >lume, C.i: 
 
 further says : " It is a book * b .; Englishman * 
 
 !>c the better for reading for studying diligently till he saw in: 
 till he recognised and believed the high and tragic phenomenon set 
 the re ! A book which may be called * profitable ' in the old 
 :ure sense; pro' : reproof, for correction and admoni- 
 
 for great - ghteousness' too in 
 
 heroic, manful endeavour to do well, and not ill, in one s time and 
 place. One fee : <>f {icmesiloii to know that one has had 
 
 such a fellow -citizen and contemporary in these evil days." 
 
His Visit to Germany. 265 
 
 sively devoted to the subject. " There must have been 
 near two thousand books in this room, every one of which 
 was in some way connected with that subject, and the 
 walls not occupied by books were covered with pictures 
 representing Frederick or his battles. He seemed for 
 years indeed to be possessed by the man about whom he 
 was writing. There was no labour he would not undergo 
 to find the exact fact on, each point, however trivial it 
 might seem to others." His search after accurate in- 
 formation involved an amount of- toil which, if it were 
 fully described, would appear incredible. Even in Ger- 
 many, whither he went to hunt up materials and visit 
 certain localities, we have heard him say that the obstacles 
 which barred his path were almost insurmountable ; it was 
 with the utmost difficulty he could secure any authentic 
 information, for example, as to the uniform worn by a 
 German infantry soldier in Frederick's time. He only 
 got this bit of information at last, after wasting many 
 days in futile inquiries, and no end of toil in digging 
 among the records at Berlin. No public man in Germany 
 to whom he applied could either give him the desired in- 
 formation or tell him where it was to be got* It was in 
 1858 that Carlyle went to Germany, and, in addition to 
 many other places famous in the wars of Frederick, 
 he visited Zorndorf, Leuthen, Liegnitz, Sorr Mollwitz, 
 
 * Once, in conversation with a visitor on this subject, he also re- 
 marked on the general ignorance of historical matters that existed 
 even among the class in London who pass for sages and oracles. 
 He said he scarcely ever put a question to these people that they 
 could answer, and as he had always some questions to put, if they 
 saw him coming along the street, they turned off (this accompanied 
 with a genuine Annandale guffaw) in another direction to avoid a 
 fresh exposure of their ignorance. 
 
266 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 and Prague. The vivid desrriptions of the battles of 
 CholuMt/ and 1 k-ttingen owe very much to this jour: 
 
 he did not go back to Germany. On an April day 
 in 1862 when Charles Boner looked in at Cheyne Row 
 he found Carlyle " sitting in dressing gown and slippers 
 looking over the proofs of Frederick, Mrs Carlyle sitting 
 on the sofa by the fire ;" and ( Id him he should 
 
 not pay another visit to Germany. " As long as he was 
 there he could get nothing fit for a Christian man to e 
 no bed big enough to sleep in. The bedsteads ah* 
 too short, and like a trough. Once, to ihe 
 
 mattress was too long for the bed, and so he lay all night 
 with it arched like a saddle in the middle. There were 
 no curtains, and in the hotels j>eople stamped overhead, 
 and tramped past his door all night. He had not slept 
 all the seven weeks he was in Germany, and felt the 
 worse for it, he verily believed, up to the present day.* 
 It was during this visit to the Fatherland that Carlyle 
 utt haracteristic sarcasm against some of Goer 
 
 hat George Lewes has reported, with so much 
 gusto, in his Life of the ^German poet mer 
 
 party in Berlin some were complaining of Goethe's * 
 of religion. " For SOUK tune Carlyle sat quiet, but not 
 pati D pietists were throwing up their 
 
 eyes, and regretting that so great a genius! so godlike a 
 genius! should not have moi devoted himself 
 
 to the v < Christian truth, and should have had so 
 
 little, etc, c vie sat grim, ominously silent, 
 
 hands impatiently twi napkin, until at last he 
 
 broke silence, and in his slow, emphatic way, said, 
 4 M ren, did you ar the story of that 
 
 man who vi t>ecause it would not light his 
 
Defects of his "Frederick" 267 
 
 cigar ? ' This bombshell completely silenced the enemy's 
 fire." 
 
 The fact that The Life of Frederick has got packed into 
 it what we may truly designate a complete political his- 
 tory of the eighteenth century, the overflowing richness 
 of its humour, the hundreds of biographical vignettes 
 executed as only Carlyle could do such work, are features 
 that give it a permanent interest and value, whatever we 
 may think of its philosophy ; and he who is at pains to 
 study the volumes will probably be inclined to agree with 
 the verdict that in none of Carlyle's works is more genius 
 discernible, and that it gives an insight into modern 
 history such as is to be found in no other book. But the 
 reader must also have perceived that it is marred by many 
 serious defects. It is the most crotchetty of all Carlyle's 
 works. It abounds in fresh nicknames, refrains, and 
 other peculiarities of diction, in addition to all the old 
 ones, that become tiresome when so often repeated. 
 " Whole pages," as an acute critic has remarked, " are 
 written in a species of crabbed shorthand ; the speech of 
 ordinary mortals is abandoned ; and sometimes we can 
 detect in the writer a sense of weariness and a desire to 
 tumble out in any fashion the multitude of somewhat 
 dreary facts which he had collected." The truth is that 
 Carlyle, as he frequently told his friends, entered on the , 
 task of writing this book reluctantly, simply from a feeling 
 that he had a call to do it ; and he used to add that, if 
 he had foreseen the difficulties, he would never have 
 begun it. Even so early as 1858 he had got very sick of 
 the business ; for when he was the guest of Varnhagen 
 von Ense in Germany, he told his host that this " Fried- 
 rich " was " the poorest, most troublesome, and arduous 
 
268 Thomas Car/yU. 
 
 piece of work he had ever undertaken." There was 
 no satisfaction in it at all, he said ; only labour and 
 sorrow. 4i What the devil had I to do with your 
 Frederick?" As to which Von Ense, who records the 
 conversation in his Tagcbuthtr, cynically observes, "It 
 must have cost him unheard of labour to understand 
 Frederick if he docs understand him." To friends at 
 home he was wont to say that " he had tried to put some 
 humanity into Frederick, but found it hard work." He 
 has himself, in a letter to Sir George Sinclair, described 
 the winding up of the performance as almost more than 
 he could accomplish ; and from Mrs Car cr to Sir 
 
 George, given on a previous page, it would appear that 
 
 had hardly one day's good health or one night of 
 sound sleep during the whole of the years in which he 
 was engaged upon the gigantic work. He refreshed him- 
 self for the completion of his arduous task by a visit to 
 Thurso Castle, where he was for some weeks the guest of 
 Sir George Sinclair, and derived much benefit from the 
 
 and change of scene. Before making that visit he 
 wrote, under date 3ist July, 1860, *' You need not reckon 
 me quite an invalid after all My sleeping faculty has 
 returned, or is evidently returning, to the old impcr 
 degree ; but my work, but my head ! In short, I was 
 seldom in my life more worn out to utter weariness; or 
 had more need of lying down for a little rest, under hope- 
 ful conditions." to Sir George on isth A 
 1863, we find him s.i I am still kept overwhelm- 
 ingly busy here ; my strength slowly diminishing, my 
 work progressing still more slowly, my heart really 
 almost broken. In some six or eight months, si. 
 not Ion .:, I hope to have at last done 
 
His Eulogy of Frederick. 269 
 
 will be the gladdest day I have seen for ten years back, 
 pretty much the one glad day ! I have still half a volume 
 to do ; still a furious struggle, and tour-de-force, as there 
 have been many, to wind matters up reasonably in half a 
 volume. But this is the last, if I can but do it ; and if 
 health hold out in any fair measure, I always hope I can." 
 The first effect of the book in England was to weaken 
 its author's moral influence, for the Christian conscience 
 of the country revolted against its teaching, and was 
 shocked by the pictures of Frederick and his father. It 
 was only as the book receded from view, and its author's 
 previous writings were reverted to, that the painful im- 
 pression wore off. That feeling was only too well 
 founded. Though he did not magnify Frederick, in 
 whom Force without Righteousness was incarnate, as he 
 had magnified Cromwell, it cannot be denied that he 
 treats this unspeakable monster with a deference to which 
 he was in no way entitled ; and at times it would almost 
 appear as if he loved him for his unendurable brutality, 
 while he has actually the hardihood to charge other 
 historians with injustice in not recognising the candour 
 with which Frederick owned that his seizure of Silesia 
 was one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated.* That 
 
 * Dr Peter Bayne, who has published more than one essay on 
 Carlyle's writings, says : " It took nine acres to furnish a grave for 
 the dead of one battle out of those which Frederick fought with a 
 view to robbing his neighbour and making people talk about him. 
 Many years before the appearance of Mr Carlyle's Life rf Frederick, 
 Lord Macaulay wrote an essay on that hero. After careful study of 
 Mr Carlyle's volumes, we are prepared to affirm that Macaulay is 
 right in his estimate of the man, and that Mr Carlyle's ingenious 
 and elaborate eulogy does not render it necessary to qualify in any 
 essential particular his Lordship's verdict." 
 
27 Thomas Carlytc. 
 
 such a cynical confession of wickedness should modify 
 the feeling ol righteous indignation against .rial, 
 
 still more that it should be a bar against the sternest 
 reprobation, is a monstrous theory, which, were it applied 
 practical 1\ in judicial proceedings, would enable thou- 
 sands of the worst criminals to escape. In the most 
 explicit terms, Carlyle reproduces the abominable doctrine 
 of Hobbes, when, justifying his hero's seizure of Silesia, 
 he exclaims, "Just rights ) What are rights never so 
 which you cannot make valid ? The world is full of such. 
 If you have rights, and can assert them into facts, do it ; 
 that is worth doing. " It may be said that here he means 
 by Mights simply that which is Possible; or, in c>: 
 words, that he wants his readers to be content with \\ 
 
 can get good advice, doubtless, when it is put in a 
 proper form, but, as here enunciated, certainly liable to 
 misconst that may produce results of deadliest 
 
 evil An author is bound to consider the meaning wl 
 
 xcly to be attached to his words ; and ambiguity, of 
 which the slaveholder and the despot can avail them- 
 
 ystems, with all their accompam 
 hon< .sninal in any writer. The typical sentc 
 
 we have cited is < my Satan might quote, to suit 
 
 own ends; and, so far as we can see their men 
 need not trouble himself to put a forced cor -i on 
 
 words, < nning these unfortunate sen- 
 
 cs, seems to have forgotten that where there are no 
 Rights there can be no Duties ; and that was a pert:: 
 question and earnest author of Henry 
 
 Iressed to him: "Do you, I ask, refuse to 
 acknowledge the idea of Rights ? Then you shan't have 
 the other word to sport with. > lack directly, and 
 
German and English Honours. 271 
 
 take your place in the Infernal Cohort, under the old 
 Black Flag that we know" 
 
 The book is a great favourite in Germany, and it made 
 Carlyle doubly dear to the people of that country. Well 
 might they be grateful to this illustrious Scotsman, who 
 had devoted two of the three epochs of his working life 
 to the exposition of their national literature and history. 
 When the Empress of Germany was in England in the 
 May of 1872 she personally communicated to Carlyle a 
 flattering message from the Emperor thanking him for 
 his Life of Frederick ; and in 1873, on tne death of 
 Manzoni, he was presented with the Prussian " Order for 
 Merit" Some people were foolish enough to feel, and 
 even to express, surprise when Carlyle declined the Grand 
 Cross of the Bath, offered in 1875 through Mr Disraeli, 
 the more especially as he had not long before accepted 
 the Ordre pour le Merite. They overlooked several 
 important facts, which led others to rejoice that the 
 English honour had been rejected. In the first place, it 
 was ludicrously inadequate Carlyle ought to have had 
 long before a seat in the House of Lords ; secondly, it 
 came too late. Goethe was only 27 years of age when 
 Karl August made him a member of the Privy Council. 
 To offer Carlyle a G.C.B. at 80 was almost worse than to 
 leave him in the evening of his life, as he had been left 
 during his working days, without recognition from the 
 State to which he had rendered such splendid service. 
 He consulted the dignity of letters as well as his own 
 personal honour when he declined to accept the tardy 
 and insignificant decoration. There were in his native 
 Scotland country gentlemen under forty who had for 
 years been called " Right Honourables " by grace of the 
 
Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 monarch who had suffered her greatest Scottish subject to 
 spend all his years of arduous toil without one token of 
 
 tr. As respects the honour that came from Germ 
 well might Carlyle accept that ; not only had it come 
 more timcously, it was of far higher significance and 
 value. The Ordrc pour U MMU is not given by the 
 Sovereign or the Minister, but by the Knights of the 
 Order themselves, the King only confirming their choice, 
 The number of the Knights is strirtly limited (there are no 
 more than 30 German and 30 Foreign so that 
 
 every Knight knows who will be his peers. Not even 
 Bismarck is a Knight of this Order. Moltke was elec 
 
 simply as the representative of military science; 
 does he rank higher in this Order than did Bunsen, the 
 representative of physical science, or Ranke the histor. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ELECTED LORD RECTOR AT EDINBURGH HIS INAUGURAL 
 
 ADDRESS AT THOMAS ERSKINE'S DEATH OF MRS 
 
 CARLYLE HER FUNERAL THE MINISTRY OF SORROW 
 
 OLD BETTY BRAID : " A PERPETUAL GOSPEL " THE 
 
 LORD'S PRAYER THE VOICE OF MAN'S SOUL KNOX 
 
 MEMORIAL AND SCOTTISH MONUMENTS AT HIS WIFE'S 
 GRAVE. 
 
 ALMOST immediately after the completion of what was 
 destined to be Carlyle's last literary work of importance, 
 came an honour that, of all things the world had to offer, 
 was perhaps the one most likely to be grateful to his 
 heart. In the previous decade an attempt had been 
 made by some of his admirers among the students at 
 Edinburgh University to secure his nomination for the 
 office of Lord Rector ; but the few adventurous spirits of 
 1856 discovered that they were before their time. They 
 were obliged to yield to objections which few who made 
 them would care to see recalled to-day. Ten years later 
 the tide had turned ; and a second endeavour, made in 
 the November of 1865, was crowned with triumphant 
 success. By a majority the largest on record of 657 
 against 310, he was elected Lord Rector in preference to 
 Mr Disraeli.* There have been few such days even in 
 
 * Twice before his election by his own University he had been 
 invited to allow himself to be nominated for the office of Lord 
 Rector, once by students in the University of Glasgow, and once by 
 those of Aberdeen ; but both of these invitations he had declined. 
 
 S 
 
Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 nburgh as th; the 2cl of April 1866, 
 
 rerea his Inaugural 
 
 I fall he!- 1 luded, not only hi 
 
 constituents, hut many people from distant parts of tf 
 country, and even from foreign shores, ! thither 
 
 'he prospect of witnessing Carlyle's reception in the 
 capital of his native land. It was h 
 a public speaker since he, gave his lectures on F 
 
 -ship twent) six years before. I e lectures his 
 
 address was a purely extemporaneous utterance, deliv 
 conversationally and without a single note; and, as must 
 
 been expected by those who really knew the i 
 there was in it a singular mellowness of thought and 
 lerted in the ho: 
 
 which it was couched, and the fine flashes of hum 
 
 sarcasm by which it v. ted. Tl. 
 
 his discourse ! he Choice of Bool 
 
 id to enforce were to avoid cram, to be pa 
 tak .t in the acquisition of k: 
 
 ledge. With remarkable emphasis he on the 
 
 vital distinction between knowledge 
 hypothetic*] and the known a: confounded \\ 
 
 out loss to man, loss of strength, loss of truth, f 
 truth the soul's stre: He prote ted against the 
 
 not where a > be 
 
 d for the SJH 
 
 he contended, is to prepare a man for mastering any 
 u hing him the method of all. There were 
 hut ' 
 
 one was the iuot. velli of the s: 
 
 with which he evidently agreed himself, though he 
 
 :y of 
 
His Inaugural Address. 275 
 
 Rome shows that a democracy could not permanently 
 exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator. 
 The other was a declaration of the necessity for recognis- 
 ing the hereditary principle in government, if there is to be 
 " any fixity in things." Proclaiming anew his old doctrine 
 no the virtue of Silence, he lamented that "the first nations 
 in the world the English and the American are going 
 all away into wind and tongue." One hearer from London 
 declared that it was worth coming all the way in the rain 
 in the Sunday night train were it only to have heard Car- 
 lyle utter the final sentence of his penultimate paragraph, 
 " There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all 
 California, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on 
 the planet just now !" One of his last words counselled 
 the students to take care of their health ; the old word 
 for " holy " in the German language, heiUg^ also means 
 "healthy." He also exhorted them to read Knox's 
 History of the Reformation , " a glorious book," full of 
 humour and of "the sunniest glimpses of things;" and 
 there was hearty laughter when he advised them to 
 "keep out of literature, as a general rule." He had 
 talked for an hour and a half. At times his eye kindled, 
 and the eloquent blood flamed up the speaker's cheek ; 
 the occasional drolleries came out with an inexpressible 
 voice and look ; as for the fiery bursts, they took shape 
 in grand tones, the impression made deeper, not by 
 raising, but by lowering the voice. Alexander Smith, the 
 poet, who was secretary to the University, wrote the 
 most vivid sketch of the proceedings ; it is included in 
 his Last Leaves. He describes Carlyle's voice as " a 
 soft, downy voice," with " not a tone in it of the shrill, 
 fierce kind that one would expect it to be in rea 
 
276 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 1 lets" Time and labour seemed to 
 
 c dealt U ' .irlyle ; " his face had not 
 
 lost the country bronze which he brought up with him 
 from Drumfriesshire as a student fifty-six years ago." 
 hair was yet almost dark ; his moustache and short 
 beard were iron grey; his eyes, wide, melancholy, 
 rowful; altogether in his aspect there was something 
 aboriginal, as of a piece of unhewn granite. M I am not 
 ashamed to confess," wrote the author of Drcamti 
 tk that I felt moved towards him, as I do not think I 
 could have felt moved towards any other living in 
 Before the address several gentlemen, includi 
 lessors Huxley and Tyndall, received the honorary 
 degree of LL.D. The Senatus had offered to ". 
 the new Lord Rector; but he laughed it off, saying that 
 he had a brother who was already a Doctor, and that if 
 two Dr Carlyles should appear at the gate of Parac 
 
 takes might arise. His old friend, Krskinc of I.in- 
 lathen, was one of the recipients of the degree; but this 
 good man wrote soon after to a friend, "Of course 
 nobody calls me Dr, except for fun." Carlyle was Mr 
 Erskine's guest during this visit to Kdinburgh ; ami wl 
 the address was well achieved (says Dr H 
 
 noir of Erskine), and it was found that the Io>rd 
 Rector was none the worse, but rather the tatter for 
 deliverance, the host invited two or three intimate friends 
 to meet him at dim. William Stirling Maxv. 
 
 "with nice tact, gave such turn to the conversation as 
 allowed fullest scope to the sage who has praised sik 
 so well, but fortunately does n< Released 
 
 . his burden, Carlyle was in e\c ellei .mil dis- 
 
 coursed in his most genial mood of his old Dumfriesshire 
 
His Greatest Sorrow. 277 
 
 remembrances, of the fate of James IV., and other matters 
 of Scottish history, and of the Emperor Napoleon, of 
 whom he was no admirer. 
 
 In one of his little songs, thrown off nearly forty years 
 before, he had pictured life as " a thawing iceboard on a 
 sea with sunny shore." There had come to him a gleam 
 of sunshine, lighting up what on the whole had been a 
 sombre pathway through the world ; and it was at this 
 very hour, while the echo yet lingered in his ears of those 
 joyous greetings that assured him how warm was the 
 place he had in the heart of young Scotland, that the 
 ground, in a moment, seemed to melt away from beneath 
 his feet. He had just received what, in one sense, might 
 be called the crowning honour of his life ; it was followed, 
 with tragic swiftness, by his greatest grief. He had gone 
 from Edinburgh to Dumfriesshire to visit his relations on 
 his way home to London ; and on the i7th of April we 
 find him writing from Scotsbrig, his brother's (as it had 
 been before his father's) farm at Ecclefechan, to Mr 
 Erskine. " This is almost the first day I have had any 
 composure," he said ; " and I cannot but write you a little 
 word of gratitude, to Mrs Stirling (Erskine's sister) and 
 you, for your cordial reception of me in my late ship- 
 wrecked state, and your unwearied patience with me, 
 during the whole of the late adventure. Now that it is 
 all comfortably over, and a thing to look thankfully back 
 upon, there is no feature of it prettier to me than that 
 your kind chamber in the wall should have been my safe 
 lodging-place, and that there, with the very clock silenced 
 for me, I should have been so affectionately sheltered. 
 Thanks for this, as for the crown of a long series of kind- 
 nesses, precious to remember for the rest of my days." 
 
278 Thomas Car/yk. 
 
 He adds how he sprained his ankle a week ago, but that 
 it is mending ; and how he has written a little word to 
 Lady Ruthvcn, and was still busy j^enning notes when he 
 ought rather to be " in the woods of Springkell" on his 
 " solitary rides of mei! purpose 
 
 to be at home on *' from Dumfries, ray 
 
 ill and one remaining shift."* 
 
 Before next Monday came, that home had been forever 
 darkened On Saturday, April 21, Mrs Tarlyle was 
 taking her usual drive in Hyde Park, about four o'clock, 
 when her little favourite dog, trotting by the side of 
 
 m, was run over by a carriage. She was greatly 
 ;ned, though the dog had not been seriously hurt. 
 She lifted it into the carriage, and the coachman drove 
 ig any cal -inn from his mistress, 
 
 he stopped the carriage and discovered her, as he thoi: 
 in a fit. nee drove to St George 
 
 was near at h.md. Here it was discovered that 
 
 ad for some little time. '! .ing 
 
 : that had walked by the side of our Pilgrim, sus 1 
 ing his sad heart at every ste journey for i 
 
 years, was gone. 
 
 >kine of I.inlathen, a still older 
 
 For this and other extracts in the present chapter, including 
 
 they have ever seen, we are indr' .'<^rj of Tkemat 
 
 ' Unna, D.I'. 
 id Douglas. 1877. This UN,; >ntains ot) 
 
 yle ought to overloo'' 
 
 lose acquaintance with the character of Carlyle's moat 
 
 .r. . u ^h life the man to whom he opened 
 
 least reserve the secret workings and the deepest thoughts and 
 
 . . j ; r .1 ! : : | Of . '. : ^ ^ | : 1 1 1 . 
 
Sorrow and Real Kingship. 279 
 
 man, was also left alone in the world by the death of 
 his last surviving sister. Carlyle was one of the first 
 to hasten with words of sympathy. "Alas ! what can 
 writing do in such a case ? The inexorable stroke has 
 fallen ; the sore heart has to carry on its own unfathom- 
 able dialogue with the Eternities and their gloomy Fact ; 
 all speech in it, from the friendliest sympathiser, is apt to 
 be vain, or worse. Under your quiet words in that little 
 note there is legible to me a depth of violent grief and 
 bereavement, which seems to enjoin silence rather. We 
 knew the beautiful soul that has departed, the love that 
 had united you and Her from the beginnings of existence, 
 and how desolate and sad the scene now is for him 
 who is left solitary. Ah me ! ah me ! Yesterday gone a 
 twelvemonth (3ist March 1866, Saturday by the day of 
 the week) was the day I arrived at your door in Edin- 
 burgh, and was met by that friendliest of Hostesses and 
 you ; three days before I had left at the door of this room 
 one dearer and kinder than all the earth to me, whom I 
 was not to behold again : what a change for you since 
 then, what a change for me ! Change after change 
 following upon both' of us upon you especially ! It is 
 the saddest feature of old age that the old man has to 
 see himself daily grow more lonely ; reduced to commune 
 with the inarticulate Eternities and the Loved Ones now 
 unresponsive who have preceded him thither. Well, 
 well ; there is a blessedness in this too, if we take it well. 
 There is a grandeur in it, if also an extent of sombre 
 sadness, which is new to one ; nor is hope quite wanting 
 nor the clear conviction that those whom we would most 
 screen from sore pain and misery are now safe and at 
 rest. It lifts one to real kingship withal, real for the first 
 
280 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 time in this scene of things. Courage, my friend ; le- 
 endure jaiicntly and act piously to the c 
 
 On the Wednesday following her death, the body was 
 .eyed from I^ondoi lington for interment, and 
 
 the ABM : >ok place on Thursday afternoon. Carlyle, 
 who had hastened to London immediately on receipt of 
 the solemn message, was accompanied to Haddingtoi 
 1m ! ; >r I'arlyle, Mr John Forster, and the H 
 
 M r Twtstleton. i ral cortege was followed on foot 
 
 by a large numU r of local gentlemen who had known 
 
 Carlyle ami her father. The grave lies in the cc :. 
 of the ruined roofless choir of the old Abbey Churc! 
 Haddingtoru In accordance with the Scottish < ustom, 
 there was no service read. Carlyle threw a handful of 
 earth on the coffin after it had been lowered into the 
 grave. On the tombston already recorded the 
 
 names of her parents, this additional inscription was 
 placed by Carlyle : " Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh 
 Carlyle, spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London- 
 was born at Haddin^ton, i4th July 1801 ; only child 
 of the above John \\VKh and of Grace 
 I)u: ;> wife. In h she had 
 
 more sorrows than are common, but also a soft 
 bility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble loyalty of 
 heart whirh are rare. 1-or 40 years she was the true and 
 :i^ helpmate of her husband, and by act and word 
 unweari irded him as none else could in all of 
 
 worthy that he dl died at London 
 
 ;1 1 366, suddenly snatched away from him, and 
 the li^ht of his life as if gone 01 
 
 Surely 01 rest and most heart -moving, as 
 
 it was also, we be -.he truest. ever 
 
What he Owed to his Wife. 281 
 
 placed by a husband over the grave of a departed wife. 
 It would not be saying too much has not the most com- 
 petent witness said it himself in these words ? that but 
 for this woman the greater part of the work that has made 
 her husband's name tower above all others in his century 
 might never have been done. It was no small matter 
 that her little fortune made him independent of the 
 drudgery that had hitherto repressed the ardour of his 
 spirit, and circumscribed the bounds of his literary efforts ; 
 it was in the years immediately succeeding his marriage 
 that he produced the essay on Burns, his Characteristics, 
 and, above all, Sartor. That dowry enabled him to 
 face London life and the biography of Cromwell an 
 experiment no poor man, nailed to hack-work for daily 
 bread, could possibly have dared. Thus he was set on 
 the road to fortune. Nor was it the small but sufficient 
 material provision she brought that constituted the whole, 
 or even the best part, of the help. Many a poor man, 
 especially of the literary and professional class, has had 
 cause to rue the day that tied him to a rich wife. 
 Selfish, purse-proud, exigeant, ever remembering the ori- 
 ginal disparity of their worldly fortunes all the more, 
 perhaps, if her own has been trivial she has been an 
 instrument to drag him down. But Jane Welsh was a 
 woman of good sense, of culture, of heart, capable of 
 appreciating her husband's powers, and who gave him the 
 reverential devotion of her entire being and life. Thrice- 
 happy Sartor to secure such a prize ! Every kind of 
 needed help came to him with her cheerfulness to 
 sustain his spirit in its darkest hours ; self-abnegation 
 without limit, to endure the tempest of his anger and 
 even his days of distempered gloom ; the thrifty diligence 
 
282 Thomas CarlyU* 
 
 that made her perfect mistress of the humblest work in 
 the he ta*te that made each ajar the 
 
 dwelling fit for any peer of the realm to enter ; an inu 
 that seemed to many who knew them both scared 
 to his own/ with powers as a conversationalist that s< 
 Margaret Fuller fur example, no mean judge, 
 superior ; never, surely, was man happier in 1. 
 But woman, the world, perhaps, might never 
 
 greatest works of Thomas Carls 
 had always cherished the memory of her native 
 towr. cath, and her mot; val 
 
 omhill, she icle 
 
 Benjamin, who succeeded to her father 
 continued to take a deep interest in : the old 
 
 people of the place, helping the i>oor whom she had 
 
 i days. 1 -mnection with or 
 
 these humble H.uldington friends of her youth, one 
 brought specially close to her by the most inti: 
 domestic association, that there emerges int :ttle 
 
 y of great beauty and ire. Many years have 
 
 cned one day to hi rgh, 
 
 ugh a fr had qu: ntally made the 
 
 discovery, that there was a poor old woman in t! 
 bourhood of that < ity, who was visited by Carlylet 
 
 Before Afatut was printed," tays a 
 l, "Tennyson used to come and read it al and 
 
 ask ' he though 1 
 
 think it is perfect stuff! 9 Slightly discouraged by t 
 Laureate read it once more; upon which 'ylc rcmar. 
 
 tig read to her the third 
 
 she was obliged to confer that she 1 h. This 
 
 littlr hew* how Tennyson must have valued her dear 
 
 ncnt and excellent taste." 
 
Old Betty Braid. 283 
 
 summer when he came to Scotland, and to whose comfort 
 he ministered with the greatest generosity, and at the same 
 time, with almost reverential delicacy. It did not surprise 
 us to hear the story, or rather the little fragment of a 
 story, that thus reached our ears; but the curiosity 
 naturally excited was not satisfied until the publication of 
 the second volume of the Letters of Thomas Erskine of 
 Linlathen, in 1877. On opening that delightful book, 
 almost the first thing that met our eye was the interpre- 
 tation of the story. The old woman's name was Mrs 
 Braid, and she had been a nurse of Mrs Carlyle. She 
 was often visited by the Laird of Linlathen. Referring to 
 the hero on whom Carlyle was then at work, " this weary 
 Fritz," Erskine says, "I would much rather be honest 
 Mrs Braid selling flour and bacon, and lovingly bearing 
 the burden of her bed-rid son." In the January of 1868, 
 Carlyle writes to Erskine, " I owe you many thanks for 
 that pious little visit you have made to Greenend and 
 poor Betty. Often had I thought of asking you to do 
 such a thing for me by some opportunity, but, in the new 
 sad circumstances, never had the face. Now that the ice 
 is broken, let me hope you will from time to time 
 continue, and on the whole, keep yourself and me in 
 some kind of mutual visibility with poor Betty, so long as 
 we are all spared to continue here. The world has not 
 many shrines to a devout man at present, and perhaps in 
 our own section of it there are few objects holding more 
 authentically of Heaven and an unseen c better world,' 
 than the pious, loving soul, and patient heavy-laden life 
 of this poor old venerable woman. The love of human 
 creatures, one to another, where it is true and unchange- 
 able, often strikes me as a strange fact in their poor 
 
284 Thomas Carlyk. 
 
 history, a kind of perpetual Gospel, revealing itself in 
 them; sad, solemn, U-autiful, the heart and mother of all 
 that ran, in any way, ennoble their otherwise mean and 
 contemptible exi world." In the following 
 
 year, 1869, he writes : " I am very thankful that you v. 
 to see poor Betty ; she is one of the most venerable 
 human figures now known to me in the world I called 
 fir>t thing after my bit of surgery, in the neigh- 
 bourhood, end of July last ; I seemed to have only one 
 // to make in all Scotland, and I made only 
 onf. The sight of po mournful as it is, and full 
 
 mrnftillest memories to me, always does me good. So 
 far as I could any way learn, she is well enough in her 
 huinMe thrifty economics, etc : if otherwise at any tin 1 
 
 eve you understand that help from this quarter would 
 be a soared duty to me." 
 
 They were weary days in Cheyne Row that followed 
 the great loss. " I am very idle here/ 1 he writes in the 
 January of 1868, "very solitary, which I find to be 
 
 nest less miserable to mo than the common so 
 tli.it offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I see 
 once a week, there is .nybody whose talk, always 
 
 jM.l: 1 
 
 good." It was a to him, he added, that he had 
 
 no work, at least none worth calling by the name. 
 
 am too weak, too languid, too sad of heart, too unfit 
 
 an> to care v .my obje< * 
 
 in t)u v 'link of grappling round it and coercing 
 
 it i >y v. >rk. A most sorry dog oftenest all seems 
 
 ie, and wise words, if < 
 
 thrown away on it Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, 
 and look with longings towards the still country where at 
 
The Lord's Prayer. 285 
 
 last we and our loved ones shall be together again." At 
 the time he wrote this letter his sister, Mrs Aitken of Dum- 
 fries, had been with him for two months, " to help us," 
 he says, " through the dark hollow of the year." Lady 
 Ashburton, who had been a great friend of Mrs Carlyle's, 
 was never weary of ministering to the disconsolate 
 widowed one. It is to this period of his life that we owe 
 one of the most solemn and pathetic, and also one of the 
 most comforting of all his letters that we have yet been 
 privileged to see. Writing on the i2th February, 1869, 
 to Erskine, he says : " I was most 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, 
 plumb-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 wanderings, 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 
 
286 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 Then he adds : " I am still able to walk, thou r ' I 
 do it on compulsion merely, and without pleasure except 
 i n work dune. 1 1 is a great sorrow that you now get 
 fatigued so soon, and have nut your old privilege in this 
 respect ; I only hope you perhaps do not quite so indis- 
 IH: usably need it as I ; with me it is the key to 3/<v/, and 
 in fact the one medicine (often ineffectual, and now 
 gradually oftener) that I ever could discover for tlu\ jxx>r 
 day taberna me. I still keep working, after a 
 
 k sort; but can now ii almost nothing; 
 
 all my little * \\< >rth private (as I calcula 
 
 a setting of my poor house in hich I would : 
 
 . and occasionally fear I sh. 
 
 It was in one of these sombre closing years that a 
 
 movement was begun, in his wife's nati. to erect 
 
 to her ancestor John Knox, who also was 
 
 born tht though Carlyle had been disaj 
 
 not long before with the failure of a similar scheme 
 
 Edinburgh in which he had taken part, he gave his 
 hearty support to this new endeavour, while by no 
 means sanguine as to its success. At the outset he sub- 
 scribed ^25, with the promise of more if the details were 
 successfully carried out ; on the score of failing health 
 declined to join the i ommittee, but furnished practical 
 suggestions as to e thing, 
 
 that Mi I i< : IK : 1 to act on it a hint 
 
 that wa ved, and to which the di^ 
 
 guished historian gave his cordial consent The 
 morial was t >rm of a school, and this led 
 
 Carlyle to re: > the days when Edward 
 
 ng was a tear lu: hoped the 
 
 school, when established on the new basis, would be 
 
The Memorial of Knox. 287 
 
 worthy of its ancient fame. "It the site of the new 
 school," he said, in a letter dictated by him on the 
 1 5th February 1875, " was on tne ground on which Knox 
 is known to have actually walked, it would beyond all 
 things give the building a memorial character. In regard 
 to ' ornamentation,' of which there was some mention in 
 an article in the Scotsman^ the best architect to be found 
 anywhere ought to be employed ; a man who would 
 keep before his eyes the fact that Knox never in his life 
 said or did anything untrue or insincere ; and that the 
 Parish School, or f National Monument ' (or whatever 
 name it may be called), sacred to his memory, should be 
 scrupulously preserved from every species of meaningless 
 and unveracious ornamentation." In a postscript he 
 suggested that " the people of Haddington would do a 
 really good work by marking, by a simple obelisk and a 
 good oak tree, the site of the house in which Knox's 
 Father lived, which Mr Laing, in his Preface to Knox's 
 Work, says is discoverable." After the building was 
 begun, and on learning that arrangements had been made 
 for giving the institution the character of a grammar 
 school, he showed his entire approval by doubling his 
 subscription, and sent a cheque for ^50. In the last 
 interview which one of his Haddington acquaintances, 
 Colonel Davidson, had with Carlyle, only a few months 
 before his death, he inquired after the welfare of the 
 school, and expressed pleasure on hearing of its success. 
 It is satisfactory to know that the suggestion for marking 
 the house of Knox's birth with an oak tree has been 
 acted on ; some day soon the obelisk should be placed 
 there too, with the words of Carlyle inscribed upon it. We 
 may add that, although he had in one of his Latter-Day 
 
288 Thomas CarljU. 
 
 denounced the " brazen images ! to 
 
 unworthy men, the whole of which he would have melted 
 nee and turned into warming-pa- any 
 
 ins object to the erection of worthily-executed statues 
 of veritable heroes. In 1856 he became an honorary 
 ha ( omm he erection of the Wallace 
 
 n the Abbey Craig. In 1870 he expressed 
 igness to subscribe his "bit <-f contribution" to 
 a T. 't Stirling; and in a letter to the 
 
 secretary he said : " Dr Gregory' very 
 
 good, but besides he year of Bannockburn it 
 
 surely would be an obvious in \\\ to give the day 
 
 of the month (and even of the week, if that latu : 
 indubitably known)/' The author of both these patri 
 schemes was the Rev. Charles Roger . the S 
 genealogist and antiquary, who had been visited with 
 severe < -count of his management of the 
 
 iment affair ; and the fart that Carl yie always 
 arp eye on what was appearing in the 
 Scottish journaK .aed in the 1- 
 
 !>r Rogers, of date 25th June 1870, with respect to 
 the proposed Bruce Monument ; the closing senu 
 resses "sincere wishes" for the success of the ; 
 bled in this instance." It remains to be n< 
 that rarlvle was also a supporter, both by pen and purse, 
 of the !' 'us lately U-en erected at 
 
 Lo< He took a SJKM ially warm interest inth.it 
 
 me no doubt on account, to some extent, of 
 ing of local attachment as a Dumfriesshire man, 
 also as a member ot .: had first settled in 
 
 (1 years ago under the wing of the 
 progenitors of the Bruce. 
 
At his WifJs Grave. 289 
 
 After the death no summer passed, as long as health 
 allowed, in which Carlyle did not go to Haddington to visit 
 the grave, and also the house in which his wife had spent 
 her early years, and under whose roof they had first met. It 
 was with a feeling of sympathetic awe that the inhabitants 
 of the ancient town who were familiar with his aspect would 
 see the venerable pilgrim revisiting "these shrines of his 
 heart. "He liked to go alone," we are. told, "and if 
 unobserved he used to walk up the passage which led 
 from the street to the house in which his wife had lived 
 before their marriage, and to look into the little garden, 
 which was perhaps the centre of many sweet and sad 
 memories." On an autumn day of 1880 a stranger from 
 America made a pilgrimage to the graveyard at Hadding- 
 ton to see the burial-place of Mrs Carlyle. " Mr Car- 
 lyle," said the sexton, as he pointed to the stone, "comes 
 here from London now and then to see the grave. He 
 is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind of an old man, looking 
 very old the last time he was here. He is to be brought 
 here to be buried with his wife. He comes here lone- 
 some and alone. When he visits the wife's grave, his 
 niece keeps him company to the gate ; but he leaves her 
 there, and she stays there for him. The last time he was 
 here, I got sight of him, and he was bowed down under 
 his white hairs, and took his way up by that ruined wall 
 of the old cathedral, and around there and in here by the 
 gateway, and he tottered up here to this spot." Softly 
 spake the gravedigger and paused. Softer still, in the 
 dialect of the Lothians, he proceeded : " And he stood 
 here awhile in the grass, and then kneeled down and 
 stayed on his knees at the grave ; then he bent over and 
 I saw him kiss the ground ; ay, he kissed it again and 
 
290 
 
 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 again; and he kept kneeling, and it was a long tin* 
 before he arose arid tottered out of the cathedral an< 
 wandered through the graveyard to the gate where hi 
 niece stood wa. ..im." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 HIS VIEWS OF THE NEGRO QUESTION "THE AMERICAN 
 ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL" THE JAMAICA MASSACRE 
 HIS DEFENCE OF GOVERNOR EYRE ITS FAILURE 
 
 TOM BROWN ON THE CAPTIVE RUSKIN MILL AND 
 
 CARLYLE: A CONTRAST "SHOOTING NIAGARA" 
 CHANGE OF VIEW ON THE AMERICAN WAR THE TWO 
 REFORM BILLS. 
 
 AT his first meeting with John Sterling, in the February 
 of 1835, the conversation turned, amongst other things, 
 on the Negroes, and Carlyle noticed that Sterling's 
 views had not " advanced " into the stage of his own 
 on that subject. A happy thing for Sterling, we should 
 say, since Carlyle had already arrived at the conclusion 
 that an " engagement for life," his euphemism for slavery, 
 was really better than " one from day to day." Sterling, 
 the infatuated creature, thought " the Negroes themselves 
 should be consulted as to that ! " the manifest absurdity 
 of which Carlyle marks in his account of the colloquy 
 with a contemptuous point of exclamation. It was in 
 John Stuart Mill's private room at the India House that 
 the meeting took place, and he perhaps recalled that 
 conversation about the Nigger in after days. Carlyle 
 expounded his anti-Negro views, with brutal frankness, in 
 the Latter-Day Pamphlets, where he declared, " I never 
 thought the rights of negroes worth much discussing in 
 
29* Ttema* CarlyU. 
 
 any form;" and he adhcr the last In the 
 
 September of 1874, when Mr Hodgson, the Cupar ed 
 mentioned the news in the day's papers of the lawless 
 Southern whites having driven Governor Kellogg from 
 seat at New Orleans and illegally possessed themselves of 
 the government, Carlyle said he was in no way surprised, 
 save that the conflict had been so long of coming, adding 
 that " the man who is seventy-nine years of age (his own 
 age at the time) has not seventeen minutes to spare for 
 the entire negro race perfect harmony 
 
 scornful words he had, with unhappy 
 consistency, employed on this subject from the i 
 
 >rd John Russell is able to comfort us with the fact 
 
 that the negroes are doing very well" "Our beautiful 
 
 black darlings arc at least happy, with little labour except 
 
 .rely in those e\< client horse jaws of 
 
 theirs will not fail' 1 "Quashee will get himself made a 
 
 slave again, and with beneficent whip will be compelled 
 
 to work."* We care not to quote the worst of the words 
 
 wrote, of some of which we hesitate not to say i 
 
 -grace to the writer's manhood. 
 It was this theory as to the Negro that caused Carlyle, 
 
 An honoured friend of ours, whose ntw b known and flsteesftti 
 in all the Protestant churches of England and America, once, oo a 
 
 to Jamaica, got into conversation with an old negro, a man of 
 long-established character and piety, oo the attacks which Ca 
 had made upon his race. He knew of them, but had not seen them. 
 
 le they were being repeated in detail, the negro, who was of a 
 noble and venerable aspect, drew himself up with dignity, and some 
 other tokens of natural resentment ; but when the tale wa 
 his countenance relaxed into its usual benignity, as he replied, ' 
 
 Massa Carlyle, sir, and mt f*rgh* torn!* as sublime a v 
 ment in its way, we take it, as ever fell from the lips even of a 
 
American Iliad in a Nutshell. 293 
 
 at the time of the Civil War in America, to espouse the 
 side of the South ; and his fierce invectives no doubt led 
 many of his countrymen to take the same side. The 
 American Iliad in a Nutshell, of date May 3, 1863, pub- 
 lished in Macmillarts Magazine, represented the conflict 
 as simply a dreadful fight between Peter of the North 
 and Paul of the South as to whether they should " hire " 
 their servants for life a singular meaning to put into the 
 word hire or by the month or year ; and the little squib, 
 a really silly as well as sad document, closed with a 
 jeering reference to the want of success that had attended 
 the Northern armies. Within a few weeks the course of 
 events took the sting out of this cruel sneer. At that 
 very moment thousands in England were protesting that 
 Peter of the North cared nothing for the slave another 
 opinion that was falsified by the issue; but it betrayed 
 a singular ignorance on the part of Carlyle, in spite of 
 what Mr Conway has told us about his marvellous 
 mastery of American history and topography, that he 
 failed to perceive the primary purpose of the War, which 
 resulted not only in Emancipation, but also in the pre 
 servation of the threatened Union. He was not afflicted 
 with the same blindness during the struggle that took 
 place, at a later date, between Germany and France 
 clearly he saw and approved the effort of the former to 
 regain her lost provinces ; but in this instance there was 
 no Nigger to obscure his vision. 
 
 Something even worse than the abortive little nutshell 
 iliad was to come. Fidelity to the truth, and the duty of 
 pointing out a fundamental error in his political writings, 
 alone could constrain us to record the fact, that the year 
 of his great private grief also witnessed, what we conceive 
 
294 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 to be, the greatest mistake of CarKlc's life. That year 
 had not ended when the sorrowful regrets of 
 
 many of his sincerest friends and admirers, he hastened 
 to welcome and justify Governor Eyre on the return of 
 the ded, from such outrage and slaughter 
 
 in a Hritish Colony, as almost rivalled the worst deeds 
 of the Spaniards in Jamaica, and which even a Roman 
 pro-consul would have blushed to own. In giving com- 
 fort to the enemy of the murdered Gordon, and the 
 author of a massacre in which more lives were taken than 
 in Jefieries 1 Bloody Assize, he was not the only distin- 
 guished man of letters in England who went astray ; for 
 committee of Kyre's defenders, on which he early 
 lied his name, and to whose funds he subscribed ^5, 
 could also boast of h on, 
 
 Ruskin, and Kingsley. The Romans, though they were 
 Pagans, 1 >ral stand i forbade a triumph to 
 
 >r in a civil war; but Kingsley, the Christian 
 minister, sat at the festive board at Southampton, at 
 which Kyre was entertained wl ! ngland, 
 
 spattered with the blood of his fellow-subjects.* Ruskin 
 led the Defence i h a subscription of ^100, 
 
 explaining that, in doing so, he had sacrificed a summer 
 
 * Mr Kingsley was personally connected with the West Indian 
 planter interest, through i nship, which no doubt ac- 
 
 counted, in part, at least . c friend of the English poor having 
 
 so little regard for the Incs <>f the negroes of Jamaica. Speaking of 
 the Jamaica Massacre, which his grace condemned, at a meeting in 
 Glasgow, on the a;th January, 1868, the Duke of Argyll said : 
 
 "Several .f myr.ui.rst .*.:, i taftfll Ir.cr.U ucic COOOeCted wi:h 
 
 West India property, and through West India property, with the 
 slave trade ; and I have observed that, even to this very day ay, 
 to the second and i generation of those who held slaves- 
 
 there is a comparative coolness on the subject of slave i 
 
His Defence of Eyre. 295 
 
 journey to Switzerland, where he had much wanted to go, 
 " not only for health's sake, but to examine the junctions 
 of the Molasse sandstones and nagelfluh with the 
 Alpine limestone, in order to complete some notes he 
 meant to publish next spring on the geology of the Great 
 Northern Swiss Valley." Carlyle acted as one of the two 
 vice-presidents of "The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund," 
 his colleague being Sir Roderick Murchison, and the 
 president the Earl of Shrewsbury. Next to these names 
 the most distinguished on the committee were Earl 
 Manvers, Sir Thomas Gladstone, Professor Tyndall, John 
 William Kaye, Viscount Melville, Lord Gordon Lennox, 
 and Henry Kingsley.* Carlyle went out of his usual 
 course by presiding at the first two meetings of the com- 
 mittee, which were held at No. 9 Waterloo Place, Pall 
 Mall, the first on the 29th August, 1866, the second on 
 the 5th September. On the first occasion, he said, he 
 
 * It may be worth while to note some of the names of "The 
 Jamaica Committee," which undertook the duty, after it had been 
 finally declined by the Government, of prosecuting Mr Eyre and his 
 subordinates for acts committed by them in the so-called rebellion in 
 Jamaica, and especially for the illegal execution of Mr Gordon. Mr 
 John Stuart Mill, M.P., was chairman, and the committee included 
 John Bright, Thomas Hughes, M.P., W. E. Baxter, M.P., Charles 
 Gilpin, M.P., Professor Fawcett, M.P., Joseph Cowen, M.P., 
 Duncan M'Laren, M.P., Professors Cairnes, Goldwin Smith, Francis 
 W. Newman, Thorold Rogers, J. J. Tayler, and Beesly, Herbert 
 Spencer, Edward Miall, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Frederick Harrison, 
 Humphrey Sandwith, and Titus Salt. In the circulars of the com- 
 mittee presided over by Carlyle the proceedings of the above-named 
 gentlemen were denounced as *' un-English and disgraceful." Car- 
 lyle himself verbally described them as a "noisy" clique, and 
 Ruskin said he was glad to make any sacrifice to shew his " much 
 more than disrespect for the Jamaica Committee." So foolish 
 may even the greatest intellects become, when blinded by the 
 passion of the distempered partisan. 
 
296 Thomas Cat 
 
 " considered that the committee should be presided over 
 by some nobleman of power and influence. As he, how 
 ever, considered it to be a solemn publi< duty on the part 
 of every man who believed that Governor Eyre had quelled 
 tin m Jamaica, and saved that island, to 
 
 come forward and boldly proclaim such to be 
 IK would gladly consent to take the chair at the present 
 moling." Aiu; |p :.< | !> a \\Ot India nu: ha:;' .iiid 
 * C Hall, the editor of the Art Journal, the latt. 
 
 whom expressed the belief that the prosecution of Eyre 
 would never be attempted, Carlylc said he " considered 
 that it would be advisable to meet the wishes of all well 
 affected parties, and he therefore proposed that the 
 of the Fund be altered from * The Eyre Testimonial and 
 Defence Fund ' to 4 The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund' 
 In 1 :i the amount of money subscribed, though 
 
 an important, was by no means the most important point 
 
 main object of the committee ought to be to 
 attack resolutely, by all fair methods, the fallacy 
 such he could not but believe it to be) that these 
 y denum iations of Mr I.) re, were the deliberate 
 voice of the peopK r did at all 
 
 press England ion aboir .re." The v*tc 
 
 of thanks to Carlylc for presiding was proposed 
 a captain of the loth Hussars, and seconded by a 
 captain of the Kn\.i! Na\\. .\i the second meeting, at 
 :\ denounced the threat to prose* 
 
 as 4t the cry of .1 linded by its avarice to all 
 
 true .rtue," Carlylc said he was "glad to find 
 
 that no less than twenty-five new names had been added" 
 
 to the committee during the week, and that " subscriptions 
 
 c flowing in from all quarters." At the third meeting. 
 
The Jamaica Massacre. 297 
 
 though he did not preside, Carlyle was again present, 
 and, with "very great pleasure," accepted the post of 
 vice-chairman. The reports of what he was doing 
 brought upon him a flood of correspondence, much of it 
 by no means complimentary, which he " could not afford 
 to read, much less to answer ; " and, as " his one answer 
 to all such correspondence from without," he caused a 
 letter to be published, in which he eulogised Eyre as "a 
 just, humane, and valiant man, faithful to his trusts every- 
 where, and with no ordinary faculty of executing them," 
 and declared that " penalty and clamour are not the 
 things this Governor merits from any of us, but honour 
 and thanks, and wise imitation (I will further say), should 
 similar emergencies rise, on the great scale or on the 
 small, in whatever we are governing." The nature of the 
 work thus commended for universal imitation can only be 
 appreciated by recalling a few of its salient features. 
 Four Hundred and Fifty innocent negro peasants of 
 Jamaica, many of whom would have shed the last drop 
 of their blood in defence of the British Crown, had been 
 slain in cold blood, in batches of ten and twenty per 
 diem ; Six Hundred other inhabitants of the island, from 
 the aged matron of seventy to the young boy of twelve, 
 and including some pregnant women, had been stripped 
 naked and flogged with a new instrument of torture made 
 of piano-wire ; and One Thousand Homes had been 
 robbed and burned by the soldiery ! As if this were not 
 enough, Eyre sanctioned an Act, the effect of which was 
 to confiscate the provision grounds belonging to the 
 widows and orphans of those who had been executed. 
 Nothing like it had occurred in British history since " the 
 bloody Claverhouse " and the Highland Host desolated 
 
298 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 the south-western shires of Scotland in the Covenanting 
 days. The Massacre of Glencoe was the merest trifle to 
 the Jamaica Massacre of 1865. Very many of the 
 Jamaica victims were, like Gordon, members of Christian 
 churches; one of them was a white girl, the daughter 
 a missionary she was stripped and flogged with the 
 piano-wire cat. 9 
 
 Carlyle's too famous letter, most admirable as to its 
 form each sentence gleaming flashes as of cold steel- 
 had no words too contemptuous to apply to the men who 
 were denouncing the Massacre. "The clamour/' he 
 said, was "disgraceful to the good sense of England; 
 and if it rested on any depth of conviction, and were not 
 rather (as I always flatter myself it is) a thing of rumour 
 and hearsay, of repetition and reverberation, mostly from 
 the teeth outward, I should consider it of evil omen to 
 the country, and to its highest interests, in these times.* 
 England, he continued, had never been wont to spend 
 its sympathy on "miserable mad seditions, esrx 
 
 inhuman and half-brutish type;" and he " flattered" 
 
 For detailed and air proof of all 
 
 he Royal CommistioQ; Charge by Lord Chief Justice 
 Cock burn in the case of Nelson and Brand ; and what Mr (now 
 Lord) Cardwell so truly designated "those ghastly volumes,* 1 the 
 Jamaica Blue Books of the period. These documents may be con* 
 mended to the attention of the Rev. Gavin Carlylc, who, in some 
 pleasant reminiscences of his great namesake, refers to his own 
 father, " now a venerable missionary in Jamaica, a year younger 
 than Carlylc himself.*' It appears from the son's statement, that 
 
 her, " though the greatest friend of the negroes," took 1 
 part .1 sent Carlyle one of his letters on the subject, and 
 
 he sent it back with great delight, saying, it was just what he would 
 have expected from the good sense of his old friend. Pcaise from the 
 greatest enemy of the Negro could hardly be pleasant to " the great- 
 eat friend of the negroes *' in Jamaica. 
 
The Charge of the Chief Justice. 299 
 
 himself that it had not changed, " not yet quite ; but that 
 certain loose superficial portions of it have become a 
 great deal louder, and not any wiser, than they formerly 
 used to be." In conclusion, he hoped that, by the "wise 
 effort and persistence " of the committee he had joined, 
 " a blind and disgraceful act of public injustice might be 
 prevented, and an egregious folly as well." Betaking 
 himself to an obscure nook of England, where he received 
 the shelter of justices who refused to commit him for 
 trial, the ex-Governor contrived to elude what an honour- 
 able man, accused of a great crime yet conscious of his 
 innocence, is always anxious to obtain. Market-Drayton, 
 the birthplace of Clive, was the hiding-place of this 
 modern hero, this "just, humane, and valiant" man, 
 extolled by Carlyle. If the panegyric had been well- 
 founded, the Governor would have hastened to secure a 
 fair trial by a jury of his countrymen; but, instead of 
 justifying the praises bestowed upon him by his friends, 
 he resorted to every possible artifice in order to escape 
 the necessity of submitting his conduct to a judicial 
 tribunal. One of the guiltiest of his subordinates, 
 Colonel Hobbs, had committed suicide by throwing 
 himself into the sea on the homeward voyage ; but 
 two others also deeply implicated, Lieutenant Brand 
 and Colonel Nelson, committed for trial by a London 
 magistrate, were set free by a grand jury whose mem- 
 bers went in the teeth of what has been regarded as 
 the noblest charge delivered by the greatest Chief 
 Justice of our century. But that charge remains ; 
 and as long as it continues to be read men will see how 
 grievously Carlyle had gone astray. According to the 
 doctrines laid down by Cockburn, the hanging of Gordon 
 
300 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 was murder, and martial law, as ir ' in Jam 
 
 a thing utterly foreign to our institutions and without the 
 faintest sanction in the \ of En^' ru- 
 
 dence. The Charge was hailed by the great bulk of the 
 >n with profound sati^ 1 ,.; went 
 
 on deep' n the country re< report of the 
 
 Royal Commission sent out to 1 and subsequently 
 
 heard that the new Governor of the island, Sir 1 
 
 it, was swiftly carrying out ' for 
 
 Bating which Gordon had be- iout 
 
 A few faint at* -..ore made by a few friends 
 
 of the degraded Governor to have him restored to the 
 ed on the pen>i>n list ; but the 
 moral sense of the country revolted from these propc* 
 and there is now no danger of their being a^: ed 
 
 Both from individuals and organs of public opinion 
 entitled to respectful attention there came expostulation 
 and reproof. By the leading journal of his n.r 
 countr)', 'im nor at any other 
 
 of its history obnoxious to the charge of being weakly 
 humanitarian, Carlyle was reminded that no man . 
 should ! , and less admiration for G 
 
 m he. " .idling about and 
 
 nobleness of energy is to IK :n doing harm and 
 
 not good," said >nan, " it must be fenced 1 
 
 strenuous ; .ill be guided and 
 
 tempered l> 1 hat he failed to see this did not, 
 
 howev e those who were best acquainted with his 
 
 the author of Tom Brew*?* 
 
 Sfhoo! : how the test of the 
 
 treat m ferior races divided men in our : 
 
 kecnl !> than any other. I never now can 
 
A Literary Lust of Carnage. 301 
 
 depend upon an Englishman's political faith until I know 
 how he felt about your rebellion, or how he is feeling 
 about this outbreak of ours in Jamaica. The foremost 
 men on the wrong side with us are Carlyle, Ruskin, and 
 Kingsley. Our people are calling them renegades, but 
 this is not fair. The only one to whom the name can 
 with even prima fade fairness be given, is Kingsley. 
 Carlyle has been a power-worshipper and a despiser of 
 freedom any time this twenty-five years. Reverence 
 him as one does, and must, there is no denying this. 
 Ruskin has been the captive of Carlyle's bow and spear 
 for the last ten years, or nearly that. He is intensely 
 clear, keen, and narrow; can never see more than one 
 side, and is as bigoted a hero-worshipper, both in the 
 good and evil sense, as his great master. He is fond now 
 of saying, 1 1 am a King's man, not a mob's man, 5 includ- 
 ing tyrant in his term King, and people in his term 
 mob."* The Daily News accurately interpreted the 
 feeling of thousands, when it lamented the deterioration A 
 of moral sentiment in Carlyle. " The generous enthusi- 
 asm, the poetic insight, the pure, if austere, morals, the 
 blended hope and sadness of an earnest temperament 
 which glowed in his earlier pages, live in his later writings 
 only as half-extinguished fires under the smouldering 
 ashes. Personally one of the kindest of men, Mr Carlyle 
 has cultivated an intellectual taste for bloodshed a 
 literary lust of carnage. He has become, by sedulous 
 self-indulgence, voluptuous in cruelty. Like old Lear, in 
 
 * In 1880, when a candidate for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow 
 University, in opposition to Mr Bright, Mr Ruskin wrote that 
 Carlyle and he were now the only two King's men left in the king- 
 dom ! 
 
302 TTiomas CarlyU. 
 
 his madness, he threatens to quit the stage, muttering 
 'Kill kill kill."' The question arose in many minds, 
 
 they read Carlyle's diatribes, if John Stuart 
 "superficial," who, then, in England is profound? and 
 they pointed to the calm and lucid explanation of the 
 pan he was taking in the controversy whi< h Mr Mill had 
 given in Parliament, with all the quiet dignity and force 
 of argument becoming a philosopher. The idea of ju 
 was involved; but in his pamphlet on Model 
 Carlyle, when asked for a definition of justice, had < 
 declaimed in eloquent language. Not so Mr Mill, who 
 had been at pains in his writings to define it with 
 cision, and whose action was the outcome of his serious 
 thought of fundamental principles reached by the 
 exercise of reason. Carlyle did not reason; ruled 
 rhetoric and his emotions, he set reason at defiance. 
 One remark of an able writer who mixed in the 
 seems worthy of preservation for permanent use : " While 
 the men whose eloquent writings, wherein are often found 
 episodes of tender, touching pathos, and noble, generous 
 sentiment, are yet disfigured with a passionateness and 
 one-sidedness truly startling, have ranked themselves with 
 the supporters of Mr Eyre; the men of calmnes- 
 patient thought, and of industrious investigation 1 
 decidedly pronounced against him. On his side we 
 have hot and interne-rate feeling; against him cool, 
 calm, collected thougl 
 
 That these remonstrances were of no avail in modify- 
 ing the aversion to the negro which Carlyle had so 
 long cherished was made apparent in the following year, 
 1867, by the publication in Maanillan of what might be 
 called the last of the Latter-Day PamphUt*. Its title was 
 
He Advocates Slavery. 303 
 
 Shooting Niagara ; and After. While the primary pur- 
 pose of the essay was to assail the Reform Bill of Mr 
 Disraeli, a statesman he had always viewed with distrust, 
 it included a reproduction of the little American Iliad. 
 The great conflict in the United States was over, but 
 even yet he failed to apprehend its purport. In the 
 previous year, while the case of the Jamaica Massacre 
 was pending, Emerson had been astonished and dis- 
 tressed, telling his friends that " Carlyle was losing him- 
 self;" and this assault upon the American form of 
 government, with its violent expressions of contempt, 
 both for the liberated negro and the Republic, deepened 
 the regret felt by his oldest friends on the other side of 
 the sea. " The Almighty Maker," said Carlyle, in this 
 latest manifesto, with a confidence in his own knowledge 
 of the Divine purpose which he would have called 
 fanatical in another man, "has appointed the nigger to 
 be a servant," and the American War, having been under- 
 taken to set him free from servitude, was a war against 
 Heaven's decree. Moreover, it was a war against an 
 eternal law of human society, which demands that ser- 
 vantship shall not be on the nomadic principle at the rate 
 of so many shillings a day, but upon the principle of a 
 contract for life. In other words, slavery is the natural 
 condition of labour ; and that for the white man as well 
 as the black. Mr Moncure Conway, the sincerity of 
 whose anti-slavery feeling was attested by the liberation 
 of his own slaves long before the War, assures us that 
 Carlyle took the wrong side, not because his sympathies 
 were with the oppressors, but because he was misled as 
 to the facts of the case by the stories told him by slave- 
 owners concerning their patriarchal arcadia in the South. 
 
304 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 icrican lady whose noble son had died amid 
 great renown in the Northern ranks, sent to Carlyle the 
 une of the Harvard students who had fallen 
 in the war, c their letters, their biographies, 
 
 an account of their thoughts and deeds during that great 
 struggle : old man read that book r 
 
 last, and some i wards, when that 
 
 :i lady came to see him in j>< grasped 
 
 hand, and, even with tears, said, * I have been 
 
 It is a pity Carlyle I 
 
 change of view k the world. He certainly 
 
 owed this re para: had done so 
 
 .id.* 
 
 As respects our own country, he declared that it had 
 been ::i hy|xx:risy, lying to steep in the DC 
 
 indred years;" and what with 
 .1 of "traitorous politicians," the 
 rge of Chief Justice Cockburn on mar- 
 ine thr Governor 
 
 -.not of nigger-philanthropists," he 
 
 n was at hand. He had < 
 
 one hope, and tl \ "our ; D he 
 
 body of brave men and of beautifully 
 
 >uroals penuitcn 
 
 ngiai meant to be serious. H< had made men 
 ihosc wh< > extension of the suffrage, 
 
 declaring that . ! of betetofae were 
 
 can. 
 
 '(1 one of his amuse 
 
 I.-;.MM the -; Chelsea." Another 
 
 ' 'arlyle that we are all going to 
 
 I Because he clothe^ the gloomy intimation in uch fantastk 
 garr. makes our future state so picturesque, that it ceaaet 
 
 to be terrible. " 
 
His View of the Lords in 1831. 305 
 
 polite women," " noble souls," " of high stoicism," and all 
 manner of virtues. A somewhat different picture this 
 from the one he drew of the aristocracy in Past and 
 Present ; indicating also a change since that day in the 
 October of 1831 when he wrote from London to Macvey 
 Napier, " This is the day when the Lords are to reject the 
 Reform Bill. The poor Lords can only accelerate (by 
 perhaps a century) their own otherwise inevitable enough 
 abolition ; that is the worst they can do ; the people and 
 their purposes are no longer dependent on them." As 
 a politician, he had changed during the interval of fifty 
 years ; and to some people it will seem that the change 
 was not one for the better. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 LETTERS ON FRANCO-GERMAN WAR JOY AT THE GERMAN 
 MPH EPISODE OF HERR WALDMULLER-DUBOC 
 LETTER ON THE E\ 
 
 SPEAKABLE TURK "OUR MIRACULOUS PREMIER* 
 HIS LAST POLITICAL ACT MR SWINBUF 
 HIS VIEW OF SCOTT HIS EIGHTIETH I 
 LAST FRUIT FROM THE OLD TREE. 
 
 THERE remained now only two other occasions on which 
 Carlyle was to fci aid upon him to acqi: 
 
 the puMic \\ith his \iewson the question of In 
 
 the autumn of 1870 his friends had observed a great 
 improvement in his health and sj : h seemed to 
 
 be rising in consequence of the Prussian victori< 
 war with France. He was almost !uh, the 
 
 Athenaeum, freely and joyously conversing with 
 habitues on the j. opean topic of the hour; and 
 
 UK strain of his talk was, perhaps, not mode- 
 
 rated by the fact that a large proportion of the men he- 
 met retained a keen sympathy with France, even though 
 many of them rejoiced to see ird 
 
 Naj)oleon rushing to doom. Carly! 
 
 exuberant feeling was expressed in a let 
 the Weimar Gazttte in OctoK epistle had been 
 
His Views of France and Germany. 307 
 
 handed to that journal by the private friend in Germany 
 to whom it was addressed. Of course, it gave profound 
 satisfaction to the victorious nation, and made the name 
 of Goethe's British expositor dearer than ever to the 
 German people. This letter was succeeded in November 
 by a long manifesto, addressed to his own countrymen 
 through the Times > which proved that the writer's power 
 in the minatory line had not by any means abated on 
 account of advancing years. It was imperatively neces- 
 sary, said this new proclamation, that France, which had 
 proved herself not only unfit to guide others, but which 
 "is swallowed up in oceans of vanity and all sorts of 
 mendacity, not only of the conscious, but, what is far 
 worse, also of the unconscious sort, should be dethroned 
 from her seeming primacy in Europe." This work Ger- 
 many, under the guidance of Bismarck, was about to 
 achieve. In doing it she was not only vindicating for 
 herself the position to which she was entitled, but she 
 was also paying off France for all the miseries and mis- 
 chiefs wrought upon her by the latter country during the 
 last four hundred years. She must recover the territory 
 stolen from her by France, and restore Alsace and Lor- 
 raine to a reconstituted Germany, or as much of the 
 latter at least as would serve for a secure boundary-fence 
 between the two countries. In the efforts of the French 
 to defend themselves, he saw nothing admirable. They 
 are a vile race, altogether given over to lies, and the 
 father of lies all their patriotism vanity, vapouring, and 
 idle gesticulating. In contrast with them, the English 
 public were summoned to look admiringly at " that noble, 
 patient, deep, pious, and solid Germany." It was to 
 Carlyle " the hopefullest public fact " that had occurred 
 
308 Thomas Cat 
 
 in his time that such a people "should be at length 
 welded into a nation and become Queen of the Conti- 
 nent, instead of vapouring, vain-glorious, gesticulating, 
 
 letter was manifestly one-sided, and lacking in the quality 
 of solid, comprehensive judgment Carlyle's historical 
 
 cw of the quarrels between France and Germany for 
 four hundred years introduced a principle, u' 
 universally acted on, would plunge the whole world into 
 war, and, as one of the most incisive <>: ;cs, who 
 
 was also a warm per- nd, told him, "wipe civil- 
 
 sation from the face of Europe with a sponge of blood" 
 Did not his own book on the French Revolution show 
 that, it Germany had suffered at the hands of France 
 four centuries ago, France had been plunged into twenty 
 years of war at a time much nearer our own by the 
 
 jiritous assaults of Germany? Besides, to speak 
 Germany as equivalent to Prussia, involved a false 
 assumption. The wrongs (if wrongs they were) inflicted 
 by France on Germany really fell upon Austria, for t! 
 was then no kingdom of Prus- >tence The rise 
 
 of Prussia dates from the sei/ure of Silesia by Freder 
 her claim to represent the rights and avenge the wrongs 
 01 Austria and the old German Emj 
 burglar.* As to Carlyle's furious contempt for the 
 
 By no writer was the historical argument against C 
 manifesto more effectively presented than by Dr Peter Bayne, who, 
 the son-in-law of a Prussian general, spoke from an intimate personal 
 acquaintance with Prussia and her history. In the latest edition of 
 irtt book, Tkf Ckrittia* Lt/e, Dr Bayne gives a prefatory essay, 
 analysing the general teaching of Carlyle, and pointing out what he 
 conceives to be its fundamental errors. 
 
Herr Waldmiiller-Duboc. 309 
 
 French Government of Defence, it was suggested that 
 " if, instead of acting with signal moderation, they had 
 shown the maniacal energy of the Government of the 
 Reign of Terror, and set fifty guillotines spouting blood, 
 he might have spoken of them with more respect." 
 Objectionable as Carlyle's letter seemed to be in so 
 many respects, even at the time of its publication, 
 when the general joy at the fall of the author of the 
 coup d'etat led multitudes to rank themselves on the 
 side of Germany, it is now, after the lapse of a decade, 
 seen even more plainly to be untenable. The argu- 
 ment was unjust to France ; and its sympathy for 
 Germany, based on sentimental rather than equitable 
 grounds, was also distasteful to lovers of freedom, 
 since it rested in no slight degree on Carlyle's satis- 
 faction with the absence among the Germans of those 
 political virtues which the English people justly value in 
 themselves. 
 
 An amusing episode in connection with Carlyle's enthu- 
 siastic devotion to the cause of Germany was the imposi- 
 tion successfully practised on him by an astute son of the 
 Fatherland, Robert Waldmiiller-Duboc by name, who, in 
 the December of 1870, sent to Carlyle a little book of 
 verse, called "The Thousand Years' Oak of Alsace," 
 with an inscription indicating that the author of the 
 volume was in the German army, then engaged in the 
 siege of Paris. Carlyle hastened to send an acknowledg- 
 ment of the " beautiful little blue book," the contents of 
 which he praised lavishly as " betokening in the writer a 
 delicate, affectionate, poetic, and gifted human brother, 
 well skilled in literary composition not to speak of still 
 higher things." As a matter of fact, we are assured by 
 
3io Thomas CarfyU. 
 
 competent judges, who have read Hen Waldmuller's 
 verses, that they are thin and feeble, with a thread of 
 
 nipted satire running through them that does not tend 
 to hilarity in the reader's mind Hut < rnagined 
 
 they were written by a German soldier, which led him 
 to see in the book merits nobody else could discover. 
 " That a soul capable of such work should now date to 
 me from * Le Vert Galant,' and the heart of a great and 
 M event, supremely beneficent and yet su- 
 premely terrible, upon which all Europe is waiting v, 
 abated breath, is another circumstance which adds im- 
 mensely to the interest of the kind gift for me ; and I 
 may well keep the little book ir preservation a 
 
 memorial to me of what will be memorable to all the 
 
 Id for another 'thousand years. I i to 
 
 convey some hint of my feeling to you, as at once a 
 writer of such a piece, and the worker and fighter in such 
 a world ; and I try to contrive some way of doing so. 
 Alas ! my wishes can do little for you or for your valiant 
 comrades, nobly fronting the storms of war and of wir 
 but if this ever reach you, let it be an assurance that I do 
 in my heart praise you (and miglr -\ a sort, if I 
 
 were a German and still young, envy you), and that no 
 man, in Germany or out of it, more deeply applauds the 
 heroic, invincible bearing of your comrades and 
 more entirely wishes and augurs a glorious n <.t at 
 
 the appointed hour. hat a good genius does 
 
 guide you, that Heaven itself approves what you are 
 doin^', that in tl v is sure to you, 
 
 an old man's blessing; continue to quit yourselves like 
 men, and in that case expect that a good issue 
 
 >nd the reach 01 Fortune and her inconstancies. 
 
"Our Miraculous Premier" 311 
 
 God be with you, dear sir, with you and your brave 
 brethren in arms." 
 
 Alas ! this valiant and heroic, as well as delicate and 
 gifted young warrior turned out to be no warrior at all, 
 but a mere newspaper correspondent ! a fact which must 
 have considerably disgusted Carlyle, if it ever came to 
 his knowledge. But Herr Waldmiiller-Duboc, who at 
 once handed the epistle to Mr Archibald Forbes as a 
 serviceable " sensation " for his next morning's letter, 
 had the satisfaction of seeing it duly telegraphed to 
 London, where it appeared next morning (January n, 
 1871) in the very largest type the characteristically 
 smart preface of Mr Forbes, who of course did not "peach" 
 upon the provider of the copy, opening with the startling 
 words, " Thomas Carlyle on the foreposts ! The Sage 
 of Chelsea among the besiegers of Paris ! " It was 
 .a good stroke of business for Herr Waldmiiller-Duboc. 
 It also threw what he himself would have called " a 
 straggle" of illumination on the emotional nature of 
 Herr Waldmiiller-Duboc's victim. We must add that 
 the strong enthusiasm for Germany which beat in 
 the heart of Carlyle did not exclude a tender sym- 
 pathy for the sufferings entailed upon the French; 
 and to a lady actively employed in London further- 
 ing the French Relief Fund he sent " a little ear of 
 corn to join with the charitable harvest you are reap- 
 ing, which I trust will be abundant for the sake of 
 those poor Frenchwomen whom with all my heart I pity 
 as you do." 
 
 In the November of 1876, when he was within a few 
 days of his eighty -first birthday, a warlike speech delivered 
 .at the Guild-hall by Lord Beaconsfield provoked a brief 
 
312 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 letter to the Times from Carlyle, assailing the policy on 
 the Eastern Question of " our miraculous Premier," and 
 denouncing "the unspeakable Ti; Never in the 
 
 poll ry of t>ur time did two little phrases perform 
 
 such effective sen ice ; and, a.s r was to be the 
 
 last f should address to his fellow-countrymen, it 
 
 is pleasant to think that it was the one, of all his polr 
 manifestoes, that gave the u ulest and most intense satis- 
 faction. That it contributed in a degree quite dispropor- 
 tioned to the in hastening the d< 
 
 fall of Lord Beaconsfic! ration, has been 
 
 admitted on every hand That political leader had at no 
 time been a favourite of his. In 1867, in a conversai 
 with a visitor from Australia on the public men of 
 England, "he seized hold of I nd ridiculed him 
 
 with a bitterness of sarcasm, and a force and vigour of 
 expression, \v de me feel," says the narrator, I 
 
 was to an intellectual giant. He then assailed, 
 
 the lords and gentlemen who have so long 
 
 .s to be led by such a man, mention 
 the circumstance to a 
 
 large Edinburgh audience, as he informed it of the 
 process of * education' to which he had subjected the 
 aforesaid lords and gentlemen in the matter of Reform. 
 He was full of fun and satiric humour while 1. 
 Disraeli, and to be utterly unable to get over the 
 
 monstrous anomaly of all the great lords and gentle: 
 suffering tlu: > be led notorious polk, 
 
 jug rally dissected poor Mr Disraeli wit 
 
 1 an amazing knowledge of the 
 
 anatomy of his subje* -vas striking and enter: 
 
 ing in the highest degree." S 1874,10 
 
"The Unspeakable Turk." 313 
 
 its Tory editor, when they got on politics, " Mr Disraeli 
 was the first politician who fell in his way, and him he 
 executed in a noose you could almost see him dangling 
 from the ceiling. Mr Disraeli was c a clever trickster,' 
 who ' could not look facts in the face.'" The phrase, 
 " He whom men call Dizzy," was originated by Carlyle ; 
 and he could hardly contain himself in private conversa- 
 tion when the name was mentioned. This life-long 
 feeling of antagonism found its culminating public expres- 
 sion in the scornful declaration which he threw in the teeth 
 of the Guildhall orator, when he declared that it was 
 " impossible for any Minister or Prime Minister that exists 
 among us " to undertake a war against Russia on behalf 
 of the Turk. "It is evident to me that this would be 
 nothing short of insanity," he continued. He would give 
 the Turk " something very different from war on his 
 behalf." The Turk " must quam primam turn his face to 
 the eastward; forever quit the side of the Hellespont, 
 and give up his arrogant ideas of governing anybody but 
 himself." In the main, this last letter of Carlyle was on 
 the side of truth, justice, and humanity it was a wise as 
 well as a potent word of advice to the British people ; 
 yet it evinced an undue sympathy with the despotic drill 
 imposed by their government on the Russian people, 
 and the general result of the argument did not seem to 
 harmonise altogether with certain memorable words about 
 Mahomet and Islamism which Carlyle had uttered on a 
 London platform thirty-six years before. If the word 
 spoken by Mahomet was really invested, as Carlyle then 
 argued, with Heavenly power, how had it come about 
 that the followers of Mahomet had sunk to depths that 
 were " unspeakable," and were, of all the governing powers 
 
3 M Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 in Europe, alone beyond reclamation ? During the year 
 that followed the publication ot raculous Premier " 
 
 epistle, one would here and there come across bills posted 
 
 dead walls, and even in railway trains and cabins 
 of steamers, entitled " Thomas Carlyle's Query," which 
 asked, " I wonder how long John Bull is going to allow a 
 
 crable Jew to dance on his belly ?" 
 It has been urged by some that, notwithstanding all 
 appearances to the contrary, Carlyle's sympathies 
 were essentially democratic; and those who hold this 
 
 nion might point to the last political act of his life 
 as a symbol of the alleged fact Dean Stanley was 
 
 though the Dean was the auth< 
 the scheme, and sought to carry it into effect with 
 almost passionate ardour, Carlyle at once authorised 
 the attaching of his signature to the memorial aga 
 the de.se( ration ot" \\'e>ti; \lbey by the intni 
 
 into it of a monument in honour of the unh. ; 
 
 ice Imperial. The moral influence of this act was 
 iore emphatic by a hasty declaration 
 on the part of Dean Stanley, that the signature must 
 be a forgery. The Dean was apparently unacquainted 
 with the handwriting of Carlyle's niece, and also un- 
 aware of the fact, familiar enough to his intimate friends, 
 Carlyle had not for a long while been able to use 
 hi.s |>en. 
 
 Amongst the replies to Carlyle's last letter, perhaps the 
 least pleasant was one issued in pamphlet form by Mr 
 Swinburne. It professed to have the Eastern Ques; 
 for its theme, but that was manifestly no more than a peg 
 on which the writer contrived to hang a 
 attack on Carlyle. This pamphlet recalled an incident, 
 
Mr Swinburne* s Attack. 315 
 
 which was probably its motive, of 1874, when Carlyle's 
 opinion of the author of Chastelard^ given in conversation 
 to Emerson, on the last visit of the Concord sage to 
 England, found its way into the American journals. 
 The truth of the estimate was much in excess of the 
 refinement of the language in which it was expressed; 
 and Mr Swinburne wrote a passionate reply, in which he 
 described the words of Carlyle as " the sewerage of 
 Sodom," adding that "a foul mouth is ill matched 
 with a white beard." Emerson he pictured as "a 
 gap-toothed and hoary-headed ape, carried first into 
 notice on the shoulder of Carlyle, and who now, in 
 his dotage, spits and chatters from a dirtier perch 
 of his own finding and fouling." It was no doubt 
 true that Carlyle, in 1841, had edited the first English 
 edition of his American friend's essays, to which 
 he prefixed a characteristic eulogy of their author; 
 but Emerson hardly needed this to make him known to 
 the world, as the English poet's irate and unedifying 
 assault seemed to imply. The figure used by Carlyle to 
 describe Mr Swinburne was not a nice one ; but it 
 expressed the loathing excited within him by a school of 
 versifiers who have imported into England the worst 
 vices of effeminate sensualists who in France degrade the 
 name of poet. The exclusion of drinking songs, and 
 worse, from Miss Mary Carlyle Aitken's selection of 
 Scottish Song, published in 1874 in the Golden Treasury 
 Series, may be ascribed with some confidence to the 
 influence of her uncle. It was, perhaps, the same 
 guidance that caused only three of Sir Walter Scott's 
 compositions to be given. To the last Carlyle clung to 
 the depreciatory estimate of the author of Waverley 
 
316 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 which he had expressed, with almost an excess of frank- 
 ness, in that early essay wherein he asserted that S 
 had never been in>pircd with one idea, purpose, inst 
 or tendency that was worthy of the name of great, ha\ 
 nothing to recommend him, indeed, but a u healthy, 
 
 ly nature" that made him the equal of Will. 
 Cobbett The essay on Scott contains some of 
 author's noblest teaching; but for what he said against 
 Walter there are many, in his native land and elsewhere, 
 who have never been able to forgive Carlyle. It was an 
 essay, however, which Erskine of Linlathen never wearied 
 in j.r .ising; Madame Vinet thought it admiral 
 and so did Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to whom also 
 Scott's aims appeared " low and vulgar," and his views of 
 literature "sordid. By no writer h; vourable 
 
 :nate of Scott been more earnestly or nx ely 
 
 enforced than by Mr Gladstone. The curious fact 
 deserves to be put upon record that the great Free 
 Church leader, Dr Candlish, was prepared to nomir 
 Carlyle as the man of all others who, in ! ion, 
 
 ought to preside at the Scott Centenary Celebration in 
 Edinburgh in 1871. Much to his own relief, howc . 
 Carlyle was not called to this ceremony, and, indeed, he 
 could not well have presided ;val after the 
 
 candid judgment of S -id his work which he 
 
 published in t minster Rcsicw in 1838, and \\ 
 
 which he never afterwards swerved But the attitude 
 in whi< h Candlish stood to Carlyle on this occasion was 
 a pleasing and hopeful sign of the times. Even theolo- 
 gians noted for their " soundness" in t! ere now 
 regarding the Sage of Chelsea with less s\ .md 
 more respect We ought not to forget, however, that 
 
His Eightieth Birthday. 317 
 
 Dr Chalmers had long before this date declared that 
 Carlyle, by his firm grasp of the religious sentiment, had 
 done more than any other man of his time to " vindicate 
 and bring to light the Augustan age of Christianity in 
 England." 
 
 Carlyle has told how, on the eightieth, which was also 
 the last, birthday of Goethe, it was celebrated by an 
 outward ceremony of a peculiar kind, "wherein, too, it 
 is to be hoped, might be some inward meaning and 
 sincerity." It fell on the 28th of August 1831, and on 
 that day the sage of Weimar received a graceful com- 
 pliment from fifteen Englishmen. As a token of 
 their veneration, they presented the poet with a highly- 
 wrought seal, on which, amidst tasteful carving and 
 emblematic embossing, stood these words, engraven 
 on a gold belt, along with the date "To the German 
 Master : From Friends in England." This seal was 
 designed, as before noted, by Mrs Carlyle ; and a letter 
 accompanied the gift, written by her husband, which 
 expressed in touching language the reverence felt by the 
 donors " as the spiritually taught towards their spiritual 
 teacher." 
 
 It is Saturday, the 4th of December 1875 ; an ^ now 
 it is Carlyle, the disciple and first British expositor of 
 Goethe, who has completed the eightieth year of his 
 earthly pilgrimage. It was not inappropriate that the 
 first tribute should arrive at Cheyne Row in the morning, 
 in the shape of a telegram from Berlin, subscribed by ten 
 of the most distinguished professors and politicians of 
 Germany, the list headed by the historian Leopold von 
 Ranke, who himself was within a few days of completing 
 his eightieth year. These Germans thanked Carlyle, 
 
318 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 "the champion of Germanic freedom of thought and 
 moral integrity," for having done so much to promote 
 cordial relations between the English and German nations. 
 The second tribute came at a later hour of the day from 
 Briti^i friends. Along with a gold medal, of exqui 
 
 ^n, the workmanship of his friend J. E. Boehm, 
 bearing on one side a portrait of the pa was 
 
 a quiet and kindly letter of congratulation ; both v. 
 simply handed in at the door of his dwelling, the mode 
 of presentation deemed most congenial to Carls 
 
 rigs, besides being in accord with the wholesome 
 British aversion to all theatrical display in connect 
 
 the solemn realities of life. " Not a few," said the 
 
 r, "of the voices which would have been dearest to 
 you to hear to-day are silent in death. Thi 
 perhaps be some compensation in the assurance of 
 revc v and affectionate gratitude of many 
 
 thousands of living men and women throughout the 
 Brit: ; .-Is and cl who have derived dc 
 
 an<! ion from the noble series of your writings, 
 
 and who have noted also how powerfully the world has 
 been influenced by your great personal example. A 
 whole generation has elapsed since you described for us 
 the hero as a Man of Letters. We congratulate you and 
 ourselves on the spacious fulness of years which has 
 enabled you to sustain this rare dignity among mankind 
 in all its possible splendour and < 1 is a 
 
 matter for general rejoicing that a teacher whose gc: 
 and achievements have lent radiance to his time still 
 dwells amidst us ; and our hope is ; long 
 
 continue in fair > feel how much you are loved 
 
 and honoured, and to rest in the retrospect of a brave 
 
The Commemorative Medal. 
 
 and illustrious life."* Of the medal, an engraved represen- 
 tation of which we are privileged to lay before our readers 
 (see page 321), silver and bronze copies were struck for 
 the use of the subscribers, with a few for presentation to 
 public institutions ; the copy sent for Carlyle's acceptance 
 was in gold. 
 
 In the opening months of the same year which brought 
 this beautiful and solemn tribute at its close, the wonder- 
 ful old man had published what was to be his penultimate 
 work. Without the slightest preliminary notice, the 
 January number of his first friend in time of need, 
 Fraser's Magazine, gave the initial instalment of the 
 Early Kings of Norway ; and the brilliant little series 
 
 * This document was subscribed by the following friends : 
 Thomas Aird, William Allingham, Alex. Bain, Thos. S. Baynes, 
 John S. Blackie, J. E. Boehm, W. Boxall, Wm. Brodie, R.S.A. ; 
 John Brown, M.D. ; Robert Browning, John Caird, Edward Caird, 
 H. Calderwood, Lewis Campbell, Robert Carruthers, Edwin Chad- 
 wick, Fred. Chapman, Henry Cole, Thomas Constable, Archibald 
 Constable, Henry Cowper, George Lillie Craik, D. M. Craik, 
 Francis Cunningham, Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, J. Llewelyn 
 Davies, James Donaldson, David Douglas, Edward Dowden, George 
 Eliot, Edward Fitzgerald, Percy Fitzgerald, Robert Flint, John 
 Forster, W. E. Forster, Robert Were Fox, A. C. Eraser, Richard 
 Garnett, Ad. Gifford, John Gordon, A. Grant, John Richard Green, 
 Alex. B. Grosart, George Grove, William Hanna, R. Palmer 
 Harding, T. Duffus Hardy, Frederick Harrison, Robert Herdman, 
 R.S.A. ; W. B. Hodgson, Jos. D. Hooker, Robert Horn, Thomas 
 Hughes, Thos. H. Huxley, Alexander Ireland, William Jack, R. C. 
 Jebb, David Laing, Samuel Lawrence, Arthur Laurenson, W. E. H. 
 Lecky, G. H. Lewes, J. Norman Lockyer, John Lubbock, E. L. 
 Lushington, Godfrey Lushington, Vernon Lushington, Lyttelton, 
 ^E. J. J. Mackay, Alexander Macmillan, Henry S. Maine, Theodore 
 Martin, Helena Faucit Martin, Harriet Martineau, David Masson, 
 William Stirling Maxwell, Henry Morley, John Morley, Chas. 
 Edward Mudie, F. Max Muller, Charles Neaves, M. O. W. Oliphant, 
 
320 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 nonymous sketches were carried on and completed in 
 the February and March numbers. Three years after 
 : appearance, the editor of the magazine i ridden tally 
 rred to the curious circumstance that, when these 
 papers appeared, only one of the critics detected the 
 authorship ; and we may be permitted to claim whatever 
 of credit belongs to that exception, though to us it was 
 indeed a marvel, not merely that we stood alone in this 
 matter, but that every person whom we were able to 
 consult had grave doubts on the subject, even the most 
 warding the sketches as no more than a good 
 imitation of the master's style. To us it seemed that but 
 one hand in England could have penned even the brief 
 business-like, preliminary statement as to the original 
 sources from which the substance of the notes had been 
 Some of the critics ascribed the work to Mr 
 Froude ; and \vhen the belief we hazarded was at length 
 confirmed, the same guides hastened to express the 
 opinion that the work exhibited signs of senility. Un- 
 fortunately for them it soon transpired that, instead of 
 being a product of the author's old age, it had in reality 
 been written many years before he handed the manuscript 
 for publication to his friend Mr Allinghum, at that :. 
 
 i Andrews Ormc, Richard Owen, Noel P Pollock, 
 
 ard Quain, M.D. ; ecve, Mary Rich, Alexander 
 
 Ruv \V. Y. Sellar, Henry Sidgwick, Samuel 
 
 Spalding, James Spedding, W. Spottiswoode, Arthur Penrhyn 
 
 Stanley, J : Hutchison Stirling. 
 
 Susan Stirling, Patrick D. Swan, Tom TV .wjxrr-Tci 
 
 A. Tennyson, Anne Isabella Thackeray, W. II. Thompson, George 
 
 Otto Trcvclyan, Anthony Trollopc, John Tyndall, 
 
 1 Vdich, G. S. Venables, A. W. Ward, Hcnslcigh Wedgwood, 
 
 Icigh Wedgwood, W. Aldis Wright. 
 
The Last Fruit off the Old Tree. 
 
 321 
 
 the able editor of Fraser. In the same year he published 
 in the same magazine a paper which, unlike the Norse 
 sketches, had been newly written. The Portraits of John 
 Knox was the last fruit off the old tree ; and the vivid 
 sketch of the great Reformer from the pen of the vener- 
 able octogenarian proved that his hand had lost none of 
 its cunning, while it deepened the sorrow that this vignette 
 was all we were ever to get from that hand on the same 
 subject. 
 
 By permission^ from the Medal by J. E. Boehm, Esq., A.R.A. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF CARI.VI E HIS ASPECl 
 
 EAI S OLD ACE- sCES 
 
 SPii OK DIRT" HIS 
 
 PORTRAIT Oi IJ> LAMB- 
 
 I HI. H.. \MLS OF LOCHGOIN Till. UN KARV: 
 
 MR CLADSTON OVE OK THE ( 
 
 was in one of the opening years of the last decade of 
 
 life that we enjoyed the j privilege of first meet 
 
 Carlyle. Or. ; that presence >om 
 
 upstairs whcr newly-issued number of the 
 
 Qu< cling, we ,, was one of 
 
 :d to realise that this 
 was 
 
 so much mo: .il aspect than we had 
 
 expected to find him, with one shoulder so much raised 
 it to a deformity ; hut because that aspect 
 was likewise so very homely, the air so rustic and 
 peasant like, not to say mcouth. When, some time 
 
 rwards, we 0|>cncd the newly published Memoir 
 George we could understand how it came to 
 
 pass that the dandiacal person from Boston who i 
 Carlyle upwards of forty years ago, when he was known 
 rilnitor to the magazines and reviews! 
 described hi: journal as 4t a vulgar looking little 
 
His Rustic Appearance. 323 
 
 man." That was, beyond question, the impression any 
 person, taking a merely superficial look, would have 
 carried away. What we saw was simply such a face and 
 form as we had come across hundreds of times in the 
 glens and on the moorlands of Western Scotland mend- 
 ing a feal dyke, seeing to the sheep, or hoeing potatoes 
 in a cottage kailyard by the roadside. Met with in any 
 one of these positions, he would have seemed in his 
 natural place; only a keen inspection could have suggested 
 the suspicion to any passer-by that there was something 
 out of or beyond the ordinary run of peasants in this 
 man. Surely no other cultured Scotsman ever went 
 through the world with so little change of the external 
 appearance and air that he had before leaving the cottage 
 of his birth. xVt no period of his life, from all that we 
 have been able to make out from conversations with his 
 sister and others who had known him well, was Robert 
 Burns so much of the rustic in appearance, deportment, 
 or speech ; and yet Carlyle was a student from his earliest 
 days, mixed for years in the best society of Edinburgh 
 before he was thirty, got a highly cultivated lady for his 
 wife, and an estate along with her, while for upwards of 
 forty years he had been the intellectual leader in the Great 
 Metropolis latterly such a potentate in the literary 
 world of the nineteenth as Johnson was in that of the 
 eighteenth century, and even a little more. There is 
 something profoundly significant in the tenacity with 
 which Carlyle must have resisted those social influences 
 that usually rub off the provincial angularities and impart 
 at least an external polish. That tenacity was in keeping 
 with one of the root principles of his teaching, and 
 reflected, perhaps to an exaggerated extent, his abhor 
 
3 24 Thomas Carfylt. 
 
 rencc of mere seeminghis detestation of shams. To 
 the last his mother always spoke of him as " Oor Tai 
 so also spoke at least one of his sisters, a farmer's 
 and any Scotsman meeting him, even in his latter days, 
 could have no difficulty in understanding why that was 
 the habit of those who knew him best In manner he 
 had preserved the strongly-marked characteristics of 
 youth and his family ; we question if he deflected a hair's 
 breadth from one of these even when he was tx 
 ministered to in her castle by the kindly Countess who 
 watched over his health after the death of his wife ; or 
 even when he was received, in 1869, by Queen Victoria 
 at the Deanery of Westminster ; or when he was receiving 
 the Kmpress of Germany in his own house in Che 
 -v. A bit of native granite, verily, must this man 
 who, after some forty years of London life, mingling 
 in the best and most polished circles, courted by the 
 loftiest in station, with the wife of an earl to send him 
 his daily loaf of bread from her own kitchen, because it 
 had been found to answer best with his weak digestion, 
 and carrying him off to her castle on the breezy clif 
 
 t whenever he seemed in need of a breath of sea air, 
 \\ith e\ npress calling at his abode in < 
 
 v, should still bear about with him, in his gen 
 
 aspect, air, and a- , cry modes of speech, 
 
 the unmistakable marks of the obscure Annandale 
 
 village in which he was born. 'I .11 in all 
 
 Inryond anything we ever saw or have read of in 
 
 books. Old age had bowed him down and shrivelled up 
 
 full and vigorous form ; but he never could 
 
 re answered to those descriptions which represent him 
 
 as tall ai . Old folks at Thornhill, who remem- 
 
In the Templand Days. 325 
 
 her well the days when he and Mrs Carlyle used to visit 
 Mrs Welsh on their way to and from Craigenputtoch and 
 Edinburgh, had told us that he was not a tall man 
 about five feet seven or eight is the figure they give ; and 
 their recollections, in some instances exceedingly vivid, 
 must be in accordance, we suspect, with the fact. Our 
 friend Mr Thomas Lawrie, the well-known picture-dealer 
 in Glasgow, famous as an angler and a walking encyclo- 
 paedia of good stories about Burns and Carlyle, and many 
 other Dumfriesshire worthies, is one of the surviving 
 natives of Thornhill who came into close contact with 
 the Laird of Craigenputtoch when he was visiting at his 
 mother-in-law's. Carlyle in those days struck the homely 
 people of the little upland town as "a bit of a dandy." 
 He was always dressed in a nice shooting-jacket, the 
 cloth a fashionable " mixture " not familiar to the rustic 
 populations, and the jacket well made by a city tailor ; 
 the " philosophy of clothes " evidently studied practically 
 by young Sartor in those early years of his married life, 
 if Mr Lawrie's recollection may be trusted, as we think it 
 may. The young folks would stay with Mrs Welsh for a 
 few days each time they passed, either going to or coming 
 back from Edinburgh ; and, " to put aff his time," Carlyle 
 would enter into familiar chat with Lawrie, who was then 
 a house-painter in his native parish, while the young man 
 was at work on Mrs Welsh's premises at Templand. It 
 was that lady who gave any importance he then had (in 
 the estimation of the Thornhill people) to Carlyle. She 
 was a true lady, in every way ; very fine-looking, with an 
 impressive air and carriage, yet kind and motherly to all 
 who dwelt under her roof, or came about the farm. 
 When a young man of the village, Mr Lawrie's brother, 
 
326 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 came home, as it was thought, in a <L Iff! Welsh 
 
 took kind motherly notice of him, inviting him to walk 
 up to the farm every morning a drink of warm 
 
 milk frac the same COO "the mile he had to travel 
 the milk would do him good ; he did get better, and 
 
 j>erhaps justly. 
 
 lylc hadna' tx cd to Mrs Welsh's dochter, he 
 
 wadna' been inurklc thocht o' at Thornhill. five 
 
 years ago an old on physiognomy came to that 
 
 region, and astonished the good folks of the countryside 
 by what he said concerning the changes that came 
 the countenance of ea dual in the course of 
 
 life. Mr I<awrie can never look at one of the current 
 photographs of Carlyle without thinking of that old 
 lecturer; for he never saw so striking an illustration 
 of the truth of his saying. " No doubt, the beard has 
 made a great difference in him, as in so many other 
 people; but the change is indeed astonishing, and the 
 shaggy eyebrows espet pear an altogether 
 
 what he looked at Thornhill."* 
 
 The weight <>: on seventy years is resting upon 
 
 him on this day that finds us sitting by his side in the 
 
 .wing-room of the old house in Chcyne Row; 
 though his body has become < still 
 
 re we may no M, Uwrie's testimony that Gilfillan's picture 
 of Craigenputtoch. citctl on a pccvioos page, is, as we suspected, 
 wholly a' tcad of being wild and * "a bonny 
 
 pla "a wee bit burn" making it lively, and much good 
 
 arable land about, smiling in the snmmmef and autumn with excel* 
 lent croj : port, at all events, of Mr I cmp- 
 
 Itn vh*s residence, we may add, it what the Scotch call 
 
 "a gent' c parish of doaebuni, about a mile 
 
 nftflL Mi- \v,: h\ f.;:hcr (armed Morton Mains, in the 
 parish of Morton, which lies in the same portion of Nilhsdalc. 
 
A Portrait of Carlyle. 327 
 
 bright and powerful, and the touch of country bronze in 
 his complexion, the rosy tint on his cheek, the red vel- 
 vetty winter-apple hue, together with the fire that yet 
 flashes from his bright blue eye, proclaim that there is 
 still a fount of vigorous life left in the aged pilgrim. It 
 is the eye that makes the chief charm of this strange, 
 rugged countenance ; its glance at once so keen, as quick 
 to mark external objects as it was that morning he entered 
 Annan town by his father's side a child of ten, as pierc- 
 ing as when he spake with Coleridge at Highgate, and 
 yet so sad, wistful, and tender, with a far-away look, as if 
 the object on which he gazed was in another world. 
 There is a wonderful contrast between the other features 
 of the countenance and that eye of Carlyle's ; together, 
 they reflect the contrast in his character and his writings. 
 Apart from the eye the face has a hard, stern, cold, 
 even forbidding aspect, such as we might associate with 
 the Scot who has found a not uncongenial sphere on 
 a West Indian plantation, carving his way to success by 
 the use of the " beneficent whip ;" but in the eye there 
 is a depth of tenderness that wells up like the light in a 
 clear, deep pool among the mountains. This face reads 
 the strange riddle of its owner's books ; we see in it the 
 author of Frederick and of Sartor, of the harsh, discor- 
 dant, denunciations of the poor negro in the Latter-Day 
 Pamphlets, and of those Letters to Erskine that might 
 have been written in the Isle of Patmos by St John. 
 
 That new number of the Quarterly which we found 
 him reading, paper-knife in hand, was the one that con- 
 tained an article, not yet forgotten, by Dr Carpenter on 
 the subject of Spiritualism ; and a reference to the essay 
 set him off in a fashion that soon decided his identity, if 
 
328 uis Ciirtylt. 
 
 -he first few minutes a doubt existed on that hi 
 There was no other man in the world competent to pour 
 forth such a withering blast of scorn but Thomas < 
 
 wondered what the world was coming to wh 
 educated people and the leaders of society were beconi 
 believer this abominable new 
 
 n of the Kvil one. And then he recounted some 
 of the facts Stated in the article, warmly praising Dr Car- 
 penter for th - way in which he had treated the 
 subject It was in the course of the conversation on 
 re phenomenon of Spiritualism that we first 
 heard from his own lips a kindred assault on the Dar- 
 winian philosophy, i om erning which he spoke in such a 
 way as led us to accept as authentic a report we first met 
 with in a tr.i: -v years afterward 
 
 r had had with him, 
 
 and win. 1 that the faith in which he was nurtured 
 
 at 1 nee in the old Dumfriesshire home had 
 
 not lost its hold upon Carlyle. To the American he had 
 said: "A good sort 01 this Mr I urwin, and well 
 
 meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it's a sad, 
 a terrible thing to see ni r le generation of men 
 
 and -.g to be cultivated, looking around 
 
 I purblind fashion, and finding no God in this uni- 
 
 e. I suppose it is a reaction from the reign of. 
 and hollow pretence, fact 
 
 they do not believe. And this is what we have got to. 
 All things from frog-spawn ; the gospel of dirt the o: 
 
 row and I now stand on the 
 e comes back to me the 
 
 tence in the Catechism which 1 learned when a child, 
 and the fuller and deeper it becomes. 4 What is the 
 
" The Gospel of Dirt." 329 
 
 chief end of man ? To glorify God, and enjoy him for- 
 ever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have 
 descended from frogs, through monkeys, can ever set 
 that aside." These words were in harmony with what 
 Carlyle had, at the same period, said to a friend of our 
 own, to whom he confessed, in most touching language, 
 that he was seeking his way back to the simple faith of 
 his childhood, convinced that there was more in that 
 than in all the wisdom of the illuminati. On one of 
 the opening days of 1877 we published the report by the 
 American visitor in a Scottish journal, from which it 
 found its way into the London newspapers, where it was 
 erroneously given as an extract from a letter written by 
 Carlyle, this statement being the invention of some blun- 
 dering sub-editor. Immediately, the erroneous assertion 
 that Carlyle had written such an epistle was denied, " on 
 the best authority," by a correspondent of the Times^ under- 
 stood to be Mr Lecky, the historian ;" but the controversy 
 that ensued placed it beyond a doubt that the words were 
 an authentic report of an actual conversation. One and 
 another witness stepped into the arena to testify that they 
 also had heard Carlyle use almost precisely the same 
 language. One witness related, on the authority of Lady 
 Ashburton, how at her house the conversation, on one 
 occasion, turned on the theory of Evolution. Carlyle 
 took no part in it, but at length, a pause occurring, he 
 exclaimed, "Gentlemen, you are well pleased to trace 
 your descent from a tadpole and an ape, but I would 
 exclaim with David, ' Lord, Thou hast made me but a 
 little lower than the angels.' " Mr Andrew James 
 Symington, the poet and essayist, wrote : " I can vouch 
 for having heard the same or similar sentiments from the 
 
330 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 Sage of Chelsea, whose reverence for the God of the 
 Bible is so deep and true that, to his thinking, it 
 too sacred to be much spoken about On one creation, 
 in particular, I heard him remark that the short, simple, 
 but sublime account of Creation, given in the first chap- 
 ter of Genesis, was in advance of all theories, for it was 
 God's truth, and, as such, the only key to the mystery; 
 that it ought to satisfy the savans, who in any case would 
 never find out any other, although they might dream 
 about it. Then, alluding to the Development hypothesis, 
 waxing warm, and, at the same time, bringing his hand 
 down on the table with a thump like the sledgehammer 
 of Thor, he emphatically added 'I have no patience 
 whatever with these gorilla damnifications of humanity f ** 
 A friend of ours, also an old friend of Carlyle's, and, 
 we may add, one of the most intimate English friends of 
 :ig lately printed, for privat tion, a 
 
 most com; iography of Leigh Hunt, Ha/litt, and 
 
 Vs I-imb, this book was spoken of, Carlylc saving 
 he had got a copy, and praising it as a " most piously- 
 executed piece of work," worthy of all commendation, 
 though it struck us, from an incidental remark, that it 
 was the portion of the book relating to Ixrigh Hunt that 
 had possessed the greatest interest and charm for Carlylc. 
 This was proved almost immediately. As we had noted 
 that he nowhere speaks of the gentle " Elia," though he 
 
 We do not wish it to be supposed that we sympathise with 
 these expressions against the Darwinian theory and its supporters ; 
 for, whatcv ire and tendencies of that theory may be, it 
 
 ost not be forgotten as Cariyle seemed to forget that many 
 who accept the doctrine of Evolution, concerning which we here 
 say nothing, are Christian believers, and that, too, of a much more 
 tc type than Cariyle himself could be said to be. 
 
His Portrait of Charles Lamb. 331 
 
 has written so kindly of Leigh Hunt and other contem- 
 poraries of Lamb, we ventured to ask him if he had much 
 personal acquaintance with the latter. The quality of 
 Mr Carlyle's own humour made us suspect that we should 
 probably hear little to Lamb's advantage ; and this sus- 
 picion was all the stronger when we reflected that the 
 personal habits of " Elia" must have made him a distaste- 
 ful object to the sober and correct-living Scot, who, as 
 Wordsworth has so finely indicated, preserved in his life 
 at least the severe purity of Calvinism, however far he 
 might have departed from the Calvinistic creed in his 
 speculative system. "What makes you ask what interest 
 have you in Lamb?" " I like his humour." "Humour 
 he had no humour." We mildly submitted our belief 
 that he had. "You are mistaken it was only a thin 
 streak of Cockney wit ;" this phrase uttered with a shrill 
 shout expressive of ineffable contempt; and then the 
 speaker added, " I dare say you must have known some 
 I have known scores of Scotch moorland farmers, who 
 for humour could have blown Lamb into the zenith !" 
 The pictorial effect of this figure, delivered in a high 
 Annandale key, especially when the speaker came to the 
 last clause of the sentence, it is impossible for print to 
 convey the listener saw poor Lamb spinning off into 
 space, propelled thither by the contemptuous kick of a 
 lusty Dandie Dinmont, in hodden grey, from the moors 
 of Galloway or Ayrshire. 
 
 "The only thing really humorous about Lamb," he 
 continued, " was his personal appearance. His suit of 
 rusty black, his spindle-shanks, his knee-breeches, the 
 bit ribbons fleein' at the knees o' him : indeed he was 
 humour personified!" this last clause again in the high 
 
332 -nas Carlylt. 
 
 , making the figure effective and mirth-compelling to 
 a degree. And then he told us how the first occasion on 
 which he met u the puir drucken body" was at Enfield, 
 in 1829, at the house of a most respectable lady. It was 
 the forenoon mb, who had been " tasting " before 
 
 he came, immediately demanded gin, and because he 
 could not get it, "kicked up a terrible row." Moral 
 disgust at poor * 1 nsconduct was evidently at the 
 
 root of the feeling of antipathy evinced by Carlyle in 
 speaking of his humour. Lamb was not a humo 
 because he got drunk, and because he demanded gin in 
 the forenoon at a lady's house. 
 
 :i we were told, as an example of Lamb's Co< 
 wit, how at Enfield, on the same occasion, he had ex- 
 pressed his regret that the Royalists had not taken 
 Milton's head off at the 1 >rx That was one of 
 
 the bright remarks which he invariably fired off whenever 
 anybody for the first time; Carlyle had often 
 afterwards heard him repeat it At Enfield he ga\ 
 
 !>cnefit, to astonish the stranger from Scot- 
 land. " But Lamb was a Liberal/* we remarked ; " he 
 could not have wished such a fate for I Ah, 
 
 you don't see his jK)int ; id the Royalists had 
 
 taken Milton's head off in order that ;ht have 
 
 damned themselves to all eternity:" Then, sotto **, 
 Carlyle added, " Puir silly 
 
 .il disgust, however, with a strong dash of the 
 Scottish Philistine in it, was perhaps not the only cause 
 oftl :-cct the ethereal quality of Lamb's 
 
 humour was distasteful to the old Viking, who relished 
 something of a more robust, not to say a coarser, or 
 Bulwcr Lytton speaks of Lamb as one of those rare 
 
"Ella" as Personified Humour. 333 
 
 favourites of the Graces on whom the gift of charm is 
 bestowed ; but the charm was assuredly not felt by Car- 
 lyle, whatever the cause may have been. In the same 
 essay, Bulwer Lytton says : " As Scott's humour is that 
 of a novelist, and therefore objective, so Lamb's is that 
 of an essayist, and eminently subjective. All that he 
 knows or observes in the world of books or men becomes 
 absorbed in the single life of his own mind, and is repro- 
 duced as part and parcel of Charles Lamb. If thus he 
 does not create imaginary characters, Caleb Balder- 
 stones and Major Dalgettys, he calls up, completes, and 
 leaves to the admiration of all time a character which, as 
 a personification of humour, is a higher being than even 
 Scott has imagined, viz., that of Charles Lamb himself. 
 Nor is there in the whole world of humorous creation an 
 image more beautiful in its combinations of mirth and 
 pathos. In the embodiment of humour, as it actually 
 lived amongst us in this man, there is a dignity equal to 
 that with which Cervantes elevates our delight in his ideal 
 creation. Quixote is not more essentially a gentleman 
 than Lamb." 
 
 In spite of the stain of gin, we must confess that we 
 prefer to look upon poor "Elia " as personified humour in 
 Lytton's sense, rather than in Carlyle's ; and when we 
 recall the story of Lamb's devotion to his sister Mary, in 
 which there is a pathetic grandeur that rises to the 
 sublime, we can only marvel that it failed to correct what 
 we believe to be a singularly false estimate of that bright 
 and charming creature concerning whom the most classi- 
 cal of modern poets exclaimed : 
 
 " Few are the spirits of the glorified 
 I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven. ' 
 
334 Thomas Car 
 
 That same day the talk turned to one of whom Carlylc 
 was re sympathetically ; and, in spite of 
 
 emotion (not of a pleasant sort) excited within us by 
 
 what we conceived to be the almost abominable injustice 
 
 done to Lamb, it was with hushed heart that we listened 
 
 ! of Edward Irving, as he spoke of that old 
 
 companion of his youth. How often we had read the 
 
 Sute to Irving! We felt it was no small 
 
 ilcgc to hear him now speaking on the same theme. 
 It has been stated by Mrs Oliphant, in her Life of Irving^ 
 that f that work claimed kindred with the 
 
 Howies of Lochgoin, and was proud of the connection 
 with that old Covenanting : which belonged John 
 
 Howie, author of the Scot* * We asked Carlylc 
 
 if he knew whether there was any truth in the statement 
 u-d that this claim of kinship with the Howies 
 was one whirh he well remembered Irving to have cher- 
 ishc tion, if not with pride. Then he pro- 
 
 ceeded an anecdote which he had been told 
 
 mor rty years before by an old Glasgow friend of 
 
 Ir\; own, the l.r am, 
 
 most worthy man," wl. only went to confirm 
 
 * The old Martyrologist was a moorland farmer in Ayrshire, and 
 
 irm of Lochgoin, which is held to-day by a grandson, has been 
 
 OCCM r six hundred years. The Howies are, 
 
 1 to have been Waldensian refugees, who fled from 
 
 their country to Scotland in the great Papal persecution of the 
 
 :th century, and who settled at Ijochgoin. Through all the 
 
 ubtequc! maincd, in the land of 
 
 adoption, nerable traditions of their house ; and in 
 
 the Covenanting struggle they came t among the suffering 
 
 i, their moorland dwelling having been t * 
 times " h >ilcr, and on several occidom burned to 
 
Edward Irving at Lochgoin. 335 
 
 the fact that Irving believed he was a kinsman of the 
 martyrologist, but which also threw a quaint light both on 
 [rving and the family of Lochgoin. When Irving was 
 settled at Glasgow as the assistant of Dr Chalmers, he 
 resolved to make a pilgrimage to Lochgoin, not only that 
 tie might look upon the scene of so many stirring events 
 in the Covenanting history, but in order to make the 
 acquaintance of those whom he believed to be his 
 kindred. Accordingly, he first of all took a public 
 :oach, which carried him on his journey to the village 
 3f Eagelsham in the Mearns the district where Professor 
 Wilson spent most of his boyhood, and which he has 
 described in the early chapters of the Recreations of 
 Christopher North. From the village Irving was obliged 
 to make the rest of his pilgrimage on foot. Not only 
 was there no conveyance, but the greater part of the way 
 was over a wild moor, abounding in black tracts of 
 marshy soil, across which no vehicle had ever ventured 
 to pass. It was dark when the great preacher arrived at 
 the door of the little farmhouse then, as for many a year 
 after, a poor thatched hut of one storey, such as the 
 English tourist views to-day with amazement when he has 
 penetrated into the glens of the Western Highlands. 
 Irving could hear that the family were engaged at evening 
 worship, "the Books," Carlyle called it, as he told the story, 
 before retiring for the night. Gently he lifted the latch, 
 and entered on tiptoe the homely kitchen, lighted only by 
 a turf fire. The members of the household were on their 
 knees, and in the dim light the stranger sought the nearest 
 vacant space, and " we may be sure, with much pious 
 emotion," said Carlyle knelt with his kindred. With 
 dosed eyes he bent his head over what seemed at first to 
 
33 6 Thomas CaHyU. 
 
 be a chair or stool ; but in a little while a genial warmth 
 began to be diffused from tl which he could not 
 
 understand ; by and by it became hotter still, and in a 
 little while the heat was so strong he could endure it no 
 longer. Opening his eyes, and steadily surveying the 
 object, he discerned, through the gloom, that he had been 
 '.ing over a huge pot, I tly withdrawn from 
 
 the fire, a: .rung the r the pigs! At this 
 
 point, Carlylo br< and then, 
 
 resuming, he told how, when the service was ended, 
 \ received a hearty welcome from the good man of 
 the house, who was a son of the martyrologist,* and spent 
 a happy night under the humble roof where so 
 
 -o(ll) men and women had practised that 
 
 thinking" which has contributed 
 
 iiake Scotland what it is. This was a story 
 
 liking; and it is impossible 
 
 to reproduce on paper the graphic touches of t! 
 
 as it iell i. om his lips, especially the account of 
 
 r the black bogs surrounding Tx> 
 and t itial manner in which he described 1 
 
 n fmdin ;|>osed kindred so well 
 
 their house in the "gloam- 
 
 ig really connected with the Howies? 
 
 juired Carlylc knew nothing about tl 
 
 it not be t' >ther that he was related ? " HJ-. 
 
 Many yean . ,it we found Irvtttg't Oratim, 9/7*4* 
 
 mtnt to Co9r. t.iry at Lochgoin, and rca nc with 
 
 wonder and awe, on the moor dote by oar first meeting with 
 
 On the flyleaf was an inscription by 
 
 the author, shewing that be had sent the book as a present to hti 
 -t, the too of the martyrotogfart. 
 
The Fen Farmers. 337 
 
 mother !" exclaimed Carlyle, " no, no : his mother was a 
 Lowther; she was a Cumberland woman."* He added 
 that when Irving wanted a thing to be true, he was almost 
 sure to find some reason for believing it. 
 
 Of the author of the Scots Worthies and the book by 
 which he is best known, Carlyle spoke with profound 
 respect. "A simple, earnest, fine old man," he said, 
 " who had written, in his own homely way, one of the best 
 books on the religious history of Scotland." Since he 
 came to London he had given away many copies of it to 
 English friends who wished to understand that history 
 a subject on which many of them were wofully in the 
 dark. He had given Mr Froude a copy, to let him see 
 what kind of men there had been in the kingdom of 
 Scotland. 
 
 From the Covenanters and the moors of Ayrshire our 
 talk on this occasion passed, by association of ideas, to 
 an old seat of the Cromwell family in Huntingdonshire 
 with which we happened to have somewhat intimate 
 personal relations. " What sort of folk are the Fen 
 farmers ?" inquired Carlyle. Many of them, we replied, 
 were very much of the same stamp as their forefathers 
 who fought with Cromwell, and with whom he had some 
 acquaintance, we replied ; and then, we fear not without 
 
 * The Rev. Gavin Carlyle, a nephew of Edward Irving, and 
 editor of his collected works, informs us that Irving's mother once 
 wrote to him of Carlyle as "uncouth." He wrote back that if 
 Carlyle lived, he would be one of the greatest men in England. 
 With this we may bracket an inedited anecdote, which proves the 
 constant loyalty of Irving to his friend. The late Dr Kirkwood, a 
 well-known Secession minister, was in London on a visit at the time 
 of Carlyle's settlement in Cheyne Row, and, in conversation with 
 Irving, the talk turned on the new-comer. " Carlyle," exclaimed 
 Irving, " will revolutionise the literature of England !" 
 
 v 
 
33** Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 a touch of malice, we told a story of one, a good friend 
 of our own, who had sacrificed a farm vote 
 
 at the previous Parliamentary election against his con- 
 science. "More fool he!" cried Carlylc, in 1 
 loudest key. " And was it to put Glad 
 did that ?" We replied in the affirn. 
 he exclaimed, with a snort of ( "and t 
 
 Heaven-born Minister of War, Mr Cardwell ! Froudc 
 me they have, perhaps, a dozen guns and six 
 howitzers that could fire in the event of a war!" We 
 suggested that there might be as much cor in a 
 
 man going to the poll for Gladstone, in the teeth of land- 
 lord intimidation, as there was in his ancestor fighting at 
 Naseby or I > We even ventured to go a little 
 
 farther, and to question the soundness of the theory 
 which seemed to confine the service of God by Engl 
 men to the seventeenth century, i. He had not q 
 as much to do with the nineteenth ; but the response to 
 this was the reverse of satisfactory. The biographer of 
 Cromwell refused to be drawn out on this delicate i>oinL 
 But there was no end to his glorifying of the Germans, 
 who were at that time completing t! >ver 
 
 France. His estimate of the 1 the war 
 
 was exceedingly contemptuous; even Macmahon ca: 
 in for a satin .; of the utmost s< 
 
 who was present at this conversation, ami \\\ ' .>ng 
 official experience, wa object above t he- 
 
 mark of most men, afterwards assured us that Car 
 whom he had known intimately for upwards 
 years, was talking on these war topics very much at 
 dom, and without exact information about the men 
 whom he held up to scorn. Bismarck was the god of his 
 
The Peaceful German 339 
 
 idolatry; all the other politicians in Europe were the 
 merest " windbags," he the only genuine article in that 
 line. Against the friend above-mentioned, he maintained 
 that the influence of a great united Germany would be 
 peaceful, though an observation with which he backed up 
 this opinion scarcely seemed to support it. The very 
 name German, he said, indicated that he had always been 
 distinguished for his warlike character and success in 
 arms. He is the guerre-m&n, that is, the w^r-man. 
 " It's just the same word we have in Scotland, { I'll gar 
 ye doV"* And so he went on pointing out how 
 guarantee, and probably the word war itself, came from 
 the same root. Yet the German, he would have it, was 
 radically one of the most peaceful of human beings the 
 very last to pick a quarrel ; but when driven to it, he will 
 also be the last to yield. 
 
 * This might serve as Carlyle's motto. His theory put Erskine 
 of Linlathen in mind of old Sir Harry Moncreiff s saying, that we 
 need men who will "mak' us for to know it," and who will also 
 " mak' us for to do it." 
 
CHAPTER XX I I 
 
 ! TACHMEKT TO SCOTLAND ASSISTS THE FUND FOR 
 NIECES OF BURNS SOME CLERICAL FRIENDS 
 HIS SCOTTISH VERSICLES GEORGE < VISITS 
 
 TO SCOTLAND AT RUTHERFORD'S GRAVE AN 
 VETERATE SMOKER " TAK* A GUDB LOOK AT HIM!" 
 AT HI> MICE'S WEDI 
 
 CARLYLE was a thorough Scot He clung, with I 
 and almost passionate tenacity, to more than the dialect 
 and accent of his " own stern Motherland" Never was 
 there a ma cserved everywhere, and to the la 
 
 mint-mark of the place of his nativity as he did Not even 
 honest Allan Cunningham may be named as approach- 
 ing him in this respect It was not only the 
 but musical speech of Annandalc that he carried about 
 with him d of his earthly pilgrimage; in 
 
 mind and heart in all the essential qualities of his 
 he bore the stamp of that south-western region of Scot- 
 land that will be known to coming generations as pre- 
 eminently the Land of Carlylc. London he selected as 
 lace of residence simply for its convenience as a 
 In the forty seven yean that followed 
 his sc tie Row hardly a summer passed 
 
 in which he 
 
 or was gone, he never (ailed to look in 
 
A West Country Humourist. 341 
 
 upon his brothers and sisters at their respective homes, 
 taking an interest in their domestic welfare and preserv- 
 ing fresh and vigorous the recollections of his childhood. 
 One nephew he took away to push his fortune in the 
 metropolis, in the house of his own publishers ; and 
 when his wife was suddenly snatched from his side it 
 was a sister's child that he asked to come and keep 
 house for him in the distant wilderness where he dwelt. 
 One other sister, married to a farmer in a bleak upland 
 part of their native district, he tried to make more com- 
 fortable by endeavours, often renewed, to get a belt of 
 trees to grow round her mountain home; but all the efforts 
 of " oor Tarn" proved futile the young trees he brought, 
 or sent, never came to anything, the place was so exposed 
 and the soil so uncongenial. To Dumfriesshire he would 
 have latterly returned altogether, he told his friend 
 Thomas Aird, but for the fear that he might become 
 intellectually torpid away from the society to which he 
 had become accustomed, and which can only be pro- 
 cured in the great city. Those who enjoyed the privi- 
 lege of visiting Carlyle, especially if they were fellow- 
 countrymen, can testify how vivid were his reminis- 
 cences of his early days at Ecclefechan and Annan, 
 and how he liked nothing better than to hear of 
 the old companions of his boyhood. That the 
 talk was good, though occasionally a little bitter and 
 stinging in its characterisations, when he got on the 
 subject of the worthies he had known in his youth, 
 need not be told to those who have read his graphic 
 picture of the "steel-grey" peasant-prophet, Dr Lawson 
 of Selkirk. When a West Country humourist like the 
 late John Kelso Hunter published his autobiography, no 
 
342 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 reader enjoyed it more than Carlyle, and he praised 
 that book of genuine homespun, in no stinted measure, 
 for its "good humour and canny shrewdness," and es- 
 isant way in which it had reminded 
 him of what IK knew so well long ago." He 
 
 lik< ibdued vein of just satire," too, which ran 
 
 through it, he said, "like a suspicion of good cogna- 
 
 ome tumbler of new milk." He was greatly 
 i we told him that his letter t< had 
 
 been the chief means of sending a large edition of the 
 qua Aspect over the world, and that 
 
 ;ter had pocketed the largest sum ever got by the 
 author of an of Scotland. 
 
 He deserves it," said Carlyle; "there was truth, and 
 humour too, in that book of the Cobbler's I mir 
 In 1859, when the Scottish people were < 
 brating the (Yntenury of Burns'.s birth, he gave hearty 
 I>ort, both by pen ar. to the fund for the 
 
 ses Begg, the nieces of the poet "Could all the 
 eloquen- uit will be uttered over the 
 
 world on the 2$\\\ next, or even all the that 
 
 will be i but convert then <> solid cash 
 
 for those two int. hat a sum were there 
 
 of benefi to all the ju:- 
 
 con< I think, at least, the question ought to be 
 
 everywhere put, pointedly, yet with due politeness^ 
 r in Scotland, or eKewher is an assem- 
 
 blage of to expre^ . tragic 
 
 iount of money they will 
 to save from in<: hesctwo nieces of 
 
 i virtual answer, which this got in 
 
 1842, threw i .il light to me on such assem- 
 
Toddy-Drinking Patriots. 343 
 
 blages; but they ought to be tried again, with more 
 direct emphasis ; and very shame will perhaps force 
 them to do something towards saving indigent merit 
 on the one hand, and saving on the other what is too 
 truly a frightful (though eloquent) expenditure of pave- 
 ment to a certain locality we have all heard of!" This 
 letter contributed in no slight degree to secure the suc- 
 cess with which the effort was crowned. With the London 
 Scots, however, of the toddy drinking and rhetorical 
 species, who prove their patriotism chiefly at taverns, 
 he would have nothing to do. They tried, more than 
 once, to catch him for the presidential chair, but they 
 never succeeded. In 1870, one of their number pub- 
 lished a letter, wherein he gave an account, not meant to 
 be amusing, of how he and three other compatriots got up 
 the London dinner in celebration of the Burns Centenary, 
 at which James Hannay presided. Two of the originators 
 of the scheme (thought to be so great a scheme that years 
 afterwards there was actually a printed controversy as to 
 who started it) were deputed to wait, most likely appointed 
 themselves to wait, upon Carlyle at his Chelsea home, to 
 see if he would take the chair ! " We might as well have 
 stayed at home, however," was their lugubrious report. 
 His attachment to the land of his birth was too deep and 
 tender to admit of such a degradation for, to a man of 
 his nature, it would have been nothing short of that a 
 speech about Scotland and Burns, at a convivial gathering 
 in a tavern, by Thomas Carlyle, being a phenomenon 
 simply inconceivable. 
 
 Though he did not patronise their "kirks" to any appre- 
 ciable extent, having, indeed, usually a small congregation 
 of his own to minister to at his own house on the Sundays, 
 
344 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 he was on friendly terras with a few of the 1're.v 
 
 n Alexander J. Scott, afterwards the Prin- 
 
 1 of Owens College at Manchester, wa.s 
 the Presbyterian Church at h, he was in const 
 
 rcourse with Carlylc. In the July of 1838 we find 
 Erskine of Linlathen closing a letter to Scott with the 
 sentence : " Remember me lovingly to the Carlylcs and 
 Ma \Vhen Scott, in 1848, became a candi<: 
 
 for the Chair of I ire in Univc: ge, 
 
 Carlylc commended him as a man " long and intiina 
 known to him," and " of great, solid, and original powers 
 
 and; of a \> earnest chara *e 
 
 he whole world, if at length the fit arena 
 were conceded to 1 well come to reco^ 
 
 For some twenty years the Chelsea Presbyterians had for 
 their pastor a severely orthodox, but personally genial, 
 sailor like Scotsman, Thomas Alexander, whose 
 
 .logical standpoint may be guessed from the fact 
 that it \vas he who wrote an attack on Good Words in 
 the Record v. ide some little stir at the time 
 
 the "religious world," and is referred to in Norman 
 
 leod's biography. Though Mr Alexander was a 
 Presbyterian of the most antique type, advocating st 
 adherence to the well-trod pat! h the Covenant- 
 
 ing fathers travelled, he was on excellent terms 
 
 hbour in Cheyne Row; and when he died very 
 suddenly, and under most distressing circumstances, b 
 1872, Carlyle sent a touching letter of condolence to Dr 
 Hogg, one of the elders of the congregation, which was 
 read at the funeral. Next Sunday Carlyle attended the 
 church, and listened to the funeral sermon, which was 
 preached by Dr Oswald Dykes, a native of his own 
 
Scottish Versides. 345 
 
 county of Dumfries. At the sale of poor Alexander's 
 library, the article that excited the most interest and the 
 keenest bidding was a scrap of notepaper, mounted in an 
 ebony frame, on which was written in its author's " ken- 
 speckle " caligraphy a versicle by Carlyle. The minister 
 had applied for a subscription towards building schools 
 in connection with the church, and this was the reply he 
 got: 
 
 "Rev. T. Alexander, with many regards. 
 
 " There was a Piper had a Cow, 
 
 And he had nocht to give her ; 
 He took his pipes and play'd a spring, 
 
 And bade the Cow consider. 
 The Cow consider'd wi' hersel' 
 
 That mirth wad never fill her : 
 ' Gie me a pickle ait strae, 
 
 And sell your wind for siller.' 
 " Chelsea, 3d Feb. 1870. T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The minister did not get the expected subscription at the 
 time; but, by playfully threatening to have the verse 
 lithographed for sale, he succeeded in his object. A 
 second kindred versicle, escaped from the custody of 
 some lady's album, runs thus : 
 
 " Simon Brodie had a cow ; 
 
 He lost his cow, and he could na find her, 
 When he had done what man could do, 
 
 The cow cam' hame, and her tail behind her. 
 " Chelsea, 23 Jan. 1849. T CARLYLE." 
 
 Both of these trifles remind one of the old rhymes that 
 used to be current at the firesides of the Scottish Low- 
 land peasantry before the newspaper had come, to banish, 
 not only the chap-books, but also a vernacular literature, 
 mostly in verse, that never found its way into print until 
 the few lingering fragments were gathered by the anti- 
 quary in our own day. A third Presbyterian minister 
 
346 Thoma* Carfyle. 
 
 of London who had ready access to Carlyle was his 
 ake, the Rev. Gavin Carlylc, the nephew of his old 
 
 nd Edward Irving. To him Carlylc once spoke of 
 
 old kinsman, Dr Carlyle, of Inveresk, as a "pot- 
 walloping Sadducee ;" and, talking liege days at 
 
 nburgh, he described one of the professors in the 
 
 ological Hall, as having " a (ace red like the setting 
 
 a misty day such a man speaking of the ethereal 
 
 and the heavenly!" Of the Presbyterian ministers in 
 
 Scotland who h records of tl ;^s with 
 
 Carlylc, the most prominent were Dr Chalmers and 
 
 George Gilfillan. The latter writes in 1845 : " Car!;. 
 
 excellent mother still lives, and we had the pleasure of 
 
 . in the company of her illustrious son, 
 
 ! beautiful it was to see his profound and tender 
 
 regard, motherly and yearning reverence, to 
 
 hear her fine old Covenanting accents concerting i 
 
 transcendental tones." Gilfillan adds that "it was 
 worth a thousand homilies to , as we were 
 
 privileged to do, talking for four miles of moonlit road, 
 with his earnest, sagacious voice, of religion, baring ever 
 and cad as if in worship amid the w.. 
 
 il>crous August a: first 
 
 Gallery of Literary / in \vh: was an 
 
 article on Carlylc's />,/;,// A'^vlufum, pitched on a key 
 
 tpturous admiration, the r< se wrote 
 
 in whose paper at Dumfries the ar: 
 first appeared: "It is a noble panegyric; a picture 
 painted by a p<> means with me a man 
 
 insight and of heart, decisive, sharp of outline, in hues 
 borrowed from the sun. It is rare to find one's self so 
 mirrored in I 
 
At Rutherford's Grave. 347 
 
 One of the longest of Mr Carlyle's later visits to 
 Scotland was made in the autumn of 1871. It extended 
 over several months ; and towards the close of October 
 he returned to Cheyne Row much invigorated in health, 
 having greatly enjoyed the sojourn in his native country. 
 In the autumn of 1874 he made another protracted stay 
 in the North, residing for a time at Portobello for the 
 sea-bathing and on account of its proximity to Edinburgh, 
 and afterwards, accompanied by his brother the Doctor, 
 and his niece, passing over to Fife, where he was the 
 guest for several weeks of his old pupil, Provost Swan of 
 Kirkcaldy. He drove about a great deal in the pleasant 
 little " Kingdom," as the Fife people love to designate 
 their county ; and one day, Thursday, September 1 7, 
 was devoted to St Andrews. While sauntering among 
 the tombs that surround the ruins of the ancient 
 Cathedral, a lady observed that he was about to pass one 
 noteworthy grave without perceiving it. She therefore 
 ventured to say to him, " This is Samuel Rutherford's 
 grave." He bowed and thanked her, and, having read 
 the inscription on the tombstone, said, " Ah ! he was a 
 deep thinker." On another day he visited a school on 
 the Links at Kirkcaldy, and the master, anxious to show 
 the children at their best before their distinguished visitor, 
 set them to sing. Carlyle asked that they should sing 
 something by Burns ; but the master not having practised 
 the children in Burns, had to excuse himself and them 
 as well as he could. Carlyle left exclaiming, " Scotch 
 children singing, and not taught Burns's songs ! Oh, 
 dear me !" Every morning he walked before breakfast to 
 Seafield Tower, a distance of a mile and a half, to enjoy 
 a bathe in the sea ; and after breakfast he sallied forth 
 
348 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 armed with a long clay pij>e into the grounds surrounding 
 
 the mansion of his host " A m< smoker 
 
 ," said the local chronicler, " and has been 
 
 he was here sixty years ago statemen 
 confirmed by a story current at Cannes, whither he v. 
 one season to be under the care of I " Ir.-.ks, " 111 do 
 
 , Doctor, ye tell me," was his first remark ; " but 
 :uaunna stop my pipe!" In the garden behind his 
 house in Cheyne Row, in the summer tin* an 
 
 awnin . there was a table with a canister of tobacco and 
 a supply of pipes, whither he always betook himself, with 
 six o'clock tea; and to any stranger he 
 was almost si. the smoke with a denunciation 
 
 of the Government for laying " a tax of some hundreds 
 per cent upon the poor man's pipe, while the rich man's 
 glass of wine pays scarcely one-tenth of this impost" 
 ! I felt somewhat comforted by the thought that 
 amount of tobacco smuggled into England is about as 
 great as the quantity that pays the duty, which some 
 
 1 told him was actually the case; "the Smugg! 
 said the Lord A'. : the Chancellor of the 
 Excheq D to hin f.ir shall thou go, and 
 no i all thy proud waves be sta> 
 
 It was during one of these visits to his native country 
 that he spent a few 
 
 village of Balfron. During his stay his hostess had 
 occasion to send her butler to the l>ank to get a cheque 
 cashed The banker, a gentleman ry tastes, 
 
 he would himself call presently with the ra*h, and shortly 
 afterwards proceeded to fulfil his self-imposed miy 
 On the road he i out taking a walk with her 
 
 venerable guest Carlylc turned a w the set 
 
" TaK a Gude Look at Him /" 349 
 
 while the banker addressed the lady, explaining how, as 
 she had so distinguished a visitor, he could not resist 
 taking the liberty of coming up, in the hope that he 
 might have the great honour of seeing her guest. There- 
 upon Carlyle, who had heard all that was passing, turned 
 round, and, addressing the hero-worshipper in his most 
 sarcastic tone, said, "Weel, noo that you are here, be 
 sure and tak' a gude look at him ! Be sure that you'll 
 ken him the next time you see him !" The poor banker 
 was glad to get out of the great man's presence as quickly 
 as possible.* The coachman who daily drove Carlyle out 
 in Stirlingshire that year, kept a careful record of all the 
 places and distances. He was suffered to pass no man- 
 sion or scene of a striking character, without giving a 
 complete account of it to the lively octogenarian; and 
 when he happened to be in ignorance as to its name, etc., 
 he was obliged to pull up and receive an elaborate rebuke 
 for his unpardonable ignorance. One evening, in another 
 part of the country, Carlyle was present at a social party, 
 where the old homely custom of calling on each member 
 of the company for a song, or, failing that, a story, was 
 observed. A learned minister of the Kirk, who, under 
 a veil of the most perfect pastoral gravity, carries a rich 
 fund of quaint humour, sang the old ballad, " Oor gude- 
 
 * A kindred story is current in Chelsea. While Carlyle was one 
 morning taking his customary walk, a well dressed man approached 
 him, with the question, "Are you really the great Thomas Carlyle, 
 author of the French Revolution?" "I am Thomas Carlyle," was 
 the reply, "and I have written a history of the French Revolution." 
 " Indeed ! Pray pardon a stranger for speaking to you ; but I was 
 .W anxious to have a look at you." "Look on, man !" quoth the 
 philosopher, as he resumed his walk; "look on! it will do me no 
 harm, and you no good." 
 
350 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 man cam* hamc md hamc cam' he,* and gave 
 
 the piece wi :ttt which charmed the sage, who 
 
 asked to have it over again. Many a year hfcd passed 
 
 since he last heard the song, and it touched the spring 
 
 of old memories. A few days afterwards he met the 
 
 reverend vocalist on a country road, and gave his hearty 
 
 greeting as they neared each other by merrily chanting 
 
 line of his song. It seems to have been the 
 
 ;y of the Kstablishment he came most into contact 
 
 during these visits to Scotland; he thought the 
 
 Secession Kirk was not now what it had been in his 
 
 young days, and as for the other great Presbyterian de- 
 
 .ination, his favourite formula when desrr \vas* 
 
 :m of all righteousness, the Fret 
 
 :ifer that he had no excessive liking 
 : 
 
 He was in his 84th year when he paid his last visit to 
 , alive country ; and on this occasion he went thither 
 for the purpose of being present at the marriage of the 
 niece who had acted as his amanuensis and housekeeper 
 during the whole of his widow The bridegroom 
 
 was one of her Canadian cousins, M : 
 B.A., of Bie! :eld, Ontario. 1 !K marriage cere- 
 
 mony, whii h took ; '.are on August 21, 1879, according to 
 the Sco was performed in the house of 
 
 .iher, Mr James Aitk Dumfries, 
 
 always one of !.:< h..i,u-- .d Scotia 
 
 after tin c, who was in excellent h 
 
 and spirits, <. isation with the officiating 
 
 > man, the Rev. James A. Campbell, parish minist 
 Troquccr, remarking, with tears, tl 
 
 ing snared him so many years. 
 
At his Nieces Wedding. 351 
 
 also spoke of the work of John Knox, and of his being mon- 
 umentally commemorated. Mr Campbell was deeply im- 
 pressed with the Christian earnestness of the illustrious 
 veteran. The newly-married pair took up their residence 
 at Chelsea under the same roof with their venerated rela- 
 tive. He had become so habituated to the gentle minis- 
 trations of his niece that her departure from the home which 
 her presence had brightened for upwards of twelve years 
 was a simple impossibility. Before his death there was, 
 to the great delight of the old man, another Thomas 
 Carlyle in the Chelsea home. 
 
CHAPTER XX I II. 
 
 ' LSEA ANECDOTES " JENNY KISSED ME "NOISE I 
 NOCTURNAL WALKING A RUSKIN EPISODE PEOPLE'S 
 EDITION OF HIS WORKS LITERARY ANA THE BOOT- 
 
 \NNER SHARP SAYINGS- 
 UGHTS ON II A. KATH Oi : H I M HONOURS 
 
 A SCOTTISH SCHOOLBOY'S VISIT HIS LAST YEAR 
 DEATH OF CARLYLE. 
 
 MANY are the stories, humorous and pathetic, that c\\ 
 round No. 5 Cheyne Row. One of the prettiest is that 
 to Leigh Hunt's graceful little poem, "Jenny 
 Poor Hunt had come one day in hot 
 to the Carl vies, to tell them of some rare bit of 
 good fortune that had just happened cither to himself or 
 the! uj'on Mrs Curlyle sprang from re- 
 
 threw her arms about the old poet's neck, and gave him 
 1 kiss; .e poem. That < was 
 
 to noise has been already atte 
 
 by t -:ri;h the Krskines were obliged 
 
 to stop the clock IK.T while he was thinking 
 
 out his Rectorial address. In the graphic sketch of 
 
 in his London home in the Englischc Charak- 
 
 I-.erlin, 1860, by Dr ! haus, one of 
 
 the (Jennan translators of Carlyle's Frfdcruk^ an account 
 
 is gi workshop a large noise-proof 
 
 the top storey of the house, which he 
 
 built specially for the purpose of securing quiet and 
 
Nocturnal Walking. 353 
 
 freedom from interruption. A lady residing close by 
 kept Cochin China fowls, whose crowing was such a 
 nuisance that Carlyle sent in a complaint. But the 
 message of the philosopher only moved her to indigna- 
 tion. " Why," she exclaimed, " the fowls only crow four 
 times a day, and how can Mr Carlyle be seriously 
 annoyed at that ?" " The lady forgets," was his re- 
 joinder, "the pain I suffer in waiting for those four 
 crows." Like Dean Swift, Christopher North, Charles 
 Dickens, and some other eminent men of letters, Carlyle 
 was a great nocturnal pedestrian before the infirmities of 
 old age crept upon him. His favourite beat was the 
 riverside district in which he dwelt ; he carried an enor- 
 mous stick on these occasions, and walked with his eyes 
 fixed on the ground. He kept to this habit all through 
 the time of the garotting panic, though friends warned 
 him that the History of Frederick^ on which he was 
 then engaged, might be suddenly cut short some 
 night if he did not give up his midnight rambles. 
 This walking was his specific for procuring sleep. 
 Mr Ruskin once sent a letter to the papers on the 
 subject of the alleged bad manners of the English 
 people, as compared with those of the continental 
 nations; and he stated, as an illustration of this, that 
 Carlyle could not walk out in the streets of Chelsea 
 without being subjected to insult by the " roughs " of that 
 region. Carlyle at once wrote to say that there was no 
 truth in the allegation ; in fact, he penned no fewer than 
 three notes contradicting the report, an exhibition of 
 candour that did not pass without comment, especially 
 among those who could recall the time when Carlyle 
 was wont to sally forth on horseback every Wednesday 
 
354 T/iomas CarJvle. 
 
 to enjoy a ride on Denmark Hill with his friend and 
 
 hipi>er. Not a little slanderous tattle used to ap 
 in the papers about him. In 1870 he was pictured by 
 some one as absolutely alone in his house at Che 
 deserted by everybody on account of his wret< 
 temper; the truth being that he was not in town at all, 
 hut in the country, the guest of his good friend I^idy 
 Ashburton. Mr Ruskin, the slanderers said, was the 
 longest suffering, but he also had been compelled to give 
 up his visits to Cheyne Row. Ruskin had been there 
 every other day till Carlyle left town for a change of 
 rendered necessary by the weak h during 
 
 the severe winter of 1869-70. All cd Carl}'. 
 
 the time when these reports were current in\ und 
 
 him in his most amiable mood. I i.i> was especially the 
 case in the spring of 1871, when the first volume of 
 "people's edition" of his collected writings made 
 appearance. It was to have been published on the i5th 
 of March; but t n poured in to such an u: 
 
 pected extent, that the publishers could not supply t 
 all at the date originally fixed ; he:. had to d 
 
 the issue. The demand for the book, especially in 
 Scotland, was beyond all their calculations, and in< 
 something quite unprccedcnh and 
 
 :tude for this widespread inter*. ings 
 
 amon- the working classes were, we had reason to know, 
 most profound. 
 
 Of tin- m. >re purely literary anecdotes! one of the best 
 used to be told with inimitable point \ is. The 
 
 self-confident editor of a certain weekly paper was pre- 
 sent at a dinner ; i enunciated some wei 
 
 on the subject under discussio: it up 
 
Literary Anecdotes. 355 
 
 in a small parcel and laying it by on a shelf as if done 
 with for ever and a dead silence ensued. This silence, 
 to the astonishment of all, was broken by Carlyle look- 
 ing across the table at the editor, in a dreamy way, and 
 saying as though to himself, but in perfectly audible 
 tones, " Eh, but you're a puir cratur, a puir, wratched, 
 meeserable cratur !" Then, with a sigh, he relapsed into 
 silence. To a popular young novelist, the writer of some 
 Scottish stories, who had called upon him, he said, 
 "When are you going to begin some honest, genuine 
 work?" To another popular author, of the flippant 
 Cockney sort, a wit, he said, " And when, sir, do you 
 bring out the Comic Bible ? " It has been said that at 
 first Carlyle sent his manuscript to the printer without 
 making any corrections on the first words that came, but 
 that, happening to see the interlineated "copy" of a 
 distinguished contemporary, he changed his plan and also 
 took to making emendations, almost on the scale of a 
 Balzac. We have the authority of Miss Martineau, how- 
 ever, for a statement that does not harmonise with this 
 story. She tells how almost every other word was altered 
 in Carlyle's proofs. One day he went to the office to 
 urge on the printer. " Why, sir," said the latter, " you 
 really are so very hard upon us with your corrections. 
 They take so much time, you see !" Carlyle replied that 
 he had been accustomed to this sort of thing he had 
 
 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 it had 
 burnt his fingers, and cried out, ' Lord have mercy ! 
 have you got that man to print for ? Lord knows when 
 
356 Tfiomas CarlyU. 
 
 all get done with all his corrections! 1 " On the 
 
 ion of Copyright he thought much and wrote not a 
 little. \> early as 1839, indeed, he presented a p< 
 to Parliament on the subject of the Copyright Hill then 
 engaging the attention of the Legislature ; it was in this 
 docun described himself, wit:. 
 
 ference for simple, homely phrase, as a 44 \Vr. 
 Books." I rising to read the answers which he- 
 
 gave to Joseph Hume, in the Commission upon the 
 
 h Museum, on the subject of the selection of 
 books. " r.ut what you might think a bad book I might 
 think a good one," was th- nice of Mr 1 
 
 ions to the sage, who was for stark naked despotism] 
 in this matter. Carlyle would allow a book of wl 
 personally disapproved " a run for its life," but he 
 shoot it down if he could Mr Hume was quite unable 
 to produce any impression upon him, and the v 
 dropped 
 
 little annoyed at nd booti: 
 
 who lithographed a note of commendation which he had 
 received from the author of Sartor, and as an 
 
 advertisement ; the sage was troubled with corns, and 
 
 been induced to csman a trial. 
 
 such relief in usim; his hoots that he felt constrained to 
 send him a compliment along with tl . never] 
 
 dreaming urpose to whit h it would be t 
 
 He was vexed at first, hut afurwards laughed, disdain- 
 fully, when the subject came up, though he would i: 
 add s M of the man's skill from an e\i>crience ofl 
 
 ues repeated He was better sa :h the 
 
 paragraph which appeared in the papers telling about a 
 tanner whose D ire was remarkah excel-: 
 
His Intolerance of Verse. 357 
 
 lence, and who explained the matter by saying, " If I 
 had not read Carlyle, I should never have made my 
 leather so good." This story pleased him very much- 
 more so, perhaps, than the most glowing panegyric on his 
 works that had ever appeared in print. 
 
 Perhaps the last public meeting Carlyle attended was 
 one in St James's Hall, when Mr Ralston, who has done 
 so much to familiarize English readers with the literature 
 of Russia, lectured on " Stories for Children of All Ages." 
 The sage came and went leaning on the arm of Mr 
 William Allingham. He was always very fond of chil- 
 dren, and used to carry a supply of sweets in his pocket 
 to give to the bairns about his own door at Chelsea. To 
 the last he continued to sneer at novel-writing, expressing 
 contempt even for the masterpieces of George Eliot, 
 whose Adam Bede he pronounced " simply dull ;" and at 
 no time did he ever lose an opportunity of condemning 
 verse, of which he had been intolerant for at leasty forty 
 years. He had advised even Mrs Browning " to say 
 rather than to sing," when she sent him one of her 
 earliest books ; and there was more than a grain of 
 truth in Miss Mitford's sneer, that he kept a set form of a 
 letter to send to all the poets, great and small. The pub- 
 lication of one of these letters a few years ago provoked 
 a great controversy, and Mr Russell Lowell expressed his 
 belief that Carlyle has no artistic sense of form or rhythm, 
 scarcely of proportion, and that therefore he looks on 
 verse with contempt as something barbarous as a savage 
 ornament which a higher refinement will abolish as it has 
 abolished tatooing and nose-rings. Mr Lowell admits that 
 he has a conceptive imagination vigorous beyond any in his 
 generation, with a mastery of language equalled only by 
 
358 Thomas dir/yle. 
 
 the greatest poets, but holds that he is altogether d^ 
 tute of the plastic imagination, the shaping faculty. But 
 it would be a great mistake to suppose that he has no 
 soul for genuine i>oetry. Who has shown a more pro- 
 found appreciation of lyrical compositions than he ? No 
 writer has more completely exhibited what goes to form 
 the essence of a song. That aphorism of Fletcher of 
 Saltoun's, " Let me make the songs of a people, and you 
 shall make its laws," has been so very frequently cited 
 that it has grown stale ; but the first man to quote it was 
 
 yle. 
 
 When poor Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader, was 
 denouncing the established authorities in the presence 
 of Carlyle, the latter shook his head and told him that, 
 "had the Chartist leaders been living in the days of 
 Christ, He would have sent the unclean spirits into 
 them, instead of into the swine of the (iergesenes, and 
 so we should have happily got rid of them." One day, 
 in the company of some clerical friends, he said ' 
 would build a wood and h m to reason as wcl 
 
 most country parsons." One ei it a small literary 
 
 gathering, a lady, famous for her " muslin theology," was 
 bewailing the wickedness of the Jews in not receiving our 
 Saviour, and ended her diatribe by expressing regret that 
 He had not appeared in our own time. *' How delighted," 
 said she, " we should all be to throw our doors open to 
 Him, and listen to His divine precepts! Don't you 
 think so, Mr Carlyle?" Thus appealed to, he repl 
 "No, madam, I don't I think that, had He come \ 
 fashionably dressed, with plenty of money, and preaching 
 doctrines palatable to the higher orders, I might 1 
 had the honour of receiving from you a card of in\ 
 
The Book of Job. 359 
 
 tion, on the back of which would be written, ' To meet 
 our Saviour;' but if he had come uttering His sublime 
 precepts, and denouncing the Pharisees, and associating 
 with the Publicans and lower orders, as He did, you 
 would have treated Him much as the Jews did, and 
 have cried out, * Take Him to Newgate and hang Him !" 
 He admitted, however, that Lord Houghton would pro- 
 bably invite Him to breakfast. Once, while staying at a 
 country house, Carlyle was requested to conduct family 
 worship ; he readily complied, and, as soon as the house- 
 hold had assembled, began reading the Book of Job, 
 which he read right through to the end. "I call the 
 Book of Job," he writes, " apart from all theories about 
 it, one of the grandest things ever written with a pen." 
 One evening, during his visit to Provost Swan at Kirk- 
 caldy, on returning from his afternoon siesta to the 
 family sitting room, he sat down with a Bible in his 
 hand, and, as the cloth for tea was being laid, audibly 
 repeated the last hymn in the Scottish collection of 
 hymns, the one beginning 
 
 "The hour of my departure's come, 
 I hear the voice that calls me home ; 
 At last, O Lord, let trouble cease, 
 And let thy servant die in peace." 
 
 There were surprised listeners to all this; but having 
 re-read, audibly too, one or two of the verses, he, still 
 heeding no one, turned the pages of the book, and 
 silently perused some passages in the stately chapters 
 of Job. 
 
 On the day he heard of Mazzini's death, he said to Mr 
 Moncure Conway, who is, in our opinion, the most 
 successful of all who have tried their hand at reporting 
 
360 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 Carlyle's talk, " I remember *i lie sat for the first 
 
 time on the scat there, thirty-six yean ago. A more 
 beautiful person I never beheld, with his soft flashing 
 eyes and face full of intelligence. He had great talent 
 certainly the only acquaintance of mine of anything like 
 equal intellect who ever became entangled in what seemed 
 to me hopeless visions. He was rather silent, spoke 
 hi 'Ugh he spoke good English even 
 
 then, notwithstanding a strong accent It was plain 
 might have taken a high rank in literature. He wrote 
 well, as it was sometimes for the love of it, at others 
 when he wanted a little money ; but he never wrote * 
 ne might have done had he devoted himself to that kind 
 of work. He had fine tastes, particularly in I hit 
 
 he gave himself up as a martyr and sacrifice to his aims 
 for Italy. He lived almost in squalor. His health was 
 poor from the first ; but he took no care o. it. He used 
 to smoke a great deal, and drink coffee with bread 
 crumbled in it ; but hardly gave any attention to his 
 food His mother used to send him n. '.< ; , but he 
 gave it awa\ died, she left him as i 
 
 two hundred pounds a year all she had ; but it went to 
 1 ian beggars. His mother was the only member of his 
 family who stuck to him. His father soon turned 
 back on his son. His only sister married a strict Roman 
 Catholic, and she herself became too st 
 thing to do with him. lie did see her once or twice; 
 but the interviews were too painful to be repeated. He 
 desired, I d t to sec her again when he was dying; 
 
 but she declined Poor Mazzini i I could not have any 
 sympathy whatev many of his views and hopes. 
 
 He used to come here and talk about the 'solu 
 
His Recollections of Mazzini. 361 
 
 peoples ' ; and when he found that I was less and less 
 interested in such things, he had yet another attraction 
 than myself which brought him to us. But he found that 
 she also by no means entered into his opinions, and his 
 visits became fewer. But we always esteemed him. He 
 was a very religious soul. When I first knew him he 
 reverenced Dante chiefly, if not exclusively. When his 
 letters were opened at the post-office here, Mazzini 
 became, for the first time, known to the English people. 
 There was great indignation at an English government 
 taking the side of the Austrian against Italian patriots ; 
 and Mazzini was much sought for, invited to dinners, and 
 all that. But he did not want the dinners. He went to 
 but few places. He formed an intimacy with the 
 Ashursts, which did him great good gave him a kind of 
 home-circle for the rest of his life in England. At last it 
 has come to an end. I went to see him just before he 
 left London for the last time, passed an hour, and came 
 away feeling that I should never see him again. And so 
 it is. The papers and people have gone blubbering away 
 over him the very papers and people that denounced 
 him during life, seeing nothing of the excellence that was 
 in him. They now praise him without any perception of 
 his defects. Poor Mazzini ! After all, he succeeded. 
 He died receiving the homage of the people, and seeing 
 Italy united, with Rome for its capital. Well, one may 
 be glad he has succeeded. We wait to see whether Italy 
 will make anything great out of what she has got. We 
 wait." The Athenczum has told us, since Carlyle's death, 
 of an extant document connected with the renting, by 
 Mazzini, of a house in York Buildings, Chelsea, before 
 the letter-opening year. Mrs Carlyle had negotiated the 
 
362 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 matter, and Carlyle signed the agreement as poor Ma/zini's 
 \vitness. 
 
 In 1857 Carlyle was appointed a trustee of the National 
 
 Portrait (Jallery, on the death of the Earl of Ellesmere. 
 
 m Harvard University he received and accepted the 
 
 degree of LL. D. a few years ago. In 1 868 he was elected 
 
 president of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in 
 
 succession to Lord Brougham, who had succeeded 
 
 .nd this office he held till his death. Though 
 
 unable to appear publicly before the members, he hardly 
 
 ever was in Edinburgh without visiting their rooms, and 
 
 r failed to express cordial approbation of the v. 
 that was being done by the society. He was also a 
 patron of the Chelsc , Institute, which had 
 
 head quarters in the Vestry Hall in King's Road, dote 
 l>y his own residence; and he was on the Commission of 
 the Peace for Dumfr We may add that copies 
 
 of a letter exist in which he describes his interview with 
 
 sty at the Deanery of Westminster in 1869. 
 
 From the sometimes authentic reports of American 
 
 erviewers," a >n< ej'tion may be formed of the life 
 
 that was led by the wonderful old man in those years when 
 
 1 longing for the day of his release. Dr 
 
 Cuyler, the American preacher, who visited Carlyle in 1873, 
 
 stated that not a eemed to have been changed 
 
 in the house since his j-r Carlyle 
 
 was attired in a long blue woollen gown, rcat hing down 
 
 to 1. D an uncombed mop on 
 
 eye was still s' 
 
 a bright tinge of red was on his thin check. 1 (led 
 
 this visitor of an old alchymist He was still able to talk 
 with his wonted vigour, and commenced at once, after a 
 
A Scottish Schoolboy's Visit. 363 
 
 few inquiries about Longfellow, Bryant, and other Ameri- 
 can friends, a most characteristic discourse on the degen- 
 eracy of this age of delusions and impostures. With 
 great vehemence he declared that " England has gone 
 clean down into an abominable and damnable cesspool of 
 lies, and shoddies, and shams !" The first of these which 
 he specified were the swindling joint-stock companies, and 
 new schemes for turning everything into gold. " Abom- 
 inable contrivances for turning commerce and trade into 
 a villainous rouge et noir" So he continued to talk, on 
 occasion, through most of the years of his last decade ; it 
 was not till the dawn of 1880 that he was bereft of his 
 extraordinary powers as a conversationalist. The last 
 picture we have of him is from the pen of a Scottish 
 schoolboy, one of the sens of the late Alexander Munro, 
 the sculptor, who died young in 1871. The boys, being 
 at school at Charterhouse, went to see their father's old 
 friend in the May of 1880, and one of them wrote home 
 an account of their visit. They were led up the stair 
 with the heavy wooden balustrade into the " well-lighted, 
 cheerful-looking room," with the little old picture of 
 Cromwell on the wall and the sketch by Mrs Carlyle of 
 her Haddington home on the mantelpiece the room in 
 which Carlyle had passed the most of his time since he 
 gave up working fourteen years before. Nothing could 
 be more touching than the picture drawn by the boy, a 
 grandson, we may note, of the late Dr Robert Car- 
 ruthers, the accomplished journalist, of Inverness. " The 
 maid went forward and said something to Carlyle, and 
 left the room. He was sitting before a fire in an arm- 
 chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, 
 and looked much, older than I had expected. The 
 
364 Thomas Cat 
 
 cr part of his face was covered with a rather shaggy 
 
 beard, almost quite white. His eyes were bright blue, but 
 
 looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured 
 
 d a long gown reaching to his ankles, and 
 
 slippers on his feet A rest attached to the arm of 
 
 ed a book before him. I could not quite 
 see the name, but I think it was Channing's works. 
 Leaning against the fireplace was a long cl and 
 
 e was a slight smell of tobacco in the room. 
 
 1 and shook hands, and he invited us to sit 
 down, and began, I think, by asking where we were 
 living. He talked of our fat! innately, speaking 
 
 in a low tone as if to himself, and stopping now and then 
 for a moment and sighing. He mentioned the last time 
 1 one took a long walk to see the o: 
 
 ould not catch which), 'and then he went away to 
 Cannes and died/ and he paused and sighed 'And 
 your grandfather, lu is dead too.' He said he had done 
 much good work, and written several books of u 
 mentioning particularly his 1 v, ho the 
 
 people iiK-r/.ioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson were. All 
 this was in a low tone, and rather confused and broV 
 so I cannot put it dearly down. He said he liked my 
 grandfather very much. I aid 1 th<u did 
 
 He agreed, and spoke very highly of him as a 'mott 
 amiable man. 1 He asked what I was going to be. I 
 said I was not sure, but I thought of going to college 
 the present He asked something I only caught 
 
 words * good scholars. 1 I said I hoped we should turn 
 out so. He said there could be no doubt about it, if we 
 only kept fast to what is right and true, and we certainly 
 ought to, as the sons ot such a respectable man. He 
 
His Last Year. 365 
 
 strongly exhorted us to be always perfectly true and open, 
 not deceiving ourselves or others, adding something about 
 the common habits of deceit. He went on, ' I am near 
 the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my 
 own feeling.' He said he still reads a little, but has not 
 many books he cares to read now, and is * continually dis- 
 turbed by foolish interruptions from people who do not 
 know the value of an old man's leisure.' His hands were 
 very thin and wasted ; he showed us how they shook and 
 trembled unless he rested them on something, and said 
 they were failing him from weakness. He asked, ' Where 
 did you say you were staying, and what are you doing 
 there ?' I told him we were at Bromley for our holidays, 
 which ended on Thursday, when we returned to school. 
 He asked if we were at school at Bromley. I told him 
 we were at Charterhouse. ' Well, I'll just bid you good- 
 bye.' We shook hands. He asked our names. He 
 could not quite hear Henry's at first. ' I am a little deaf, 
 but I can hear well enough talking,' or words to that 
 effect. * I wish you God's blessing, good-bye.' We 
 shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all 
 shy. He seemed such a venerable old man, and so 
 worn and old looking that I was very much affected. 
 Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2 P.M." 
 That summer of 1880 was the longest and loveliest 
 that had visited our island within the memory of living 
 men; but it was the first that found Carlyle unable to 
 leave town for his accustomed holiday. He had seen his 
 native north for the last time. For more than a year, 
 indeed, he had been visibly failing fast. The Chelsea 
 people missed him from their streets ; his morning walk 
 by the riverside had become infrequent, and each time 
 
366 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 he did appear, his form was more bowed, his step feel 
 Instead of going out every day, he was compelled to 
 make it each alternate day; then twice a week was as 
 much as he could bear; at last, not at all For months 
 
 Airing had been taken in a bath chair. The breaking 
 up, spread over more than ten years, of a most active and 
 vigorous constitution, had been almost imperceptible in 
 successive, certain stages ; but it was now evident 
 that the end was drawing nigh. ( 
 time it was thought he would die, and for several days 
 
 ;fe hung in the balance; and when the winter came, 
 an Arctic rigour as i the length and 
 
 beauty of the preceding summer, the thoughts of n 
 turned to the old man in Cheyne Row. They wondered 
 how he was faring as they saw so many of the aged 
 dropping down at their own doors ; and when his 85th 
 birthday arr; mghts were cone, 
 
 more on the venenbi He was now obliged to 
 
 remain in his room, unable even to go down stairs; and 
 at length, on one of the days of January, we learned that 
 the severity of the season was proving too much for 
 diminished vital jxnvers, and that he was d 
 
 \\ in the midst of the keen pol; over 
 
 that weary Irish problem, which he .If a 
 
 ury before, thousands turned each morning, as t 
 opened the newspaper, first of all to the bull 
 l>h) >r Maclagan ; the nation wa 
 
 t the i>easuiu's son had been a king, which, in 
 
 truth, he was. Even on t of the sea, 
 
 in that : iblic of the West, which had hailed the 
 
 dawn of his genius before it was recognised in his own 
 
 country, eacl \ >ort was looked for not less cage 
 
"God's Will be Done!" 367 
 
 while Germany waited for the tidings as if he had been 
 one of her own sons. Generally the news was, that he 
 had passed a quiet night, and that his general condition 
 remained the same. Thus was it for many days. On 
 Thursday morning, the 3d of February, the doctor found 
 him in a drowsy state, moaning now and then in his 
 sleep. He was almost pulseless, and in such an ex- 
 tremely exhausted condition that it was feared the heart's 
 action might cease at any moment. So he continued till 
 five o'clock on Friday evening, when he became uncon- 
 scious, his respiration being extremely feeble, and the 
 heart's action barely perceptible. Thus he lingered 
 through the night; and on the morning of Saturday, 
 the 5th, about half-past eight o'clock, he breathed his 
 last. During the previous thirty-six hours he had 
 suffered no pain. Dr Maclagan was in attendance 
 when the end was drawing nigh, but medical skill was 
 of no avail. His niece, the constant companion of all 
 his widowed years, and who had been to him as the most 
 loving of daughters, was with him to the last. He had 
 suffered from no organic disease ; his life had gradually 
 burnt itself out, and he died from a general failure of 
 vital power. 
 
 Next day, in Westminster Abbey, Dean Stanley told 
 his congregation of "one tender expression one plain- 
 tive yet manful thought written but three or four years 
 ago," that had not yet reached the public eye ; and which 
 it was grateful, most of all in such an hour, to hear 
 though it took by surprise no one who really knew 
 Carlyle. "Three nights ago, stepping out after mid- 
 night and looking up at the stars, which were clear and 
 numerous, it struck me with a strange new kind of 
 
368 Thomas Car/yU. 
 
 ing. 'In a little while I shall have seen you also for 
 the last time. God ' own Theatre of Imi; 
 
 made palpable and visible to me. That 
 also will be closed, flung to in my face, and I shall never 
 behold it any more.' The thought of this eternal de- 
 pn. en of this, though this is such a nothing in 
 
 comparison, was sad and painful to me. And then a 
 second feeling rose in me : What if Omnipotence, that 
 has developed in me those those reverences, and 
 
 infinite affections, should actually have said, 'Yes, poor 
 mortals, such of you as have gone so far shall be per- 
 mitted to go further. Hope; despair not God's will, 
 God's will, not ours, be done.' ' 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE "PAUSE OF SORROWFUL STILLNESS" TRIBUTES OF 
 THE PRESS AND THE PULPIT THE FUNERAL HIS 
 BEQUEST OF CRAIGENPUTTOCH : THE JOHN WELSH 
 BURSARIES PERVERSION OF TRUSTS HIS INFLUENCE 
 ON LITERATURE AND ON LIFE HIS RELATION TO 
 CHRISTIANITY THE SELF-DISCIPLINE OF HIS LIFE 
 HIS LETTERS. 
 
 THE world, it was truly said by the chief reflector of the 
 feeling of England, seemed duller and colder, that one 
 grey old man at Chelsea had faded away from among us. 
 As another powerful journal remarked, it was a striking 
 testimony to the greatness of Carlyle's position, that men 
 were almost as much impressed by the tidings of his 
 death as if he had been taken in the midst of his career. 
 His work had been finished nearly fifteen years before 
 no more was expected from him ; yet every educated 
 Briton, and even many of the manual toilers in our 
 nation, felt that they had lost something by the disappear- 
 ance of a writer to whom they owed so much. He had 
 passed away in a season of almost fierce political conflict, 
 but for the moment even the leaders in the strife became 
 oblivious of its heats and distractions there had come, 
 as one of these leaders finely remarked, "a pause of 
 sorrowful stillness " in the minds of all men. At the 
 recollection of the brave old worker who had gone to his 
 
 <-> A 
 
370 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 rest, of his noble character, of his magnificent work, "the 
 battles of the hour seemed but pale skirmishes 
 did the fact pass unnoted, that while the parli. 
 
 rnment of whit h he had said so many hard things 
 
 was in the very crisis of one of its most trying struggles, 
 
 he was gently sinking away from it all, setting out on the 
 
 ige to the still country, " where, beyond these voices, 
 
 there is peace." 
 
 T was the press of Or n more unanimous 
 
 than in the testimony which it bore respecting Thomas 
 Carlyle. On all hands, by the organs of every polit 
 party and of every chun h, it was conceded that he had 
 been the greatest and most heroic man of letters of our 
 time, and that he had left his traces more han 
 
 any single Englishman on the moral - of the 
 
 nineteenth century. The organ of the fashionable world 
 ot London pointed to the humble station in whit h he 
 was bon u to am 1 1'he son of a 
 
 sma he had died regretted and mourned 
 
 by an entii lost 
 
 advanced Literalism conu . cr been 
 
 an idol. brute, sc , for he placed 
 
 Vapoleon ved in the divinity of 
 
 Strength, but only in th is strong in 
 
 in lalxnir. 1 
 noli 
 
 age cbraism scorned the modern Hellenists, 
 
 and it was impo- could be the prophet of 
 
 modern aristocracies. The Scottish journals mourned 
 the departu: eatcst Scotsman of his gen 
 
 be ranked with John Knox and 
 
 \ some respects to be placed above c 
 
The Tributes of the Press. 371 
 
 them ; and pointed with pardonable pride to his personal 
 character, fruit of the wholesome training in that peasant- 
 home of Annandale, as constituting perhaps the truest 
 element of his greatness. The people of the little land 
 that lies north the Tweed might be excused if they felt 
 their hearts swell as they read in the most influential 
 organ of British public opinion, that their newly-departed 
 compatriot was a man who had educated himself in the art 
 of plain living and high thinking, before he presumed to 
 educate others, and who, when he had become famous, 
 as while he was obscure, never taught the world lessons 
 which he had not first made part of his own being. 
 
 As was to be expected, the press of Germany vied with 
 that of Britain in doing honour to the memory of Car- 
 lyle, as also did the press of England's daughter, the 
 Great Republic across the sea, generously forgiving 
 the many hard words he had used in speaking of her. 
 The press of Italy did not fail to render justice to the old 
 friend of Mazzini, praising him both as a writer and as 
 a man; from France alone came the one discordant 
 note. There the Republican journalists reciprocated 
 the feeling of dislike with which he had viewed their 
 country; their verdict was distinctly unfavourable, and 
 obviously coloured by political resentment. They de- 
 fined him as " a Scotchman of an age anterior to 
 Burns, a Scot of the Covenant and Old Testament," who 
 judged Diderot and Danton according to the Covenanters 7 
 standard ; and declared that nothing could be looked for 
 from a man who took his standpoint on the Cromwellian 
 dictatorship in criticising parliamentarism, industrialism, 
 and all that is great and small in modern civilization. 
 
 Hero-worship and hatred of French sensualism blinded 
 
372 Thomas Carlylt. 
 
 Carlylc. He was original and vigorous, but too fantastic 
 and archaic to merit the name of a great think 
 The most favourable estimate was pronounced by the 
 chief organ of the Clericals, which, while deploring the 
 contempt felt for the Ixitin races by this " Cromwellian 
 Roundhead of the nineteenth century," praised him for 
 41 his implacable antagonism to that modern state of 
 society in which falsehood, hypocrisy, scepticism, and 
 stu; ties are more and more taking the place of 
 
 the chain of sentiments and ideas which links earth to 
 The marvels of industry did not awe him, the 
 progress of humanity he did not place in the triumphs of 
 matter ; in his eyes a man was a man only on condition 
 of being a Ubernacle of the living God 
 
 In hundreds of pulpits, on both sides of the Bordc 
 
 ;ed Churches and of nearly 
 
 all the Nonconformist communions as well, the life 
 writings of Carlyle were made the subject of discourse; 
 and the conclusion almost unanimously reached was, that 
 
 had been the greatest moral teacher of this generation. 
 
 in 1840, Professor Sewell said to his K 
 Pantheism : bk country in a great variet 
 
 modes, and in a man named t who 
 
 writes in a grotesque and striking manm reduced 
 
 it in a most objectionable form." Not even in the most 
 orthodox pi: ountry was such language 
 
 as this uttered when he passed away. Even the : 
 representatives of the least advanced section of the 
 "Compendium < ^hteousness " had 
 
 good to say of him. " No greater preacher of righteous- 
 ness ever lived in modern times," said the minister of 
 iiburgh ; and in the same 
 
The Tributes of the Pulpit. 373 
 
 one of the most thoughtful representatives of Noncon- 
 formity spoke of him as not the least of the many great 
 men God had given to "the small and manly Scottish 
 nation," and stated, as a fact of his own spiritual experi- 
 ence, that in some of his most troubled hours he had 
 derived more aid from Sartor than from any other book 
 save the Bible. " It is said he did not attend church or 
 chapel, which, if true, as it is only partially, need not be 
 marvelled at, when it is considered what both church and 
 chapel have done to drive such men away from their 
 doors." One preacher at Dundee took it to be a hopeful 
 sign that the orthodox were not without hope that Carlyle 
 may have found his way into Heaven. Those who cher- 
 ished the hope were not trespassing far into the realm of 
 Christian faith and hope. " Pity the heaven," he said, 
 " that has no room for men like Carlyle. Pity the hell 
 that got him, so far, at least, as its own peace and 
 stability were concerned. Iniquity would not find much 
 rest there with Carlyle's eyes upon it." Another preacher 
 on the banks of the Tay described him as a man of 
 blameless life, clearly gifted with the spirit and gifts 
 of Isaiah and Ezekiel ; and yet there was no Church that 
 would have admitted him to its ministry, or even to its 
 membership. He had turned away from all ecclesiastical 
 bodies, that, like Paul, he might go unto the Gentiles and 
 preach to God's wider Church scattered throughout the 
 world. The best men in the ecclesiastical bodies, how- 
 ever, did not turn away from him. The Dean of Durham 
 publicly suggested, within a day or two of his death, 
 that a Carlyle Scholarship should be established at New- 
 castle in honour of the man whose works were familiar, 
 he knew, to so many of the sons of toil on the busy banks 
 
374 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 of the Tyne ; and the Rector of Chelsea came forward 
 with a proposal to have Mr Boehm's statue of their sage 
 erected on the Thames Embankment at the end of the 
 quiet little street that will henceforth be a shrine visited 
 
 om every quarter of the world 
 igh Dean Stanley offered a grave in the Abbey, it 
 was the universal expectation that Carlyle would be laid 
 beside his wife at Haddington. But on the eve of the 
 funeral it transpired, as the inner circle of his friends had 
 known for years, that he was, l> ft wish, to find his 
 
 grave with his kindred in that province of Scotland where 
 he had been born and nurtured This harmonised with 
 all that we knew of his character. It was the last impres- 
 sive illustration of the fact, urged by the Parisian journals 
 as a complaint, that Carlyle was a Scot of the Old Testa- 
 ment. Though he declared to John Sterling that the 
 old Jew stars have now gone out, he was himself a 
 nding proof that they are by no means extinguished 
 This was exemplified in many ways, even in the very 
 writings that seemed to superficial readers destructive of 
 the religious cult and the sacred traditions that had so 
 long dominated the life of the Scottish nation ; and now 
 we saw it confirmed by the Hebrew-like desire that he 
 should be laid, after life's fitful fever, in the "auld 
 kirkyard " in the village of his birth, where his fathers 
 sleep. On the evening of Wednesday, February 9, the 
 body was removed from Chelsea to Euston Square, and 
 left for the North by the 9 o'clock train, accompa: 
 by Mr Alexander Carlyle, B.A., and his wife. The 
 arrangements, in accordance with the express desire of 
 deceased to > obsequies conducted in the 
 
 most private and simple manner, had been kept so secret 
 
His Funeral 375 
 
 that the body passed unobserved through the streets of 
 London from Cheyne Row to Euston; and even next 
 day at Ecclefechan, only the villagers and a few news- 
 paper men who had travelled thither almost on a perad- 
 venture, were present to witness the touchingly simple 
 funeral procession as it moved slowly along the snow- 
 covered country road from the railway station to the 
 graveyard. The mourners were Mr James Carlyle, late 
 of Scotsbrig, brother of Carlyle; Mr James Carlyle, jun., 
 Newlands ; Mr John Carlyle, Pingle, Middlebie ; Mr 
 Alexander Carlyle, B.A., London ; Mr J. C. Austin, The 
 Gill, Annan, nephews ; Mr James Aitken, The Hill, Dum- 
 fries, a brother-in-law ; Mr John Aitken, The Hill, Dum- 
 fries ; Mr Alex. Welsh, merchant, Liverpool, a cousin of 
 the late Mrs Carlyle; Captain Henry F. Wall, Liverpool ; 
 as also Professor Tyndall, Mr J. A. Froude, and Mr W. 
 E. H. Lecky, who had travelled from London to attend 
 the funeral of their deceased friend. Mr Russell Lowell, 
 the American Ambassador, had been invited, but was 
 unavoidably absent. A few gentlemen connected with 
 the district were also in the churchyard; the villagers, 
 who had shut their shops and left off work, gathered, in 
 their ordinary attire, in clusters by the roadside, while the 
 younger portion of the inhabitants watched the interment 
 from the churchyard wall, a score or so of women, with 
 little coloured shawls thrown round their shoulders to 
 protect themselves from the cold, standing at the side of 
 the gate. The muffled bell in the schoolhouse tower was 
 rung slowly ; when the hearse drew up at the churchyard 
 gate, about twenty-five minutes to one o'clock, the specta- 
 tors reverently took off their hats and remained uncovered 
 until the coffin was carried to the grave. At this moment 
 
376 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 a sharp shower of sleet fell, but before the coffin had been 
 laid upon the trestles the sun shone through the clouds 
 and sent a gleam into the open grave. According to the 
 Scottish custom, there was no religious ceremonial. It 
 was with difficulty the relatives could restrain t' 
 emo 1 Mr Froude, Professor Tyndall, and Mr 
 
 Lecky all seemed deeply moved Mrs A. Carlyle, the 
 niece, was in the churchyard, though her presence was 
 unknown to the sj>ectators. Several beautiful wrc.< 
 were laid upon the coffin, and choice flowers thrown 
 into the tomb; the transient gleam of sunlight that 
 had suddenly pierced the dull leaden skies sparkled 
 on the flowers and on the polished oak of the coffin 
 wet with the rain. Never before had so great a man 
 so simple a funeral An old woman in the crowd at 
 the gate told how Carlyle himself had pointed out to 
 her, two summers before, the pl.ire in \\\> family " 1. 
 where he intended he should be la: > yle^gra-. 
 in the centre, his kindred lying on each side of him. 
 
 ier ; on the other 
 
 side his brother John, the translator of Dante, who d 
 in 1879. The lair K in the west comer of the h 
 
 under the shadow of some bourtree bushes growing 
 of the wall. It is surrounded by a stout railing, wit: 
 ornamentation. 1 n stones bear the names of the 
 
 Carlyles who lie beneath ; the record of Car 
 
 11 the pen of her illustrious first-born, tells how ' 
 brought" her husband " nine children, whereof four sons 
 and three daught lly reverent of such a 
 
 father and such a m The kirkyard, enclosed on 
 
 one .1 stone wall, on the other three sides with a 
 
 thorn hedge, is not above a dozen yards square ; 
 
Bequest of Craigenputtoch. 377 
 
 hillocky surface is crowded with old tombstones, some 
 falling forward and others backward among the long rank 
 grass ; it is one of the least lovely of the rustic burial- 
 grounds in a land where sentiment does not much run 
 in the direction of ornamenting the " cities of the dead." 
 There is very little of an outlook on the surrounding 
 country, just a glimpse to be got of a fir-covered hill on 
 one hand, and of the Roman camp on Burnswork Hill, 
 on the other ; but from Carlyle's grave you can see the 
 house in which he was born, only a stone-throw distant. 
 That Border land has long been rich in memorials of 
 the distinguished dead; but henceforth it must attract 
 even a greater throng of pilgrims to its soil, for now in 
 addition to the tombs of Robert Burns, the Ettrick 
 Shepherd, and Thomas Aird, it has the grave of its 
 greatest son, Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Before the month in which he died was ended, it be- 
 came known that Carlyle, while he yet occupied the office 
 of Lord Rector, in 1867, had executed a deed bequeath- 
 ing to the University of Edinburgh the estate of Craigen- 
 puttoch which his wife had brought him, for the endow- 
 ment of ten bursaries in the Faculty of Arts, to be called 
 the " John Welsh Bursaries," in honour of his wife's 
 father and forefathers. The "deed of mortification," 
 read at a meeting of the Senatus on the last Saturday of 
 February, is perhaps the most remarkable document of 
 the kind that was ever written a revelation of the mind 
 and heart of the testator singularly impressive and touch- 
 ing ; the terms in which it is expressed rising to a solemn 
 and lofty pitch of genuine eloquence that must secure for 
 it an enduring place among the most precious of its 
 author's literary remains. It opens with a tribute to his 
 
378 Thomas Car 
 
 "late dear, magnanimous, much-loving, and to me in- 
 It was for her sake, and in memory of 
 "her constant nobleness and piety towards him 
 father) and towards me," that Carlylc, "with whatever 
 piety is in me/ 1 bequeathed to Edinburgh University 
 "this Craigenputtoch, which was theirs and hers." S 
 was the main motive of the bequest ; but Carlyle also 
 had a wish to he! *ung heroic soul struggling for 
 
 what is highest," and very is the provision 
 
 that the bursaries should "always be given, on solemnly 
 a! faithful trial, to the worthiest; or if (what in 
 practice can never hapi>en, though it illustrates my ii. 
 
 i ) the claims of two were absolutely equal, and could 
 not be settled by further trial, preference is to fall in 
 
 ur of the more unrccommended and unfriended" 
 To this Carlyle adds the solemn monition : " Under 
 penalties graver than I, or any higru end 
 
 to impose, but which I can never doubt as the law 
 of eternal justice, inexorably valid, whether noticed or 
 unnoticed, pervades all corners of space and of time 
 are \ to be punctually exacted if incurred, th 
 
 to be the perpetual rule for the S :ig. w 
 
 We are here reminded of an incident that occurred when 
 he accompanied Emerson on their pilgrimage to Stone- 
 hen^e during his American friend's second visit to England 
 Just before entering Winche stopped at the 
 
 Church of Saint Cross, and, after looking 
 quaint antiquity, demanded the piece of bread and the 
 draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de l;!i^ in 
 , commanded should be given to every one who 
 should ask it at the gate. They got both from the old 
 couple who take care " this hospitality 
 
On the Abuse of Trusts. 379 
 
 of seven hundred years' standing did not hinder Carlyle 
 from pronouncing a malediction on the priest who receives 
 ^2,000 a year, that were meant for the poor, and spends 
 a pittance on this small beer and crumbs." Such mal- 
 administration of sacred trusts always roused his deepest 
 indignation ; and never more than when the endowments 
 so perverted by unscrupulous trustees had been left for 
 educational purposes. When Mr W. C. Bennett pub- 
 lished a pamphlet in 1853 exposing such a case in con- 
 nection with Roan's School at Greenwich, Carlyle wrote 
 thanking him : " I hope you will completely achieve the 
 reform of that scandalous mismanagement, to the benefit 
 of this and future generations ; and cannot but wish there 
 were such a preacher in every locality where such an 
 abuse insults mankind ; a rather frequent case, I believe, 
 in poor England just now." And, as Mr Bennett happened 
 to be a song- writer, he added : " Such work (as the 
 writing of the pamphlet) I continue to think, is much 
 more melodiously ' Poetical ' for a human soul than the 
 best written verses are." 
 
 Of the ten John Welsh Bursaries, five are to be 
 given absolutely and irrevocably for proficiency in Mathe- 
 matics, Carlyle holding that proficiency therein is peren- 
 nially the symptom, not only of steady application, 
 but of a clear, methodic intellect," and that it offers, 
 " in all epochs, good promise for all manner of arts and 
 pursuits." The other five are to be given for proficiency 
 in " classical learning," which also " gives good promise 
 of a mind," though he is not quite so sure that it will 
 continue to retain its present position as an instrument of 
 culture; hence he leaves power to the Senatus of the 
 University to change the destination of this part of the 
 
. 
 
 380 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 endowment, " in case of a change of its opinion on this 
 point hereafter in the course of generations." The \alue 
 of Craigenputtoch is at present ^250 a year, likely to 
 become ^300. Each bursary will be tenable during the 
 whole undergraduate course. Very beautiful are the 
 closing words of the testator. "So may a little tr 
 of help, to the young heroic soul struggling for wha 
 -pring from this poor arrangement and bequ 
 it run, forever if it can, as a thread of pure w.- 
 
 i the Scottish rocks, tinkling into its little basin by 
 the thirsty wayside, for those whom it veritably belongs 
 to. Am 
 
 passed since the greatest thinker of 
 America asserted that the influence of Carlyle might be 
 traced in every new book ; and one of the most powerful 
 of our own essayists, far enough from being an unquali- 
 .irer, acknowledges that the intellectual career of 
 Carlyle "has exercised on many sides the profound 
 sort of influence upon English feeling;" that ' 
 influent :lating moral energy, in kindling cnthu- 
 
 ;n for virtues worthy of enthusiasm, and in stirring a 
 sense of the reality on the one hand, and the unreality 
 on the other, of all that men can do or suffer, has not 
 been surpassed by any teacher now 1 nd that 
 
 "whatever later tea< lit T - m.r, '<>ne in definitely 
 
 :ing opinion, in giving specific form to sentin. 
 
 and in subjecting impulse to rational ili was 
 
 :riendly fire-bearer :nethean 
 
 spark, here the prophet who first smote the rock."* 1. 
 
 *l MiKtlianiis. By John Mor ley. Pp. 195-6. London. 
 
His Influence on Literature. 381 
 
 where a protest has to be lodged by the judgment against 
 Carlyle's doctrines, our feelings are almost always enlisted 
 in his favour by our faith in the sincerity of his purpose, 
 the singular purity and earnestness of his life, and the 
 depth of his genius, to say nothing of the force and 
 beauty of that utterance which are almost always so 
 great as to overbear disapproval of the thought he utters. 
 When we trace his influence on contemporary litera- 
 ture, we find that although Wordsworth denounced him 
 as " a pest to the English tongue," he has done more 
 than any other writer to exalt and bring to perfection 
 prose composition. His style, by some objected to as 
 German, was in reality his own, much more derived, as 
 to its peculiarities, from Ecclefechan and the old Secession 
 pulpit (whose cadence may often be detected in his loftiest 
 flights) than from the authors of Germany, greatly as he 
 was beholden to these, especially to Jean Paul. It is 
 unrivalled for its simplicity, richness, clearness and 
 strength, infinitely preferable to that conventional style 
 which has so often served to conceal or give inadequate 
 expression to thought. For this he substituted the plain- 
 speaking of colloquial intercourse, not afraid of it even 
 when it verged towards vulgarity. Despising the artificial 
 and frigid phraseology of the schools, he has freely 
 employed "the fresh and beautiful idioms of daily speech;" 
 and if an author should wish his words to be as hooks, 
 this merit at least cannot be denied to the words of 
 Carlyle. The notion, that his style was affected and 
 unintelligible (Dr Robert Chambers said it was " painfully 
 studied "), arose from the fact that " every fresh experiment 
 in language is ridiculed and disliked, unless it be a retro- 
 grade experiment " also from the strangeness of a strong, 
 
382 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 ind , learned, humorous, and altogether human 
 
 being daring to speak to the public in his own natural 
 voice. If there is a pronounced mannerism in Carl) 
 
 Ings, it is only becau iruc to his own pro- 
 
 nounced individuality; there : it the slightest 
 
 taint of affectation. His word is ever in harmony with 
 the thought or feeling to be expressed Indeed, you see 
 
 \: as they rise in 
 
 the author's mind. One of the first things you marked in 
 com is, that he spoke exactly as he wrote. 
 
 Though sternly patriotic in his temper, his style is cosmo- 
 politan ; he enriches his discourse with all that he has 
 
 ered in the field of the world's literature. In the same 
 
 it, he uses many of the frcedou, ; -osed to 
 
 be permissible only to the composers of verse, flashing out 
 sudden bursts of homely laughter, or almost savag 
 or tenderest pathos in quick succession, according to the 
 theme and the varying mood of his mind ; tea hing 
 great truth by a familiar phrase of the market, or 
 sharp n: cither borrowed or in 
 
 the talk of the street ; taking, in .short, the - 
 phrase that will best serve his turn, no matter wlu 
 it comes from Annandale or from I lindostan. Edv. 
 
 lias fulfil ^ing two 
 
 dep. 
 
 As i be classed with the great ma 
 
 who display a universal and the 
 
 leading of the period with wl are 
 
 dealing. And this he combines with the character: 
 excellencies of the lesser > gain in vivid power 
 
 '.uniting the scope of their effort to 
 of that clement with wh: j-crsonally sympathise 
 
His Influence on Life. 383, 
 
 He unites the power of detachment, which is fair to all 
 the actors in the story he has to tell, with the warm and 
 enthusiastic personal interest and sympathy of conviction. 
 He is too great a humourist to be a narrow and bitter 
 partisan; too earnest in spirit to pourtray a struggle 
 without taking a side. He sees something to love and 
 pity in the hearts of all men ; but he never allows this to 
 blind him to the cause of righteousness and truth. He 
 has powers of severe compression equal to those of the 
 coldest of philosophical historians, being indeed altogether 
 matchless in his use of what has been happily called the 
 stenographic method ; and yet he has carried the power 
 of local painting to the very highest pitch. It is this 
 union of the two styles of historical writing that explains 
 the form which his work has assumed, and accounts for 
 its so-called mannerisms. 
 
 As to his influence on religion and life, that is a more 
 perplexing problem, and one that will probably continue 
 to provoke as much controversy in the future as it has 
 done in the past. That he has communicated a mighty 
 impulse to the moral activity of his generation, is almost 
 universally conceded. He has penetrated ingenuous 
 souls with a reverence for the true and the just thing. 
 He has also taught more impressively than any other 
 writer in our language the sacredness of work. But we 
 are far from accepting the evangel that is founded on 
 Hero- Worship, concerning which it has been too truly 
 said that it begins by placing certain select men on a 
 superhuman pinnacle, and ends with wholesale shooting of 
 the weak. With respect to his religious teaching, some 
 have thought him a truer representative of Scottish 
 Puritanism than even Hugh Miller ; and there is not a 
 
384 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 little truth in the shrewd remark that, " in the same way 
 
 nd powerful pro- 
 moter of free thought in matters of religion, so has Car- 
 hands of religious bodies to whose 
 been ev< . opposed" His position 
 
 iinly not been a consistent one. To a friend of 
 ours who happened once to say that he held the same 
 vs as himself, Carl vie with some heat re- 
 1 who told you what 
 
 my rrli^iniis views are? This Question was as just in 
 one point of view as it was touching in another ; for no 
 one could p what he meant by his mysterious 
 
 allusions to God and \\'e are not disposed to 
 
 rlirvj; in that great heart wl. 
 
 now ceased to beat ; but it is to be feared that Car- 
 was neai uh in the dark as to his meaning 
 
 with the 
 
 . who has suggest* n the sul> 
 
 of ( 'e ought either to have saidmor 
 
 or less. 
 
 One lesson of Carlyle's life has been in< identally 
 
 TK Earl of Shaftcs- 
 
 bury uowledgment in Lord Beaconsfield's 
 
 n are 
 
 Gassttt says : ' ' The 
 
 reason why C.i r >t st.-itc his views plain!) and simply are 
 
 us enough. In the first place, if he had done to sixty yean 
 ago, be would not only have lost all influence, but he would have 
 starved. In the next place, he would have taken up the pov 
 
 icrs was roost un U> him n.v -fa 
 
 it would become of .on 
 
 h < .u 1> Ic was always insisting, were m of his 
 
 vt a true one ! 
 
The Self-Discipline of his Life. 385 
 
 alluded to by his friend Professor Masson. The latter 
 is pointing out the sad fact that most literary men do not 
 see or scheme much farther than into the middle of next 
 week, any more in what pertains to the conduct of their 
 intellect than in their material concerns, so that life for 
 them is but a series of disconnected efforts, having no 
 real strategic unity. But there have been men, he says, 
 who, at an early period of their lives, or at some period 
 less early, have formed a resolution as to the direction of 
 their activity for the rest of their lives, and have kept 
 true in the main to their plans. Mr Masson cites the 
 examples of Bacon, Gibbon, Milton, Hallam, and Words- 
 worth, and then adds : " If among our still living British 
 writers we would seek for one in whose life, reviewed as 
 a whole hitherto, the same character of what may be 
 called strategy, the same noble self-discipline on a large 
 scale, is obvious with all the clearness of a historic fact 
 of our time, whom should we name but Carlyle?" This 
 lesson is emphasized when we contrast the outcome of 
 his well-planned life with the comparatively wasted lives 
 of two of his most brilliant contemporaries. De Quincey 
 did achieve marvellous things in spite of the absence of 
 this strategy; but what might he not have done had 
 he combined with his lofty genius a corresponding mea- 
 sure of self-discipline ? As for John Wilson, Scott and 
 others declared he had a capacity that might make him, 
 in literature, the very first man of his generation ; but, 
 alas ! he did not do justice to his wonderful gifts, and 
 was distanced in the race by inferior men who observed 
 that stringent self-regulation which he failed to apply to 
 his splendid powers. 
 
 How pleasant it is to recall the blameless nature of 
 
 2 B 
 
386 Thomas Car 
 
 Carlyle's private life, and the beautiful spirit which he 
 exemplified not only within the domestic precinct, but 
 also in all the social relationships, where he was ever the 
 
 idliest and most helpful of men. To the \ 
 particular he was a loving and faithful monitor, read 
 all times to bestow patient, earnest thought on the case 
 of the very humblest youth who applied to him for advice 
 as to the conduct of his lite. When his muhi 
 letters to young men and women who thus sought 
 counsel have been brought together, tl 
 a volume not only full of UK 
 but also jxjrvaded throughout by a tenderly sympatl 
 
 ing such as was never equalled by any other of the 
 world's philosophers. Had a Boswell been at 
 his side to chron less talk, the >uld 
 
 ine\ 1 the Johnson which thus far sta 
 
 without a ri\.il in our literature ; and we are firmly* 
 vinced that the collection of Carlyle's Lett 
 happily sure to appear some day, will make a book 
 greater, both as to its lit 
 
 moral value, th :. romance of 
 
 or the greatest of i 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 I. THE PORTRAITS OF CARLYLE. 
 
 No one has more eloquently vindicated the utility of trust- 
 worthy portraits of great men than Carlyle. His last essay 
 was on The Portraits of John Knox. Old Beza, in the dedi- 
 cation of his Icones, after avowing the delight he had in 
 contemplating the face of any " heroic friend of Letters and 
 of true Religion," proceeded to defend himself against any 
 imputation of idolatry or image-worship ; but Carlyle de- 
 clares the defence to be " superfluous." Any frequent visitor 
 to the little house in Cheyne Row knew that its tenant had 
 what most people would call a craze for portraits of great men. 
 
 i. DANIEL MACLISE was hardly the artist we should have 
 selected to execute a portrait of Carlyle ; but to his pencil we 
 are indebted for the earliest we have seen. Maclise was for 
 many years a neighbour of Carlyle's, living but a few doors 
 off, round the corner, at 4 Cheyne Walk one of the houses 
 facing the water. The portrait, a full-length, appeared in 
 Eraser's Magazine for June 1833. So far as we are aware, 
 this was the first portrait of Carlyle that had been taken. He 
 was at that date in his thirty-eighth year. In the sketch he 
 is leaning against a column, one hand supporting his head, 
 the other holding his hat. The letterpress accompanying the 
 
388 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 portrait was a bit of not very brilliant Carlylese by Maginn. 
 "Here hast thou, O Reader!" he says, "the from-stone- 
 printed effigies of Thomas Carlyle, the thunderwordovers< 
 of Herr Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These fingers now 
 in listless occupation supporting his head, or clutching 
 outward integument with which the head holds so singular a 
 relation that those who philosophically examine, and with a 
 fire-glance penetrate into the contents of the great mai 
 of the orb-shaped knobs which form the upper extremi* 
 
 , know not with assured critic-craft to decide whether 
 the hat was made to cover the head or the head erected as a 
 peg to hang that upon yea, these finger^ tnsfcrrcd 
 
 some of the most harmonious and mystic passages to the 
 initiated, mild-shining, inaudible-light instinct and to the 
 uninitiated, dark and un transparent as the shadows o; 
 of those forty tttkft] \\ixlom \vhich arc com- 
 
 monly known by the title ot 'Goethe's Werke,' from the 
 i dialect oi High- Dutch to the Allgemeino Mid- 
 Lothianish of Auld Reekie." And so on. In 1835 Ma 
 executed a large cartoon etching of the writers in 
 
 see the author of Sartor in the compar. 
 Maginn (who presides at the symposium), Southey, Pro 
 Macnish, Coleridge, Hogg, Croker, Lockhart, D'O. 
 Thackeray, A , Hook, Brewster, and others. He 
 
 does not seem very much at home in the company ; and his 
 face is peepy and obscure. Carlyle was the last survivor 
 of these Frascrians. Speaking of Maclise's portrait, Mr 
 K. H. Hutton says: "You see ha thing char 
 
 it the bright eye and arched eyebrow, which seem 
 to indie. of marvel; you certainly sec nothing of 
 
 that strong contempt for average life and eager craving 
 after traces of force and grandeur ive made < 
 
 countenance in later life the very type of a cynical 
 of the face of one yc.i M fires, and other 
 
 earth-shaking powers, of which he could but seldom detect in 
 
The Portraits of Carlyk. 389 
 
 the actual world even the trace. Maclise has not thrown any 
 touch of ridicule into his sketch of Carlyle, unless he has 
 made it just a little conceited and moony, though very like 
 the later countenance, of course, in feature. Had he drawn 
 him in later lile, what a powerful picture he must have 
 given." 
 
 2. COUNT D'ORSAY's sketch was published in 1839 by 
 Mitchell the printseller. It is much more characteristic of 
 the artist than of the subject. " If Carlyle should ever relax 
 his opinions upon society," says one critic, " and desire to go 
 down to posterity as a fashionable personage, rather than as 
 a stern moralist, this will be his favourite portrait. It was 
 taken when no man of position was considered a dutiful sub- 
 ject who did not wear a black satin stock and a Petersham 
 coat." Even so lately as 1862 Carlyle continued to wear a 
 stock and a very stiff one, too and could see no reason 
 why everybody else should not be compelled to do the same. 
 Charles Boner, who visited him in the above year, found 
 Carlyle laughing at what the press and the public were 
 saying about the soldiers' dress. They abused the stock. 
 " Why, a stock was most comfortable ; the best neck-cover- 
 ing a soldier could wear. He always wore a stock." There- 
 fore, he did not see why soldiers were not to wear stocks, 
 and resented indignantly the interference of the press in such 
 matters. But not long after this colloquy with Mr Boner he 
 departed widely from that old and certainly absurd fashion 
 commemorated in the sketch of D'Orsay, who, by the way, 
 was even a less appropriate artist to treat such a subject than 
 Maclise. 
 
 3. LAWRENCE executed a portrait in crayons about 1843, of 
 which it has been said that it is " perhaps the most intellec- 
 tual-looking of all the published likenesses ; the beetle- 
 browed, stern figure presents to one's mind the very ideal of 
 
39 Thomas dirlylt. 
 
 a giant in thought." Mr L:\urrnce, many years afterw 
 executed a copy of the Somerville p f John Knox, 
 
 which he agreed with Carlyle in accepting as the true repre- 
 ition of the Scottish Reformer. A reference to Mr 
 Lawrence will be found in Carlyle's Essay on the Knox Por- 
 traits. 
 
 4. In 1844 a good portrait appeared in the New Spirit of 
 the Age (edited by R. H. Home ; 2 vols.) It is subscribed 
 wkh the familiar "most faithfully yourv 
 was engr \RMYTACF. from Lawrence's port : 
 
 It still bears the younger look of Maclise's 1833 sketch, but 
 uch more of the ripeness of years, yet with a look 
 of hectic contemplativencss. 
 
 RIDGE LITHOGRAPH. An esteemed friend 
 possesses a striking portrait of which we have seen only the 
 one cop .\vn on stone" and "lithographed." 
 
 The publisher is Roe of Cambridge. It is said to be a after 
 a daguerrotype." It bears no date ; but the copy we have 
 seen was bou irs ago. The 
 
 ,;c. Thcr 
 
 no moustache or 1 or. The 
 
 is rather closely cut, and is brushed somewhat loosely down 
 on the !<> le, The i: 
 
 stril. .re the eye and the lips ; the eye is ht 
 
 1 compressed. In 
 the room in \ lit there 
 
 id Tennyson. It presents a 
 
 striking contrast to the face of Maurice, with its firm 
 sen ;:h, and ! >;>cful look. Tennyson, on 
 
 the is a perplexed. :id half-timid 
 
 look. Our friend who owns the portraits thinks that one 
 under Tennyson, "The problem pondered;" 
 und The problem faced as insoluble ; M under 
 
Tiie Portraits tf Carlyle. 391 
 
 Maurice, " The problem solved." Or, to put it in another 
 way "Before the Storm;" "In the Storm;" "After the 
 Storm." But Maurice's face in the flesh bore traces that 
 an inward conflict was still going on for the maintenance 
 of his faith and hope. The portrait, however, is somewhat 
 idealised, and gives rather the impression of calm and settled 
 assurance. Another friend, now deceased, informed us that 
 many .years ago he was shown by a near relative of Carlyle 
 a rather faded talbotype of the philosopher, and was then 
 informed that it was taken by John Sterling, who in failing 
 health amused himself by taking some pictures of his friends. 
 Our friend's recollection of the picture corresponds with the 
 description of the lithograph published by Roe of Cam- 
 bridge. John Sterling's talbotype and the daguerrotype 
 must have been about the same date. If the talbotype which 
 our friend saw is still in existence, it must be altogether 
 unique. 
 
 6. In 1857 there was a picture in the Royal Academy 
 Exhibition of " Mr and Mrs Carlyle at Home," by Mr 
 ROBERT TAIT, the same "friendly Scottish artist" who is 
 twice referred to in exceedingly complimentary terms in 
 Carlyle's essay on The Portraits of Knox. It was Mr Tait 
 who reported to Carlyle on the portrait of Knox in Glasgow 
 University, and also on the bronze figure on the monument 
 in Glasgow Necropolis. Mr Tait furthermore reported on 
 the famous Somerville Portrait of the Reformer. 
 
 7. AN ANONYMOUS SKETCH. In J. Camden Hotten's 
 little volume, containing Carlyle's Rectorial Address, there is 
 a portrait, engraved from a sketch taken, it is not said by 
 whom, in 1859. It is not without a measure of fidelity, but 
 must have been taken when the subject of the sketch was in 
 one of his dullest moods. 
 
392 Thomas CarlyU. 
 
 8. BUST BY BEHNES. A bust of Carlylc was modelled by 
 Behncs for the Crystal Palace Portrait Gallery. The short 
 biographical and < ntical notices in the catalogue very' able 
 they were, but in Carlyle's case rather disparaging were 
 
 :en by Samuel Phillips, author of Caleb Stukdy> and for 
 many years literary tutu to the 7 
 
 9. Mr HKRDMAN painted a per \\ was exhibited 
 in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1876. Good, both as 
 a painting and a likeness. 
 
 10. There is a medallion by WOOLNER, of which it is quite 
 
 ary to say that it is in the hi-hest degree art 
 
 Iced by grace and delicacy; but it is not a speaking 
 
 likeness. 
 
 Mr CRITTENDEN has executed a bust ; and so has 
 Mrs D. O. HILL, to whom Carlyle gave sittings in the week 
 of his address to the students at Edinb 
 
 i J K 1 .1 ifM, A.R.A., the sculptor of the statue of 
 John Bunyan erected at Bedford, completed a fine statue of 
 Carlyle in 1876, from which the po n title-page 
 
 is engraved. The venerable author is seated in an a 
 chair, ami the likene^ perfect The statue, wi. 
 
 gave great satisfaction to its subject (and he was by no 
 means easy t> as exhibited in the 
 
 Royal Acadc: it has been proposed by the 1 
 
 Gerald Blunt, rector of Chelsea, that the people of that pa: 
 shall acquire the 1 set it up on the Thames 1 
 
 .mcnt at the end of Chcyne Row. Mr Boehm is war: 
 eulogised by Carlyle in the essay on Th* Portraits of 
 leclared that his judgment of painting and 
 knowledge of the , and epochs of it seemed to 
 
 the essayist far beyond that of any other man he had com- 
 muned with. 
 
The Portraits of Carlyle. . 393 
 
 13. Mr MILLAIS executed a portrait in 1879. It is a seated 
 figure, the hands on the lap, one leg crossed on the other, 
 with strongly-contrasted light and shade on the powerful, 
 deeply-indented features, the ashy brownness of the com- 
 plexion, and the whitish iron-grey of the stubbly beard and 
 thick moustaches. This is thought by some to be the 
 noblest of all the portraits. 
 
 14. Mr HOWARD, M.P., who lately succeeded his father in 
 the representation of East Cumberland, and who is heir- 
 presumptive to the Earldom of Carlisle, executed more than 
 one striking sketch of the sage, who was his intimate friend. 
 It was Mr Howard who acted with so much energy and enthu- 
 siasm as the secretary of the Eastern Question Association. 
 
 15. G. F. WATTS, R.A., has painted a portrait, which has 
 been etched by M. RAJON. The artist's proofs, numbering 
 125 only, were sold at three prices with remarques, at fifteen 
 guineas ; on Japanese paper, at six guineas ; on Whatman 
 paper, at five. 
 
 1 6. J. M. WHISTLER'S portrait, exhibited at the first Ex- 
 hibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, but not a new work then, 
 has been variously estimated. Some conceive it to be " one 
 of the most acceptable achievements " of Mr Whistler ; and 
 it was said that Carlyle, at the time of its production, con- 
 sidered it the finest portrait of himself that had till then been 
 painted. Others declared that it was " no more Carlyle than 
 a lump of black anthracite is a glowing fire ; " for our own 
 part, we sympathise with the latter opinion. Carlyle is re- 
 presented seated on a wicker-bottomed chair, dressed in 
 black, with a brown cloak or shawl thrown over his knees, on 
 the top of which rests his black wide-awake hat, his right 
 hand leaning on a staff. This likeness was engraved on 
 steel by Mr JOSEY in 1878. 
 
394 Tfiomas Carlyle. 
 
 17. A bust by Mr Win. BRODIE, R.S.A., in the Exhibition 
 of the Royal Scot- !emy in 1881, was bought by 
 John Lcng, Kinbrae, Newport, the price being/ 150. 
 
 1 8. The latest portraits are nine or ten water-colour 
 sketches from life by , done about two 
 years ago. The artist, having the privilege - fre- 
 quently in his room, sketched him reading, smoking, sleep- 
 
 ' \itlylc pronounced the likenesses to be highly 
 successful They will probably be exhibited in the course 
 of the season ( 1 88 1 ). 
 
 -.A series of etchings ome time been 
 
 in process of execution by Mr Howard Helmiclc They are 
 
 oductions of authentic and unpublished portraits and 
 
 sketches in the possession of the family ; and, covering a 
 
 >d of about fifty years -v Carlyle in the more 
 
 intimate aspects of his home life at ease in his garden 
 
 ly. These etchings, six in number, will be 
 issued by the Etchers* Society. 
 
 IOGRAPHS. For many years we have been so familiar 
 with the photographs of Carlyle of whirh there has been a 
 grea : the case of any other : 
 
 of our time, not excepting eve >>ne or Lord 
 
 Beacons! uM th. ; to be told that a consider- 
 
 able period elapsed before he could be indu to a 
 
 photographer. At professed .:ive contempt 
 
 '1 by saw reason to change his 
 
 mind. When the Critic published a bil>lm-raphi< al memoir 
 of C 1859, he declined to assist them to the use of 
 
 a good portrait ; whereupon they published a ll 
 
 described it as a characteristic like- 
 ness .tudc in I stands being one which his 
 friends will recognise as that in which he will sometimes 
 
The Portraits of Carlyle. 395 
 
 remain for hours, when earnestly engaged in the discussion of 
 some absorbing question " a statement as far from the truth 
 as the portrait. Many of the photographs have been striking 
 and powerful some, indeed, painfully so. One of the most 
 faithful likenesses is that taken by Mr Charles Watkins, of 
 34 Parliament Street, London, in which Carlyle is repre- 
 sented with his broad-brimmed felt hat on his head, casting 
 the upper part of the face into shadow. It was one of the 
 portraits taken by Messrs Elliot & Fry, of Baker Street, 
 that had the honour of being engraved for the initial volume 
 of the people's edition of Carlyle's writings. In the October 
 of 1862 an admirable photograph was taken by Mr Vernon 
 Heath, an engraving from which appeared in the Illustrated 
 London News, February 19, 1881. An additional interest 
 attaches to this portrait on account of its having been taken 
 at the Grange, Lord Ashburton's place. Mr Heath writes : 
 "Carlyle was then in the height of his vigour and power, 
 and both he and his wife impressed me deeply. Towards 
 the close of the week Bishop Wilberforce joined the party. 
 Just think what it was to hear Carlyle and the Bishop in 
 argument ! and that was my good fortune. There was one 
 wet morning we amused ourselves with my camera, and it 
 was then this portrait was taken." In 1874, on his visit to 
 Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, Carlyle sat to Mr Patrick, of that 
 town, who succeeded in producing a set of four (different 
 positions) that were thought by Carlyle himself to be very 
 successful. There is a strikingly faithful photograph taken 
 in 1876 by F. Bruckmann, of u King Street, Covent Garden. 
 A capital engraving from one of the photographs of 
 Elliott & Fry appeared in the Graphic of April 30, 1870. 
 It is a profile, and reproduces with admirable effect the 
 keen -searching, sceptical, half-contemptuous and yet most 
 pathetic weary look, which was probably the most habitual 
 with its subject. A good portrait was published upwards of 
 a dozen years ago in the Illustrated London News. 
 
396 Thomas Carlylc. 
 
 II.-- T11K CAKLYLK KAMI! 
 
 Of the father of Carlylc we have received an anecdote that 
 helps to confirm the view of the old man given in our second 
 cha; '-r the death, in his eighty-second year, ol the 
 
 Rev. John Johnston, the Burgher minister 01 Ecclefechan, 
 28, 1812, there was considerable diffi- 
 culty in procuring a successor. The congregation first called 
 Mi John M'Kerrow, but the Synod appointed him to Bridge 
 of Teith. Then they called Mr Robert Balmer, but he 
 sent to Berwick. Next, Mr Andrew Hay, who declined the 
 never got another. The fourth preacher called was 
 
 a Mr B , who was appointed by the Synod to 1 
 
 pbell Street, Glasgow. During the negotiations with 
 the i <1 person, he had spoken a good deal about the 
 
 stipend to be given, and o :he pccun >ion 
 
 offered by E< n -not to t of the vill 
 
 ;h wh.it he could get in Glasgow. When this came out 
 cting of the Session, or ol the Congregation, old 
 Carlyle rose up, and, with a dc< p of his arm, 
 
 "Let th hireling go!" Hi- id low members at once acted 
 on the advice. Our informant H .is a good proof of 
 
 old ( lit into hum. in character, as the minister he 
 
 so summarily dismissed had a wide repute lor being richly 
 endowed with "saving ki 1 worldly wis 
 
 gene r 
 
 All Carlyle's brothers and sisters were distinguishes 
 decisive, strong character ; and of brother 
 
 Jame>. we have heard m one ot 1 
 
 rcm cen 
 
 her of the same. ! seem to have double po 
 
 in hi^ mouth, and were always " clcn .ught was 
 
 im<!< tan. It was h. logy 
 
 from the old \ Kcclcfechan. " Been a long 
 
 tune in ->ked an Amc: -Her 
 
The Carlyle Family. 397 
 
 on the outlook for a sight of the sage. " Been here a' ma 
 days, sir." " Then you'll know the Carlyles ? " " Weel that ; 
 a ken the whole o' them. There was, let me see," he said, 
 leaning on his shovel and pondering, "there was Jock, he 
 was a kind o' throughither sort o' chap, a doctor, but 
 no a bad fellow Jock he's deid, man." "And there was 
 Thomas?" said the inquirer eagerly. "Oh ay, of course, 
 there's Tarn a useless munestruck chap that writes books 
 and talks havers. Tarn stays maistly up in London. There's 
 naething in Tarn. But man, there's Jamie owre in the New- 
 lands there's a chap for ye. He's the man o' that family ! 
 Jamie tak's mair swine into Ecclefechan markets than ony 
 ither farmer in the parish ! " 
 
 Carlyle is survived by many near relatives, the most of 
 whom are still resident in their native country, though others 
 have emigrated to Canada, where more than one nephew 
 has risen to a position of professional distinction. A nephew 
 now farms Craigenputtoch, though he does not occupy the 
 house where Sartor was written, being obliged to reside else- 
 where, to be near schools for his children. In the mean time, 
 the house is given up to a shepherd. Of all the members of 
 his family, perhaps the one who most closely resembled 
 Carlyle is his sister, Mrs Aitken, of Dumfries, the mother of 
 the young lady who for so many years acted as the house- 
 keeper of her uncle. We have heard Mrs Aitken described 
 by those who are privileged with her acquaintance as a lady 
 of remarkable intellectual power and a most brilliant con- 
 versationalist, with quaint, bright forms of expression akin 
 to those that lighten up the books of her illustrious brother. 
 In addition to translating Dante's Inferno, Dr John Carlyle 
 wrote several articles for the Edinburgh Review and other 
 periodicals. 
 
 The name Carlyle is pronounced " Keryl " in Annandale. 
 We have stated in the first chapter that Carlyle took a warm 
 interest in the genealogy of his House. A reference to his 
 
398 Thomas CarJyU. 
 
 genealogical inqu: 
 
 where we are told that Tcufelsdrockh had written "long 
 historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, 
 hen is far as Henry the Fowler : the whole of 
 
 which we pass over, not without silent astonishment." He 
 was unquestionably proud oi '- and an For 
 
 indeed," he s.i \ alter Shandy often insisted, thei 
 
 much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest 
 Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting ME : to which it 
 thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there arc Names 
 that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very r 
 
 III. DAVID HOPE OF GLASG< 
 
 The laic Mr David Hope, men' ;.nv, who died 
 
 i fine collection of letters written to 
 
 him by Carlylc when they were young men. Mr Hope was 
 
 a n< ny" 
 
 n, and he and young Ten :c great 
 
 Hope's house in Windsor 
 
 Place his home when he v. isgow. A friend, who 
 
 once saw some of the '-ers that one had been 
 
 .is sojoun 
 with a i 
 
 urgent cr .d the Tobacco, or there will be a famine 
 
 in t be obliged to use t t leaves 
 
 if you don't sec to ! the old com; 
 
 you sec. '\\iiv should a living man CD: 
 use hSs a fool? 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aird, Thomas, 185, 249, 341. 
 Aitken, Mary Carlyle, 315. 
 Aitken, Mrs, ot Dumfries, 285. 
 Alexander, Rev. Thos., 344. 
 Allingham, Win., 70, 248, 321, 
 
 357- 
 America, 139, 144, 174, 252, 
 
 293, SOS- 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, 190, 294. 
 Aristocracy, Carlyle's eulogy of 
 
 the British, 304. 
 Arnold, Dr, 221. 
 Arnott, Dr, of Ecclefechan, 24. 
 Ashburton, Lady, 285, 329. 
 Athen&um, The, 202, 250, 361. 
 
 Ballantyne, Thomas, 204, 250, 
 
 251. 
 
 Bayne, Dr P., 269, 308. 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, 7, 271, 273, 
 
 3" 312. 
 
 Blackie, Prof., 158. 
 Blackwodd's Magazine, 81, 118, 
 
 144, 202. 
 
 Boehm, J. E., 317, 374, 392. 
 Boner, Charles, 215, 249, 266. 
 Braid, Betty, 283. 
 Brewster, Sir David, 68, 72, 73. 
 Broune, Dr Jas., 117. 
 Browning, Robt., 177. , 
 Browning, Mrs, 357. 
 Bruce, Robert the, 5. 
 Buchanan, David, of Sydney, 
 
 59, 217. 
 
 Buchanan, Robt., 189. 
 Buller, Charles, 82, 85, 228. 
 
 Bunsen, Baron, 177. 
 Burlesques of Carlyle's style, 
 
 253- 
 
 Burns, Robt., n, 40, 47, 105, 
 108, 118, 128, 146, 342, 347. 
 
 Burns, Rev. Dr Thomas, 39. 
 
 Campbell, Dr Macleod, 180, 
 197, 260. 
 
 Candlish, Dr, 316. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his genealogy, 
 4, 397 ; birth of, 1 1 ; his 
 father, 13 ; his mother, 19 ; 
 anecdotes of childhood, 31 ; 
 of his boyhood, 103 ; his 
 schoolmasters, 35 ; goes to 
 University, 50 ; turns from 
 pulpit, 55 ; his dyspepsia, 57 ; 
 his poverty in youth, 59 ; be- 
 comes schoolmaster, 62 ; ap- 
 plies for chair of astronomy, 
 69 ; first literary productions, 
 70 ; his poems, 73 ; Life of 
 Schiller, 78, 82 ; translates 
 Legendre's Geometry and 
 Wilhelm Meister, 79; Speci- 
 mens of German Romance, 
 83 ; marriage, 90 ; first so- 
 journ in London, 104 ; settle- 
 ment at Craigenputtoch, 105 ; 
 letter to Goethe, 106 ; Essays 
 in Edinburgh J\evieiv, 120 ; 
 his essay on Burns, 128 ; 
 
 ASartor Resartus, 134; first 
 
 /.meeting with Emerson, 143 ; 
 his relatives, 153; a letter of 
 the cholera year, 155; settles 
 
400 
 
 TJwmas Carfyle. 
 
 in Chelsea, 157 ; lectures, 165; 
 : political 
 
 well, 206; 1. :im Ki 
 
 256; Sterling's evuy n, 261 ; 
 Frederick the Great, 262 ; 
 Lord Rector of i 
 '>'. 273 ; a 1 
 grave, 289 ; 1 
 ingS 291 : 
 
 .ings of Norway, 
 320 . >2i ; 
 
 persona] reminiscences of. 
 at his niece's wedding, 350; 
 a S xilboy's vi 
 
 363 ; his death, 367 ; funeral, 
 374 ; influence on literature, 
 381 K 
 
 ciplinc, 384 ; his letters, 386 ; 
 rtraits of, 387. 
 
 anecdote of her 
 
 corge 
 of, 
 
 Charlotte .98; 
 
 verses f> to, 109; 
 
 163, 195, 261 Vath, 
 
 277 280. 
 
 .:se of, 4 ; 
 
 Alexander . 
 
 346; Thomas, Seek, 
 
 15 B A., 74, 347. 
 
 37'' 
 
 -98, 337, 346; the 
 396. 
 ;i6. 
 52. 
 213. 
 
 Coltr .'59. 
 
 ', Carlyle as a, 
 Con way, Moncurc D., 252, 293, 
 
 Cooper, Thot., 240. 
 Cow; 214. 
 
 Craij: i 
 
 'Ian, 227. 
 
 Cuylcr's, Dr, sketch of Carlyle, 
 362. 
 
 Darwinism, Carlyle on, 328. 
 
 ens, Chas., 99, 179,304. 
 Drumwhinn Bridge, the Poem 
 229. 
 
 ties, receives bell 
 \V. dc Carlyle, 7; the cholera 
 
 153. 
 
 Ecclcfcchan, country a: 
 Lord Scrope at, 8 ; 23, . % 
 
 50, 152. 
 George, 357. 
 
 n, Ralph Waldo, 139, 
 140, 142, 143, 190, 253, 303, 
 
 - 3*4 
 
 'iomas, 150, 1 80, 276, 
 283, 25, 316, 339, 344. 
 Everett, Alex. H., 140. 
 Exttmimr Newspaper, 166, 199, 
 
 237, 243, 24$. 
 
 Eyre, Governor, Carlylc's eu- 
 logy of, 297. 
 
 Forbes, Archibald, 311. 
 For- 213, 241, 249. 
 
 :' 
 
 . Carlyle 
 .>o6. 
 
 ' / Maganns, 70, 1 20, 1 34, 
 138, 144, 320, 387. 
 Free Kirk, Carlylc's definition 
 
 of, 350. 
 Froude, J. A., 161, 284, 286, 
 
 >75- 
 Fuller, Margaret, 176, 195, 282. 
 
 Gallows, Carlylc's l*licf in the, 
 
 255- 
 Germany, 84, 165, 266, 
 
 ?o6. 317. 339- 
 
 in, George, 146, 
 346. 
 Gladstone, ' 190, 316, 
 
 (i.'.luir 
 
 209. 
 
 Goethe, 82, 99, 106, 227, 316. 
 Grant, James, 109, 166, 
 191, 
 
Index. 
 
 401 
 
 Haddington, Knox Memorial 
 
 at, 286 ; Carlyle's visit to in 
 
 old age, 289. 
 Hamilton, Sir Wm., 105, 114, 
 
 152, 162, 164, 179. 
 Ha're, Archdeacon, 257. 
 I Hero-Worship, 191. 
 History, Carlyle as a writer of, 
 
 212, 218. 
 
 Hoddam, burial-ground in, 9. 
 Hodgson, Wm., of Cupar-Fife, 
 
 66, 249, 254, 255, 292. 
 Holbeach, Henry, 270. 
 Home, R. H., 185, 236. 
 Houghton, Lord, 359. 
 Howies of Lochgoin, The, 334. 
 Hughes, Thomas, 300. 
 Hunt, Leigh, 161, 167, 169, 
 
 223, 258. 
 
 Hunter, John Kelso, 341. 
 Huntingdon, 208, 337. 
 
 Inglis, Henry, 114. 
 
 Inglis, Rev. Wm., of Dumfries, 
 
 47- 
 
 Ireland, Carlyle's newspaper ar- 
 ticles on, 245. 
 
 Irving, Edward, 8, 334, 18, 49, 
 64, 66, 82, 91, 98, 104, 286, 
 
 334, 337- 
 Irving, Joseph, 217. 
 
 Jamaica Massacre, 294. 
 
 Japp, LL.D., A., Hay, 77, 8l, 
 
 no. 
 
 Jeffrey, Lord, 79, 114, 121. 
 Johnson, Dr, 102. 
 Johnston, Rev. John, of Eccle- 
 
 fechan, 42, 43. 
 Johnston, Rev. John, Carlyle's 
 
 tutor, 37, 38. 
 Jones, Ernest, 358. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 150,294,301. 
 Kirkcaldy, Carlyle's visit to in 
 
 1874, 347. 
 Knox, John, 263, 275, 286 ; his 
 
 daughter Elizabeth, 94. 
 
 Laing, David, 95. 
 Lamb, Charles, 139, 330. 
 Landor, W. S., 179, 242. 
 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets, 199. 
 
 ^awrie's, Thomas, recollections 
 of Carlyle, 325. 
 
 Lawson of Selkirk, Prof., por- 
 trait of by Carlyle, 44. 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 329, 375. 
 
 Leslie, Prof., 63. 
 
 Lewes, Geo. H., 266. 
 
 London Library, 173, 212. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, Carlyle on, 285. 
 
 Lowell, J. Russell, 254, 357, 375. 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 77, 333. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 209, 223, 258, 
 
 269. 
 
 Maccall, Wm., 250. 
 Mackenzie, Henry, 129. 
 Maclaren, Charles, 117. 
 Macready, W. C., 177. 
 Maginn, Dr, 81. 
 Martineau, Harriet, 164, 249, 
 
 355- 
 Masson, David, 212, 220, 248, 
 
 249. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 150. 
 Maxwell, Sir W. Stirling, 276. 
 Mazzini, Joseph, 193, 359. 
 Milburn, Rev. W. H., 148, 183. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 105, 138, 180, 
 
 190, 234, 239, 261, 291, 302. 
 Miller, Hugh, 226, 383. 
 Mitford, Mary Russell, 180,215, 
 
 216, 357- 
 Monuments, Carlyle's support of 
 
 Wallace and Bruce, 288. 
 Morgan, Prof. De, 68. 
 Morley, John, 380. 
 Mozley, Canon, 219. 
 Museum, British, 212. 
 
 Napier, Sir Charles, hero of 
 
 Scinde, 264. 
 Napier, Macvey, 136. 
 Napoleon III., 198, 277. 
 Negro Question, Carlyle on, 291. 
 Newspapers, Carlyle on, 244. 
 
 Paisley, Carlyle at, 76. 
 Peals of Ecclefechan, The, 26. 
 Permissive Bill, Carlyle a sup- 
 porter of, 247. 
 Popery, Carlyle on, 170. 
 
 2 C 
 
402 
 
 Thomas ( 
 
 ey, Thos - >, 80, 
 
 105, 109, i 
 
 Kac, Robt., 246. 
 
 ", Leopold von, 12. 
 Robinson. Crabb, 178. 
 
 m, John, 294. 296, joi, 
 
 Rusiell, Lady\Vm.,97 
 238, 292. 
 
 Scotland, scenery o 
 attachment to, 34 
 
 Sa>fsman, The, 8 
 287, 300. 
 
 3 ; Carlylc's 
 0. 
 , 1 1 6, 136, 
 
 , 8$, 216, 
 
 ion Kirk, Carlyle's 
 ne< 
 
 103. 
 ca, 268. 
 
 275. 
 
 Newspaper, 165, 199, 
 
 384. 
 ran, 46, 264, 3 '4, 3 6 7, 
 
 203, 219. 
 ^07, 256, 291. 
 176. 
 
 Swan, Provost, of Kirkcaldy, 
 65. 359- 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon 
 Symington, A. J. f 329. 
 
 Taylor, \Y 
 Tennyion, A 
 
 t to, 
 268. 
 I 
 
 Newspa; 181, 
 
 186, 198, 250, 259. 
 
 Carlylc of, 7. 
 Turk, Carlylr . n the. 
 Two Hundred and 1- .::> Years 
 
 Ago, 229. 
 
 Vaughan, Dr Robert, on ( 
 209. 
 
 Queen, 324, 362. 
 
 93- 
 
 'l mother- 
 in 
 
 ' -' % 151, l8o, 
 
 
 
 M., 161, 393. 
 
 
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