UCSB LIBRARY
 
 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 1849.
 
 THOMAS CAELTLE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FIKST FOKTY YEAKS OF HIS LIFE 
 1795-1835 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TWO VOLUMES ix oyj-: 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1882
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 MR. CARLYLE expressed a desire in his will that of him no 
 biography should be written. I find the same reluctance in hid 
 Journal. No one, he said, was likely to understand a history, 
 the secret of which was unknown to his closest friends. He 
 hoped that his wishes would be respected. 
 
 Partly to take the place of a biography of himself, and part- 
 ly for other reasons, he collected the letters of his wife letters 
 which covered the whole period of his life in London to the 
 date of her death, when his own active work was finished. He 
 prepared them for publication, adding notes and introductory 
 explanations, as the last sacred duty which remained to him in 
 the world. He intended it as a monument to a character of 
 extreme beauty ; while it would tell the public as much about 
 himself as it could reasonably expect to learn. 
 
 These letters he placed in my hands eleven years ago, with 
 materials for an Introduction which he was himself unable to 
 complete. He could do no more with it, he said. He could 
 not make up his mind to direct positively the publication even 
 of the letters themselves. He wished them to be published, 
 but he left the decision to myself; and when I was reluctant 
 to undertake the sole responsibility, he said that, if I was in 
 doubt when the time came, I might consult his brother John 
 and his friend Mr. Forster. 
 
 Had he rested here, my duty would have been clear. The 
 collection of letters, with the Memoir of Mrs. Carlyle which 
 was to form part of the Introduction, would have been consid- 
 ered among us, and would have been either published or sup- 
 pressed, as we might jointly determine. Mr. Carlyle's remain- 
 ing papers would have been sealed up after his death, and by 
 me at least no use would have been made of them. 
 
 Two years later, however, soon after he had made his will, 
 Carlyle discovered that, whether he wished it or not, a life, or 
 perhaps various lives, of himself would certainly appear when
 
 Ti PREFACE. 
 
 he was gone. When a man has exercised a large influence on 
 the minds of his contemporaries, the world requires to know 
 whether his own actions have corresponded with his teaching, 
 and whether his moral and personal character entitles him to 
 confidence. This- is not idle curiosity ; it is a legitimate de- 
 mand. In proportion to a man's greatness is the scrutiny to 
 which his conduct is submitted. Byron, Burns, Scott, Shelley, 
 Rousseau, Voltaire, Goethe, Pope, Swift, are but instances, to 
 which a hundred others might be added, showing that the pub- 
 lic will not be satisfied without sifting the history of its men 
 of genius to the last grain of fact which can be ascertained 
 about them. The publicity of their private lives has been, is, 
 and will be, either the reward or the penalty of their intellect- 
 ual distinction. Carlyle knew that he could not escape. Since 
 a " Life " of him there would certainly be, he wished it to be as 
 authentic as possible. Besides the Memoir of Mrs. Carlyle, he 
 had written several others, mainly autobiographical, not dis- 
 tinctly to be printed, but with no fixed purpose that they 
 should not be printed. These, with his journals and the whole 
 of his correspondence, he made over to me, with unfettered 
 discretion to use in any way that I might think good. 
 
 In the papers thus in my possession, Carlyle's history, ex- 
 ternal and spiritual, lay out before me as in a map. By re- 
 casting the entire material, by selecting chosen passages out 
 of his own and his wife's letters, by exhibiting the fair and 
 beautiful side of the story only, it would have been easy, with- 
 out suppressing a single material point, to draw a picture of a 
 faultless character. When the devil's advocate has said his 
 worst against Carlyle, he leaves a figure still of unblemished 
 integrity, purity, loftiness of purpose, and inflexible resolution 
 to do right, as of a man living consciously tinder his Maker's 
 eye, and with his thoughts fixed on the account which he would 
 have to render of his talents. 
 
 Of a person of whom malice must acknowledge so much as 
 this, the prickly aspects might fairly be passed by in silence ; 
 and if I had studied my own comfort or the pleasure of my 
 immediate readers, I should have produced a portrait as agree- 
 able, and at least as faithful, as those of the favored saints in 
 the Catholic calendar. But it would have been a portrait with- 
 out individuality an ideal, or, in other words, an "idol," to 
 be worshipped one day and thrown away the next. Least of 
 all men could such idealizing be ventured with Carlyle, to
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 whom untruth of any kind was abominable. If he was to be 
 known at all, he chose to be known as he was, with his angu- 
 larities, his sharp speeches, his special peculiarities, meritorious 
 or unmeritorious, precisely as they had actually been. He has 
 himself laid down the conditions under which a biographer 
 must do his work if he would do it honestly, without the fear 
 of man before him ; and in dealing with Carlyle's own mem- 
 ory I have felt myself bound to conform to his own rule. He 
 shall speak for himself. I extract a passage from his review 
 of Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott.'" 
 
 " One thing we hear greatly blamed in Mr. Lockhart, that 
 he has been too communicative, indiscreet, and has recorded 
 much that ought to have lain suppressed. Persons are men- 
 tioned, and circumstances not always of an ornamental sort. 
 It would appear that there is far less reticence than was looked 
 for ! Various persons, name and surname, have ' received pain.' 
 Nay, the very hero of the biography is rendered unheroic ; 
 unornamental facts of him, and of those he had to do with, 
 being set forth in plain English : hence ' personality,' ' indis- 
 cretion,' or worse ' sanctities of private life,' etc. How deli- 
 cate, decent, is English biography, bless its mealy mouth ! A 
 Damocles' sword of Respectability hangs forever over the poor 
 English life-writer (as it does over poor English life in general), 
 and reduces him to the verge of paralysis. Thus it has been 
 said, ' There are no English lives worth reading, except those 
 of players, who, \>y the nature of the case, have bidden re- 
 spectability good-day.' The English biographer has long felt 
 that if in writing his biography he wrote down anything that 
 could by possibility offend any man, he had written wrong. 
 The plain consequence was that, properly speaking, no biog- 
 raphy whatever could be produced. The poor biographer, 
 having the fear not of God before his eyes, was obliged to re- 
 tire as it were into vacuum, and write in the most melancholy 
 straitened manner, with only vacuum for a result. Vain that 
 he wrote, and that we kept reading volume on volume. There 
 was no biography, but some vague ghost of a biography, white, 
 stainless, without feature or substance ; vacuum as we say, and 
 wind and shadow. ... Of all the praises copiously bestowed on 
 Mr. Lockhart's work there is none in reality so creditable to 
 him as this same censure which has also been pretty copious. 
 
 "Miscellanies," vol. v. p. 221 sqq.
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 It is a censure better than a good many praises. He is found 
 guilty of having said this and that, calculated not to be entire- 
 ly pleasant to this man and that ; in other words, calculated to 
 give him and the thing he worked in a living set of features, 
 not to leave him vague in the white beatified ghost condition. 
 Several men, as we hear, cry out, 'See, there is something 
 written not entirely pleasant to me !' Good friend, it is pity ; 
 but who can help it? They that will crowd about bonfires 
 may sometimes very fairly get their beards singed ; it is the 
 price they pay for such illumination ; natural twilight is safe 
 and free to all. For our part we hope all manner of biogra- 
 phies that are written in England will henceforth be written 
 so. If it is fit that they be written otherwise, then it is still 
 fitter that they be not written at all. To produce not things, 
 but the ghosts of things, can never be the duty of man. . . . 
 The biographer has this problem set before him : to delineate 
 a likeness of the earthly pilgrimage of a man. He will com- 
 pute well what profit is in it, and what disprofit ; under which 
 latter head this of offending any of his fellow-creatures will 
 surely not be forgotten. Nay, this may so swell the disprofit 
 side of his account, that many an enterprise of biography other- 
 wise promising shall require to be renounced. But once taken 
 up, the rule before all rules is to do it, not to do the ghost of it. 
 In speaking of the man and men he has to do with, he will of 
 course keep all his charities about him, but all bis eyes open. 
 Far be it from him to set down aught untrue; nay, not to ab- 
 stain from, and leave in oblivion, much that is true. But 
 having found a thing or things essential for his subject, and 
 well computed the for and against, he will in very deed set 
 down such thing or things, nothing doubting, having, we may 
 say, the fear of God before his eyes, and no other fear what- 
 ever. Censure the biographer's prudence; dissent from the 
 computation he made, or agree with it; be all malice of his, 
 be all falsehood, nay, be all offensive avoidable inaccuracy con- 
 demned and consumed; but know that by this plan only, exe- 
 cuted as was possible, could the biographer hope to make a 
 biography; and blame him not that he did what it had been 
 the worst fault not to do. ... The other censure of Scott be- 
 ing made unheroic springs from the same stem, and is perhaps 
 a still more wonderful flower of it Your true hero must 
 have no features, but be a wliite, stainless, impersonal ghost 
 hero ! But connected with this, there is an hypothesis now
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 current that Mr. Lockhart at heart has a dislike to Scott, 
 and has done his best in an underhand treacherous manner 
 to dis-hero him ! Such hypothesis is actually current. He 
 that has ears may hear it now and then on which astounding 
 hypothesis if a word must be said, it can only be an apology 
 for silence. If Mr. Lockhart is fairly chargeable with any rad- 
 ical defect, if on any side his insight entirely fails him, it seems 
 even to be in this, that Scott is altogether lovely to him, that 
 Scott's greatness spreads out before him on all hands beyond 
 reach of eye, that his very faults become beautiful, and that of 
 his worth there is no measure." 
 
 I will make no comment on this passage farther than to say 
 that I have considered the principles here laid down by Car- 
 lyle to be strictly obligatory upon myself in dealing with his 
 own remains. The free judgments which he passed on men 
 and things were part of himself, and I have not felt myself at 
 liberty to suppress them. Remarks which could injure any 
 man and very few such ever fell from Carlyle's lips I omit, 
 except where indispensable. Remarks which are merely legit- 
 imate expressions of opinion I leave for the most part as they 
 stand. As an illustration of his own wishes on this subject, I 
 may mention that I consulted him about a passage in one of 
 Mrs. Carlyle's letters describing an eminent living person. Her 
 judgment was more just than flattering, and I doubted the 
 prudence of printing it. Carlyle merely said, " It will do him 
 no harm to know what a sensible woman thought of him." 
 
 As to the biography generally, I found that I could not my- 
 self write a formal Life of Carlyle within measurable compass 
 without taking to pieces his own Memoirs and the collection 
 of Mrs. Carlyle's letters ; and this I could not think it right to 
 attempt. Mr. Forster and John Carlyle having both died, the 
 responsibility was left entirely to myself. A few weeks before 
 Mrs. Carlyle's death, he asked me what I meant to do. I told 
 him that I proposed to publish the Memoirs as soon as he was 
 gone those which form the two volumes of the "Reminis- 
 cences." Afterwards I said that I would publish the letters 
 about which I knew him to be most anxious. He gave his full 
 assent, merely adding that he trusted everything to me. The 
 Memoirs, he thought, had better appear immediately on his de- 
 parture. He expected that people would then be talking about 
 him, and that it would be well for them to have something 
 authentic to guide them.
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 These points being determined, 'the remainder of my task 
 became simplified. Mrs. Carlyle's letters are a better history 
 of the London life of herself and her husband than could be 
 written either by me or by any one. The connecting narrative 
 is Carlyle's own, and to meddle with his work would be to 
 spoil it. It was thus left to me to supply an account of his 
 early life in Scotland, the greater part of which I had written 
 while he was alive, and which is contained in the present vol- 
 umes. The publication of the letters will follow at no dis- 
 tant period. Afterwards, if I live to do it, I shall add a brief 
 account of his last years, when I was in constant intercourse 
 with him. 
 
 It may be said that I shall have thus produced no " Life," 
 but only the materials for a " Life." That is true. But I be- 
 lieve that I shall have given, notwithstanding, a real picture as 
 far as it goes ; and an adequate estimate of Carlyle's work in 
 this world is not at present possible. He was a teacher and a 
 prophet in the Jewish sense of the word. The prophecies of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah have become a part of the permanent 
 spiritual inheritance of mankind, because events proved that 
 they had interpreted correctly the signs of their own times, 
 and their prophecies were fulfilled. Carlyle, like them, be- 
 lieved that he had a special message to deliver to the present 
 age. Whether he was correct in that belief, and whether his 
 message was a true message, remains to be seen. He has told 
 us that our most cherished ideas of political liberty, with their 
 kindred corollaries, are mere illusions, and that the progress 
 which has seemed to go along with them is a progress towards 
 anarchy and social dissolution. If he was wrong, he has mis- 
 used his powers. The principles of his teaching are false. 
 He has offered himself as a guide upon a road of which he 
 had no knowledge ; and his own desire for himself would be 
 the speediest oblivion both of his person and his works. If, 
 on the other hand, he has been right ; if, like his great prede- 
 cessors, he has read truly the tendencies of this modern age 
 of ours, and his teaching is authenticated by facts, then Car- 
 lyle, too, will take his place among the inspired seers, and he 
 will shine on, another fixed star in the intellectual sky. 
 
 Time only can show how this will be : 
 afiipai tTTiXotTroi fidprvpts
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 II. A.D. 1805. JET. 10 8 
 
 III. A.D. 1814. ^ET. 19 19 
 
 IV. A.D. 1817. uET. 22 24 
 
 V. A.D. 1818. ^ET. 23 30 
 
 VI. A.D. 1819. ^Ex. 24 40 
 
 VII. A.D. 1820. ^ET. 25 51 
 
 VIII. A.D. 1821. ^Ex. 26 61 
 
 IX. A.D. 1822. .Ex. 27 80 
 
 X. A.D. 1822. ^Ex. 27 86 
 
 XI. A.D. 1823. ^ET. 28 102 
 
 XII. A.D. 1823. JE.T. 28 112 
 
 XIII. A.D. 1824. ^ET. 29 124 
 
 XIV. A.D. 1824. ^Er. 29 133 
 
 XV. A.D. 1824. ^ET. 29 146 
 
 XVI. A.D. 1825. ^Er. 30 156
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAG1I 
 
 XVII. A.D. 1825. JET. 30 169 
 
 XVIII. A.D. 1825. JET. 30 182 
 
 XIX. A.D. 1826. ^ET. 31 191 
 
 XX. A.D. 1826. JET. 31 ... .' N 214 
 
 XXI. A.D. 1827. ^Ex. 32 228 
 
 XXII. A.D. 1827. JET. 32 . . 242 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE, A.D. 1849 Frontispiece 
 
 ECCLEFECHAN To face page 1 
 
 MAINHILL " " "19 
 
 SCOTSBRIO ... " " " 191
 
 LIFE 
 
 OP 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. ^ 
 
 THE river Annan, rising above Moffat in Hartfell, descends from 
 the mountains through a valley, gradually widening and spreading 
 out, as the fells are left behind, into the rich and well-cultivated 
 district known as Annandale. Picturesque and broken in the up- 
 per part of its course, the stream, when it reaches the level country, 
 steals slowly among meadows and undulating wooded hills, till at 
 the end of forty miles it falls into the Solway at Annan town. An- 
 nandale, famous always for its pasturage, suffered especially be- 
 fore the union of the kingdoms from border forays, the effects of 
 which were long to be traced in a certain wildness of disposition 
 in the inhabitants. Dumfriesshire, to which it belongs, was sternly 
 Cameronian. Stories of the persecutions survived in the farm- 
 houses as their most treasured historical traditions. Cameronian 
 congregations lingered till the beginning of the present century, 
 when they merged in other bodies of seceders from the established 
 religion. 
 
 In its hard fight for spiritual freedom Scotch Protestantism lost 
 respect for kings and nobles, and looked to Christ rather than to 
 earthly rulers ; but before the Reformation all Scotland was clan- 
 nish or feudal ; and the Dumfriesshire yeomanry, like the rest, were 
 organized under great noble families, whose pennon they followed, 
 whose name they bore, and the remotest kindred with which, even 
 to a tenth generation, they were proud to claim. Among the fami- 
 lies of the western border the Carlyles were not the least distinguish- 
 ed. They were originally English, and were called probably after Car- 
 lisle town. They came to Annandale with the Bruces in the time of 
 David the Second. A Sir John Carlyle was created Lord Carlyle of 
 Torthorwald in reward for a beating which he had given the Eng- 
 lish at Annan. Michael, the fourth lord, signed the Association 
 Bond among the Protestant lords when Queen Mary was sent to 
 Lochleven, being the only one among them, it was observed, who
 
 2 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 could not write his name. Their work was rough. They were 
 rough men themselves, and with the change of times their impor- 
 tance declined. The title lapsed, the estates were dissipated in law- 
 suits, and by the middle of the last century nothing remained of the 
 Carlyles but one or two households in the neighborhood of Burns- 
 wark, who had inherited the name either through the adoption by 
 their forefathers of the name of their leader, or by some descent of 
 blood which had trickled down through younger sons. ' 
 
 In one of these families, in a house which his father, who was a 
 mason, had built with his own hands, Thomas Carlyle was born on 
 December 4, 1795. Ecclefechan, where his father lived, is a small 
 market town on the east side of Annandale, six miles inland from 
 the Sol way, and about sixteen on the great north road from Carlisle.' 3 
 It consists of a single street, down one side of which, at that time, 
 ran an open brook. The aspect, like that of most Scotch towns, is 
 cold, but clean and orderly, with an air of thrifty comfort. The 
 houses are plain, that in which the Carlyles lived alone having pre- 
 tensions to originality. In appearance one, it is really double, a cen- 
 tral arch dividing it. James Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle's father, occu- 
 pied one part. His brother, who was his partner in his trade, lived 
 in the other. 
 
 Of their ancestors they knew nothing beyond the second genera- 
 tion. Tradition said that they had been long settled as farmers at 
 Burrens, the Roman station at Middlebie (two miles from Eccle- 
 fechan). One of them, it was said, had been unjustly hanged on 
 pretext of border cattle-stealing. The case was so cruel that the 
 farm had been given as some compensation to the widow, and the 
 family had continued to possess it till their title was questioned, 
 and they were turned out by the Duke of Queensberry. Whether 
 this story was true or not, it is certain that James Carlyle's grand- 
 mother lived at Middlebie in extreme poverty, and that she died 
 in the early part of the last century, leaving two sons. Thom- 
 as, the elder, was a carpenter, worked for some time at Lancaster, 
 came home afterwards, and saw the Highlanders pass through Ec- 
 clefechan in 1745 on their way to England. Leaving his trade, he 
 settled at a small farm called Brownknowe, near Burnswark Hill, 
 and, marrying a certain Mary Gillespie, produced four sons and two 
 daughters. Of these sons James Carlyle was the second. The house- 
 
 1 When Carlyle became famous, a Dumfries antiquary traced his ancestry with ap- 
 parent success through ten generations to the first Lord torthonvald. There was mnrh 
 laughter about it in the house in Cheyne Row, but Carlyle was inclined to think on the 
 whole that the descent was real. 
 
 * The usually received etymology of Ecclefechan is that it is the same as Kirkfechan, 
 Church of St. Fechanus, an Irish saint supposed to have come to Annandale in the sev- 
 enth century ; but Fechan is a not unusual termination in Welsh, and means ' ' small, " 
 as in Llaufairfeehan.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 
 
 hold life was in a high degree disorderly. Old Thomas Carlyle was 
 formed after the border type, more given to fighting and wild ad- 
 venture than to patient industry. "He did not drink," his grand- 
 son says, "but he was a fiery man, irascible, indomitable, of the 
 toughness and springiness of steel. An old market brawl, called 
 Ecclefechan dog-light, in which he was a principal, survives in tra- 
 dition to this day." 1 He was proud, poor, and discontented, leav- 
 ing his family for the most part to shift for themselves. They 
 were often without food or fuel ; his sons were dressed in breeks 
 made mostly of leather. 
 
 "They had to scramble [Carlyle says], scraffle for their very 
 clothes and food. They knit, they thatched for hire, they hunted. 
 My father tried all these things almost in boyhood. Eve^y dale and 
 burngate and cleugh of that district he had traversed seeking hares 
 and the like. He used to talk of these pilgrimages. Once I remem- 
 ber his gun-flint was tied on with a hatband. He was a real hunter 
 like a wild Indian from necessity. The hare's flesh was food. Hare- 
 skins at sixpence each would accumulate into the purchase money 
 of a coat. His hunting years were not useless to him. Misery was 
 early training the rugged boy into a stoic, that one day he might be 
 the assurancex)f a Scottish man. " 
 
 "Travelling tinkers," "Highland drovers," and such like were 
 occasional guests at Brownknowe. " Sandy Macleod, a pensioned 
 soldier who had served under Wolfe, lived in an adjoining cottage, 
 and had stories to tell of his adventures." Old Thomas Carlyle, not- 
 withstanding his rough, careless ways, was not without cultivation. 
 He studied " Anson's Voyages," and in his old age, strange to say, 
 when his sons were growing into young men, he would sit with a 
 neighbor over the fire, reading, much to their scandal, the "Arabian 
 Nights." They had become, James Carlyle especially, and his 
 brother through him, serious lads, and they were shocked to see two 
 old men occupied on the edge of the grave with such idle vanities. 
 
 Religion had been introduced into the house through another 
 singular figure, John Orr, the school-master of Hoddam, who was 
 also by trade a shoemaker. School-mastering in those days fell to 
 persons of clever, irregular habits, who took to it from taste partly, 
 and also because other forms of business did not answer with them. 
 Orr was a man of strong pious tendencies, but was given to drink. 
 He would disappear for weeks into pothouses, and then come back 
 to his friends shattered and remorseful. He, too, was a friend and 
 visitor at Brownknowe, teaching the boys by day, sleeping in the 
 room with them at night, and discussing arithmetical problems with 
 their father. From him James Carlyle gained such knowledge as 
 
 1 This, it should be said, was written fifty years ago.
 
 4 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 he had, part of it a knowledge of the Bible, which became the guid- 
 ing principle of his life. The effect was soon visible on a remark- 
 able occasion. While he was still a boy, he and three of his com- 
 panions had met to play cards. There was some disagreement, 
 among them, when James Carlyle said that they were fools and 
 worse for quarrelling over a probably sinful amusement. They 
 threw the cards into the fire, and perhaps no one of the four, certain- 
 ly not James Carlyle, ever touched a card again. Hitherto he and 
 his brother had gleaned a subsistence on the skirts of settled life. 
 They were now to find an entrance into regular occupation. James 
 Carlyle was born in 1757. In 1773, when he was sixteen, a certain 
 William Brown, a mason from Peebles, came into Annandale, be- 
 came acquainted with the Carlyles, and married Thomas Carlyle's 
 eldest daughter Fanny. He took her brothers as apprentices, and 
 they became known before long as the most skilful and diligent 
 workmen in the neighborhood. James, though not the eldest, had 
 the strongest character, and guided the rest. " They were noted for 
 their brotherly affection and coherence." They all prospered.- They 
 were noted also for their hard sayings, and it must be said also, in 
 their early manhood, for "hard strikings." They were warmly 
 liked by those near them ; " by those at a distance they were view- 
 ed as something dangerous to meddle with, something not to be 
 meddled with." 
 
 James Carlyle never spoke with pleasure of his young days, re- 
 garding them "as days of folly, perhaps sinful days;" but it was 
 well known that he was strictly temperate, pure, abstemious, prudent, 
 and industrious. Feared he was from his promptness of hand, but 
 never aggressive, and using his strength only to put down rudeness 
 and violence. "On one occasion," says Carlyle, "a huge peasant 
 was rudely insulting and defying the party my father belonged to. 
 The other quailed, and he bore it till he could bear it no longer, but 
 clutched his rough adversary by the two flanks, swung him with 
 ireful force round in the air, hitting his feet against some open door, 
 and hurled him to a distance, supine, lamed, vanquished, and utterly 
 humbled. He would say of such things, ' I am wae to think of it ' 
 wae from repentance. Happy he who has nothing worse to re- 
 pent of !" 
 
 The apprenticeship over, the brothers began work on their own 
 account, and with marked success ; James Carlyle taking the lead. 
 He built, as has been already said, a house for himself, which still 
 stands in the street of Ecclefechan. His brothers occupied one part 
 of it, he himself the other ; and his father, the old Thomas, life now 
 wearing out, came in from Brownknowe to live with them. James, 
 perhaps the others, but James decisively, became an avowedly re- 
 ligious man. He had a maternal uncle, one Robert Brand, whose
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 5 
 
 advice and example influenced him in this matter. Brand was a 
 "vigorous religionist," of strict Presbyterian type. From him 
 James Carlyle received a definite faith, and made his profession as a 
 "Burgher," a seceding sect which had separated from the Establish- 
 ment as insufficiently in earnest for them. They had their humble 
 meeting-house, "thatched with heath;" and for minister a certain 
 John Johnstone, from whom Carlyle himself learned afterwards his 
 first Latin ; "the priestliest man," he says, "I ever under any eccle- 
 siastical guise was privileged to look upon." 
 
 " This peasant union, this little heath-thatched house, this simple 
 evangelist, together constituted properly the church of that district; 
 they were the blessing and the saving of many; on me too their pious 
 heaven-sent influences still rest and live. There was in those days 
 a 'teacher of the people.' He sleeps not far from my father who 
 built his monument in the Ecclefechan church-yard, the Teacher 
 and the Taught. Blessed, I again say, are the dead that die in the 
 Lord. " 
 
 In 1791, having then a house of his own, James Carlyle married a 
 distant cousin of the same name, Janet Carlyle. They had one son, 
 John, and then she died of fever. Her long fair hair, which had 
 been cut off in her illness, remained as a memorial of her in a 
 drawer, into which the children afterwards looked with wondering 
 awe. Two years after the husband married again Margaret Aitken, 
 "a woman," says Carlyle, "of to me the fairest descent, that of the 
 pious, the just, and the wise." Her character will unfold itself as 
 the story goes on. Thomas Carlyle was her first child, born Decem- 
 ber 4, 1795 ; she lived to see him at the height of his fame, known, 
 and honored wherever the English language was spoken. To her 
 care " for body and soul " he never ceased to say that "he owed end- 
 less gratitude." After Thomas came eight others, three sons and 
 five daughters, one of whom, Janet, so called after the first wife, 
 died when she was a few months old. 
 
 The family was prosperous, as Ecclefechan working life under- 
 stood prosperity. In one year, his best, James Carlyle made in his 
 business as much as 100. At worst he earned an artisan's sub- 
 stantial wages, and was thrifty and prudent. The children, as they 
 passed out of infancy, ran about barefoot, but were otherwise clean- 
 ly clothed, and fed on oatmeal, milk, and potatoes. Our Carlyle 
 learned to read from his mother too early for distinct remembrance; 
 when he was five his father taught him arithmetic, and sent him 
 with the other village boys to school. Like the Carlyles generally, 
 he had a violent temper. John, the son of the first marriage, lived 
 usually with his grandfather, but came occasionally to visit his 
 parents. Carlyle's earliest recollection is of throwing his little 
 brown stool at his brother in a mad passion of rage, when he was
 
 C LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 scarcely more than two years old, breaking a leg of it, and "feeling 
 for the first time the united pangs of loss and remorse." The next 
 impression which most affected him was the small round heap under 
 the sheet upon a bed where his little sister lay dead. Death, too, he 
 made acquaintance with in another memorable form. His father's 
 eldest brother John died. "The day before his funeral, an ill-be- 
 having servant-wench lifted the coverlid from off his pale, ghastly 
 befilleted head to show it to some crony of hers, unheeding of the 
 child who was alone with them, and to whom the sight gave a new 
 pang of horror. " The grandfather followed next, closing finally his 
 Anson and his "Arabian Nights." He had a brother whose advent- 
 ures had been remarkable. Francis Carlyle, so he was called, had 
 been apprenticed to a shoemaker. He, too, when his time was out, 
 had gone to England, to Bristol among other places, where he fell 
 into drink and gambling. He lost all his money; one morning after 
 an orgie he flung himself desperately out of bed and broke his leg. 
 When he recovered he enlisted in a brig-of-war, distinguished him- 
 self by special gallantry in supporting his captain in a mutiny, and 
 was rewarded with the command of a Solway revenue-cutter. Af- 
 ter many years of rough creditable service he retired on half-pay to 
 his native village of Middlebie. There had been some family quar- 
 rel, and the brothers, though living close to one another, had held 
 no intercourse. They were both of them above eighty years of age. 
 The old Thomas being on his death-bed, the sea-captain's heart re- 
 lented. He was a grim, broad, fierce-looking man; "prototype of 
 Smollett's Trunnion." Being too unwieldy to walk, he was brought 
 into Ecclefechan in a cart, and carried in a chair up the steep stairs 
 to his dying brother's room. There he remained some twenty min- 
 utes, and came down again with a face which printed itself in the 
 little Carlyle's memory. They saw him no more, and after a brief 
 interval the old generation had disappeared. 
 
 Amid such scenes our Carlyle struggled through his early boy- 
 hood. 
 
 "It was not a joyful life [he says]; what life is? yet a safe and 
 quiet one, above most others, or any other I have witnessed, a whole- 
 some one. We were taciturn rather than talkative, but if little was 
 said, that little had generally a meaning. 
 
 "More remarkable man than my father I have never met in my 
 journey through life; sterling sincerity in thought, word, and deed, 
 most quiet, but capable of blazing into whirlwinds when needful, 
 and such a flash of just insight and brief natural eloquence and em- 
 phasis, true to every feature of it as I have never known in any other. 
 Humor of a most grim Scandinavian type he occasionally had; wit 
 rarely or never too serious for wit my excellent mother with per- 
 haps the deeper piety in most senses had also the most sport. No 
 man of my day, or hardly any man, can have had better parents."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 7 
 
 The Sunday services in Mr. Johnstone's meeting-house were the 
 events of the week. The congregation were "Dissenters" of a 
 marked type, some of them coming from as far as Carlisle ; another 
 party, and among these at times a little eager boy, known afterwards 
 as Edward Irving, appearing regularly from Annan, "their stream- 
 ing plaids in wet weather hanging up to drip." 
 
 "A man [Carlyle wrote in 1866] who in those days awoke to the 
 belief that he actually had a soul to be saved or lo'st was apt to be 
 found among the Dissenting people, and to have given up attendance 
 at Kirk. All dissent in Scotland is merely stricter adherence to the 
 Church of the Reformation. Very venerable are those old Seceder 
 clergy to me now when I look back. . . . Most figures of them in 
 my time were hoary old men; men so like evangelists in modern 
 vesture and poor scholars and gentlemen of Christ I have nowhere 
 met with among Protestant or Papal clergy in any country in the 
 world. . . . That poor temple of my childhood is more sacred to me 
 than the biggest cathedral then extant could have been; rude, rustic, 
 bare, no temple in the world was more so; but there were sacred 
 lambencies, tongues of authentic flame which kindled what was best 
 in one, what has not yet gone out. Strangely vivid are some twelve 
 or twenty of those old faces whom I used to see every Sunday, whose 
 names, employments, or precise dwelling-places I never knew, but 
 whose portraits are yet clear to me as in a mirror. 
 
 "Their heavy-laden, patient, ever attentive faces, fallen solitary 
 most of them, children all away, wife away forever, or, it might be, 
 wife still there and constant like a shadow, and grown very like the 
 old man, the thrifty cleanly poverty of these good people, their well 
 saved coarse old clothes, tailed waistcoats down to mid-thigh ail 
 this I occasionally see as with eyes sixty or sixty-five years off, and 
 hear the very voice of my mother upon it, whom sometimes I would 
 be questioning about these persons of the drama, and endeavoring to 
 describe and identify them." 
 
 Of one of these worshippers in the Ecclefechan meeting-house, 
 "tall, straight, very clean always, brown as mahogany, with a beard 
 white as snow," Carlyle tells the following anecdote : 
 
 "Old David Hope [that was his name] lived on a little farm close 
 by Solway shore, a mile or two east of Annan a wet country with 
 late harvests which are sometimes incredibly difficult to save ten 
 days continuously pouring, then a day, perhaps two davs, of drought, 
 part of them, it may be, of high roaring wind ; during w T hich the 
 moments are golden for you, and perhaps you had better work all 
 night as presently there will be deluges again. David's stuff, one 
 such morning, was all standing dry, ready to be saved still if he 
 stood to it, which was very much his intention. Breakfast, whole- 
 some hasty porridge, was soon over, and next in course came family 
 worship, what they call taking the book, i.e. , taking your Bible, psalui 
 and chapter always part of the service. David was putting on his 
 spectacles when somebody rushed in. ' Such a raging wind risen
 
 8 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 will drive the stocks (shocks) into the sea if let alone.' 'Wind!' 
 answered David. 'Wind canna get ae straw that has been ap- 
 pointed mine. Sit down and let us worship God.' " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A.D. 1805. 2ET. 10. 
 
 EDUCATION is a passion in Scotland. It is the pride of every hon- 
 orable peasant, if he has a son of any promise, to give him a chance 
 of rising as a scholar. As a child Carlyle could not have failed to 
 show that there was something unusual in him. The school-master 
 in Ecclefechan gave a good account of his progress in "figures." 
 The minister reported favorably of his Latin. "I do not grudge 
 thee thy schooling, Tom," his father said to him one day, "now that 
 thy uncle Frank owns thee a better arithmetician than himself." It 
 was decided that he should go to Annan Grammar-school, and 
 thence, if he prospered, to the University, with final outlook to the 
 ministry. 
 
 He was a shy thoughtful boy, shrinking generally from rough 
 companions, but with the hot temper of his race. His mother, natu- 
 rally anxious for him, and fearing perhaps the family tendency, ex- 
 tracted a promise before parting with him that he would never re- 
 turn a blow, and, as might be expected, his first experiences of school 
 were extremely miserable. Boys of genius are never well received 
 by the common flock, and escape persecution only when they are 
 able to defend themselves. 
 
 "Sartor Resartus" is generally mythic, but parts are historical, 
 and among them the account of the first launch of Teufelsdrockh 
 into the Hinterschlag Gymnasium. Hinterschlag (smite behind) is 
 Annan. Thither, leaving home and his mother's side, Carlyle was 
 taken by his father, being then in his tenth year, and "fluttering 
 with boundless hopes," at Whitsuntide, 1805, to the school which 
 was to be his first step into a higher life. 
 
 "Well do I remember [says Teufelsdrockh] the red sunny Whit- 
 suntide morning when, trotting full of hope by the side of Father 
 Andreas, I entered the main street of the place and saw its steeple 
 clock (then striking eight) and Schuldthurm (jail), and the aproned 
 or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast; a little dog, in mad 
 terror, was rushing past, for some human imps had tied a tin kettle 
 to its tail, fit emblem of much that awaited myself in that mischiev- 
 ous den. Alas! the kind beech rows of Entepfuhl (Ecclefechan) 
 were hidden in the distance. I was among strangers harshly, at 
 best indifferently, disposed to me ; the young heart felt for the first 
 time quite orphaned and alone. . . . My school-fellows were boys, 
 mostly rude boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude nature, which
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 9 
 
 bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to 
 death any broken - winged brother or sister, and on all hands the 
 strong tyrannize over the weak." 
 
 Carlyle retained to the end of his days a painful, and indeed re- 
 sentful recollection of these school experiences of his. " This," he 
 said of the passage just quoted from "Sartor," "is true, and not 
 half the truth." 
 
 He had obeyed his mother's injunctions. He had courage in 
 plenty to resent ill - usage, but his promise was sacred. He was 
 passionate, and often, probably, violent, but fight he would not; and 
 every one who knows English and Scotch life will understand what 
 his fate must have been. One consequence was a near escape from 
 drowning. The boys had all gone to bathe; the lonely child had 
 stolen apart from the rest, where he could escape from being tor- 
 mented. He found himself in a deep pool which had been dug out 
 for a dock and had been filled with the tide. The mere accident of 
 some one passing at the time saved him. At length he could bear 
 his condition no longer; he turned on the biggest bully in the school 
 and furiously kicked him ; a battle followed, in which he was beat- 
 en ; but he left marks of his fists upon his adversary, which were 
 not forgotten. He taught his companions to fear him, if only like 
 Brasidas's mouse. He was persecuted no longer, but he carried 
 away bitter and resentful recollections of what he had borne, which 
 were never entirely obliterated. 
 
 The teaching which Carlyle received at Annan, he says, "was 
 limited, and of its kind only moderately good. Latin and French 
 I did get to read with fluency. Latin quantity was left a frightful 
 chaos, and I had to learn it afterwards. Some geometry, algebra; 
 arithmetic tolerably well. Vague outlines of geography I learned; 
 all the books I could get were also devoured. Greek consisted of 
 the alphabet merely." 
 
 Elsewhere in a note I find the following account of his first teach- 
 ing and school experience : 
 
 ' My mother [writes Carlyle, in a series of brief notes upon his 
 early life] had taught me reading. I never remember when. 
 Tom Donaldson's school at Ecclef echan a severely - correct kind 
 of man Tom . . . from Edinburgh went afterwards to Manchester ; 
 I never saw his face again, though I still remember it well as always 
 merry and kind to me, though to the undeserving severe. The 
 school then stood at Hoddam Kirk. Sandie Seattle, subsequently 
 a Burgher minister at Glasgow, I well remember examining me. 
 He reported me complete in English, age then about seven . . . that 
 I must go to Latin or waste my time. Latin accordingly, with what 
 enthusiasm ! But the school-master did not himself know Latin. 
 I gradually got altogether swamped and bewildered under him. 
 Reverend Mr. Johnstone,of Ecclef echan, or rather first his sou, home 
 
 1*
 
 10 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 from college, and already teaching a nephew or a cousin, had to 
 take me in hand, and once pulled afloat I made rapid and sure way. 
 
 " In my tenth year I was sent to the grammar school at Annan. 
 May 26, a bright sunny morning Whit-Monday which I still viv- 
 idly remember, I trotting at my father's side in the way alluded to 
 in ' Sartor.' It was a bright morning, and to me full of moment 
 of fluttering, boundless hopes, saddened by parting with mother, 
 with home, and which afterwards were cruelly disappointed. 
 
 " ' Sartor' is not to be trusted in details. Greek consisted of the 
 Alphabet mainly. Hebrew is a German entity. 1 Nobody in that 
 region except old Mr. Johnstone could have read a sentence of it 
 to save his life. I did get to read Latin and French with fluency 
 Latin quantity was left a frightful chaos, and I had to learn it after- 
 wards. Some geometry, algebra, arithmetic thoroughly well. Vague 
 outlines of geography I did learn; all the books I could get were 
 also devoured. Mythically true is what ' Sartor ' says of my school- 
 fellows, and not half the truth. Unspeakable is the damage and 
 defilement I got out of those coarse, unguided tyrannous cubs, es- 
 pecially till I revolted against them and gave stroke for stroke, as 
 my pious mother, in her great love of peace and of my best inter- 
 ests, spiritually chiefly, had imprudently forbidden me to do. One 
 way and another I had never been so wretched as here in that 
 school, and the first two years of my time in it still count among 
 the miserable of my life. Academia! High School Instructors of 
 Youth ! Oh, ye unspeakable ! ' ' 
 
 Of holidays we hear nothing, though holidays there must have 
 been at Christmas and Midsummer ; little also of school friendships 
 or amusements. For the last, in such shape as could have been 
 found in boys of his class in Annan, Carlyle could have had little 
 interest. He speaks warmly of his mathematical teacher, a certain 
 Mr. Morley, f rom Cumberland, "whom he loved much, and who 
 taught him well." He had formed a comradeship with one or two 
 boys of his own age, who were not entirely uncongenial to him ; 
 but only one incident is preserved which was of real moment. In 
 his third school year Carlyle first consciously saw Edward Irving. 
 Irving's family lived in Annan. He had himself been at the school, 
 and had gone thence to the University of Edinburgh. He had dis- 
 tinguished himself there, gained prizes, and was otherwise honora- 
 bly spoken of. Annan, both town and school, was proud of the 
 brilliant lad that they had produced. And Irving one day looked 
 in upon the class-room, the masters out of compliment attending 
 him. "He was scrupulously dressed, black coat, tight pantaloons 
 in the fashion of the day, and looked very neat, self - possessed, 
 and amiable ; a flourishing slip of a youth with coal-black hair, 
 swarthy clear complexion, very straight on his feet, and, except for 
 
 Alluding to a German biography in which he was said to have learned Hebrew.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 11 
 
 the glaring squint, decidedly handsome." The boys listened eager- 
 ly as he talked in a free, airy way about Edinburgh and its prolV.-s- 
 ors. A University man who has made a name for himself is infi- 
 nitely admirable to younger ones ; he is not too far above them to 
 be comprehensible. They know what he has done, and they hope 
 distantly that they too one day may do the like. Of course Irving 
 did not distinguish Carlyle. He walked through the rooms and 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Hinterschlag Gymnasium was over soon after, and Carlyle's 
 future career was now to be decided on. The Ecclefechan family 
 life was not favorable to displays of precocious genius. Vanity was 
 the last quality that such a man as James Carlyle would encourage, 
 and there was a severity in his manner which effectively repressed 
 any disposition to it. 
 
 "We had all to complain [Carlyle says] that we dared not freely 
 love our father. His heart seemed as if walled in. My mother has 
 owned to me that she could never understand him, and that her af- 
 fection and admiration of him were obstructed. It seemed as if an 
 atmosphere of fear repelled us from him, me especially. My heart 
 and tongue played freely with my mother. He had an air of deep- 
 est gravity and even sternness. He had the most entire and open 
 contempt for idle tattle what he called clatter. Any talk that had 
 meaning in it he could listen to: what had no meaning in it, above 
 all what seemed false, he absolutely could not and would not hear, 
 but abruptly turned from it. Long may we remember his ' I don't 
 believe thee ;' his tongue-paralyzing cola indifferent ' Hah.' " 
 
 Besides fear, Carlyle, as he grew older, began to experience a cer- 
 tain awe of his father as of a person of altogether superior qualities. 
 
 "N"one of us [he writes] will ever forget that bold glowing style 
 of his, flowing free from the untutored soul, full of metaphor, though 
 he knew not what metaphor was, witli all manner of potent words 
 which he appropriated and applied with surprising accuracy brief, 
 energetic, conveying the most perfect picture, definite, clear, not in 
 ambitious colors, but in full white sunlight. Emphatic I have heard 
 him beyond all men. In anger he had no need of oaths ; his words 
 were like sharp arrows that smote into the very heart." 
 
 Such a father may easily have been alarming and slow to gain his 
 children's confidence. He had silently observed his little Tom, how- 
 ever. The reports from the Annan masters were all favorable, and 
 when the question rose what was to be done with him, he inclined 
 to venture the University. The wise men of Ecclefechan shook 
 their heads. "Educate a boy," said one of them, "and he grows 
 up to despise his ignorant parents." Others said it was a risk, it 
 was waste of money, there was a large family to be provided for, 
 too much must not be spent upon one, etc. James Carlyle had seen
 
 12 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 something in his boy's character which showed him that the ri.sk, if 
 risk there was, must be encountered; and to Edinburgh it was de- 
 cided that Tom should go and be made a scholar of. 
 
 To English ears university life suggests splendid buildings, luxu- 
 rious rooms, rich endowments as the reward of successful industry ; 
 as students, young men between nineteen and twenty-three with 
 handsome allowances, spending each of them on an average double 
 the largest income which James Carlyle had earned in any year of 
 his life. Universities north of the Tweed had in those days no 
 money prizes to offer, no fellowships and scholarships, nothing at 
 all but an education, and a discipline in poverty and self-denial. 
 The lads who went to them were the children, most of them, of 
 parents as poor as Carlyle's father. They knew at what a cost the 
 expense of sending them to college, relatively small as it was, could 
 be afforded; and they went with the fixed purpose of making the 
 very utmost of their time. Five months only of each year they 
 could remain in their classes; for the rest of it they taught pupils 
 themselves, or worked on the farm at home to pay for their own 
 learning. 
 
 Each student, as a rule, was the most promising member of the 
 family to which he belonged, and extraordinary confidence was 
 placed in them. They were sent to Edinburgh, Glasgow, or wher- 
 ever it might be, when they were mere boys of fourteen. They had 
 no one to look after them either on their journey or when they came 
 to the end. They walked from their homes, being unable to pay for 
 coach-hire. They entered their own names at the college. They 
 found their own humble lodgings, and were left entirely to their own 
 capacity for self -conduct. The carriers brought them oatmeal, po- 
 tatoes, and salt butter from the home farm, with a few eggs occasion- 
 ally as a luxury. With their thrifty habits they required no other 
 food. In the return cart their linen went back to their mothers to 
 be washed and mended. Poverty protected them from temptations 
 to vicious amusements. They formed their economical friendships; 
 they shared their breakfasts and their thoughts, and had their clubs 
 for conversation or discussion. When term was over they walked 
 home in parties, each district having its little knot belonging to it ; 
 and known along the roads as University scholars, they were assured 
 of entertainment on the way. 
 
 As a training in self-dependence no better education could have 
 been found in these islands. If the teaching had been as good as the 
 discipline of character, the Scotch universities might have competed 
 with the world. The teaching was the weak part. There were no 
 funds, either in the colleges or with the students, to provide personal 
 instruction as at Oxford and Cambridge. The professors were indi- 
 vidually excellent, but they had to teach large classes, and had no
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 13 
 
 leisure to attend particularly to this or that promising pupil. The 
 universities were opportunities to boys who were able to take ad- 
 vantage of them, and that was all. 
 
 Such was the life on which Carlylc was now to enter, and such 
 were the circumstances of it. It was the November term, 1809. lie 
 was to be fourteen on the fourth of the approaching December. Ed- 
 inburgh is nearly one hundred miles from Ecclefechan. He was to 
 go on foot like the rest, under the guardianship of a boy named " Tom 
 Small, " two or three years his senior, who had already been at col- 
 lege, and was held, therefore, to be a sufficient protector. 
 
 "How strangely vivid [he says in 1866], how remote and wonder- 
 ful, tinged with the hues of far-off love and sadness, is that journey 
 to me now after fifty -seven years of time! My mother and father 
 walking with me in the dark frosty November morning through the 
 village to set us on our way ; my dear and loving mother, her tremu- 
 lous affection, my etc. " 
 
 "Tom Smail"was a poor companion, very innocent, very con- 
 ceited, an indifferent scholar. Carlyle in his own mind had a small 
 opinion of him. The journey over the moors was a weary one, the 
 elder lad stalking on generally ahead, whistling an Irish tune; the 
 younger "given up to his bits of reflections in the silence of the 
 hills." Twenty miles a day the boys walked, by Moffat and over 
 Airock Stane. They reached Edinburgh early one afternoon, got a 
 lodging in Simon Square, got dinner, and sallied out again that " Pal- 
 inurus Tom " might give the novice a glance of the great city. The 
 scene so entirely new to him left an impression on Carlyle which 
 remained distinct after more than half a century. 
 
 "The novice mind [he says] was not excessively astonished all 
 at once, but kept its eyes open and said nothing. What streets we 
 went through I don't the least recollect, but have some faint im- 
 age of St. Giles's High Kirk, and of the Lucken booths there with 
 their strange little ins and outs and eager old women in miniature 
 shops, of combs, shoe-laces, and trifles ; still fainter image, if any, of 
 the sublime horse statue in Parliament Square hard by ; directly af- 
 ter which Small, audaciously, so I thought, pushed open a door free 
 to all the world and dragged me in with him to a scene which I have 
 never forgotten. An immense hall dimly lighted from the top of the 
 walls, and perhaps with candles burning in it here and there, all in 
 strange chiaroscuro, and filled with what I thought exaggeratively a 
 thousand or two of human creatures, all astir in a boundless buzz of 
 talk, and simmering about in every direction some solitary, some 
 in groups. By degrees I noticed that some were in wig and black 
 gown, some not, but in common clothes, all well dressed ; that here 
 and there on the sides of the hall were little thrones with enclosures 
 and steps leading up, red velvet figures sitting in said thrones, and 
 the black-gowned eagerly speaking to them; advocates pleading to 
 judges as I easily understood. How they could be heard in such a 
 I. 3
 
 14 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 grinding din was somewhat a mystery. Higher up on the walls, stuck 
 there like swallows in their nests, sate other humbler figures ; these 
 I found were the sources of certain wildly plangent lamentable kinds 
 of sounds, or echoes, which from time to time pierced the universal 
 noise of feet and voices, and rose unintelligibly above it as in the bit- 
 terness of incurable woe: criers of the court I gradually came to un- 
 derstand. And this was Themis in her ' outer house ;' such a scene 
 of chaotic din and hurly-burly as I had never figured before. It 
 seems to me that there were four times or ten tunes as many people 
 in that ' outer house ' as there now usually are ; and doubtless there 
 is something of fact in this, such have been the curtailments and 
 abatements of law practice in the head courts since then, and trans- 
 ference of it to county jurisdiction. Last time I was in that outer 
 house (some six or seven years ago in broad daylight) it seemed like 
 a place fallen asleep, fallen almost dead. 
 
 "Notable figures, now all vanished utterly, were doubtless wan- 
 dering about as part of that continual hurly-burly when I first set 
 foot in it fifty-seven years ago ; great law lords this and that, great 
 advocates alors celebres, as Thiers has it. Craustoun, Cockburn, Jef- 
 frey, Walter Scott, John Clark. To me at that tune they were not 
 even names ; but I have since occasionally thought of that night and 
 place where probably they were living substances some of them in 
 a kind of relation to me afterwards. Time with his tenses what a 
 wonderful entity is he always ! The only figure I distinctly recollect 
 and got printed on my brain that night was John Clark, there veri- 
 tably hitching about, whose grim strong countenance with its black 
 far-projecting brows, and look of great sagacity, fixed him in my 
 memory." 
 
 This scene alone remains recorded of Carlyle's early Edinburgh 
 experience. Of the University he says that he learned little there. 
 In the Latin class he was under Professor Christieson, who "never 
 noticed him nor could distinguish him from another Mr. Irving Car- 
 lyle, an older, bigger boy, with red hair, wild buck teeth, and scorch- 
 ed complexion, and the worst Latinist of his acquaintance." 
 
 "In the classical field [he writes elsewhere] I am truly as noth- 
 ing. Homer I learnt to read in the original with difficulty, after 
 Wolf's broad flash of light thrown into it ; ^Eschylus and Sophocles 
 mainly in translations. Tacitus and Virgil became really interest- 
 ing to me ; Homer and .^Eschylus above all ; Horace egoistical, 
 leicUtfertig, in sad fact I never cared for ; Cicero, after long and va- 
 rious trials, always proved a windy person and a weariness to me, 
 extinguished altogether by Middleton's excellent though misjudging 
 life of him." 
 
 It was not much better with philosophy. Dugald Stewart had 
 gone away two years before Carlyle entered. Brown was the new 
 professor, "an eloquent, acute little gentleman, full of enthusiasm 
 about simple suggestions, relative," etc., unprofitable utterly to Car-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 15 
 
 lyle, and bewildering and dispiriting, as* the autumn winds among 
 withered leaves. 
 
 In mathematics only he made real progress. His temperament 
 was impatient of uncertainties. He threw himself with delight into 
 a form of knowledge in which the conclusions were indisputable, 
 where at each step he could plant his foot with confidence. Pro- 
 fessor Leslie (Sir John Leslie afterwards) discovered his talent, and 
 exerted himself to help him with a zeal of which Carlyle never af- 
 terwards ceased to speak with gratitude. That he made progress in 
 mathematics was ' ' perhaps, " as he says, 
 
 "due mainly to the accident that Leslie alone of my professors had 
 some genius in his business, and awoke a certain enthusiasm in me. 
 For several years geometry shone before me as the noblest of all 
 sciences, and I prosecuted it in all my best hours and moods. But 
 far more pregnant inquiries were rising in me, and gradually en- 
 grossing me, heart as well as head, so that about 1820 or 1821 I had 
 entirely thrown mathematics aside, and except in one or two brief 
 spurts, more or less of a morbid nature, have never in the least re- 
 garded it farther." 
 
 Yet even in mathematics, on ground with which he was familiar, 
 his shy nature was unfitted for display. He carried off no prizes. 
 He tried only once, and though he was notoriously superior to all 
 his competitors, the crowd and noise of the class-room prevented 
 him from even attempting to distinguish himself. I have heard 
 him say late in life that his thoughts never came to him in proper 
 form except when he was alone. 
 
 " Sartor Rcsartus," I have already said, must not be followed too 
 literally as a biographical authority. It is mythic, not historical. 
 Nevertheless, as mythic it may be trusted for the general outlines. 
 
 "The university where I was educated [says Teufelsdrockh] still 
 stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well, 
 which name, however, I from tenderness to existing interests shall 
 in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that out of Eng- 
 land and Spain purs was the worst of all hitherto discovered univer- 
 sities. This is indeed a time when right education is, as nearly as 
 may be, impossible; however, in degrees of wrongness there is no 
 limit; nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless 
 itself, as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. 
 
 "It is written, when the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into 
 the ditch. Wherefore in such circumstances may it not sometimes 
 be safer if both leader and led simply sit still? Had you anywhere 
 in Crim Tartary walled in a square enclosure, furnished it with a 
 small ill-chosen library, and then turned loose into it eleven hundred 
 Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed from three to sev- 
 en years; certain persons under the title of professors being station- 
 ed at the gates to declare aloud that it was a university and exact 
 considerable admission fees, you had, not indeed in mechanical
 
 16 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 structure, yet in spirit and' result, some imperfect substance of our 
 High Seminary. . . . The professors in the Nameless lived with ease, 
 with safety, by a mere reputation constructed in past times and 
 then, too, with no great effort by quite another class of persons; 
 which reputation, like a strong brisk-going undershot wheel sunk 
 into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual repaint- 
 ing on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assid- 
 uously grind for them. Happy that it was so for the millers ! They 
 themselves needed not to work. Their attempts at working, what 
 they called educating, now when I look back on it fill me with a 
 certain mute admiration. . . . 
 
 "Besides all this we boasted ourselves a rational university, in 
 the highest degree hostile to mysticism. Thus was the young va- 
 cant mind furnished with much talk about progress of the species, 
 dark ages, prejudice, and the like, so that all were quickly blown 
 out into a state of windy argumentativeness, whereby the better sort 
 had soon to end in sick impotent scepticism; the worser sort explode 
 in finished self-conceit, and to all spiritual interests become dead. . . . 
 The hungry young looked up to their spiritual nurses, and for food 
 were bidden eat the east wind. What vain jargon of controver- 
 sial metaphysics, etymology, and mechanical manipulation, falsely 
 named Science, was current there, I indeed learned better than per- 
 haps the most. Among eleven hundred Christian youths there will 
 not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, 
 a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; by instinct 
 and by happy accident I took less to rioting than to thinking and 
 reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay, from the Chaos 
 of that library I succeeded in fishing up more books than had been 
 known to the keeper thereof. The foundation of a literary life was 
 hereby laid. I learned on my own strength to read fluently in al- 
 most all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences. 
 A certain ground-plan of human nature and life began to fashion 
 itself in me, by additional experiments to be corrected and indefi- 
 nitely extended." 1 
 
 The teaching at a university is but half what is learned there; the 
 other half, and the most important, is what young men learn from 
 one another. Carlyle's friends at Edinburgh, the eleven out of the 
 eleven hundred, were of his own rank of life, sons of peasants who 
 had their own way to make in life. From their letters, many of 
 which have been preserved, it is clear that they were clever good 
 lads, distinctly superior to ordinary boys of their age, Carlyle him- 
 self holding the first place in their narrow circle. Their lives were 
 pure and simple. Nowhere in these letters is there any jesting witli 
 vice or light allusions to it. The boys wrote to one another on the 
 last novel of Scott or poem of Byron, on the Edinburgh Review, 
 on the war, on the fall of Napoleon, occasionally on geometrical 
 problems, sermons, college exercises, and divinity lectures, and again 
 
 i "Sartor Resartus," book ii. chap. iii.
 
 17 
 
 on innocent trifles, with sketches, now and then humorous and 
 bright, of Annandale life as it was seventy yeare ago. They looked 
 to Carlyle to direct their judgment and advise them in difficulties. 
 He was the prudent one of the party, able, if money matters went 
 wrong, to help them out of his humble savings. He was already 
 noted, too, for power of effective speech "far too sarcastic for so 
 young a man " was what elder people said of him. One of his cor- 
 respondents addressed him always as "Jonathan," or "Dean," or 
 "Doctor," as if he was to be a second Swift. Others called him 
 "Parson," perhaps from his intended profession. All foretold fut- 
 ure greatness to him of one kind or another. They recognized that 
 he was not like other young men, that he was superior to other 
 young men, in character as well as intellect. "Knowing how you 
 abhor all affectation " is an expression used to him when he was 
 still a mere boy. 
 
 His destination was "the ministry," and for this, knowing how 
 much his father and mother wished it, he tried to prepare himself. 
 He was already conscious, however, ' ' that he had not the least en- 
 thusiasm for that business, that even grave prohibitory doubts were 
 gradually rising ahead. Formalism was not the pinching point, 
 had there been the preliminary of belief forthcoming." " No church 
 or speaking entity whatever," he admitted, "can do without formu- 
 las, but it must believe them first if it would be honest." 
 
 Two letters to Carlyle from one of these early friends may be 
 given here as specimens of the rest. They bring back the Annan- 
 dale of 1814, and show a faint kind of image of Carlyle himself re- 
 flected on the writer's mind. His name was Hill. He was about 
 Carlyle's age, and subscribes himself Peter Pindar : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Castlcbank: January 1, 1814. WindS.W. Weather hazy. 
 
 " What is the life of man 1 Is it not to shift from trouble to trou- 
 ble and from side to side ? to button up one cause of vexation and 
 unbutton another ? So wrote the celebrated Sterne, so quoted the 
 no less celebrated Jonathan, and so may the poor devil Pindar ap- 
 ply it to himself. You mention some two or three disappointments 
 you have met with lately. For shame, Sir, to be so peevish and 
 splenetic ! Your disappointments are ' trifles light as air ' when 
 compared with the vexations and disappointments I have experi- 
 enced. I was vexed and grieved to the very soul and beyond the 
 soul, to go to Galloway and be deprived of the pleasure of some- 
 thing you know nothing about. I was disappointed on my return 
 at finding he r in a devil of a bad shy humor. I was but why do I 
 talk to you about such things ? There are joys and sorrows, pleas- 
 ures and pains, with which a Stoic Platonic humdrum bookworm 
 sort of fellow like you, Sir, intermeddleth not, and consequently rau
 
 18 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 have no idea of. I was disappointed in Bonaparte's escaping to 
 Paris when he ought to have been taken prisoner by the allies at 
 Leipsic. I was disappointed at your not mentioning aaything about 
 our old acquaintances at Edinburgh. Last night there was a flag 
 on the mail, and to-night, when I expected a Gazette announcing 
 some great victory, the taking of Bayonne or the marching of Wel- 
 lington to Bourdeaux, I was disappointed that the cause of all the 
 rejoicing was an engagement with the French under the walls of 
 Bayonne, in which we lost upwards of 500 men killed and 3000 
 wounded, and drew off the remainder of our army safe from the 
 destroying weapons of the enemy. I was disappointed last Sunday, 
 after I had got my stockings on, to find that there was a hole in the 
 heel of one of them. I read a great many books at Kirkton, and 
 was disappointed at finding faults in almost every one of them. I 
 will be disappointed ; but what signifies going on at this rate? Un- 
 mixed happiness is not the lot of man 
 
 ' Of chance and change, oh ! let not man complain, 
 Else never, never, will he cease to waiL' 
 
 " The weather is dull ; I am melancholy. Good-night. 
 
 "P.S. My dearest Dean, The weather is quite altered. The 
 wind has veered about to the north. I am in good spirits, am 
 happy. " 
 
 From t7ie Same. 
 
 "Castlebank: May 9. 
 
 "Dear Doctor, I received yours last night, and a scurrilous, 
 blackguarding, flattering, vexing, pernicked, humorous, witty, daft 
 letter it is. Shall I answer it piecemeal as a certain Honorable House 
 does a speech from its Sovereign, by echoing back each syllable ? 
 No. This won't do. Oh, how I envy you, Dean! that you can run 
 on in such an off-hand way, ever varying the scene with wit and 
 mirth, while honest Peter must hold on in one numskull track to all 
 eternity pursuing the even tenor of his way, so that one of Peter's 
 letters is as good as a thousand. 
 
 "You seem to take a friendly concern in my affaires de caur. 
 By-the-bye, now, Jonathan, without telling you any particulars of 
 my situation in these matters, which is scarcely known to myself, 
 can't I advise you to fall in love ? Granting as I do that is attend- 
 ed with sorrows, still, Doctor, these are amply compensated by the 
 tendency that this tender passion has to ameliorate the heart, ' pro- 
 vided always, and be it further enacted,' that chaste as Don Quixote 
 or Don Quixote's horse, your heart never breathes a wish that angels 
 may not register. Only have care of this, Dean, and fall in love as 
 soon as you can you will be the better for it." 
 
 Pages follow of excellent criticism from Peter on Leyden's poems, 
 on the Duke of Wellington, Miss Porter, etc. Carlyle has told him 
 that he was looking for a subject for an epic poem. Peter gives him 
 a tragi-comic description of a wedding at Middlebie, with the return 
 home in a tempest, which he thinks will answer ; and concludes: 
 
 " Your reflections on the fall of Napoleon bring to my mind an
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 19 
 
 observation of a friend of mine the other day. I was repeating 
 these lines in Shakespeare and applying them to Bony 
 
 ' But yesterday the word of Caesar might 
 Have stood against the world; now lies he there, 
 And none so poor to do him reverence. ' 
 
 " ' Ay, very true,' quoth he ; ' the fallow could na be content wi* 
 maist all Europe, and now he's glad o' Elba room.' 
 
 "Now, Doctor, let me repeat my instructions to you in a few 
 words. Write immediately a very long letter ; write an epic poem 
 as soon as may be. Send me some more 'remarks.' Tell me how 
 you are, how you are spending your time in Edinburgh. Fall in 
 love as soon as you can meet with a proper object. Ever be a 
 friend to Pindar, and thou shalt always find one in the heart sub- 
 dued, not subduing. PETEB." 
 
 In default of writings of his own, none of which survive out of 
 this early period, such lineaments of Carlyle as appear through these 
 letters are not without instructiveness. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 A.D. 1814. SET. 19. 
 
 HAYING finished his college course, Carlyle looked out for pupils 
 to maintain himself. The ministry was still his formal destination, 
 but several years had still to elapse before a final resolution would 
 be necessary four years if he remained in Edinburgh attending lect- 
 ures in the Divinity Hall ; six if he preferred to be a rural Divinity 
 student, presenting himself once in every twelve months at the Uni- 
 versity and reading a discourse. He did not wish to hasten matters, 
 and, the pupil business being precarious and the mathematical tutor- 
 ship at Annan falling vacant, Carlyle offered for it, and was elected 
 by competition in 1814. He never liked teaching. The recommen- 
 dation of the place was the sixty or seventy pounds a year of salary, 
 which relieved his father of farther expense upon him, and enabled 
 him to put by a little money every year, to be of use in future either 
 to himself or his family. In other respects the life at Annan was 
 only disagreeable to him. His tutor's work he did scrupulously 
 well, but the society of a country town had no interest for him. 
 He would not visit. He lived alone, shutting himself up with his 
 books, disliked the business more and more, and came finally to 
 hate it. Annan, associated as it was with the odious memories of 
 his school -days, had, indeed, but one merit that he was within 
 reach of his family, especially of his mother, to whom he was at- 
 tached with a real passion. 
 His father had by this time given up business at Ecclefechan,
 
 20 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and had taken a 'farm in the neighborhood. The great north road 
 which runs through the village rises gradually into an upland tree- 
 less grass country. About two miles distant on the left-hand side 
 as you go towards Lockerby, there stands, about three hundred yards 
 in from the road, a solitary low whitewashed cottage, with a few 
 poor out-buildings attached to it. This is Mainhill, which was now 
 for many years to be Onrlyle's Twrne, where he first learned German, 
 studied "Faust" in a dry ditch, and completed his translation of 
 " Wilhelm Meister." The house itself is, or was when the Carlyles 
 occupied it, of one story, and consisted of three rooms, a kitchen, 
 a small bedroom, and a large one connected by a passage. The door 
 opens into a square farm-yard, on one side of which are stables, on 
 the other side opposite the door the cow byres, on the third a wash- 
 house and dairy. The situation is high, utterly bleak, and swept by 
 all the winds. Not a tree shelters the premises; the fences arc low, 
 the wind permitting nothing to grow but stunted thorn. The view 
 alone redeems the dreariness of the situation. On the left is the 
 great hill of Burnswark. Broad Annandale stretches in front down 
 to the Solway, which shines like a long silver riband ; on the right 
 is Hoddam Hill, with the Tower of Repentance on its crest, and the 
 wooded slopes which mark the line of the river. Beyond towers up 
 Criffel, and in the far distance Skiddaw, and Saddleback, and Hel- 
 vellyn, and the high Cumberland ridges on the track of the Roman 
 wall. Here lived Carlyle's father and mother with their eight chil- 
 dren, Carlyle himself spending his holidays with them; the old man 
 and his younger sons cultivating the sour soil and winning a hard- 
 earned living out of their toil, the mother and daughters doing the 
 household work and minding cows and poultry, and taking their 
 turn in the field with the rest in harvest time. 
 
 So two years passed away ; Carlyle remaining at Annan. Of his 
 own writing during this period there is little preserved, but his cor- 
 respondence continued, and from his friends' letters glimpses can 
 be gathered of his temper and occupations. He was mainly busy 
 with mathematics, but he was reading incessantly, Hume's Essays 
 among other books. He was looking out into the world, meditating 
 on the fall of Napoleon, on the French Revolution, and thinking 
 much of the suffering in Scotland which followed the close of the 
 war. There were sarcastic sketches, too, of the families with which 
 he was thrown in Annan. Robert Mitchell (an Edinburgh student 
 who had become master of a school at Ruthwell) rallies him on 
 "having reduced the fair and fat academicians into scorched, singed, 
 and shrivelled hags;" and hinting a warning "against the temper 
 with respect to this world which we are sometimes apt to entertain," 
 lie suggests that young men like him and his correspondent ' ' ought 
 to think how many are worse off than they," "should be thank-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 21 
 
 ful for what they had, and not allow imagination to create unreal 
 distress." 
 
 To another friend, Thomas Murray, author afterwards of a history 
 of Galloway, Carlyle had complained of his fate in a light and less 
 bitter spirit. To an epistle written in this tone Murray replied with 
 a description of Carlyle's style, which deserves a place if but for the 
 fulfilment of the prophecy which it contains : 
 
 "I have had the pleasure of receiving, my dear Carlyle, your 
 very humorous and friendly letter, a letter remarkable for vivacity, 
 a Shaudean turn of expression, and an affectionate pathos, which 
 indicate a peculiar turn of mind, make sincerity doubly striking and 
 wit doubly poignant. You flatter me with saying my letter was 
 good ; but allow me to observe that among all my elegant and re- 
 spectable correspondents there is none whose manner of letter- writ- 
 ing I so much envy as yours. A happy flow of language either for 
 pathos, description, or humor, and an easy, graceful current of ideas 
 appropriate to every subject, characterize your style. This is not 
 adulation ; I speak what I think. Your letters will always be a feast 
 to me, a varied and exquisite repast; and the time, I hope, will 
 come, but I trust is far distant, when these our juvenile epistles will 
 be read and probably applauded by a generation unborn, and that 
 the name of Carlyle, at least, will be inseparably connected with the 
 literary history of the nineteenth century. Generous ambition and 
 perseverance will overcome every difficulty, and our great Johnson 
 says, ' Where much is attempted something is performed. ' You 
 will, perhaps, recollect that when I conveyed you out of town in 
 April, 1814, we were very sentimental: we said that few knew us, 
 and still fewer took an interest in us, and that we would slip through 
 the world inglorious and unknown. But the prospect is altered. 
 We are probably as well known, and have made as great a figure, 
 as any of the same standing at college, and we do not know, but 
 will hope, what twenty years may bring forth. 
 
 "A letter from you every fortnight shall be answered faithfully, 
 and will be highly delightful ; and if we live to be seniors, the letters 
 of the companions of our youth will call to mind our college scenes, 
 endeared to us by many tender associations, and will make us for- 
 
 fet that we are poor and old. . . . That you may be always success- 
 ill and enjoy every happiness that this evanescent world can af- 
 ford, and that we may meet soon, is, my dear Carlyle, the sincere 
 wish of Yours most faithfully, 
 
 "THOMAS MURRAY. 
 
 "5 Carnegie Street: July 27, 1814." 
 
 Murray kept Carlyle's answer to this far-seeing letter : 
 
 Thomas Carl vie to Thomas Murray. 
 
 " August, 1814. 
 
 "Oh, Tom, what a foolish flattering creature thou art! To talk of 
 future eminence in connection with the literary history of the nine- 
 teenth century to such a one as me ! Alas ! my good lad, when I and 
 all my fancies and reveries and speculations shall have been swept
 
 22 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 over with the besom of oblivion, the literary history of no century 
 will feel itself the worse. Yet think not, because I talk thus, I am 
 careless of literary fame. No ; Heaven knows that ever since I have 
 been able to form a wish, the wish of being known has been the 
 foremost. 
 
 " Oh, Fortune! thou that givest unto each his portion in this dirty 
 planet, bestow (if it shall please thee) coronets, and crowns, and prin- 
 cipalities, and purses, and pudding, and powers upon the great and 
 noble and fat ones of the earth. Grant me that, with a heart of in- 
 dependence unyielding to thy favors and unbending to thy frowns, 
 I may attain to literary fame ; and though starvation be my lot, I 
 will smile that I have not been born a king. 
 
 "But alas! my dear Murray, what am I, or what are you, or what 
 is any other poor unfriended stripling in the ranks of learning?" 
 
 These college companions were worthy and innocent young men ; 
 none of them, however, came to any high position, and Carlyle's ca- 
 reer was now about to intersect with the life of a far more famous 
 contemporary, who flamed up a few years later into meridian splen- 
 dor and then disappeared in delirium. Edward Irving was the son 
 of a well-to-do burgess of Annan, by profession a tanner. Irving 
 was five years older than Carlyle ; he had preceded him at Annan 
 School ; he had gone thence to Edinburgh University, where he had 
 specially distinguished himself, and had been selected afterwards to 
 manage a school at Haddington, where his success as a teacher had 
 been again conspicuous. Among his pupils at Haddington there 
 was one gifted little girl who will be hereafter much heard of in 
 these pages, Jane Baillie Welsh, daughter of a Dr. "Welsh whose sur- 
 gical fame was then great in that part of Scotland, a remarkable 
 man, who liked Irving and trusted his only child in his hands. The 
 Haddington adventure had answered so well that Irving, after a year 
 or two, was removed to a larger school at Kirkcaldy, where, though 
 no fault was found with his teaching, he gave less complete satisfac- 
 tion. A party among his patrons there thought him too severe with 
 the boys, thought him proud, thought him this or that which they 
 did not like. The dissentients resolved at last to have a second 
 school of their own, to be managed in a different style, and they ap- 
 plied to the classical and mathematical professors at Edinburgh to 
 recommend them a master. Professor Christieson and Professor 
 Leslie' who had noticed Carlyle more than he was aware of, had de- 
 cided that he was the fittest person that they knew of ; and in the 
 summer of 1816 notice of the offered preferment was sent down to 
 him at Annan. 
 
 He had seen Irving's face occasionally in Ecclefechan church, and 
 once afterwards, as has been said, when Irving, fresh from his college 
 distinctions, had looked in at Annan School; but they had no per- 
 sonal acquaintance, nor did Carlyle, while he was a master there,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 23 
 
 ever visit the Irving family. Of course, however, he was no stran- 
 ger to the reputation of their brilliant son, with whose fame all An- 
 nandale was ringing, and with whom kind friends had compared 
 him to his own disadvantage. 
 
 "I [he says] had heard much of Irving all along, hcrvtf distin- 
 guished in studies, how splendidly successful as a teacher, how two 
 professors had sent him out to Haddington, and how his new acad- 
 emy and new methods were illuminating and astonishing everything 
 there. I don't remember any malicious envy towards this great 
 Irving of the distance for his greatness in study and learning. I cer- 
 tainly might have had a tendency hadn't I struggled against it, and 
 tried to make it emulation. ' Do the like, do the like under difficul- 
 ties. 1 " 
 
 In the winter of 1815 Carlyle for the first time personally met Ir- 
 ving, and the beginning of the acquaintance was not promising. He 
 was still pursuing his Divinity course. Candidates who could not 
 attend the regular lectures at the University came up once a year 
 and delivered an address of some kind in the Divinity Hall. One 
 already he had given the first year of his Annan mastership an 
 English sermon on the text "Before I was afflicted I went astray," 
 etc. He calls it "a weak, flowery, sentimental piece," for which, 
 however, he had been complimented "by comrades and professors." 
 His next was a discourse in Latin on the question whether there wag 
 or was not such a thing as "Natural Religion." This, too, he says 
 was ' ' weak enough. " It is lost, and nothing is left to show the view 
 which he took about the matter. But here also he gave satisfaction, 
 and was innocently pleased with himself. It was on this occasion 
 that he fell in accidentally with Irving at a friend's rooms in Edin- 
 burgh, and there was a trifling skirmish of tongue between them, 
 where Irving found the laugh turned against him. 
 
 A few months after came Carlyle's appointment to Kirkcaldy as 
 Irving's quasi rival, and perhaps he felt a little uneasy as to the 
 terms on which they might stand towards each other. His alarms, 
 however, were pleasantly dispelled. He was to go to Kirkcaldy in 
 the summer holidays of 1816 to see the people there and be seen by 
 them, before coming to a final arrangement with them. Adam Hope, 
 one of the masters in Annan School, to whom Carlyle was much 
 attached, and whose portrait he has painted, had just lost his wife. 
 Carlyle had gone to sit with the old man in his sorrows, and unex- 
 pectedly fell in with Irving there, who had come on the same errand. 
 
 "If [he says] I had been in doubts about his reception of me, 
 he quickly and forever ended them by a friendliness which on wider 
 scenes might have been called chivalrous. At first sight he heartily 
 shook my hand, welcomed me as if I had been a valued old acquaint- 
 ance, almost a brother, and before my leaving came up to me again
 
 34 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and with the frankest tone said, ' You are coming to Kirkcaldy to 
 look about you in a month or two. You know I am there ; my 
 house and all that I can do for you is yours; two Aunandale peo- 
 ple must not be strangers in Fife. ' The doubting Thomas durst not 
 quite believe all this, so chivalrous was it, but felt pleased and re- 
 lieved by the fine and sincere tone of it, and thought to himself, 
 ' Well, it would be pretty.' " 
 
 To Kirkcaldy, then, Carlyle went with hopes so far improved. 
 How Irving kept his word ; how warmly he received him ; how he 
 opened his house, his library, his heart to him ; how they walked 
 and talked together on Kirkcaldy Sands on the summer nights, and 
 toured together in holiday time through the Highlands ; how Car- 
 lyle found in him a most precious and affectionate companion at 
 the most critical period of his life all this he has himself described. 
 The reader will find it for himself in the Reminiscences which he 
 has left of the time. 
 
 "Irving [he says] was four years my senior, the facile princeps 
 for success and reputation among the Edinburgh students, famed 
 mathematician, famed teacher, first at Haddington, then here, a 
 flourishing man whom cross fortune was beginning to nibble at. He 
 received me with open arms, and was a brother to me and a friend 
 there and elsewhere afterwards such friend as I never had again or 
 before in this world, at heart constant till he died, " 
 
 I am tempted to fill many pages with extracted pictures of the 
 Kirkcaldy life as Carlyle has drawn them. But they can be read 
 in their place, and there is much else to tell; my business is to sup- 
 ply what is left untold, rather than give over again what has been 
 told already. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A.D. 1817. ^:T. 22. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE with his family had commenced and was regu- 
 larly continued from the day when Carlyle went first to college. 
 The letters, however, which are preserved begin with his settlement 
 at Kirkcaldy. From this time they are constant, regular, and, from 
 the care with which they have been kept on both sides, are to be 
 numbered in thousands. Father, mother, brothers, sisters, all wrote 
 in their various styles, and all received answers. They were "a 
 clannish folk " holding tight together, and Carlyle was looked up to 
 as the scholar among them. Of these letters I can give but a few 
 here and there, but they will bring before the eyes the Mainhill farm, 
 and all that was going on there in a sturdy, pious, and honorable 
 Annandale peasant's household. Carlyle had spent his Christmas 
 holidays 1816-17 at home as usual, and had returned to work:
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 25 
 
 James Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Mainhill : February 12, 1817. 
 
 " Dear Son, I embrace this opportunity of writing you a few 
 lines with the carrier, as I had nothing to say that was worth post- 
 age, having written to you largely the last time. But only I have 
 reason to be thankful that I can still tell you that we are all in good 
 health, blessed be God for all his mercies towards us. Your mother 
 has got your stockings ready now, and I think there are a few pairs 
 of very good ones. Times is very bad here for laborers work is 
 no brisker and living is high. There have been meetings held by 
 the lairds and farmers to assist them in getting meal. They pro- 
 pose to take all the meal that can be sold in the parish to Eccle- 
 fechan, for which they shall have full price, and there they sign an- 
 other paper telling how much money they will give to reduce the 
 price. The charge is given to James Bell, Mr. Miller, and William 
 Graham to sell it. 
 
 " Mr. Lawson, our priest, is doing very well, and has given us no 
 more paraphrases; but seems to please every person that hears him, 
 and indeed he is well attended every day. The sacrament is to be 
 the first Sabbath of March, and he is visiting his people, but has not 
 reached Mainhill. Your mother was very anxious to have the house 
 done before he came, or else she said she would run over the hill and 
 hide herself. Sandy 1 and I got to work soon after you went away, 
 built partitions, and ceiled a good floor laid and indeed it is very 
 dry and comfortable at this time, and we are very snug and have no 
 want of the necessaries of life. Our crop is as good as I expected, 
 and our sheep and all our cattle living and doing very well. Your 
 mother thought to have written to you; but the carrier stopped only 
 two days at home, and she being a very slow writer could not get it 
 done, but she will write next opportunity. I add no more but your 
 mother's compliments, and she sends you half the cheese that she 
 was telling you about. Say in your next how your butter is coming 
 on, and tell us when it is done and we will send you more. Write 
 soon after you receive this, and tell us all your news and how you 
 are coming on. I say no more, but remain, 
 
 "Dear son, your loving father, 
 
 "JAMES CARLYLE." 
 
 TJiomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle (Mainhill}, 
 
 "Kirkcaldy: March 17, 1817. 
 
 " My dear Mother, I have been long intending to write 3-011 a 
 line of two in order to let you know my state and condition, but 
 having nothing worth writing to communicate I have put it off from 
 time to time. There was little enjoyment for any person at Main- 
 hill when I was there last, but I look forward to the ensuing autumn, 
 when I hope to have the happiness of discussing matters with you as 
 we were wont to do of old. It gives me pleasure to hear that the 
 bairns are at school. There are few things in this world more val- 
 uable than knowledge, and youth is the period for acquiring it. With 
 
 ' Alexander Carlyle, tho second son.
 
 26 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the exception of the religious and moral instruction which I had the 
 happiness of receiving from my parents, and which I humbly trust 
 will not be entirely lost upon me, there is nothing for which I feel 
 more grateful than for the education which they have bestowed 
 upon me. Sandy was getting fond of reading when he went away. 
 I hope he and Aitken 1 will continue their operations now that he is 
 at home. There cannot be imagined ? more honest way of employ- 
 ing spare hours. 
 
 " My way of life in this place is much the same as formerly. The 
 school is doing pretty well, and my health through the winter has 
 been uniformly good. I have little intercourse with the natives 
 here ; yet there is no dryness between us. We are always happy to 
 meet and happy to part ; but their society is not very valuable to 
 me, and my books are friends that never fail me. Sometimes I see 
 the minister and some others of them, with whom I am very well 
 satisfied, and Irving and I are very friendly; so I am never wearied 
 or at a loss to pass the time. 
 
 "I had designed this night to write to Aitken about his books 
 and studies, but I will scarcely have time to say anything. There 
 is a book for him in the box, and I would have sent him the geome- 
 try, but it was not to be had in the town. I have sent you a scarf 
 as near the kind as Aitken's very scanty description would allow me 
 to come. I hope it will please you. It is as good as any that the 
 merchant had. A shawl of the same materials would have been 
 warmer, but I had no authority to get it. Perhaps you would like 
 to have a shawl also. If you will tell me what color you prefer, I 
 will send it you with all the pleasure in the world. I expect to hear 
 from you as soon as you can find leisure. You must be very minute 
 in your account of your domestic affairs. My father once spoke 
 of a thrashing-machine. If 201. or so will help him, they are quite 
 ready at his service. 
 
 ' ' I remain, dear mother, your affectionate son, 
 
 "THOMAS CARLYLE." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle could barely write at this time. She taught herself 
 later in life for the pleasure of communicating with her son, between 
 whom and herself there existed a special and passionate attachment 
 of a quite peculiar kind. She was a severe Calvinist, and watched 
 with the most affectionate anxiety over her children's spiritual wel- 
 fare, her eldest boy's above all. The hope of her life was to see him 
 a minister a "priest" she would have called it and she was al- 
 ready alarmed to know that he had no inclination that way: 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle to TJiomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Mainhill: June 10,1817. 
 
 "Dear Son, I take this opportunity of writing you a few lines, 
 as you will get it free. I long to have a craik, 2 and look forward to 
 August, trusting to see thee once more, but in hope the meantime. 
 
 1 John Aitken Carlyle, the third son, afterwards known as John. 
 
 2 Familiar talk.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 27 
 
 Oh, Tom, mind the golden season of youth, and remember your Crea- 
 tor in the' days of your youth. Seek God while He may be found. 
 Call upon Him while He is near. We hear that the world by wis- 
 dom knew not God. Pray for His presence with you, and His coun- 
 sel to guide you. Have you got through the Bible yet ? If you 
 have, read it again. I hope you will not weary, and may the Lord 
 open your understanding. 
 
 " I have no news to tell you, but thank God we are all in an ordi- 
 nary way. I hope you are well. I thought you would have writ- 
 ten before now. I received your present and was very proud of it. 
 I called it ' my son's venison. ' Do write as soon as this conies to 
 hand and tell us all your news. I am glad you are so contented in 
 your place. We ought all to be thankful for our places in these dis- 
 tressing times, for I dare say they are felt keenly. We send you a 
 small piece of ham and a minding of butter, as I am sure yours is 
 done before now. Tell us about it in your next, and if anything is 
 wanting. 
 
 " Good-night, Tom, for it is a very stormy night, and I must away 
 to the byre to milk. 
 
 "Now, Tom, be sure to tell me about your chapters. No more 
 from YOUR OLD MINNIE." 
 
 The letters from the other members of the family were sent equally 
 regularly whenever there was an opportunity, and give between them 
 a perfect picture of healthy rustic life at the Mainhill farm the 
 brothers and sisters down to the lowest all hard at work, the little 
 ones at school, the elders ploughing, reaping, tending cattle, or mind- 
 ing the dairy, and in the intervals reading history, reading Scott's 
 novels, or even trying at geometry, which was then Carlyle's own 
 favorite study. In the summer of 1817 the mother had a severe ill- 
 ness, by which her mind was affected. It was necessary to place 
 her for a few weeks under restraint away from home a step no 
 doubt just and necessary, but which she never wholly forgave, but 
 resented in her own humorous way to the end of her life. The dis- 
 order soon passed off, however, and never returned. 
 
 Meanwhile Carlyle was less completely contented with his posi- 
 tion at Kirkcaldy than he had let his mother suppose. For one 
 thing he hated school-mastering, and would, or thought he would, 
 have preferred to work with his hands, while except Irving he had 
 scarcely a friend in the place for whom he cared. His occupation 
 shut him out from the best kind of society, which there, as elsewhere, 
 had its exclusive rules. He was received, for Irving's sake, in the 
 family of Mr. Martin, the minister; and was in some degree of inti- 
 macy there, liking Martin himself, and to some extent, but not much, 
 his wife and daughters, to one of whom Irving had, perhaps too pre- 
 cipitately, become engaged. There were others also Mr. Swan, a 
 Kirkcaldy merchant, particularly for whom he had a grateful re- 
 membrance ; but it is clear, both from Irving's letters to him and
 
 28 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 from his own confession, that he was not popular either there or any- 
 where. Shy and reserved at one moment, at another sarcastically 
 self -asserting, with forces working in him which he did not himself 
 understand, and which still less could be understood by others, he 
 could neither properly accommodate himself to the tone of Scotch 
 provincial drawing-rooms, nor even to the business which he had 
 especially to do. A man of genius can do the lowest work as well 
 as the highest; but genius in the process of developing, combined 
 with an irritable nervous system and a fiercely impatient tempera- 
 ment, was not happily occupied in teaching stupid lads the elements 
 of Latin and arithmetic. Nor were matters mended when the Town 
 Corporation, who were his masters, took upon them, as sometimes 
 happened, to instruct or rebuke him. 
 
 Life, however, even under these hard circumstances, was not with- 
 out its romance. I borrow a passage from the ' ' Reminiscences :" 
 
 "The Kirkcaldy people were a pleasant, solid, honest kind of fel- 
 low mortals, something of quietly fruitful, of good old Scotch in 
 their works and ways, more vernacular, peaceably fixed and almost 
 genial in their mode of life, than I had been used to in the border 
 home land. Fife generally we liked. Those ancient little burghs 
 and sea villages, with their poor little havens, salt-pans and weather- 
 beaten bits of Cyclopean breakwaters, and rude innocent machiner- 
 ies, are still kindly to me to think of. Kirkcaldy itself had many 
 looms, had Baltic trade, whale fishery, etc., and was a solidly dili- 
 gent and yet by no means a panting, puffing, or in any way gam- 
 bling ' Lang Town.' Its flax-mill machinery, I remember, was turn- 
 ed mainly by wind; and curious blue-painted wheels with oblique 
 vanes rose from many roofs for that end. We all, I in particular, 
 always rather liked the people, though from the distance chiefly, 
 chagrined and discouraged by the sad trade one had. Some hos- 
 pitable human friends I found, and these were at intervals a fine lit- 
 tle element ; but in general we were but onlookers, the one real so- 
 ciety our books and our few selves. Not even with the bright young 
 ladies (which was a sad feature) were we generally on speaking 
 terms. By far the brightest and cleverest, however, an ex-pupil of 
 Irving's, and genealogically and otherwise, being poorish and well- 
 bred, rather an alien in Kirkcaldy, I did at last make some acquaint- 
 ance with at Irving's first, I think, though she rarely came thither 
 and it might easily have been more, had she and her aunt and our 
 economics and other circumstances liked. She was of the fair-com- 
 plexioned, softly elegant, softly grave, witty and comely type, and had 
 a good deal of gracefulness, intelligence, and other talent. Irving, 
 too, it was sometimes thought, found her very interesting, could 
 the Miss Martin bonds have allowed, which they never would. To 
 me, who had only known her for a few months, and who within a 
 twelve or fifteen months saw the last of her, she continued, for per- 
 haps three years, a figure hanging more or less in my fancy, on the 
 usual romantic, or latterly quite elegiac and silent terms, and to this 
 day there is in me a good will to her, a candid and gentle pity, if
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 29 
 
 needed at all. She was of the Aberdeenshire Gordons. Margaret 
 Gordon, born I think in New Brunswick, where her father, probably 
 iii some official post, had died young and poor ; but her accent was 
 prettily English, and her voice very fine. 
 
 ' ' An aunt (widow in Fife, childless with limited resources, but of 
 frugal cultivated turn ; a lean, proud, elderly dame, once a Miss 
 Gordon herself ; sung Scotch songs beautifully, and talked shrewd 
 Aberdeenish in accent and otherwise) had adopted her and brought 
 her hither over seas ; and here, as Irving's ex-pupil, she now, cheery 
 though with dim outlooks, was. Irving saw her again in Glasgow 
 one .summer's touring, etc. ; he himself accompanying joyfully not 
 joining, so I understood, in the retinue of suitors or potential suitors; 
 rather perhaps indicating gently ' No, I must not.' A year or so af- 
 ter we heard the fair Margaret had married some rich Mr. Something, 
 who afterwards got into Parliament, thence out to ' Nova Scotia ' (or 
 so) as governor, and I heard of her no more, except that lately she 
 was still living childless as the 'dowager lady, 'her Mr. Something 
 having got knighted before dying. Poor Margaret ! I saw her rec- 
 ognizable to me here in her London time, 1840 or so, twice ; once 
 witli her maid in Piccadilly promenading little altered; a second 
 time that same year, or next, on horseback both of us, and meeting 
 in the gate of Hyde Park, when her eyes (but that was all) said to 
 me almost touchingly, yes, yes, that is you." 
 
 Margaret Gordon was the original, so far as there was an original, 
 of Blumine in "Sartor Resartus." Two letters from her remain 
 among Carlyle's papers, which show that on both sides their regard 
 for each other had found expression. Circumstances, however, and 
 the unpromising appearance of Carlyle's situation and prospects, 
 forbade an engagement between them, and acquit the aunt of need- 
 less harshness in peremptorily putting an end to their acquaintance. 
 Miss Gordon took leave of him as a "sister" in language of affec- 
 tionate advice. A single passage may be quoted to show how the 
 young unknown Kirkcaldy school-master appeared in the eyes of 
 the young high-born lady who had thus for a moment crossed his 
 path: 
 
 "And now, my dear friend, a long, long adieu; one advice, and as 
 a parting one consider, value it. Cultivate the milder dispositions 
 of your heart. Subdue the more extravagant visions of the brain. 
 In time your abilities must be known. Among your acquaintance 
 they are already beheld with wonder and delight. By those whose 
 opinion will be valuable, they hereafter will be appreciated. Genius 
 will render you great. May virtue render you beloved ! Remove 
 the awful distance between you and ordinary men by kind and gen- 
 tle manners. Deal gently with their inferiority, and be convinced 
 they will respect you as much and like you more. Why conceal the 
 real goodness that flows in your heart? I have ventured this coun- 
 sel from an anxiety for your future welfare, and I would enforce it 
 with all the earnestness of the most sincere friendship. Let your
 
 30 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 light shine before men, and think them not unworthy the trouble. 
 This exercise will prove its own reward. It must be a pleasing thing 
 to live in the affections of others. Again adieu. Pardon the free- 
 dom I have used, and when you think of me be it as a kind sister, to 
 whom your happiness will always yield delight, and your griefs 
 sorrow. Yours, with esteem and regard, M. 
 
 "I give you not my address because I dare not promise to see 
 you." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A.D. 1818. ,-ET. 23. 
 
 CAKLYLE had by this time abandoned the thought of the "min- 
 istry" as his possible future profession not without a struggle, for 
 both his father's and his mother's hearts had been set upon it; but 
 the "grave prohibitive doubts " which had risen in him of their own 
 accord had been strengthened by Gibbon, whom he had found in 
 Irving's library and eagerly devoured. Never at any time had he 
 "the least inclination" for such an office, and his father, though 
 deeply disappointed, was too genuine a man to offer the least re- 
 monstrance. 1 The "school-mastering" too, after two years' expe- 
 rience of it, became intolerable. His disposition, at once shy and 
 defiantly proud, had perplexed and displeased the Kirkcaldy burgh- 
 ers. Both he and Irving also fell into unpleasant collisions with 
 them, and neither of the two was sufficiently docile to submit tame- 
 ly to reproof. 2 An opposition school had been set up which drew 
 
 1 "With me [he says in a private note] it was never much in favor, though my 
 parents silently much wished it, as I knew well. Finding I had objections, my father, 
 with a magnanimity which I admired and admire, left me frankly to my own guidance 
 in that matter, as did my mother, perhaps still more lovingly, though not so silently; 
 and the theological course which could be prosecuted or kept open by appearing an- 
 nually, putting down your name, but with some trifling fee, in the register, and then 
 going your way, was, after perhaps two years of this languid form, allowed to close it- 
 self for good. I remember yet being on the street in Argyll Square, Edinburgh, prob- 
 ably in 1817, and come over from Kirkcaldy with some intent, the languidest possible, 
 still to put down my name and fee. The official person, when I rung, was not at homej 
 and my instant feeling was, ' Very good, then, very good ; let this be Finis in the mat- 
 ter,' and it really was." 
 
 2 Carlyle says in the "Reminiscences " that Irving was accused of harshness to the 
 boys. Kirkcaldy tradition has preserved instances of it, which sound comical enough 
 at a distance, but were no matter of laughter to the sufferers. A correspondent writes 
 to me: " Irving has the reputation to this day of being a very hard master. He thrash- 
 ed the boys frequently and unmercifully. A story in illustration was told me. A car- 
 penter, a bit of a character, whose shop was directly opposite Irviug's school, hearing 
 a fearful howling one day, rushed across, axe in hand, drove up to the door, and to 
 Irving's query what he did there, replied, 'I thocht ye were killin' the lad, and cam' 
 over tae see if ye were neediu' help. ' Carlyle, on the contrary, I was assured, never 
 lifted his hand to a scholar. Still he had perfect command over them. A look or a 
 word was sufficient to command attention and obedience. Nor have I ever heard that 
 this command was attributable to fear. So far as I can learn, it was entirely due to 
 the respect which he seems to have obtained from the first." There is snme truth in 
 these legends of Irving's severity, for Carlyle himself admits it. But tradition always 
 tends to shape stories and characters into an artistic completeness which had no real 
 existence. The authentic evidence of Irving's essential kindness and affectionate gen- 
 tleness makes it impossible to believe that he was ever wantonly or carelessly cruel.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 31 
 
 off the pupils, and finally they both concluded that they had had 
 enough of it "better die than be a school-master for one's living" 
 and would seek some other means of supporting themselves. Car- 
 lyle had passed his summer holidays as usual at Mainhill (1818), 
 where he had perhaps talked over his prospects with his familj*. 
 On his return to Kirkcaldy in September he wrote to his father ex- 
 plaining his situation. He had saved about 90Z. , on which, with his 
 thrifty habits, he said that he could support himself in Edinburgh 
 till he could "fall into some other way of doing." He could per- 
 haps get a few mathematical pupils, and meantime could study for 
 the Bar. He waited only for his father's approval to send in his 
 resignation. The letter was accompanied by one of his constant 
 presents to his mother, who was again at home though not yet fully 
 recovered. 
 
 John Carlyle to Tlwmm Canyle. 
 
 "Mainhill: September 1C, 1818. 
 
 "Dear Brother, We received yours, and it told us of your safe 
 arrival at Kirkcaldy. Our mother has grown better every day since 
 you left us. She is as steady as ever she was, has been upon hay- 
 stacks Ihree or four times, and has been at church every Sabbath 
 since she came home, behaving always very decently. Also she has 
 given over talking and singing, and spends some of her time con- 
 sulting Ralph Erskine. She sleeps every night, and hinders no per- 
 son to sleep, but can do with less than the generality of people. In 
 fact we may conclude that she is as wise as could be expected. She 
 has none of the hypocritical mask with which some people clothe 
 their sentiments. One day, having met Agg Byers, she says : ' Weel, 
 Agg, lass, I've never spoken t' ye sin ye stole our coals. I'll gie ye 
 au advice: never steal nae more.' " 
 
 Alexander Carlyle to Tliomas Carlyle. 
 
 " September 18, 1818. 
 
 "My dear Brother, We were glad to hear of your having arrived 
 in safety, though your prospects were not brilliant. My father is at 
 Ecclefechan to-day at a market, but before he went he told me to 
 mention that with regard to his advising you, he was unable to give 
 you any advice. He thought it might be necessary to consult Leslie 
 before you gave up, but you might do what seemed to you good. 
 Had my advice any weight, I would advise you to try the law. You 
 may think you have not money enough to try that, but with what 
 assistance we could make, and your own industry, I think there 
 would be no fear but you would succeed. The box which contained 
 my mother's bonnet came a day or two ago. She is very well pleased 
 with it, though my father thought it too gaudy; but she proposes 
 writing to you herself." 
 
 The end was, that when December came Carlyle and Irving 
 "kicked the school-master functions over," removed to Edinburgh, 
 and were adrift on the world. Irving had little to fear ; he had
 
 82 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 money, friends, reputation ; he had a profession, and was waiting 
 only for "a call" to enter on his full privileges. Carlyle was far 
 more unfavorably situated. He was poor, unpopular, comparatively 
 unknown, or, if known, known only to be feared and even shunned. 
 In Edinburgh "from my fellow-creatures," he says, "little or noth- 
 ing but vinegar was my reception when we happened to meet or pass 
 near each other my own blame mainly, so proud, shy, poor, at once 
 so insignificant-looking and so grim and sorrowful. That in ' Sartor ' 
 of the worm trodden on and proving a torpedo is not wholly a fable, 
 but did actually befall once or twice, as I still with a kind of small, 
 not ungenial, malice can remember." He had, however, as was said, 
 nearly a hundred pounds, which he had saved out of his earnings ; 
 he had a consciousness of integrity worth more than gold to him. 
 He had thrifty self-denying habits which made him content with the 
 barest necessaries, and he resolutely faced his position. His family, 
 though silently disapproving the step which he had taken, and nec- 
 essarily anxious about him, rendered what help they could. Once 
 more the Ecclef echan carrier brought up the weekly or monthly sup- 
 plies of oatmeal, cakes, butter, and, when needed, under - garments, 
 returning with the dirty linen for the mother to wash and mend, 
 and occasional presents which were never forgotten; while Carlyle, 
 after a thought of civil engineering, for which his mathematical 
 training gave him a passing inclination, sat down seriously, if not 
 very assiduously, to study law. Letters to and from Ecclefechan 
 were constant, the carrier acting as postman. Selections from them 
 bring the scene and characters before the reader's eyes. 
 Sister Mary, then twelve years old, writes : 
 
 "I take this opportunity of sending you this scrawl. I got the 
 hat you sent with Sandy [brother Alexander], and it fits very well. 
 It was far too good; a worse would have done very well. Boys and 
 I are employed this winter in waiting on the cattle, and are going on 
 very well at present. I generally write a copy every night, and read 
 a little in the 'Cottagers of Gleuburnie,' or some such like; and it 
 shall be my earnest desire never to imitate the abominable slutteries 
 of Mrs. Maclarty. The remarks of the author, Mrs. Hamilton, often 
 bring your neat ways in my mind, and I hope to be benefited by 
 them. In the mean time, I shall endeavor to be a good girl, to be 
 kind and obedient to my parents, and obliging to my brothers and sis- 
 ters. You will write me a long letter when the carrier comes back." 
 
 The mother was unwearied in her affectionate solicitude solicitude 
 for the eternal as well as temporal interests of her darling child : 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Mainhill : January 3, 1819. 
 
 "Dear Son, I received yours in due time, and was glad to hear 
 you were well. I hope you will be healthier, moving about in the
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 
 
 city, than in your former way. Health is a valuable privilege ; try 
 to improve it, then. The time is short. Another year has com- 
 menced. Time is on the wing, and flies swiftly. Seek God with 
 all your heart ; and oh, my dear son, cease not to pray for His 
 counsel in all your ways. Fear not the world; you will be provided 
 for as He sees meet for you. 
 
 " As a sincere friend, whom you are always dear to, I beg you do 
 not neglect reading a part of your Bible daily, and may the Lord 
 open your eyes to see wondrous things out of His law! But it is 
 now two o'clock in the morning, and a bad pen, bad ink, and I as 
 bad at writing. I will drop it, and add no more, but remain 
 
 "Your loving mother, 
 
 "PEGGIE CARLYLE." 
 
 Carlyle had written a sermon on the salutary effects of "afflic- 
 tion," as his first exercise in the Divinity School. He was beginning 
 now, in addition to the problem of living which he had to solve, to 
 learn what affliction meant. He was attacked with dyspepsia, which 
 never wholly left him, and in these early years soon assumed its most 
 torturing form, like "a rat gnawing at the pit of his stomach." 
 His disorder working on his natural irritability found escape in 
 expressions which showed, at any rate, that he was attaining a 
 mastery of language. The pain made him furious ; and in such a 
 humor the commonest calamities of life became unbearable horrors. 
 
 " I find living here very high [he wrote soon after he was settled 
 in his lodgings]^ An hour ago I paid my week's bill, which, though 
 15s. 2d., was the smallest of the three I have yet discharged. This 
 is an unreasonable sum when I consider the slender accommodation 
 and the paltry, ill-cooked morsel which is my daily pittance. There 
 is also a school-master right overhead, whose noisy brats give me at 
 times no small annoyance. On a given night of the week he also 
 assembles a select number of vocal performers, whose music, as they 
 charitably name it, is now and then so clamorous that I almost 
 wished the throats of these sweet singers full of molten lead, or any 
 other substance that would stop their braying." 
 
 But he was not losing heart, and liked, so far as he had seen into 
 it, his new profession : 
 
 "The law [he told his mother] is what I sometimes think I 
 was intended for naturally. I am afraid it takes several hundreds 
 to become an advocate; but for this I should commence the study 
 of it with great hopes of success. We shall see whether it is possi- 
 ble. One of the first advocates of the day raised himself from being 
 a disconsolate preacher to his present eminence. Therefore I en- 
 treat you not to be uneasy about me. I see none of my fellows 
 with whom I am very anxious to change places. Tell the boys not 
 to let their hearts be troubled for me. I am a stubborn dog, and 
 evil fortune shall not break my heart or bend it either, as I hope. 
 I know not how to speak about the washing which you offer so 
 kindly. Surely you thought, five years ago, that this troublesome
 
 34 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 washing and baking was all over ; and now to recommence ! I can 
 scarcely think of troubling you; yet the clothes are ill -washed 
 here ; and if the box be going and coming any way, perhaps you 
 can manage it." 
 
 While law lectures were being attended, the difficulty was to live. 
 Pupils were a not very effective resource, and of his adventures in 
 this department Carlyle gave ridiculous accounts. In February, 
 1819, he wrote to his brother John : 
 
 ' ' About a week ago I briefly dismissed an hour of private teach- 
 ing. A man in the New Town applied to one Nichol, public teacher 
 of mathematics here, for a person to give instruction in arithmetic, 
 or something of that sort. Nichol spoke of me, and I was in con- 
 sequence directed to call on the man next morning. I went at the 
 appointed hour, and after waiting for a few minutes was met by a 
 stout, impudent-looking man with red whiskers, having much the 
 air of an attorney, or some such creature of that sort. As our con- 
 versation may give you some insight into these matters, I report the 
 substance of it. 'I am here,' I said, after making a slight bow, 
 which was just perceptibly returned, ' by the request of Mr. Nichol, 
 to speak with you, sir, about a mathematical teacher whom he tells 
 me you want.' 'Ay. What are your terms?' 'Two guineas a 
 month for each hour.' 'Two guineas a month! that is perfectly 
 extravagant.' 'I believe it to be the rate at which every teacher of 
 respectability in Edinburgh officiates, and I know it to be the rate 
 below which I never officiate.' 'That will not do for my friend.' 
 ' I am sorry that nothing else will do for me ;' and I retired with 
 considerable deliberation." 
 
 Other attempts were not so unsuccessful ; one, sometimes two, 
 pupils were found willing to pay at the rate required. Dr. Brewster, 
 afterwards Sir David, discovered Carlyle, and gave him occasional 
 employment on his Encyclopaedia. He was thus able to earn, as 
 long as the session lasted, about two pounds a week, and on this he 
 contrived to live without trenching on his capital. His chief pleas- 
 ure was his correspondence with his mother, which never slackened. 
 She had written to tell him of the death of her sister Mary. He 
 
 replies : 
 
 "Edinburgh: Monday, March 29, 1819. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I am so much obliged to you for the affec- 
 tionate concern which you express for me in that long letter that I 
 cannot delay to send you a few brief words by way of reply. I was 
 affected by the short notice you give me of Aunt Mary's death, and 
 the short reflections with which you close it. It is true, my dear 
 mother, ' that we must all soon follow her, ' such is the unalterable 
 and not unpleasing doom of men. Then it is well for those who, 
 at that awful moment which is before every one, shall be able to 
 look back with calmness and forward with hope. But I need not 
 dwell upon this solemn subject. It is familiar to the thoughts of 
 every one who has any thought.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 35 
 
 " I am rather afraid I have not been quite regular in reading that 
 best of books which you recommended to me. However, last night 
 I was reading upon my favorite Job, and I hope to do better in time 
 to come. I entreat you to believe that I am sincerely desirous of 
 being a good man; and though we may differ in some few unim- 
 portant particulars, yet I firmly trust that the same power which 
 created us with imperfect faculties will pardon the errors of every 
 one (and none are without them) who seeks truth and righteousness 
 with a simple heart. 
 
 "You need not fear my studying too much. In fact, my pros- 
 pects are so unsettled that I do not often sit down to books with all 
 the zeal I am capable of. You are not to think I am fretful. I 
 have long accustomed my mind to look upon the future with a 
 sedate aspect, and at any rate my hopes have never yet failed me. 
 A French author, D'Alembert (one of the few persons who deserve 
 the honorable epithet of honest man), whom I was lately reading, 
 remarks that one who devoted his life to learning ought to carry for 
 his motto, ' Liberty, Truth, Poverty, ' for he that fears the latter can 
 never have the former. This should not prevent one from using 
 every honest effort to attain a comfortable situation in life ; it says 
 only that the best is dearly bought by base conduct, and the worst 
 is not worth mourning over. We shall speak of all these matters 
 more fully in summer, for I am meditating just now to come down 
 to stay a while with you, accompanied with a cargo of books, Ital- 
 ian, German, and others. You will give me yonder little room, and 
 you will waken me every morning about five or six o'clock. Then 
 such study. I shall delve in the garden, too, and, in a word, become 
 not only the wisest but the strongest man in those regions. This is 
 all claver, but it pleases one. 
 
 "My dear mother, yours most affectionately, 
 
 "THOMAS CARLYLE." 
 
 D'Alembert's name had probably never reached Annandale, and 
 Mrs. Carlyle could not gather from it into what perilous regions her 
 son was travelling but her quick ear caught something in the tone 
 which frightened her : 
 
 "Oh, my dear, dear son [she answered at once and eagerly], I 
 would pray for a blessing on your learning. I beg you with all the 
 feeling of an affectionate mother that you would study the Word of 
 God, which He has graciously put in our hands, that it may power- 
 fully reach our hearts, that we may discern it in its true light. God 
 made man after His own image, therefore he behoved to be without 
 any imperfect faculties. Beware, my dear son, of such thoughts ; 
 let them not dwell on your mind. God forbid ! But I dare say you 
 will not care to read this scrawl. Do make religion your great 
 study, Tom; if you repent it, I will bear the blame forever." 
 
 Carlyle was thinking as much as his mother of religion, but the 
 form in which his thoughts were running was not hers. He was 
 painfully seeing that all things were not wholly as he had been 
 taught to think them ; the doubts which had stopped his divinity
 
 83 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 career were blackening into thunder-clouds ; and all his reflections 
 were colored by dyspepsia. ' ' I was entirely unknown in Edinburgh 
 circles," he says, "solitary, eating my own heart, fast losing my 
 health too, a prey to nameless struggles and miseries, which have 
 yet a kind of horror in them to my thoughts, three weeks without 
 any kind of sleep from impossibility to be free of noise." In fact, 
 he was entering on what he called ' ' the three most miserable years 
 of my life. " He would have been saved from much could he have 
 resolutely thrown himself into his intended profession ; but he soon 
 came to hate it, as just then, perhaps, he would have hated any- 
 thing. 
 
 "I had thought [he writes in a note somewhere] of attempting 
 to become an advocate. It seemed glorious to me for its indepen- 
 dency, and I did read some law books, attend Hume's lectures on 
 Scotch law, and converse with and question various dull people of 
 the practical sort. But it and they and the admired lecturing Hume 
 himself appeared to me mere denizens of the kingdom of dulness, 
 pointing towards nothing but money as wages for all that bogpool 
 of disgust. Hume's lectures once done with, I flung the thing away 
 forever." 
 
 Men who are out of humor with themselves often see their own 
 condition reflected in the world outside them, and everything seems 
 amiss because it is not well with themselves. But the state of Scot- 
 land and England also was well fitted to feed his discontent. The 
 great war had been followed by a collapse. Wages were low, food 
 at famine prices. Tens of thousands of artisans were out of work, 
 their families were starving, and they themselves were growing mu- 
 tinous. Even at home, from his own sternly patient father, who 
 never meddled with politics, he heard things not calculated to rec- 
 oncile him to existing arrangements. 
 
 "I have heard my father say [he mentions] with an impressive- 
 ness which all his perceptions carried with them, that the lot of a 
 poor man was growing worse, that the world would not, and could 
 not, last as it was, but mighty changes, of which none saw the end, 
 were on the way. In the dear years, when the oatmeal was as high 
 as ten shillings a stone, he had noticed the laborers, I have heard 
 him tell, retire each separately to a brook, and there drink instead of 
 dining, anxious only to hide it." 1 
 
 These early impressions can be traced through the whole of Carlyle's 
 writings ; the conviction was forced upon him that there was some- 
 thing vicious to the bottom in English and Scotch society, and that 
 revolution in some form or other lay visibly ahead. So long as Irving 
 remained in Edinburgh "the condition of the people" question was 
 
 > "Reminiscences,"' vol. i. p. CO.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 37 
 
 the constant subject of talk between him and Carlyle. They were 
 both of them ardent, radical, indignant at the injustice which they 
 witnessed, and as yet unconscious of the difficulty of mending it. 
 Irving, however, he had seen little of since they had moved to Ed- 
 inburgh, and he was left, for the most part, alone with his own 
 thoughts. There had come upon him the trial which in these days 
 awaits every man of high intellectual gifts and noble nature on their 
 first actual acquaintance with human things the question, far deep- 
 er than any mere political one, What is this world then, what is this 
 human life, over which a just God is said to preside, but of whose 
 presence or whose providence so few signs are visible ? In happier 
 ages religion silences scepticism if it cannot reply to its difficulties, 
 and postpones the solution of the mystery to another stage of exist- 
 ence. Brought up in a pious family, where religion was not talked 
 about or emotionalized, but was accepted as the rule of thought and 
 conduct, himself too instinctively upright, pure of heart, and rever- 
 ent, Carlyle, like his parents, had accepted the Bible as a direct com- 
 munication from Heaven. It made known the will of God, and the 
 relation in which man stood to his Maker, as present facts like a law 
 of nature, the truth of it, like the truth of gravitation, which man 
 must act upon or immediately suffer the consequences. But relig- 
 ion, as revealed in the Bible, passes beyond present conduct, pene- 
 trates all forms of thought, and takes possession wherever it goes. 
 It claims to control the intellect, to explain the past, and foretell the 
 future. It has entered into poetry and art, and has been the inter- 
 preter of history. And thus there had grown round it a body of 
 opinion, on all varieties of subjects, assumed to be authoritative ; 
 dogmas which science was contradicting ; a history of events which 
 it called infallible, yet which the canons of evidence, by which other 
 histories are tried and tested successfully, declared not to be infallible 
 at all. To the Mainhill household the Westminster Confession was 
 a full and complete account of the position of mankind and of the 
 Being to whom they owed their existence. The Old and New Testa- 
 ment not only contained all spiritual truth necessary for guidance in 
 word and deed, but every fact related hi them was literally true. 
 To doubt was not to mistake, but was to commit a sin of the deep- 
 est dye, and was a sure sign of a corrupted heart. Carlyle's wide 
 study of modern literature had shown him that much of this had ap- 
 peared to many of the strongest minds in Europe to be doubtful or 
 even plainly incredible. Young men of genius are the first to feel 
 the growing influences of their time, and on Carlyle they fell in their 
 most painful form. Notwithstanding his pride, he was most modest 
 and self-distrustful. He had been taught that want of faith was sin, 
 yet , like a true Scot, he knew that he would peril his soul if he pre- 
 tended to believe what his intellect told him was false. If any part 
 I. 3
 
 88 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of what was called Revelation was mistaken, how could he be as- 
 sured of the rest ? How could he tell that the moral part of it, to 
 which the phenomena which he saw round him were in plain contra- 
 diction, was more than a "devout imagination?" Thus to poverty 
 and dyspepsia there had been added the struggle which is always 
 hardest in the noblest minds, which Job had known, and David, and 
 Solomon, and yEschylus, and Shakespeare, and Goethe. Where are 
 the tokens of His presence ? wLere are the signs of His coming ? Is 
 there, in this universe of things, any moral Providence at all ? or is 
 it the product of some force of the nature of which we can know 
 nothing save only that " one event comes alike to all, to the good and 
 to the evil, and that there is no difference ?" 
 
 Commonplace persons, if assailed by such misgivings, thrust them 
 aside, throw themselves into occupation, and leave doubt to settle 
 itself. Carlyle could not. The importunacy of the overwhelming 
 problem forbade him to settle himself either to law or any other 
 business till he had wrestled down the misgivings which had grap- 
 pled with him. The greatest of us have our weaknesses, and the 
 Margaret Gordon business had, perhaps, intertwined itself with the 
 spiritual torment. The result of it was that Carlyle was extremely 
 miserable, "tortured," as he says, "by the freaks of an imagination 
 of extraordinary and wild activity." 
 
 He went home, as he had proposed, after the session, but Mainhill 
 was never a less happy home to him than it proved this summer. 
 He could not conceal, perhaps he did not try to conceal, the condi- 
 tion of his mind ; and to his family, to whom the truth of their creed 
 was no more a matter of doubt than the presence of the sun in the 
 sky, he must have seemed as if "possessed." He could not read; 
 he wandered about the moors like a restless spirit. His mother was 
 in agony about him. He was her darling, her pride, the apple of 
 her eye, and she could not restrain her lamentations and remon- 
 strances. His father, with supreme good judgment, left him to 
 himself. 
 
 "His tolerance for me, his trust in me [Carlyle says], was great. 
 When I declined going forward into the Church, though his heart 
 was set upon it, he respected my scruples, and patiently let me have 
 my way. When I had peremptorily ceased from being a school- mas- 
 ter, though he inwardly disapproved of the step as imprudent, and 
 saw me in successive summers lingering beside him in sickness of 
 body and mind, without outlook towards any good, he had the for- 
 bearance to say at worst nothing, never once to whisper discontent 
 with me." , 
 
 A letter from Irving, to whom he had written complaining of his 
 condition and of his friend's silence, was welcome at this dreary 
 period :
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 39 
 
 Edicard Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh: June 4, 1819. 
 
 " Dear Sir, My apology for neglecting you so long is that I have 
 been equally negligent of myself. By what fatality 1 know not, I 
 have been so entirely devoted to idleness or to insignificant employ- 
 ments since you left me, that German, Italian, and every other study, 
 useful or serious, has been relinquished. Perhaps this renewal of 
 our intercourse may be the date of my awakening from my slum- 
 ber, as the breaking up of our intercourse was the date of its com- 
 mencement. To speak of myself, that most grateful of topics, is, 
 therefore, out of the question ; as it would only be to expose the 
 day-dreams of this my lethargy to one whose active mind has no 
 sympathy with listlessness and drowsiness, and this subject being 
 excluded, where shall I find materials for this letter ? 
 
 ' ' I could detail to you the mineralogy of the Campsey hills, and 
 tell you of the overlying formation of porphyry above the green- 
 stone, and of the nearly horizontal bed of limestone on the green- 
 stone which supplies the greater part of Stirling, Dumbarton, and 
 Strathearn, and of a curious quarry of stone which is carried far and 
 near for building stoves and setting grates, with an account of its 
 singular virtue of resisting heat ; but well I know you are weary 
 unto death of such jargon. And I could relate to you one most 
 sentimental incident that did befall me on that journey, whereby 
 hangs a tale which might furnish matter for a novel or even a mod- 
 ern tragedy; but then I suspect you have already put me down for 
 an adventure-hunter, which is too near a stage to a story-teller to 
 fall in with my fancy. 
 
 " Now the truth is, to throw in a word of self-defence, if I have a 
 turn for the romantic, it is not for the vanity of being the actor of a 
 strange part, or the spouter of a strange tale in the various scenes of 
 the great drama of this mortal state, but rather to be a spectator of 
 those who are so, more especially if they be unfortunate withal ; and 
 occasionally I confess to have the privilege of the ancient chorus, of 
 moralizing a little, or rather not a little, upon the passing events ; 
 and occasionally to reach an admonition or a consolation to the suf- 
 fering hero or heroine of the piece. But see, I am letting you into 
 some of the vagaries which came and went across my fancy during 
 the interval of apathy which has passed away since I was separated 
 from your conversation, for which I have not yet found a substitute. 
 
 "And I could dwell upon the rich harvest of insight into charac- 
 ter which I gathered from the debates of the General Assembly, and 
 of the lack of genius and honesty which took from its value, and of 
 the rankness and superfluity of vulgarity and bad temper and party 
 zeal, which were as the thistles and ragworts and tares of the crop, 
 but that I know your mind is incurious of these things, engaged as 
 it is with much higher contemplations. 
 
 " Of the men of Edinburgh and their employments I know as lit- 
 tlo as of those of Canton in China, save that 'Christieson rather in- 
 clines to fall in with Lord Lauderdale's views of the Bullion question 
 than the Committee's, and that he is as sure as ever that all men have 
 mistaken the meaning of Aristotle which, it seems, is wonderfully
 
 40 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 wrapped up in the power of the particle av and that Galloway is 
 as ill-bred, and stares as full, and wears his hair hanging over the 
 ample circumference of his globular skull, as usual ; like the thatch 
 of those round rustic Chinese-roofed cottages which gentlemen some- 
 times plant at the outer gates of their grounds. As to Dickson, he 
 plays quoits with Chartres, and at times with me, and has got his 
 mouth always filled with wit at me for admiring those beautiful lines 
 of Milton's "Hymn on the Nativity:"* 
 
 ' It was no season then for her [Nature] 
 To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.' 
 
 I need not tell you where the wit lies ; and you know when he is 
 primed anything will do for a match. He is just in the predica- 
 ment of a spring-gun in a garden which has ropes in every direction 
 you cannot stir a foot but twitch goes one of its ropes ; round it 
 turns full-mouthed upon you, and, hit or miss, off it goes. 
 
 "Weary not then, my dear Carlyle, of the country. I am here in 
 the midst of the busy world, and its business only interrupts me, and 
 would vex me if I would let it. Fill up with the softness of rural 
 beauty, and the sincerity of rural manners, and the contentment of 
 rural life, those strong impressions of nature and of men whicty are 
 already in your mind, till the pictures become more mellow and 
 joyous, and yield to yourself more delight in forming, and to others 
 more pleasure in viewing them. 
 
 ' ' I would I were along with you to charm the melancholy of soli- 
 tude, and in your company to carry my eye into those marks of be- 
 neficence and love which every part of nature exhibits, and win from 
 the contemplation of them a portion of that beneficence ; so that the 
 restless and evil passions of my heart might be charmed if not 
 shamed into repose, and I might go forth again into the world of 
 busy speech resolved to mar the enjoyment of no one, but in my 
 little sphere to do all the good it would allow, to wish for a wider 
 sphere, and to live in hope of that wider and better existence which, 
 when it is revealed,! pray that you and I and all we love and should 
 love may be prepared for. 
 
 "Don't be so tardy in writing to me as I have been in writing to 
 you. Arrange the plan of a correspondence which may be useful 
 to us both. You proposed it first, and now I reckon myself entitled 
 to press it. Remember me kindly to your father and mother, and to 
 Sandy and the rest. Your faithful friend, EDWARD IRVING." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A.D. 1819. JET. 24. 
 
 IN November Carlyle was back at Edinburgh again, with his pu- 
 pils and his law lectures, which he had not yet deserted, and still 
 persuaded himself that he would persevere with. He did not find 
 his friend; Irving had gone to Glasgow, to be assistant to Dr.Chal-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 41 
 
 mers ; and the state of things which he found in the metropolis was 
 not of a sort to improve his humor. 
 
 "1819 [he says] was the year of the great Radical rising in 
 Glasgow, and the kind of (altogether imaginary) rising they at- 
 tempted on Bonnymuir against the yeomanry a 'time of great rage 
 and absurd terrors and expectations; a very fierce Radical and anti- 
 Radical time ; Edinburgh suddenly agitated by it all round me, not 
 to mention Glasgow in the distance; gentry people full of zeal and 
 foolish terror and fury, and looking disgustingly busy and impor- 
 tant. Courier hussars would come in from the Glasgow region, cov- 
 ered with mud, breathless from head-quarters, as you took your walk 
 in Princes Street; and you would hear old powdered gentlemen in 
 silver spectacles talking in low-toned but exultant voice about ' Cor- 
 don of troops, sir,' as you went along. The mass of the people, not 
 the populace alone, had a quite different feeling, as if the danger 
 was small or imaginary and the grievances dreadfully real, which 
 was, with emphasis, my own poor private notion of it. One bleared 
 Sunday morning I had gone out, perhaps seven or eight A.M., for my 
 walk. At the riding-liouse in Nicholson Street was a kind of strag- 
 
 fly group or small crowd, with red-coats interspersed. Coming up, 
 perceived it was the Lothian yeomanry (Mid or East I know not), 
 just getting under way for Glasgow, to be part of ' the cordon.' I 
 halting a moment, they took the road, very ill -ranked, not numer- 
 ous, or any way dangerous-looking men of war; but there rose from 
 the little crowd, by way of farewell cheer to them, the strangest shout 
 I have heard human throats utter; not very loud, or loud even for 
 the small numbers; but it said, as plain as words, and with infinitely 
 more emphasis of sincerity, ' May the devil go with you, ye pecul- 
 iarly contemptible and dead to the distresses of your fellow-creat- 
 ures.' Another morning, months after, spring and sun now come, 
 and the 'cordon,' etc., all over, I met a gentleman, an advocate, 
 slightly of my acquaintance, hurrying along, musket in hand, to- 
 wards*' the Links,' there to be drilled as an item of the 'gentleman 
 volunteers ' now afoot. ' You should have the like of this,' said he, 
 cheerily patting his musket. ' H'm, yes ; but I haven't yet quite 
 settled on which side!' which, probably, he hoped was quiz, though 
 it really expressed my feeling. Irving, too, and all of us juniors, 
 had the same feeling in different intensities, and spoken of only 
 to one another : a sense that revolt against such a load of unvera- 
 cities, impostures, and quietly inane formalities would one day be- 
 come indispensable sense which had a kind of rash, false, and 
 quasi-insolent joy in it; mutiny, revolt, being alight matter to the 
 young." 1 
 
 The law lectures went on, and Carlyle wrote to his mother about 
 his progress with them. " The law," he said, "I find to be a most 
 complicated subject, yet I like it pretty well, and feel that I shall 
 like it better as I proceed. Its great charm in my eyes is that no 
 
 1 "Reminiscences," vol. i. p. 152.
 
 42 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 mean compliances are requisite for prospering in it. " To Irving he 
 had written a fuller, not yet completely full, account of himself, com- 
 plaining perhaps of his obstructions and difficulties. Irving's advice 
 is not what would have been given by a cautious attorney. He ad- 
 mired his friend, and only wished his great capabilities to be known 
 as soon as possible : 
 
 Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "31 Kent Street, Glasgow : December 28, 1819. 
 
 "Dear Carlyle, I pray that you may prosper in your legal stud- 
 ies, provided only you will give your mind to take in all the elements 
 which enter into the question of the obstacles. But remember, it is 
 not want of knowledge alone that impedes, but want of instruments 
 for making that knowledge available. This you know better than I. 
 Now my view of the matter is that your knowledge, likely very soon 
 to surpass in extent and accuracy that of most of your compeers, is 
 to be made salable, not by the usual way of adding friend to friend, 
 which neither you nor I are enough patient of, but by a way of your 
 own. Known you must be before you can be employed. Known 
 you will not be for a winning, attaching, accommodating man, but 
 for an original, commanding, and rather self-willed man. Now es- 
 tablish this last character, and you take a far higher grade than any 
 other. How are you to establish it ? Just by bringing yourself before 
 the public as you are. First find vent for your notions. Get them 
 tongue ; upon every subject get them tongue, not upon law alone. 
 You cannot at present get them either utterance or audience by ordi- 
 nary converse. Your utterance is not the most favorable. It con- 
 vinces, but does not persuade ; and it is only a very few (I can claim 
 place for myself) that it fascinates. Your audience is worse. They 
 are generally (I exclude myself) unphilosophical, unthinking drivel- 
 lers, who lay in wait to catch you in your words, and who give you lit- 
 tle justice in the recital, because you give their vanity or self-esteem 
 little justice, or even mercy, in the rencounter. Therefore, my dear 
 friend, some other way is to be sought for. Now pause, if you be not 
 convinced of this conclusion. If you be, we shall proceed. If you 
 be not, read again, and you will see it just, and as such admit it. Now 
 what way is to be sought for ? I know no other than the press. You 
 have not the pulpit as I have, and where perhaps I have the advan- 
 tage. You have not good and influential society. I know nothing 
 but the press for your purpose. None are so good as these two, the 
 Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine. Do not steal away and 
 say, the one I am not fit for, the other I am not willing for. Both 
 pleas I refuse. The Edinburgh Review you are perfectly fit for ; 
 not yet upon law, but upon any work of mathematics, physics, gen- 
 eral literature, history, and politics, you are as ripe as the average 
 of their writers. Blackicood's Magazine presents bad company, I 
 confess ; but it also furnishes a good field for fugitive writing, and 
 good introductions to society on one side of the question. This last 
 advice, I confess, is against my conscience, and I am inclined to 
 blot it out ; for did I not rest satisfied that you were to use your
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 
 
 pen for your conscience I would never ask you to use it for your 
 living. Writers in the encyclopedias, except of leading articles, do 
 not get out from the crowd ; but writers in the Review come out at 
 once, and obtain the very opinion you want, opinion among the in- 
 telligent and active men in every rank, not among the sluggish 
 tatxmti alone. N 
 
 "It is easy for me to advise what many perhaps are as ready to 
 advise. But I know I have influence, and I am willing to use it. 
 Therefore, again let me entreat you to begin a new year by an effort 
 continuous, not for getting knowledge, but for communicating it, 
 that you may gain favor, and money, and opinion. Do not disem- 
 bark 'all your capital of thought, and time, and exertion into this 
 concern, but disembark a portion equal to its urgency, and make the 
 experiment upon a proper scale. If it succeed, the spirit of advent- 
 ure will follow, and you will be ready to embark more ; if it fail, 
 no great venture was made ; no great venture is lost : the time is not 
 yet come. But you will have got a more precise view by the failure 
 of the obstacles to be surmounted, and time and energy will give 
 you what you lacked. Therefore I advise you, as a very sincere 
 friend, that forthwith you choose a topic, not that you are best in- 
 formed on, but that you are most likely to find admittance for, and 
 set apart some portion of each day or week to this object and this 
 alone, leaving the rest free for objects professional and pleasant. 
 This is nothing more than what I urged at our last meeting, but I 
 have nothing to write I reckon so important. Therefore do take it 
 to thought. Depend upon it, you will be delivered by such present 
 adventure from those harpies of your peace you are too much tor- 
 mented with. You will get a class with whom society will be as 
 pleasant as we have found it together, and you will open up ulti- 
 mate prospects which I trust no man shall be able to close. 
 
 "I think our town is safe for every leal-hearted man to his Maker 
 and to his fellow-men to traverse without fear of scaith. Such trav- 
 ersing is the wine and milk of my present existence. I do not 
 warrant against a Radical rising, though I think it vastly improba- 
 ble. But continue these times a year or two, and unless you un- 
 make our present generation, and unman them of human feeling 
 and of Scottish intelligence, you will have commotion. It is im- 
 possible for them to die of starvation, and they are making no pro- 
 vision to have them removed. And what on earth is for them? 
 God and my Saviour enable me to lift their hearts above a world 
 that has deserted them, though they live in its plenty and labor in 
 its toiling service, and fix them upon a world which, my dear Car- 
 lyle, I wish you and I had the inheritance in which we may have 
 if we will. But I am not going to preach, else I would plunge into 
 another subject which I rate above all subjects. Yet this should 
 not be excluded from our communion either. 
 
 " I am getting on quietly enough, and, if I be defended from the 
 errors of my heart, may do pretty well. The Doctor (Chalmers) is 
 full of acknowledgments, and I ought to be full to a higher source. 
 " Yours affectionately, EDWARD IRVING." 
 
 Carlyle was less eager to give his thoughts "tongue " than Irving
 
 44 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 supposed. He had not yet, as lie expressed it, "taken the devil by 
 the horns." He did not mean to trouble the world with his doubts, 
 and as yet he had not much else to trouble it with. But he was 
 more and more restless. Reticence about his personal sufferings 
 was at no time one of his virtues. Dyspepsia had him by the throat. 
 Even the minor ailments to which our flesh is heir, and which most 
 of us bear in silence, the eloquence of his imagination flung into 
 forms like the temptations of a saint. His mother had early de- 
 scribed him as "gey ill to live wi'," and while in great things he 
 was the most considerate and generous of men, in trifles he was in- 
 tolerably irritable. Dyspepsia accounts for most of it. He did not 
 know what was the matter with him, and when the fit was severe 
 he drew pictures of his condition which frightened every one be- 
 longing to him. He had sent his family in the middle of the win- 
 ter a report of himself which made them think that he was serious- 
 ly ill. His brother John, who had now succeeded him as a teacher 
 in Annan School, was sent for in haste to Mainhill to a consultation, 
 and the result was a letter which shows the touching affection with 
 which the Carlyles clung to one another : 
 
 John A. Carlyle to TJiomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Mainhill : February, 1820. 
 
 "I have just arrived from Annan, and we are all so uneasy on 
 your account that at the request of my father in particular, and of 
 all the rest, I am determined to write to call on you for a speedy 
 answer. Your father and mother, and all of us, are extremely anx- 
 ious that you should come home directly, if possible, if you think 
 you can come without danger. And we trust that, notwithstanding 
 the bitterness of last summer v you will still find it emphatically a 
 home. My mother bids me call- upon you to do so by every tie 
 of affection, and by all that is sacred. She esteems seeing you 
 again and administering comfort to you as her highest felicity. 
 Your father, also, is extremely anxious to see you again at home. 
 The room is much more comfortable than it was last season. The 
 roads are repaired, and all things more convenient ; and we all trust 
 that you will yet recover, after you shall have inhaled your native 
 breezes and escaped once more from the unwholesome city of Edin- 
 burgh, and its selfish and unfeeling inhabitants. In the name of all, 
 then, I call upon you not to neglect or refuse our earnest wishes ; to 
 come home and experience the comforts of parental and brotherly 
 affection, which, though rude and without polish, is yet sincere and 
 honest." 
 
 The father adds a postscript; 
 
 "My dear Tom, I have been very uneasy about you ever since 
 we received your moving letter, and I thought to have written to 
 you myself this day and told you all my thoughts about your health, 
 which is the foundation and copestone of all our earthly comfort.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 45 
 
 But, being particularly engaged this day, I caused John to write. 
 Come home as soon as possible, and forever oblige, 
 
 " Dear son, your loving father, 
 
 ' ' JAMES CARLYLE. " 
 
 The fright had been unnecessary. Dyspepsia, while it tortures 
 body and mind, does little serious injury. The attack had passed 
 off. A letter from Carlyle was already on the way, in which the 
 illness was scarcely noticed ; it contained little but directions for his 
 brothers' studies, and an offer of ten pounds out of his scantily filled 
 purse to assist " Sandy" on the farm. With his family it was im- 
 possible for him to talk freely, and through this gloomy time he 
 had but one friend, though this one was of priceless value. To Ir- 
 ving he had written out his discontent. He was now disgusted 
 with law, and meant to abandon it. Irving, pressed as he was with 
 work, could always afford Carlyle the best of his time and judg- 
 ment: 
 
 Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Glasgow: March 14, 1820. 
 
 "Since I received your last epistle, which reminded me of some 
 of those gloomy scenes of nature I have often had the greatest 
 pleasure in contemplating, I have been wrought almost to death, 
 having had three sermons to write, and one of them a charity ser- 
 mon ; but I shall make many sacrifices before I shall resign the en- 
 tertainment and benefit I derive from our correspondence. 
 
 "Your mind is of too penetrating a cast to rest satisfied with the 
 frail disguise which the happiness of ordinary life has thrown on to 
 hide its nakedness, and I do never augur that your nature is to be 
 satisfied with its sympathies. Indeed, I am convinced that were 
 you translated into the most elegant and informed circle of this 
 city, you would find it please only by its novelty, and perhaps re- 
 fresh by its variety ; but you would be constrained to seek the solid 
 employment and the lasting gratification of your mind elsewhere. 
 The truth is, life is a thing formed for the average of men, and it is 
 only in those parts of our nature which are of average possession 
 that it can gratify. The higher parts of our nature find their enter- 
 tainment in sympathizing with the highest efforts of our species, 
 which are, and will continue, confined to the closet of the sage, and 
 can never find their station in the drawing-rooms of the talking 
 world. Indeed, I will go higher and say that the highest parts of our 
 nature can never have their proper food till they turn to contemplate 
 the excellences of our Creator, and not only to contemplate but to 
 imitate them. Therefore it is, my dear Carlyle, that I exhort you to 
 call in the finer parts of your mind, and to try to present the society 
 about you with those more ordinary displays which they can enjoy. 
 The indifference with which they receive them, 1 and the ignorance 
 with which they treat them, operate on the mind like gall and worrn- 
 
 ' I.e., the talk to which you usually treat your friends. 
 3*
 
 46 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 wood. I would entreat you to be comforted in the possession of 
 your treasures, and to study more the times and persons to which 
 you bring them forth. When I say your treasures, I mean not 
 your information so much, which they will bear the display of for 
 the reward and value of it, but of your feelings and affections, 
 which, being of finer tone than theirs, and consequently seeking a 
 keener expression, they are apt to mistake for a rebuke of their own 
 tameness, or for intolerance of ordinary things, and too many of 
 them, I fear, for asperity of mind. 
 
 ' ' There is just another panacea for your griefs (which are not 
 imaginary, but for which I see a real ground in the too penetrating 
 and, at times, perhaps, too severe turn of your mind) ; but though I 
 judge it better and more worthy than reserve, it is perhaps more dif- 
 ficult of practice. I mean the habit of using our superiority for the 
 information and improvement of others. This I reckon both the 
 most dignified and the most kindly course that one can take, found- 
 ed upon the great principles of human improvement, and founded 
 upon what I am wont, or at least would wish, to make my pattern, 
 the example of the Saviour of men, who endured, in His ertand of 
 salvation, the contradiction of men. But I confess, on the other 
 hand, one meets with so few that are apt disciples, or willing to al- 
 low superiority, that will be constantly fighting with you upon the 
 threshold, that it is very heartless, and forces one to reserve. And 
 besides, one is so apt to fancy a superiority where there is none, that 
 it is likely to produce overmuch self-complacency. But I see I am 
 beginning to prose, and therefore shall change the subject with 
 only one remark, that your tone of mind reminds me more than 
 anything of my own when under the sense of great religious im- 
 perfection, and anxiously pursuing after higher Christian attain- 
 ments. . . . 
 
 " I have read your letter again, and, at the risk of farther prosing, 
 I shall have another hit at its contents. You talk of renouncing the 
 law, and you speak mysteriously of hope springing up from another 
 quarter. I pray that it may soon be turned into enjoyment. But I 
 would not have you renounce the law unless you coolly think that this 
 new view contains those fields of happiness from the want of which 
 the prospect of law has become so dreary. Law has within it scope 
 ample enough for any mind. The reformation Avhich it needs, and 
 which with so much humor and feeling you describe, 1 is the very 
 evidence of what I say. Did Adam Smith find the commercial sys- 
 tem less encumbered ? (I know he did not find it more) ; and see 
 what order the mind of one man has made there. Such a reforma- 
 tion must be wrought in law, and the spirit of the age is manifestly 
 bending that way. I know none who, from his capacity of remem- 
 bering and digesting facts, and of arranging them into general re- 
 sults, is so well fitted as yourself. 
 
 "With regard to my own affairs, I am becoming too much of a 
 man of business, and too little a man of contemplation. I meet with 
 few minds to excite me, many to drain me off, and, by the habits of 
 
 1 Carlyle's letters to Irving are all, unfortunately, lost.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 47 
 
 discharging and receiving nothing in return, I am run off to the very 
 lees, as you may easily discern. I have a German master and a class 
 in college. I have seen neither for a week ; such is the state of my 
 engagements engagements with I know not what ; with preaching 
 in St. John's once a week, and employing the rest of the week in 
 visiting objects in which I can learn nothing, unless I am collecting 
 for a new series of 'Tales of my Landlord,' which should range 
 among Radicals and smugglers. 
 
 "Dr. Chalmers, though a most entire original by himself, is sur- 
 rounded with a very prosaical sort of persons, who please me some- 
 thing by their zeal to carry into effect his philosophical schemes, 
 and vex me much by their idolatry of him. My comforts are in 
 hearing the distresses of the people, and doing my mite to al- 
 leviate them. They are not in the higher walks (I mean as to 
 wealth) in which I am permitted to move, nor yet in the greater pub- 
 licity and notoriety I enjoy. Every minister in Glasgow is an oracle 
 to a certain class of devotees. I would not give one day in solitude 
 or in meditation with a friend as I have enjoyed it often along the 
 sands of Kirkcaldy for ages in this way. . . . 
 
 " Yours most truly, EDWARD IRVING." 
 
 It does not appear what the " other quarter " may have been on 
 which the prospect was brightening. Carlyle was not more explicit 
 to his mother, to whom he wrote at this time a letter unusually 
 gentle and melancholy : 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle. 
 
 " Edinburgh : March 29, 1820. 
 
 "To you, my dear mother, I can never be sufficiently grateful, 
 not only for the common kindness of a mother, but for the unceas- 
 ing watchfulness with which you strove to instil virtuous principles 
 into my young mind ; and though we are separated at present, 
 and may be still more widely separated, I hope the lessons which 
 you taught will never be effaced from my memory. I cannot 
 say how I have fallen into this train of thought, but the days of 
 childhood arise with so many pleasing recollections, and shine so 
 brightly across the tempests and inquietudes of succeeding times, 
 that I felt unable to resist the impulse. 
 
 " You already know that I am pretty well as to health, and also that 
 I design to visit you again before many months have elapsed. I can- 
 not say that my prospects have got much brighter since I left you ; 
 the aspect of the future is still as unsettled as ever it was ; but some 
 degree of patience is behind, and hope, the charmer, that ' springs 
 eternal in the human breast,' is yet here likewise. I am not of a 
 humor to care very much for good or evil fortune, so far as con- 
 cerns myself; the thought that my somewhat uncertain condition 
 gives you uneasiness chiefly grieves me. Yet I would not have you 
 despair of your ribe of a boy. He will do something yet. He is a 
 shy stingy soul, and very likely has a higher notion of his parts 
 than others have. But, on the other hand, he is not incapable of 
 diligence. He is harmless, and possesses the virtue of his country
 
 48 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 thrift; so that, after all, things will yet be right in the end. My 
 love to all the little ones. Your affectionate son, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The University term ends early in Scotland. The expenses of 
 the six months which the students spend at college are paid for in 
 many instances by the bodily labors of the other six. The end of 
 April sees them all dispersed, the class-rooms closed, the pupils no 
 longer obtainable ; and the law studies being finally abandoned, 
 Carlyle had nothing more to do at Edinburgh, and migrated with 
 the rest. He was going home; he offered himself for a visit to Ir- 
 ving at Glasgow on the way, and the proposal was warmly accepted. 
 The Irving correspondence was not long continued; and I make 
 the most of the letters of so remarkable a man which were written 
 while he was still himself , before his intellect was clouded : 
 
 Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "34 Kent Street, Glasgow: April 15, 1820. 
 
 " My dear Carlyle, Right happy shall I be to have your company 
 and conversation for ever so short a time, and the longer the better; 
 and if you could contrive to make your visit so that the beginning 
 of the week should be the time of your departure, I could bear you 
 company on your road a day's journey. I have just finished my 
 sermon Saturday at six o'clock at which I have been sitting with- 
 out interruption since ten ; but I resolved that you should have my 
 letter to-morrow, that nothing might prevent your promised visit, to 
 which I hold you now altogether bound. 
 
 " It is very dangerous to speak one's mind here about the state of 
 the country. I reckon, however, the Radicals have in a manner ex- 
 patriated themselves from the political co-operation of the better 
 classes; and, at the same time, I believe there was sympathy enough 
 in the middle and well-informed people to have caused a meliora- 
 tion of our political evils, had they taken time and legal measures. 
 I am very sorry for the poor; they are losing their religion, their 
 domestic comfort, their pride of independence, their everything; and 
 if timeous remedies come not soon, they will sink, I fear, into the 
 degradation of the Irish peasantry; and if that class goes down, thea 
 along with it sinks the morality of every other class. We are at a 
 complete stand here; a sort of military glow has taken all ranks. 
 They can see the houses of the poor ransacked for arms without ut- 
 tering an interjection of grief on the fallen greatness of those who 
 brought in our Reformation and our civil liberty, and they will hard- 
 ly suffer a sympathizing word from any one. Dr. Chalmers takes a 
 safe course in all these difficulties. The truth is, he does not side 
 with any party. He has a few political nostrums so peculiar that 
 they serve to detach his ideal mind both from Whigs and Tories and 
 Radicals that Britain would have been as flourishing and full of 
 capital though there had been round the island a brazen wall a thou- 
 sand cubits high; that the national debt does us neither good nor 
 ill, amounting to nothing more or less than a mortgage upon prop-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 49 
 
 erty, etc. The Whigs dare not speak. The philanthropists are so 
 much taken up each with his own locality as to take little charge of 
 the general concern ; and so the Tories have room to rage and talk 
 big about armaments and pikes and battles. They had London well 
 fortified yesterday by the Radicals, and so forth. 
 
 " Now it will be like the unimprisoning of a bird to come and let 
 me have free talk. Not that I have anything to say in favor of Rad- 
 icalism, for it is the very destitution of philosophy and religion and 
 political economy; but that we may lose ourselves so delightfully in 
 reveries upon the emendation of the State, to which, in fact, you and 
 I can bring as little help as we could have done against the late in- 
 undation of the Vallois. 
 
 "I like the tone of your last letter; for, remember, I read your 
 very tones and gestures, at this distance of place, through your let- 
 ter, though it be not the most diaphanous of bodies. I have no more 
 fear of your final success than Noah had of the Deluge ceasing; and 
 though the first dove returned, as you say you are to return to your 
 father's shelter, without even a leaf, yet the next tune, believe me, 
 you shall return with a leaf; and yet another time, and you shall 
 take a flight who knows where? But of this and other things I de- 
 lay farther parley. Yours affectionately, EDWARD IRVING." 
 
 Carlylc went to Glasgow, spent several days there, and noted, ac- 
 cording to his habit, the outward signs of men and things. He saw 
 the Glasgow merchants in the Tontine, he observed them, fine, clean, 
 opulent, with their shining bald crowns and serene white heads, 
 sauntering about or reading their newspapers. He criticised the 
 dresses of the young ladies, for whom he had always an eye, remark- 
 ing that with all their charms they had less taste in their adornments 
 than were to be seen in Edinburgh drawing-rooms. He saw Chal- 
 mers too, and heard him preach. "Never preacher went so into 
 one's heart." Some private talk, too, there was with Chalmers, 
 "the Doctor" explaining to him "some new scheme for proving 
 the truth of Christianity," "all written in us already in sympathetic 
 ink; Bible awakens it, and you can read." 
 
 But the chief interest in the Glasgow visit lies less in itself than in 
 what followed it a conversation between two young, then unknown 
 men, strolling alone together over a Scotch moor, seemingly the 
 most trifling of incidents, a mere feather floating before the wind, 
 yet, like the feather, marking the direction of the invisible tendency 
 of human thought. Carlyle was to walk home to Ecclefechan. 
 Irving had agreed to accompany him fifteen miles of his road, and 
 then leave him and return. They started early, and breakfasted 
 on the way at the manse of a Mr. French. Carlyle himself tells the 
 rest -, 1 
 
 " Drumclog Moss is the next object that survives, and Irving and 
 i " Reminiscences," yol i. p. 177.
 
 50 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I sitting by ourselves under the silent bright skies among the ' peat 
 hags ' of Drumclog with a world all silent round us. These peat 
 hags are still pictured in me ; brown bog all pitted and broken with 
 heathy remnants and bare abrupt wide holes, four or five feet deep, 
 mostly dry at present ; a flat wilderness of broken bog, of quagmire 
 not to be trusted (probably wetter in old days then, and wet still in 
 rainy seasons). Clearly a good place for Cameronian preaching, and 
 dangerously difficult for Claverse and. horse soldiery if the suffering 
 remnant had a few old muskets among them! Scott's novels had 
 given the Claverse skirmish here, which all Scotland knew of already, 
 a double interest in those days. I know not that we talked much of 
 this ; but we did of many things, perhaps more confidentially than 
 ever before ; a colloquy the sum of which is still mournfully beauti- 
 ful to me though the details are gone. I remember us sitting on the 
 brow of a peat hag, the sun shining, our own voices the one sound. 
 Far, far away to the westward over our brown horizon, towered up, 
 white and visible at the many miles of distance, a high irregular 
 pyramid. 'Ailsa Craig' we at once guessed, and thought of the 
 seas and oceans over yonder. But we did not long dwell on that 
 we seem to have seen no human creature, after French, to have had 
 no bother and no need of human assistance or society, not even of 
 refection, French's breakfast perfectly sufficing us. The talk had 
 grown ever ^friendlier, more interesting. At length the declining 
 sun said plainly, you must part. We sauntered slowly into the 
 Glasgow Muirkirk highway. Masons were building at a wayside 
 cottage near by, or were packing up on ceasing for the day. We 
 leant our backs to a dry stone fence, and looking into the western 
 radiance continued in talk yet a while, loath both of us to go. It 
 was just here, as the sun was sinking, Irving actually drew from me 
 by degrees, in the softest manner, the confession that I did not 
 think as he of the Christian religion, and that it was vain for me to 
 expect I ever could or should. This, if this was so, he had pre- 
 engaged to take well from me like an elder brother, if I would be 
 frank with him, and right loyally he did so, and to the end of his 
 life we needed no concealments on that head, which was really a 
 step gained. 
 
 "The sun was about setting when we turned away each on his 
 own path. Irving would have had a good space farther to go than 
 I, perhaps fifteen or seventeen miles, and would not be in Kent 
 Street till towards midnight. But he feared no amount of walking, 
 enjoyed it rather, as did I in those young years. I felt sad, but af- 
 fectionate and good, in my clean, utterly quiet little inn at Muirkirk, 
 which and my feelings in it I still well remember. An innocent lit- 
 tle Glasgow youth (young bagman on his first journey, I supposed) 
 had talked awhile with me in the otherwise solitary little sitting- 
 room. At parting he shook hands, and with something of sorrow 
 in his tone said, ' Good-night. I shall not see you again.' I was off 
 next morning at four o'clock."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 51 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A.D. 1820. ,T. 25. 
 
 NOTHING farther has to be recorded of Carlyle's history for some 
 months. He remained quietly through the spring and summer at 
 Mainhill, occupied chiefly in reading. He was beginning his ac- 
 quaintance Avith German literature, his friend Mr. Swan, of Kirk- 
 caldy, who had correspondents at Hamburg, providing him with 
 books. He was still writing small articles, too, for " Brewster's En- 
 cyclopaedia" unsatisfactory work, though better than none. 
 
 "I Avas timorously aiming towards literature [he says, perhaps in 
 consequence of Irving's urgency]. I thought in audacious moments 
 I might perhaps earn some wages that way by honest labor, some- 
 how to help my finances ; but in that too I was painfully sceptical 
 (talent and opportunity alike doubtful, alike incredible to me, poor 
 down-trodden soul), and in fact there came little enough of produce 
 and finance to me from that source, and for the first years absolute- 
 ly none, in spite of my diligent and desperate efforts, which are sad 
 to me to think of even now. Acti laborcs. Yes, but of such a fu- 
 tile, dismal, lonely, dim, and chaotic kind, in a sense all ghastly 
 chaos to me. Sad, dim, and ugly as the shore of Styx and Phlege- 
 thon, as a nightmare dream become real. No more of that; it did 
 not conquer me, or quite kill me, thank God." 1 
 
 August brought IrA T ing to Annan for his summer holidays, which 
 opened possibilities of companionship again. Mainhill was but 
 seven miles off, and the friends met and wandered together in the 
 Mount Annan Avoods, Irving steadily cheering Carlyle with confi- 
 dent promises of ultimate success. In September came an offer of a 
 tutorship in a "statesman's" 4 family, which Irving urged him to 
 accept. 
 
 " You live too much in an ideal world [Irving said], and you are 
 likely to be punished for it by an unfitness for practical life. It is 
 not your fault but the misfortune of your circumstances, as it has 
 been in a less degree of my own. This situation will be more a 
 remedy for that than if you were to go back to Edinburgh. Try 
 your hand with the respectable illiterate men of middle life, as I am 
 doing at present, and perhaps in their honesty and hearty kindness 
 you may be taught to forget, and perhaps to undervalue the splen- 
 dors, and envies, and competitions of men of literature. I think 
 you have within you the ability to rear the pillars of your own im- 
 mortality, and, what is more, of your own happiness, from the basis 
 of any level in life, and I Avould always have any man destined to 
 
 i "Reminiscences," vol. i. p. H3. 
 
 9 "Statesman," or small freeholder farming bis own land, common still in Cumber- 
 land, then spread over the northern counties.
 
 52 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 influence the interests of men, to have read these interests as they 
 are disclosed in the mass of men, and not in the few who are lifted 
 upon the eminence of life, and when there too often forget the man 
 to ape the ruler or the monarch. All that is valuable of the literary 
 caste you have in their writings. Their conversations, I am told, 
 are full of jealousy and reserve, or, perhaps to cover that reserve, 
 of trifling. " 
 
 Irving's judgment was perhaps at fault in this advice. Carlyle, 
 proud, irritable, and impatient as he was, could not have remained 
 a week in such a household. His ambition, "down-trodden as he 
 might call himself," was greater than he knew. He may have felt 
 like Halbert Glendinning when the hope was held out to him of be- 
 coming the Abbot's head keeper "a body servant, and to a lazy 
 priest !" At any rate the proposal came to nothing, and with the 
 winter he was back once more at his lodgings in Edinburgh, deter- 
 mined to fight his way somehow, though in what direction he could 
 not yet decide or see. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh : December 5, 1820. 
 
 "I sit down with the greatest pleasure to answer your most ac- 
 ceptable letter. The warm affection, the generous sympathy dis- 
 played in it go near the heart, and shed over me a meek and kindly 
 dew of brotherly love more refreshing than any but a wandering 
 forlorn mortal can well imagine. Some of your expressions affect 
 me almost to weakness, I might say with pain, if I did not hope the 
 course of events will change our feelings from anxiety to congratu- 
 lation, from soothing adversity to adorning prosperity. I marked 
 your disconsolate look. It has often since been painted in the mind's 
 eye ; but believe me, my boy, these days will pass over. We shall 
 all get to rights in good time, and, long after, cheer many a winter 
 evening by recalling such pensive, but yet amiable and manly 
 thoughts to our minds. And in the mean while let me utterly 
 sweep away the vain fear of our forgetting one another. There is 
 less danger of this than of anything. We Carlyles are a clannish peo- 
 ple, because we have all something original in our formation, and 
 nnd therefore less than common sympathy with others; so that we 
 are constrained, as it were, to draw to one another, and to seek that 
 friendship in our own blood which we do not find so readily else- 
 where. Jack and I and you will respect one another to the end of 
 our lives, because I predict that our conduct will be worthy of re- 
 spect, and we will love one another, because the feelings of our young 
 days feelings impressed most deeply on the young heart are all 
 intertwined and united by the tenderest yet strongest ties of our 
 nature. But independently of this your feat is vain. Continue to 
 cultivate your abilities, and to behave steadily and quietly as you 
 have done, and neither of the two literati ' are likely to find many 
 
 ' His brother John and himself.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 
 
 persons more qualified to appreciate their feelings than the farmer 
 their brother. Greek words and Latin are fine things, but they can- 
 not hide the emptiness and lowness of many who employ them. 
 
 ' ' Brewster has printed my article. He is a pushing man and speaks 
 encouragingly to me. Tait, the bookseller, is loud in his kind an- 
 ticipations of the grand things that are in store for me. But, in fact, 
 I do not lend much ear to those gentlemen. I feel quite sick of this 
 drivelling state of painful idleness. I am going to be patient no 
 longer, but quitting study, or leaving it in a secondary place, I feel 
 determined, as it were, to find something stationary, some local habi- 
 tation and some name for myself, ere it be long. I shall turn and 
 try all things, be diligent, be assiduous in season and out of season, 
 to effect this prudent purpose ; and if health stay with me I still 
 trust I shall succeed. At worst it is but narrowing my views to 
 suit my means. I shall enter the writing life, the mercantile, the 
 lecturing, any life in short but that of country school-master; and 
 even that sad refuge from the storms of fate rather than stand here 
 in frigid impotence, the powers of my mind all festering and cor- 
 roding each other in the miserable strife of inward will against out- 
 ward necessity. 
 
 " I lay out my heart before you, my boy, because it is solacing for 
 me to do so; but I would not have you think me depressed. Bad 
 health does indeed depress and undermine one more than all other 
 calamities put together; but with care, which I have the best of all 
 reasons for taking, I know this will in time get out of danger. 
 Steady then, steady ! as the drill-sergeants say. Let us be steady 
 unto the end. In due time we shall reap if we faint not. Long 
 may you continue to cherish the manly feelings which you express 
 in conclusion. They lead to respectability at least from the world, 
 and, what is far better, to sunshine within, which nothing can destroy 
 or eclipse." 
 
 In the same packet Carlyle encloses a letter to his mother : 
 
 "I know well and feel deeply that you entertain the most solici- 
 tous anxiety about my temporal, and still more about my eternal 
 welfare; as to the former of which, I have still hopes that all your 
 tenderness will j-et be repaid ; and as to the latter, though it becomes 
 not the human worm to boast, I would fain persuade you not to en- 
 tertain so many doubts. Your character and mine are far more 
 similar than you imagine ; and our opinions too, though clothed in 
 different garbs, are, I well know, still analogous at bottom. I respect 
 your religious sentiments, and honor you for feeling them more than 
 if you were the highest woman in the world without them. Be 
 easy, I entreat you, on my account ; the world will use me better 
 than before; and if it should not, let us hope to meet in that upper 
 country, when the vain fever of life is gone by, in the country where 
 all darkness shall be light, and where the exercise of our affections 
 will not be thwarted by the infirmities of human nature any more. 
 Brewster will give me articles enough. Meanwhile my living here 
 is not to cost me anything, at least for a season more or less. I have 
 two hours of teaching, which both gives me a call to walk and 
 brings in four guineas a month."
 
 54 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Again, a few weeks later : 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle. 
 
 "January 30, 1821. 
 
 "My employment, you are aware, is still very fluctuating, but this 
 I trust will improve. I am advancing, I think, though leisurely, and 
 at last I feel no insuperable doubts of getting honest bread, which is 
 all I want. For as to fame and all that, I see it already to be noth- 
 ing better than a meteor, a will-o'-the-wisp which leads one on 
 through quagmires and pitfalls to catch an object which, when we 
 have caught it, turns out to be nothing. I am happy to think in the 
 mean time that you do not feel uneasy about my future destiny. 
 Providence, as you observe, will order it better or worse, and with 
 His award, so nothing mean or wicked lie before me, I shall study to 
 rest satisfied. 
 
 "It is a striking thing, and an alarming to those who are at ease 
 in the world, to think how many living beings that had breath and 
 hope within them when I left Ecclefechan are now numbered with 
 the clods of the valley! Surely there is something obstinately stupid 
 in the heart of man, or the flight of threescore years, and the poor 
 joys or poorer cares of this our pilgrimage would never move as 
 they do. Why do we fret and murmur, and toil, and consume our- 
 selves for objects so transient and frail? Is it that the soul, living 
 here as in her prison-house, strives after something boundless like 
 herself, and finding it nowhere, still renews the search? Surety we 
 are fearfully and wonderfully made. But I must not pursue these 
 speculations, though they force themselves upon us sometimes even 
 without our asking." 
 
 To his family Carlyle made the best of his situation; and, indeed, 
 so far as outward circumstances were concerned, there was no spe- 
 cial cause for anxiety. His farm-house training had made him indif- 
 ferent to luxuries, and he was earning as much money as he required. 
 It was not here that the pinch lay; it was in the still uncompleted 
 "temptations in the wilderness," in the mental uncertainties which 
 gave him neither peace nor respite. He had no friend in Edinburgh 
 with whom he could exchange thoughts, and no society to amuse or 
 distract him. And those who knew his condition best, the faithful 
 Irving especially, became seriously alarmed for him. So keenly 
 Irving felt the danger, that in December he even invited Carlyle to 
 give up Edinburgh and be his own guest for an indefinite time at 
 Glasgow : 
 
 "You make me too proud of myself [he wrote] when you con- 
 nect me so much with your happiness. Would that I could contrib- 
 ute to it as I most fondly wish, and one of the richest and most 
 powerful minds I know should not now be struggling with obscurity 
 and a thousand obstacles. And yet if I had the power I do not see 
 by what means I should cause it to be known ; your mind, unfortu- 
 nately for its present peace, has taken in so wide a range of study as 
 to be almost incapable of professional trammels; and it has nourish-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 55 
 
 ed so uncommon and so unyielding a character as first unfits you 
 for, and then disgusts you with, any accommodations which would 
 procure favor and patronage. The race which you have run these 
 last years pains me even to think upon it, and if it should be con- 
 tinued a little longer, I pray God to give you strength to endure it. 
 We calculate upon seeing you at Christmas, and till then you can 
 think of what I now propose that instead of wearying yourself 
 with endless vexations which are more than you can bear, you will 
 consent to spend not a few weeks, but a few months, here under my 
 roof, where enjoying at least wholesome conversation and the sight 
 of real friends, you may undertake some literary employment which 
 may present you in a fairer aspect to the public than any you 
 have hitherto taken before them. Now I know it is quite Scottish 
 for you to refuse this upon the score of troubling me : but trouble to 
 me it is none; and if it were a thousand times more, would I not es- 
 teem it well bestowed upon you and most highly rewarded by your 
 company and conversation ? I should esteem it an honor that your 
 iirst sally in arms went forth from my habitation." 
 
 Well might Carlyle cherish Irving's memory. Never had he or 
 any man a truer -hearted, more generous friend. The offer could 
 not be accepted. Carlyle was determined before all things to earn 
 his own bread, and he would not abandon his pupil work. Christ- 
 mas he did spend at Glasgow, but he was soon back again. He was 
 corresponding now with London booksellers, offering a complete 
 translation of Schiller for one thing, to which the answer had been 
 an abrupt No. Captain Basil Hall, on the other hand, having heard 
 of Carlyle, tried to attach him to himself, as a sort of scientific com- 
 panion on easy terms Carlyle to do observations which Captain 
 Hall was to send to the Admiralty as his own, and to have in return 
 the advantage of philosophical society, etc. , to which his answer had 
 in like manner been negative. His letters show him still suffering 
 from mental fever, though with glimpses of purer light : 
 
 TJiomas Carlyle to John Carlyle. 
 
 " Edinburgh : March 9, 1821. 
 
 " It is a shame and misery to me at this age to be gliding about in 
 strenuous idleness, with no hand in the game of life where I have 
 yet so much to win, no outlet for the restless faculties which are 
 there up in mutiny and slaying one another for lack of fair enemies. 
 I must do or die then, as the song goes. Edinburgh, with all its 
 drawbacks, is the only scene for me. In the country I am like an 
 alien, a stranger and pilgrim from a far-distant land. I must en- 
 deavor most sternly, for this state of things cannot last, and if Health 
 do but revisit me as I know she will, it shall erelong give place to a 
 better. If I grow seriously ill, indeed, it will be different; but when 
 once the weather is settled and dry, exercise and care will restore me 
 completely. I am considerably clearer than I was, and I should have 
 been still more so had not this afternoon been wet, and so prevented
 
 56 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 me from breathing the air of Arthur's Seat, a mountain close beside 
 us, where the atmosphere is pure as a diamond, and the prospect 
 grander than any you ever saw. The blue majestic everlasting ocean, 
 with the Fife hills swelling gradually into the Grampians behind; 
 rough crags and rude precipices at our feet (where not a hillock rears 
 its head unsung), with Edinburgh at their base clustering proudly 
 over her rugged foundations, and covering with a vapory mantle the 
 jagged, black, venerable masses of stone-work that stretch far and 
 wide and show like a city of Fairy-land. ... I saw it all last evening 
 when the sun was going down, and the moon's fine crescent, like a 
 pretty silver creature as it is, was riding quietly above me. Such a 
 sight does one good. But I am leading you astray after my fantasies 
 when I should be inditing plain prose." 
 
 The gloomy period of Carlyle's life a period on which he said 
 that he ever looked back with a kind of horror was drawing to its 
 close, this letter among other symptoms showing that the natural 
 strength of his intellect was asserting itself. Better prospects were 
 opening; more regular literary employment; an offer, if he chose to 
 accept it, from his friend Mr. Swan, of a tutorship at least more sat- 
 isfactory than the Yorkshire one. His mother's affection was more 
 precious to him, however simply expressed, than any other form of 
 earthly consolation. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "ilainhill: March 21, 1821. 
 
 "Son Tom, I received your kind and pleasant letter. Nothing 
 is more satisfying to me than to hear of your welfare. Keep up your 
 heart, my brave boy. You ask kindly after my health. I complain 
 as little as possible. When the day is cheerier, it has a great effect 
 on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank 
 God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes with a box to bring 
 home your clothes. Send them all home, that I may wash and sort 
 them once more. Oh, man, could I but write! I'll tell ye a' when 
 we meet, but I must in the mean time content myself. Do send me 
 a long letter; it revives me greatly; and tell me honestly if you read 
 your chapter e'en and morn, lad. You mind I hod if not your hand, 
 I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in par- 
 ticular. I must run to pack the box, so I am 
 
 " Your affectionate mother, 
 
 "MABGAKET CARLYLE." 
 
 Irving was still anxious. To him Carlyle laid himself bare in all 
 his shifting moods, now complaining, now railing at himself for want 
 of manliness. Irving soothed him as he could, always avoiding 
 preachment. 
 
 "I see [he wrote] 1 you have much to bear, and perhaps it may 
 be a time before you clear yourself of that sickness of the heart 
 
 March 15, 182L
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 57 
 
 which afflicts you; but strongly I feel assured it will not master you; 
 that you will rise strongly above it and reach the place your genius 
 destines you to. Most falsely do you judge yourself when you seek 
 such degrading similitudes to represent what you call your ' whin- 
 ing. ' And I pray you may not again talk of your distresses in so 
 desperate, and to me disagreeable, manner. My dear Sir, is it to be 
 doubted that you are suffering grievously the want of spiritual com- 
 munion, the bread-and-water of the soul ? and why, then, do you, 
 as it were, mock at your calamity or treat it jestingly? I declare 
 this is a sore offence. You altogether mistake at least my feeling if 
 you think I have anything but the kindest sympathy in your case, 
 in which sympathy I am sure there is nothing degrading, either to 
 you or to me. Else were I degraded every time I visit a sick-bed in 
 endeavoring to draw forth the case of a sufferer from his own lips, 
 that I may "if possible administer some spiritual consolation. But 
 oh ! I would be angry, or rather I should have a shudder of unnat- 
 ural feeling, if the sick man were to make a mockery to me of his 
 case, or to deride himself for making it known to any physician of 
 body or mind. Excuse my freedom, Carlyle. I do this in justifica- 
 tion of my own state of mind towards your distress. I feel for your 
 condition as a brother would feel, and to see you silent about it were 
 the greatest access of painful emotion which you could cause me. 
 I hope soon to look back with you over this scene of trials as the 
 soldier does over a hard campaign, or the restored captives do over 
 their days of imprisonment. " 
 
 Again, on the receipt of some better account of his friend's condi- 
 tion, Irving wrote, on April 26 : 
 
 "I am beginning to see Hie dawn of the day when you shall be 
 plucked by the literary world from my solitary, and therefore more 
 clear, admiration; and when from almost a monopoly I shall have 
 nothing but a mere shred of your praise. They will unearth you, 
 and for your sake I will rejoice, though for my own I may regret. 
 But I shall always have the pleasant superiority that I was your 
 friend and admirer, through good and through bad report, to con- 
 tinue, so I hope, unto the end. Yet our honest Demosthenes, 1 or 
 shall I call him Chrysostom (Boanerges would fit him better), seems 
 to have caught some glimpse of your inner man, though he had few 
 opportunities, for he never ceases to be inquiring after you. You 
 will soon shift your quarters, though for the present I think your 
 motto should be, 'Better a wee bush than na bield.' If you are go- 
 ing to revert to teaching again, which I heartily deprecate, I know 
 nothing better than Swan's conception, although 'success in it de- 
 pends mainly upon offset and address, and the studying of humors, 
 which, though it be a good enough way of its kind, is not the way 
 to which I think you should yet condescend." 
 
 Friends and family might console and advise, but Carlyle himself 
 could alone conquer the spiritual maladies which were the real cause 
 
 Dr. Chalmers.
 
 68 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of his distraction. In June of this year 1821 was transacted what 
 in "Sartor Resartus" he describes as his "conversion," or "new 
 birth," when he "authentically took the Devil by the nose," when 
 he began to achieve the convictions, positive and negative, by which 
 the whole of his later life was governed. 
 
 "Nothing in ' Sartor Resartus' [he says] is fact; symbolical myth 
 all, except that of the incident in tiie Rue St. Thomas de 1'Enfer, 
 which occurred quite literally to myself in Leith Walk, during three 
 weeks of total sleeplessness, in which almost my one solace was that 
 of a daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello. Inci- 
 dent was as I went down ; coming up I generally felt refreshed for 
 the hour. I remember it well, and could go straight to about the 
 place." 
 
 As the incident is thus authenticated, I may borrow the words in 
 which it is described, opening, as it does, a window into Cariyle's 
 inmost heart : 
 
 " Shut out from hope in a deeper sense than we yet dream of (for 
 as the professor wanders wearisomely through this world, he has 
 lost all tidings of another and a higher), full of religion, or at least 
 of religiosity, as our friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not 
 that in those days he was totally irreligious. ' Doubt had darkened 
 into unbelief,' says he : 'shade after shade goes grimly over your 
 soul, till you have the fixed starless Tartarean black.' To such 
 readers as have reflected (what can be called reflecting) on man's 
 life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much profit and less 
 philosophy, that soul is not synonymous with stomach, who under- 
 stand, therefore, in our friend's words, ' that for man's well-being 
 faith is properly the one thing needful ; how with it martyrs, other- 
 wise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross, and with- 
 out it worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide in the midst 
 of luxury;' to such it will be clear that for a pure moral nature the 
 loss of his religious belief was the loss of everything. Unhappy 
 young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, 
 the stab of false friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so 
 genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been 
 withdrawn. Well might he exclaim in his wild way: ' Is there no 
 God then ? but, at best, an absentee God sitting idle ever since the 
 first Sabbath, at the outside of his universe, and seeing it go ? Has 
 the word "duty" no meaning? Is what we call Duty no divine 
 messenger and guide, but a false earthly phantasm, made'up of desire 
 and fear, of emanations from the gallows and Dr. Graham's celestial 
 bed ? Happiness of an approving conscience ! Did not Paul of 
 Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named saint, feel that he 
 AVUS the chief of sinners ; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit, spend 
 much of his time in fiddling ? Foolish wordmonger and motive 
 grinder, who in thy logic mill hast an earthly mechanism for the 
 god-like itself, and wouldst fain grind me out virtue from the husks 
 of pleasure. I tell thee Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus 
 Vinctus of a man it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretch-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 59 
 
 edncss that lie is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim 
 not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then ? Is the heroic 
 inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the 
 blood bubbling in the direction others profit by ? I know not; only 
 this I know. If what thou namest Happiness is pur true aim, then 
 are we all astray. With stupidity and sound digestion man may 
 front much. But what in these dull imaginative days are the ter- 
 rors of conscience to the diseases of the liver ! Not on morality but 
 on cookery let us build our stronghold. Then brandishing our fry- 
 ing-pan as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and lie at 
 ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect !' 
 
 ' ' Thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have 
 done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl- cave of destiny, 
 and receive no answer but an echo. . . . No pillar of cloud by day 
 and no pillar of fire by night any longer guides the pilgrim. To 
 such length has the spirit of inquiry carried him. ' But what boots 
 it ?' cries he ; ' it is but the common lot in this era. Not having 
 come to spiritual majority prior to the "Siecle de Louis Quinze," 
 and not being born purely a loghead, thou hadst no other outlook. 
 The whole world is like thee sold to unbelief. Their old temples of 
 the godhead, which for long have not been rain-proof, crumble down ; 
 and men ask now, where is the godhead ; our eyes never saw him.' 
 
 "Pitiful enough were it for all these wild utterances to call our 
 Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at 
 no era of his life was he more decisively the servant of goodness, 
 the servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 
 ' One circumstance I note,' says he ; ' after all the nameless woe that 
 Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine love of 
 truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would 
 bate no jot of my allegiance to her.' ' Truth !' I cried, ' though the 
 heavens crush me for following her : no Falsehood ! though a whole 
 celestial Lubberland were the price of apostasy.' In conduct it was 
 the same. Had a divine messenger from the clouds, or miraculous 
 handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me This thou 
 shalt do, with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I 
 have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal fire. Thus in 
 spite of all motive grinders and mechanical profit and loss philoso- 
 phies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought 
 on, was the infinite nature of duty still dimly present to me : living 
 without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft. 
 If my as yet sealed eyes with their unspeakable longing could no- 
 where see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and his 
 Heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred there.' 
 
 ' ' Meanwhile, under all these tribulations and temporal and spiritual 
 destitutions, what must the wanderer in his silent soul have endured ! 
 
 "The painfullest feeling [writes he] is that of your own feeble- 
 ness; even as the English Milton says, ' to be weak is the true misery.' 
 And yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save 
 by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between 
 vague wavering capability and fixed indubitable performance, what 
 a difference ! A certain inarticulate self -consciousness dwells dimly 
 in us, which only our works can render articulate and decisively
 
 60 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 discernible. Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees 
 its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible pre- 
 cept, Know thyself, till it be translated into this partially possible one, 
 Know what thou canst work at. 
 
 "But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net result 
 of my workings amounted as yet simply to nothing. How, then, 
 could I believe in my strength when there was as yet no mirror to 
 see it in? Ever did this agitating, <xet, as I now perceive, quite friv- 
 olous question remain to me insoluble : Hast thou a certain faculty, 
 a certain worth, such as even the most have not; or art thou the 
 completest dullard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful unbe- 
 lief is unbelief in yourself! and how could I believe? Had not my 
 first last faith in myself, when even to me the heavens seemed laid 
 open, and I dared to love, been all too cruelly belied? The specula- 
 tive mystery of life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in 
 the practical mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been 
 everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble 
 unit in the middle of a threatening infinitude, I seemed to have 
 nothing^ given me but eyes whereby to discern my own wretched- 
 ness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided 
 me from all living. Now when I looked back it was a strange iso- 
 lation I then lived in. The men and women round me, even speak- 
 ing with me, were but figures; I had practically forgotten that they 
 were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of 
 their crowded streets and assemblages I walked solitary, and (ex- 
 cept as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring), 
 savage also as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have 
 been could I, like Faust, have fancied myself tempted and torment- 
 ed of the devil ; for a hell as I imagine, without life, though only 
 diabolic life, were more frightful: but in our age of downpulling 
 and disbelief, the very devil has been pulled down; you cannot so 
 much as believe in a devil. To me the universe was all void of life, 
 of purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead, 
 immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on in its dead indifference, to 
 grind me limb from limb. Oh, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha 
 and mill of death ! Why was the living banished thither companion- 
 less, conscious? Why, if there is no devil, nay, unless the devil is 
 your god? . . . From suicide a certain aftershine (Nachschcin) of 
 Christianity withheld me, perhaps also a certain indolence of char- 
 acter; for was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? 
 Often, however, there was a question present to me : should some one 
 now at the turning of that corner blow thee suddenly out of space 
 into the other world or other no-world by pistol-shot, how were it? . . . 
 
 " So had it lasted, as in bitter protracted death-agony, through long 
 years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dew-drop, 
 was smouldering in sulphurous slow-consuming fire. Almost since 
 earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmur- 
 ing half audibly, recited Faust's death-song, that wild ' Selig der, 
 den er iru Siegesglanze fiudet,' Happy whom he finds in battle's 
 splendor, and thought that of this last friend even I was not for- 
 saken, that destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having 
 no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of mail or devil ;
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 61 
 
 nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing could the arch-devil him- 
 self, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell 
 him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a 
 continual indefinite pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous apprehen- 
 sion of I knew not what. It seemed as if all things in the heavens 
 above and the earth beneath would hurt me ; as if the heavens and 
 the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein 
 I palpitating waited to be devoured. 
 
 "Full of such humor was I one sultry dog-day after much peram- 
 bulation toiling along the dirty little Rue St. Thomas de 1'Enfer in a 
 close atmosphere and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's fur- 
 nace ; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered ; when all at 
 once there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, ' What art thou 
 afraid of? wherefore, like a coward, dost thou for ever pip and 
 whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped ! what 
 is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, 
 death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the devil and 
 man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart? canst 
 thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and as a child of freedom, though 
 outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? 
 Let it come, then, and I will meet it and defy it.' And as I so 
 thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul, and I 
 shook base fear away from me forever. I was strong; of unknown 
 strength; a spirit; almost a god. Ever from that time the temper of 
 my misery was changed ; not fear or whining sorrow was it, but in- 
 dignation and grim fire-eyed defiance. 
 
 " Thus had the everlasting No (' das ewige Nein ') pealed authori- 
 tatively through all the recesses of my being, of my ME; and then it 
 was that my whole ME stood up in native God-created majesty, and 
 with emphasis recorded its protest. Such a protest, the most impor- 
 tant transaction in my life, may that same indignation and defiance, 
 in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The everlasting 
 No had said, Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe 
 is mine (the devil's); to which my whole ME now made answer: / 
 am not thine but free, and forever hate thee. 
 
 "It is from this hour I incline to date my spiritual new birth; 
 perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man." 1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A.D. 1821. MT. 26. 
 
 CRAIGENPUTTOCK, craig, or whinstone hill of the puttocks, 2 is a 
 high moorland farm on the water-shed between Dumfriesshire and 
 Galloway, sixteen miles from the town of Dumfries. The manor 
 
 i "Sartor," p. 156 et seq. 
 
 a Small hawks, so named still in Galloway, and once throughout England. 
 
 " Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, 
 But may imagine how the bird was dead." SHAKESPEARE.
 
 62 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 house, solid and gaunt, and built to stand for centuries, lies on a 
 slope protected by a plantation of pines, and surrounded by a few 
 acres of reclaimed grass land a green island in the midst of heath- 
 cry hills, sheep-walks, and undrained peat bogs. A sterner spot is 
 hardly to be found in Scotland. Here for many generations had 
 resided a family of Welshes, holding the rank of small gentry. The 
 eldest son bore always the same name John Welsh had succeeded 
 John Welsh as far back as tradition'could record; the earliest John 
 of whom authentic memory remained being the famous Welsh, the 
 minister of Ayr, who married the daughter of John Knox. This 
 lady it was who, when her husband was banished, and when she 
 was told by King James that he might return to Scotland if he 
 would acknowledge the authority of bishops, raised her apron and 
 said, "Please your Majesty I'd rather kep his head there." The 
 King asked her who she was. " Knox and Welsh," he exclaimed, 
 when she told him her parentage " Knox and Welsh ! The devil 
 never made such a match as that." " It's right like, sir," said she, 
 "for we never speered his advice." 
 
 A family with such an ancestry naturally showed remarkable 
 qualities. "Several blackguards among them, but not one block- 
 head that I ever heard of," was the account of her kinsfolk given 
 to Jane Welsh 1 by her grandfather. 
 
 In the rebellion of 1745 the laird of Craigenputtock had been 
 among the sympathizers, though he escaped committing himself. 
 Some of his friends who had been more deeply implicated, had taken 
 shelter with him when they were inquired for after Culloden. In- 
 formers betrayed their hiding-place, and a party of dragoons were 
 sent up from Dumfries to arrest them. The alarm was given; be- 
 fore the dragoons arrived the objects of their pursuit were away 
 across the hills in Galloway. "Such and such men with you, 
 aren't they?" said the officer to the laird, as he rode to the door. 
 "Truly they were three hours ago," the laird answered; "and they 
 were rebels, say you? Fie, the villains! had I but known! But 
 come, let us chase immediately. Once across the Orr yonder, and 
 the swamps " (which looked green enough from the house), "you 
 will find firm road, and will soon catch the dogs. " Welsh mounted, 
 and volunteered to guide; guided the dragoons into a spot where he 
 and his pony, who knew the road, could pass, and the heavy dra- 
 goon horses sunk to their girths. Having provided them with work 
 which would last till dark, he professed profound regrets, rode off, 
 and left them. 
 
 The son of this laird died young, leaving a widow at Craigenput- 
 tock with a single child, another John, who was born in 1757. The 
 
 1 Afterwards Mrs. Carlyle.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 
 
 mother, desiring to give the boy a better education than was to be 
 had on the moors, sent him down to a tutor in Nithsdale. There 
 he fell in love with a Miss Hunter, daughter of a neighboring graz- 
 ier, and married her, he being seventeen and the lady a year younger. 
 They returned to the Craig together, and produced one after the 
 other fourteen children. The large family brought expenses. The 
 income was small. The laird drifted into difficulties, sold part of 
 the Craigenputtock property, and being unable to make a living out 
 of the rest, left it and took a farm by the river-side in Nith valley, 
 above Dumfries. Here he was fairly successful, as indeed he de- 
 served to be. 
 
 "A valiant sensible man [says Carlyle], solidly devout, truth's 
 own self in what he said and did ; had dignity 01 manners too, in 
 fact a really brave, sincere, and honorable soul ; reverent of talent, 
 honesty, and sound sense beyond all things; was silently respected 
 and honestly esteemed in the district where he lived." 
 
 ' ' Not however without a grin here and there, " for he had his peculiar- 
 ities. He was a tall man himself; he had a fixed notion that size of 
 body and si/e of mind went together, and he would never admit a 
 new friend till he had measured him. This old John "Welsh (or 
 Penfillan, as he was called from the name of his farm) did not die 
 till 1823, outliving his distinguished son who was the father of 
 Carlyle's wife. 
 
 This next John Welsh was the eldest of the fourteen. He was 
 born at Craigenputtock in 1776, and spent his childish years there. 
 Scotch lads learn early to take care of themselves. He was sent to 
 Edinburgh University when a mere lad to study medicine. While 
 attending the classes he drew attention to himself by his intelligence, 
 and was taken as an apprentice by one of the celebrated brothers, 
 John or Charles Bell. 1 Dr. Bell saw his extraordinary merit, and in 
 1796, when he was but twenty, recommended him for a commission 
 as regimental surgeon to the Perthshire Fencibles. This post he 
 held for two years, and afterwards, in 1798, he succeeded either by 
 purchase or otherwise to the local practice of the town and neigh- 
 borhood of Haddington. His reputation rose rapidly, and along 
 with it he made a rapid fortune. To help his brothers and sisters 
 he purchased Craigenputtock from his father, without waiting till it 
 came to him by inheritance. He paid off the encumbrances, and 
 he intended eventually to retire thither when he should give up 
 business. 
 
 In 1800 Dr. Welsh married, the wife whom he chose being a 
 Welsh also, though of another family entirely unrelated to his own. 
 
 1 Probably John, as Sir Charles Bell was ouly two years John Welsh's senior.
 
 64 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 She, too, if tradition might be trusted, came of famous blood. John 
 Welsh was descended from Knox. Grace or Grizzie Welsh traced 
 her pedigree through her mother, who was a Baillie, to Wallace. 
 Her father was a well-to-do stock farmer, then living at Caplegill on 
 Moffat Water. Walter Welsh (this was his name), when his daugh- 
 ter left him to go to Haddington, moved himself into Nithsdale, and 
 took a farm then known as Templand, near Penfillan. Thus Jane 
 Welsh's two grandfathers, old Walter and old John, Welshes both of 
 them, though connected only through their children's marriage, be- 
 came close neighbors and friends. Walter of Templand lived to a 
 great age, and Carlyle after his marriage knew him well. He took 
 to Carlyle, indeed, from the first, having but two faults to find with 
 him, that he smoked tobacco and would not drink whiskey punch ; 
 not that old Walter drank to excess himself, or at all cared for drink- 
 ing, but he thought that total abstinence in a young man was a sign 
 of conceit or affectation. 
 
 "He was a man [Carlyle writes 1 ] of much singularity and intel- 
 lect too, a microcosm of old Scottish life as it had been. Hot, im- 
 patient temper, breaking out into flashes of lightning if you touched 
 him the wrong way; but they were flashes only, never bolts. Face 
 uncommonly fine, serious yet laughing eyes as if inviting you in, 
 bushy eyebrows picturesquely shaggy, abundant gray hair, beard 
 imperfectly shaved, features massive yet soft, honesty, quick inge- 
 nuity, kindliness and frank manhood as the general expression, a 
 most simple man of stunted utterance, burred with his rr's, had a 
 chewing kind of way with his words which rapid or few were not 
 extremely distinct till you attended a little, and then aided by the 
 face they were distinct and memorable. Clever things Walter never 
 said or attempted to say, nor wise things either in any shape beyond 
 that of sincerely accepted commonplace; but he well knew when 
 such were said by others, and had a bright dimpling chuckle smudge 
 of laughter the Scotch call it, one of the prettiest words and ditto 
 things, and on the whole hated no kind of talk but the unwise kind. 
 He was serious, pensive, not mournful or sad in those old times. He 
 had the prettiest laugh that I can remember, not the loudest. My 
 own father's still rarer laugh was louder far, though not perhaps 
 more complete. But his was all of artillery thunder -feu de jaie 
 from all guns as the main element; while in Walter there was audi- 
 ble something as of infinite flutes and harps, as if the vanquished 
 themselves were invited or compelled to partake of the triumph. 
 ' Radiant ever young Apollo,' etc., etc., of Teufelsdrockh's laugh is 
 a reminiscence of that. He had an immense fund of articulate gay- 
 ety in his composition, a truly fine sense of the ridiculous; excellent 
 sense in a man, especially if he never cultivate it or be conscious of 
 it, as was Walter's case. It must have been from him that my Jane 
 derived that beautiful light humor, never going into folly, yet full 
 
 i "Reminiscences,' 1 vol. ii. (abridged).
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 65 
 
 of tacit fires which spontaneously illuminated all her best hours. 
 Thanks to Walter ! . . . she was like him in this respect. My fa- 
 ther's laugh is mainly mine : a grimmer and inferior kind. Of my 
 mother's beautifully sportive vein (which was a third kind, also 
 hereditary I am told) I seem to have inherited less, though not noth- 
 ing either, nay, perhaps at bottom not even less, had my life chanced 
 to be easier and joyf uller. ' Sense of the ridiculous ' worth calling 
 such i. e. , brotherly sympathy with the downward side, is very in- 
 dispensable to a man. Hebrews have it not, hardly any Jew creat- 
 ure not even a blackguard Heine to any real length; hence vari- 
 ous misqualities of theirs, perhaps most of their qualities too which 
 have become historical. This is an old remark of mine, though not 
 yet written anywhere." 
 
 The beautiful Miss Baillie, Walter's wife, who came of Wallace, 
 died early. Their son, called also John (the many John Welshes 
 may cause some confusion in this biography unless the reader can 
 remember the distinctions), went into business at Liverpool, and was 
 prospering as a merchant there, when a partner who was to have 
 been his brother-in-law proved dishonest, ran off with all the prop- 
 erty that he could lay hands on, and left John Welsh to bankruptcy 
 and a debt of 12,000. The creditors were lenient, knowing how the 
 catastrophe had been brought about. John Welsh exerted himself, 
 remade his fortune, and after eight years invited them all to dinner, 
 where each found under his cover a check for the full amount of 
 his claim. He was still living at Liverpool long after Carlyle set- 
 tled in London with his niece, and will be heard of often in her cor- 
 respondence. 
 
 His sister Grace, or Grizzie, was the wife of Dr. Welsh at Had- 
 dington. In appearance she was like her mother, tall, aquiline, and 
 commanding. 
 
 "She had a goodish, well -tending intellect [says Carlyle], with 
 something of real drollery in it, which her daughter inherited. Your 
 mother, my dear, I once said, has narrowly missed being a woman 
 of genius. But she was sensitive, fanciful, capricious. Old Pen- 
 fillau, who was on a visit to Haddington once after his son's mar- 
 riage, reported that he had seen her one evening in fifteen different 
 humors. She was not easy to live with for one wiser than herself, 
 though very easv for one more foolish, especially if a touch of hy- 
 pocrisy and perfect admiration was superadded. The married life at 
 Haddington was loyal and happy, but because the husband took the 
 command and knew how to keep it; he had much loved his wife, 
 but none could less love what of follies she had. She was unusually 
 beautiful, but strangely sad. Eyes bright as if with many tears be- 
 hind them." 
 
 Dr. Welsh himself did not live to know Carlyle. He died in 1819, 
 while still only forty-three, of a fever caught from a patient, three 
 years before Carlyle's acquaintance with the family began. His
 
 66 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 daughter was so passionately attached to him, that she rarely men- 
 tioned his name even to her husband. From others, however, Car- 
 lyle gathered a general account of his character. 
 
 "Dr. Welsh's success [he writes 1 ] appears to have been swift 
 and constant, till before long the whole sphere or section of life he 
 was placed in had in all senses, pecuniary and other, become his 
 own, and there remained nothing more to conquer in it : only very 
 much to retain by the methods that had acquired it, and to be ex- 
 tremely thankful for as an allotment in this world, a truly superior 
 man according to all ihe evidence I from all quarters have a very 
 valiant man Edward Irving once called him in my hearing. He was 
 of noble and distinguished presence, tall, highly graceful, self-pos- 
 sessed, spontaneously dignified, so that people, if he entered a theatre 
 or the like, asked who is it ? black hair, bright hazel eyes, bright, 
 lively, steadily expressive features. His medical sagacity was reck- 
 oned at a higher and higher rate, medical and other honesty as well ; 
 for it was by no means as a wise physician only, but as an honora- 
 ble, exact, and quietly-dignified man, punctual, faithful in all points, 
 that he was esteemed in the counly. It was three years after his 
 death when I first came into the circle which had been his, and no- 
 where have I met with a posthumous reputation that seemed to be 
 more unanimous or higher among all ranks of men. The brave man 
 himself I never saw; but my poor Jeannie in her best moments often 
 said to me about this or that, ' Yes, he would have done it so !' ' Ah, 
 he would have liked you !' as her highest praise. Punctuality, 
 Irving described as a thing he much insisted on. Gravely inflexible 
 where right was concerned, and very independent when men of rank 
 attempted to avail upon him. One anecdote I always remember. 
 Riding along one day on his multifarious business, he noticed a poor 
 wounded partridge fluttering and struggling about, wing or leg, or 
 both, broken by some sportsman's lead. He alighted in his haste, 
 gathered up the poor partridge, looped it gently in his handkerchief, 
 brought it home, and by careful splints and other treatment had it 
 soon on wing and sent it forth healed. This in so grave and practi- 
 cal a man had always in it a fine expressiveness to me." 
 
 Such was the genealogy of the young lady to whom Carlyle was 
 now about to be introduced by Irving, and who was afterwards to be 
 his wife. Tradition traced her lineage to Knox and Wallace. Au- 
 thentic history connected her with parents and kindred of singular, 
 original, and strikingly superior quality. Jane Baillie Welsh was 
 an only child, and was born in 1801. In her earliest years she show- 
 ed that she was a girl of no common quality. She had black hair, 
 large black eyes shining with soft mockery, pale complexion, broad 
 forehead, nose not regularly formed, but mocking also like the eyes, 
 figure slight, airy, and perfectly graceful. She was called beautiful, 
 and beautiful she was even to the end of her life, if a face be beauti- 
 
 i "Reminiscences," vol. ii. p. 114.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 
 
 ful which to look at is to admire. But beauty was only the second 
 thought which her appearance suggested; the first was intellectual 
 vivacity. Precious as she was to parents who had no other child, 
 she was brought up with exceptional care. Strict obedience in es- 
 sentials was the rule of the Haddington household. But the stories 
 of her young days show that there was no harsh interference with 
 her natural playfulness. Occasional visits were allowed to Temp- 
 land, to her grandfather Walter, who was especially fond of her. 
 In that house she was called Pen (short for Penfillan), to distinguish 
 her from a second Jane Welsh of the other family. On one of these 
 occasions, when she was six years old, her grandfather took her out 
 for a ride on a quiet little pony. When they had gone as far as was 
 desirable, Walter, burring his rr's and intoning his vowels as usual, 
 said, "Now we will go back by so and so, to vahery the shane." 
 "Where did you ride to, Pen ?" the company asked at dinner. "We 
 rode to so and then to so," answered she punctually, "and then from 
 so returned by so to vahery the shane," at which, says Carlyle, the old 
 man burst into his cheeriest laugh at the mimicry of tiny little Pen. 
 She was a collected little lady, with a fine readiness in difficulties. 
 The Welshes were the leading family at Haddington, and were 
 prominent in the social entertainments there. When she was about 
 the same age there was to be a childs' ball at the dancing-school. 
 
 "Of this [Carlyle writes 1 ] I often heard in the daintiest style, 
 how the evening was so great, all the higher public, especially the 
 maternal and paternal sections of it, collected to see the children 
 dance; how Jeannie Welsh, then about six, had been selected to per- 
 form some pas-seul, beautiful and difficult, the jewel of the evening, 
 and was privately anxious in her little heart to do it well; how she 
 was dressed to perfection with elegance, with simplicity, and at the 
 due hour was carried over in a clothes-basket (streets being muddy 
 and no carriage), and landed safe, pretty silks and pumps uninjured. 
 Through the ball everything went well and smoothly, nothing to be 
 noted till the pas-seul came. My little woman, with a look that I 
 can still fancy, appeared upon the scene, stood waiting for the mu- 
 sic. Music began, but, alas ! it w r as the wrong music. Impossible 
 to dance that pas-seul to it. She shook her little head, looked or 
 made some sign of distress ; music ceased, took counsel, scraped, be- 
 gan again ; again wrong hopelessly ; the pas-seul flatly impossible. 
 Beautiful little Jane alone against the world, forsaken by the music, 
 but not by her presence of mind, plucked up her little skirt, flung it 
 over her head, and, curtseying in that veiled manner, withdrew from 
 the adventure, amidst general applause." 
 
 She learned rapidly the usual young lady's accomplishments mu- 
 sic, drawing, modern languages ; and she had an appetite for knowl- 
 
 1 "Reminiscences," vol. ii. p. 99.
 
 68 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 edge not easily to be satisfied. A girl's education was not enough. 
 She demanded "to learn Latin like a boy." Her mother was against 
 it. Her father, who thought well of her talents, inclined to let her 
 have her way. The question was settled at last in a characteristic 
 fashion by herself. She found some lad in Haddington who intro- 
 duced her to the mysteries of nouns of the first declension. Having 
 mastered her lesson, one night when she was thought to be in bed, 
 she had hidden herself under the drawing-room table. When an 
 opportunity offered, the small voice was heard from below the cover, 
 " Penna, a pen ; pennce, of a pen," etc., etc. She crept out amidst 
 the general amusement, ran to her father, and said, " I want to learn 
 Latin ; please let me be a boy. " 
 
 Haddington school was a furlong's distance from her father's 
 house. Boys and girls were taught together there ; and to this ac- 
 cordingly she was sent. 
 
 "Thither daily at an early hour [records Carlyle again] might 
 be seen my little Jeannie tripping nimbly and daintily along, satchel 
 in hand, dressed by her mother, who had a great talent that way, in 
 tasteful simplicity, neat bit of pelisse (light blue sometimes), fastened 
 with black belt, dainty little cap, perhaps little beaverkin, with flap 
 turned up, and I think one at least with modest little plume in it. 
 Fill that little figure with elastic intellect, love, and generous vivacity 
 of all kinds, and where in nature will you find a prettier ? At home 
 was opulence without waste, elegance, good -sense, silent, practical 
 affection, and manly wisdom. From threshold to roof -tree no pal- 
 triness or unveracity admitted into it. I often told her how very 
 beautiful her childhood was to me. So authentic, too, in her charm- 
 ing naive and humorous way of telling, and that she must have been 
 the prettiest little Jenny Spinner 1 that was dancing on the summer 
 rays hi her time." 
 
 A fiery temper there was in her too. Boys and girls were kept f 01 
 the most part in separate rooms at the school, but arithmetic and al- 
 gebra, in which she was especially proficient, they learned together 
 or perhaps she in her zeal for knowledge was made an exception. 
 The boys were generally devoted to her, but differences rose now 
 and then. A lad one day was impertinent. She doubled her little 
 fist, struck him on the nose, and made it bleed. Fighting in school 
 was punished by flogging. The master came in at the instant, saw 
 the marks of the fray, and asked who was the delinquent. All were 
 silent. No one would betray a girl. The master threatened to tawse 
 the whole school, and being a man of his word would have done it, 
 when the small Jeannie looked up and said, "Please it was I." The 
 master tried to look grave, failed entirely, and burst out laughing. 
 
 i Scotch name for a long-winged, long-legged, extremely bright and airy insect 
 T. C.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 69 
 
 He told her she was " a little deevil," and had no business there, and 
 bade her "go her ways" to the girls' room. 
 
 Soon after this there was a change in the school management. 
 Edward Irving, then fresh from college honors, came as master, and, 
 along with the school, was trusted with the private education of 
 Jane Welsh. Dr. Welsh had recognized his fine qualities, and took 
 him into the intimacy of his household, where he was treated as an 
 elder son. He watched over the little lady's studies, took her out 
 with him on bright nights to show her the stars and teach her the 
 movements of them. Irving was then a young man, and his pupil 
 was a child. A few years were to make a difference. She worked 
 with feverish eagerness, getting up at five in the morning, and busy 
 with her books at all hours. She was soon dux in mathematics. 
 Her tutor introduced her to Virgil, and the effect of Virgil and of 
 her other Latin studies was "to change her religion and make her 
 into a sort of Pagan. " In one of her old note-books I find an illusion 
 to this : 
 
 "It is strictly true [she says], and it was not my religion alone 
 that these studies influenced, but my whole being was imbued with 
 them. Would I prevent myself from doing a selfish or cowardly 
 thing, I didn't say to myself, ' You mustn't, or if you dp you will go 
 to hell hereafter.' Nor yet, ' If you do you will be whipt here;' but 
 I said to myself simply and grandly, 'A Roman would not have 
 done it,' and that sufficed under ordinary temptations. Again, when 
 I had done something heroic when, for instance, I had caught a 
 gander which hissed at me by the neck and flung him to the right- 
 about, it was not a good child that I thought myself, for whom the 
 half-crown bestowed on me was fit reward in my own mind I had 
 deserved well of the Republic, and aspired to a 'civic crown.' But 
 the classical world in which I lived and moved was best indicated in 
 the tragedy of my doll. It had been intimated to me by one whose 
 wishes were law, that a young lady in ' Virgil ' should for consisten- 
 cy's sake drop her doll. So the doll being judged, must be made an 
 end of ; and I, ' doing what I would with my own,' like the Duke of 
 Newcastle, quickly decided how. She should end as Dido ended, 
 that doll ! as the doll of a young lady in ' Virgil ' should end ! With 
 her dresses, which were many and sumptuous, her four-posted bed, 
 a fagot or two of cedar allumettes, a few sticks of cinnamon, a few 
 cloves and a nutmeg ! I non ignara futuri constructed her funeral 
 pyre sub auras, of course ; and the new Dido, having placed herself 
 in the bed, with help, spoke through my lips the last sad words of 
 Dido the first, which I had then all by heart as pat as ABC, and 
 have now forgotten all but two lines 
 
 ' Vixi et quern dederat cursum fortuna percgi; 
 Ki iiunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.' 
 
 And half a line more 
 
 'Sic, sic jurat ire sub umbras.' 
 
 4*
 
 70 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The doll having thus spoken, pallida morte futurd, kindled the pile 
 and stabbed herself with a penknife by way of Tyrian sword. Then, 
 however, in the moment of seeing my poor doll blaze up for being 
 stuffed with bran she took fire and was all over in no time in that 
 supreme moment my affection for her blazed up also, and I shrieked 
 and would have saved her and could not, and went on shrieking till 
 everybody within hearing flew to me, and bore me off in a plunge 
 of tears an epitome of most of one's ' heroic sacrifices ' it strikes 
 me, magnanimously resolved on, ostentatiously gone about, repented 
 of at the last moment, and bewailed with an outcry. Thus was my 
 inner world at that period three-fourths old Roman and one-fourth 
 old Fairy." 
 
 In the same note-book there is a long story of her first child love, 
 told with the same grace, which need not be extracted here. When 
 she was fourteen she wrote a tragedy, rather inflated, but extraordi- 
 nary for her age. She never repeated the experiment, but for many 
 years she continued to write poetry. She had inherited from her 
 mother the gift of verse-making. Mrs. Welsh's lyrics were soft, 
 sweet, passionate, musical, and nothing besides. Her daughter had 
 less sweetness, but touched intellectual chords which her mother 
 never reached. 
 
 The person "whose wishes were law," and whose suggestion oc- 
 casioned the sacrifice of the doll, if it was not Irving, was probably 
 her father. 
 
 "Of him [says her friend Miss Jewsbury] she always spoke 
 with reverence. He was the only person who had any real influ- 
 ence over her. However wilful she might be, obedience to her 
 parents unquestioning and absolute lay at the foundation of her 
 life. She used to say that this habit was her salvation, and that she 
 owed to it all that was of value in her character. She always spoke 
 of any praise her father gave her as a precious possession. She 
 loved him passionately, and never spoke of him except to friends 
 whom she valued. It was the highest token of her regard when she 
 told any one about her father. " 
 
 She lost him, as has been said, at an age when she most needed 
 his guiding hand. Had Dr. Welsh lived, her life would have been 
 happier ; whether more useful it is unprofitable to conjecture. The 
 patient from whom he caught the fever which killed him was at 
 some distance from Haddington. She being then eighteen, had ac- 
 companied him in the carriage in this his last drive, and it was for- 
 ever memorable to her. Carlyle writes : ' 
 
 "The usually tacit man, tacit especially about his bright daugh- 
 ter's gifts and merits, took to talking with her that day in a style 
 quite new, told her she was a good girl, capable of being useful and 
 
 1 "Reminiscences," vol. ii. p. 93.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 71 
 
 precious to him, and to the circle she would live in ; that she must 
 summon her utmost judgment and seriousness to choose her path 
 and be what he expected of her ; that he did not think he had ever 
 seen the life partner that would be worthy of her ; in short, that he 
 expected her to be wise as well as good-looking and good all this 
 in a tone and manner which filled her poor little heart with surprise 
 and a kind of sacred joy, coming from the man she of all men re- 
 vered. Often she told me about this, for it was her last talk with 
 him ; on the morrow, perhaps that evening, certainly within a day 
 or two, he caught from some poor old woman patient a typhus- 
 fever, which under injudicious treatment killed him in three or four 
 days, and drowned the world for her in the very blackness of dark- 
 ness. In effect it was her first sorrow, and her greatest of all. It 
 broke her health permanently, and in a sense almost broke her heart. 
 A father so loved and mourned I have never seen. To the end of 
 her life, his title even to me was 'He' and 'Him.' Not above twice 
 or thrice, quite in later years, did she ever mention, and then in a 
 quiet, slow tone my father." 
 
 Dr. Welsh's illness being of so deadly a kind, he gave orders that 
 she should not be allowed to enter his room. Persons who were in 
 the house at the time have said that Miss Welsh's agitation was con- 
 vulsive in its violence. " I will see him," she cried. ''I will see my 
 father. " She forced her way to his bedside. He sent her out, and she 
 lay all night on the stairs outside the door, refusing to be moved. Dr. 
 Welsh's end was hastened on, perhaps caused, by the unskilfulness 
 of his brother, a medical man like himself, who bled him too pro- 
 fusely. The first letter of Jane Welsh which has been preserved, is 
 one which she wrote a fortnight later to her Penfillan grandmother, 
 her father's mother. She had spoken laughingly of her paganism ; 
 her nature at the bottom was of a seriousness too deep for words, 
 and her real character only showed itself when she was passionately 
 moved : 
 
 To Mrs. Welsh, Penfillan. 
 
 "Haddington: October 5, 1819. 
 
 "My dear Grandmother, I cannot allow my uncle to retiirn 
 to you without writing to assure you that the example of resignation 
 to the will of God which you have given has not been totally lost 
 upon us. It has been a great consolation to me under this dreadful 
 trial to see my poor mother support it so well. From the very deli- 
 cate state of her health for some time past, from the great fatigue 
 she underwent during my dear father's illness, and above all from 
 the acuteness of her feelings on the most ordinary occasions, I had 
 little reason to expect so much fortitude. I will ever be grateful to 
 her for the exertion which she has made (I am convinced in a great 
 measure on my account), and still more grateful to Him who has 
 enabled her to make them. 
 
 "This has indeed been an unexpected and overwhelming blow. 
 My father's death was a calamity I almost never thought of. If on
 
 72 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 any occasion the idea did present itself to me, it was immediately 
 repelled as being too dreadful to be realized for many, many yosirs, 
 and top painful to occupy any present place in my thoughts. Until 
 this misfortune fell upon me I never knew what it was to be really 
 unhappy. The greatest error and misfortune of my life hitherto has 
 been not being sufficiently grateful for the happiness I enjoyed. 
 
 ' ' You, my dear grandmother, have had many trials ; but if I mis- 
 take not, you will still remember the bitterness of the first above all 
 others, ; you will still be able to recall the feeling of disappointment 
 and despair which you experienced when calamity awoke you from 
 your dream of security, and dispelled the infatuation which led you 
 to expect that you alone were to be exempted from this world's mis- 
 ery. But you are good, and I am judging of your feelings by my 
 own; when young as I am perhaps you were not, as I was, thought- 
 less and unprepared for the chastisement of the Divine Power. The 
 ways of the Almighty are mysterious ; but in this instance, though 
 he has left thousands in the world whose existence is a burden to 
 themselves and to those around them, though he has cut off one who 
 was the glory of his family, a most useful member of society, one who 
 was respected and beloved by all who knew him, and though he has 
 afflicted those who we thought deserved to be happy, yet his inten- 
 tion appears to me clear and intelligible. Could the annihilation of 
 a thousand useless and contemptible beings have sent such terror 
 and submission to the hearts of the survivors, as the sudden death 
 of one whom their love would, if possible, have gifted with immor- 
 tality? Oh, no! Hard it is, but we must acknowledge the wisdom 
 of his sentence, even while we are suffering under it we must kiss 
 the rod even while we are writhing under the tortures which it 
 inflicts. 
 
 "We shall be in Dumfriesshire in a month or three weeks. My 
 mother will answer your kind letter as soon as she feels able for it. 
 With kind love to my grandfather and my aunts, and with every 
 wish for your health, and the restoration of your peace of mind, I 
 remain, my dear grandmother, your very affectionate child, 
 
 "JANE BAILLIE WELSH." 
 
 After her father's death, Miss Welsh continued with her mother 
 at Haddington. With the exception of some small annuity for his 
 widow, Dr. Welsh had left everything belonging to him to his daugh- 
 ter. Craigenputtock became hers ; other money investments became 
 hers; and though the property altogether was not large according to 
 modern estimates of such things, it was sufficient as long as mother 
 and child remained together to enable them to live with comfort 
 and even elegance. Miss Welsh was now an heiress. Her wit and 
 beauty added to her distinctions, and she was called the flower of 
 Haddington. Her hand became an object of speculation. She had 
 as many suitors as Penelope. They were eligible, many of them, in 
 point of worldly station. Some afterwards distinguished themselves. 
 She amused herself with them, but listened favorably to none, being 
 protected perhaps by a secret attachment, which had grown up un-
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 73 
 
 consciously between herself and her tutor. There were difficulties 
 in the way which prevented them from acknowledging to one an- 
 other, or even to themselves, the condition of their feelings. Ed- 
 ward Irving had been removed from Haddington to Kirkcaldy, 
 where he had entered while Jane Welsh was still a child into a half- 
 formed engagement with the daughter of the Kirkcaldy minister, 
 Miss Isabella Martin. In England young people often fancy them- 
 selves in love. They exchange vows which as they grow older are 
 repented of, and are broken without harm to either party. In Scot- 
 land, perhaps as a remains of the ecclesiastical precontract which 
 had legal validity, these connections had a more binding character. 
 They could be dissolved by mutual consent ; but if the consent of 
 both was wanting, there was a moral stain on the person escaping 
 from the bond. Irving had long been conscious that he had been 
 too hasty, and was longing for release. But there was no encourage- 
 ment on the side of the Martins. Marriage was out of the question 
 till he had made a position for himself, and he had allowed the mat- 
 ter to drift on, since immediate decision was unnecessary. Jane 
 "Welsh meanwhile had grown into a woman. Irving, who was a 
 constant visitor at Haddington, discovered when he looked into his 
 heart that his real love was for his old pupil, and the feeling on her 
 part was the word is her own "passionately" returned. The 
 mischief was done before they became aware of their danger. Ir- 
 ving's situation being explained, Miss Welsh refused to listen to any 
 language but that of friendship from him until Miss Martin had set 
 him free. Irving, too, was equally high-principled, and was resolved 
 to keep his word. But there was an unexpressed hope on both sides 
 that he would not be held to it, and on these dangerous terms Irving 
 continued to visit at Haddington, when he could be spared from his 
 duties. Miss Welsh was working eagerly at literature, with an ambi- 
 tion of becoming an authoress, and winning name and fame. Un- 
 able or too much occupied himself to be of use to her, Irving thought 
 of his friend Carlyle, who was living in obscurity and poverty at 
 Edinburgh, as a fit person to assist and advise her. The acquaint- 
 ance, he considered, would be mutually agreeable. He obtained 
 leave from Mrs. Welsh to bring him over and introduce him. The 
 introduction was effected a little before Carlyle had "taken the 
 devil by the nose," as he describes in " Sartor Resartus ;" and per- 
 haps the first visit to Haddington had contributed to bringing him 
 off victorious from that critical encounter. 
 
 "In June, 1821 [says Carlyle, but it was rather in the last week 
 of May], Edward Irving, who was visiting and recruiting about 
 Edinburgh, on one of his occasional holiday sallies from Glasgow, 
 took me out to Haddington. We walked cheerily together, not al- 
 ways by the highway, but meandering at our will pleasantly and
 
 74 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 multifariously talking, as has been explained elsewhere, 1 and about 
 sunset of that same day I first saw her who was to be so important 
 to me thenceforth. A red, dusky evening, the sky hanging huge 
 and high, but dim as with dust or drought over Irving and me, as 
 we walked home to our lodging at the George Inn. 
 
 "The visit lasted three or four days, and included Gilbert Burns 
 and other figures, besides the one fair figure most of all important 
 to me. We were often in her mother's house ; sat talking with the 
 two for hours almost every evening. The beautiful bright and ear- 
 nest young lady was intent on literature as the highest aim in life, 
 and felt imprisoned in the dull element which yielded her no com- 
 merce in that kind, and would not even yield her books to read. I 
 obtained permission to send at least books from Edinburgh. Book 
 parcels naturally included bits of writing to and from, and thus an 
 acquaintance and correspondence was begun which had hardly any 
 interruption, and no break at all while life lasted. She was often 
 in Edinburgh on visit with her mother to 'Uncle Robert,' in 
 Northumberland Street, to 'old Mrs. Bradfute, in George's Square,' 
 and I had leave to call on these occasions, which I zealously enough, 
 if not too zealously sometimes, in my awkward way took advantage 
 of. I was not her declared lover, nor could she admit me as such 
 in my waste and uncertain posture of affairs and prospects ; but we 
 were becoming thoroughly acquainted with each other ; and her 
 tacit, hidden, but to me visible friendship for me, was the happy 
 island in my otherwise dreary, vacant, and forlorn existence in 
 those years." 
 
 Eager as the interest which Carlyle was taking in his new acquaint- 
 ance, he did not allow it to affect the regulation of his life, or to 
 drive him into the beaten roads of the established professions on 
 which he could arrive at fortune. His zeal for mathematics had by 
 this time cooled. He had travelled, as he said, into more "pregnant 
 inquiries." Inquiry had led to doubt, and doubt had enfeebled and 
 dispirited him till he had grappled with it and conquered it. Tradi- 
 tionary interpretations of things having finally broken down with 
 him, he was now searching for some answer which he could believe 
 to the great central question, What this world is, and what is man's 
 business in it ? Of classical literature he knew little, and that little 
 had not attracted him. He was not living in ancient Greece or 
 Rome, but in modern Europe, modern Scotland, with the added ex- 
 periences and discoveries of eighteen centuries ; and light, if light 
 there was, could be looked for only in the writers of his own era. 
 English literature was already widely familiar to him. He had read 
 every book in Irving's library at Kirkcaldy, and his memory had 
 the tenacity of steel. He had studied Italian and Spanish. He had 
 worked at D'Alembert and Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire. Still 
 unsatisfied, he had now fastened himself upon German, and was 
 
 Reminiscences," vol. i. p. 174.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 75 
 
 devouring Schiller and Goethe. Having abandoned the law, he was 
 becoming conscious that literature must be the profession of his life. 
 He did not suppose that he had any special gift for it. He told me 
 long after, when at the height of his fame, that he had perhaps less 
 capability for literature than for any other occupation. But he was 
 ambitious to use his time to honorable purposes. He was impatient 
 of the trodden ways which led only to money or to worldly fame, 
 and literature was the single avenue which offered an opening into 
 higher regions. The fate of those who had gone before him was 
 not encouraging. " The biographies of English men of letters," he 
 says somewhere, "are the wretchedest chapters in our history, ex- 
 cept the Newgate Calendar." Germany, however, and especially 
 modern Germany, could furnish brighter examples. Schiller first 
 took hold of him: pure, innocent, consistent, clear as the sunlight, 
 with a character in which calumny could detect neither spot nor stain. 
 The situation of Schiller was not unlike his own. A youth of pov- 
 erty, surrounded by obstructions ; long difficulty in finding a road 
 on which he could travel ; bad health besides, and despondent fits, 
 with which Carlyle himself was but too familiar. Yet with all this 
 Schiller had conquered adversity. He had raised himself to the sec- 
 ond, if not to the highest place, in the admiration of his countrymen ; 
 and there was not a single act in his whole career which his biogra- 
 pher would regret to record. Schiller had found his inherited be- 
 liefs break down under him, and had been left floating hi uncertain- 
 ties. But he had formed moral convictions of his own, independent 
 of creeds and churches, and had governed his thought and conduct 
 nobly by them. Nothing that he did required forgiveness, or even 
 apology. No line ever fell from his pen which he could have wished 
 unwritten when life was closing round him. Schiller's was thus an 
 inspiriting figure to a young man tremulously launching himself on 
 the same waters. His work was high and serene, clear and healthy 
 to the last fibre, noble thought and noble feeling rendered into words 
 with true artistic skill. 
 
 Nevertheless, the passionate questionings which were rising in 
 Carlyle's mind could find no answer which would satisfy him in 
 Schiller's prose or consolation in Schiller's lyrics. Schiller's nature 
 was direct and simple rather than profound and many-sided. Kant 
 had spoken the last word in philosophy to him. His emotions were 
 generous, but seldom subtle or penetrating. He had never looked 
 with a determined eye into the intellectual problems of humanity. 
 He worked as an artist with composed vigor on subjects which suited 
 his genius, and while his sentiments are lofty and his passion hearty 
 and true, his speculative insight is limited. Thus Schiller is great, 
 but not the greatest ; and those who have gone to him for help in 
 the enigmas social and spiritual which distract modern Europe, have
 
 76 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 found generally that they must look elsewhere. From Schiller Car- 
 lyle had turned to Goethe, and Goethe had opened a new world to 
 him. Schiller believed in the principles for which Liberals had been 
 fighting for three centuries. To him the enemy of human welfare 
 was spiritual and political tyranny, and Don Carlos, William Tell, 
 the revolt of the Netherlands, or the Thirty Years' War, were ready- 
 made materials for his workshop. He was no vulgar politician. He 
 soared far above the commonplaces of popular orators and contro- 
 versialists. He was a poet, with a poet's sympathies. He could ad- 
 mire greatness of soul in a Duke of Friedland; he could feel for suf- 
 fering if the sufferer was a Mary Stuart. But the broad articles of 
 faith professed by the believers in liberal progress were Schiller's 
 also, and he never doubted their efficacy for man's salvation. Goethe 
 had no such beliefs no beliefs of any kind which could be reduced 
 to formulas. If he distrusted priests, he distrusted still more the 
 Freiheit's Apostel and the philosophic critics. He had studied his 
 age on all its sides. He had shared its misgivings ; he had suffered 
 from its diseases ; he had measured its possibilities ; he had severed 
 himself from all illusions ; and held fast to nothing but what he 
 could definitely recognize as truth. In "Werter," in "Faust," in 
 "Prometheus," Carlyle found that another as well as he had expe- 
 rienced the same emotions with which he was himself so familiar. 
 In "Wilhelm Meister," that menagerie of tame creatures, as Nie- 
 buhr called it, he saw a picture of society, accurate precisely because 
 it was so tame, as it existed in middle-class European communities ; 
 the ardent, well-disposed youth launched into the middle of it, be- 
 ginning his apprenticeship in the false charms of the provincial the- 
 atre, and led at last into a recognition of the divine meaning of Chris- 
 tianity. Goethe had trod the thorny path before Carlyle. He had 
 not rushed into atheism. He had not sunk into superstition. He 
 remained true to all that intellect could teach him, and after facing 
 all the spiritual dragons he seemed to have risen victorious into an 
 atmosphere of tranquil wisdom. On finishing his first perusal of 
 "Meister," and walking out at midnight into the streets of Edin- 
 burgh to think about it, Carlyle said to himself, " with a very mixed 
 feeling in other respects, that here lay more insight into the elements 
 of human nature, and a more poetically perfect combining of them, 
 than in all the other fictitious literature of our generation. " 
 
 Having been charged by Irving with the direction of Miss Welsh's 
 studies, he at once introduced her to his German friends. Irving, 
 of the nature of whose interest in her welfare Carlyle had no sus- 
 picion, was alarmed at what he had done. His own religious con- 
 victions were profound and sincere. He had occasioned unexpect- 
 ed mischief already with his " Virgil." He had labored afterwards 
 with all his energies to lead his pupil to think about Christianity as
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 77 
 
 he thought himself, and when he heard of the books which she was 
 set to read, he felt that he had been imprudent. Two months after 
 the introduction at Haddingtoii he wrote to Carlyle to confess his 
 uneasiness : 
 
 Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "July 24, 1821. 
 
 "I did not follow your injunctions in transmitting to our fair ac- 
 quaintance my German grammar and dictionary, her own being as 
 much to the purpose. But I did not fail to instruct her to make all 
 progress through the preliminaries to an easy perusal of the German 
 poets. I am not competent to judge of their value towards the de- 
 velopment of thought and character. You are and therefore I 
 should be silent. But if they should tend to cut our young friend 
 off from any of the wholesome intercourse of those amongst whom 
 she is cast without being able to raise her to a better, I should be 
 very sorry, as it seems to me she is already unhinged from many of 
 the enjoyments her condition might afford her. She contemplates 
 the inferiority of others rather from the point of ridicule and con- 
 tempt than from that of commiseration and relief ; and by so doing 
 she not only leaves objects in distress and loses the luxury of doing 
 good, but she contracts in her own mind a degree of coldness and 
 bitterness which suits ill with my conception of female character 
 and a female's position in society. But I am speaking, perhaps, 
 away from the truth. The books may not be what they are report- 
 ed of. At the same time I am daily becoming more convinced that 
 in all the literature of our own which, it is said, holds of the Ger- 
 man school, there is something most poisonous to all that in this 
 country has been named virtue, and still more to the distinctions of 
 conduct which religion makes. It seems to me there is a jumble or 
 confusion of former distinctions as if they were preparing for some 
 new ones. They have the language of the highest purity, even of 
 the most sacred religion, in communion with the blackest crimes ; 
 and the presence of the former is thought somehow or other to com- 
 pensate for the latter. There is an attempt, too, I think, at two 
 standards of moral judgment one for the man of genius and litera- 
 ture, the other for the vulgar. But I dare say these are rather the 
 extravagances of imitators than the errors of the masters." 
 
 Another letter is to the same purpose, while it throws interesting 
 light on Irving's opinion of Carlyle : 
 
 "There is too much of that furniture about the elegant drawing- 
 room of Jane Welsh. I could like to see her surrounded with a 
 more sober set of companions than Rousseau (j'our friend), and By- 
 ron, and such like. They will never make different characters than 
 they were themselves, so deeply are they the prototypes of their 
 own conceptions of character. And I don't think it will much 
 mend the matter when you get her introduced to Von Schiller and 
 Von Goethe and your other nobles of German literature. I fear 
 Jane has already dipped too deep into that spring already, so that 
 unless some more solid food be afforded I fear she will escape alto- 
 gether out of the region of my sympathies and the sympathies of
 
 78 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 honest, home-bred men. In these feelings I know you will join me ; 
 and in giving to her character a useful and elegant turn you will aid 
 me as you have opportunity. 
 
 "I have been analyzing, as I could, the origin of my esteem and 
 affection for you. You are no more a general favorite than I am, 
 and in the strong points of character we are not alike, nor yet alike in 
 the turn of our general thoughts ; and we are both too intrepid to 
 seek in each other pity or consolation, and too independent to let 
 anything sinister or selfish enter into our attachments. How comes 
 it to pass, then, that we have so much pleasant communion ? I'll 
 tell you one thing. High literature is exiled from my sphere, and 
 simple principle is very much exiled from yours. Thus we feel a 
 blank on both sides, which is supplied in some measure when we 
 meet. I'll tell you another thing. Severed from the ordinary stays 
 of men, influence, place, fortune, each in his way has been obliged to 
 hang his hopes upon something higher ; and though we have not 
 chosen the same thing, in both cases it is pure and unearthly, and 
 next to his own the thing which the other admires most. I can easily 
 see that in the progress of our thoughts and characters there will be 
 ample room for toleration and charity, which will form the touch- 
 stone of our esteem." 
 
 Irving identified ' ' principle " with belief in the formulas of the 
 Church, and, therefore, supposed Carlyle to be without it. He con- 
 sidered his friend, no doubt, to be playing with dangerous weapons, 
 and likely to injure others with them besides himself. But Carlyle's 
 principles, when applied to the common duties of life, were as rigid 
 as Irving's. He had been struck by his new acquaintance at Had- 
 dington, but he was too wise to indulge in dreams of a nearer rela- 
 tion which their respective positions seemed to put out of the ques- 
 tion and he was too much in earnest to allow himself to be dis- 
 turbed in the course of life which he had adopted, or forget the 
 dearer friends at Mainhill to whom he was so passionately attached. 
 He had remained this summer in Edinburgh longer than usual, and 
 he and Irving had meditated a small walking-tour together at the 
 end of it. Irving, however, was unable to take a holiday. Carlyle 
 went home alone, walking as he always did, and sending his box by 
 the carrier. For him, as for so many of his student countrymen, 
 coaches were rarely-tasted luxuries. They tramped over moor and 
 road with their bundles on their shoulder, sleeping by the way at 
 herdsmen's cottages ; and journeys which to the rich would be a 
 delightful adventure, were not less pleasing to the sons of Scottish 
 peasants because forced on them by honest poverty. Mainhill had 
 become again by this time the happiest of shelters to him, and be- 
 tween his family and himself the old clear affection and mutual 
 trust had completely re-established themselves. The passing cloud 
 had risen only out of affectionate anxiety for his eternal well-being. 
 Satisfied of the essential piety of his nature, his mother had been
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 79 
 
 contented to believe that the differences between herself and her son 
 were differences of expression merely, not of radical conviction. 
 His father was beginning to be proud of him, and was sensible 
 enough to leave him to his own guidance. Three quiet months 
 were spent with his brothers and sisters while he was writing arti- 
 cles for Brewster's Encyclopaedia. In November he was in Edin- 
 burgh again with improving prospects. 
 
 "Things look as if they would go smoothly with me this winter 
 [lie wrote on Xovember 17 to his father]. I saw Brewster the other 
 day, who received me kindly, and spread out his bank draft for fif- 
 teen guineas like a man. He told me farther that a translation was 
 for certain to be set about, and that I as certainly should have the 
 first offer of it. The work is a French one, Legendre's ' Elements 
 of Geometry,' which Jack knows well and has in his possession. It 
 is a thing I can work at, if the ' gea of life' be in me at all, and for 
 that cause alone I purpose to accept it. There is plenty of Encyclo- 
 paedia work besides, and the worthy Review men seem to the full as 
 desirous that I should write for them, as I am willing to write for 
 anything in honor that will pay me well. That poor article which 
 you saw 1 has done me some good I find already, and though I respect 
 neither them nor their cause among the highest, I have thoughts of 
 complying for a time. From the whole of this you will be happy to 
 conclude that I am free of danger if I keep a sound body, which I 
 shall surely do to a certain extent." 
 
 The first use which Carlyle made of his improved finance was to 
 send his father a pair of spectacles, and his mother "a little sover- 
 eign to keep the fiend out of her hussif." 
 
 "You will tell me I am poor [he said to her in a note which went 
 with his present], and have so few myself of these coins ; but I am 
 going to have plenty by-and-by; and if I had but one I cannot see 
 how I could purchase more enjoyment with it than if I shared it 
 with you. Be not in want of anything, I entreat you, that I can 
 possibly get for you. It would be hard indeed if in the autumn of 
 a life the spring and summer of which you have spent well in tak- 
 ing care of us we should know what would add to your frugal en- 
 joyments and not procure it. The stockings and other things you 
 have sent me are of additional value in my eyes, as proofs of the 
 unwearied care with which you continue to watch over me. I still 
 hope to see the day when I may acknowledge all this more effectu- 
 ally. I think you wanted a bonnet when I was at home. Do not 
 buy any till after the box returns." 
 
 His father and mother were not Carlyle's only thought. His 
 brother John was working hard at school, hoping that means might 
 offer to enable him to attend the medical classes at Edinburgh. 
 
 1 Perhaps one of the short biographies which Carlyle was writing for Brewster. Ho 
 never republished these sketches, which are little more than exercises.
 
 80 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Power rather than will was alone wanting for Carlyle to take the 
 expense upon himself. He was watching for an opportunity, and 
 meanwhile he encouraged John to persevere with all his energy. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to John Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh: December 21, 1821. 
 
 "I send many a thought southward to you; often in the mind's 
 eye you appear seated at your mahogany tippet with the various 
 accoutrements of a solitary student, laboring in secret at the task 
 which fear it not, my boy will yet be rewarded openly. Few 
 such quiet things in nature have so much of the sublime in them as 
 the spectacle of a poor but honorable-minded youth, with discourage- 
 ment all around him, but never-dying hope within his heart, forging, 
 as it were, the armor with which he is destined to resist and over- 
 come the hydras of this world, and conquer for himself in due time a 
 habitation among the sunny fields of life. Like every other virtue 
 this effort may be called its own reward, even though success should 
 never crown it. How poor, how beggar poor compared with this, is 
 the vulgar rioting, punch-drinking, oyster-eating existence often led 
 by your borough procurator or embryo provost. Truly, Jack, you 
 have chosen the better part, and as your brother I rejoice to see you 
 persevere in it. I perused with deep interest and pleasure your 
 graphic account of the style in which our father received the spec- 
 tacles. It is a cheap way of purchasing pleasure to make those that 
 love us happy at so small an expense. 
 
 " Your affectionate brother, T. CAKLYLE." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 A.D. 1822. ^ET. 27. 
 
 AN important change was now to take place in Carlyle's circum- 
 stances, which not only raised him above the need of writing articles 
 for bread or hunting after pupils, but enabled him to give his brother 
 the lift into the University which he had so ardently desired to give 
 him. It came about in this way, through the instrumentality of his 
 constant friend, Edward Irving. Irving's position at Glasgow, Car- 
 lyle says, was not an easy one. Theological Scotland was jealous of 
 originality, and Irving was always inclined to take a road of his own. 
 He said himself that "from the Westland Whigs he had but tolera- 
 tion : when praised it was with reservation, often with cold and un- 
 profitable admonition." Even Chalmers sometimes, in retailing the 
 general opinion of him, "made him feel all black in his prospects." 
 He was growing dispirited about himself, when, just at that time, he 
 received an invitation to go to London on experimental trial. The 
 Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden was in need of a minister. 
 " Certain Glasgow people," who thought more favorably of Chal-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 81 
 
 mers's assistant than their neighbors thought, or than Chalmers him- 
 self, named him to the trustees, and Irving was sent for that his 
 " gifts " might be ascertained. The gifts proved to be what London 
 wanted. He was brilliantly successful. There was no jealousy of 
 originality in Hatton Garden, but ardent welcome rather to a man 
 who had something new to say on so worn a subject as the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 ' ' I have preached [he reported to Carlyle after three weeks' ex- 
 perience], but I shall not repeat the compliments which burst upon 
 me. It is so new a thing to me to be praised in my preaching, I 
 know not how to look. I have been hailed with the warmest re- 
 ception. They anticipate great things. The Duke of York was 
 present at a charity sermon Sunday week; and much more which 
 it is needless to repeat. One thing would have made your heart 
 feel my audience was almost entirely young Scotchmen. No fa- 
 thers, no mothers, no sisters ; seats full of youth and how grave ! 
 how attentive!" 
 
 Not the Duke of York only, but great persons of all kinds were 
 brought to the Caledonian Chapel by the report of a new man of 
 genius who really believed in Christianity. It happened that among 
 the rest there came Mrs. Strachey, wife of a distinguished East 
 Indian director, and her sister, Mrs. Charles Buller. Mr. Buller was 
 also a retired Anglo-Indian of eminence. Mrs. Strachey was devout 
 and evangelical, and had been led to Hatton Garden by genuine in- 
 terest ; Mrs. Buller had accompanied her in languid curiosity ; she 
 was struck, like the rest of the world, by Irving's evident ability, 
 and she allowed herself to be afterwards introduced to him. She 
 had three sons one the Charles Buller who won so brilliant a place 
 for himself in Parliament, and died as he was beginning to show to 
 what a height he might have risen ; another, Arthur, the Sir Arthur 
 of coming years, an Indian judge; and a third, Reginald, who be- 
 came a clergyman. Charles was then fifteen, having just left Har- 
 row, and was intended, perhaps, for Cambridge ; Arthur was a year 
 or two younger, and Reginald was a child. The Bullers were un- 
 certain about the immediate education of the two elder boys. Mrs. 
 Buller consulted Irving, and Irving recommended the University of 
 Edinburgh, adding that he had a friend of remarkable quality there 
 who would prove an excellent tutor for them. Mrs. Buller was 
 prompt in her decisions, if not always stable in adhering to them. 
 A negotiation was opened and was readily concluded. Carlyle's 
 consent having been obtained, he was instructed to expect the ar- 
 rival of his pupils as soon as arrangements could be made for their 
 board. The family intended to follow, and reside themselves for a 
 time in Scotland. Those who remember Charles Buller will read 
 with revived interest Irving's first impressions of him :
 
 82 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " London : January 4, 1822. 
 
 "... My opinion is that in the mother you will meet a most 
 pleasant, elegant, and sensible woman. In the eldest boy, whom I 
 have conversed with, you will meet a rather difficult subject: clever 
 and acute, and not ill-informed for his age; but his tastes are all given 
 to Boxiana, Bond Street, and pleasure gathered out of the specula- 
 tions and ambitions of Harrow School. But while he argued for 
 that style of life against his mother and me, he displayed a soul far 
 above it, and sporting with it, and easily to be dislodged from it; 
 and he confessed, when his mother was gone, that he could apply 
 himself with great good-will for several years to study, and would 
 delight to travel. I told him and his mother that I should like my- 
 self to be his tutor, and I spoke bond fide, for nothing I perceive is 
 wanting but a superior mind to give him higher tastes and to breed 
 admiration of excellence. You could soon master him and easily 
 direct him, though at the outset it might be a trial of your patience. 
 But I think you ought to submit to such a trial. You would be no 
 worse by it. You labor upon a good subject, for a most accom- 
 plished, quite a gallant and noble woman, and gracious withal, and 
 willing to recompense your labors." 
 
 The salary was to be 200?. a year. The offer, so desirable in 
 many ways, came opportunely, and at Mainhill was warmly wel- 
 comed. The times were hard; the farm was yielding short returns. 
 For once it was Carlyle who was to raise the spirits of the family. 
 
 Tlwmas Carlyle to James Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh: January 12, 1822. 
 
 "... As to the times, it is an evil which must be promptly and 
 effectually met, and many will fail for want of a remedy ; perhaps 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the British farmers before you need fear 
 greatly. And if the issue prove unfortunate, what then? You can 
 stand it better than many many whom it would leave without re- 
 sources. The worst is over; we are all past childhood, and with so 
 many brave sons to stand between you and danger, why should you 
 be afraid? For myself, the eldest and least profitable of them, I do 
 sometimes think that Fate is about to lift its heavy hand off me, 
 and that I shall yet have it in my power to be useful to you all. 
 My health is considerably better than it was last winter. It will re- 
 turn completely, I trust, and my hopes are infinitely more extensive 
 and better founded than they were at that period. I have abun- 
 dance of employment, and the expectation of more, and more lucra- 
 tive in process of time. There is a plan in particular about which 
 Irving wrote to me the other day, that promises exceedingly well. 
 It is a tutorship in a London family, who have two sons intended to 
 reside with their parents in Edinburgh till their education is com- 
 pleted. The mother, Irving says, is an excellent person ; the sons 
 likely to be more troublesome ; but the yearly salary is 200., a 
 round solid sum for which a man would submit to much. Accord-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 83 
 
 marly I have engaged to attend the youths when they arrive, which 
 they are to do shortly, in quality o'f 'teacher for the interim,' for 
 three months, till their parents arrive, with the understanding that 
 if I like them, and they me, I am to undertake the office perma- 
 nently. " 
 
 To his mother Carlyle wrote at the same date : 
 
 " The woman, Irving says, is a gallant, accomplished person, and 
 will respect me well. "He warned her that I had seen little of life, 
 and was disposed to be rather high in the humor if not well used. 
 The plan, if I like it and be fit for it, will be advantageous for me in 
 many aspects. I shall have time for study and convenience for it, 
 and plenty of cash. At the same time, as it is uncertain, I do not 
 make it my bower anchor by any means. If it go to nothing alto- 
 gether I shall snap my finger and thumb in the face of all the In- 
 dian judges of the earth, and return to my poor desk and quill with 
 as hard a heart as ever." 
 
 John Carlyle replies from Mainhill : 
 
 "We were all glad to hear from you. The SOW. figures largely 
 in the eyes of our father, but not so largely and exclusively, perhaps, 
 as you would be supposed to think, considering all the bearings of 
 his character. He seems to entertain a very great deal more of re- 
 spect towards you of late than he was wont to cherish when you 
 were strolling about the moors. You can excuse him for doing so. 
 He is one of the most wonderful persons in these parts, considering 
 the manner in which he was brought up. " 
 
 The young Bullers arrived at Edinburgh early in the spring. 
 They lodged with a Dr. Fleming in George Square, Carlyle being in 
 daily attendance. 
 
 "From the first [he says] I found my Charles a most manage- 
 able, intelligent, cheery, and altogether welcome and agreeable phe- 
 nomenon quite a bit of sunshine in my dreary Edinburgh element. 
 I was in waiting for his brother and him when they landed at Flem- 
 ing's. We set instantly out on a walk round by the foot of Salis- 
 bury Crags, up from Holyrood by the Castle and Law Courts, home 
 again to George Square; and really I recollect few more pleasant 
 walks in my life so all-intelligent, seizing everything you said to 
 him with such a prompt recognition, so loyal - hearted, chivalrous, 
 guileless, so delighted evidently with me as I was with him. Ar- 
 thur, two years younger, kept mainly silent, being slightly deaf too. 
 But I could perceive that he also was a fine little fellow, honest, in- 
 telligent, and kind, and that apparently I had been much in luck in 
 this didactic adventure, which proved abundantly the fact. The 
 two youths took to me with unhesitating liking, and I to them, and 
 we never had anything of quarrel, or even of weariness and dreari- 
 ness between us such teaching as I never had in any sphere before 
 or since. Charles, by his qualities, his ingenuous curiosities, his 
 brilliancy of faculty and character, was actually an entertainment to 
 me rather than a labor. If we walked together, which I remember
 
 84 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 sometimes happening, he was the best company which I could find 
 in Edinburgh. I had entered him in Dunbar's third Greek class at 
 College. In Greek and Latin, in the former in every respect, he 
 was far my superior, and I had to prepare my lessons by way of 
 keeping him to his work at Dunbar's. Keeping him to work was 
 my one difficulty, if there was one, and my essential function. I 
 tried to guide him into reading, into solid inquiry and reflection. 
 He got some mathematics from me, and might have had more. He 
 got, in brief, what expansion into wider fields of intellect and more 
 manful modes of tlu'nking and working my poor possibilities could 
 yield him, and was always generously grateful to me afterwards. 
 Friends of mine in a fine frank way, beyond what I could be 
 thought to merit, he, Arthur, and all the family remained, till death 
 parted us." 1 
 
 Carlyle was now at ease in his circumstances. He could help his 
 brother ; he had no more money anxieties. He was living inde- 
 pendently in his own rooms in Moray Street. His evenings were 
 his own, and he had leisure to do what he pleased. Yet it was not 
 his nature to be contented. He was full of thoughts which were 
 struggling for expression, and he was beginning that process of in- 
 effectual labor so familiar to every man who has risen to any height 
 in literature, of trying to write something before he knew what the 
 something was to be ; of craving to give form to his ideas before 
 those ideas had taken an organic shape. The result was necessarily 
 failure, and along with it self -exasperation. He translated his 
 " Legendre " easily enough, and made a successful book out of it; but 
 he was aspiring to the production of an original work, and what it 
 should be he could not decide. Now it was an essay on ' ' Faust, " now 
 a history of the English Commonwealth, now a novel to be written 
 in concert with Miss Welsh. An article on " Faust " was finished, 
 but it was crude and unsatisfactory. The other schemes were com- 
 menced and thrown aside. The workings of his mind appear in his 
 letters to his brother : 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to John Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh: March 15, 1822. 
 
 "Your two letters came to hand about a fortnight ago. I read 
 them with the pleasure that all your letters give me. They exhibit 
 the same picture of young, arduous, honest affection and inflexible 
 perseverance, in worthy though difficult pursuits, for which I have 
 always loved you. The last quality, perseverance, I particularly re- 
 spect; it is the very hinge of all virtues. On looking over the world 
 the cause of nine parts in ten of the lamentable failures which oc- 
 cur in men's undertakings, and darken and degrade so much of their 
 history, lies not in the want of talents or the will to use them, but 
 in the vacillating and desultory mode of using them, in flying from 
 
 i "Reminiscences,"' vol. i. p. 196.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 85 
 
 object to object, in starting away at each little disgust, and thus ap- 
 plying the force which might conquer any one difficulty to a series 
 of diliiculties so large that no human force can conquer them. The 
 smallest brook on earth by continuing to run has hollowed out for 
 itself a considerable valley to flow in. The wildest tempest over- 
 turns a few cottages, uproots a few trees, and leaves after a short 
 space no mark behind it. Commend me, therefore, to the Dutch 
 virtue of perseverance. Without it all the rest are little better than 
 fairy gold, which glitters in your purse, but when taken to market 
 proves to be slate or cinders. 
 
 "This preaching, my beloved Jack, is directed against myself, 
 who have need of it not against you, who have none. ' Improve 
 the passing hour, for it will never, never return,' is a precept which 
 you not only assent to but practise. In myself study has in a meas- 
 ure ceased to be a thing of which I am capable. At no period of 
 my life did I spend my time more unprolitably than at present. 
 Science and arts and book-learning no longer inspire me with any 
 suitable interest, and my ignorance, my indecision, my weakness of 
 all kinds, prevent me from fixing my heart on any one object of my 
 own inventing. Well did old Crispus say, 'Truly that man lives 
 and enjoys existence who is intent on some undertaking and aims 
 at some excellent attainment.' It is a fact certain that I must write 
 a book. Would to Heaven that I had a subject which I could dis- 
 cuss, and at the same time loved to discuss. I cannot say for certain 
 whether I have the smallest genius; but I know I have unrest enough 
 to serve a parish. Pity me, but I hope I shall not always be so piti- 
 ful a thing. As for my employment it goes on pretty fairly. The 
 Bullers are boys of many good qualities and many faults. I am too 
 little beside them at present to grapple on fair terms with their inat- 
 tentions and frequent peccadilloes. However, in the main they are 
 very superior boys, both in head and heart, and I think the under- 
 taking will succeed ultimately." 
 
 Again, a few days later, d propos of the translation of " Legendre :" 
 
 " I am anxious to get all these mechanical things off my hand, so 
 that I may be able to embark fairly in some more honorable enter- 
 prise. I have had a faint purpose for some weeks of writing some 
 c-->;iy on the Genius and Character of Milton, if I could. It is not 
 quite the subject I should like, but better than none, so that I am 
 still thinking of it, and determined at least to read the works that 
 relate to it. I am already through Clarendon's ' History of the Re- 
 bellion.' To-morrow I shall try to get hold of Ludlow's 'Memoirs,' 
 or some other of them. My condition is rather strange at present. 
 I feel as if I were impelled to write; as if I had also very little pow- 
 er to do it ; but at the same time as if I had altogether lost the facul- 
 ty of exerting that power. It is these 'coorsed nervoiis disorders.' 
 If I had but strong health! But what is the use of talking? If I 
 had a supereminent genius, the end would be still better attained, 
 and the wish is perhaps just about as reasonable. Should I never 
 be healthy. again, it will not aid me to complain, to sit and whine, 
 ' put finger in the eye and sob, ' because my longings are not grati- 
 L 5
 
 86 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 fieri. Better to do what I can while it is called to-day ; and if the 
 edifice I create be but a dog-hutch, it is more honorable to have 
 built a dog-hutch than to have dreamed of building a palace. There- 
 fore, Jack, I mean to try if I can bestir myself. Art is long and life 
 is short; and of the threescore and ten years allotted to the liver, 
 how small a portion is spent in anything but vanity and vice, if not 
 in wretchedness, and worse than unprofitable struggling with the 
 adamantine laws of fate ! I am w.ae when I think of all this, but it 
 cannot be helped." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A.D. 1822. JET. 27. 
 
 THE correspondence with Haddington meanwhile grew more in- 
 timate. The relations between tutor and pupil developed, or prom- 
 ised to develop, into literary partnership. Miss Welsh sent Carlyle 
 her verses to examine and correct. Carlyle discussed his plans and 
 views with her, and they proposed to write books in concert. But 
 the friendship, at least on her part, was literary only. Carlyle, in 
 one of his earliest letters to her, did indeed adopt something of the 
 ordinary language of gallantry natural in a young man when ad- 
 dressing a beautiful young lady. But she gave him to understand 
 immediately that such a tone was disagreeable to her, and that their 
 intimacy could only continue on fraternal and sisterly terms. Car- 
 lyle obeyed without suspecting the reason. He had known that 
 Irving was engaged to Miss Martin. It never occurred to him as 
 possible that he could be thinking of any one else, or any one else 
 of him. 
 
 As for Irving himself, the reception which he had met with in 
 London was all that he could desire. A brilliant career appeared 
 to be opening before him, and ardent and enthusiastic as he was, ho 
 had allowed his future in all points to be colored by his wishes. 
 There could be no doubt that the Hatton Garden committee would 
 confirm his London appointment. He would then be able to many, 
 and his fate would have to be immediately decided. He was to re- 
 turn to Scotland in the spring to be ordained he was as yet only in 
 his novitiate ; meanwhile he was in high spirits, and his letters were 
 of the rosiest color : 
 
 Edward Irving to Tliomaa Carlyle. 
 
 " February 22, 1822. 
 
 "I have taken new wing by my visit to London. I see my way 
 distinctly. My intellect is putting out new powers, at least I fancy 
 so; and if God endow me with His grace, I foresee service to His 
 Church. My ambition a sanctified one, I trust is taking another 
 direction : no less than an endeavor to bring the spirit and powers
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 87 
 
 of the ancient eloquence into the pulpit, which appears to me the 
 only place in modern manners for its revival. I would like to hear 
 your thoughts upon this subject, both as to the correctness of the 
 idea and its proper execution. 
 
 "It is for an audience chiefly I am so fond of London ; perhaps 
 as much for a school to learn in by conversation and observation, for 
 which I think nature has fitted ine more than by books. I have a 
 wonderful aptitude to sympathize with men. Their manner of feel- 
 ing, of thinking also, is clear to me, and, even when false, is interest- 
 ing from a desire to set them right. Jane Welsh accuses me of in- 
 tolerance, but I think she is wrong, althgugh I think I have some 
 little skirmishes for approbation. "But this is not deep, and will 
 yield according as I receive the share which is my due. 
 
 ' ' And so will yours, my dear Carlyle ; you have within you pow- 
 ers of good the world is not alive to, and which shall yet shine out 
 to the confusion of many who discredit them. Your natural power 
 of devotion will yet have utterance; and your deep-seated reverence 
 of religion the largest expansion and highest attainment of the soul, 
 which makes your mother so superior to those around her will yet 
 make her son superior among the rich and literary men that are 
 hereafter to company with him." 
 
 In March the trial period had ended. The trustees were satisfied; 
 Irving was to be minister of the Hatton Garden chapel. He return- 
 ed to Glasgow in March to prepare for his ordination. On April 
 29 he wrote to Carlyle again : 
 
 "It is now at length determined that I go to London. I have 
 received the call, most respectably signed ; and, what with sub- 
 scriptions and the first of the seat-rents, the security of 50(M. a year. 
 I go to Annan this day three weeks, where I am to abide during the 
 month of June and obtain ordination, then to London, without see- 
 ing Edinburgh; and yet I would like to see you could you come 
 through at the time of the sacrament. Many things oppress my 
 spirit at the present moment, nothing more than parting with these 
 most worthy and kind-hearted people. Some other things also 
 which I cannot render into language unto my own mind. There is 
 an independence about my character, a want of resemblance espe- 
 cially with others of my profession, that will cause me to be appre- 
 hended ill of. I hope to come through honestly and creditably. 
 God grant it!" 
 
 I am not writing Irving's history, save so far as it intersects with 
 that of Carlyle, and I must hasten to the catastrophe of their uncon- 
 scious rivalry. The "other things " which he could not render into 
 language, the "independence of character which might cause him 
 to be apprehended ill of," referred to his engagement, and to his 
 intentions with respect to it. Miss Martin had been true to him 
 through many years of tedious betrothal, and he was bound to her 
 by the strictest obligations of honor and conscience. But it is only 
 in novels that a hero can behave with entire propriety. Folded
 
 88 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 among Irving's letters to Miss Welsh is a passionate sonnet ad- 
 dressed to her, and on the other side of it (she had preserved his 
 verses and so much of the accompanying letter as was written on 
 the opposite page of the paper) a fragment, written evidently at this 
 period, in which he told her that he was about to inform Miss Mar- 
 tin and her father of the condition of his feelings. It seems that 
 he did so, and that the answer was unfavorable to his hopes. The 
 Martins stood by their contract, as justice and Scotch custom en- 
 tirely entitled them to do. Miss Welsh had refused to listen to his 
 addresses until he was free ; and Irving, though he confessed after- 
 wards (I use his own words) that the struggle had almost "made 
 his faith and principles to totter," submitted to the inevitable. He 
 must have carried the news to Haddington in person ; what had 
 passed there may be gathered from a letter which he wrote to 
 her from Carlyle's lodgings in Edinburgh, to which he had gone 
 after all : 
 
 Edward Irving to Miss Welsh. 
 
 "My well -beloved Friend and Pupil, When I think of you 
 my mind is overspread with the most affectionate and tender re- 
 gard, which I neither know to name nor to describe. One thing I 
 know, it would long ago have taken the form of the most devoted 
 attachment but for an intervening circumstance, and showed itself 
 and pleaded itself before your heart by a thousand actions from 
 which I must now restrain myself. Heaven grant me its grace 
 to restrain myself ; and, forgetting my own enjoyments, may I be 
 enabled to combine into your single self all that duty and plighted 
 faith leave at my disposal. When I am in your company my whole 
 soul would rush to serve you, and my tongue trembles to speak my 
 heart's fulness. But I am enabled to forbear, and have to find other 
 avenues than the natural ones for the overflowing of an affection 
 which would hardly have been able to confine itself within the ave- 
 nues of nature if they had all been opened. But I feel within me 
 the power to prevail, and at once to satisfy duty to another and af- 
 fection to you. I stand truly upon ground which seems to shake 
 and give way beneath me, but my help is in Heaven. Bear with 
 thus much, my early charge and my present friend, from one who 
 loves to help and defend you, who would rather die than wrong you 
 or see you wronged. Say that I shall speak no more of the painful 
 struggle that I am undergoing, and I shall be silent. If you allow 
 me to speak, then I shall reveal to you the features of a virtuous 
 contention, to be crowned, I pray and trust, with a Christian tri- 
 umph. It is very extraordinary that this weak nature of mine can 
 bear two affections, both of so intense a kind, and yet I feel it can. 
 It shall feed the one with faith, and duty, and chaste affection ; the 
 other with paternal and friendly love, no less pure, no less assidu- 
 ous, no less constant in return seeking nothing but permission and 
 indulgence. 
 
 " I was little comforted by Rousseau's letters, though holding out 
 a most admirable moral ; but much comforted and confirmed by the
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 89 
 
 few words which your noble heart dictated the moment before I left 
 you. Oh, persevere, my admirable pupil, in the noble admirations 
 you have taken up. Let affectionateness and manly firmness be the 
 qualities to which you yield your love, and your life shall be hon- 
 orable ; advance your admiration somewhat higher, and it shall be 
 everlastingly happy. Oh, do not forbid me from rising in my com- 
 munications with one so capable of the loftiest conceptions. For- 
 bid me not to draw you upwards to the love and study of your Crea- 
 tor, which is the beginning of wisdom. I have returned Rousseau. 
 Count forever, my dear Jane, upon my last efforts to minister to 
 your happiness, present and everlasting. 
 
 " From your faithful friend and servant, 
 
 "EDWARD IRVING. " 
 
 I should not unveil a story so sacred in itself, and in which the 
 public have no concern, merely to amuse their curiosity ; but Mrs. 
 Carlyle's character was profoundly affected by this early disappoint- 
 ment, and cannot be understood without a knowledge of it. Car- 
 lyle himself, though acquainted generally with the circumstances, 
 never realized completely the intensity of the feeling Avhich had 
 been crushed. Irving's marriage was not to take place for a year, 
 and it was still possible that something might happen in the inter- 
 val. He went back to his place in London, flung himself into relig- 
 ious excitement as grosser natures go into drink, and took popular- 
 ity by storm. The fashionable world rushed after him. The streets 
 about Ilatton Garden were blocked with carriages. His chapel was 
 like a theatre, to which the admission was by tickets. Great states- 
 men went with the stream. Brougham, Canning, Mackintosh be- 
 spoke their seats, that they might hear the new actor on the theo- 
 logical stage. Irving concluded that he had a divine mission to re- 
 establish practical Christianity. He felt himself honored above all 
 men, yet he bore his honors humbly, and in his quiet intervals his 
 thoughts still flowed towards Haddington. Miss Welsh's husband 
 he could not be ; but he could still be her guide, her spiritual father 
 some link might remain which would give him an excuse for writ- 
 ing to her. As long as he was actually unmarried there was still 
 hope, but he tried to avoid hinting at so remote a possibility. 
 
 Edward Irving to Miss Welsh. 
 
 " London : September 9, 1822. 
 
 "My dearest Friend, I said in the last walk which we enjoyed 
 together on a Sabbath evening when by the solemn stillness of the 
 scene, no less than the pathetic character of our discourse, my mind 
 was in that solemn frame which is my delight that in future I was 
 to take upon me in my letters the subject of your religious and mor- 
 al improvement, leaving to other correspondents matters of litera- 
 ture, taste, and entertainment. But I have not forgot that you dis- 
 charged me from preaclu'ng to you in my letters, and I fear that
 
 90 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 what you humorously call preaching is the very thing which I shall 
 have to do if I fulfil my resolution. Now I can chat, though some- 
 what awkwardly I confess ; and ten years agone I had a little hu- 
 mor, which has now nearly deceased from neglect. My mind was 
 then light and airy, and loved to utter its conceptions, and to look 
 at them and laugh at them when uttered. Then I could have writ- 
 ten letters trippingly, and poured out whatever was uppermost in 
 my mind; but I can do that no longer. I am aiming from morning 
 till night to be a serious and wise man, though God knows how 
 little I succeed. The shortness of life is evermore in my eye, the 
 wasting of it before my conscience ; the responsibility of it over- 
 whelms me, and the vanity of it ashames me. I cannot make a 
 mock heroic of these things, or laugh them away. I was never so 
 far lost to good sense and good feeling as to try. So they hang over 
 me, and I must either sink down into a melancholy forlorn creature, 
 weeping and sighing and talking over the difficulties of living well, 
 or I must rise up in the strength of Him who made me, and en- 
 deavor to work my passage through the best and surest way I can. 
 This last I have chosen, like the wise men who have gone before me, 
 and by God's help I will fulfil it. 
 
 "Now, my dear friend, bear with me if I violate the law of letter- 
 writing you imposed on me by daring to be serious, and to speak to 
 :>u whom I love of those things and that strain which most I love, 
 he fine promise of your mind has been to me the theme of much 
 conversation and of far more delightful thought. It is not a part 
 of my character to withhold my admiration from others, or even 
 from those I admire, and you yourself have often charged me with 
 exaggerating your gifts. Your industry to get knowledge, and to 
 accomplish your mind with elegant learning, no one can exaggerate. 
 Your enthusiasm towards the excellent and rare specimens of human 
 genius is beyond that of any other I know ; and your desire to be 
 distinguished by achievements of mind is equalled only by your 
 contempt of all other distinctions. Now there is in these qualities 
 of character not only promise but assurance of the highest excellence, 
 if God give time for all to ripen, and you give ear to his directions 
 for bringing the human character to perfection. Now it does give 
 me great hope that God will yet be pleased to open your mind to 
 the highest of all knowledge, the knowledge of his Blessed Son, and 
 gain therewith the highest of all delights, of being like his Sou in 
 character and in destiny; when I see you not alienated from men of 
 genius by their being men of religion, but attracted to them I think 
 rather the more. 
 
 ' ' I could wish, indeed and forgive me when I make free to sug- 
 gest it that your mind were less anxious for the distinction of be- 
 ing enrolled amidst those whom this world hath crowned with their 
 admiration, than among those whom God hath crowned with his 
 approval. There are two things to be kept in view in judging of 
 the worth of men first what powers they had, and then what uses 
 they turned them to. You and I agree always when we meet with 
 a person of power, but you do not go so far as I in exacting from 
 them a good use of it. I do not wish it turned to arts of cruelty, 
 which satire and ridicule and scorn are. I can endure this no more
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 91 
 
 than I can endure the tyranny of a despot or the wilfulness of a man, 
 of power. They prey upon the physical rights and comforts of their 
 underlings; the others prey upon the feelings, by far the tenderer 
 and nobler part. I do not wish it turned to the aggrandizement and 
 adulation of its possessor ; for he doth not possess it by virtue of 
 himself, but by his Maker and his Preserver. Keep away these 
 two things, the cruel treatment of another, and the deification 
 of energy, and I will not be offended with the exercise of mental 
 powers ; but to satisfy me I seek for much besides ; I must have it 
 husbanded and not wasted in indolence, for that is as bad almost as 
 the indulgence of superiority. Then I must have it turned to the 
 discovery of truth, and to the undeceiving of men, then to lead them 
 into the way of their well-being. Then finally, which should have 
 been first, or rather which should be the moving principle of the 
 whole, to do honor unto God who has made us masters of our pow- 
 ers. Find people of this kind from the annals of the world ; admire 
 them, love them, be like them, and God enroll you among them. 
 Oh, how few I find, my dear Jane, hardly have I found a single one, 
 who can stand the intoxication of high talents, or resist presuming 
 to lord it over others. They cry out against kings for their arbitra- 
 ry tempers. I think men of talents are more so. Nothing can over- 
 come it but the power and wisdom of God, which is in the gospel of 
 his dear Son, your Saviour and mine, and the Saviour of all who 
 believe ; who, though the brightness of his Father's glory and the 
 express image of his person, and speaking as no man spoke, took 
 upon him the form of a servant, and submitted to the death of the 
 cross. Therefore God highly exalted him, and hath given him a 
 name above every name. So also will he exalt all others who like 
 him use those their high gifts and appointments to the service of 
 God and their fellows. 
 
 " Enough of this, for I have much more to speak of. Of my own 
 condition I can speak with great satisfaction, in as far as favor and 
 friendship are concerned, and the outward popularity of my calling. 
 I have no evidence to judge by farther than that my chapel is filled, 
 and that their patient hearing of discourses, each an hour and a 
 quarter long, testifies they are not dissatisfied with the stuff they are 
 made of. In another respect I have reason to be thankful that God 
 has revealed to me of late the largeness of my own vanity and the 
 worthlessness of my own services, which, if he follows up with far- 
 ther light upon the best way for me to act in future, and with strength 
 to act as he teaches me, then I have no doubt of a great increase both 
 of happiness and fruit. 
 
 " I have made no acquaintance in London of any literary eminence, 
 but I shall, I doubt not, in good time. I derive little advantage from 
 my acquaintances, my course is so different from theirs. The next 
 moment I have unemployed I devote to my friend Carlyle, to whom 
 I have not yet found time to write. Oh that God would give rest to 
 his mind, and instruct him in his truth. I meditate a work upon the 
 alienation of clever men from their Maker. But this shall not hinder 
 me from taking up the life of St. Paul, which deserves certainly the 
 highest strain of poetry, but I am utterly unable for such a task. 
 
 ' ' My love to your mother. Oh, how I would like to see you both, to
 
 92 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 live with you in the quietness and love which I have so often , l 
 
 The next time I come to live with you I hope I shall be more worthy 
 of your kindness, being more satisfied with myself, and standing 
 firmer in the favor of my God, whom that my dear Jane may always 
 set before her is the first and last prayer of her most true and faith- 
 ful friend, EDWARD IRVING." 
 
 This letter is one of Irving's best, simple, true, and from his heart, 
 while it is kept firmly within the lines which he had prescribed for 
 himself. Others were less collected, and perhaps less resigned, lie 
 would lie on his sofa in the December midnight, listening to the music 
 of the streets, and then pour out his emotions to Mrs. Welsh, telling 
 her how Haddington had been a haven of peace to him; how the 
 happiest days of his life had been spent under her roof; how "no- 
 where had thoughts of piety and virtue come to him so little sought 
 as with her and his dear pupil." Every day in his walk he passed 
 a window where there was a portrait of Miss Kelly as Juliet. "It 
 had the cast of Miss Welsh's eye," he said, " in one of its most pierc- 
 ing moods, which he could never stand to meet, the roundness of her 
 forehead, and somewhat of the archness of her smile." He was very 
 miserable at times, but he struggled with his weakness. His duty 
 was plain and peremptory, and should be done, let the cost be what 
 it might. 
 
 Though he seldom found time to write to Carlyle, he had not for- 
 gotten him. He was eager to see him in the position which of right 
 belonged to him, especially to see him settled in London. "Scot- 
 land breeds men, " he said, ' ' but England rears them. " He celebrated 
 his friend's praises in London circles. He had spoken of him to 
 Mr. Taylor, the proprietor of the London Magazine. Carlyle had 
 meditated a series of "portraits of men of genius and character." 
 Taylor, on Irving's recommendation, undertook to publish these 
 sketches in monthly numbers, paying Carlyle sixteen guineas a sheet. 
 Carlyle closed with the proposal, and a "Life of Schiller" was to be 
 the first to appear. Irving's unwearied kindness unfortunately did 
 not help him out of his own entanglements. The year passed, and 
 then he married, and from that time the old, simple, unconscious 
 Irving ceased to exist. His letters, once so genial and transparent, 
 became verbose and stilted. Though "faith and principle " escaped 
 unscathed, his intellect was shattered. He plunged deeper and 
 deeper into the great ocean of unrealities. When his illusions failed 
 him his health gave way, and after flaming for a few years as a 
 world's wonder, he died, still young in age, worn out and broken- 
 hearted. " There would have been no tongues," Mrs. Carlyle once 
 said, "had Irving married me." 
 
 > Word omitted.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 93 
 
 Carlyle, meanwhile, was working with his pupils, and so far as 
 circumstances went, had nothing to complain of. The boys gave 
 him little trouble. He was no longer obliged to write articles for 
 Brewster to support himself. The " Legendre " was well done so 
 well that he was himself pleased with it. 
 
 " I still remember [he says] a happy forenoon (Sunday, I fear) in 
 which I did a Fifth book (or complete Doctrine of Proportion) for 
 that work. Complete really and lucid, and yet one of the briefest 
 ever known. It was begun and done that forenoon, and I have, ex- 
 cept correcting the press next week, never seen it since; but still feel 
 as if it was right enough and felicitous in its kind. I got only 501. 
 for my entire trouble in that ' Legendre,' and had already ceased to lie 
 the least proud of mathematical prowess; but it was an honest job 
 of work honestly done, though perhaps for bread-and-water wages, 
 and that was such an improvement upon wages producing, jji Jean 
 Paul's phrase, ' only water without the bread. ' " 
 
 He ought to have been contented ; but content was not in him. 
 Small discomforts were exaggerated by his imagination till they 
 actually became the monsters which his fancy represented. He was 
 conscious of exceptional power of some kind, and was longing to 
 make use of it, yet was unable as yet to find out what sort of power 
 it w r as, or what to do with it, 
 
 " If I fail [he wrote to Miss Welsh at the beginning of the Buller 
 engagement] to effect anything in my day and generation, anything 
 to justify Providence for having called me into his universe, the 
 weakness of my ability, not of my will, shall be to blame. I have 
 much to strive with, much to do. The few conceptions that act- 
 ually exist within me are scattered in a thousand directions, dis- 
 tracted, dismembered, without form and void; and I have yet gained 
 no right mastery of my pen, no right familiarity with the public, to 
 express them even if worth expressing. Nevertheless I must perse- 
 vere. What motives have I not which man can have? The bright- 
 est hopes and the darkest fears. On the one side obscurity and iso- 
 lation, the want of all that can render life endurable, and death, ' sad 
 refuge from the storms of fate,' without even an approving con- 
 science to disarm it of its sting. On the other is . I tell you, 
 
 my friend, to be in no pain for me. Either I shall escape from this 
 obscure sojourn, or persist as I ought in trying it. The game is deep, 
 but I must play it out. I can no other, so away with fear. 
 
 "Meanwhile I am not unhappy. It is true I have none to love 
 me here, none that I can love. But I have long been studying the 
 painful lesson to live alone, and the task is easier than it was. I 
 enjoy quiet and free air and returning health. I have business in 
 abundance for the present, and the future lies before me vaguely, 
 but with some glimpses of a solemn beauty irradiating all its gloom. 
 When I compare the aspect of the world to me now with what it 
 was twelve months ago, I am far from desponding or complaining." 
 
 If he could not express himself to his satisfaction when trying to 
 
 5*
 
 94 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 write for the public, he could describe well enough anything which 
 happened to him, when telling it in a private letter. To his mother 
 he was the best of correspondents. Here is a little incident charac- 
 teristic both in manner and matter : 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, Nairihill. 
 
 " 3 Moray Street, Edinburgh : June 2, 1822. 
 
 "It will give you pleasure to know that I continue improving in 
 that most important of qualities, good health. The bathing does me 
 great good, and you need be under no apprehension of my drown- 
 ing. Unfortunately my mode of sleeping is too irregular to admit 
 of my bathing constantly before breakfast. Small noises disturb 
 me and keep me awake, though I always get to sleep at last, and 
 happily such disturbances occur but rarely. Some two weeks ago 
 I had a little adventure with an ugly messan, which a crazy half- 
 pay captain had thought proper to chain in his garden, or, rather, 
 grass-plot, about twenty yards from my window. The pug felt un- 
 happy in its new situation, began repining very pitifully in its own 
 way; at one time snarling, grinning, yelping, as if it cared not wheth- 
 er it were handed then or to-morrow; at another, whining, howling, 
 screaming, as if it meant to excite the compassion of the earth at 
 large this, at intervals, for the whole night. By five o'clock in the 
 morning I would have given a guinea of gold for its hind-legs firm 
 in my right hand by the side of a stone wall. l Next day the crazy 
 captain removed it, being threatened by the street at large with pros- 
 ecution if he did not. But on the evening of the second day, being 
 tired of keeping the cur in his kitchen, he again let it out, and just 
 as I was falling asleep, about one o'clock, the same musical, ' most 
 musical, most melancholy' serenade aroused me from my vague 
 dreamings. I listened about half an hour, then rose indignantly, 
 put on my clothes, went out, and charged the watchman to put an 
 instant stop to the accursed thing. The watchman could not for 
 the world interfere with a gentleman's rest at that hour, but next 
 morning he would certainly, etc., etc. I asked to be shown the 
 door, and pulling the crazy captain's bell about six times, his ser- 
 vant at length awoke, and inquired with a tremulous voice, what 
 was it ? I alluded to the dog, and demanded the instant, the total, 
 the everlasting removal of it, or to-morrow I would see whether jus- 
 tice was in Edinburgh, or the shadow of British law in force. ' Do 
 you hear that?' said the Irish knight of the rattle and lantern. She 
 heard it and obeyed, and no wretched messan has since disturbed my 
 slumbers. 
 
 ' ' You ask about my home coming [he continues, the dog being 
 disposed of] ; but this must be a very uncertain story for a while. 
 I cannot count on any such thing till the Buller people 2 are arrived, 
 and in the event of my farther engaging with them, my period of 
 absence must of course be short. However, there is good and cheap 
 conveyance to Dumfries daily, and it shall go hard if I do not steal 
 
 1 Carlylc's mode of speech : he was exceptionally tender to animals. 
 
 2 Mr. and Mrs. C. Buller.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 95 
 
 a week or so to spend at home. It is the dearest blessing of my life 
 that I have you to write to and to care for me. 
 
 ' ' I am in very fair health considering everything : about a hun- 
 dred times as well as I was last year, and as happy as you ever saw 
 me. In fact, I want nothing but steady health of body (which I 
 shall get in time) to be one of the comfortablest persons of my ac- 
 quaintance. I have also books to write and things to say and do in 
 this world which few wot of. This has the air of vanity, but it is 
 not altogether so. I consider that my Almighty Author has given 
 me some glimmerings of superior understanding and mental gifts ; 
 and I should reckon it the worst treason against him to neglect im- 
 proving and using to the very utmost of my power these his bounti- 
 ful mercies. At some future day it shall go hard, but I will stand 
 above these mean men whom I have never yet stood with. But we 
 need not prate of this. I am very much satisfied with my teaching. 
 In fact, it is a pleasure rather than a task. The Bullers are quite 
 another sort of boys than I have been used to, and treat me in an- 
 other sort of manner than tutors are used to. When I think of Gen- 
 eral Dixon's brats, ' and how they used to vex me, I often wonder I 
 had not broken their backs at once, and left them. This would not 
 have done, to be sure; but the temptation was considerable. The 
 eldest Buller is one of the cleverest boys I have ever seen. He de- 
 lights to inquire and argue and be demolished. He follows me 
 almost nigh home every night. Very likely I may bargain finally 
 with the people, but I have no certain intimation on the subject ; 
 and, in fact, I do not care immensely whether or not. There is 
 bread for the diligent to be gained in a thousand ways." 
 
 In July the London season ended, and the parent Bullers arrived 
 in Edinburgh with their youngest boy. They took a large house 
 and settled for the autumn and winter. They made acquaintance 
 with Carlyle, and there was immediate and agreeable recognition of 
 one another's qualities, both on his side and theirs. Mrs. Buller was 
 clever and cultivated.* In her creed she was Manichaean. In her 
 
 1 Past pupils, of whom I find no other notice. 
 
 8 Mrs. Buller had been a celebrated beauty in her youth. Among Carlyle's papers I 
 find the following beautiful lines by John Leyden, which have never. I believe, before 
 been printed: 
 
 VERSES TO MRS. BULLER OX PEEIXO HER IX A HIGHLAND DRESS, 
 BY DOCTOR JOHN LEYDEN. 
 
 (From a copy in Mrs. Buller'' $ handwriting, January, 1824.) 
 
 That bonnet's pride, that tartan's flow, 
 
 My soul with wild emotion fills; 
 Methinks I see in Fancy's glow 
 
 A princess from the land of hills. 
 Oh for a fairy's hand to trace 
 
 Tbe rainbow tints that rise to view, 
 That slender form of sweeter grace 
 
 Than e'er Malvina's poet drew ! 
 
 Her brilliant eye, her streaming hair. 
 
 Her skin's soft splendors do display; 
 The finest pencil must despair 
 
 Till it can paint the solar ray. 
 Calcutta, 1811.
 
 96 LIFE OP THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 youth she had been a beauty, and was still handsome, and was in 
 London the centre of an admiring circle of intellectual politicians 
 and unbelieving Radicals. She was first amused, then charmed, and 
 really interested in a person so distinctly original and remarkable as 
 her son's tutor. Her husband, though of different quality, liked 
 him equally well. Mr. Buller was practical and hard-headed; a 
 Benthamite in theory, in theology negative and contemptuous. He 
 had not much sympathy with literature, but he had a keen under- 
 standing ; he could see faculty, and appreciate it whenever it was 
 genuine, and he forgave Carlyle's imagination for the keenness of 
 his sarcasms. Thus it was not only settled that he was to continue 
 to be the tutor, but he was admitted into the family as a friend, and 
 his presence was expected in the drawing-room in the evenings more 
 often than he liked. The style of society was new to him, and he 
 could not feel himself at ease. The habits of life were expensive, 
 and the luxuries were not to his taste. 
 
 " Tea [he wrote] I now consume with urns and china and splen- 
 did apparatus all around me, yet I often turn from these grandeurs 
 to the little ' down the house ' at Mainhill, where kind affection 
 makes amends for all deficiencies. Often, often, my dear mother, 
 in coming years, we shall yet drink tea there, enjoy our pipes and 
 friendly chat together, and pity all the empty gorgeousness of the 
 earth." 
 
 On the other hand, he found Mrs. Buller, naturally enough, "one 
 of the most fascinating, refined women he had ever seen." The 
 "goodman" he did not take to quite so readily, but he thought him 
 at least "an honest, worthy, straightforward English gentleman." 
 His comfort was considered in every way. They would have liked 
 to have him reside in their house, but he wished to keep his lodgings 
 in Moray Street, and no difficulty was made. Even his humors, 
 which were not always under restraint, were endured without re- 
 sentment. 
 
 " The people treat me [lie wrote to his brother John in September] 
 with a degree of respect which I do not deserve. They have sub- 
 mitted implicitly to all my ideas about a lodging-place. They have 
 delivered me, without even a hint on my part, from the drudgery of 
 teaching their youngest boy, 1 and our arrangements for the other 
 two have been formed with a view to my convenience as much as to 
 that of any other. The boys, too, behave well; and though I clearly 
 perceive that the management of my duties will require the whole 
 of my slender stock of prudence and discretion, yet this stock, I ex- 
 pect, will suffice to carry me through without discredit. " 
 
 Again, a little later : 
 
 "I am well, and comfortable as I could wish. Buller's house is 
 
 1 Reginald, then ten years old.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 97 
 
 becoming more and more a kind of home to me. The elders treat 
 me almost like a son in many respects, the younger members al- 
 most like a brother. Our studies are going on moderately well. 
 There is nothing but good agreement as yet, and I think the thing 
 will do." 
 
 Not the least of the advantages of this tutorship was the power 
 which it gave Carlyle of being useful to his family. John Carlyle 
 came in the autumn to live with him in Moray Street and attend the 
 University lectures, Carlyle taking upon himself the expenses. With 
 himself, too, all was going well. He had paid a hasty visit to Main- 
 hill in October ; where, perhaps, as was likely enough, in some of their 
 midnight smokes together, he had revived the anxieties of his mother 
 about his spiritual state. His constant effort was to throw his own 
 thoughts into her language, and prevent her from distressing herself 
 about him. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, MainMll. 
 
 "Edinburgh: November 14. 1822. 
 
 ' ' You have not sent me a line since I went away. I am not sur- 
 prised at this, knowing how you are circumstanced, but it keeps me 
 very much in the dark with regard to your situation. I can only 
 hope you are in your usual state of health and spirits, fighting as 
 formerly against the inconveniences of your present life, and bright- 
 ening all its dreariness by the hopes 01 a better. There is nothing 
 else that can keep the happiest of us in a state of peace, worth call- 
 ing by the name of peace ; and ' with this anchor of the soul both 
 sure and steadfast ' the unhappiest man alive is to be envied. You 
 think I am a very thoughtless character, careless of eternity, and 
 taken up with the vain concerns of time alone. Depend upon it, my 
 dear mother, you misjudge me. These thoughts are rooted in every 
 reflecting mind, in mine perhaps more deeply than in many that 
 make more noise about them ; and of all the qualities that I love in 
 you, there is none I so much love as that heroic feeling of devotion 
 which elevates you so much above the meanness of ordinary persons 
 in your situation, which gives to the humble circumstances of your 
 lot a dignity unborrowed of earthly grandeur as well as far superior 
 to the highest state of it ; and which ornaments a mind untrained in 
 worldly education and accomplishments with sentiments after which 
 mere literature and philosophy with all their pretensions would for- 
 ever strive in vain. The dress of our opinions, as I have often told 
 you, may be different, because our modes of life have been different, 
 but fundamentally our sentiments are completely the same. We 
 should tolerate each other, therefore, in this world, where all is weak 
 and obscure, trusting meanwhile that we shall comprehend all things 
 more perfectly in that clearer land where faith is changed into vi- 
 sion ; where the dim though fervent longings of our minds from this 
 their dark prison - house are changed for a richness of actual gran- 
 deur beyond what the most ardent imagination has ventured to con- 
 ceive. Long may these hopes be yours, my dearest mother. Who- 
 ever entertains them is richer than kings.
 
 98 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "The young Bullers are gone to college 1 a few days ago, and I 
 do not go near them till two o'clock in the afternoon. By this means 
 I not only secure a competent space of time for my own studies, but 
 find also that my stomach troubles me a good deal less after break- 
 fast than it used to do when I had a long hurried walk to take 
 before it. 
 
 "My duties are of an easy and brief sort. I dine at half -past 
 three with a small and very civil youth, little Reginald, contracted 
 into Reggy, and I have generally done with the whole against six. 
 I find Jack immersed in study when I return. He cooks the tea 
 for us, and we afterwards devote ourselves to business till between 
 eleven and twelve. My brotherly love to all the younkers about 
 home, to each by name. Why do they never write ? Will you 
 not write? I am, ever affectionately your son thy son ! ! 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Once more, before the year closed : 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 "December 4. 
 
 "It is already past twelve o'clock, and I am tired and sleepy, but 
 I cannot go to rest without answering the kind little note which you 
 sent me, and acknowledging these new instances of your unwearied 
 attention to my interests and comfort. I am almost vexed at these 
 shirts and stockings. My dear mother, why will you expend on 
 superfluities the pittance I intended for very different ends ? I again 
 assure you, and would swear it if needful, that you cannot get me 
 such enjoyment with it in any way as by convincing me that it is 
 adding to your own. Do not therefore frustrate my purposes. I 
 send you a small screed of verses which I made some time ago. I 
 fear you will not care a doit for them, though the subject is good 
 the deliverance of Switzerland from tyranny by the hardy moun- 
 taineers at the battle of Morgarten above five hundred years ago. 
 
 "This is my birthday. I am now ssven-and-twenty years of age. 
 What an unprofitable lout I am! What have I done in this world 
 to make good my place in it, or reward those that had the trouble 
 of my upbringing ? Great part of an ordinary lifetime is gone by, 
 and here am I, poor trifler, still sojourning in Meshech, still doing 
 nothing in the tents of Kedar. May the great Father of all give me 
 strength to do better in time remaining, to be of service in the good 
 cause in my day and generation; and, having finished the work 
 which was given me to do, to lie down and sleep in peace and pu- 
 rity in the hope of a happy rising." 
 
 The " screed of verses " was not thought worthy of a place among 
 the few fragments of his poetry which Carlyle afterwards published, 
 though they are as good as any of the rest. Long and patiently he 
 had toiled at verse-making. Infinite loose sheets of paper remain 
 covered with the memorials of his efforts. It was the received opin- 
 ion that in verse alone fine emotion and spiritual thought could be 
 
 The University Term having begun.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 99 
 
 clothed in adequate form. The poets, so far as Carlyle could see, 
 had been the wisest men. Inspiration meant poetry, and poetry 
 inspiration, and if he had any genius in him worth considering, he 
 thought it his duty to master the mechanical difficulties of the art. 
 He never entirely succeeded. Rhyme and metre were to Carlyle 
 like Saul's armor to David, and the intended vase turned out usually 
 no better than an earthen pitcher. The "screed" is good as an echo 
 of Campbell or Byron, or of both combined, but there is no trace in 
 it of original native power : 
 
 "Proud Hapsburgh came forth in the gloom of his wrath, 
 
 With his banners of pomp and his Hitters in mail, 
 For the herdsmen of Uri have fronted his path, 
 And the standard of freedom is raised in the vale. 
 
 "All scornful advancing, he thought as he came 
 
 How the peasants would shrink at the glance of his eye; 
 How their heath-covered chalets in ruin must flame, 
 And the hope of the nation must wither and die. 
 
 "But marked he the moment when thundering and vast 
 
 The voice of the Switzers in echoes arose, 
 When the rocks of the glen from the hill summits cast, 
 Carried vengeance and death on the heads of their foes. 
 
 " Xow charge in your fury, ye sons of the Fell, 
 
 Now plunge ye your blades in the hearts of his men; 
 If ye conquer, all time of your glory shall tell. 
 And conquered ye ne'er shall arouse ye again. 
 
 " 'Tis done, and the spoilers are crushed and o'crthrown, 
 And terror has struck through the souls of the proud, 
 For the Despot of Austria stoops from his throne, 
 And the war-cry of Uri is wrathful and loud. 
 
 " In speed they came on, but still faster they go, 
 
 While ruin and horror around them are hurled, 
 
 And the fleld of JJorgarten in splendor shall grow, 
 
 Like Marathon's lie Id, to the end of the world." 
 
 Once only Carlyle did better than this, when love came to assist 
 his inspiration. Miss Welsh's injunctions, though they subdued the 
 tone of his letters, could not prevent a confidential intercourse with 
 a young, fascinating woman from producing its natural effect. Per- 
 haps, after Irving was lost to her, though she gave Carlyle no en- 
 couragement, she was less peremptorily cold. He on his part re- 
 garded her as the most perfect of women, beyond his practical 
 hopes, but not beyond his adoration, and he indulged in the usual 
 flights of musical imagining: 
 
 "They chide thee, fair and fervid one, 
 
 At Glory's goal for aiming: 
 Does not Jove's bird, its flight begun, 
 Soar up against the beaming sun, 
 Undazed in splendor flaming? 
 
 "Young brilliant creature, even so 
 
 A lofty instinct draws thee, 
 Heaven's fires within thy bosom glow, 
 Could earth's vain fading vulgar show 
 
 One hour's contentment cause thee ?
 
 100 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "The gay saloon 'twas thine to tread, 
 
 Itn stateliest scenes adorning, 
 Thine bo, by nobler wishes led, 
 With bays to crown thy lofty head, 
 
 All meaner homuge scorning. 
 
 "Bright maid, thy destiny as I view, 
 
 Unuttered thoughts come o'er me; 
 Enrolled among earth's chosen few, 
 Lovely as morning, pure as dew, 
 
 Thy image stands before me. 
 
 " Oh, that on Fame's far shining peak, 
 With great and mighty numbered, 
 Unfading laurels I could seek; 
 This longing spirit then might speak 
 The thoughts within that slumbered. 
 
 "Oh, in the battle's wildest swell, 
 
 By hero's deeds to win thee, 
 To meet the charge, the stormy yell, 
 The artillery's flash, its thundering knell, 
 
 And thine the light within me. 
 
 "What man in Fate's dark day of power, 
 
 While thoughts of thee upbore him, 
 Would shrink at danger's blackest lour, 
 Or faint in Life's last ebbing hour, 
 
 If tears of thine fell o'er him?" 
 
 These lines are noteworthy for the emotion which they express", 
 but they have not the ring of genuine gold. The feeling did not 
 seek the metre because it could not otherwise find fit expression. 
 The metre was rather laboriously adapted to the feeling, because 
 the metrical form was assumed to be the right and appropriate one. 
 Had Carlyle struggled on upon the false track, he might have writ- 
 ten good artificial verses, showing from time to time a mind impa- 
 tient of its fetters, but he would scarcely liave risen to true great- 
 ness. Happily he was himself under no illusions. His object was 
 to write out the truth that was in him: he saw his mistake, and he 
 left his ideas to take the shape that was most natural to him. Tay- 
 lor's offer for the London Magazine came to the help of his resolu- 
 tion, and he began his "Life of Schiller" as the commencement of 
 the intended series. Goethe was designed to follow. But the biog- 
 raphy of Goethe was soon exchanged for a translation of " Wilhelm 
 Meister." 
 
 Thus opened the year 1823. The Buller connection continued to 
 be agreeable. John Carlyle's companionship relieved the loneliness 
 of the Edinburgh lodgings, while spare moments were occupied with 
 writing letters to Miss Welsh or correcting his exercises. 
 
 "We lead a quiet life at present [he wrote to his brother Alexan- 
 der]. No incident breaks the smooth current of our history. None 
 meddles with us, we meddle with none. Jack is studying bones, 
 and the like. I write nonsense all the morning, then go and teach 
 from two till six, then come home and read till half-past eleven, 
 and so the day is done. I am happy while I can keep myself busy,
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 101 
 
 which, alas ! is not by any means always. The other day I went 
 with Murray to call upon Macculloch, the Scotsman. He was sitting 
 like a great Polar bear, chewing, and vainly trying to digest, the 
 doctrines of Adam Smith and Ricardo, which he means to vomit 
 forth again next spring in the shape of lectures to 'the thinking 
 public ' of this city. He eyed me with suspicion and distrust ; 
 would not come forth into open parley at all. What ailed the great 
 Macculloch I could not tell. Did he ever feel fear ? or might I be 
 come to spy out the nakedness of his land ? I would not give a rush 
 to know." 
 
 Communications more interesting than political economy came in 
 weekly by the carrier from Mainhili. His father wrote to him on 
 the 1st of January : 
 
 James Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "MainhiH: January I, 1823. 
 
 "I take the pen in hand once more to write to you, though you 
 may look for nothing but a few ill-arranged thoughts. But how- 
 ever that may be, I can tell you that I am in as good health as any of 
 my age can expect to enjoy. In spite of bad times we are fighting 
 away, and by feeding cattle, selling our barley, and one thing and 
 another, we think we can meet our landlord at Candlemas this year 
 as formerly; and when we can do that, you know we may go on so 
 long as we are in any measure of health. How long that may be we 
 cannot say. He who knows all things only knows what is before 
 us; but we may know, both by Scripture and by our own observa- 
 tion, that before long we must leave the place we now occupy for 
 a place in eternity, and only one of two places can we look for, as 
 there is not a third ; and the Apostle tells us that, as we spend our 
 time here, so will our eternal state be. May the Lord make us all 
 wise to consider these things, and to think on our latter end. 
 
 " I forgot, the last time I wrote, to tell you that I had got the book 
 of sermons safe which you sent me, and I like them very well. When 
 1 was reading Balmer's sermon on the Resurrection, it brought into 
 my mind a sennon preached by Mr. William Glen nearly on the 
 same subject. He said many things about the eternity of the body 
 that would rise at the Day of Judgment, and the subject was dis- 
 puted about by Robert Scott and George Maclvin. Robert Scott 
 was for the same body rising again. The arguments were talked 
 over one morning at the meeting-house door. I was present, and 
 was rather involved in the dispute. I observed that I thought a 
 stinking clogg of a body like Robert Scott the weaver's would be 
 very unfit to inhabit those places. 
 
 " Your mother wishes you a happy new year, and she wishes it 
 may be the best you over have seen, and the worst you ever may 
 see. I am, dear son, your loving father, 
 
 "JAMES CARLYLE." 
 
 The family, young and old, often contributed their scraps to the 
 carrier's budget on these occasions. The youngest child of all, Jane,
 
 102 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 called the Craw, or Crow, from her black hair, and not yet able even 
 to write, was heard composing in bed in the morning, to be enclosed 
 in her father's letter, "a scrap of doggerel from his affectionate sis- 
 ter Jane Carlyle." 
 
 Of Carlyle's brothers, Alexander had the most natural genius. Of 
 his sisters, the eldest, Margaret, had a tenderness, grace, and dignity 
 of character which, if health and circumstances had been more kind, 
 would have made her into a distinguished woman. But Jane was 
 peculiar and original. She, when the day's work was over, and the 
 young men wandered out in the summer gloaming, would cling to 
 "Tom's" hand and trot at his side, catching the jewelled sentences 
 which dropped from his lips. She now, when he was far away, sent, 
 among the rest, her little thoughts to him, composing the "meanest 
 of the letter kind " instinctively in rhyme and metre; her sister Mary, 
 who had better luck in having been at school, writing down the 
 words for her. 
 
 " Surely a very singular little crow," was Carlyle's observation on 
 reading her characteristic lines. "Meanest of the letter kind" be- 
 came a family phrase, to be met with for many years when an indif- 
 ferent composition seemed to require an apology. Carlyle, in return, 
 thought always first of his mother. He must send her a present. 
 She must tell him what she needed most. " Dear bairn," she might 
 answer, "I want for nothing." But it was not allowed to serve. 
 " She must understand that she could not gratify him so much as 
 by enabling him to promote her comfort." 
 
 "Life [he wrote to her] is still in prospect to Jack and me. 
 We are not yet what we hope to be. Jack is going to become a large 
 gawsie broad-faced practiser of physic, to ride his horse in time, to 
 give aloes by the rule, to make money and be a large man ; while I, 
 in spite of all my dyspepsias and nervousness and hypochondrias, 
 am still bent on being a very meritorious sort of character, rather 
 noted in the world of letters, if it so please Providence, and useful, 
 I hope, whithersoever I go, in the good old cause, for which I beg you 
 to believe that I cordially agree with you in feeling my chief interest, 
 however we may differ in our modes of expressing it." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A.D. 1823. ^ET. 28. 
 
 THE Bullers after a winter's experience grew tired of Edinburgh, 
 and in the spring of 1823 took Kinnaird House, a large, handsome 
 residence in Perthshire. Carlyle during the removal was allowed a 
 holiday. He had been complaining of his health again. He had 
 been working hard on Schiller, and was beginning his translation of
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 103 
 
 ' ' Mcister. " His brother had gone home when the University session 
 was over, and describes the anxiety of the family with a degree of 
 humor unusual with him : 
 
 John Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " May 5, 1823. 
 
 "I found all the Mainhill people well in body and mind, all very 
 cheerful, and all disposed to give me a hearty welcome and receive 
 me in their ' choicest mood.' 1 They all inquired after you. Question 
 followed question anxiously. ' Thou'se a vast deal leaner, lad, sin' 
 thou gaed away!' ' Is Tom got better? Does he sleep well yet? It 
 gaed to my heart when he told me in the last letter that he couldna 
 sleep without his finger in his ear. Poor fellow, he has had a terrible 
 time o't. I see by thee thou'se no telling me the worst' before I 
 could get a word said. She thanks you for the large quantity of tea 
 you sent her. It was the best she had had for a long while. Our 
 father is cheerful and vigorous, and in the very best health. He has 
 got every ounce weight of his corn sown, his potatoes set and covered, 
 and has wherewith to meet his landlord with an 'impudent face.' 
 I gave him Paley's ' Hora3 Paulina?,' with which he was considerably 
 pleased. He told me he had often heard of it, but never could get 
 it. He read a little of it yesterday, and was much pleased. Jane's 
 muse has not visited her frequently of late. The ' letter poetic ' 
 which she sent you was entirely her own production. She made it 
 in her bed one night exactly in the form in which you got it." 
 
 Kinnaird House is a beautiful place in the midst of woods near 
 Dunkeld on the Tay. Carlyle spent a week in Annandale, and re- 
 joined the Bullers there at the end of May. 
 
 " I spent a joyful week in Annandale [he reported to Miss Welsh] 
 amidst scenes in themselves unattractive or repulsive, but hallowed 
 in my thoughts by the rude but genuine worth and true affection 
 of those who people them. I think I am going to be comfortable 
 enough in my new quarters. The Bullers are good people; and, 
 what is better, the first hour when they treat me uncivilly shall like- 
 wise be the last. So we live together in that easy style of cheerful 
 indifference which seems to be the fit relation between us. For the 
 rest, I have balmy air to breathe, fine scenery to look at, and stillness 
 deeper than I have ever before enjoyed. My apartments are in a 
 house detached from the larger bui4ding, which, except at meals and 
 times of business, I intend to frequent but seldom. My window 
 opens into a smooth bowling green, surrounded with goodly trees, 
 and the thrushes have been singing amongst them, though it has 
 rained every moment since I came. Here I purpose to spend my 
 leisure and to think sweetly of friends that are far away." 
 
 Of these friends, Miss "Welsh was naturally the most frequently in 
 his mind. Her relations with him were drifting gradually in the 
 direction in which friendships between young men and young wom- 
 
 1 A phrase of Edward Irvine's.
 
 104 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 en usually do drift. She had no thought of marrying him, but she 
 was flattered by his attachment. It amused her to see the most re- 
 markable person that she had ever met with at her feet. His birth 
 and position seemed to secure her against the possibility of any 
 closer connection between them. Thus he had a trying time of it. 
 In serious moments she would tell him that their meeting had made 
 an epoch in her history, and had influenced her character and life. 
 When the humor changed, she would ridicule his Annandale accent, 
 turned his passionate expressions to scorn, and when she had toned 
 him down again she would smile once more, and enchant him back 
 into illusions. She played with him, frightened him away, drew 
 him back, quarrelled with him, received him again into favor as the 
 fancy took her, till at last the poor man said, ' ' My private idea is 
 that you are a witch like Sapphira in the New Testament, concern- 
 ing whom Dr. Nimmo once preached in my hearing : ' It seems 
 probable, my friends, that Ananias was tempted into this by some 
 spirit more wicked than his wife.' " At last, in the summer of 1823, 
 just after he was settled at Kinnaird, she was staying in some house 
 which she particularly disliked, and on this occasion, in a fit of im- 
 patience with her surroundings for she dated a letter which she 
 wrote to him thence, very characteristically, as from " Hell " she ex- 
 pressed a gratitude for Carlyle's affection for her, more warm than 
 she had ever expressed before. He believed her serious, and sup- 
 posed that she had promised to be his wife. She hastened to tell 
 him, as explicitly as she could, that he had entirely mistaken her. 
 
 "My friend [she said], I love you. I repeat it, though I find the 
 expression a rash one. All the best feelings of my nature are con- 
 cerned in loving you. But were you my brother I should love you 
 the same. No. Your friend I will be, your truest, most devoted 
 friend, while I breathe the breath of life. But your wife, never. 
 Never, not though you were as rich as Croesus, as honored and re- 
 nowned as you yet shall be." 
 
 Carlyle took his rebuke manfully. "My heart," he said, "is too 
 old by almost half a score of years, and is made of sterner stuff than 
 to break in junctures of this kind. I have no idea of dying in the 
 Arcadian shepherd's style for the disappointment of hopes which 
 I never seriously entertained, or had no right to entertain seriously." 
 Could they have left matters thus, it had been better for both of them. 
 Two diamonds do not easily form cup and socket. But Irving was 
 gone. Miss Welsh was romantic ; and to assist and further the ad- 
 vance of a man of extraordinary genius, who was kept back from 
 rising by outward circumstances, was not without attraction to her. 
 Among her papers there is a curious correspondence which passed 
 about this time between herself and the family solicitor. Her moth- 
 er had been left entirely dependent on her. Her marriage, she said,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 105 
 
 was possible, though not probable; and " she did not choose that her 
 husband, if he was ever to be so disposed, should have it in his pow- 
 er to lessen her mother's income." She executed an instrument, 
 therefore, by which she transferred the whole of her property to her 
 mother during Mrs. Welsh's life. By another she left it to Carlyle 
 after her own and her mother's death. It was a generous act, which 
 showed how far she had seen into his character and the future which 
 lay before him, if he could have leisure to do justice to his talents. 
 But it would have been happier for her and for him if she could 
 have seen a little farther, and had persevered in her refusal to add 
 her person to her fortune. 
 
 Men of genius are "kittle folk," as the Scotch say. Carlyle had 
 a strange temper, and from a child was ' ' gey ill to live with. " When 
 dyspepsia was upon him he spared no one, least of all those who 
 were nearest and dearest to him. Dearly as he loved his brother 
 John, yet he had spoken to him while they were lodging together in 
 language which he was ashamed to remember. "Often in winter," 
 he acknowledged ruefully to the poor John, "when Satanas in the 
 shape of bile was heavy upon me, I have said cruel things to thee, 
 and bitterly, though vainly, do I recollect them; but at bottom I hope 
 you never doubted that I loved you." Penitence, however, sincere 
 as it might be, was never followed by amendment, even to the very 
 end of his life. 
 
 But enough will be heard hereafter on this sad subject. The life 
 at Kinnaird went on smoothly. The translation of ' ' Meister " pros- 
 pered. An Edinburgh publisher undertook to publish it and pay 
 well for it. There is a letter from Carlyle to his mother, dated 
 June 10 of this year. Half a page is cut off, and contained evi- 
 dently a check for a small sum of money : 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, MainliiU. 
 
 'Kinnaird House: June 10, 1823. 
 
 " This letter may operate as a spur on the diligence of my beloved 
 and valuable correspondents at Mainhill. There is a small blank 
 made in the sheet for a purpose which you will notice. I beg you 
 to accept the little picture which fills it without any murmuring. 
 It is a poor testimonial of the grateful love I should ever bear you. 
 If I hope to get a moderate command of money in the course of my 
 life's operations, I long for it chiefly that I may testify to those deur 
 to me what affection I entertain for them. In the mean time we 
 ought to be thankful that we have never known -what it was to be 
 in fear of want, but have always had wherewith to gratify one an- 
 other by these little acts of kindness, which are worth more than 
 millions unblest by a true feeling between the giver and receiver. 
 You must buy yourself any little odd things you want, and think I 
 enjoy it along with you, if it add to your comfort. I do indeed en- 
 joy it with you. I should be a dog if I did not. I am grateful to
 
 106 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 you for kindness and true affection such as no other heart will ever 
 feel for me. I am proud of my mother, though she is neither rich 
 nor learned. If I ever forget to love and reverence her, I must cease 
 to be a creature myself worth remembering. Often, my dear moth- 
 er, in solitary, pensive moments does it come across me like the cold 
 shadow of death that we two must part in the course of time. I 
 shudder at the thought, and find no refuge except in humbly trust- 
 ing that the great God will surely appoint us a meeting in that far 
 country to which we are tending. May he bless you forever, my 
 good mother, and keep up in your heart those sublime hopes which 
 at present serve as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
 night to guide your footsteps through the wilderness of life. We 
 are in his hands. He will not utterly forsake us. Let us trust in 
 him. 
 
 "I have no news of myself to send you except what are good. 
 The boys are going on very fairly with me. They are excellent 
 creatures in the main. With the rest of the family I am on the best 
 footing. We talk together cheerfully whenever we meet. They 
 show themselves anxious to promote my comfort by every rational 
 arrangement. When with them I forget that there is any difference 
 in worldly rank. They have their wealth, and birth, and connec- 
 tions, and accomplishments to brag of. I too have my little stock 
 of vanities within myself. My health was scarcely so good as you 
 saw it for some days after I arrived. The air is pure as may be, 
 and I am quiet as when at home ; but I did not sleep well for some 
 nights, and began to fear that I was again going downhill. On con- 
 sidering what the matter might be, it struck me it was, perhaps, my 
 dining so late at five o'clock and fasting so long before dinner. 
 A new regulation took place instantly; and now, except on Sabbath- 
 days, when from choice I eat with the family, my meals are served 
 up in a very comfortable manner at the hours I myself selected. 
 The boys and I are up at breakfast a little before niue. We begin 
 work half an hour after it, continuing till one. Then I go out and 
 walk, or smoke, or amuse myself till half -past two, when dinner is 
 waiting for me in the parlor, after which teaching recommences till 
 near five, and then I am free as air for the night. I go into my own 
 room, and do whatsoever seemeth me good. I go out of it and walk 
 and sometimes ride ; and Donovan, the smart, whisking, and very 
 trustworthy butler, has a dish of tea standing ready for me at seven. 
 By this means I have brought, myself round again. I like the ar- 
 rangement also because I have more time to myself, and am less re- 
 stricted in my movements. I have begun translating the German 
 book which Jack knows of. I am busy, I shall be healthy, and in 
 the mean time I am as comfortable as I could hope to be." 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Kinnaird: June 24. 
 
 "Tell our mother I have a fire every night, and that all things I 
 want are supplied to me abundantly. We have no incidents in our 
 menage. Buller fishes and rides, and eschews heart(ache). 1 The 
 
 1 Paper torn.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 107 
 
 lady saunters about on the back of a gray stalking pony, and fights 
 against ennui as fiercely as she can. Both are uniformly civil and 
 even kind to me. We have got two visitors from the south with us 
 at present, Anna Pole and Reginald Pole her brother; but they pro- 
 duce no change in our mode of life. The lady is fully arrived at 
 the years of discretion, at least if these are under thirty. She is 
 good-humored, understands all cookery from the mixture of water- 
 gruel up to the composition of the choicest curry. She has a cor- 
 nelian necklace, and kind blue eyes, and a bit nimble-gaun tongue. 
 Reginald has been at Oxford studying the nature of horses. Philos- 
 ophy is all a hum; but the short back, and the shoulder, and the 
 hands of height, and the price, and the speed these are the points 
 for a future parson of the English Church. My own boys in general 
 behave admirably well to me and very ill to themselves. . . . Under 
 this fine climate and among these beautiful scenes I am at no loss to 
 pass my time with profit to my body, if not my mind. 1 wander by 
 the copses on the shores of the Tay, or stroll over these black, inter- 
 minable, solitary moors, and meditate on many foolish filings." 
 
 Later in the season, when London began to empty itself, other 
 guests appeared at Kinnaird. The first glimpse into the great world 
 did not please Carlyle. 
 
 "I see something of fashionable people here [lie wrote to Miss 
 Welsh], and truly to my plebeian conception there is not a more 
 futile class of persons on the face of the earth. If I were doomed to 
 exist as a man of fashion, I do honestly believe I should swallow 
 ratsbane, or apply to hemp or steel before three months were over. 
 From day to day and year to year the problem is, not how to use 
 lime, but how to waste it least painfully. They have their dinners 
 and their routs. They move heaven and earth to get everything ar- 
 ranged and enacted properly; and when the whole is done what Ls 
 it ? Had the parties all wrapped themselves in warm blankets and 
 kept their beds, much peace had been among several hundreds of 
 his Majesty's subjects, and the same result, the uneasy destruction of 
 half a dozen hours, had been quite as well attained. No wonder 
 poor women take to opium and scandal. The wonder is rather that 
 these queens of the land do not some morning, struck by the hope- 
 lessness of their condition, make a general finish by simultaneous 
 consent, and exhibit to coroners and juries the spectacle of the 
 whole world of ton suspended by their garters, and freed at last 
 from ennui in the most cheap and complete of all possible modes. 
 There is something in the life of a sturdy peasant toiling from sun 
 to sun for a plump wife and six eating children; but as for the Lady 
 Jerseys and the Lord Petershams, peace be with them." 
 
 There was a glimpse, too, of modern sporting, which was as little 
 admirable as the fine ladies and gentlemen : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Kinaaird: September 28. 
 
 " I got your letter last Friday on returning from a roe-hunt, which 
 we had all been assisting at in the wood on the hill beside us. A
 
 108 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 sorrier piece of entertainment, I may observe, is not to be met with 
 in this kingdom. They went hallooing and beating the bushes, and 
 talking Gaelic, the gun-men standing at certain determined points 
 with their pieces ready, and I driving on Mrs. Buller and a wretched 
 old clout of a white pony she was riding on, or doing my best to 
 keep her in talk while we sat for hours in open places among the 
 heath. In the course of the day they got two fawns about as large 
 as your long-eared warlock, in value somewhere about sixpence a 
 piece, and thought it royal sport. Reginald de la Pole shot them 
 both, and never was victor at the Olympic games more charmed 
 with his laurels. Richard Buller, ' the other Oxford scholar, declared 
 on the first occasion ' he would have given a sovereign for that shot. v 
 After the second he became chapfallen, and spoke little more for 
 four-and- twenty hours. Sic itur ad astra." 
 
 Sporting was not the only amusement at Kinnaird. There was 
 literature also and literary discussion. Irving's popularity had 
 taken fire, as Carlyle called it, and he had become the rage of fash 
 ionable London. He had published an argument for judgment to 
 come, written in great excitement and under some imagined quasi 
 inspiration. 
 
 "Irving's book [Carlyle wrote] is come three days ago. Mrs. 
 Buller bought it. I fear it will hardly do. There is a fierce and 
 very spiteful review of it and him in the last Blackwood. There is 
 strong talent in it, true eloquence and vigorous thought, but the 
 foundation is rotten, and the building itself a kind of monster in 
 architecture, beautiful in parts, vast in dimensions, but on the whole 
 decidedly a monster. Buller has stuck in the middle of it, ' Can't 
 fall in with your friend at all, Mr. C.' Mrs. Buller is very near 
 sticking ; sometimes I burst right out laughing when reading it. 
 At other times I admired it sincerely. 
 
 "I am sorry [he wrote a little later to Miss Welsh] that Irving's 
 preaching has taken such a turn; he had been much better if, with- 
 out the pleasure of being a newspaper lion and a season's wonder, he 
 had gradually become what he must ultimately pass for a preacher 
 of first-rate abilities, of great eloquence, with a head fertile above all 
 others in sense and nonsense, and a heart of the most honest and 
 kindly sort. As it is, our friend incurs the risk of many vagaries 
 and disasters, and at best the certainty of much disquietude. His 
 path is steadfast and manly only when he has to encounter opposi- 
 tion and misfortune. When fed with flatteries and prosperity his 
 progress soon changes into 'ground and lofty tumbling,' accom- 
 panied with all the hazards and confusion that usually attend this 
 species of condiment. With three newspapers to praise him and 
 three to blame, with about six peers and six dozen right honorables 
 introduced to him every Sunday, tickets issuing for his church as if 
 it were a theatre, and all the devout old women in the capital treat- 
 ing him with comfits und adulation, I know that ere now he is strik- 
 
 1 Nephew of Mr. Buller, on a visit at Kinnaird.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 109 
 
 ing the stars with his sublime head well if he do not break his shins 
 among the rough places of the ground. I wish we saw him safely 
 down again, and walking as other men walk. ... I have meant to 
 write to him very frequently for almost three months, but I know 
 not well how to effect it. He will be talking about ' the Lord,' and 
 twenty other things which he himself only wishes to believe, and 
 which to one that knows and loves him are truly painful to hear. . . . 
 Happy Irving, after all, that is fitted with a task which he loves and 
 is equal to. He entertains no doubt that he is battering to its base 
 the fortress of the alien, and he lies down every night to dream of 
 planting the old true blue Presbyterian flag upon the summit of the 
 ruins." 
 
 "Happy Irving, that is fitted with a task that he loves." With- 
 out any tinge of envy Carlyle could not but contrast his friend's lot 
 with his own; and the sense of this was perhaps the more painful, 
 because his friend was winning fame and name on a course which 
 he knew to be a wrong one. But a few years since they were poor 
 school-masters together at Kirkcaldy, and now Irving was the theo- 
 logical lion of the age, the passing wonder of lawyers, statesmen, 
 and men of the world, who, having set religion aside as no longer 
 worthy of serious consideration, were awakened by him to a languid 
 belief that there might be something in it after all. Carlyle saw the 
 hollowncss of the success ; yet for all that his friend had been lifted 
 into a blaze of distinction, while he was still unnoticed, was still in 
 his own conscience undeserving of notice, and unable to turn to ac- 
 count the talents which he knew that he possessed. He would have 
 been more than mortal if he had not at times repined at the inequali- 
 ties of Fate. 
 
 Poor Irving ! Little Carlyle knew or could measure his friend's 
 real condition. So far from "standing on tiptoe on Fortune's 
 wheel," he was just then getting married, and trying to forget Had- 
 dington. Carlyle saw him on his wedding-tour in the Highlands. 
 He has given an account of their meeting in his "Reminiscences" 
 which need not be repeated here. It had been intended that Miss 
 Welsh should pay Irving and his wife a visit in London as soon as 
 they were settled. But Irving could not face the trial ; he only 
 hoped that a time might come when he might be able to face it. 
 
 "My dear Isabella [he wrote to her] has succeeded in healing the 
 wounds of my heart by her unexampled affection and tenderness ; 
 but I am hardly yet in a condition to expose them. My former 
 calmness and piety are returning. I feel growing in grace and holi- 
 ness; and before another year I shall be worthy in the eye of my 
 own conscience to receive you into my house and under my care, 
 which till then I should hardly be." 
 
 Carlyle's lot was happy compared to Irving's, and yet he was al- 
 ready quarrelling with it. The Bullers, as he admitted, were most 
 I. 6
 
 110 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 kind and considerate ; yet he must have tried their patience. Tie 
 was uneasy, restless, with dyspepsia and intellectual fever. He laid 
 the blame on his position, and was already meditating to throw up 
 his engagement. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " September 2. 
 
 "I sleep irregularly here, and feel a little, very little, more than 
 my usual share of torture every day. What the cause is would puz- 
 zle me to explain within the limits I could here assign it. I take 
 exercise sufficient daily ; I attend with vigorous minuteness to the 
 quality of my food ; I take all the precautions that I can, yet still 
 the disease abates not. I should be an unreasonable blockhead 
 did I complain of the conduct of Mr. and Mrs. Buller towards me. 
 Any arrangement that I could suggest would, I have not a doubt, 
 be most cheerfully complied with. Much trouble they have al- 
 ready had with me. But their good resolutions and enactments re- 
 quire to be executed by a pack of lazy, careless, and irregular wait- 
 ing men and women, and often in this wasteful transmission their 
 good-will comes my length almost void. It is the hundred petty 
 omissions and commissions of this canaille, coupled with the small 
 inquietudes and vexations, small but often returning, of my official 
 employments that chiefly act against me, and render this Kinnaird a 
 worse place for me than Mainhill. Pity that it were so. I might 
 else be very happy. Here am I sitting in this far highland glen, 
 under a fair autumn night, with my clear fire of oak sticks blazing 
 near me, my books and my tackle all around me, and no sound at 
 all but now and then the twang of honest James Gow's fiddle, who 
 is solacing his labors by this not usual gratification; partly, I sup- 
 pose, because he sees the sky beautiful and mild and kind, and feels 
 in spirits, he knows not why. The boys and old people and all seem 
 to grow in their esteem for me. It is very hard. But what avails 
 its hardness or softness either ? Let us have done witll whining, 
 and consider what steps can be taken to remedy it. Often and long 
 have I meditated that point since I came hither. I have cudgelled 
 my brains till they are sore to seek deliverance ; for, like Joseph of 
 Austria, par ma tete seule must I get help if I get help at all. This, 
 then, Jack, I have in view at present. The Bullers I mean the old 
 gentry, with Miss Pole are gone to Aberdeen to some Caledonian 
 hunt or other, and will not be back for ten days. At their return, 
 if I am not better than I have been lately, I shall say to them, ' My 
 very noble and approved good masters, allow me to ask you what 
 you purpose doing through the winter with your boys ? If to go to 
 Edinburgh, can I be any way accommodated there, so that I shall 
 have the entire command of my eating and drinking, sleeping, wak- 
 ing, and general regimen ? If so, then I shall be very glad to serve 
 you. To stay here as you once proposed? This plan I doubt not 
 may be attended with a thousand benefits ; but for my poor share 
 of it, I have distinctly ascertained that my kfrkage cannot stand 
 it without manifest and permanent injury, and therefore, with the 
 most profound dorsoflexions, I beg to wish you all good-morning as 
 soon as may be. '
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. Ill 
 
 " So here, you see, the matter rests. I care not the tossing of a 
 halfpenny whether I go or stay. If I go, I have money enough to 
 keep me for a year or two. I can obtain plenty of literary tasks, 
 and get them done about five times as effectually as now. If I stay, 
 1 shall gather a hundred or two additional pounds, and have the 
 privilege of living for the winter in Edinburgh, where my engage- 
 ments call me to be, at any rate. I shall leave it in spring with 
 books and pens and fresh undertakings. We shall get some accom- 
 modation furbished up at Mninhill (the old peel house or some hole), 
 where, by the aid of Bardolph 1 and my faithful mother, I am nearly 
 certain I can recover my health. I shall be very busy, and we can 
 all live together as merry as maltmen ; so I cast my cap into the air 
 in defiance of all things yet ; for the spirit that is in me is still un- 
 broken as the spirit of that old lame duck you have at home, who 
 trusts, though at present winged and mashed in both her limbs, that 
 she shall yet by the blessing of Providence lay above five shillings' 
 worth of eggs, and be useful in her day and generation." 
 
 In better moments Carlyle recognized that the mischief was in 
 himself, and that the spot did not exist upon earth where so sepsi- 
 tive a skin would not be irritated. He wrote, three weeks after : 
 
 "I find the Bullers are determined to stay here with us all the 
 winter. If I had any quiet place to retire to I believe I should be 
 tempted to throw up my commission to-morrow, and set forth to try 
 the voyage on another tack, as I must erelong do at any rate. But 
 there is none. Mainhill must be full of bustle and confusion at this 
 time,* unfit for purposes of literary labor. Of Edinburgh, of liv- 
 ing in lodgings with Mantie, 3 and stenches and horrors more than 
 tongue can tell to drive me to despair, I cannot think without a 
 cold shudder which scarcely the prospect of the gallows could bring 
 over me. Many a man, I am sure, has been tried by fifteen of his 
 peers, and fairly doomed and hanged, and quartered by the doctors, 
 with less torment than I have suffered in that fatal city for no cause 
 at all. What then shall I do ? In days when wrecked with want 
 of sleep and all its infernal et cwteras, I am sometimes within an 
 inch of writing to Buller to signify my resolution of departing ; but 
 their kindness to me and the reflection of my inability to mend the 
 matter certainly, and the risk I run of making it considerably worse, 
 always shuts my mouth. Next day, perhaps, I shall sleep better 
 and become as lively as a hawk, and think I might exist here long 
 enough very comfortably. Thus I vary and vacillate. Most prob- 
 ably it will long be so. It seems likely I shall just thring on here 
 till I get desperate, and then cut and run. 
 
 "Meanwhile I make a point of going on with Goethe. 4 Ten 
 pages I find more than I can almost ever execute, for it is very 
 hard, and I scarcely get fairly into the spirit of it till I must leave 
 off. Nevertheless, I gar myself (as our father would do) go on with 
 
 1 A horse bought for Carlyle by his brother Alexander, anil with him at Kinnaird. 
 
 2 Harvest. 9 JIantie was the name of his least-loved landlady. 
 4 The translation of " Meister. "
 
 112 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 this thing. I am now more than half through the first volume. It 
 will all be 'ready long ere spring. You and I could do it in fotir 
 weeks if we had quiet quarters, and the fiend would give me any 
 respite. I am sometimes tempted to sally off and get it done and 
 then have it printed in winter; then take something different and 
 better down to Mainhill, to work and toil as if I were a brownie, not 
 a man, till I have conquered all these mean impediments that hem 
 in the free-born, heaven-tending soul. I say, Jack, thou and I must 
 never falter. Work, my boy, work unweariedly. I swear that all 
 the thousand miseries of this hard fight, and ill-health, the most ter- 
 rific of them all, shall never chain us down. By the river Styx it 
 shall not. Two fellows from a nameless spot in Annandale shall 
 yet show the world the pluck that is in Carlyles." 
 
 Mrs. Buller must have been a most forbearing and discerning 
 woman. She must have suffered, like every one who came in con- 
 tact with Carlyle, from his strange humors, but she had mind enough 
 to see what he was, and was willing to endure much to keep such a 
 man at her sons' side. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A.D. 1823. JET. 28. 
 
 IF Carlyle complained, his complaints were the impatience of a 
 man who was working with all his might. If his dyspepsia did him 
 no serious harm, it obstructed his efforts and made him miserable 
 with pain. He had written the first part of " Schiller," which was 
 now coming out in the London Magazine. He was translating 
 "Meister;" and his translation, though the production of a man 
 who had taught himself with grammar and dictionary, and had 
 never spoken a word of German, is yet one of the very best which 
 has ever been made from one language into another. In everything 
 which he undertook he never spared labor or slurred over a difficul- 
 ty, but endeavored with all his might to do his work faithfully. A 
 journal which he kept intermittently at Kinnaird throws light into 
 the inner regions of his mind, while it shows also how much he 
 really suffered. Deeply as he admired his German friends, his stern 
 Scotch Calvinism found much in them that offended him. Goethe 
 and even Schiller appeared to think that the hope of improvement 
 for mankind lay in culture rather than morality in aesthetics, in 
 arts, in poetry, in the drama, rather than in obedience to the old rugged 
 rules of right and wrong; and this perplexed and displeased him. 
 
 " Schiller [lie writes] was a very worthy character, possessed of 
 great talents, and fortunate in always finding means to employ them 
 in the attainment of worthy ends. The pursuit of the Beautiful, the 
 representing it in suitable forms, and the diffusion of the feelings 
 arising from it, operated as a kind of religion in his soul. He talks
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 113 
 
 in some of his essays about the aesthetic being a necessary means of 
 improvement among political societies. His efforts in this cause 
 accordingly not only satisfied the restless activity, the desire of cre- 
 ating and working upon, others which forms the great want of an 
 elevated mind, but yielded a sort of balsam to his conscience. He 
 viewed himself as an apostle of the Sublime. Pity that he had no 
 better way of satisfying it. A playhouse shows but indifferently as 
 an arena for the moralist. It is even inferior to the synod of the 
 theologian. One is tired to death with his and Goethe's palabra, 
 about the nature of the fine arts. Did Shakespeare know anything 
 of the aesthetic? Did Homer? Kant's philosophy has a gigantic 
 appearance at a distance, enveloped in clouds and darkness, shad- 
 owed forth in types and symbols of unknown and fantastic deriva- 
 tion. There is an apparatus, and a flourishing of drums and trum- 
 pets, and a tumultuous Marktschreyerei, as if all the earth were going 
 to renew its youth ; and the Esoterics are equally allured by all thi.s 
 pomp and circumstance, and repelled by the hollowness and airy 
 nothingness of the ware which is presented to them. Any of the 
 results which have been made intelligible to us turn out to be like 
 Dryden in the ' Battle of the Books ' a helmet of rusty iron large 
 as a kitchen pot, and within it a head little bigger than a nut. 
 What is Schlegel's great solution of the mystery of life ? ' the strife 
 of necessity against the will.' Nothing earthly but the old old story 
 that all men find it difficult to get on in the world, and that one 
 never can get all his humors out. They pretend that Nature gives 
 people true intimations of true beauty and just principles in Art ; 
 but the Mldende Kiinstkr and the nchtende ought to investigate the 
 true foundation of these obscure intimations, and set them fast on 
 the basis of reason. Stuff and nonsense I fear it is. People made 
 finer pieces of workmanship when there was not a critic among 
 them, just as people did finer actions when there was no theory of 
 the moral sentiments among them. Nature is the sure guide in all 
 cases ; and perhaps the only requisite is that we have judgment 
 enough to apply the sentiment implanted in us without an effort to 
 the more complex circumstances that will meet us more frequently 
 as we advance in culture or move in a society more artificial. Poor 
 silly sons of Adam ! you have been prating on these things for two 
 or three thousand years, and you have not advanced a hair's breadth 
 towards the conclusion. Poor fellows, and poorer me, that take tho 
 trouble to repeat such insipidities and truisms. " 
 
 Here, on the same page, Carlyle sketch- 
 ed the emblem of the wasting candle, 
 with the motto written on it, " Tcrar 
 duin proxim." "May I be wasted, so 
 that I be of use." He goes on: 
 
 ' ' But what if I do not prosum f Why 
 then tcrar still, so I cannot help it. This 
 is the end and beginning of all philosophy, 
 known even to Singleton the blacksmith ; 
 we must just do the best we can. Oh, most lame and impotent
 
 114 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 conclusion ! I wish I fully understood the philosophy of Kant. Is 
 it a chapter in the history of human folly? or the brightest in the 
 history of human wisdom ? or both mixed ? and in what degree ?" 
 
 This was written on May 23. The next entry begins 
 
 "It is now November ; six weary months have passed away, an- 
 other portion from my span of being; and here am I, in a wet, dreary 
 night at Kinnaird, with no recollections or acquisitions to fill up 
 that span with; but the recollection of agonized days and nights, 
 and the acquisition of a state of health worse than ever it was. My 
 time ! my time ! my peace and activity ! where are they? I could 
 read the curse of Ernulphus, or something twenty times as fierce, 
 upon myself and all things earthly. What will become of me ? 
 Happiness ! Tophet must be happier than this ; or they but, 
 basta! it is no use talking. Let me get on with Schiller, then with 
 Goethe. ' They that meaned at a gowden gown gat aye the sleeve.' 
 I shall not get even the listing. ' Schiller ' is in the wrong vein 
 laborious, partly affected, meagre, bombastic. Too often it strives 
 by lofty words to hide littleness of thought. Would I were done 
 with it ! Oh, Carlyle ! if thou ever become happy, think on these 
 days of pain and darkness, and thou wilt join trembling with thy 
 mirth." 
 
 " There is something in reading a weak or dull book very nauseous 
 to me. Reading is a weariness of the flesh. After reading and 
 studying about two scores of good books there is no new thing 
 whatever to be met with in the generality of libraries ; repetitions 
 a thousand times repeated of the same general idea. Feelings, 
 opinions, and events, all is what we might anticipate. No man 
 without Themistocles's gift of forgetting can possibly spend his days 
 in reading. Generally about the age of five-and-twenty he should 
 begin to put the little knowledge he has acquired (it can be but lit- 
 tle) from books to some practical use. If I could write, that were 
 my practical use. But, alas ! alas ! Oh Schiller ! what secret hadst 
 thou for creating such things as Max and Thekla when thy body 
 was wasting with disease ? I am well-nigh done, I think. To die 
 is hard enough at this age. To die by inches is very hard. But 
 I will not. Though all things human and divine are against me, I 
 will not. 
 
 "December 14. ' Schiller,' part ii., is off to London three weeks 
 ago. It was very bad. Part iii. I am swithering to begin; would it 
 were finished! 
 
 "I spent ten days wretchedly in Edinburgh and Haddington. I 
 was consulting doctors, who made me give up my dear nicotium 
 and take to mercury. I am to write letters, and then begin Schiller. 
 May God bless all my friends ! my poor mother at the head of them. 
 It sometimes comes on me like the shadow of death that we are all 
 parting from one another each moving his several, his inevitable 
 way; fate driving us on inexorable, dread, relentless fate. No de- 
 liverance! (Mit clem Fusse stampfend.) No help? Alas, poor sons 
 of Adam!
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 115 
 
 "December 31. The year is closing. This time eight-and-twenty 
 years I was a child of three weeks old, sleeping iu my mother's 
 bosom. 
 
 'Oh! little did my mithcr thiuk 
 
 That day she emdled me, 
 The lands that I should travel in, 
 The death I was to dee. ' 
 
 Another hour and 1823 is with the years beyond the flood. What 
 have I done to mark the course of it? Suffered the pangs of Tophet 
 almost daily; grown sicker and sicker; alienated by my misery cer- 
 tain of my friends, and worn out from my own mind a few remain- 
 ing capabilities of enjoyment; reduced my world a little nearer the 
 condition of a bare, rugged desert, where peace and rest for me is 
 none. Hopeful youth, Mr. C. ! Another year or two and it will do. 
 Another year or two and thou wilt wholly be this caput mortuum 
 of thy former self; a creature ignorant, stupid, peevish, disappoint- 
 ed, broken-hearted, the veriest wretch upon the surface of the globe. 
 My curse seems deeper and blacker than that of any man: to be im- 
 mured in a rotten carcass, every avenue of which is changed into an 
 inlet of pain, till my intellect is obscured and weakened, and my 
 head and heart are alike desolate and dark. How have I deserved 
 this? Or is it mere fate that orders these things, caring no jot for 
 merit or demerit, crushing our poor mortal interests among its pon- 
 derous machinery, and grinding us and them to dust relentlessly? 
 I know not. Shall I ever know? Then why don't you kill yourself, 
 sir? Is there not arsenic? is there not ratsbane of various kinds? 
 and hemp? and steel? Most true, Sathanas, all these thing are; but 
 it will be time enough to use them when I have lost the game which 
 I am as yet but losing. You observe, sir, I have still a glimmering 
 of hope; and while my friends, my mother, father, brothers, sisters 
 live, the duty of not breaking their hearts would still remain to be 
 performed when hope had utterly fled. For which reason even if 
 there were no others, which, however, I believe there are the be- 
 nevolent Sathanas will excuse me. I do not design to be a suicide. 
 God in heaven forbid ! That way I was never tempted. But where 
 is the use of going on with this? I am not writing like a reasonable 
 man. If I am miserable the more reason there is to gather my fac- 
 ulties together, and see what can be done to help myself. I want 
 health, health, health! On this subject I am becoming quite furi- 
 ous ; my torments are greater than I am able to bear. If I do not 
 soon recover, I am miserable for ever and ever. They talk of 
 the benefit of ill-health in a moral point of view. I declare solemn- 
 ly, without exaggeration, that I impute nine-tenths of my present 
 wretchedness, and rather more than nine-tenths of all my faults, to 
 this infernal disorder in the stomach. 
 
 "But if it were once away, I think I could snap my fingers in the 
 face of all the world. The only good of it is the friends it tries for 
 us and endears to us. Oh, there is a charm in true affection that 
 suffering cannot weary, that abides by us in the day of fretfulness 
 and dark calamity, a charm which almost makes amends for misery. 
 Love to friends alas! I may almost say relatives is now almost 
 the sole religion of my miud.
 
 116 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "I have hopes of 'Meister,' though they are still very faint. 
 ' Schiller,' part iii., I began just three nights ago. I absolutely could 
 not sooner. These drugs leave me scarcely the consciousness of ex- 
 istence. I am scribbling, not writing, ' Schiller.' My mind will not 
 catch hold of it. I skim it, do it as I will, and I am as anxious as 
 possible to get it off my hands. It will not do for publishing sepa- 
 rately. It is not in my natural yein. I wrote a very little of it to- 
 night, and then went and talked ineptitudes at the house. Alas! 
 there is mercurial powder in me, and a gnawing pain over all the 
 organs of digestion, especially in the pit and left side of the stomach. 
 Let this excuse the wild absurdity above. 
 
 " Half -past eleven. The silly Donovan is coming down (at least 
 so I interpreted his threat) with punch or 'wishes,' which curtails 
 the few reflections that mercury might still leave it in my power to 
 make. To make none at all will perhaps be as well. It exhibits 
 not an interesting, but a true picture of my present mood stupid, 
 unhappy, by fits wretched, but also dull dull and very weak. 
 
 1 Now fare thcc well, old twenty-three, 
 No powers, no arts can theo retain; 
 Eternity will roll away. 
 And thou wilt never come again. 
 
 ' And welcome thou, young twenty-four, 
 
 Thou bringest to men of joy and grief; 
 Whatever thou bringest in sufferings sour, 
 
 The heart in faith will hope relief. ' 
 
 Here thou art, by Jove! Donny is not come. Good-night to 
 whom? 
 
 "January 7. Last Sunday came the Times newspaper with the 
 commencement of ' Schiller,' part ii., extracted. So Walter thought 
 it on this side zero. I believe this is about the first compliment 
 (most slender as it is) that ever was paid me by a person who could 
 have no interest in hoodwinking me. I am very weak. It kept 
 me cheerful for an hour. Even yet I sometimes feel it. Certainly 
 no one ever wrote with such tremendous difficulty as I do. Shall I 
 ever learn to write with ease?" 
 
 There can be no doubt that Carlyle suffered, and perhaps suffered 
 excessively. It is equally certain that his sufferings were immensely 
 aggravated by the treatment to which he was submitted. ' ' A long 
 hairy-eared jackass," as he called some eminent Edinburgh physician, 
 had ordered him to give up tobacco, but he had ordered him to take 
 mercury, as well ; and he told me that along with the mercury he 
 must have swallowed whole hogsheads of castor-oil. Much of his 
 pain would be so accounted for ; but of all the men whom I have 
 ever seen, Carlyle was the least patient of the common woes of hu- 
 manity. Nature had, in fact, given him a constitution of unusual 
 strength. He saw his ailments through the lens of his imagination, 
 so magnified by the metaphors in which he described them as to seem 
 to him to be something supernatural ; and if he was a torment to 
 himself, he distracted every one with whom he came in contact. He
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 117 
 
 had been to Edinburgh about the printing of "Meister,"and had 
 slept in the lodgings which he had longed for at Kinnaird. " There 
 was one of those public guardians there," 1 he says in a letter, "whose 
 throat I could have cut that night ; his voice was loud, hideous, and 
 ear and soul piercing, resembling the voices of ten thousand gib-cats 
 all molten into one terrific peal." He had been given rooms in a 
 separate house at Kinnaird for the sake of quiet. This did not con- 
 tent him either. When the winter came he complained of the cold. 
 
 "My bower [he said] is the most polite of bowers, refusing admit- 
 tance to no wind that blows from any quarter of the shipmate's 
 card. It is scarcely larger than your room at Mainhill ; yet has three 
 windows, and, of course, a door, all shrunk and crazy. The walls, 
 too, are pierced with many crevices, for the mansion has been built 
 by Highland masons, apparently in a remote century. I put on my 
 gray duffle sitting jupe. I bullyrag the sluttish harlots of the place, 
 and cause them to make fires that would melt a stithy ". . . . 
 
 Poor Mrs. Buller's household management pleased him as little. 
 
 "This blessed stomach I have lost all patience with [he wrote to 
 his brother Alexander]. The want of health threatens to be the 
 downdraught of all my lofty schemes. My heart is burnt with fury 
 and indignation when I think of being cramped and shackled and 
 tormented as never man till me was. ' There is too much fire in my 
 belly, 'as Ram Dass said, to permit my dwindling into a paltry val- 
 etudinarian. I must and will be free from these despicable fetters, 
 whatever may betide. ... I could almost set my house in order, 
 and go and hang myself like Judas. If I take any of their swine- 
 meat porridge, I sleep ; but a double portion of stupidity overwhelms 
 me, and I awake very early in the morning with the sweet conscious- 
 ness that another day of my precious, precious time is gone irrevo- 
 cably, that I have been very miserable yesterday, and shall be very 
 miserable to-day. It is clear to me that I can never recover or retain 
 my health under the economy of Mrs. Buller. Nothing, therefore, 
 remains for me but to leave it. This kind of life is next to absolute 
 starvation, only slower in its agony. And if I had my health even 
 moderately restored, I could earn as much by my own exertions." 
 
 So it would be one day. The next, the pain would be gone, the 
 sun would be shining again, and nothing would remain but a twinge 
 of remorse for the anxiety which his clamors might have caused. 
 He apologized in a letter to his father with characteristic coolness : 
 
 I often grieve for the uneasiness my complaining costs you and 
 
 truth is, complaint is the natural resource of uneasiness, and I have 
 
 1 A watchman. 
 6*
 
 118 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 none that I care to complain to but you. After all, however, I am 
 not so miserable as you would think. My health is better than it 
 was last year, but I have lost all patience with it ; and whenever any 
 retrograde movement comes in view, I get quite desperate in the 
 matter, being determined that I must get well cost what it will. 
 On days when moderately well I feel as happy as others ; happier 
 perhaps, for sweet is pleasure after pain." 
 
 I have dwelt more fully on these aspects of Carlyle's character 
 than in themselves they deserve, because the irritability which he 
 could not or would not try to control followed him through the 
 greater part of his life. It was no light matter to take charge of 
 such a person, as Miss Welsh was beginning to contemplate the pos- 
 sibility of doing. Nor can we blame the anxiety with which her 
 mother was now regarding the closeness of the correspondence be- 
 tween Carlyle and her daughter. Extreme as was the undesirable- 
 ness of such a marriage in a worldly point of view, it is to Mrs. 
 Welsh's credit that inequality of social position was not the cause 
 of her alarm so much as the violence of temper which Carlyle could 
 not restrain even before her. The fault, however, was of the surface 
 merely, and Miss Welsh was not the only person who could see the 
 essential quality of the nature which lay below. Mrs. Buller hud 
 suffered from Carlyle's humors as keenly as any one, except, per- 
 haps, her poor "sluttish harlots ;" yet she was most anxious that he 
 should remain with the family and have the exclusive training of 
 her sons. They had been long enough at Kinnaird ; their future 
 plans were unsettled. They thought of a house in Cornwall, of a 
 house in London, of travelling abroad, in all of which arrangements 
 they desired to include Carlyle. At length it was settled so far as 
 Mrs. Buller could settle anything that they were to stay where they 
 were till the end of January, and then go for the season to London. 
 Carlyle was to remain behind in Scotland till he had carried "Meis- 
 ter " through the press. Irving had invited him to be his guest at 
 any time in the spring which might suit him, and farther plans 
 could then be arranged. For the moment his mind was taken off 
 from his own sorrows by the need of helping his brothers. His 
 brother Alick was starting in business as a farmer. Carlyle found 
 him in money, and refused to be thanked for it. " What any breth- 
 ren of our father's house possess," he said, " I look on as common 
 Btock, from which all are entitled to draw whenever their conven- 
 ience requires it. Feelings far nobler than pride are my guides in 
 such matters. " 
 
 He was already supporting John Carlyle at College, and not sup- 
 porting only, but directing and advising. His counsels were always 
 wise. As a son and brother his conduct in all essentials was fault- 
 lessly admirable. Here is a letter on the value of a profession.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 119 
 
 John, it seems, was shrinking from drudgery, and inclining to fol- 
 low the siren of literature : 
 
 Tli&mas Carlyle to John Carlyle. 
 
 " Kinnaird : January 1, 1824. 
 
 "I am glad to hear that your repugnance to medicine is gradually 
 wearing away. Persist honestly in the study, and you will like it 
 more and more. Like all practical sciences, medicine is begirt with 
 a tangled border of minute, technical, uninteresting, or, it may be, 
 disgusting details, the whole of which must be mastered before you 
 penetrate into the philosophy of the business, and get the better pow- 
 ers of your understanding at all fastened on the subject. You are 
 now, I suppose, getting across these brambly thickets into the green 
 fields of the science. Go on and prosper, my dear Jack ! Let not 
 the difficulties repulse you, nor the little contentions of natural taste 
 abate your ardor. To conquer our inclinations of whatever sort is 
 a lesson which all men have to learn, and the man who learns it 
 soonest will learn it easiest. This medicine your judgment says is 
 to be useful to you. Do you assail it and get the better of it, in spite 
 of all other considerations. It is a noble thing to have a profession 
 by the end: it makes a man independent of all mortals. He is richer 
 than a lord, for no external change can destroy the possession which 
 he has acquired for himself. Nor is there any weight in the fears 
 you labor under about failing in more interesting acquisitions by 
 your diligence in following after this. It appears to me that a man 
 who is not born to some independency, if he means to devote him- 
 self to literature properly so called, even ought to study some pro- 
 fession which as a first preliminary will enable him to live. It is 
 galling and heart-burning to live on the precarious windfalls of liter- 
 ature ; and the idea that one has not time for practising an honest 
 calling is stark delusion. I could have studied three professions in 
 the time I have been forced, for want of one, to spend in strenuous 
 idleness. I could practise the most laborious doctor's occupation at 
 this moment in less time than I am constrained to devote to toiling 
 in that which cannot permanently profit, and serves only to make a 
 scanty provision for the day that is passing over me ; but I will 
 I trench no more, for you are a reasonable youth, Jack, and are 
 already bent on persevering." 
 
 The life at Kinnaird was running out. The last roes were shot on 
 the mountains, and the last visitors were drifting away. Carlyle too 
 was longing to be gone, but the move was continually postponed. 
 
 "He wad need to have a lang ladle that sups with the Deil [he 
 said], and he wad need to have a long head that predicts the move- 
 ments of aught depending on Mrs. Buller. . . . This accursed Schil- 
 ler is not finished yet. Patience, patience; or, rather, fortitude and 
 action, for patience will not do. ... It is impossible for anything 
 to be more stagnant and monotonous than our life here is. We are 
 all very agreeable together, but there is no new topic among us; and 
 now, grouse-shooting having failed, the good people are weary of 
 their abode here. Two or three squires of the neighborhood have
 
 120 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 looked in upon us of late, but their minds are what Pump Sandy 
 calls a 'vaaccum.' Natter and airt working together have rendered 
 them dull. We had the other night a Sir John something I forget 
 what perhaps Ogilvie 'one of the numerous baronets of the age,' 
 as Arthur Buller described him. Thurtell being hanged last week, 
 we grew duller than ever, till yesterday Mrs. Buller turned off all 
 the servants except two at one svoop. This keeps up our hearts for 
 the time. On the whole, however, I have been happier than I usu- 
 ally was throughout the summer and autumn. My health, I think, 
 is little worse or better than it was; but I have the prospect of speedy 
 deliverance, and my mind has been full, disagreeably so often, of 
 this miserable Schiller." 
 
 He was looking forward to London, though far from sharing the 
 enthusiastic expectations which Irving had formed for him. Irving, 
 it seems, had imagined that his friend had but to present himself 
 before the great world to carry it by storm as he had himself done, 
 and when they met in the autumn had told him so. Carlyle was 
 under no such illusion. 
 
 "We spoke about this project of his and my share in it [he wrote], 
 but could come to no conclusion. He figured out purposes of un- 
 speakable profit to me. He seemed to think that, if set down in 
 London streets, some strange development of genius would take 
 place in me; that by conversing with Coleridge and the Opium-eater 
 I should find out new channels of speculation and soon learn to 
 speak with tongues. There is but a very small degree of truth in 
 all this. Of genius (bless the mark!) I never imagined in the most 
 lofty humors that I possessed beyond the smallest possible fraction ; 
 and this fraction, be it little or less, can only be turned to account 
 by rigid and stern perseverance through long years of labor, in Lon- 
 don as any other spot in the universe. Unrelenting perseverance, 
 stubborn effort, is the remedy. Help cometh not from the hills or 
 valleys. My own poor arm, weak and shackled as it is, must work 
 out my deliverance, or I am forever captive and in bonds. Irving 
 said I had none to love or reverence in Scotland. Kind, simple 
 Irving. I did not tell him of the hearts in Scotland I will love till 
 my own has ceased to feel, whose warm, pure, and generous affection 
 I would not exchange for the maudlin sympathy of all the peers and 
 peeresses and prim saints and hypochondriacal old women of either 
 sex in the creation. I told him that love concentred on a few ob- 
 jects, or a single one, was like a river flowing within its appointed 
 banks, calm, clear, rejoicing in its course. Diffused over many, it 
 was like that river spread abroad upon a province, stagnant, shallow, 
 cold and profitless. He puckered up his face into various furrowy 
 peaks at this remark, and talked about the Devil and universal be- 
 nevolence, reproving me withal because I ventured to laugh at the 
 pretensions of the Devil." 
 
 The Bullers went at last. Carlyle returned to his lodgings at Edin- 
 burgh, finished his " Schiller," and was busy translating the last chap- 
 ters of "Meister" while the first were being printed. Miss Welsh
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 121 
 
 came into the city to stay with a friend. They met and quarrelled. 
 She tormented her lover till he flung out of the room, banging the 
 door behind him. A note of penitence followed. "I declare," she 
 said, "I am very much of Mr. Kemp's way of thinking, that certain 
 persons are possessed of devils at the present time. Nothing short 
 of a devil could have tempted me to torment you and myself as I 
 did on that unblessed day." There was no engagement between 
 them, and under existing circumstances there was to be none; but 
 she shared Irving's conviction that Carlyle had but to be known to 
 spring to fame and fortune ; and his fortune, as soon as it was made, 
 she AVQS willing to promise to share with him. Strict secrecy was of 
 course desired. Her mother and his mother were alone admitted to 
 the great mystery; but the "sorrows of Teufelsdrockh," bodily and 
 mental, were forgotten for at least three months. 
 
 To James Carlyle, MainliiU. 
 
 "3 Moray Street: April 2, 1824. 
 
 "My dear Father, I feel thankful to learn that you are still in 
 moderate health, having little to complain of except the weariness of 
 increasing years, and being supported under the feeling of this by 
 such comforts as it has been your care in life to lay up. To all men 
 journeying through the wilderness of the world religion is an inex- 
 haustible spring of nourishment and consolation; the thorns and 
 flinty places of our path become soft when we view them as leading 
 to an everlasting city, where sorrow and sin shall be alike excluded. 
 To a religious man, and to a mere worldling, the frailties of age 
 speak in very different tones : to the last they are the judgment voice 
 that warns him to an awful reckoning, a dark and dreary change; 
 to the first they are kind assurances of a father that a place of rest 
 is made ready where the weary shall find refreshment after all their 
 toils. 
 
 "Judging from your years and past and present health, I expect 
 that we shall yet be all spared together for a long, long season, shall 
 live and see good here below. But it gives me real pleasure to know 
 that you have such approved resources against the worst that can 
 befall. I often think of death, as all reasonable creatures must ; but 
 with such prospects there is little in it to be feared. I have many a 
 time felt that without the expectation of it life would be in its bright- 
 est station a burden too heavy to be borne. But these are topics too 
 serious for this light handling. "We are in the hands of an all-mer- 
 ciful Father. Let us live with hope in him, and try to fill rightly 
 the parts he has assigned us. Here is an anchor of the soul both 
 sure and steadfast. By this let us abide, and vex ourselves with no 
 needless fear. 
 
 "Jack, poor Jack! I feel convinced is going to make a figure yet; 
 he inherits a good head and an honest heart from his parents, and 
 no bad habit of any kind has perverted these invaluable gifts. His 
 only faults at present are his inexperience and the very excess of his 
 good qualities. Our only subject of disagreement is the relative im- 
 portance of worldly comforts and mental wealth. Jack decides, as
 
 122 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 a worthy fellow of twenty always will decide, that mere external 
 rank and convenience are nothing; the dignity of the mind is all in 
 all. I argue as every reasonable man of twenty-eight, that this is 
 poetry in part, which a few years will mix pretty largely with prose. 
 And there we differ and chop logic, an art for which Jack has been 
 famous from his very cradle. Sometimes I make free to settle him 
 with your finisher, ' Thou natura} thou !' But on the whole he is 
 getting more rational. His jolly presence has been of no small ben- 
 efit to myself on many sad occasions. I have often absolutely won- 
 dered at the patience with which he has borne my black humors, 
 when bad health and disturbance vexed me too much. He is cer- 
 tainly a prime honest 'Lord Moon,' 1 with all his faults." 
 
 Carlyle did not stay long in Edinburgh. He remained only till 
 he had settled his business arrangements with Boyd, his publisher, 
 and then went home to Mainhill to finish his translation of "Meis- 
 ter" there. He was to receive 1801. on publication for the first edi- 
 tion. If a second edition was called for, Boyd was to pay him 2501. 
 for a thousand copies, and after that the book was to be Carlyle's 
 own. "Any way, I am paid sufficiently for my labors," he said. 
 " Am I a genius? I was intended for a horse-dealer, rather." The 
 sheets of "Meister" were sent to Haddington as they were printed. 
 Miss Welsh refused to be interested in it, and thought more of the 
 money which Carlyle was making than of the great Goethe and his 
 novel. Carlyle admitted that she had much to say for her opinion. 
 
 "There is not [he said], properly speaking, the smallest particle 
 of historical interest in it except what is connected with Mignon, 
 and this you cannot fully see till near the very end. Meister himself 
 is perhaps one of the greatest ganacJies that ever was created by quill 
 and ink. I am going to write a fierce preface disclaiming all con- 
 cern with the literary or the moral merit of the work, grounding my 
 claims to recompense or toleration on the fact that I have accurately 
 copied a striking portrait of Goethe's mind the strangest, and in 
 many points the greatest, now extant. What a work ! Bushels of 
 dust and straw and feathers, with here and there a diamond of the 
 purest water." 
 
 Carlyle was very happy at this time at Mainhill. He had found 
 work that he could do, and had opened, as it seemed, successfully 
 his literary career. The lady whom he had so long worshipped had 
 given him hopes that his devotion might be rewarded. She had de- 
 clined to find much beauty even in Mignon; but she might say what 
 she pleased now without disturbing him. 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 "Mainhill: April 15. 
 
 " So you laugh at my venerated Goethe and my Hcrzen's Kind 
 poor little Mignon. Oh, the hardness of man's, and still more of 
 
 1 Name by wliicb John Carlyle went iu the family from the breadth of his faca.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 123 
 
 woman's, heart! If you were not lost to all true feeling your eyes 
 would be a fountain of tears in the perusing of 'Meister.' Have 
 you really no pity for the hero, or the Count, or the Frau Melina, or 
 thilina, or the Manager? Well, it cannot be helped. I must not 
 quarrel with you. Do what you like. Seriously, you are right 
 about the book. It is worth next to nothing as a novel. Except 
 Mignon, who will touch you yet, perhaps, there is no person in it 
 one has any care about. But for its wisdom, its eloquence, its wit, 
 and even for its folly and its dulness, it interests me much.far more 
 the second time of reading than it did the first. I have not got as 
 many ideas from any book for six years. You will like Goethe bet- 
 ter ten years hence than you do at present. It is pity the man were 
 not known among us. The English have begun to speak about him 
 of late years, but no light has yet been thrown upon him ; ' no light, 
 but only darkness visible.' The syllables of Goethe excite an idea 
 as vague and monstrous as the words Gorgon or Chimera. 
 
 "It would do you good to see with what regularity I progress in 
 translating. Clock-work is scarcely steadier. Nothing do I allow 
 to interfere with me. My movements might be almost calculated 
 like the moon's. It is not unpleasant work, nor is it pleasant. Orig- 
 inal composition is ten times as laborious. It is an agitating, fiery, 
 consuming business, when your heart is in it. I can easily conceive 
 a man writing the soul out of him writing till it evaporate like the 
 snuff of a farthing candle when the matter interests him properly. 
 I always recoil from again engaging with it. But this present busi- 
 ness is cool and quiet. One feels over it as a shoemaker does when 
 he sees the leather gathering into a shoe as any mortal does when 
 he sees the activity of his mind expressing itself in some external 
 material shape. You are facetious about my mine of gold. It has 
 often struck me as the most accursed item in men's lot that they had 
 to toil for filthy lucre; but I am not sure now that it is not the ill-best 
 way it could have been arranged. Me it would make happy at least 
 for half a year, if I saw the certain prospect before me of making 
 500/. per annum. A pampered Lord e. g., Byron would turn with 
 loathing from a pyramid of ingots. I may be blessed in this way: he 
 never. Let us be content. 
 
 ' ' It would edify you much to see my way of life here how I 
 write and ride and delve in the garden and muse on things new and 
 old. On the whole I am moderately happy. There is rough sub- 
 stantial plenty here. For me there is heartfelt kindness in the breast 
 of every living thing, from the cur that vaults like a kangaroo when- 
 ever he perceives me, and the pony that prances when he gets me on 
 Ms back, up to the sovereign heads of the establishment. Better is 
 a dinner of herbs with peace, than a stalled ox with contention. 
 Better is affection in the smoke of a turf cottage than indifference 
 amidst the tapestries of palaces. 
 
 "I am often very calm and quiet. I delight to see these old 
 mountains lying in the clear sleep of twilight, stirless as death, pure 
 as disembodied spirits, or floating like cerulean islands, while the 
 white vapors of the morning have hidden all the lower earth. 
 
 "They are my own mountains. Skiddaw and Helvellyn, with 
 their snowy cowls among their thousand azure brethren, are more
 
 134 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to me than St. Gothard and Mont Blanc. Hartfell and Whitecombe 
 raise their bald and everlasting heads into my native sky, and far 
 beyond them, as I often picture, are Jane and her mother, sometimes 
 thinking of me, cheering this dull earth for me with a distant spot 
 of life and kindliness. . . . But, bless me ! the sweet youth is grow- 
 ing quite poetical. C'estassez." 
 
 In this mood Carlyle heard of the end of Lord Byron. He had 
 spoken slightingly of Byron in his last letter; he often spoke in the 
 name tone in his own later years ; but he allowed no one else to take 
 the same liberties. Perhaps in his heart he felt at fourscore much 
 what he wrote when the news came from Missolonghi. Both he 
 and Miss Welsh were equally affected. She wrote, ' ' I was told it 
 all alone in a room full of people. If they had said the sun or the 
 raoon was gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with 
 the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in the creation than the 
 words, ' Byron is dead.'" 
 
 Carlyle answered 
 
 " Poor Byron! alas, poor Byron! the news of his death came upon 
 my heart like a mass of lead; and yet, the thought of it sends a pain- 
 ful twinge through all my being, as if I had lost a brother. O God! 
 that so many souls of mud and clay should fill up their base exist- 
 ence to its utmost bound, and this the noblest spirit in Europe 
 should sink before half his course was run. Late so full of fire and 
 generous passion and proud purposes; and now forever dumb and 
 cold. Poor Byron! and but a young man, still struggling amidst 
 the perplexities and sorrows and aberrations of a mind not arrived 
 at maturity, or settled in its proper place in life. Had he been 
 spared to the age of threescore and ten, what might he not have 
 done! what might he not have been! But we shall hear his voice 
 no more. I dreamed of seeing him and knowing him; but the cur- 
 tain of everlasting night has hid him from our eyes. We shall go 
 to him ; he shall not return to us. Adieu. There is a blank in your 
 heart and a blank in mine since this man passed away." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 A.D. 1824. ^ET. 29. 
 
 THE time for Carlyle's departure for London had now arrived. 
 A letter came from Mrs. Buller begging his immediate presence. 
 ' ' Meister " was finished and paid for. A presentation copy was se- 
 cured for Mainhill, and there was no more reason for delay. The 
 expedition was an epoch in Carlyle's life. There was, perhaps, no 
 one of his age in Scotland or England who knew so much and had 
 seen so little. He had read enormously history, poetry, philoso- 
 phy; the whole range of modern literature French, German, and
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 125 
 
 English was more familiar to him, perhaps, than to any man living 
 of his own age ; while the digestive power by which all this spiritual 
 food had been digested and converted into intellectual tissue was 
 equally astonishing. And yet all this time he had never seen any 
 town larger than Glasgow, or any cultivated society beyond what 
 he had fallen in with at occasional dinners with Brewster, or with 
 the Bullers at Kinnaird. London had hovered before him rather as 
 a place of doubtful possibilities than of definite hope. The san- 
 guine Irving would have persuaded him that it would open its arms 
 to a new man of genius. Carlyle knew better. He had measured 
 his own capabilities. He was painfully aware that they were not of 
 the sort which would win easy recognition, and that if he made his 
 way at all it would be slowly, and after desperate and prolonged ex- 
 ertion. He would never go to bed unknown and wake to find him- 
 self famous. His own disposition was rather towards some quiet 
 place in Scotland, where with fresh air and plain food he could pos- 
 sess his soul in peace and work undisturbed and unconfused. Still 
 London was to be seen and measured. He was to go by sea from 
 Leith, and for the first week or two after his arrival he was to be 
 Irving's guest at Pentonville. A few happy days were spent at 
 Haddington, and on Sunday morning, June 5, he sailed sailed lit- 
 erally. Steamers had begun to run, but were not yet popular; and 
 the old yacht, safe if tedious, was still the usual mode of transit for 
 ordinary travellers. His fellow-passengers were a Sir David Innes; 
 a Captain Smith from Linlithgow; a M. Dubois, land-steward to 
 Lord Bute; and two ladies who never left their cabins. This is 
 Carlyle's account of his voyage : 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 ' ' I had the most melancholy sail to London. Cross winds, storms, 
 and, what was ten times worse, dead calms, and the stupidest society 
 in nature. Sir David Innes, if, indeed, he be a knight of flesh and 
 blood, and not a mere shadowy personification of dulness, snored 
 assiduously beside me all night, and talked the most polite inepti- 
 tudes all day. He had a large, long head like a sepulchral urn. 
 His face, pock -pitted, hirsute, and bristly, was at once vast and 
 hatchet -shaped. He stood for many hours together with his left 
 hand laid upon the boat on the middle of the deck, and the thumb 
 of his right hand stuck firmly with its point on the hip joint ; his 
 large blue and rheumy eyes gazing on vacancy, the very image of 
 thick-lipped misery. Captain Smith was of quite an opposite spe- 
 cies, brisk, lean, whisking, smart of speech, and quick in bowing, 
 but if possible still more inane than Dulness. . . . These two, Dul- 
 ness and Inanity, contrived to tell me in the course of the voyage 
 nearly all the truisms which natural and moral science have yet en- 
 riched the world withal. They demonstrated to me that sea-sick- 
 ness was painful, that sea-captains ought to be expert, that London
 
 126 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 was a great city, that the Turks eat opium, that the Irish were dis- 
 contented, that brandy would intoxicate. Oh, I thought I should 
 have given up the ghost ! M. Dubois, a Strasburger, Lord Bute's 
 factotum, with his flageolet, his 'Vaillant Troubadour,' and his 
 'Es hatt' ein Bauer ein schOnes Weib,' alone contributed to save 
 me. I laughed at him every day about an hour. On Sunday do 
 you suppose I was very gay? The Bass was standing in sight all 
 day, and I recollected where the Sunday before I had been sitting 
 beside you in peace and quietness at home! But time and hours 
 wear out the roughest day. Next Friday at noon we were winding 
 slowly through the forest of masts in the Thames up to our station 
 at Tewer Wharf. The giant bustle, the coal-heavers, the bargemen, 
 the black buildings, the ten thousand times ten thousand sounds and 
 movements of that monstrous harbor formed the grandest object I 
 had ever witnessed. One man seems a drop in the ocean : you feel 
 annihilated in the immensity of that heart of all the earth. " 
 
 Carlyle has described in his "Reminiscences" his arrival in Lon- 
 don, his reception in Irving's house, and his various adventures dur- 
 ing his English visit. When written evidence rises before us of what 
 we said and did in early life, we find, generally, that memory has 
 played false to us, and has so shaped and altered past scenes that 
 our actions have become legendary even to ourselves. Goethe call- 
 ed his autobiography "Wahrheit und Dichtung," being aware that 
 facts stand in our recollection as trees, houses, mountains, rivers 
 stand in the landscape ; that lights and shadows change their places 
 between sunrise and sunset, and that the objects are grouped into 
 new combinations as the point of vision alters. But none of these 
 involuntary freaks of memory can be traced in Carlyle's "Reminis- 
 cences." After two-and-forty years the scenes and persons which 
 he describes remain as if photographed precisely as they are to be 
 found in his contemporary letters. Nothing is changed. The im- 
 ages stand as they were first printed, the judgments are unmodified, 
 and are often repeated in the same words. His matured and epito- 
 mized narrative may thus be trusted as an entirely authentic record 
 of the scenes which are recorded at fuller length in the accounts 
 which he sent at the time to his family and friends. With Irving 
 he was better pleased than he expected. Uneasiness Carlyle had felt 
 about him never, indeed, that the simplicity and truth of Irving's 
 disposition could be impaired or tarnished, but that he might be 
 misled and confused by the surroundings in which he was to find 
 him. " The Orator," he wrote, "is mended since I saw him at Dun- 
 keld. He begins to see that his honors are not supernatural, and his 
 honest, practical warmth of heart is again becoming the leading feat- 
 ure of his character." He was thrown at once into Irving's circle, 
 and made acquaintance with various persons whom he had previ- 
 ously heard celebrated. Mrs. Strachey, Mrs. Buller's sister, he ad-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 127 
 
 mired the most. Her husband, too, he met and liked, and her niece, 
 Miss Kirkpatrick. To Miss Welsh he wrote, a few days after his 
 arrival : 
 
 "I have seen some notable characters. Mrs. Montagu 1 (do not 
 tremble) is a stately matron, with a quick intellect and a taste for 
 exciting sentiments, which two qualities, by dint of much manage- 
 ment in a lougish life, she has elaborated into the materials of a 
 showy, tasteful, clear-sighted, rigid, and, I fancy, cold manner of 
 existence, intended rather for itself and being looked at than for 
 being used to any useful purpose in the service of others. She 
 loves and admires the Orator beyond all others : me she seems to 
 like better than I like her. I have also seen and scraped acquaint- 
 ance with Procter Barry Cornwall. He is a slender, rough-faced, 
 palish, gentle, languid -looking man, of three or four and thirty. 
 There is a dreamy mildness in his eye ; he is kind and good in his 
 manners, and I understand in his conduct. He is a poet by the ear 
 and the fancy, but his heart and intellect are not strong. He is a 
 small poet. I am also a nascent friend of Allan Cunningham's my 
 most dear, modest, kind, good-humored Allan. He has his Annan- 
 dale accent as faithfully as if he had never crossed the border. He 
 seems not to know that he is anything beyond a reading mason. 
 Yet I will send you his books and tell you of him, and you will find 
 him a genius of no common make. I have also seen Thomas Camp- 
 bell. Him I like worst of all. He is heartless as a little Edinburgh 
 advocate. There is a smirk on his face which would befit a shopman 
 or an auctioneer. His very eye has the cold vivacity of a conceited 
 worldling. His talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow. The blue 
 frock and trousers, the eye-glass, the wig, the very fashion of his bow, 
 proclaim the literary dandy. His wife has black eyes, a fair skin, 
 a symmetrical but vulgar face ; and she speaks with that accursed 
 Celtic accent a twang which I never yet heard associated with any 
 manly or profitable thought or sentiment which to me is but the 
 symbol of Highland vanity and filth and famine. ' Good heavens !' 
 cried I, on coming out, ' does literature lead to this ? Shall I, too, 
 by my utmost efforts realize nothing but a stupid Gaelic wife, with 
 the pitiful gift of making verses, and affections cold as those of a 
 tinker's cucklie, with nothing to love but my own paltry self and 
 what belongs to it ? My proudest feelings rivalled, surpassed by 
 Lord Petersham and the whole population of Bond Street? God 
 forbid ! Let me be poor and wretched if it must be so, but never, 
 never let the holy feeling of affection leave me. Break my heart a 
 hundred times, but never let it be its own grave !' The aspect of 
 that man jarred the music of my mind for a whole day. He prom- 
 ised to invite me to his first 'literary dejeuner.' Curiosity attracts, 
 disgust repels. I know not which will be stronger when the day 
 arrives. Perhaps I am hasty about Campbell. Perhaps I am too 
 severe. He was my earliest favorite. I hoped to have found him 
 
 1 Mrs. Basil Montagu, of whom there is a full account in the "Reminiscences." 
 called by Irving "the noble lady," and already known through Irving's letters to 
 Miss Welsh.
 
 128 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 different. Of Coleridge and all the other originals I will not say a 
 word at present. You are sated and more." 
 
 Coleridge naturally was an object of more than curiosity. He 
 was then at the height of his fame poet, metaphysician, theologian, 
 accomplished, or supposed to be accomplished, in the arts in which 
 Carlyle was most anxious to excej. Carlyle himself had formed a 
 high, if not the highest, opinion of the merits of Coleridge, who was 
 now sitting up at Highgate receiving the homage of the intellectual 
 world, and pouring out floods of eloquence on all who came to wor- 
 ship in a befitting state of mind. The befitting state was not uni- 
 versal even in those who sincerely loved the great man. Leigh 
 Hunt and Lamb had sat one night in the Highgate drawing-room 
 for long hours listening to the oracle discoursing upon the Logos. 
 Hunt, as they stood leaning over a style in the moonlight on their 
 way home, said, "How strange that a man of such indisputable 
 genius should talk such nonsense !" "Why, you see," said Lamb, 
 stammering, " C-c-coleridge has so much f-f-fun in him." The fin- 
 ished portrait of Coleridge is found in Carlyle's "Life of Sterling." 
 The original sketch is a letter of the 24th of June to his brother 
 John: 
 
 "I have seen many curiosities ; not the least of them I reckon 
 Coleridge, the Kantian metaphysician and quondam Lake poet. I 
 will tell you all about our interview when we meet. Figure a fat, 
 flabby, incurvated personage, at once short, rotund, and relaxed, with 
 a watery mouth, a snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown, timid, yet 
 earnest-looking eyes, a high tapering brow, and a great bush of gray 
 hair, and you have some faint idea of Coleridge. He is a kind, 
 good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal mag- 
 netism. His cardinal sin is that he wants mil. He has no resolu- 
 tion. He shrinks from pain or labor in any of its shapes. His very 
 attitude bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He 
 stoops with his fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking lie does not 
 tread, but shovel and slide. My father would call it 'skluiffing.' 
 He is also always busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, 
 the water of his mouth from overflowing, and his eyes have a look 
 of anxious impotence. He wmdd do with all his heart, but he knows 
 he dares not. The conversation of the man is much as I anticipated 
 a forest of thoughts, some true, many false, more part dubious, all 
 of them ingenious in some degree, often in a high degree. But 
 there is no method in his talk : he wanders like a man sailing among 
 many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what 
 is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquizes. He cannot 
 speak, he can only tal-k (so he names it). Hence I found him un- 
 profitable, even tedious; but we parted very good friends, I promis- 
 ing to go back and see him some evening a promise which I fully 
 intend to keep. I sent him a copy of 'Meister,' about which we 
 had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and useless 
 genius : a strange, not at all a great man. "
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 129 
 
 While Carlyle was studying the leaders of literature in London 
 with such indifferent satisfaction, the family at Mainhill were busy 
 over his own first book. Never had Goethe's novel found its way 
 into a stranger circle than this rugged, unlettered Calvinist house- 
 hold. But they had all strong natural understandings. Young and 
 old alike read it, and in their way appreciated it, the mother most 
 of all. 
 
 John Carlyle to T/wmas Carlyle. 
 
 "Mainhill: June 24. 
 
 "You did well to send our father the neckerchief and tobacco 
 with the spluichan, for he was highly pleased at the sight of them. 
 The shawl, our mother says, suits very well, though she has no par- 
 ticular need of one at present. She bids me tell you she can never 
 repay you for the kindness you have all along shown her, and then 
 she has advices about religion to give you, the best of gifts in her 
 estimation that she has to offer. She is sitting here as if under some 
 charm, reading 'Meister,' and has nearly got through the second vol- 
 ume. Though we are often repeating honest Hall Foster's denounce- 
 ment against readers of ' novels,' she still continues to persevere. She 
 does not relish the character of the women, and especially of Philina: 
 ' They are so wanton.' She cannot well tell what it is that interests 
 her. I defer till the next time I write to give a full account of the 
 impression it has made upon us all, for we have not got it fairly 
 studied yet. We are unanimous in thinking it should succeed." 
 
 The Bullers were still uncertain about their future movements. 
 One day they were to take a house at Boulogne, the next to settle in 
 Cornwall, the next to remain in London, and send Carlyle with the 
 boys into the country. As a temporary measure, ten days after his 
 arrival he and Charles found themselves located in lodgings at Kew 
 Green, which Carlyle soon grew weary of and Charles Buller hated ; 
 while Carlyle, though he appreciated, and at times even admired, 
 Mrs. Buller's fine qualities, was not of a temper to submit to a wom- 
 an's caprices. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Kew Green: June 24, 1824. 
 
 "The Bullers are essentially a cold race of people. They live in 
 the midst of fashion and external show. They love no living creat- 
 ure. Our connection, therefore, has to sit a little loosely. I attach 
 no portion of my hopes or thoughts of affection towards them; they 
 none to me. Nevertheless, I have engaged to go with them whith- 
 ersoever they list for the next three months. After that, with regard 
 to the France project, I shall pause before deciding. Indeed, so fit- 
 ful 'and weathercock-like in their proceedings are they, that it is very 
 possible the whole scheme of Boulogne-sur-Mer may be abandoned 
 long before the time for trying it comes round. Meanwhile, Mrs. B. 
 lias settled us here/or a fortnight only in lodgings, and we have be- 
 gun our studies. It is a pleasant village. We are within a bow-
 
 130 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 shot of a Royal Palace, close by the south bank of the Thames, 
 about six miles to the westward of London. A village here is not 
 what it is with you. Here it is a quantity of houses scattered over 
 a whole parish, each cluster connected with the rest by lanes of trees, 
 with meadows and beautiful greens interspersed, sometimes ponds 
 and lakes and hedges of roses, and commons with sheep and cuddies 
 grazing on them. Many of the houses belong to rich people, and 
 the whole has a very smart and pleasing air. Such is the village of 
 Kew, especially the Green, the part of it which lies on the south 
 side of the river, connected by the bridge with Kew proper. We 
 form part of the periphery of an irregular square, measuring, per- 
 haps, two furlongs in diagonal, intersected with one large and many 
 foot-roads, and into portions by thick, low, painted wooden palings, 
 with breaks in it to admit the freest ingress and egress. The parish 
 church, with its cluster of gravestones, stands a little to the right of 
 our windows. Beyond it the north-west corner of the square is 
 occupied by the Palace and the barracks of soldiers. This, with the 
 many barges and lighters of the river, and the shady woods and 
 green places all around, makes the place very pretty. What is bet- 
 ter, our lodging seems to be very respectable. I have a good, clean, 
 quiet bed, and the landlady, Mrs. Page, and her pretty granddaugh- 
 ter (sweet Anne Page), almost become as dead women every time we 
 speak to them, so reverential are they and so prompt to help." 
 
 Mrs. Page was unlike the dames who had driven Carlyle so dis- 
 tracted in Edinburgh, and the contrast between the respectful man- 
 ners of English people and the hard familiarity of his countrywom- 
 en struck him agreeably. Time and progress have done their work 
 whether for good or evil, and it would at present be difficult to find 
 reverential landladies either at Kew Green or anywhere in the Brit- 
 ish dominions ; Kew Green has become vulgarized, and the grace 
 has gone from it ; the main points of the locality can be recognized 
 from Carlyle's picture, but cockneys and cockney taste are now in 
 possession. The suburban sojourn came to an early end, and with 
 it Carlyle's relations with Mr. Buller and his family. He describes 
 the close of the connection in words which did not express his delib- 
 erate feeling. He knew that he owed much to Mrs. Buller's kind- 
 ness; and her own and Mr. Buller's regard for him survived in the 
 form of strong friendship to the end of their lives. But he was irri- 
 tated at the abruptness with which he conceived that he had been 
 treated. He was proud and thin-skinned. His next letter is dated 
 from Irving's house at Pentonville, which was again immediately 
 opened to him, and contains the history of the Buller break-up, and 
 of a new acquaintance which was about to take him to Birming- 
 ham : 
 
 "4 Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville: July C, 1824. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I suppose you are not expectiflg to hear from 
 me so soon again, and still less to hear the news I have got to tell
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 131 
 
 you. The last letter was dated from Kew Green; there will be no 
 more of mine dated thence. Last time I was complaining of the 
 irresolute and foolish fluctuations of the Bullers: I shall never more 
 have reason to complain of them and their proceedings. I am now 
 free of them for ever and a day. I mentioned the correspondence 
 which had taken place between ' the fair Titania ' (as the Calcutta 
 newspapers called her) and myself on the subject of her hopeful 
 son, and how it was arranged that we should live together till Octo- 
 ber, and then see about proceeding to Boulogne, in France, or else 
 abandoning our present engagement altogether. The shifting and 
 trotting about which she managed with so total a disregard to my 
 feelings, joined to the cold and selfish style of the lady's general 
 proceedings, had a good deal disaffected me ; and when, in addi- 
 tion to all this, I reflected that nothing permanent could result from 
 my engagement with them, and considered the horrid weariness of 
 being in seclusion from all sense and seriousness, in the midst of 
 sickness on my own part, mingled with frivolous and heartless dis- 
 sipation on theirs, I had well-nigh silently determined not to go to 
 Boulogne, or even to stay with the people though they remained in 
 England. My determination was called for sooner than I had an- 
 ticipated. After a week spent at Kew in the most entire tedium, 
 by which my health had begun to deteriorate rapidly, but which I 
 determined to undergo without repining till October, Mrs. Buller 
 writes me a letter signifying that they must know directly whether 
 I would go with them to France or not ; that if I could not, the boy 
 might be sent to prepare for Cambridge; and that if I could, we must 
 instantly decamp for Royston, a place in Hertfordshire about fifty 
 miles oft. I replied that the expected time for deciding was not yet 
 arrived, but that if they required an immediate decision, of course 
 there was nothing for it but to count on my declining the offer. 
 Next day we met in town by appointment; there seemed to be the 
 best understanding in the wwld betwixt us; it was agreed that I 
 should quit them an arrangement not a little grievous to old Buller 
 and his son, but nowise grievous to his wife, one of whose whims 
 was Cambridge University, in which whim, so long as she persists, 
 she will be ready to stake her whole soul on the fulfilment of it. 
 Buller offered me twenty pounds for my trouble. With an excess 
 of generosity which I am not quite reconciled to since I thought of 
 it maturely, I pronounced it to be too much, and accepted of ten. 
 The old gentleman and I shook hands with dry eyes. Mrs. Buller 
 gave me one of those ' Good-mornings ' with which fashionable peo- 
 ple think it right to part with friends and foes alike. Charlie was 
 in a passion of sadness and anger, to be forgotten utterly in three 
 hours, and I went my way and they saw me no more. Such is my 
 conclusion with the Bullers. I feel glad that I have done with them; 
 their family was ruining my mind and body. I was selling the very 
 quintessence of my spirit for 2QQI. a year. Twelve months spent at 
 Boulogne in the midst of drivelling and discomfort would have add- 
 ed little to my stock of cash, and fearfully diminished my remnant 
 of spirits, health, and affection. The world must be fronted some 
 time, soon as good as ityne! Adieu, therefore, to ancient dames of 
 quality that flaunting, painting, patching, nervous, vaporish, jig-
 
 132 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ging, skimming, scolding, race of mortals. 1 Their clothes are silk, 
 their manners courtly, their hearts are kipper. I have left the Bullers 
 twelve months sooner than they would have parted with me had I 
 liked. I am glad that we have parted in friendship; very glad that 
 we are parted at all. She invited me to a rout (a grand, fashionable 
 affair) next night. I did not go a foot length. I want to have no 
 farther trade with her or hers, at least except in the way of cold 
 civility; for as to what affection means I do not believe there is one 
 of them that even guesses what it means. Her sister, indeed (Mrs. 
 Strachey), 2 likes me; but she is as opposite as day from night. 
 
 "Thus you see, my dear mother, I am as it were once more upon 
 the waters. I got my trunks hither last night, after having kept 
 them just one week at Kew, and paid fourteen shillings for the trip 
 to and fro. So much for having a spirited commander like Titania. 
 I am settled with Irving, who presses me to stay with him all win- 
 ter. That I certainly will not do, though I honor the kindness that 
 prompts even an invitation of this sort. Irving and I are grown 
 very intimate again, and have had great talking matches about many 
 things. He speaks in glorious language of the wonderful things I 
 am to accomplish here, but my own views are much more moderate. 
 
 "Meanwhile let me assure you that I have not been so happy for 
 a long while. I am at no loss for plans of proceeding, nor is the 
 future overcast before me with any heavy clouds that I should feel 
 or fear. I am once more free ; and I must be a weak genius indeed 
 if I cannot find an honest living in the exercise of my faculties, 
 independently of favor from any one. My movements for a while 
 must be rather desultory. My first is to be northward. Among the 
 worthy persons whom I have met with here is a Mr. Badams, a friend 
 of Irving's, a graduate in medicine, though his business is in chemi- 
 cal manufactures in Birmingham, where I understand he is rapidly 
 realizing a fortune. This man, one of the most sensible, clear-head- 
 ed persons I have ever met with, seems also one of the kindest. Af- 
 ter going about for a day or two talking about pictures and stomach 
 disorders, in the cure of which he is famous, and from which he once 
 suffered four years of torment in person, what does the man do but 
 propose that I should go up to Birmingham and live for a month 
 with him, that he might find out the make of me and prescribe for 
 my unfortunate inner man. I have consented to go with him. I 
 understand he keeps horses, etc. , and is really the frank hospitable 
 fellow he seems. Of his skill in medicine I augur favorably from 
 his general talent, and from the utter contempt in which he holds all 
 sorts of drugs as applied to persons in my situation. Regimen and 
 exercise are his specifics, assisted by as little gentlest medicine as 
 possible; on the whole I think I never had such a chance for the 
 recovery of health. I intend to set off in about a week. There is 
 a fine coach that starts from our very door, and carries one up be- 
 
 1 Poor Mrs. Buller! a year back "one of the most fascinating women he had ever 
 met." She was about forty, and probably had never flaunted, painted, or patched in 
 her life. 
 
 2 Of this lady he says in another letter: " My chief favorite is Mrs. Strachey. a sister 
 of Mrs. Buller; but she is serious and earnest and religious and iillertiniiate. while (ho 
 other is light, giddy, vail), and heartless, bhe and I will be sworn friends by-aiid-by."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 133 
 
 tween seven in the morning and seven at night for one guinea. I 
 am going to take books and read and ride and stroll about Birming- 
 ham, and employ or amuse myself as seemeth best. Sometimes 
 I think of beginning another translation, sometimes of setting about 
 some original work. ' Meister, ' I understand, is doing very well. 
 Jack tells me you are reading 'Meister.' This surprises me. If I 
 did not recollect your love for me, I should not be able to account 
 for it. " 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A.D. 1824. JET. 29. 
 
 CARLYLE was now once more his own master, adrift from all 
 engagements which made his time the property of others, and with- 
 out means or prospect of support save what his pen could earn for 
 him. Miss Welsh had expected with too sanguine ignorance that 
 when his first writings had introduced him to the world, the world 
 would rush forward to his assistance ; that he would be seized upon 
 for some public employment, or at worst would be encouraged by a 
 sinecure. The world is in no such haste to recognize a man of 
 original genius. Unless he runs with the stream, or with some one 
 of the popular currents, every man's hand is at first against him. 
 Rivals challenge his pretensions ; his talents are denied ; his aims 
 are ridiculed ; he is tried in the furance of criticism, and it is well 
 that it should be so. A man does not know himself what is in him 
 till he has been tested ; far less can others know ; and the metal 
 which glitters most on the outside most often turns out to be but 
 pinchbeck. A longer and more bitter apprenticeship lay upon 
 Carlyle than even he, little sanguine as he was, might at this time 
 have anticipated. His papers on Schiller had been well received 
 and were to be collected into a volume ; a contemptuous review 
 of "Meister" by De Quincey appeared in the London Magazine, 
 but the early sale was rapid. He had been well paid for the first 
 specimens of jewels which he had brought out of the German 
 mines. An endless vein remained unwrought, and the field was for 
 the present his own. Thus he went down to Birmingham to his 
 friend with a light heart, anxious chiefly about his health, and con- 
 vinced that if he could mend his digestion all else would be easy 
 for him. Birmingham with its fiery furnaces and fiery politics was 
 a new scene to him, and was like the opening of some fresh volume 
 of human life. He has given so full a history of his experiences 
 when he was Mr. Badams's guest that there is no occasion to dwell 
 upon it. The visit lasted two months instead of one. His first im- 
 pression of the place, a,s he described it in a letter to his brother, is 
 I. 7
 
 134 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 worth preserving as a specimen of his powers of minute word-paint- 
 ing, and as a description of what Birmingham was sixty years ago : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Birmingham: August 10, 1824 
 
 "Birmingham I have now tried for a reasonable time, and I can- 
 not complain of being tired of it. As a town it is pitiful enough 
 a mean congeries of bricks, including one or two large capitalists, 
 some hundreds of minor ones, and, perhaps, a hundred and twenty 
 thousand sooty artisans in metals and chemical produce. The 
 streets are ill-built, ill-paved, always flimsy in their aspect often 
 poor, sometimes miserable. Not above one or two of them are 
 paved with flagstones at the sides ; and to walk upon the little egg- 
 shaped, slippery flints that supply their places is something like a 
 penance. Yet withal it is interesting from some of the commons 
 or lanes that spot or intersect the green, woody, undulating environs 
 to view this city of Tubal Cain. Torrents of thick smoke, with 
 ever and anon a burst of dingy flame, are issuing from a thousand 
 funnels. 'A thousand hammers fall by turns.' You hear the 
 clank of innumerable steam-engities, the rumbling of cars and vans, 
 and the hum of men interrupted by the sharper rattle of some canal- 
 boat loading or disloading ; or, perhaps, some fierce explosion when 
 the cannon founders are proving their new-made ware. I have seen 
 their rolling-mills, their polishing of teapots, and buttons, and gun- 
 barrels, and fire-shovels, and swords, and all manner of toys and 
 tackle. I have looked into their iron-works where 150,000 men are 
 smelting the metal in a district a few miles to the north ; their coal- 
 mines, fit image of Avernus ; their tubs and vats, as large as country 
 churches, full of copperas and aqua-fortis and oil of vitriol ; and the 
 whole is not without its attractions, as well as repulsions, of which, 
 when we meet, I will preach to you at large." 
 
 But all the while Carlyle's heart was in Scotland, at Haddington 
 and less at Haddington than at Mainhill. The strongest personal 
 passion which he experienced through all his life was his affection 
 for his mother. She was proud and wilful, as he. He had sent 
 her, or offered her, more presents, and she had been angry with him. 
 She had not been well, and she was impatient of doctors' regulations. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Mainhill. 
 
 "Birmingham: August 29, 1824. 
 
 1 ' I must suggest some improvements in your diet and mode of 
 life which might be of service to you, who I know too well have 
 much to suffer on your own part, though your affection renders you 
 so exclusively anxious about me. You wiu say you cannot be fashed. 
 Oh, my dear mother, if you did but think of what value your health 
 and comfort are to us all, you would never talk so. Are we not all 
 bound to you by sacred and indissoluble ties? Am I not so bound 
 more than any other? Who was it that nursed me and watched me 
 in frowardness and sickness from the earliest dawn of mv existence 
 to this hour? My mother. Who is it that has struggled for me in
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 135 
 
 pain and sorrow with undespairing diligence, that has for me been 
 up early and down late, caring for me, laboring for me, unweariedly 
 assisting me? My mother. Who is the one that never shrunk from 
 me in my desolation, that never tired of my despondencies, or shut 
 up by a look or tone of impatience the expression of my real or im- 
 aginary griefs? Who is it that loves me and will love me forever 
 with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can 
 do away? It is you, my mother. As the greatest favor that I can 
 beg of you, let me, now that I have in some degree the power, lie of 
 some assistance in promoting your comfort. It were one of the 
 achievements which I could look back upon with most satisfaction 
 from all the stages of my earthly pilgrimage, if I could make you 
 happier. Are we not all of us animated by a similar love to you ? 
 Why then will you spare any trouble, any cost, iu what is valuable 
 beyond aught earthly to every one of us?" 
 
 Eight weeks were passed with Badams, without, however, the ad- 
 vantage to Carlyle's health which he had looked for. There had 
 been daily rides into the country, visits to all manner of interesting 
 places Hadley, Warwick, and Kenilworth. The society had been 
 interesting, and Badams himself all that was kind and considerate. 
 But the contempt of "drugs" which he had professed in London 
 had been rather theoretic than practical; and the doses which had 
 been administered perhaps of themselves accounted for the failure 
 of other remedies. At the beginning of September an invitation 
 came to Carlyle to join the Stracheys at Dover. The Irvings were 
 to be of the party. Irving needed rest from his preaching. Mrs. 
 Irving had been confined, and had been recommended sea-air for 
 herself and her baby. The Stracheys and Miss Kirkpatrick had 
 taken a house at Dover; the Irvings had lodgings of their own, but 
 were to live with their friends, and Carlyle was to be included in 
 the party. Mrs. Strachey was a very interesting person to him, still 
 beautiful, younger than Mrs. Buller, and a remarkable contrast to 
 her. Mrs. Buller was a sort of heathen ; Mrs. Strachey was earnestly 
 religious. " She is as unlike Mrs. Buller," Carlyle told his mother, 
 "as pure gold is to gilt copper; she is an earnest, determined, warm- 
 hearted, religious matron, while the other is but a fluttering patron- 
 ess of routs and operas." An invitation to stay with her had many 
 attractions for him. He wished to go, but was undecided. The 
 last letter from Birmingham was on September 18 : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Badams and I go on very lovingly together. He calls me 'phi- 
 losopher ' by way of eminence ; and Tdiscuss and overhaul, and dis- 
 sect all manner of subjects with him. A closer acquaintance dimin- 
 ishes the sublimity, but scarcely the pleasing quality of his charac- 
 ter. A certain tendency to paint en bean, a sort of gasconading turn 
 in describing his own achievements and purposes, is all the fault I
 
 136 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 can discover in him; his kind-heartedness, his constant activity, and 
 good-humor are more and more apparent. In spite of all his long- 
 boio propensities (his running away with the harrows, as our father 
 would call it) he is a man of no ordinary powers, nor has he any 
 particle of dishonesty hi his nature, however he may talk. In fact, 
 if I admire the man less than I once expected, I like him more. 
 Strange that so many men should say tJie thing that is not without 
 perceptible temptation! Hundreds do it out of momentary vanity 
 Frank Dickson and many others. It is the poorest of all possible 
 resources in this world of makeshifts ; thou and I will never try it. 
 
 "With regard to health, it often seems to me that I am better 
 than I have been for several years, though scarcely a week passes 
 without a relapse for a while into directly the opposite opinion. 
 The truth is, it stands thus: I have been bephysicked and bedrugged. 
 I have swallowed, say about two stoupfuls of castor-oil since I came 
 hither : unless I dose myself with that oil of sorrow every fourth 
 day, I cannot get along at all. . . . My resources are more numerous 
 than they have been, and I am free to use them. Am I a man and 
 can do nothing to ameliorate my destiny? Hang it, I will set up 
 house in the country and take to gardening and translating, before I 
 let it beat me. In general I am not unhappy of late I have begun 
 to grudge being so long idle. 'Schiller' is almost at a stand. I 
 have been thinking of it and preparing improvements, but the Tay- 
 lor creature is slow as a snail. ... I wrote to Irving stating in dis- 
 tant terms a proposal to board with him through winter. He has 
 not answered me, but I expect daily that he will. If he consent, I 
 shall go with him and Mrs. Strachey to Dover. If not, I think hard- 
 ly. My better plan will be to go to London and take lodgings till 
 this pitiful book is off my hands, then return to the North or stay in 
 London as I reckon best. " 
 
 The journey back on the coach through the midland counties, 
 which in late September are usually so beautiful, was spoiled by 
 bad weather. On his way, however, Carlyle saw Stratford, and was 
 long enough in the town to form a clear picture of it. His letters 
 are the journal of his experiences: 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "London: September 27, 1824 
 
 "Taking leave of Badams, who strictly charged me to come back 
 for another month till he had completed his doctorial and castor-oil 
 system with me, I left the city of Tubal Cain on Thursday morn- 
 ing. My passage was of a mixed character. Some of Badams's 
 drugs had not prospered with me, and I fell below par in point of 
 health. The morning also was damp and the day proved rainy. 
 To complete the matter it cleared up just when I had shifted my 
 place to the interior of the vehicle, and exchanged the sight of High 
 Wycombe and the lawns of Buckinghamshire for the inane prattle 
 of a little black-eyed pretty blue-stocking Genevese, my sole travel- 
 ling companion; so that when they set me down in Oxford Street, 
 falsely said by the rascal guard to be the nearest point to Penton- 
 ville, from which it was three miles distant Lad Lane being only
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 137 
 
 one I fell somewhat out of humor, a dissonance of spirit which 
 increased to loud jarring as I followed my stout and fleet porter, 
 who strode lustily along under cloud of night, through labyrinthine 
 streets and alleys, with my portmanteau dangling at his back, and 
 a travelling-bag to balance it in front. Tramp, tramp, amidst the 
 rattling of wains and coaches, and the unearthly cries of fruiterers 
 and oystermen and piemen and all the mighty din of London, till 
 I verily thought he would never reach a point of the city which my 
 eyes had seen before. 
 
 "Nevertheless,! had not been without my enjoyments on the 
 road. I had got another glance of the heart of 'merry England,' 
 with its waving knolls and green woody fields and snug hamlets 
 and antique boroughs and jolly ale-drinking, beef -eating people. . . . 
 It was not without some pleasurable imaginations that I saw Strat- 
 ford-upon-Avon, the very hills and woods which the boy Shake- 
 speare had looked upon, the very church where his dust reposes, 
 nay, the very house where he was born ; the threshold over which 
 his staggering footsteps carried him in infancy; the very stones 
 where the urchin played marbles and flogged tops. ... It is a small, 
 grim-looking house of bricks, bound, as was of old the fashion, with 
 beams of oak intersecting the bricks, which are built into it and fill 
 up its interstices as the glass does in a window. The old tile roof 
 is cast by age, and twisted into all varieties of curvature. Half the 
 house has been modernized and made a butcher's shop. The street 
 where it stands is a simple-looking, short, every -day village street, 
 with houses mostly new, and consisting, like the Shakespeare house, 
 of two low stories, or rather a story and a half. Stratford itself is 
 a humble, pleasant-looking place, the residence as formerly of wool- 
 combers and other quiet artisans, except where they have brought 
 an ugly black canal into it, and polluted this classical borough by 
 the presence of lighters or trackboats with famished horses, sooty 
 drivers, and heaps of coke and coal. It seems considerably larger 
 and less showy than Annan. Shakespeare, Breakspeare, and for 
 aught I know sundry other spears, are still common names in War- 
 wickshire. I was struck on my arrival at Birmingham by a sign 
 not far from Badams's, indicating the abode of William Shake- 
 speare, boot and shoe maker, which boots and shoes the modern 
 Shakespeare also professed his ability to mend 'cheap and neatly.' 
 Homer, I afterwards discovered, had settled in Birmingham as a 
 button-maker. 
 
 "Bull must not wander thus, or I shall never have done. Of 
 Oxford, with its domes and spires and minarets, its rows of shady 
 trees, and still monastic edifices in their antique richness and intri- 
 cate seclusion, I shall say nothing till I see you. I must rather hast- 
 en to observe that I found the Orator at Pentonville sitting sparrow- 
 like, companionless, in not on the house-top alone. His wife had 
 left him, and had taken all the crockery and bedding and other 
 household gear along with her. He extended to me the right hand 
 of fellowship notwithstanding, and even succeeded in procuring me 
 some genial tea with an egg, only half rotten, which, for a London 
 egg, is saying much. . . . By-and-by, one Hamilton, a worthy and 
 accomplished merchant from Sanquhar, came in and took me with
 
 138 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 him to his lodgings and treated me comfortably; and there, in a 
 splendid bed, I contrived, in spite of agitation from within, and 
 noise and bugs from without, to get six hours of deep slumber. 
 Next morning I was fitter to do business. 
 
 "On leaving Birmingham I had felt uncertain whether I should 
 go to Dover with the Orator or not ; and I had partly determined to 
 be regulated in my yea or no by his acceptance or rejection of my 
 proposal to board with him whiie in London. On coming to dis- 
 cuss the subject I soon discovered that his reverence was embar- 
 rassed by a conflicting proposal (to board at a very high rate some 
 medical youth from Glasgow) which was not yet decided on, and 
 was consequently in the way of any definite arrangement with me. 
 The good priest for with all his vanities and affectations he is re- 
 ally a good man, an excellent man, as men go puckered up his face 
 and eyebrows in much distress, and was just commencing with va- 
 rious articulate and inarticulate preparations, when I, discovering 
 rapidly how the matter stood, begged him to consider my proposal 
 unmade, and never to say, or even think, one other word upon the 
 subject. The puckers disappeared at this announcement, but were 
 succeeded by a continuous cloud of gloom and regret as he set about 
 advising me to go Avith him to Dover, and to put off the considera- 
 tion of lodging and all such matters till my return. After much 
 canvassing I assented, upon the proviso of my being allowed to bear 
 my own share of the expense, and to be his fellow-lodger and not 
 his guest. With this salve to my pride, which I already almost lie- 
 gin to despise as a piece of cold selfishness, we struck the bargain 
 that he should set out on Monday, and I should follow whenever my 
 business was concluded. 
 
 "The 'business' I could have in London may well surprise you; 
 it was (alas! it is) the most pitiful that ever man had: nothing but 
 the collecting of a few books for the completing of my poor ' Schil- 
 ler.' You cannot think what trotting to and fro I have had to get 
 a book or two of the most simple character. Messrs. Taylor and 
 Henry pay me somewhere on the verge of QQl. down upon the nail 
 for this book, the day when it is published. In about ten weeks 
 from this date I expect to be free of London, to have ascertained 
 how it will suit me, what hopes, what advantages it offers, and to 
 decide for continuance or departure as shall seem to me best. If 
 my health improve I shall be for remaining, especially if I can fasten 
 upon any profitable employment; if not, scarcely. About the ulti- 
 matum I am by no means low-spirited, not often even dumpish. I 
 feel pretty confident that I can recover my health in some consider- 
 able degree, perhaps wholly. If not here elsewhere. While this is 
 in progress I can at the worst translate for the London or Edinburgh 
 market; and if I were well, I feel that some considerable desire to 
 write might arise within me. I might, like Archy Halliday, ' fin ' a 
 kind of inclination to bark, and certainly there is no want of game. 
 A miserable scrub of an author, sharking and writing ' articles ' 
 about town like Hazlitt, De Quincey, and that class of living creat- 
 ures, is a thing which, as our mother says, 'I canna be.' Nor shall 
 I need it. I have fifty better schemes. 
 
 "As to not boarding with Irving, I hardly regret it now that it is
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 139 
 
 past. His house would scarcely have been a favorable place for 
 studying any science but the state of religion in general, and that of 
 tbe Caledonian chapel in particular, as managed by various elders, 
 delegates, and other nondescript personages. A very affected and 
 
 not very beautiful sister of 's is also to stay with them through 
 
 the winter. Her I might have found it a task to love. 'Pray, Mr. 
 C'arlyle,' said she, in a mincing, namby-pamby tone, the night she 
 arrived, when I was sitting with my powers of patience screwed to 
 the sticking place, being in truth very miserable and very much in- 
 disposed to make complaints ' pray, Mr. Carlyle, are you really sick 
 now, or is it only fanciful?' 'Fancy, ma'am, fancy, nothing more,' 
 said I, half-turning round, and immediately proceeding with some 
 other topic, addressed to some other member of the company. Be- 
 sides, Irving has a squeaking brat of a son, ' who indeed brings us 
 many blessings,' but rather interrupts our rest at night. Bad luck to 
 his blessings compared with natural rest! In short, I shall be more 
 completely master in my own lodgings." 
 
 Carlyle himself was not an inmate whom any mistress not direct- 
 ly connected with him would readily welcome into her household; 
 so it was well perhaps for all parties that the proposed arrangement 
 was abandoned. The Dover visit, however, was accomplished, and 
 the unexpected trip to Paris which grew out of it. For this, too, 
 the reader is mainly referred to the " Reminiscences," which need no 
 correction from contemporary letters; and to which those letters, 
 though written when the scenes were fresh, can still add little, save 
 a farther evidence of the extreme accuracy of his memory. But 
 there is a humorous description of the gigantic Irving and his new- 
 born baby, a pleasant sketch of others of the party, and an interest- 
 ing account of the state of English farming and the English laborer, 
 as Carlyle saw both before the days of economic progress. These, 
 and some vivid pictures of the drive through France, justify a few 
 extracts : 
 
 To James Carlyle, Mainhitt. 
 
 "Dover : October 4. 
 
 " My dear Father, I arrived in this corner of the sea-girt land in 
 the dusk of a bright and sharp autumnal day. There has been no 
 fixed arrangement in our plans as yet. Mrs. Irving with her infant 
 had come down with a Miss Kirkpatrick. a cousin of Mrs. Strachey, 
 in whose kind house we are all living till the rest arrive, when the 
 Irvings and I shall evacuate the place and seek lodgings of our own. 
 I expect to be very snug and comfortable while here. The sea-bath- 
 ing seems to agree with me as well as ever, and the people are all 
 anxious to treat me as a kind of established invalid, whose concerns 
 are to be attended to as a prime object. 
 
 "The young Miss Kirkpatrick, with whom I was already acquaint- 
 ed, is a very pleasant and meritorious person one of the kindest 
 and most modest I have ever seen. Though handsome and young 
 and sole mistress of 50,000?., she is meek and unassuming as a little 
 child. She laughs in secret at the awkward extravagances of the
 
 140 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Orator ; yet she loves him as a good man, and busies herself with 
 nothing so much as discharging the duties of hospitality to us all. 
 ... Of Irving I have much kindness towards me to record. I like 
 the man, as I did of old, without respecting him much less or more. 
 He has a considerable turn for displays, which in reality are sheer 
 vanity, though he sincerely thinks them the perfection of Christian 
 elevation. But in these things he indulges very sparingly before 
 me, and any little glimpses of them that do occur I find it easy with- 
 out the slightest ill-nature arising between us to repress. We talk 
 of religion and literature and men and things, and stroll about and 
 smoke cigars, a choice stock of which he has been presented with 
 by some friend. I reckon him much improved since winter. The 
 fashionable people have totally left him, yielding like feathers and 
 flying chaff to some new 'centre of attraction.' The newspapers 
 also are silent, and he begins to see that there was really nothing 
 supernatural in the former hurly-burly, but that he must content 
 himself with patient well-doing, and liberal, though not immoder- 
 ate, success ; not taking the world by one fierce onslaught, but by 
 patient and continual sapping and mining, as others do. 
 
 " I for one am sincerely glad that matters have taken this change. 
 I consider him a man of splendid gifts and good intentions, and 
 likely in his present manner of proceeding to be of much benefit to 
 the people among whom he labors. His Isabella also is a good, 
 honest-hearted person and an excellent wife. She is very kind to 
 me, and though without any notable gifts of mind or manners or 
 appearance, contrives to be in general extremely agreeable. Irving 
 and she are sometimes ridiculous enough at present in the matter 
 of their son, a quiet wersh gorb of a thing, as all children of six 
 weeks are, but looked upon by them as if it were a cherub from on 
 high. The concerns of ' him ' (as they emphatically call it) occupy 
 a large share of public attention. Kitty Kirkpatrick smiles covert- 
 ly, and I laugh aloud at the earnest devotedness of the good Orator 
 to this weighty affair. ' Isabella,' said he, the other night, ' I would 
 wash him, I think, with warm water to-night,' a counsel received 
 with approving assent by the mother, but somewhat objected to by 
 others. I declared the washing and dressing of him to be the wife's 
 concern alone; and that, were I in her place, I would wash him with 
 oil of vitriol if I pleased, and take no one's counsel in it. 
 
 "When Mrs. Strachey comes I expect some accession of enjoy- 
 ment. She has taken a great liking to me, and is any way a sin- 
 gularly worthy woman. I had a very kind note from her this day. 
 
 "Kent is a delightful region, fertile and well-cultivated, watered 
 with clear streams, sufficiently and not excessively besprinkled with 
 trees, and beautifully broken with inequalities of surface. The whole 
 country rests on chalk. They burn this mineral in kilns and use it 
 as lime. In its native state it lies in immense masses, divided into 
 strata or courses by lumps of flint distributed in parallel seams. The 
 husbandry in Kent is beyond that in many counties in England, but 
 a Scottish farmer would smile at many parts of it. They plough 
 with five horses and two men (one ca-ing), and the plough has 
 wheels. Many a time have I thought of Alick with his Lothian 
 tackle and two horses setting these inefficient loiterers to the right-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 141 
 
 about. Yet here they are much better than in Warwickshire, where 
 farming may be said to be an unknown art, where the fields are 
 sometimes of half an acre, and of all possible shapes but square, and 
 a thrashing-mill is a thing nearly unheard of. Here a fifth part of 
 the surface is not covered with gigantic and ill-kept fences ; but they 
 grow their wheat and their beans and their hops on more rational 
 principles. In all cases, however, the people seem to realize a good- 
 ly share of solid comfort. The English hind has his pork (often 
 raw) or his beef, with ale and wheateu bread three times a day, and 
 wears a ruddy and substantial look, see him where you will. I have 
 looked into the clean, brick-built, tile-flagged little cottages, and seen 
 the people dining, with their jug of ale, their bacon, and other ware, 
 and a huge loaf, like a stithy clog, toweringover it all. It is pleas- 
 ant to see every one so well provided for. There is nothing like the 
 appearance of want to be met with anywhere." 
 
 To Miss Welsh, little dreaming of the relations between herself 
 and Irving, Carlyle was still more dramatic in his sketches of the 
 Orator. Miss Welsh, as she told him afterwards, had purposely 
 misled him on this subject : 
 
 " Octobers. The Orator is busy writing and bathing, persuading 
 himself that he is scaling the very pinnacles of Christian sentiment, 
 which in truth, with him, are little more than the very pinnacles of 
 human vanity rising through an atmosphere of great native warmth 
 and generosity. I find him much as he was before, and I suppose 
 always will be, overspread with secret affectations, secret to himself, 
 but kind and friendly and speculative and discursive as ever. It 
 would do your heart good to look at him in the character of dry- 
 nurse to his first-born, Edward. Oh that you saw the Giant, with 
 his broad-brimmed hat, his sallow visage, and his sable, matted 
 fleece of hair, carrying the little pepper-box of a creature folded in 
 his monstrous palms along the beach, tick ticking to it, and dan- 
 dling it, and every time it stirs an eyelid grinning horribly a ghastly 
 smile, heedless of the crowds of petrified spectators that turn round 
 in long trains, gazing in silent terror at the fatherly leviathan ; you 
 would laugh for twelve months after, every time you thought of it. 
 And yet it is very wrong to laugh if one could help it. Nature is 
 very lovely: pity she should ever be absurd. On the whole I am 
 pleased with Irving, and hope to love him and admire him and laugh 
 at him as long as I live. There is a fund of sincerity in his life and 
 character which in these heartless, aimless days is doubly precious. 
 The cant of religion, conscious or unconscious, is a pitiable thing, 
 but not the most pitiable. It often rests upon a groundwork of 
 genuine, earnest feeling, and is, I think, in all except its very worst 
 phases, preferable to that poor and mean spirit of contemptuous per- 
 aiflnf/e which forms the staple of fashionable accomplishment so far 
 as I can discern it, and spreads like a narcotic drench over all the 
 better faculties of the soul." 
 
 Mrs. Strachey came down after a few days. The little party was 
 ajways together walking on the beach or reading Fletcher's
 
 143 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Purple Island." Mrs. Strachey herself was in full sympathy with 
 Irving, if no one else was. Then her husband came, who was espe- 
 cially wanting in sympathy. The difference of sentiment became 
 perceptible. The French coast lay invitingly opposite. The weather 
 was beautiful. A trip to Paris was proposed and instantly decided 
 on. Mr. Strachey, Miss Kirkpatrick, and Carlyle were to go. Mrs. 
 Strachey and the Irvings were to stay behind. A travelling car- 
 riage was sent across the Channel, post-horses were always ready on 
 the Paris road, and Carlyle, who had but left Scotland for the first 
 time four months before, and had been launched an entire novice 
 into the world, was now to be among the scenes so long familiar to 
 him as names. They went by Montreuil, Abbeville, Nampont, with 
 Sterne's " Sentimental Journey " as a guide-book, when Murray was 
 unknown. They saw the Cathedral at Beauvais, for which Carlyle 
 did not care at all ; they saw French soldiers, for which he cared a 
 great deal. He himself could speak a little French ; Strachey, like 
 most Englishmen, almost none. Montmorency reminded him of 
 Rousseau. From Moutmartre they looked down on Paris : ' ' not a 
 breath of smoke or dimness anywhere, every roof and dome and 
 spire and chimney-top clearly visible, and the skylights sparkling 
 like diamonds." "I have never," he says, "since or before, seen so 
 fine a view of a town." Carlyle, who could see and remember so 
 much of Stratford, where he stayed only while the coach changed 
 horses, coming on Paris fresh, with a mind like wax to receive im- 
 pressions, yet tenacious as steel in preserving them, carried off rec- 
 ollections from his twelve days' sojourn in the French capital which 
 never left him, and served him well in after years when he came to 
 write about the Revolution. He saw the places of which he had 
 read. He saw Louis Dix-huit lying in state, Charles Dix, Legendre 
 (whose Geometry he had translated for Brewster), the great Laplace, 
 M. de Chezy, the Persian professor. He heard Cuvier lecture. He 
 went to the Theatre Fran9ais, and saw and heard Talma in 
 "CEdipe." He listened to a sermon at Ste. Genevieve. A more 
 impressive sermon was a stern old gray-haired corpse which he saw 
 lying in the Morgue. He saw the French people, and the ways and 
 works of them, which interested him most of all. These images, 
 with glimpses of English travellers, were all crowded into the few 
 brief days of their stay ; the richest in new ideas, new emotions, 
 new pictures of human life, which Carlyle had yet experienced. 
 
 From the many letters which he wrote about it I select one to his 
 brother John : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Dover : November 7. 
 
 ' ' My expedition to Paris was nearly as unexpected to myself as the 
 news of it will be to you. Strachey, a little, bustling, logic-chopping,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 143 
 
 good-hearted, frank fellow, came down to Dover three weeks ago, and 
 finding himself, I suppose, rather dull in the region of the Cinque 
 Ports, and tempted, moreover, by the persuasions of his cousin Kitty, 
 as well as by the daily sight of the French coast, he determined at 
 last on a journey thither, and after infinite pleadings and solicita- 
 tions I was prevailed upon to be of the party. They were to travel in 
 their own carriage, Kitty and her maid inside, Strachey on the coach- 
 box to see the country. The additional expense for me would be noth- 
 ing ; it would be so pleasant, and would do me so much good. lu 
 fine, after a world of perplexities and miscalculations and misadvent- 
 ures, I having tirst half consented, then wholly refused, then again 
 consented, we at length all assembled by different routes on the sands 
 of Boulogne in the afternoon of Thursday gone a fortnight, and set 
 off with the utmost speed of three lean horses of the paste royale for 
 Paris. After adventures and mistakes which will keep us laughing 
 many a winter night when thou and I meet, we reached the capital 
 on Saturday about four o'clock, and forthwith established ourselves 
 in the Hotel de Wagram, and proceeded to the great purpose of our 
 journey the seeing of the many sights with which the metropolis of 
 France abounds beyond any other spot on the surface of the earth. 
 By degrees we got into proper train, and everything went on wonder- 
 fully well. Strachey and I went out singly or in company to purvey 
 for dinners and breakfasts in the cafes and restaurateur establish- 
 ments, etc. 
 
 " Sated at length with wonders, we left Paris last Wednesday, and 
 after a not unprosperous journey arrived here yesterday afternoon. 
 Irving and his household had left Dover a few hours before. 1 On 
 the whole I cannot say I regret this jaunt. I have seen many strange 
 things which may people my imagination with interesting forms, 
 and, perhaps, yield some materials for reflection and improvement. 
 France, as it presented itself to me on a most cursory survey, seemed 
 a place rather to be looked at than tarried in. Oh that I had space 
 to paint to you the strange pilgarlic figures that I saw breakfasting 
 over a few expiring embers on roasted apples, ploughing with three 
 ponies, with ploughs like peat barrows, or folded together in long 
 trough-sliaped wicker carts, wearing night-caps, and dresses of blue 
 calico, with a black stump of a pipe stuck between their jaws, and 
 a drop hanging at their long thin noses, and faces puckered together 
 into the most weepy mouse aspect; or the women riding on cuddies 
 with wooden saddles; or the postilions with their leather shovel hats 
 and their boots like moderate churns ; often blind of one eye or 
 broken-legged, and always the coolest liars in existence. But better 
 than all was our own mode of treating them ; and Strachey's French 
 when he scolded the waiters and hosts of the inns. ' C'est bien im- 
 posant " (said he at Beauvais), 'c'est une rascalite, vous dis-je; vous 
 avez charge deux f ois trop ; vous etes, ' etc. To all which they an- 
 swered with the gravity of judges passing the sentence of death: 
 'Monsieur, c'est impossible; on ne vous surfait nullement; on no,' 
 etc. 'Ou est les chevaux,' shrieked he at the end of every post. 
 
 1 In the " Reminiscences" he says that he fouud Irving still at Dover. This is the 
 single error of fact which I have detected.
 
 144 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 'Vont venir, monsieur,' said they. Kitty and I were like to split 
 with laughing. At length Strachey himself gave up the cause en- 
 tirely and took to speaking French English without disguise. When 
 a man asked him for 'quelque chose & boire; je vous ai conduit 
 tres-bien,' Strachey answered, without looking at him, 'Nong ! vous 
 avez drive devilish slow,' which suited just as well. 
 
 " Of Paris I shall say nothing till we meet. It is the Vanity Fair 
 of the Universe, and cannot be described in many letters. With 
 few exceptions the streets are narrow and crowded and unclean, the 
 kennel in the middle, and a lamp hanging over it here and there on 
 a rope from side to side. There are no foot-paths, but an everlast- 
 ing press of carriages and carts and dirty people hastening to and 
 fro among them, amidst a thousand gare-gares and sacres and other 
 oaths and admonitions; while by the side are men roasting chest- 
 nuts in their booths, fruit-shops, wine-shops, barbers ; silk merchants 
 selling dprix juste (without cheating), restaurateurs, cafes, traiteurs, 
 magasins de bonbons, billiard-tables, estaminets (gin-shops), debits de 
 tabac (where you buy a cigar for a half-penny and go out smoking 
 it), and every species of depot and entrepot and magaain for the com- 
 fort and refreshment of the physical part of the natural man, plying 
 its vocation in the midst of noise and stink, both of which it aug- 
 ments by its produce and by its efforts to dispose of it. The Palais- 
 Royal is a spot unrivalled in the world, the chosen abode of vanity 
 and vice, the true palace of the tigre-singcs^ (tiger-apes), as Voltaire 
 called his countrymen, a place which I rejoice to think is separated 
 from me by the girdle of the ocean, and never likely to be copied 
 in the British Isles. I dined in it often, and bought four little bone 
 etuis (needle-cases) at a franc each for our four sisters at Mainhill. 
 It is a sort of emblem of the French character, the perfection of the 
 physical and fantastical part of our nature, with an absence of all 
 that is solid and substantial in the moral, and often in the intellect- 
 ual part of it. Looking-glasses and trinkets and fricassees and 
 gaming-tables seem to be the life of a Frenchman; his home is a 
 place where he sleeps and dresses ; he lives in the salon du restau- 
 rateur on the boulevard, or the garden of the Palais-Royal. Every 
 room you enter, destitute of carpet or fire, is expanded into bound- 
 lessness by mirrors ; and I should think about fifty thousand dice- 
 boxes are set a rattling every night, especially on Sundays, within 
 the walls of Paris. There the people sit and chatter and fiddle away 
 existence as if it were a raree show, careless how it go on so they 
 have excitement, des sensations agreables. Their palaces and picture- 
 galleries and triumphal arches are the wonder of the earth, but the 
 stink of their streets is considerable, and you cannot walk on them 
 without risking the fracture of your legs or neck. 
 
 "But peace to the French ! for here I have no room to express 
 even my ideas about them, far less to do them any justice. Suffice 
 it to observe that I contrived to see nearly all that could be seen 
 within twelve days, and to carry off as much enjoyment as it was 
 possible for sights to afford me at the expense of about five pounds 
 sterling. I saw the Louvre gallery of pictures, the Tuilerie's palace, 
 the Jardin des Plantes, the churches and cemeteries, and all that 
 could be seen. I saw Talma the actor, and almost touched His Most
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 145 
 
 Christian Majesty Charles X. What was most interesting, I heard 
 Baron Cuvief deliver his introductory lecture on comparative anat- 
 omy. Cuvier himself pleased me much; he seems about fifty, with 
 a fair head of hair growing gray, a large broad, not very high head, 
 a nose irregularly aquiline, receding mouth, peaked chin, blue eyes, 
 which he casts upwards, puckering the eyebrows with a look of 
 great sweetness and wisdom ; altogether the appearance of an ac- 
 complished, kind, and gentlemanly person. His lecture lasted an 
 hour and a half. I made out nine-tenths of it, and thought it very 
 good and wonderfully fluent and correct for an extempore one. 
 Kay, what do you think ? I made bold to introduce myself to Le- 
 gendre, and was by him taken to a sitting of the Institute, and pre- 
 sented to Dupin, the celebrated traveller in England. Here also 
 I saw Laplace and Lacroix, and Poisson the mathematician, and 
 Yauquelin and Chaptal and Thenard the chemists, and heard Ma- 
 gendie read a paper. Dupin would have introduced me to Laplace 
 and others, an honor which I declined, desiring only to impress 
 myself with a picture of then- several appearances." 
 
 Such was Carlyle's sudden visit to Paris an incident of more im- 
 portance to him than he knew at the moment. He complained be- 
 fore and he complained after of the hardness of fortune to him ; but 
 fortune in the shape of friends was throwing in his way what very 
 few young men better connected in life have the happiness of so 
 early falling in with. The expedition created no small excitement 
 at Mainhill. The old people had grown up under the traditions of 
 the war. For a son of theirs to go abroad at all was almost mirac- 
 ulous. When they heard that he was gone to Paris, ' ' all the stout- 
 ness of their hearts " was required to bear it. 
 
 "It matters little to the sufferers [wrote his brother Alexander] 
 whether their evils are real or imaginary. Our anxiety was ground- 
 less, but this did little help till your letter to Jack arrived. We had 
 inquired at the post-office every day for more than a fortnight be- 
 fore it came, and every new disappointment was, especially to our 
 anxious mother, reason sufficient for darkening still deeper the cata- 
 logue of her fears about your welfare. I really believe that two or 
 three days more of silence would have driven her distracted well- 
 nigh. She had laid aside singing for more than a fortnight ; and 
 even the rest of the women, if they attempted to sing or indulge 
 in laughing, were reproached with unbecoming lightness of heart. 
 But, thanks to Heaven, we are all of us to rights again; and you 
 have crossed and recrossed the blue ocean yea, visited the once- 
 powerful kingdom of the great Napoleon, at whose frown Europe 
 crouched in terror."
 
 146 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 A.D. 1824. MT. 29. 
 
 THE holiday was over. Carlyle returned to London with the 
 Stracheys, and settled himself in lodgings in Southampton Street, 
 near Irving. Here at any rate he intended to stay till ' ' Schiller " was 
 off his hands complete in the form of the book. That accomplished, 
 the problem of his future life remained to be encountered. "What 
 was he to do? He was adrift, with no settled occupation. To what 
 should he turn his hand ? Where should he resolve to live ? He 
 had now seen London. He had seen Birmingham with its busy in- 
 dustries. He had seen Paris. He had been brought into contact 
 with English intellectual life. He had conversed and measured 
 strength with some of the leading men of letters of the day. He 
 knew that he had talents which entitled him to a place among the 
 best of them. But he was sick in body, and mentally he was a 
 strange combination of pride and self-depreciation. He was free as 
 air, but free only, as it seemed to him, because of his insignificance 
 because no one wanted his help. Most of us find our course de- 
 termined by circumstances. We are saved by necessity from the 
 infirmity of our own wills. No necessity interfered with Carlyle. 
 He had the world before him with no limitations but his poverty, 
 and he was entirely at sea. So far only he was determined, that he 
 would never sell his soul to the devil, never speak what he did not 
 wholly believe, never do what in his inmost heart he did not feel 
 to be right, and that he would keep his independence, come what 
 might. 
 
 "As old Quixote said [he wrote at this time], and as I have often 
 said after him, if it were but a crust of bread and a cup of water 
 that Heaven has given thee, rejoice that thou hast none but them to 
 thank for it. A man that is not standing on his own feet in regard 
 to economical affairs soon ceases to be a man at all. Poor Cole- 
 ridge is like the hulk of a huge ship his masts and sails and rudder 
 have rotted quite away." 
 
 Literature lay open. Nothing could hinder a man there save the 
 unwillingness of publishers to take his wares ; but of this there 
 seemed to be no danger, " Meister " seemed to be coming to a sec- 
 ond edition, the " Schiller," such parts of it as had as yet appeared, 
 had been favorably noticed; and Schiller's own example was spe- 
 cially encouraging. Schiller, like himself, had been intended for 
 the ministry, had recoiled from it, had drifted, as he had done, into 
 the initial stages of law, but had been unable to move in professional 
 harness. Schiller, like himself again, had been afflicted with painful
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 147 
 
 chronic disease, and, though it killed him early, his spirit had tri- 
 umphed over his body. At the age at which Carlyle had now arrived, 
 Schiller's name was known in every reading household in Germany, 
 and his early plays had been translated into half the languages in 
 Europe. Schiller, however, more fortunate than he, possessed the 
 rare and glorious gift of poetry. Carlyle had tried poetry and had 
 consciously failed. He had intellect enough. He had imagination 
 no lack of that, and the keenest and widest sensibilities; yet with 
 a true instinct he had discovered that the special faculty which dis- 
 tinguishes the poet from other men, nature had not bestowed upon 
 him. He had no correct metrical ear ; the defect can be traced in 
 the very best of his attempts, whether at translation or at original 
 composition. He could shape his materials into verse, but without 
 spontaneity, and instead of gaining beauty they lost their force and 
 clearness. His prose at this time was, on the other hand, supremely 
 excellent, little as he knew it. The sentences in his letters are per- 
 fectly shaped, and are pregnant with meaning. The more impas- 
 sioned passages flow in rhythmical cadence like the sweetest tones 
 of an organ. The style of the " Life of Schiller" is the style of his 
 letters. He was not satisfied with it; he thought it "wretched," 
 "bombastic," "not in the right vein." It was in fact simple. Few 
 literary biographies in the English language equal it for grace, for 
 brevity, for clearness of portraiture, and artist-like neglect of the 
 unessentials. Goethe so clearly recognized its merits, that in a year 
 or two it was to be translated under his direction into German, and 
 edited with a preface by himself. While England and Scotland 
 were giving Carlyle at best a few patronizing nods, soon to change 
 to anger and contempt, Goethe saw in this young unknown Scotch- 
 man the characteristics of a true man of genius, and spoke of him 
 "as a new moral force, the extent and effects of which it was im- 
 possible to predict. " 
 
 The rewriting and arranging of the "Life of Schiller" was more 
 tedious than Carlyle expected. It was done at last, however, pub- 
 lished and paid for. A copy was sent to Mainhill, with a letter to 
 his mother : 
 
 ' ' I have at last finished that miserable book, on account of which 
 I have been scolding printers and running to and fro like an evil 
 spirit for the last three weeks. The ' Life of Schiller ' is now fairly 
 off my hands. I have not put my name to it, not feeling anxious to 
 have the syllables of my poor name pass through the mouths of 
 cockneys on so slender an occasion, though, if any one lay it to my 
 charge, I shall see no reason to blush for the hand I had in it. Some- 
 times of late I have bethought me of some of your old maxims about 
 pride and vanity. I do see this same vanity to be the root of half 
 the evil men are subject to in life. Examples of it stare me in the 
 face every day.
 
 148 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "The pitiful passion under any of the thousand forms which it 
 assumes never fails to wither out the good and worthy parts of a 
 man's character, and leave him poor and spiteful, an enemy to his 
 own peace and that of all about him. There never was a wiser doc- 
 trine than that of Christian humility, considered as a corrective for 
 the coarse, unruly selfishness of man's nature. I know you will read 
 the ' Schiller ' with attention and pleasure. It contains nothing that 
 I know of but truth of fact and sentiment, and I have always found 
 that the honest truth of one mind had a certain attraction in it for 
 every other mind that loved truth honestly. Various quacks, for 
 instance, have exclaimed against the immorality of ' Meister;' and 
 the person whom it delighted above all others of my acquaintance 
 was Mrs. Strachey, exactly the most religious, pure, and true-minded 
 person among the whole number. A still more convincing proof of 
 my doctrine was the satisfaction you took in it. " 
 
 The "Schiller" was as welcome at Mainhill as "Meister" had 
 been, but I have anticipated the completion of it. It was not fin- 
 ished till the middle of the winter, all which time Carlyle was alone 
 in his London lodgings. His personal history from the time of his 
 return from Dover is told in his letters : 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Mainhill. 
 
 "23 Southampton Street, 1'entonville: November 12, 1824. 
 
 " The Stracheys took me with them in their carriage to Shooter's 
 Hill, and I made my way to the hospitable mansion of the Orator at 
 Pentonville by various coaches as I best could. Next morning no 
 entreaties for delay could detain me. I set out in quest of lodgings, 
 determined to take no rest till I had found some place which I could 
 call my own, where I might at last collect my scattered thoughts 
 and see what yet remained to me to be accomplished or avoided. I 
 found the task of seeking lodgings less abominable than I used to 
 reckon it in Edinburgh. Irving and his wife went with me to one 
 or two till I got into the way, after which I dismissed them, and 
 proceeded on the search myself. Erelong I landed in Southamp- 
 ton Street, a fine, clean, quiet spot, and found a landlady and a 
 couple of rooms almost exactly such as I was wanting. 
 
 "Here I have fixed my abode for a space, and design to set seri- 
 ously about remodelling my affairs. On the whole I am happy that 
 I have got into a house of my own where I am lord and master, and 
 can manage as I like without giving an account to any one. Irving 
 could not take me to board in his house, having engaged to admit 
 one Parker from Glasgow (at a very high rate), who is coming here 
 to study law. Indeed, after inspecting the state of his internal econ- 
 omy, I more than ceased to desire it. He himself is of rough and 
 ready habits, and his wife is not by any means the pink of house- 
 keepers. For one like me their house and table would have suited 
 but indifferently in point of health, and their visitors and other in- 
 terruptions would have sadly interfered with my standing business. 
 Irving's kind and interesting conversation was the only thing that 
 tempted me, and even this for the present could not have been got.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 
 
 The Orator's whole heart and soul seemed for a while to have been 
 set on two solitary objects the Caledonian Chapel and the squeal- 
 ing brat of a child which his dear Isabella brought him three 
 months ago. This smallest and irersJiest of his Majesty's subjects 
 the worthy preacher dandles and fondles and dry-nurses and talks 
 about in a way that is piteous to behold. He speculates on the pro- 
 gressive development of his senses, on the state of his bowels, on his 
 hours of rest, his pap-spoons and his hippings. He asks you twenty 
 limes a day (me he dares not ask any longer) if he is not a pretty boy. 
 He even at times attempts a hideous chant to the creature by way of 
 lullaby. Unhappy gorb ! I have wished it farther than I need re- 
 peat at present. Its mewing used to awaken me at night. Its his- 
 tory keeps me silent by day. Now that I am gone from its sphere I 
 can wisli it well as the offspring of my friend, whom after all I do 
 not like much the worse that he is over-fond and foolish as a father. 
 In my present situation, too, I can enjoy all that is enjoyable in his 
 company and friendship. This house is within three minutes' walk 
 of his, where I design to be a frequent visitor. They have been kind 
 friends to me. I were a worthless creature to forget them. 
 
 ' ' I expect to pass my time neither unpleasantly nor unprofitably 
 in this city. I have people enough here whom I wish to see and 
 may see. Some of them are attractive by their talent and knowl- 
 edge, several by their kindness. The Stracheys I have found to be 
 friendly in a high degree. Mrs. Montagu (Irving's 'noble lady,' 
 whom I do not like as well as Mrs. S.) had a note lying for me in 
 Dover inviting me in very warm and high-flown terms to come and 
 live with them. The Bullers are here at present; they sent inviting 
 me by Arthur their son to come and dine with them to-day. I would 
 not dint with the King. But I engaged to go and take tea. Badams 
 predicts that I will come back to him; but this I do not expect." 
 
 London pleased Carlyle less as he knew it better : 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "23 Southampton Street: November 20, 1824. 
 
 "Allen of York is here at present, setting up a sort of 'Asylum.' 
 He wishes me to go out and live with him at his house in Epping 
 Forest. He will board me and a horse for 40J. a year! That scheme 
 will not answer. There is folly enough within my reach already 
 without going to seek it among the professedly insane. Perhaps I 
 may go and stay with him a week or so when I have finished the 
 writing of this book. I have yet made but little progress in my sur- 
 vey of London. The weather has been very unpropitious, and I 
 have had many things to do. I have several persons (Mrs. Montagu, 
 Mrs. Strachey, Procter, etc.) whom I call on now and then, and might 
 far oftener if I found it useful. They are kind persons, particularly 
 the first two; but for rational employment of my mind in their com- 
 pany there is but very little. People of elevated minds and clear 
 judgment seem to be as rare here as in the North. Anything ap- 
 proaching to a great character is a treasure I have yet to meet with. 
 Yet such is life. The little that is good in it we ought to welcome, 
 and forget how much better it might have been when we think how
 
 150 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 much worse it generally is. These two women and their families 
 treat me as if I were a near relation, not a wandering stranger. I 
 feel their kindness, and hope yet to profit more by it. Basil Montagu, 
 the husband, was described to me as a philosopher. I find him to 
 
 be an honest-hearted goose. Happy Irving, who sees in all his 
 
 friends the pink of human excellence; and when he has found the 
 nakedness of the land, can turn him round and seek a fresh supply. 
 He is still fighting away as valiantly as ever nursing and preaching. 
 His popularity is growing steadier, and I think will ultimately settle 
 into something comfortable and accordant with the nature of things. 
 ' ' The fashionable people have long ago forgot that he exists ; and" 
 our worthy preacher has discovered, fortunately not too late, that 
 many things since the Reformation have been more surprising than 
 to grow a London lion for the space of three little months. I am 
 glad with all my heart that this insane work is over. Irving is be- 
 coming known to men at large as he is. The sceptical and literary 
 people find that he is not a quack; and they honor him, or at least 
 let him live at peace. There are many persons of warm hearts and 
 half-cultivated heads who love him and admire him, and I think will 
 stand by him firmly. All that have ever known him in private must 
 and do like him. Delivered from the gross incense of preaching 
 popularity, Irving will cultivate his mind in peace; and may ray out 
 a profitable mixture of light and darkness upon a much wider public 
 than he has yet addressed by writing. After all, he is a brave fellow 
 among the best, if not the very best, whom I have met in life. 
 Success to him ! for though I laugh at him, I were a dog if I did not 
 love him. Speak not of his popularity. Your words will be inter- 
 preted to mean, not that it is growing rational, but that it is over. 
 At present I reckon the appearance of it better than it has ever been." 
 
 The correspondence with Miss Welsh had continued regularly 
 since Carlyle left Scotland. Letters written under such circum- 
 stances are in their nature private, and so must for the most part 
 remain. Miss Welsh, however, was necessarily a principal element 
 in any scheme which Carlyle might form for his future life, and to 
 her his views were exposed without the smallest reserve. The pen- 
 sions or sinecures of which her too sanguine expectation had dream- 
 ed, he had known from the first to be illusions. He must live, if he 
 lived at all, by his own hand. He had begun to think that both for 
 body and mind London was not the place for him. He had saved 
 between two and three hundred pounds, beyond what he had spent 
 upon his brothers. His tastes were of the simplest. The plainest 
 house, the plainest food, the plainest dress, was all that he wanted. 
 The literary men whom he had met with in the metropolis did not 
 please him. Some, like Hazlitt, were selling their souls to the peri- 
 odical press. Even in Campbell and Coleridge the finer powers 
 were dormant or paralyzed, under the spell, it seemed, of London 
 and its influences. Southey and Wordsworth, who could give a 
 better account of their abilities, had turned their backs upon the
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 151 
 
 world with its vain distinctions and noisy flatteries, and were living 
 far away among the lakes and mountains. Carlyle was considering 
 that he, too, would be better in Annandale. He would take a farm 
 and stock it. His brother Alexander would manage it for him, while 
 he could study and write. From these two sources means sufficient 
 could easily be provided for a simple and honorable existence. Be- 
 fore taking any decided step, however, it was necessary to consult 
 the person who had promised to be his wife when he should find 
 himself in a condition to maintain her in tolerable comfort. It is 
 possible though speculations of an interested kind influenced Car- 
 lyle as little as they ever influenced any man that among their re- 
 sources he had calculated her fortune would pass for something. 
 There had been no occasion for her to tell him precisely the disposi- 
 tion which she had made of it. He had written to her effusively, 
 and she had laughed at him. She had been afterwards slightly un- 
 well, and had expressed penitence for her levity. 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 "23 Southampton Street, Pentonville: November . 
 
 "Your sickness I have striven to make light of. I will not let 
 myself believe that it is more than temporary ; and the serious 
 mood you partly owe to it is that in which to me you are far more 
 interesting. 
 
 "Do not mock and laugh, however gracefully, when you can help 
 it. For your own sake I had almost rather see you sad. It is the 
 earnest, affectionate, warm-hearted, enthusiastic Jane that I love. 
 The acute, sarcastic, clear-sighted, derisive Jane I can at best but 
 admire. Is it not a pity that you had such a turn that way ? ' Pity 
 rather that the follies of the world, and yours among the number, 
 Mr. Quack, should so often call for castigation.' Well, well ! Be 
 it so, then. A wilful man, and still more a wilful woman, will have 
 their way. . . . Now let us turn over a new leaf a new leaf in the 
 paper, and still more in the subject. I am meditating with as rigid 
 an intensity as ever on the great focus of all purposes at present 
 the arranging of my future life. Here is no light business, and 
 no want of eagerness in me to see it done. As yet I have made no 
 way, or very little ; but already I am far happier than I was, from 
 the mere consideration that my destiny, with all its manifold entan- 
 glements, perplexing and tormenting as they are, is now submitted 
 to my own management. Of my projects I can give no description. 
 They fluctuate from day to day, and many of them are not of a kind 
 to be explained in writing. One item lies at the bottom of almost 
 any scheme I form. It is determination to have some household of 
 my own ; some abode which I may be lord of, though it were no 
 better than the Cynic's tub; some abiding home which I may keep 
 myself in peace by the hope of improving not of changing for an- 
 other. I have lived too long in tents a wandering Bedouin, the fruit 
 of my toils wasted or spent in the day that witnessed them. I am 
 sick and must recover ; and if so, sickness itself provides the helps
 
 152 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 for getting out of it. Till then my mind lies spellbound, the best 
 of my talents (bless the mark) shut up even from my own poor view, 
 and the thought of writing anything beyond mere drudgery is vain. 
 I see all this, but I also see the plan of conquering it if it can be 
 conquered. I must settle myself down within reach of Edinburgh 
 or London. I must divide my time between mental and bodily ex- 
 ercises. If the latter could be turned to profit, could be regularly 
 fixed and ordered by necessity of any kind, I should regard the 
 point as gained. Had I land of my own, I should instantly be 
 tempted to become a farmer! Laugh outright ! But it is very 
 true. I think how I should mount a-horseback in the gray of the 
 morning and go forth like a destroying angel among my lazy hinds, ' 
 quickening every sluggish hand, cultivating and cleaning, tilling 
 and planting, till the place became a very garden round me. In the 
 intermediate hours I could work at literature; thus compelled to live 
 according to the wants of nature, in one twelvemonth I should be 
 the healthiest man in three parishes, and then, if I said and did 
 nothing notable, it were my own blame or nature's only. 
 
 "This you say is Utopian dreaming, not the sober scheme of a 
 man in his senses. I am sorry for it sorry that nothing half so 
 likely to save me comes within the circuit of my capabilities. A 
 sinecure ! God bless thee, my darling ! I could not touch a sine- 
 cure though twenty of my friends should volunteer to offer it. 
 Kdneswegs. It is no part of my plan to eat the bread of idleness 
 so long as I have the force of a sparrow left in me to procure the 
 honest bread of industry. Irving, too ! good Irving ! His thoughts 
 are friendly, but he expresses them like a goose. ' Help me to the 
 uttermost?' If he can help himself to get along the path through 
 life, it is all that I shall ask of him. If his own shins are safe at the 
 journey's end (a point on which there are many doubts), let him 
 hang a votive tablet up and go to bed in peace. I shall manage 
 mine. There is no use in 'helps.' The grown-up man that cannot 
 be his own help ought to solicit his discharge from the Church mili- 
 tant, and turn him to some middle region by the earliest conveyance. 
 For affection, or the faintest imitation of it, a man should feel o'bliged 
 to his very dog. But for the gross assistances of patronage or purse, 
 let him pause before accepting them from any one. Let him utterly 
 refuse them except from beings that are enshrined in his heart of 
 hearts, and from whom no chance can divide him. It is the law in 
 Yarmouth that every herring hang by its own head. Except in cases 
 singularly wretched or singularly happy, that judicious principle I 
 think should also govern life." 
 
 A few days later he writes again: 
 
 "Irving advises me to stay in London; partly with a friendly feel- 
 ing, partly with a half -selfish one, for he would fain keep me near 
 him. Among all his followers there is none whose intercourse can 
 satisfy him. Any other than him it would go far to disgust. Great 
 
 1 This is like his "sluttish harlots" at Kinnaird. How did he know that his hinds 
 would be lazy? liut vehement language, which implied nothing but the impatience 
 and irritability of his own mind, was as characteristic of Carlyle as it was of Johnson.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 153 
 
 part of them are blockheads, a few are fools. There is no rightly 
 intellectual man among them. He speculates and speculates, and 
 would rather have one contradict him rationally than gape at him 
 with the vacant stare of children viewing the Grand Turk's palace 
 with his guards all alive ! He advises me, not knowing what he 
 says. He himself has the nerves of a buffalo, and forgets that I 
 haVe not. His philosophy with me is like a gill of ditch-water 
 thrown into the crater of Mount ./Etna. A million gallons of it 
 would avail me nothing. 
 
 ' ' On the whole, however, he is among the best fellows in London, 
 by far the best that I have met with. Thomas Campbell has a far 
 clearer judgment, infinitely more taste and refinement, but there is 
 no living well of thought or feeling in him. His head is a shop, not 
 a manufactory ; and for his heart, it is as dry as a Greenock kipper. 
 I saw him for the second time the other night. I viewed him more 
 clearly and in a kindlier light, but scarcely altered my opinion of 
 him. He is not so much a man as the editor of a magazine. His 
 life is that of an exotic. He exists in London, as most Scotchmen 
 do, like a shrub disrooted and stuck into a bottle of water. Poor 
 Campbell ! There were good things in him too, but fate has pressed 
 too heavy on him, or he has resisted it too weakly. His poetic vein 
 is failing, or has run out. He has a Glasgow wife, and their only 
 son is in a state of idiocy. I sympathized with him, I could have 
 loved him, but he has forgot the way to love. Procter here has set 
 up house on the strength of his writing faculties, with his wife, a 
 daughter of the Noble Lady. He is a good-natured man, lively and 
 ingenious, but essentially a small. Coleridge is sunk inextricably 
 in the depths of putrescent indolence. Southey and Wordsworth 
 have retired far from the din of this monstrous city ; so has Thomas 
 Moore. Whom have we left ? The dwarf Opium-eater, my critic 
 in the London Magazine, lives here in lodgings, with a wife and 
 children living, or starving, on the scanty produce of his scribble far 
 off in Westmoreland. He carries a laudanum bottle in his pocket, 
 
 and the venom of a wasp in his heart. A rascal ( ),who writes 
 
 much of the blackguardism in filackwood, has been frying him to 
 cinders on the gridiron of John Bull. Poor De Quincey! He had 
 twenty thousand pounds, and a liberal share of gifts from nat- 
 ure. Vanity and opium have brought him to the state of ' dog dis- 
 tract or monkey sick.' If I could find him, it would give me pleas- 
 ure to procure him one substantial beefsteak before he dies. Hazlitt 
 is writing his way through France and Italy. The gin-shops and 
 pawnbrokers bewail his absence. Leigh Hunt writes ' wishing caps ' 
 for the Examiner, and lives on the lightest of diets at Pisa. But 
 
 what shall I say of you, ye , and , and , and all the 
 
 spotted fry that 'report' and 'get up' for the 'public press,' that 
 earn money by writing calumnies, and spend it in punch and other 
 viler objects of debauchery ? Filthiest and basest of the children of 
 men ! My soul come not into your secrets ; mine honor be not 
 united unto you ! ' Good heavens !' I often inwardly exclaim, ' and 
 is this the literary world ?' This rascal rout, this dirty rabble, desti- 
 tute not only of high feeling and knowledge or intellect, but even of 
 common honesty ! The very best of them are ill-natured weaklings.
 
 154 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 They are not red-blooded men at all. They are only things for 
 writing articles. But I have done with them for once. In railing 
 at them let me not forget that if they are bad and worthless, I, as yet, 
 am nothing ; and that he who putteth on his harness should not 
 boast himself as he who putteth it off. Unhappy souls ! perhaps 
 they are more to be pitied than blamed. I do not hate them. I 
 would only that stone walls and iron bars were constantly between 
 us. 
 
 " Such is the literary world of London ; indisputably the poorest 
 part of its population at present." 
 
 While in this humor with English men of letters, Carlyle was sur- 
 prised and cheered by a letter from one of the same calling in an- 
 other country, the man whom above all others he most honored and 
 admired, Goethe himself. He had sent a copy of his translation of 
 " Meister " to Weimar, but no notice had been taken of it, and he had 
 ceased to expect any. " It was like a message from fairy -land," he 
 said. He could at first scarcely believe "that this was the real hand 
 and signature of that mysterious personage whose name had floated 
 through his fancy like a sort of spell since his boyhood, whose 
 thoughts had come to him in maturer years almost with the impres- 
 siveness of revelations." An account of this angel visitation, with a 
 copy of the letter itself, was forwarded to Mainhill : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Southampton Street : December 18. 
 
 "The other afternoon, as I was lying dozing in a brown-study 
 after dinner, a lord's lackey knocked at the door and presented me 
 with a little blue parcel, requiring for it a note of delivery. I 
 opened it, and found two pretty stitched little books, and a letter 
 from Goethe ! I copy it and send it for your edification. The patri- 
 archal style of it pleases me much :' 
 
 " 'My dearest Sir, If I did not acknowledge on the spot the arrival of yonr wel- 
 come present, it was because 1 was unwilling to send you an empty acknowledgment 
 merely, but I purposed to add some careful remarks on a work so honorable to me. 
 
 " ' My advanced years, however, burdened as they are with many indispensable du- 
 ties, have prevented me from comparing your translation at my leisure with the origi- 
 nal text a more difficult undertaking, perhaps, for me than for some third person 
 thoroughly familiar with German and English literature. Since, however, I have at 
 the present moment an opportunity, through the Lords Bentinck, of forwarding this 
 note safely to London, and at the same time of bringing about an acquaintance be- 
 tween yourself and the Lord B. which may be agreeable to both of you, I delay no 
 longer to thank you for the interest which you have taken in my literary works as 
 well as in the incidents of my life, and to entreat you earnestly to continue the same 
 interest for the future also. It may be that I shall yet hear much of you. I send 
 herewith a set of poems which you will scarcely have seen, but with which I venture 
 to hope that you will feel a certain sympathy. With the most sincere good wishes, 
 " ' Your most obedient, J. W. GOETHE.' '' 2 
 
 1 The translation is mine; Carlyle copied the letter as it was written. 
 a In Goethe's German: 
 
 " Wenn ich, mein werthestrr Horr. tlio glfieklicho Ankunfl Ihrer willkommpnon 
 Sendung nicht ungesaumt anzeigte, so war die Ursache dass ich nicht einen leeren
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 155 
 
 This is the first of several letters which Carlyle received from 
 Goethe ; the earliest token of the attention which he had command- 
 ed from the leader of modern literature, an attention which deepened 
 into regard and admiration when the ' ' Life of Schiller " reached 
 Goethe's hands. The acquaintance which was to prove mutually 
 interesting came, of course, to nothing. Carlyle heard no more of 
 the "Lord Bentinck." The momentary consequence which attached 
 to him as the correspondent of the poet-minister of the Duke of 
 "Weimar disappeared in England, where he seemed no more than an 
 insignificant, struggling individual, below the notice of the privileged 
 circles. 
 
 The annals of this year, so eventful in Carlyle's history, may close 
 with a letter to him from the poor farm-house in Annandale : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Mainhill : December 18, 1824. 
 
 "Dear Son, I take this opportunity to thank you for your unva- 
 rying kindness, though I fear it will hardly read. But never mind; 
 1 know to whom I am writing. It is a long time since we had a 
 sight of each other; nevertheless I am often with you in thought, 
 and I hope we shall meet at a throne of grace where there is free 
 access to all who come in faith. Tell me if thou readest a chapter 
 often. If not, begin; oh, do begin! How do you spend the Sab- 
 bath in that tumultuous city? Oh! remember to keep it holy; this 
 you will never repent. I think you will be saying, 'Hold, mother!' 
 but time is short and uncertain. Now, Tom, the best of boys thou 
 art to me ! Do not think I am melancholy, though I so speak. Be 
 not uneasy on my account. I have great reason to be thankful. I 
 am quite well, and happy too when I hear from London and Edin- 
 burgh. And pray do not let me want food : as your father says, I 
 look as if I would eat your letters. Write everything and soon I 
 look for one every fortnight till we meet. I grudge taking up the 
 sheet, so I bid thee good-night, and remain, 
 
 " Your affectionate mother, MARGARET CARLYLE." 
 
 P.S. by Alexander Carlyle: 
 
 " You are very wise, we seriously think, in determining to live in 
 
 Kmpfiingsrhein ausstcllen. sondern uher Ihre mir so ehrenvolle Arbeit auch irgend ein 
 gepruftcs Wort beyzufugen die Absicht hatte. 
 
 Moino hohen Jahre jedoch mil so vielen unabwendbaren Obliegenhciten immer- 
 fort beladcn, limderten niirh an oiner ruhigon Vergleichung Ihrer Bearbeitung mit 
 dem Originaltext, welches vielleicht fur mich einc selnverere Aufgabe seyn miichte, 
 als fur irgend einen dritten der dcutschcn und englischen Literatur grundlich Be- 
 frenndoten. Gegenw-irtig abcr, da ich cine Gelegenheit sehe durch die Herren Grafen 
 Bentinck gpgems'jiriiges Schroiben sichor nach London zu bringen. und zugleicu bei- 
 den Theilen eine atigenehme Uokanntschaft zu verschaflen, so versfiiime nicht ineiuen 
 Pauk fur Ihre so Inuige Theiliialimc an meinen literurischen Arbeiten. sowohl als an 
 di-n Sehicksalen meines Lebens. hierduruh truulich auszusprechen ; und Sie um Fort- 
 Hct/.uiif; ili-rselben auch fur die Zukunfl angelegentlich zu ersuchen. Vielleicht er- 
 fahre ich in der Folge noch manches von Ilinen. und ubcrsende zugleich mit dicsem 
 eine Reiho von Gedkhteu welcho schwcrlich zu Ihnen gekommcn sind, von denen ich 
 aber hoffen darf.ilu.ss sio Ihncu einigcs Intwsse abgewinueu werdon. Hit den auf- 
 richtigsten Wuuschen, Ergebeust, J. W. GOETHE."
 
 156 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the country, but how or where I do not pretend to say; perhaps in 
 some cottage with a grass park or cow attached to it for the nonce, 
 and our mother or Mag for house-keeper. Or what say you of farm- 
 ing (marrying, I dare not speak to you about at all)? There are 
 plenty of farms to let on all sides of the country. But tell me, are 
 the warm hearts of Mainhill changed ? or are they less anxious to 
 please? I guess not. Yet, after all, I do often think that you would 
 be as comfortable here as anywhere." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 A.D. 1825. JKS. 30. 
 
 GOETHE'S letter was more than a compliment. Goethe, who did 
 not throw away his words in unmeaning politenesses, had noticed 
 Carlyle; and notice was more welcome from such a source than if 
 it had come from ministers or kings. The master had spoken ap- 
 provingly. The disciple was encouraged and invigorated. He had 
 received an earnest that his intellectual career would not be a wholly 
 unfruitful one. Pleasant as it was, however, it did not help the 
 solution of the pressing problem, what was he immediately to do ? 
 The prospect of a farm in Scotland became more attractive the more 
 he thought of it. Freedom, fresh air, plain food, and the society of 
 healthy, pious people, unspoiled by the world and its contagion 
 with these life might be worth having and might be turned to noble 
 uses. He had reflected much on his engagement with Miss Welsh. 
 He had felt that perhaps he had done wrong in allowing her to 
 entangle herself with a person whose future was so uncertain, and 
 whose present schemes, even if realized successfully, would throw 
 her, if she married him, into a situation so unlike what she had an- 
 ticipated, so unlike the surroundings to which she had been accus- 
 tomed. In his vehement way he had offered to release her if she 
 wished it; and she had unhesitatingly refused. As little, however, 
 was her ambition gratified with the prospect of being mistress of a 
 Scotch farm. She had mocked at his proposal. She had pointed 
 out with serious truth his own utter unfitness for a farmer's occupa- 
 tion. She had jestingly told him that she had land of her own at 
 Craigenputtock. The tenant was leaving. If he was bent on try- 
 ing, let him try Craigenputtock. He took her jest in earnest. Why 
 should he not farm Craigenputtock? Why should not she, as she 
 was still willing to be his life companion, live with him there ? Her 
 father had been born in the old manor-house, and had intended to 
 end his days there. To himself the moorland life would be only a 
 continuance of the same happy mode of existence which he had 
 known at Mainhill. In such a household, and in the discharge of
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 157 
 
 the commonest duties, he had seen his mother become a very para- 
 gon of women. He did not understand, or he did not wish to un- 
 derstand, that a position which may be admirably suited to a person 
 who has known no other, might be ill-adapted to one who had been 
 bred in luxury and had never known a want uncared for. The 
 longer he reflected on it, the more desirable the plan of taking 
 Craigenputtock appeared to him to be. 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 " Pentonville : January 9, 1825. 
 
 "I trust that the same cheerful spirit of affection which breathes 
 in every line of your last charming letter still animates you, and dis- 
 poses you kindly towards me. I have somewhat to propose to you 
 which it may require all your love of me to make you look upon 
 with favor. If you are not the best woman in the world, it may 
 prove a sorry business for both of us. 
 
 "You bid me tell you how I have decided what I mean to do. 
 It is you that must decide. I will endeavor to explain to you what 
 I wish ; it must rest with you to say whether it can ever be attained. 
 You tell me you have land which needs improvement. Why not 
 work on that ? In one word, then, will you go with me ? Will you 
 be my own forever ? Say yes, and I embrace the project with my 
 whole heart. I send my brother Alick over to rent that Nithsdale 
 farm for me without delay; I proceed to it the moment I am freed 
 from my engagements here; I labor in arranging it, and fitting ev- 
 erything for your reception; and the instant it is ready I take you 
 home to my hearth, never more to part from me, whatever fate be- 
 tide us. 
 
 "I fear you think this scheme a baseless vision; and yet it is the 
 sober best among the many I have meditated the best for me, and 
 I think also, so far as I can judge of it, for yourself. If it take effect 
 and be well conducted, I look upon the recovery of my health and 
 equanimity, and with these, of regular profitable and natural habits 
 of activity, as things which are no longer doubtful. I have lost them 
 by departing from Nature ; I must find them by returning to her. A 
 stern experience has taught me this, and I am a fool if I dp not profit 
 by the lesson. Depend upon it, Jane, this literature which both of 
 us are so bent on pursuing will not constitute the sole nourishment 
 of any true human spirit. No truth has been forced upon me, after 
 more resistance, or with more invincible impressiveness, than this. 
 I feel it in myself. I see it daily in others. Literature is the wine 
 of life. It will not, cannot be its food. What is it that makes blue- 
 stockings of women, magazine hacks of men? They neglect house- 
 hold and social duties. They have no household and social enjoy- 
 ments. Life is no longer with them a verdant field, but a hortw 
 sicctis. They exist pent up in noisome streets, amid feverish excite- 
 ments. . They despise or overlook the common blessedness which 
 Providence has laid out for all his creatures, and try to substitute 
 for it a distilled quintessence prepared in the alembic of painters and 
 rhymers and sweet singers. What is the result? This ardent spirit 
 parches up their nature. They become discontented and despicable. 
 I. -8
 
 158 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 or wretched and dangerous. Byron and all strong souls go the lat- 
 ter way. Campbell and all the weak souls the former. ' Hinaus !' 
 as the Devil says to Faust. ' Hinaus ins freie Feld !' There is no 
 soul in these vapid 'articles' of yours. Away! be men before at- 
 tempting to be writers. 
 
 " You, too, are unhappy, and I see the reason. You have a deep, 
 earnest, and vehement spirit, and no earnest task has ever been as- 
 signed it. You despise and ridicule the meanness of the things 
 about you. To the things you honor you can only pay a fervent ad- 
 oration which issues in no practical effect. Oh that I saw you the 
 mistress of a house diffusing over human souls that loved you those 
 clear faculties of order, judgment, elegance, which you are now re- 
 duced to spend on pictures and portfolios ; blessing living hearts 
 with that enthusiastic love which you must now direct to the distant 
 and dimly seen. All this is in you. You have a heart and an intel- 
 lect and a resolute decision which might make you the model of 
 wives, however widely your thoughts and your experience have 
 hitherto wandered from that highest distinction of the noblest wom- 
 en. I, too, have wandered wide and far. Let us return ; let us re- 
 turn together. Let us learn through one another what it is to live. 
 Let us set our minds and habitudes in order, and grow under the 
 peaceful sunshine of nature, that whatever fruit or flowers have been 
 implanted in our spirits may ripen wholesomely and be distributed 
 in due season. What is genius but the last perfection of true man- 
 hood? the pure reflection of a spirit in union with itself, discharging 
 all common duties with more than common excellence; extracting 
 from the many-colored scenes of life in which it mingles the beauti- 
 fying principle which more or less pervades them all ? The rose in 
 its full-blown fragrance is the glory of the fields ; but there must be 
 a soil and stem and leaves, or there will be no rose. Your mind and 
 my own have in them many capabilities; but the first of all their du- 
 ties is to provide for their own regulation and contentment. If there 
 be an overplus to consecrate to higher ends it will not fail to show 
 itself. If there be none, it were better it should never attempt to 
 show itself. 
 
 "But I must leave these generalities and avoid romance, for it is 
 an earnest, practical affair we are engaged in, and requires sense 
 and regulation, not poetries and enthusiasm. 'Where, then,' you 
 ask me, ' are the means of realizing these results, of mastering the 
 difficulties and deficiencies that beset us both?' This, too, I have 
 considered; the black catalogue of impediments have passed again 
 and again in review before me, but on the whole I do not think them 
 insurmountable. If you will undertake to be my faithful helper, as 
 I will all my life be yours, .1 fear not to engage with them. 
 
 " The first, the lowest, but a most essential point, is that of funds. 
 On this matter I have still little to tell you that you do not know. I 
 feel in general that I have ordinary faculties in me, and an ordinary 
 degree of diligence in using them, and that thousands manage life 
 in comfort with even slenderer resources. In my present state my 
 income, though small, might to reasonable wishes be sufficient ; were 
 my health and faculties restored, it might become abundant. Shall 
 I confess to you this is a dilliculty which we are apt to overrate?
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 
 
 The essentials of even elegant comfort are not difficult to procure. 
 It is only vanity that is insatiable in consuming. To my taste clean- 
 liness and order are far beyond gilding and grandeur, which with- 
 out them is an abomination ; and for displays, for festivals, and par- 
 ties I believe you are as indisposed as myself. What is the use of 
 this same vanity? Where is the good of being its slaves? If thou 
 and I love one another, if we discharge our duties faithfully and 
 steadfastly, one laboring with honest, manful zeal to provide, the 
 other with noble wife-like prudence in dispensing, have we not done 
 all we can? Are we not acquitted at the bar of our own conscience? 
 And what is it to us whether this or that Squire or Bailie be richer 
 or poorer than we? 
 
 " Two laws I have laid down to myself that I must and will re- 
 cover health, without which to think or even to live is burdensome 
 or unprofitable; and that I will not degenerate into the wretched 
 thing which calls itself an author in our capitals, and scribbles for the 
 sake of lucre in the periodicals of the day. Thank Heaven, there 
 are other means of living. If there were not, I for one should beg 
 to be excused. ... On the whole I begin to entertain a certain de- 
 gree of contempt for the destiny which has so long persecuted me. 
 1 will be a man in spite of it. Yet it lies with you whether I shall be 
 a right man, or only a hard and bitter Stoic. What say you ? De- 
 cide for yourself and me. Consent if you dare trust me, and let us 
 live and die together. Yet fear not to deny me if your judgment so 
 determine. It will be a sharp pang that tears away from me forever 
 the hope which now for years has been the solace of my existence; 
 but better to endure it and all its consequences than to witness and to 
 cause the forfeit of your happiness. At times, I confess, when I hear 
 you speak of your gay cousins, and contrast with their brilliant equip- 
 ments my own simple exterior and scanty prospects, and humble, but 
 to me most dear and honorable-minded kinsmen, whom I were the 
 veriest dog if 1 ceased to love and venerate and cherish for their true 
 affection and the rugged sterling worth of their character when I 
 think of all this I could almost counsel you to cast me utterly away, 
 and to connect yourself with one whose friends and station are more 
 analogous to your own. But anon in some moment of self-love, I 
 say proudly there is a spirit in me which is worthy of this maiden, 
 which shall be worthy of her. I will teach her, I will guide her, I 
 will make her happy. Together we will share the joys and sorrows 
 of existence. 
 
 "Speak, then. . . . Think well of me, of yourself , of our circum- 
 stances, and determine Dare you trust me, dare you trust your fate 
 with me, as I trust mine with you ? Judge if I wait your answer 
 with impatience. I know you will not keep me waiting. Of course 
 it will be necessary to explain all things to your mother, and take her 
 serious advice respecting them. For your other friends, it is not 
 worth while consulting one of them. I know not that there is one 
 among them that would give you as disinterested advice as even I, 
 judging in my own cause. May God bless you and direct you. De- 
 cide as you will." 
 
 Miss Welsh, after having lost Irving, had consented to be Carlyle's
 
 160 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 wife as soon as he was in a fair position to marry, in the conviction 
 that she was connecting herself with a man who was destined to be- 
 come brilliantly distinguished, whom she honored for his character 
 and admired for his gifts, in whose society and in whose triumphs 
 she would find a compensation for the disappointment of her earlier 
 hopes. She was asked in this letter to be the mistress of a moorland 
 farming establishment. Had she felt towards Carlyle as she had felt 
 towards his friend, she would perhaps have encountered cheerfully 
 any lot which was to be shared with the object of a passionate affec- 
 tion. But the indispensable feeling was absent. She was invited to 
 relinquish her station in society, and resign comforts which habit had 
 made necessary to her, and she was apparently to sacrifice at the same 
 time the very expectations which had brought her to regard a mar- 
 riage with Carlyle as a possibility. She knew better than he what 
 was really implied in the situation which he offered her. She knew 
 that if farming on a Scotch moor was to be a successful enterprise, 
 it would not be by morning rides, metaphorical vituperation of " lazy 
 hinds, "and forenoons and evenings given up to poetry and philoso- 
 phy. Both he and she would have to work with all their might, 
 and with their own hands, with all their time and all their energy, to 
 the extinction of every higher ambition. Carlyle himself also she 
 knew to be entirely unfit for any such occupation. The privations 
 of it might be nothing to him, for he was used to them at home, but 
 he would have to cease to be himself before he could submit patient- 
 ly to a life of mechanical drudgery. She told him the truth with the 
 merciless precision which on certain occasions distinguished her: 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Haddington : January 13, 1825. 
 
 "I little thought that my joke about your farming Craigenputtock 
 was to be made the basis of such a serious and extraordinary project. 
 If you had seen the state of perplexity which your letter has thrown 
 me into, you would have practised any self-denial rather than have 
 written it. But there is no use in talking of what is done. Cosa 
 fatta IM capo. The thing to be considered now is what to do. 
 
 "You have sometimes asked me did I ever think ? For once in 
 my life at least I have thought myself into a vertigo, and without 
 coming to any positive conclusion. However, my mind, such as it 
 is, on the matter you have thus precipitately forced on my consid- 
 eration I will explain to you frankly and explicitly, as the happiness 
 of us both requires. I love you, and I should be the most ungrate- 
 ful and injudicious of mortals if I did not. But I am not in lore 
 with you ; that is to say, my love for you is not a passion which 
 overclouds my judgment and absorbs all my regards for myself and 
 others. It is a simple, honest, serene affection, made up of admira- 
 tion and sympathy, and better perhaps to found domestic enjoyment 
 on than any other. In short, it is a love which influences, does not 
 make, the destiny of a life.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 161 
 
 "Such temperate sentiments lend no false coloring, no 'rosy 
 light ' to your project. I see it such as it is, with all the arguments 
 for and against it. I see that my consent under existing circum- 
 stances would indeed secure to me the only fellowship and support 
 I have found in the world, and perhaps, too, shed some sunshine of 
 joy on your existence, which has hitherto been sullen and cheerless; 
 but, on the other hand, that it would involve you and myself in 
 numberless cares and difficulties, and expose me to petty tribulations 
 which I want fortitude to despise, and which, not despised, would 
 embitter the peace of us both. I do not wish for fortune more than 
 is sufficient for my wants my natural wants, and the artificial ones 
 which habit has rendered nearly as importunate as the others. But 
 I will not marry to live on less ; because, in that case, every incon- 
 venience I was subjected to would remind me of what I had quitted, 
 and the idea of a sacrifice should have no place in a voluntary union. 
 Neither have I any wish for grandeur ; the glittering baits of titles 
 and honors are only for children and fools. But I conceive it a 
 duty which every one owes to society, not to throw up that station 
 in it which Providence has assigned him, and, having this convic- 
 tion, I could not marry into a station inferior to my own with the 
 approval of my judgment, which alone could enable me to brave the 
 censures of my acquaintance. 
 
 ' ' And now let me ask you, have you any certain livelihood to 
 maintain me in the manner I have been used to live in ? any fixed 
 place in the rank of society I have been born and bred in ? No. 
 You have projects for attaining both, capabilities for attaining both, 
 and much more. But as yet you have not attained them. Lse the 
 noble gifts which God has given you. You have prudence though, 
 by-the-way, this last proceeding is no great proof of it. Devise then 
 how you may gain yourself a moderate but settled income. Think 
 of some more promising plan than farming the most barren spot in 
 the county of Dumfriesshire. What a thing that would be to be 
 sure ! You and I keeping house at Craigenputtock ! I would as 
 soon think of building myself a nest on the Bass rock. Nothing 
 but your ignorance of the spot saves you from the imputation of 
 insanity for admitting such a thought. Depend upon it you could 
 not exfst there a twelvemonth. For my part I could not spend a 
 month at it with an angel. Think of something else then. Apply 
 your industry to carry it into effect ; your talents, to gild over the 
 inequality of our births and then we will talk of marrying. If all 
 this were realized, I think I should have good-sense enough to abate 
 something of my romantic ideal, and to content myself with stop- 
 ping short on this side idolatry. At all events I will marry no one 
 (1-c. This is all the promise! can or will make. A positive en- 
 gagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and 
 ha/.ards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth. 
 It is either altogether useless or altogether miserable. If the parties 
 continue faithfully attached to each other, it is a mere ceremony. 
 If otherwise, it becomes a fetter, riveting them to wretchedness, 
 and only to be broken with disgrace. 
 
 " Such is the result of my deliberations on this very serious sub- 
 ject. You may approve of it or not, but you cannot either persuade
 
 162 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 me or convince me out of it. My decisions, when I do decide, are 
 unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Write instantly, 
 and tell me that you are content to leave the event to time and 
 destiny, and in the mean while to continue my friend and guardian, 
 which you have so long faithfully been, and nothing more. 
 
 "It would be more agreeable to etiquette, and perhaps also to 
 prudence, that I should adopt no middle course in an affair such as 
 this ; that I should not for another instant encourage an affection 
 which I may never reward, and a hope I may never fulfil, but cast 
 your heart away from me at once, since I cannot embrace the reso- 
 lution which would give me a right to it forever. This I would as- 
 suredly do if you were like the generality of lovers, or if it were still 
 in my power to be happy independent of your affection. But, as it 
 is, neither etiquette nor prudence can obtain this of me. If there is 
 any change to be made in the terms on which we have so long lived 
 with one another, it must be made by you, not by me." 
 
 An ordinary person who had ventured to make such a proposal as 
 Miss Welsh had declined, would have been supremely foolish if he 
 had supposed that it could be acceded to ; or supremely selfish if he 
 had possessed sufficient influence with the lady whom he was ad- 
 dressing to induce her to listen to it. But Carlyle was in every way 
 peculiar. Selfish he was, if it be selfishness to be ready to sacrifice 
 every person dependent on him, as completely as he sacrificed him- 
 self, to the aims to which he had resolved to devote his life and tal- 
 ents. But these objects were of so rare a nature, that the person 
 capable of pursuing and attaining them must be judged by a stand- 
 ard of his own. His rejoinder to this letter throws a light into the 
 inmost constitution of his character. He thanked Miss Welsh for 
 her candor ; he was not offended at her resoluteness ; but also, he 
 said, he must himself be resolute. She showed that she did not un- 
 derstand him. He was simply conscious that he possessed powers 
 for the use of which he was responsible, and he could not afford to 
 allow those powers to run to waste any longer : 
 
 To Miss WeM. 
 
 "Pentonville: January 20, 1825. 
 
 "It were easy for me to plant myself \ipon the pinnacle of my own 
 poor selfishness, and utter a number of things proceeding from a very 
 vulgar sort of pride. It were easy also to pour out over the affair a 
 copious effusion of sentimental cant. But to express in simplicity 
 the convictions of a man wishing at least with his whole heart to act 
 as becomes him, is not easy. Grant me a patient hearing, for I have 
 things to say that require earnest consideration from us both. 
 
 "In the first place, however, I must thank you heartily for your 
 candor. Your letter bears undoubted evidence within itself of being 
 a faithful copy of your feelings at the moment it was written ; and 
 this to me is an essential point. Your resoluteness does not offend 
 me ; on the contrary I applaud it. Woe to us both if we cannot be
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 163 
 
 resolute. The miserable man is he who halts between two opinions, 
 who would and would not ; who longs for the merchandise and will 
 not part with the price. He who has dared to look his destiny, how- 
 ever frightful, steadfastly in the face, to measure his strength with 
 its dime allies, and once for all to give up what he cannot reach, 
 has already ceased to be miserable. 
 
 " Your letter is dictated by good-sense and sincerity; but it shows 
 me that you have only an imperfect view of my present purposes 
 and situation ; there are several mistakes in it, expressed or implied. 
 It is a mistake to suppose that want of self-denial had any material 
 share in causing this proposal. I hope that I should at all times 
 rather suffer pain myself than transfer it to you ; but here was a 
 very different case. For these many months the voice of every per- 
 suasion in my conscience has been thundering to me as with the 
 Trump of the Archangel : Man ! thou art going to destruction. 
 Thy nights and days are spent in torment ; thy heart is wasting into 
 entire bitterness. Thou art making less of life than the dog that 
 sleeps upon thy hearth. Up, hapless mortal ! Up and rebuild thy 
 destiny if thou canst ! Up in the name of God, that God who sent 
 thee hither for other purposes than to wander to and fro, bearing 
 the fire of hell in an uuguilty bosom, to suffer in vain silence, and to 
 die without ever having lived ! Now, in exploring the chaotic struct- 
 ure of my fortunes, I find my affection for you intertwined with 
 every part of it ; connected with whatever is holiest in my feelings 
 or most imperative in my duties. It is necessary for me to under- 
 stand completely how this matter stands ; to investigate my own 
 wishes and powers in regard to it ; to know of you both what you 
 will do and what you will not do. These things once clearly set- 
 tled, our line of conduct will be clear also. It was in such a spirit 
 that I made this proposal ; not, as you suppose, grounded on a casual 
 jest of yours, or taken up in a moment of insane selfishness ; but de- 
 liberated with such knowledge as I had of it for months, and calmly 
 decided on, as with all its strangeness absolutely the best for both of 
 us. There was nothing in it of the love and cottage theory, which 
 none but very young novel-writers now employ their thoughts about. 
 Had 3 - ou accepted it I should not by any means have thought the 
 battle won. I should have hailed your assent, and the disposition 
 of mind it bespoke, with a deep but serious joy; with a solemn hope 
 as indicating the distinct possibility that two true hearts might be 
 united and made happy through each other ; might by their joint, 
 unwearied efforts be transplanted from the barren wilderness, where 
 both seemed out of place, into scenes of pure and wholesome activ- 
 ity, such as nature fitted both of them to enjoy and adorn. You 
 have rejected it, I think, wisely; with your actual purposes and 
 views we should both have been doubly wretched had you acted 
 otherwise. Your love of me is completely under the control of 
 judgment and subordinated to other principles of duty or expedi- 
 ency. Your happiness is not by any means irretrievably connected 
 with mine. Believe me, I am not hurt or angry. I merely wished 
 to know. It was only in brief moments of enthusiasm that I ever 
 looked for a different result. My plan was no wise one if it did not 
 include the chance of your denial as well as that of your assent.
 
 164 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " The maxims you proceed by are those of common and acknowl- 
 edged prudence; and I do not say that it is not wise in you to walk 
 exclusively by them. But for me, my case is peculiar ; and unless I 
 adopt other than common maxims, I look upon my ruin as already 
 sure. In fact, I cannot but perceive that the stations from which 
 we have looked at life, and formed our schemes of it, are in your 
 case and mine essentially different. You have a right to anticipate 
 excitement and enjoyment. The highest blessing I anticipate is 
 peace. You are bound to pay deference to the criticisms of others, 
 and expect their approbation; I, to pay comparatively little defer- 
 ence to their criticisms, and to overlook their contempt. This is 
 not strange; but it accounts for the wide discrepancy in our prin- 
 ciples and intentions, and demands the serious study of us both. 
 
 "In your opinion about sacrifices, felt to be such, I entirely agree; 
 but at the same time need I remind your warm and generous heart 
 that the love which will not make sacrifices to its object is no proper 
 love? Grounded in admiration and the feeling of enjoyment, it is a 
 fit love for a picture or a statue or a poem ; but for a living soul it 
 is not fit. Alas! without deep sacrifices on both sides, the possibili- 
 ty of our union is an empty dream. It remains for us both to de- 
 termine what extent of sacrifices it is worth. To me, I confess the 
 union with such a spirit as yours might be, is worth all price but 
 the sacrifice of those very principles which would enable me to de- 
 serve and enjoy it. 
 
 "Then why not make an effort, attain rank and wealth, and con- 
 fidently ask what is or might be so precious to me? Now, my best 
 friend, are you sure that you have ever formed to yourself a true 
 picture of me and my circumstances ; of a man who has spent seven 
 long years in incessant torture, till his heart and head are alike dark- 
 ened and blasted, and who sees no outlet from this state but in a to- 
 tal alteration of the purposes and exertions which brought it on? I 
 must not and cannot continue this sort of life; my patience with it 
 is utterly gone. It were better for me on the soberest calculation 
 to be dead than to continue it much longer. Even of my existing 
 capabilities I can make no regular or proper use till it is altered. 
 These capabilities, I have long seen with regret, are painted in your 
 kind fancy under far too favorable colors. I am not without a cer- 
 tain consciousness of the gifts that are in me ; but I should mistake 
 their nature widely, if I calculated they would ever guide me to wealth 
 and preferment, or even certainly to literary fame. As yet the best 
 of them is very immature; and even if they should come forth in 
 full strength, it must be to other and higher ends that they are di- 
 rected. How then? "Would I invite a generous spirit out of afflu- 
 ence and respectability to share with me obscurity and poverty? 
 Not so. In a few months I might be realizing from literature and 
 other kindred exertions the means of keeping poverty at a safe dis- 
 tance. The elements of real comfort, which in your vocabulary and 
 mine, I think, has much the same meaning, might be at my disposal ; 
 and farther than this I should think it injudicious to expect that ex- 
 ternal circumstances could materially assist me in the conduct of 
 life. The rest must depend upon myself and the regulation of my 
 own affections and habits.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 165 
 
 " Now this is what I would do were it in my power. I would ask 
 a generous spirit, one whose happiness depended on seeing me hap- 
 py, and whose temper and purposes were of kindred to my own 
 I would ask such a noble being to let us unite our resources not 
 her wealth and rank merely, for these were a small and unessential 
 fraction of the prayer, but her judgment, her patience, prudence, her 
 true affection, to mine; and let us try if by neglecting what was not 
 important, and striving with faithful and inseparable hearts after 
 what was, we could not rise above the miserable obstructions that 
 beset us both into regions of serene dignity, living as became us in 
 the sight of God, and all reasonable men, happier than millions of 
 our brethren, and each acknowledging with fervent gratitude that 
 to the other he and she owed all. You are such a generous spirit. 
 But your purposes and feelings are not such. Perhaps it is happier 
 for you that they are not. 
 
 "This, then, is an outline intended to be true of my unhappy fort- 
 unes and strange principles of action. Both, I fear, are equally re- 
 pulsive to you, yet the former was meant for a faithful picture of 
 what destiny has done to me, and the latter are positively the best 
 arms which my resources offer me to war with her. I have thought 
 of these things till my brain was like to crack. I do not pretend 
 that my conclusions are indubitable; I am still open to better light. 
 But this at present is the best I have. Do you also think of all 
 this? not in any spirit of anger, but in the spirit of love and noble- 
 mindedness which you have always shown me. If we must part, 
 let us part in tenderness and go forth upon our several paths lost to 
 the future, but in possession of the past. T. CARLYLE. " 
 
 The functions of a biographer are, like the functions of a Greek 
 chorus, occasionally at the important moments to throw in some 
 moral remarks which seem to fit the situation. The chorus after 
 such a letter would remark, perhaps, on the subtle forms of self- 
 deception to which the human heart is liable, of the momentous 
 nature of marriage, and how men and women plunge heedlessly 
 into the net, thinking only of the satisfaction of their own im- 
 mediate wishes. . . . Self-sacrifice it might say was a noble thing. 
 But a sacrifice which one person might properly make, the other 
 might have no reasonable right to ask or to allow. It would con- 
 clude, however, that the issues of human acts are in the hands of the 
 gods, and would hope for the best in fear and trembling. Carlyle 
 spoke of self-denial. The self-denial which he was prepared to make 
 was the devotion of his whole life to the pursuit and setting forth 
 of spiritual truth ; throwing aside every meaner ambition. But 
 apostles in St. Paul's opinion were better unwedded. The cause to 
 which they give themselves leaves them little leisure to care for the 
 things of their wives. To his mother Carlyle was so loving, 
 
 "That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 Visit her face too roughly." 
 8*
 
 166 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 This was love indeed love that is lost in its object, and thinks 
 first and only how to guard and foster it. His wife he would ex- 
 pect to rise to his own level of disinterested self-surrender, and be 
 content and happy in assisting him in the development of his own 
 destiny; and this was selfishness selfishness of a rare and elevated 
 kind, but selfishness still ; and it followed him throughout his mar- 
 ried life. He awoke only to the consciousness of what he had been, 
 when the knowledge would bring no more than unavailing remorse. 
 He admired Miss Welsh; he loved her in a certain sense; but, like 
 her, he was not in love. In a note-book written long after I find the 
 following curious entry in her hand : 
 
 "What the greatest philosopher of our day execrates loudest in 
 Thackeray's new novel finds indeed ' altogether false and damna- 
 ble in it ' is that love is represented as spreading itself over our 
 whole existence, and constituting the one grand interest of it ; where- 
 as love tJie thing people call love is confined to a very few years of 
 man's life ; to, in fact, a quite insignificant fraction of it, and even 
 then is but one thing to be attended to among many infinitely more 
 important things. Indeed, so far as he (Mr. C.) has seen into it, the 
 whole concern of love is such a beggarly futility, that in an heroic 
 age of the world nobody would be at the pains to think of it, much 
 less to open his mouth upon it." 
 
 A person who had known by experience the tiling called lone would 
 scarcely have addressed such a vehemently unfavorable opinion of 
 its nature to the woman who had been the object of his affection. 
 He admired Miss Welsh. Her mind and temper suited him. He 
 had allowed her image to intertwine itself with all his thoughts and 
 emotions ; but with love his feeling for her had nothing in common 
 but the name. There is not a hint anywhere that he had contem- 
 plated as a remote possibility the usual consequence of a marriage 
 a family of children. He thought of a wife as a companion to 
 himself who would make life easier and brighter to him. But this 
 was all, and the images in which he dressed out the workings of his 
 mind served only to hide their real character from himself. 
 
 Miss Welsh's explanation of the limits of her regard had made so 
 little impression that she found it necessary to be still more candid: 
 
 "You assure me [she replied in answer to this long letter] that 
 you are not hurt or angry. Does this imply that there is some 
 room for your bein< hurt or angry that I have done or said what 
 might have angered another less generous than you? I think so. 
 Now room for disappointment there may be, but surely there is none 
 for mortification or offence. I have refused my immediate assent 
 to your wishes because our mutual happiness seemed to require that 
 I should refuse it. But for the rest I have not slighted your wishes ; 
 on the contrary, I have expressed my willingness to fulfil them at 
 the expense of everything but what I deem essential to our happi-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 167 
 
 ness ; and, so far from undervaluing you, I have shown you, in de- 
 claring that I would marry no one else, not only that I esteem you 
 above all the men I have ever seen, but also that I am persuaded I 
 should esteem you above all the men I may ever see. What, then, 
 have you to be hurt or angry at? 
 
 ' ' The maxims I proceed by (you tell me) are those of common 
 and acknowledged prudence ; and you do not say it is unwise in me 
 to walk by them exclusively. The maxims I proceed by are the 
 convictions of my own judgment; and being so it would be unwise 
 in me not to proceed by them whether they are right or wrong. Yet 
 I am prudent, I fear, only because I am not strongly tempted to be 
 otherwise. My heart is capable (I feel it is) of a love to which no 
 deprivation would be a sacrifice a love which would overleap that 
 reverence for opinion with which education and weakness have be- 
 girt my sex, would bear down all the restraints which duty and expe- 
 diency might throw in the way, and carry every thought of my be- 
 ing impetuously along with it. But the all-perfect mortal who could 
 inspire me with a love so extravagant is nowhere to be found; exists 
 nowhere but in the romance of my own imagination. Perhaps it is 
 better for me as it is. A passion like the torrent in the violence of 
 its course might perhaps too, like the torrent, leave ruin and desola- 
 tion behind. In the mean time I should be mad to act as if from the 
 influence of such a passion while my affections are in a state* of per- 
 fect tranquillity. 1 have already explained to you the nature of my 
 love for you; that it is deep and calm, more like the quiet river 
 which refreshes and beautifies where it flows, than the torrent which 
 bears down and destroys: yet it is materially different from what 
 one feels for a statue or a picture. 
 
 " ' Then why not attain wealth and rank?' you say; and it is you 
 who have said it, not I. Wealth and rank, to be sure, have different 
 meanings, according to the views of different people; and what is 
 bare sufficiency and respectability in the vocabulary of a young lady 
 may be called wealth and rank in that of a philosopher. But it cer- 
 tainly was not wealth or rank according to my views which I re- 
 quired you to attain. I merely wish to see you earning a certain 
 livelihood, and exercising the profession of a gentleman. For the 
 rest, it is a matter of great indifference to me whether you have 
 hundreds or thousands a year ; whether you are a ' Mr. ' or a ' Duke. ' 
 To me it seems that my wishes in this respect are far from unrea- 
 sonable, even when your peculiar maxims and situation are taken 
 into account. 
 
 " Nor was it wholly with a view to improvement in your external 
 circumstances that I have made their fulfilment a condition to our 
 union, but also with a view to some improvement in my sentiments 
 towards you which might be brought about in the mean time. In 
 withholding this matter in my former letter I was guilty of a false 
 and ill-timed reserve. My tenderness for your feelings betrayed me 
 into an insincerity which" is not natural to me. I thought that the 
 most decided objection to your circumstances would pain you less 
 than the least objection to yourself. While, in truth, it is in some 
 measure grounded on both. I must be sincere, I find : at whatever cost. 
 
 "As I have said, then, in requiring you to better your fortune, I
 
 168 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 had some view to an improvement in my sentiments. I am not sure 
 that they are proper sentiments for a husband. They are proper 
 for a brother, a father, a guardian spirit ; but a husband, it seems to 
 me, should be dearer still. At the same time, from the change which 
 my sentiments towards you have already undergone during the pe- 
 riod of our acquaintance, I have little doubt but that in time I shall 
 be perfectly satisfied with them.- One loves you, as Madame de Stae"! 
 said, in proportion to the ideas and sentiments which are in one's 
 self. According as my mind enlarges, and my heart improves, I be- 
 come capable of comprehending the goodness and greatness which 
 are in you, and my affection for you increases. Not many months 
 ago I would have said it was impossible that I should ever be your 
 wife. At present I consider this the most probable destiny for me, 
 and in a year or two perhaps I shall consider it the only one. Die 
 Zeit ist noch nicht da ! 
 
 " From what I have said it is plain (to me at least) what ought to 
 be the line of our future conduct. Do you what you can to better 
 your external circumstances; always, however, subordinately to your 
 own principles, which I do not ask you to give up ; which I should 
 despise you for giving up, whether I approve them or no while I, 
 on the other hand, do what I can, subordinately to nothing, to better 
 myself; which I am persuaded is the surest way of bringing my 
 wishes to accord with yours; and let us leave the rest to fate." 
 
 Miss Welsh had been perfectly candid; and had she ended there, 
 Carlyle if persons in such situations were ever as wise as they 
 ought to be would have seen from this frank expression of her 
 feelings that a marriage with himself was not likely to be a happy 
 one for her. He had already dimly perceived that the essential con- 
 dition was absent. She did not love him as she felt that she could 
 love. As little, however, could she make up her mind to give him 
 up or consent that, as he had said, "they should go forth their sev- 
 eral ways." She refused to believe that he could mean it. "How 
 could I, "she said, "part from the only living soul that understands 
 me? I would marry you to-morrow rather; our parting would need 
 to be brought about by death or some dispensation of Providence. 
 Were you to will it, to part would no longer be bitter. The bitter- 
 ness would be in thinking you unworthy." 
 
 The serious tone changed ; the mockery at the Craigenputtock 
 farm project came back, with the strong sense playing merrily 
 beneath it: 
 
 "Will you be done with this wild scheme of yours? I tell you it 
 will not answer, and you must play Cincinnatus somewhere else. 
 With all your tolerance of places you would not find at Craigenput- 
 tock the requisites you require. The light of heaven to be sure is 
 not denied it; but for green grass? Beside a few cattle-fields there 
 is nothing except a waste prospect of heather and black peat moss. 
 Prune and delve will you ? In the first place there is nothing to 
 prune: and for delving, I set too high a value on your life to let you
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 169 
 
 engage in so perilous an enterprise. Were you to attempt such a 
 thing there are twenty chances to one that you would be swallowed 
 up in the moss, spade and all. In short, I presume, whatever may 
 be your farming talents, you are not an accomplished cattle-drover, 
 and nobody but a person of this sort could make the rent of the 
 place out of it. Were you to engage in the concern, we should all 
 be ruined together." 
 
 Part with Carlyle, however, she would not, unless he himself 
 wished it. 
 
 " I know not [she says in a following letter] how your spirit has 
 gained such a mastery over mine, in spite of my pride and stubborn- 
 ness. But so it is. Though self-willed as a mule with others, I am 
 tractable and submissive towards you. I hearken to your voice as 
 to the dictates of a second conscience hardly less awful to me than 
 that which nature has implanted in my breast. How comes it then 
 that you have this power over me ? for it is not the effect of your 
 genius and virtue merely. Sometimes in my serious moods I be- 
 lieve it is a charm with which my good angel has fortified my heart 
 against evil." 
 
 Thus matters drifted on to their consummation. The stern and 
 powerful sense of duty in these two remarkable persons held them 
 true through a long and trying life together to the course of elevated 
 action which they had both set before themselves. He never swerved 
 from the high aims to which he had resolved to devote himself. 
 She, by never-failing toil and watchfulness, alone made it possible 
 for him to accomplish the work which he achieved. But we reap 
 as we have sown. Those who seek for something more than happi- 
 ness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their por- 
 tion. She had the companionship of an extraordinary man. Her 
 character was braced by the contact with him, and through the in- 
 cessant self-denial which the determination that he should do his 
 very best inevitably exacted of her. But she was not happy. Long 
 years after, in the late evening of her laborious life, she said, "I 
 married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest 
 hopes ever imagined of him and I am miserable." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A.D. 1825. ^ET. 30. 
 
 BY the beginning of January the "Life of Schiller" was finished. 
 Carlyle lingered in London for a few weeks longer. The London 
 publishers had their eye on him, and made him various offers for 
 fresh translations from the German; for a life of Voltaire; for other
 
 170 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 literary biographies. For each or all of these they were ready to 
 give him, as they said, fair terms. He postponed his decision till 
 these terms could be agreed on. Meanwhile he was as usual moody 
 and discontented; in a hurry to be gone from London, and its "men 
 of letters," whom he liked less and less. 
 
 To John Cartyle. 
 
 "London : January 22, 1825. 
 
 "With regard to my own movements after the conclusion of this 
 most small of literary labors, there is yet nothing fixed determinately. 
 That I shall return to Scotland pretty soon is, I think, the only point 
 entirely decided. Here is nothing adequate to induce my contin- 
 uance. The people are stupid and noisy, and I live at the easy rate 
 of five-and-forty shillings per week! I say the people are stupid not 
 altogether unadvisedly. In point either of intellectual and moral 
 culture they are some degrees below even the inhabitants of the 
 ' modern Athens.' I have met no man of true head and heart among 
 them. Coleridge is a mass of richest spices putrefied into a dung- 
 hill. I never hear him tawlk without feeling ready to worship him, 
 and toss him in a blanket. Thomas Campbell is an Edinburgh 
 'small,' made still smaller by growth in a foreign soil. Irving is 
 enveloped with delusions and difficulties, wending somewhat down 
 hill, to what depths I know not ; and scarcely ever to be seen with- 
 out a host of the most stolid of all his Majesty's Christian people 
 sitting round him. I wonder often that he does not buy himself 
 a tar-barrel, and fairly light it under the Hatton Garden pulpit, and 
 thus once for all exfumo giving lucem, bid adieu the gross train-oil 
 
 concern altogether. The poor little . I often feel that were I 
 
 as one of these people, sitting in a whole body by the cheek of my 
 own wife, my feet upon my own hearth, I should feel distressed at 
 seeing myself so very poor in spirit. Literary men! The Devil in 
 his own good time take all such literary men. One sterling fellow 
 like Schiller, or even old Johnson, would take half a dozen such 
 creatures by the nape of the neck, between his finger and thumb, 
 and carry them forth to the nearest common sink. Save Allan 
 Cunningham, our honest Nithsdale peasant, there is not one man 
 among them. In short, it does not seem worth while to spend 
 five-and-forty shillings weekly for the privilege of being near such 
 penmen." 
 
 To live in London and become enrolled in the unillustrious fel- 
 lowship, Carlyle felt to be once for all impossible. But what was 
 to be the alternative? Miss Welsh had condemned the farming 
 project; but the opinion at Mainhill was not so unfavorable. If a 
 good farm could be found, his brother Alexander was ready to un- 
 dertake to set it going. His mother or a sister would manage the 
 house and dairy. To his father, who was experienced in such mat- 
 ters, that Tom should take to them as he had done appeared neither 
 wild nor unfeasible. He might, indeed, go back to Edinburgh and 
 take pupils again. Mr. Buller was prepared to send his son Arthur
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 171 
 
 to him, and go on with the 200?. a year. One of the Stracheys might 
 come, and there were hopes of others ; but Carlyle hated the drudg- 
 ery of teaching, and was longing for fresh air and freedom. 
 He had sent " Schiller " to his mother. 
 
 ' ' The point next to be considered [he wrote to her] is what shall 
 be done with the author of this mighty work? He is a deserving 
 youth, with a clear conscience, but a bad, bad stomach. What shall 
 be done with him ? After much consideration, I had resolved in the 
 first instance to come home. Irving wants a week of talk with me 
 before I go. By the time that is done I shall have settled my affairs 
 licre. taken leave of the good people, and be about ready to take 
 flight. I am not coming by sea, so take no thought of it. My last 
 voyage satisfied me with sailing; with regard to my subsequent pro- 
 ceedings there must be some consideration, but not an hour of loi- 
 tering. I have set out before my mind distinctly what I want: and 
 this, as Goethe says, is half the game. I will recover my health, 
 though all the books in the universe should go to smoke in the proc- 
 ess. I will be a whole man ; no longer a piping, pining wretch, 
 though I should knap stones by the way-side for a living. I had 
 some thoughts of setting up house at Edinburgh, and taking two 
 or three pupils whose education I might superintend at college. 
 But I already perceive this project will not suit my chief purpose; 
 I recur to the old plan of farming and living in the country. This 
 I really think might be made to do. What might hinder Alick and 
 me to take a farm and move to it with you and some other of the 
 younkers, furnishing up an apartment in the house for my writing 
 operations, and going on in our several vocations with all imagina- 
 ble energy ? You must take counsel with the whole senate on this 
 matter. I must have a house of my own (a bit haddin o' my ain 
 
 ), where I can enjoy quiet and free air, and have liberty to do 
 
 as I list ; and I see no scheme so likely in the actual state of matters 
 as this. Tell Alick to look about him on all sides for such a thing; 
 a farm with a comfortable house to live in, and at a rent which we 
 can front. I shall have 200?. in my pocket when I return, notwith- 
 standing the horrible expensiveness of this place ; and that, with 
 what we have already, ought to put us on some sort of footing. 
 Were we once begun I could write at a moderate rate without injur- 
 ing myself, and make a handsome enough thing of it within the 
 year. And for my health, with riding, gardening, and so forth, it 
 would to a certainty improve. Could I live without taking drugs 
 for three months, I should even now be perfectly well, But drench- 
 ing one's self with castor-oil and other abominations, how can one 
 be otherwise than weak and feckless? I must and will come out of 
 this despicable state; nor on the whole have I any great doubts about 
 succeeding. Often of late I have even begun to look upon my long 
 dismal seven years of pain as a sort of blessing in disguise. It has 
 kept me clear of many temptations to degrade myself ; and really, 
 when I look back on my former state of mind, I scarcely see how, 
 except by sickness or some most grinding calamity, I could have 
 been delivered out of it into the state proper for a man in this world. 
 Truly, as you say, the ways of that Being who guides our destiny
 
 172 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 are wonderful, and past finding out. Let us trust that for all of us 
 this will prove the best." 
 
 The start of "Schiller" in the trade was less favorable than had 
 been looked for, and the offers from the booksellers for future work, 
 when they came to be specified, were not satisfactory. Carlyle in 
 consequence formed an ill opinion of these poor gentlemen. 
 
 "The booksellers of the universe [he said] are bipeds of an erect 
 form and speak articulately; therefore they deserve the name of 
 men, and from me at least shall always get it. But for the rest, 
 their thoughts are redolent of ' solid pudding. ' They are as the 
 pack-horses of literature; which the author should direct with a hal- 
 ter and a goad, and remunerate with clover and split beans. Woe 
 to him if the process is reversed; if he, with a noose about his neck, 
 is tied to their unsightly tail, and made to plash and sprawl along 
 with them through every stank to which their love of provant leads 
 them. Better it were to be a downright hairy cuddy, and crop 
 thistles and gorse on any of the commons of this isle. " 
 
 He was more successful in making an arrangement with the pub- 
 lishers of "Wilhelm Meister" for farther translations. It was ar- 
 ranged that he should furnish them with selections from Goethe, 
 Tieck, Hoffmann, Jean Paul, and several others, enough to form the 
 considerable book which appeared in the following year, in four 
 volumes, as specimens of German romance. With this work defi- 
 nitely in prospect, which he felt that he could execute with ease as 
 a mechanical task, Carlyle left London at the beginning of March, 
 and left it with dry eyes. He regretted nothing in it but Irving; 
 and Irving having taken now to interpretation of prophecy, and 
 falling daily into yet wilder speculations, was almost lost to him. 
 Their roads had long been divergent Irving straying into the land 
 of dreams, Carlyle into the hard region of unattractive truth, which 
 as yet presented itself to him in its sternest form. The distance 
 was becoming too wide for intimacy, although their affection for 
 each other, fed on recollections of what had been, never failed either 
 of them. Carlyle went down to Scotland, staying a day or two at 
 Birmingham; and another at Manchester to see an old school -fellow. 
 When the coach brought him to Ecclefechan he found waiting for 
 him his little sister Jane, the poetess, who had been daily watching 
 for his arrival. ' ' Her bonny little blush, " he wrote long after, ' ' and 
 radiancy of look when I let down the window and suddenly dis- 
 closed myself, are still present to me." 
 
 His relation with his family was always beautiful. They had 
 been busy for him in his absence, and had already secured what he 
 was longing after. Two miles from Mainhill, on the brow of a hill, 
 on the right as you look towards the Solway, stands an old ruined
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 173 
 
 building, with uncertain traditions attached to it, called the Tower 
 of Repentance. Some singular story lies hidden in the name, but 
 authentic record there is none. The Tower only remains visible far 
 away from the high slopes which rise above Ecclefechan. Below 
 the Tower is the farm-house of Hoddam Hill, with a few acres of 
 tolerable land attached to it. The proprietor, General Sharpe, was 
 the landlord of whom the Carlyles held Mainhill. It had been oc- 
 cupied by General Sharpe's factor; but the factor wishing to leave, 
 they had taken it at the moderate rent of 1001. a year for "Tom," 
 and Alick was already busy putting in the crops, and the mother and 
 sisters preparing the house to receive him. They would have made 
 a home for him among themselves, and all from eldest to youngest 
 would have done everything that affection could prompt to make 
 him happy. But the narrow space, the early hours, the noises in- 
 separable from the active work of a busy household, above all, the 
 necessity of accommodating himself to the habits of a large family, 
 were among the evils which he reckoned that he must avoid. He 
 required a home of his own, where he could be master of everything 
 about him, and sit or move, sleep or rise, eat or fast, as he pleased, 
 with no established order of things to interfere with him. Thus 
 Hoddam Hill was taken for him, and there he prepared to settle 
 himself. 
 
 "Tliis morning [he wrote to Miss "Welsh from Mainhill on March 
 23] they woke me with the tumult of loading carts with apparatus 
 for lloddam, a farm of which I, or brother Alick for me, am actual- 
 ly tenant. Think of this and reverence my savoir faire. I have 
 been to see the place, and I like it well so far as I am interested in it. 
 There is a good house where I may establish myself in comfortable 
 quarters. The views from it are superb. There are hard smooth 
 roads to gallop on towards any point of the compass, and ample 
 space to dig and prune under the pure canopy of a wholesome sky. 
 The ancient Tower of Repentance stands on a corner of the farm, a 
 fit memorial for reflecting sinners. My mother and two little sisters 
 go with us at Whitsunday we expect them to manage well. Here, 
 then, will I establish my home till I have conquered the fiend that 
 harasses me, and afterwards my place of retreat till some more 
 suitable one shall come within my reach." 
 
 Miss Welsh had promised that as soon as he was settled she would 
 pay him and his mother a visit at Hoddam, that she might become 
 acquainted with her future relations, and see with her eyes the kind 
 of home which he was inviting her to share with him. His own 
 imagination had made it into fairy -land. 
 
 "I will show you [he wrote] Kirkconnell church-yard and Fair 
 Helen's grave. I will take you to the top of Burnswark and wan- 
 der with you up and clown the woods and lanes and moors. Earth, 
 sea, and air are open to us here as well as anywhere. The water of
 
 174 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Milk' was flowing through its simple valley as early as the brook 
 Siloa, and poor Repentance Hill is as old as Caucasus itself. There 
 is a majesty and mystery in Nature, take her as you will. The es- 
 sence of all poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every 
 province of her empire. Is she not immovable, eternal and immense 
 in Annandale as she is in Chamouni? The chambers of the East are 
 opened in every land, and the sun comes forth to sow the earth with 
 orient pearl. Night, the ancient mother, follows him with her dia- 
 dem of stars ; and Arcturus and Orion call me into the Infinitudes 
 of space as they called the Druid priest or the shepherd of Chaldea. 
 Bright creatures ! how they gleam like spirits through the shadows 
 of innumerable ages from their thrones in the boundless depths of 
 heaven. 
 
 'Who ever gazed upon them shining, 
 And turned to earth without repining, 
 Nor wished for wings to fly away 
 To mix with their ethereal ray ?' " 
 
 The calm grace and even loveliness of this passage goes farther 
 than all his arguments to justify Carlyle's longing for a country 
 home among his own people. It was already telling on the inmost 
 fibres of his nature, and soothing into sleep the unquiet spirits that 
 tormented him. 
 
 I avoid as far as possible quoting passages from the " Reminis- 
 cences," preferring the contemporary record of his letters which 
 were written at the time ; and because what is already there related 
 does not need repeating. But in this year, when he was living 
 among his own people, the letters are wanting, and one brief extract 
 summing up the effects and experiences of the life at Hoddam may 
 here be permitted : 
 
 "Hoddam Hill was a neat compact little farm, rent 100?., which 
 my father had leased for me, on which was a prettyish little cottage 
 for dwelling-house ; and from the window such a view (fifty miles 
 in radius from beyond Tyndale to beyond St. Bees, Solway Firth 
 and all the fells to Ingleborough inclusive) as Britain or the world 
 could hardly have matched. Here the ploughing, etc. , was already 
 in progress, which I often rode across to see. Here I established my- 
 self, 8 set up my books and bits of implements, and took to doing 
 German romance as my daily work ten pages daily my stint, which 
 I faithfully accomplished, barring some rare accidents. Brother 
 Alick was my practical farmer ; my ever kind and beloved mother 
 with one of the little girls was generally there. Brother John too, 
 oftenest, who had just taken his degree these with a little man and 
 ditto maid were our establishment. . . . This year has a rustic dig- 
 nity and beauty to me, and lies now like a not ignoble russet-coated 
 idyl in my memory ; one of the quietest on the whole, and, perhaps, 
 the most triumphantly important of my life. I lived very silent, 
 diligent, had long solitary rides on my wild Irish horse Larry, good 
 
 i One of the small tributaries of the Annan. 2 May 26, 1825.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 175 
 
 for the dietetic part. My meditating?, musings, and reflections were 
 continual ; my thoughts went wandering or travelling through eter- 
 nity, through time and space so far as poor I had scanned or known, 
 and were now to my infinite solacement coming back with tidings 
 to me. This year I found that I had conquered all my scepticisms, 
 agonizing doublings, fearful wrestlings with the foul, vile, and soul- 
 murdering mud-gods of my epoch ; had escaped as from a worse 
 than Tartarus, with all its Phlegethons and Stygian quagmires, and 
 was emerging free in spirit into the eternal blue of ether, where, 
 blessed be Heaven, I have, for the spiritual part, ever since lived, 
 looking down upon the welterings of my poor fellow-creatures in 
 such multitudes and millions still stuck in that fatal element, and 
 have had no concern whatever in their Puseyisms, ritualisms, meta- 
 physical controversies and cobwebberies, and no feeling of my own 
 except honest silent pity for the serious or religious part of them, 
 and occasional indignation for the poor world's sake at the frivolous, 
 secular, and impious part with their universal suffrages, their nigger 
 emancipations, sluggard and scoundrel protection societies, and un- 
 exampled prosperities for the time being. What my pious joy and 
 gratitude then was, let the pious soul figure. In a fine and veritable 
 sense, I, poor, obscure, without outlook, almost without worldly 
 hope, had become independent of the world. What was death itself 
 from the world to what I had come through? I understood well 
 what the old Christian people meant by conversion by God's infi- 
 nite mercy to them. I had in effect gained an immense victory, and 
 for a number of years, in spite of nerves and chagrins, had a con- 
 stant inward happiness that was quite ro3 T al and supreme, in which 
 all temporal evil was transient and insignificant, and which essen- 
 tially remains with me still, though far oftener eclipsed, and lying 
 deeper down than then. Once more, thank Heaven for its highest 
 gift. I then felt, and still feel, endlessly indebted to Goethe in the 
 business. He in his fashion, I perceived, had travelled the steep 
 rocky road before me the first of the moderns. Bodily health it- 
 self seemed improving. Bodily health was all I had really lost in 
 the grand spiritual battle now gained ; and that too I may have 
 hoped would gradually return altogether which it never did, and 
 was far enough from doing. Meanwhile my thoughts were very 
 peaceable, full of pity and humanity as they had never been before. 
 Nowhere can I recollect of myself such pious musings, communings 
 silent and spontaneous with fact and nature, as in those poor Annan- 
 dale localities. The sound of the kirk-bell once or twice on Sunday 
 mornings (from Hoddam kirk, about a mile on the plains below me) 
 was strangely touching, like the departing voice of eighteen hun- 
 dred years." 1 
 
 The industry which Carlyle describes did not show itself im- 
 mediately on his settlement at Hoddam. The excitement of the 
 winter mouths had left him exhausted; and for the first few weeks 
 at least he was recovering himself in an idleness which showed 
 
 > "Reminiscences," vol. i. p. 286 et seq.
 
 176 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 itself in the improvement of his humor. In June he wrote to Miss 
 "Welsh: 
 
 "I am gradually and steadily gathering health, and for my occu- 
 pations they amount to zero. It is many a weary year since I have 
 been so idle or so happy. I read Richter and Jacobi ; I ride and 
 hoe cabbages, and, like Basil Montagu, am 'a lover of all quiet 
 things.' Sometimes something in the shape of conscience says to 
 me, ' You will please to observe, Mr. Tummas, that time is flying 
 fast away, and you are poor and ignorant and unknown, and verg- 
 ing towards nine-and-twenty. 1 What is to become of you in the 
 long-run, Mr. Tummas? Are you not partly of opinion that you 
 are an ass? The world is running past you. You are out of 'the 
 battle altogether, my pretty sir; no promotion, knowledge, money, 
 glory!' To which I answer, 'And what the devil is the matter? 
 What have knowledge, money, glory, done for me hitherto? Time, 
 you say, is flying. Let it fly; twice as fast if it likes.' I hope this 
 humor will not be my final one. It is rather a holy time a pax Dei, 
 which exhausted Nature has conquered for herself from all the fiends 
 that assaulted and beset her. As strength returns, the battle will 
 again commence; yet never I trust with such fateful eagerness as 
 of old. I see the arena of my life lying round me desolate and quiet 
 as the ashes of Mount ^Etna. Flowers and verdure will again spring 
 over its surface. But I know that fire is still beneath it, and that it, 
 or I, have no foundation or endurance. Oh human life! Oh soul 
 of man! But my paper is concluded." 
 
 Carlyle could not long be idle. The weariness passed off. He 
 took up his translating work, and went on with it as he has related. 
 An accident meanwhile precipitated the relations between himself 
 and Miss Welsh, which had seemed likely to be long protracted, 
 and, after threatening to separate them forever, threw them more 
 completely one upon the other. 
 
 When Irving first settled in London he had opened the secrets of 
 his heart to a certain lady with whom he was very intimately ac- 
 quainted. He had told her of his love for his old pupil, and she 
 had drawn from him that the love had been returned. She had 
 seen Irving sacrifice himself to duty, and she had heard that his res- 
 olution had been sustained by the person to whom the surrender of 
 their mutual hopes had been as bitter as to himself. The lady was 
 romantic, and had become profoundly interested. Flowing over 
 with sympathy, she had herself commenced a correspondence with 
 Haddington. To Carlyle she wrote occasionally, because she really 
 admired him. To Miss Welsh she introduced herself as one who 
 was eager for her confidence, who was prepared to love her for the 
 many excellences which she knew her to possess, and to administer 
 balm to the wounds of her heart. 
 
 i Thirty: he was born December 4, 1795.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 177 
 
 Miss "Welsh did not respond very cordially to this effusive invita- 
 tion. It was not her habit to seek for sympathy from strangers ; 
 but she replied in a letter which her new friend found extremely 
 beautiful, and which stirred her interest still deeper. The lady 
 imagined that her young correspondent was still pining in secret 
 for her lost lover, and she was tempted to approach closer to the 
 subject which had aroused her sympathies. She thought it would 
 be well slightly to disparage Irving. She painted. him as a person 
 whose inconstancy did not deserve a prolonged and hopeless affec- 
 tion. She too had sought to find in him the dearest of friends; but 
 he had other interests and other ambitions, and any woman who 
 concentrated her heart upon him would be disappointed in the re- 
 turn which she might meet with. 
 
 The lady's motive was admirable. She thought that she could 
 assist in reconciling Miss Welsh to her disappointment. In perfect 
 innocence she wrote confidentially to Carlyle on the same subject. 
 She regarded him simply as the intimate friend both of Miss Welsh 
 and Irving. She assumed that he was acquainted with their secret 
 history. She spoke of the affection which had existed between them 
 as still unextinguished on either side. For the sake of both of them 
 she wished that something might be done to put an end to idle re- 
 grets and vain imaginings. Nothing she thought could contribute 
 more to disenchant Miss Welsh than a visit to herself in London, 
 where she could see Irving as he was in his present surroundings. 1 
 
 Miss Welsh had for two years never mentioned Irving to Carlyle 
 except bitterly and contemptuously ; so bitterly indeed that he had 
 often been obliged to remonstrate. Had he been less single-minded, 
 a tone so marked and acid might have roused his suspicions. But 
 that Irving and she had been more than friends, if he had ever heard 
 a hint of it, had passed out of his mind. Even the lady's letter fail- 
 ed to startle him. He mentioned merely, when he next wrote to her, 
 that the writer labored under some strange delusion about her secret 
 history, and had told him in a letter full of eloquence that her heart 
 was with Irving in London. 
 
 Miss Welsh felt that she must at least satisfy her ecstatic acquaint- 
 ance that she was not pining for another woman's husband. She 
 was even more explicit. She had made up her mind to marry Car- 
 lyle. She told her intrusive correspondent so in plain words, desir- 
 ing her only to keep her secret. The lady was thunder-struck. In 
 ordinary life she was high-flown, and by those who did not know 
 
 1 No part of this language is the lady's own. The substance of her letters was re- 
 pcatod in the correspondence which followed between Carlyle and Miss Welsh. I have 
 alluded to the subject only because Mrs. Carlyle said afterwards that but for the un- 
 conscious action of a comparative stranger her engagement with Carlylo would proba- 
 bly never have been carried out.
 
 178 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 her might have been thought affected and unreal; but on occasions 
 really serious she could feel and write like a wise woman. She 
 knew that Miss Welsh could not love Carlyle. The motive could 
 only be a generous hope of making life dearer, and want of health 
 more endurable, to an honest and excellent man, while she might be 
 seeking blindly to fill a void which was aching in her own heart. 
 She required Miss Welsh, she moet solemnly adjured her, to examine 
 herself, and not allow one who had known much disappointment 
 and many sorrows to discover by a comparison of his own feelings 
 with hers that she had come to him with half a heart, and had mis- 
 taken compassion and the self-satisfaction of a generous act for a 
 sentiment which could alone sustain her in a struggle through life. 
 Supposing accident should set Irving free, supposing his love to have 
 been indestructible, and to have been surrendered only in obedience 
 to duty, and supposing him, not knowing of this new engagement, 
 to come back and claim the heart from which an adverse fate had 
 separated him, what in such a case would her feeling be ? If she 
 could honestly say that she would still prefer Carlyle, then let her 
 marry him, and the sooner the better. If, on the other hand; she 
 was obliged to confess to herself that she could still find happiness 
 where she had hoped to find it, Irving might still be lost to her; but 
 in such a condition of mind she had no right to marry any one else. 
 
 With characteristic integrity Miss Welsh, on receiving this letter, 
 instantly enclosed it to Carlyle. She had been under no obligation, 
 at least until their marriage had been definitively determined on, to 
 inform him of the extent of her attachment to Irving. But sincere 
 as she was to a fault in the ordinary occasions of life, she had in this 
 matter not only kept back the truth, but had purposely misled Car- 
 lyle as to the nature of her feelings. She felt that she must make 
 a full confession. She had deceived him wilfully deceived him. 
 She had even told him that she had never cared for Irving. "It 
 was false," she said. She had loved him once passionately loved 
 him. For this she might be forgiven. "If she had shown weak- 
 ness in loving a man whom she knew to be engaged to another, she 
 had made amends in persuading him to marry the other, and save 
 his honor from reproach." But she had disguised her real feelings, 
 and for this she had no excuse. She who had felt herself Carlyle's 
 superior in their late controversy, and had been able to rebuke him 
 for selfishness, felt herself degraded and humbled in his eyes. If he 
 chose to cast her off, she said that she could not say he was unjust; 
 but her pride was broken ; and very naturally, very touchingly, she 
 added that he had never been so dear to her as at that moment when 
 she was in danger of losing his affection and, what was still more 
 precious to her, his respect. 
 
 If Carlyle had been made of common stuff, so unexpected a reve-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 179 
 
 lation might have tried his vanity. The actual effect \vas to awa- 
 ken in him a sense of his own unworthiness. He perceived that 
 Miss Welsh was probably accepting him only out of the motives 
 which Mrs. Montagu suggested. His infirmities, mental and bod- 
 ily, might make him an unfit companion for her, or indeed for any 
 woman. It would be better for her once for all to give him up. 
 He knew, he said, that he could never make her happy. They 
 might suffer at parting, but they would have obeyed their reason, 
 and time would deaden the pain. No affection was unalterable or 
 eternal. Men themselves, with all their passions, sunk to dust and 
 were consumed. He must imitate her sincerity. He said (and he 
 spoke with perfect truth) that there was a strange, dark humor in 
 him over which he had no control. If she thought they were "blue 
 devils, weak querulous wailings of a mind distempered," she would 
 only show that she did not understand him. In a country town 
 she had seen nothing of life, and had grasped at the shadows that 
 passed by her. First, the rude, smoky fire of Edward Irving seemed 
 to her a star from heaven ; next, the quivering ignis fatuus of the 
 soul that dwelt in himself. The world had a thousand noble hearts 
 that she did not dream of. What was he, and what was his father's 
 house, that she should sacrifice herself for him? 
 
 It was not in nature it was not at least in Miss Welsh's nature 
 that at such a time and under such circumstances she should re- 
 consider her resolution. She was staying with her grandfather at 
 Templand when these letters were interchanged. She determined 
 to use the opportunity to pay the Carlyles her promised visit, see 
 him iu his owu home and his own circle, and there face to face ex- 
 plain all the past and form some scheme for the immediate future. 
 Like the lady in London, she felt that if the marriage was to be, or 
 rather since the marriage was to be, the sooner it was over now the 
 better for every one. Carlyle was to have met her on the road, and 
 was waiting with horses ; but there had been a mistake. She was 
 dropped by the coach the next morning at Kelhead Kilns, from 
 which she sent him a little characteristic note : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Kelhead Kilns : Friday, September 3, 1825. 
 
 "Good-morning, Sir. I am not at all to blame for your disap- 
 pointment last night. The fault was partly your own, and still 
 more the landlady's of the Commercial Inn, as I shall presently 
 demonstrate to you viva voce. In the mean time I have billeted my- 
 self in a snug little house by the way-side, where I purpose remain- 
 ing with all imaginable patience till you can make it convenient to 
 come and fetch me, being afraid to proceed directly to Hoddam Hill 
 in case so sudden an apparition should throw the whole family into 
 hysterics. If the pony has any prior engagement, never mind. I
 
 180 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 can make a shift to walk two miles in pleasant company. Any 
 way, pray make all possible despatch, in case the owner of these 
 premises should think I intend to make a regular settlement in 
 them. Yours, JANE. " 
 
 The great secret, which had been known from the first to Mrs. 
 Carlyle and suspected by the rest, was now the open property of 
 the family ; and all, old and young, with mixed feelings of delight 
 and anxiety, were looking forward to the appearance of the lady 
 who was soon to belong to them. 
 
 "She stayed with us above a week [Carlyle writes], happy, as 
 was very evident, and making happy. Her demeanor among us 
 I could define as unsurpassable, spontaneously perfect. From the 
 first moment all embarrassment, even my mother's, as tremulous 
 and anxious as she naturally was, fled away without return. Every- 
 body felt the all-pervading simple grace, the perfect truth and per- 
 fect trustfulness of that beautiful, cheerful, intelligent, and sprightly 
 creature, and everybody was put at his ease. The questionable visit 
 was a clear success. She and I went riding about, the weather dry 
 and gray, nothing ever going wrong with us ; my guidance taken 
 as beyond criticism ; she ready for any pace, rapid or slow, melo- 
 dious talk never wanting. Of course she went to Mainhill, and 
 made complete acquaintance with my father (whom she much es- 
 teemed and even admired, now and henceforth a reciprocal feeling, 
 strange enough), and with my two elder sisters, Margaret and Mary, 
 who now officially kept house with my father there. On the whole, 
 she came to know us all, saw face to face us and the rugged peas- 
 ant element and way of life we had; and was not afraid of it, but 
 recognized, like her noble self, what of intrinsic worth it might 
 have, what of real human dignity. She charmed all hearts, and 
 was herself visibly glad and happy, right loath to end these halcyon 
 days, eight or perhaps nine the utmost appointed sum of- them." 
 
 Two little anecdotes she used to tell of this visit, showing that 
 under peasant's dresses there was in the Carlyles the essential sense 
 of delicate high breeding. She was to use the girls' room at Main- 
 hill while there; and it was rude enough in its equipments as they 
 lived in it. Margaret Carlyle, doing her little best, had spread on 
 the deal table for a cover a precious new shawl which some friend 
 had given her. More remarkable was her reception by the father. 
 When she appeared he was in his rough dress, called in from his 
 farm work on the occasion. The rest of the family kissed her. 
 The old man to her surprise drew back, and soon left the room. 
 In a few minutes he came back again, fresh shaved and washed, 
 and in his Sunday clothes. "Now," he said, "if Miss Welsh al- 
 lows it, I am in a condition to kiss her too. " When she left Hod- 
 dam, Carlyle attended her back to Dumfries. 
 
 "As I rode with her [he says], she did not attempt to conceal her 
 sorrow, and indeed our prospect ahead was cloudy enough. I could
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 181 
 
 only say ' Esperons, esperons.' To her the Haddington element had 
 grown dreary and unfruitful ; no geniality of life possible there, and 
 I doubt not many paltry frets and contradictions. We left our 
 horses at the Commercial Inn ; I walked with her, not in gay mood 
 either, to her grandmother's threshold, and there had to say farewell. 
 In my whole life I can recollect no week so like a Sabbath as that 
 had been to me clear, peaceful, mournfully beautiful, and as if 
 sacred." 
 
 A few days after she was gone Carlyle wrote the following entry 
 in his most intermittent journal : 
 
 " Hoddam Hill, September 21, 1825. A hiatus valde deflendus. 
 Since the last line was written, what a wandering to and fro! how 
 many sad vicissitudes of despicable suffering and inaction have I 
 undergone! This little book and the desk that carries it have passed 
 a summer and winter in London since I last opened it ; and I, their 
 foolish owner, have roamed about the brick-built Babylon, the sooty 
 Brummagem, and Paris, the Vanity Fair of our modern world. 
 My mood of mind is changed. Is it improved? Weiss nicht. This 
 stagnation is not peace; or is it the peace of Galgacus's Romans: 
 'Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.' How difficult it is to 
 free one's mind from cant ! How very seldom are the principles we 
 act on clear to our own reason ! Of the great nostrums, ' forgetful- 
 ness of self and 'humbling of vanity,' it were better therefore to say 
 nothing. In my speech concerning them I overcharge the impres- 
 sion they have made on me, for my conscience, like my sense of 
 pain and pleasure, has grown dull, and I secretly desire to compensate 
 for laxity of feeling by intenseness of describing. How much of these 
 great nostrums is the product of necessity? Am I like a sorry hack, 
 content to feed on heather while rich clover seems to lie around it 
 at a little distance, because in struggling to break the tether it has 
 almost hanged itself? Oh that I could go out of the body to phi- 
 losophize! that I could ever feel as of old the glory and magnifi- 
 cence of things, till my own little Me (mein kleines Ich) was swal- 
 lowed up and lost in them. (Partly cant!) But I cannot, I can- 
 not. Shall I ever more? Oott weiss. At present I am but an ab- 
 gerissenes Olied, a limb torn off from the family of man, excluded 
 from acting, with pain for my companion, and hope, that comes to 
 all, rarely visiting me, and, what is stranger, rarely desired with ve- 
 hemence. Unhappy man, in whom the body has gained the mastery 
 over the soul! Inverse sensualist, not drawn into the rank of beasts 
 by pleasure, but. driven into it by pain! Hush! hush! Perhaps 
 this u the truce which weary Nature has conquered for herself to 
 re-collect her scattered strength. Perhaps, like an eagle (or a goose) 
 she will 'renew her mighty youth' and fly against the sun ; or at 
 least fish haddocks with equanimity, like other birds of similar feath- 
 er, and no more lie among the pots, winged, maimed, and plucked, 
 doing nothing but chirp like a chicken in the croup for the livelong 
 day. ' Jook and let the law gae by, ' my pretty sir. When this 
 solitude becomes intolerable to you it will be time enough to quit 
 it for the dreary blank which society and the bitterest activity have 
 I.-9
 
 182 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 hitherto afforded you. You deserve considerable pity, Mr. C., and 
 likewise considerable contempt. Heaven be your comforter, my 
 worthy sir! You are in a promising condition at this present: sink- 
 ing to the bottom, yet laid down to sleep; Destruction brandishing 
 his sword above you, and you quietly desiring him to take your 
 life but spare your rest. Oott hilf Ihnen ! Now for Tieck and his 
 Runenberg. But first one whiff of generous narcotic. ' How glad- 
 ly we love to wander on the plain with the summit in our eye!' 
 Ach Du meine Einzige die Du mich liebst und Dick an micli an- 
 schmiegst, warum bin ich Dir wie ein gebroclienes Bohr ! BoUst Du 
 niemals glucklich werden ? Wo bist Du heute Nacht f Mogen Friede 
 und Liebe und Hoffnung deine Gefdhrten seyn! Leb' wohl." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A.D. 1825. JET. 30. 
 
 Miss WELSH had now seen with her own eyes the realities of life 
 in a small Scotch farm, and was no longer afraid of it. She doubt- 
 less distrusted as much as ever Carlyle's fitness in his own person 
 for agricultural enterprises. But if his brother would take the work 
 off his hands he could himself follow his own more proper occupa- 
 tions. She had recognized the sterling worth of his peasant family, 
 and for her own part she was willing to share their method of exist- 
 ence, sharply contrasted as it was with the elegance and relative 
 luxury of her home at Haddington. It was far otherwise with her 
 mother. Mrs. Welsh's romantic days were not over. They were 
 never over to the end of her life; but she had no romance about Car- 
 lyle. She knew better than her daughter how great the sacrifice 
 would be, and the experience of fifty years had taught her that reso- 
 lutions adopted in enthusiasm are often repented of when excite- 
 ment has been succeeded by the wearing duties of hard every-day 
 routine. She was a cultivated, proud, beautiful woman, who had 
 ruled as queen in the society of a Scotch provincial town. Many 
 suitors had presented themselves for her daughter's hand, unexcep- 
 tionable in person, in fortune, in social standing. Miss Welsh's 
 personal attractions, her talents, the fair if moderate fortune which, 
 though for the present she had surrendered it, must be eventually 
 her own, would have entitled her to choose among the most eligible 
 matches in East Lothian. It was natural, it was inevitable, inde- 
 pendent of selfish considerations, that she could not look without a 
 shudder on this purposed marriage with the son of a poor Dumfries- 
 shire farmer, who had no visible prospects and no profession, and 
 whose abilities, however great they might be, seemed only to unfit 
 him for any usual or profitable pursuit. Added to this, Carlyle him- 
 self had not attracted her. She was accustomed to rule, and Car-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 183 
 
 lylc would not be ruled. She had obstinate humors, and Carlyle, 
 who never checked his own irritabilities, was impatient and sarcas- 
 tic when others ventured to be unreasonable. She had observed 
 and justly dreaded the violence of his temper, which when he was 
 provoked or thwarted would boil like a geyser. He might repent 
 afterwards of these ebullitions; he usually did repent. But repent- 
 ance could not take away the sting of the passionate expressions, 
 which fastened in the memory by the metaphors with which they 
 were barbed, especially as there was no amendment, and the offence 
 was repeated on the next temptation. It will easily be conceived, 
 therefore, that the meeting between mother and daughter after the 
 Hoddam visit, and Miss Welsh's announcement of her final resolu- 
 tion, was extremely painful. Miss Welsh wrote to Carlyle an ac- 
 count of what had passed. His letter in reply bears the same em- 
 blem of the burning candle, with the motto, " Terar dum prosim," 
 which he had before sketched in his journal. He was fond of a de- 
 sign which represented human life to him under its sternest aspect: 1 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 "Hoddam Hill: November 4, 1825. 
 
 "... Let us be patient and resolute, and trust in ourselves and 
 each other. I maintain that the weal of every human being, not 
 perhaps his enjoyment or his suffering, but his true and highest 
 welfare, lies within himself. Oh that we had wisdom to put this 
 weighty truth in practice: to know our duty for a duty every liv- 
 ing creature has and to do it with our whole heart and our whole 
 soul. This is the everlasting rock of man's security against which 
 no tempest or flood shall prevail. ' Sufficiently provided for with- 
 in,' the outward gifts or amercements of fortune are but the soft or 
 the hard materials out of which he is to build his fairest work of art, 
 a life worthy of himself and the vocation wherewith he is called. 
 But I am verging towards cant, so I shall hasten to the right-about. 
 
 "Your mother is not wise or just in spoiling the stinted enjoy- 
 ments of your present way of life by the reflections and remon- 
 strances with which she pursues you. Her views of me and my 
 connection with you I cannot justly blame; they coincide too near- 
 ly with my own. But what, one might ask her, does she mean you 
 to do? Anything? If so, it were better that she simply proposed 
 it, and backed it out by all attainable reasons in simplicity and quiet, 
 that if just and fit you might go through with it at all haps and haz- 
 ards instantly and completely. If nothing, then silence is the least 
 that can be asked of her. Speech that leads not to action, still more 
 that hinders it, is a nuisance on the earth. Let us remember this, as 
 well as call on others to remember it. But, after all, where is the 
 mighty grief? Is it ruin for you to think of giving yourself to me, 
 here as I am, in the naked undissembled meanness of my actual 
 state? Consider this with a cold clear eye, not in the purple light 
 
 1 See p. 113.
 
 184 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of love, but in the sharp still light of prudence. If your mind still 
 have any wavering, follow the truth fearlessly, not heeding me, for I 
 am ready with alacrity to forward your anticipated happiness in any 
 way. Or was this your love of me no girlish whim, but the calm, 
 deliberate self-offering of a woman to the man whom her reason and 
 her heart had made choice of? Then is it a crime in you to love me, 
 whose you are in the sight of God and man? 
 
 " The story of my temper is not worth much. I actually do not 
 think myself an ill-natured man, nor even, all things considered, very 
 ill-tempered! Really it is wearisome to think of these things. What 
 counsel to give you I know not. Submission has its limits. When 
 not based on conviction it degenerates into hypocrisy, and encour- 
 ages demands which perhaps ought to be resisted. But in asserting 
 your rights be meek and reasonable. What is this caprice and em- 
 lenness in your mother but unhappiness in herself an effort to in- 
 crease her own scanty stock of satisfaction at your expense ; or rath- 
 er to shift a portion of her own suffering upon you ? She cannot 
 cease to love you, and this is saying much. For me I beg you to 
 take no thought. Her anger at me, her aversion to me, shall never 
 be remembered against her. She thinks of me in the main, to the 
 full as highly as she ought ; and these gusts of unreasonable caprice 
 should be met by increased equability, and steady forgiving self- 
 possession, as angry gusts of wind are rendered harmless not by 
 other conflicting gusts, but by a solid wall of stone and mortar." 
 
 While on the Haddington side the contemplated alliance was so 
 distasteful, two letters from Miss Welsh, one to Carlyle's mother, the 
 other to his little sister Jane, show how playfully and prettily she 
 had thrown herself into the ways of the Mainhill household, and 
 adopted their expressions. With Jane she had assumed the privi- 
 lege of an elder sister, and charged herself with the direction of her 
 education. Carlyle has written a short preface to each: 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Hoddam Hill. 
 
 " [There are snatches of coterie speech in this letter, two quite of 
 new date, brought from Hoddam Hill, which I must explain. 
 
 " 'Broad Atlantic of his countenance' was a phrase I had noticed 
 in some stupidly adoring ' Life of Fox,' and been in use to apply to 
 my brother John, whose face also was broad enough (and full of 
 honesty and good-humor, poor fellow !).. From him also comes the 
 other phrase, ' mixture of good and evil. ' He was wont in his babbly 
 way, while at breakfast with mother and rne, to remark when the 
 least thing was complained of or went wrong, ' Nothing but evil in 
 the world, mother!' till one day mother took him sharply up on 
 theological grounds. Ever onward from which he used to make it 
 'Nothing but a mixture of good and evil.' He had many mock ut- 
 terances of this kind: 'Comes all to the same ultimately,' 'What 
 d'ye think of life this morning?' etc., over which we had our laugh- 
 ing and counter - laughing, borne with perfect gravity always, and 
 perfect patience, but producing no abatement of the practice. One 
 morning, however, he did get a retort, which rather stuck to him.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLTLE. 185 
 
 Addressing his mother with ' What d'ye think of life, mother ?' 
 'What does t'ou (thou) think o' death tho'?' answered she with a 
 veritably serious and crypto - contemptuous tone, which was not 
 forgotten again. 
 
 "'Christian comfoart' comes from a certain Mrs. Carruthers of 
 Haregills, a cousin of my mother; Bell by maiden name, solid, rather 
 stupid, farmer's wife by station. Meeting once with Frank Dickson 
 (a speculative Tartar he, unluckily for her), she had been heard to 
 wind up some lofty lilt with, ' Sir, it is the great scarce of Christian 
 comfoart,' accent on the last syllable and sound oa, Annandale 
 only. T. C.]" 
 
 "George Square, Edinburgh: November 14. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Carlyle, In the busy idleness of my present situ- 
 ation I have little leisure to write or to do any rational thing; but it 
 is best I should fulfil my promise to you now rather than wait for a 
 more quiet season, that you may know that even the turmoil of a 
 great city cannot seduce me into forgetfulness of the Hill. Indeed, 
 the more I am in the way of what is commonly called pleasure, the 
 more I think of the calm days which I spent under your roof. I 
 have never been so happy since ; though I have been at several fine 
 entertainments, where much thought and pains and money were ex- 
 pended to assemble the ingredients of enjoyment ; and this is nowise 
 strange, since affection is the native element of my soul, and that I 
 found in your cottage warm and pure, while in more splendid habi- 
 tations it is chilled with vanity, affectation, and selfishness. For 
 'there is nothing but a mixture of good and evil in the world, 
 mother;' and thus some have 'the dinner of herbs where love is,' 
 others 'the stalled ox and hatred therewith.' 
 
 "I left Templand on Thursday last after many delays, but in no 
 such downcast mood as at my departure from the Hill. Indeed, I 
 was never in my life more pleased to turn my face homewards, 
 where, if I have not suitable society any more than in Nithsdale, I 
 can at least enjoy what is next best, solitude. But all my impatience 
 to see Haddington failed to make the journey hither agreeable, which 
 was as devoid of ' Christian comfoart ' as anything you can suppose. 
 Never was poor damsel reduced to such ' extremities of fate.' I was 
 sick, wofully sick, and, notwithstanding that I had on four petti- 
 coats, benumbed with cold. To make my wretchedness as complete 
 as possible, we did not reach Edinburgh till many hours after dark. 
 Sixteen miles more, and my wanderings for this season are at an end. 
 Would that my trials were ended also! But no! Tell Mr. Carlyle 
 my handsome cousin is coming to Haddington with his sister Phoebe, 
 and his valet Henley, and his great dog Toby, over and above Dash, 
 Craigen, Fanny, and Frisk. My heart misgives me at the prospect 
 of this inundation of company, for their ways are not my ways, and 
 what is amusement to them is "death to me. But I must just be pa- 
 tient as usual. Verily I should need to be Job, instead of Jane Welsh, 
 to bear these everlasting annoyances with any degree of composure. 
 
 " Mr. Carlyle must write next week without fail to Haddington, 
 lest in vexation of spirit I curse God and die. Moreover, he must 
 positively part with Larry, and get a horse of less genius in his
 
 186 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 stead, if he would not have me live in continual terror of his life. 1 
 If the fates are kind, and the good doctor 2 a man of his word, he 
 will be in this city to-morrow, so that I have some hope to feast my 
 eyes on ' the broad Atlantic of his countenance,' and hear all about 
 my dear friends at the Hill before I go. How does Jane's Latin 
 prosper? Tell her to write a postscript in her brother's next letter. 
 You must excuse this hurried epistle. I am writing under many 
 eyes and in the noise of many tongues. God bless you. 
 
 " I am always affectionately yours, JANE B. WELSH." 
 
 The next letter is to Jean Carlyle, which is prefaced by Carlyle 
 thus: 
 
 " This Jean Carlyle is my second youngest sister, then a little 
 child of twelve. The youngest sister, youngest of us all, was Jenny 
 (Janet), now Mrs. Robert Banning, in Hamilton, Canada West. 
 These little beings, in their bits of gray speckled (black and white) 
 straw bonnets, I recollect as a pair of neat brisk items, tripping about 
 among us that summer at the Hill, especially Jean (only by euphe- 
 mism Jane), the bigger of the two, who was a constant quantity there. 
 The small Jenny (I think in some pet) had unexpectedly flung her- 
 self off and preferred native independence at Mainhill. Jean, from 
 her black eyes and hair, had got the name of ' Craw Jean ' among 
 us, or often of ' Craw ' simply. That was my mother's complexion 
 too; but the other seven of us, like our father, were all of common 
 blond. Jean was an uncommonly open-minded, gifted, ingenuous, 
 and ingenious little thing, true as steel (never told a fib from her 
 birth upwards), had, once or so, shown suddenly a will like steel too 
 (when indisputably in the right, as I have heard her mother own to 
 me), otherwise a most loving, cheerful, amenable creature, hungering 
 and thirsting for all kinds of knowledge ; had a lively sense of the 
 ridiculous withal, and already something of what you might call 
 'humor.' She was by this time in visible favor with me, which 
 doubtless she valued sufficiently. One of the first things I had noted 
 of her was five or six years ago in one of my rustications at Main- 
 hill, when in the summer evenings brothers Alick and John and I 
 used to go out wandering extensively and talking ditto till gloam- 
 ing settled into dark, always I observed little Craw turned up, either 
 at our starting or somewhere afterwards, trotting at my side, head 
 hardly higher than my knee, but eagerly thrown back and listening 
 with zeal and joy: no kind of 'sport' equal to this, for her, pursuit 
 of knowledge under difficulties. Poor little Craw! 
 
 " My darling took warmly to her for my sake and the child's own. 
 This was the first time they had met. ' Such a child ought to be 
 educated,' said she, with generous emphasis, and felt steadily, and, 
 
 > Larry had run away with Carlyle, thrown him, and dragged him some yards along 
 the road. He rode up to a late period in his life; but he always had a loose seat, and 
 his mind was busy with anything but attending to his horse. Fritz, his last, a present 
 from Lady Ashburton, carried him safely for many ye.irs through the London streets, 
 to the astonishment of most of his friends. I asked him once how he had Mcaped 
 misadventure. " It was Fritz," he said. "He was a very sensible fellow. I suppose 
 he had not been brought up to think that the first duty of a horse was to say some- 
 thing witty." John Carlyle.
 
 LITE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 187 
 
 indeed, took herself, for some years onwards, a great deal of trouble 
 and practical pains about it, as this letter may still indicate. Little 
 Jean was had to Comely Bank, l for a good few months, got her les- 
 sons, etc., attended us to Craigenputtock, hoping to try farther there 
 too ; but in the chaos of incipience there (a rather dark and even dis- 
 mal chaos, had not my Jane been a daughter of the Sun) this was 
 found impracticable; and Scotsbrig, father's place, 2 coveting and al- 
 most grudging the little Jean's bits of labor within doors and with- 
 out, she had to give the project up and return to her own way of 
 life, which she loyally did; grew up a peasant girl, got no farther 
 special education, though she has since given herself consciously 
 and otherwise not a little, both of the practical and speculative sort; 
 and is at this day to be named fairly a superior woman, superior in 
 extent of reading, culture, etc., and still better in veracity of charac- 
 ter, sound discernment, and practical wisdom ; wife for a'bove thirty- 
 five years now 3 of James Aitken, a prosperous, altogether honest, 
 valiant, intelligent and substantial man, house-painter in Dumfries 
 by trade ; parents they, too, of my bright little niece, Mary C. Ait- 
 ken, who copies for me, and helps me all she can hi this my final 
 operation in the world. " 
 
 To Miss Jane Carlyle, Hoddam Hill. 
 
 " Haddington : November, 1825. 
 
 "My affectionate Child, It grieved me to learn from your good 
 little postscript, 4 that the poor Latin was already come to a stand; 
 for I would fain see the talents with which nature has intrusted 
 you not buried in ignorance, but made the most of. Nevertheless, I 
 do not blame you, because you have despaired of accomplishing an 
 impossibility; for it is impossible for you, sure enough, to make any 
 great attainment of scholarship in the circumstances in which you 
 are already placed. You must on no account, however, abandon the 
 idea of becoming a scholar, for good, because it is beyond your abil- 
 ity to carry it into effect just as soon as you wish; for your circum- 
 stances, by the blessing of Heaven, may be in process of time rendered 
 more towardly ; but should the noble desire of knowledge die away 
 within you, you would indeed cruelly disappoint my hopes. More- 
 over, though the acquirement of a foreign language has proved too 
 difficult a matter for you in the time being, I see nothing that there 
 is to hinder you from reading many instructive books in your own. 
 For your mother cannot be so hard a task-mistress, that she would 
 refuse you two hours or so in the day to yourself, provided she saw 
 that they were turned to a profitable account. Here is a copy of 
 " Cowper's Poems" for you, with which I expect you will presently 
 commence a regular course of reading. Your brother is able, and I 
 am sure will be most willing, to direct you in the choice of books; 
 and on this account you ought to be exceedingly thankful, as many 
 for want of such direction have to seek knowledge by a weary circuit. 
 
 ' ' Had Providence been less kind to you in the relation you hold 
 
 1 Where Carlyle first lived, as will be seen, after his marriage. 
 
 a To which old Mr. Carlyle removed from Mainhill in the year following. 
 
 * Written in 1868. "Doubtless of some letter from me. T. C."
 
 188 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 in life, you should get many an epistle from me full of the best ad- 
 vices I have to give ; for I love you, my good little girl, from the 
 bottom of my heart, and desire earnestly that it should be well with 
 you in this world as well as in the world to come. But when I con- 
 sider the piety and goodness of the mother who has you in her bosom, 
 and that he whose wisdom I bow myself before is your brother, I feel 
 it idle and presumptuous in me to offer you any counsel, when in the 
 precepts and example of those about you, you have already such a 
 light to your path. Do but continue, my dear Jean, a dutiful daugh- 
 ter and a loving sister, and you are sure to grow up an estimable 
 woman. If we can make you also an accomplished woman, so 
 much the better. 
 
 " One thing more when I am about it. Look sharp that you fulfil 
 the written promise which you gave me at parting ; for know that I 
 am not disposed to remit you the smallest tittle of it. And now God 
 bless and keep you. I am always your attached friend, 
 
 "JANE BAILLIE WELSH." 
 
 After the bright interlude of Miss Welsh's visit to Hoddam, life 
 soon became as industrious as Carlyle has described. The mornings 
 were spent in work over the "German Tales," the afternoons in 
 rides, Larry remaining still in favor notwithstanding his misdemean- 
 ors. In the evenings he and his mother, perhaps, smoked their pipes 
 together, as they used to do at Mainhill, she in admiring anxiety la- 
 boring to rescue his soul from the temptations of the intellect ; he 
 satisfying her, for she was too willing to be satisfied, that they meant 
 the same thing, though they expressed it in different languages. He 
 was meditating a book, a real book of his own, not a translation, 
 though he was still unable to fasten upon a subject ; while the sense 
 that he was in his own house, lord of it and lord of himself, and able 
 if he pleased to shut his door against all comers, was delightful to 
 him. 
 
 "It is inexpressible [he wrote] what an increase of happiness and 
 of consciousness, wholesome consciousness of inward dignity, I have 
 gained since I came within the walls of this poor cottage my own 
 four walls for in this state the primeval law of nature acts on me 
 with double and triple force ; and how cheaply it is purchased, and 
 how smoothly managed ! They simply admit that I am Herr im 
 Hause, and act on this conviction. There is no grumbling about 
 my habitudes and whims. If I choose to dine on fire and brimstone, 
 they will cook it for me to their best skill, thinking only that I am 
 an unintelligible mortal, perhaps in their secret souls a kind of hu- 
 morist, facheux to deal with, but no bad soul after all, and not to be 
 dealt with in any other way. My own four walls !" 
 
 This expression, repeated twice, suggests the possible date of a 
 poem the only poem, perhaps, that Carlyle ever wrote which is 
 really characteristic of him. It was written either at Hoddam or at 
 Craigenputtock. In some respects in the mention of a wife, espe-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 
 
 cially it suits Craigenputtock best. But perhaps his imagination 
 was looking forward : 
 
 "MY OWN FOUR WALLS. 
 
 "The storm and night is on the waste, 
 
 Wild through the wind the herdsman calls, 
 As last on willing nag I haste 
 Home to my owii four walls. 
 
 "Black tossing clouds with scarce n glimmer 
 
 Envelope earth like sevenfold palls ; 
 But wifekin watches, coffee-pot doth simmer, 
 Home in my own four walls. 
 
 "A home and wife I too have got, 
 
 A hearth to blaze whate'er befalls ; 
 What needs a man that I have not 
 Within my own four walls? 
 
 " King George has palaces of pride, 
 
 And armed grooms must ward those halls ; 
 With one stout boll I safe abide 
 Within'my own four walls. 
 
 " Not all his men may sever this, 
 
 It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls ; 
 My whiustone house my castle is 
 I have my own four walls. 
 
 " When fools or knaves do make a rout 
 With gigmen, dinners, balls, cabals, 
 I turn my back and shut them out: 
 These are my own four walls. 
 
 " The moorland house, though rude it be, 
 
 May stand the brunt when prouder falls ; 
 'Twill screen my wife, my books, and me, 
 All in my own four walls." 
 
 In the autumn of this year Carlyle had a glimpse of Irving at 
 Annan. 
 
 ' ' I had next to no correspondence with Irving [he says] ; a little 
 note or so on business, nothing more. Nor was Mrs. Montagu much 
 more instructive on that head, who wrote me high-sounding amiable 
 things which I could not but respond to more or less, though dimly 
 aware of their quality. Nor did the sincere and ardent Mrs. Strach- 
 ey, who wrote seldomer, almost ever touch upon Irving. But by 
 some occasional unmelodious clang in all the newspapers (twice over 
 I think in this year) we could sufficiently and with little satisfaction 
 construe his way of life. Twice over he had leaped the barriers and 
 given rise to criticisms of the customary idle sort, loudish universal- 
 ly and nowhere accurately just. Case first was of preaching to the 
 London Missionary Society (Missionary I will call it, though it might 
 be 'Bible,' or another). On their grand anniversary these people 
 had assigned him the honor of addressing them, and were numer- 
 ously assembled, expecting some flourishes of eloquence and flatter- 
 ies to their illustrious, divinely blessed society, ingeniously done and 
 especially with fit brevity; dinner itself waiting, I suppose, close in 
 the rear. Irving emerged into his speaking place at the due mo- 
 ment; but instead of treating men and office-bearers to a short, com- 
 
 9*
 
 190 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 fortable dose of honey and butter, opened into strict, sharp inquiries, 
 rhadamanthine expositions of duty and ideal, issuing, perhaps, in 
 actual criticism and admonition ; gall and vinegar instead of honey; 
 at any rate, keeping the poor people locked up there ' for above two 
 hours,' instead of an hour or less, with dinners hot at the end of it. 
 This was much criticised : ' Plainly wrong, and produced by love of 
 singularity and too much pride in one's self ,' voted everybody. For, 
 in fact, a man suddenly holding up the naked inexorable ideal in the 
 face of the clothed (and in England generally plump, comfortable, 
 and pot-bellied) reality is doing an unexpected and questionable 
 thing. 
 
 "The next escapade was still worse. At some public meeting, 
 probably of the same 'Missionary Society,' Irving again held up his 
 Ideal, I think not without murmurs from former sufferers by it, and 
 ended by solemnly putting down, not his name to the subscription 
 list, but an actual gold watch, which he said had just arrived to him 
 from his beloved brother lately dead in India. 1 That of the gold 
 watch tabled had in reality a touch of rasli ostentation, and was bit- 
 terly crowed over by all the able editors for a time. On the whole 
 one could gather too clearly that Irving's course was beset with pit- 
 falls, barking dogs, and dangers and difficulties unwarned of ; and 
 that for one who took so little counsel with prudence, he perhaps 
 carried his head too high. I had a certain harsh kind of sorrow 
 about poor Irving, and my loss of him (and his loss of me on such 
 poor terms as these seemed to me), but I carelessly trusted in his 
 strength against whatever mistakes and impediments, and felt that 
 for the present it was better to be absolved from corresponding with 
 him. 
 
 "That same year, late in autumn, he was at Annan only for a 
 night and a day, returning from some farther journey, perhaps to 
 Glasgow or Edinburgh, and had to go on again for London next 
 day. I rode down from Hoddam Hill before nightfall, found him 
 sitting in the snug little parlor beside his father and mother, beauti- 
 fully domestic. I think it was the last time I ever saw those good 
 old people. We sat only a few minutes, my thoughts sadly con- 
 trasting the beautiful affectionate safety here and the wild tempestu- 
 ous hostilities and perils yonder. He left his blessing to each by 
 name in a low soft voice. There was something almost tragical to 
 me as he turned round, hitting his hat on the little door lintel, and 
 next moment was on the dark street followed only by me. His plan 
 of journey was to catch the Glasgow London mail at Gretna, and 
 to walk thither, the night being dry. We stepped over to Robert Dick- 
 son's, his brother-in-law's, and sate there still talking for perhaps ail 
 hour. He looked sad and serious, not in the least downhearted; 
 told us, probably in answer to some question of mine, that the pro- 
 jected London University seemed to be progressing towards fulfil- 
 ment, and how, at some meeting, Poet Campbell, arguing loudly for 
 
 1 This brother was John, the eldest of the three, an Indian army surgeon, whom I 
 remember once meeting on a common stair in Edinburgh, on return, I suppose, from 
 a call on some comrade higher up: a taller man than even Edward, and with a bloom- 
 ing, placid, not very intelligent face.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 191 
 
 a purely secular system, had on eight of Irving entering at once 
 stopped short, and in the politest manner he could, sat down with- 
 out another word on the subject. ' It will be wwreligious, secretly 
 rt/ii!/-religious all the same,' said Irving to us. 
 
 "When the time had come for setting out, and we were all on 
 foot, he called for his three little nieces, having their mother by 
 him, made them each successively stand on a chair, laid his hand on 
 the head first of one, with a 'Mary Dickson, the Lord bless you,' 
 then of the next by name, and of the next ; ' the Lord bless you,' in 
 a sad, solemn tone, with something of elaborate noticeable in it 
 too ; which was painful and dreary to me ; a dreary visit altogether, 
 though an unabatedly affectionate on both sides in what a contrast, 
 thought I, to the old sunshiny visits when Glasgow was head-quar- 
 ters, and everybody was obscure, frank to his feelings, and'saf e. Mrs. 
 Dickson, I think, had tears in her eyes. Her too he doubtless bless- 
 ed, but without hand on head. Dickson and the rest of us escorted 
 him a little way. We parted in the howling of the north wind, and 
 I turned back across the moors to Hoddam Hill to meditate in silence 
 on the chances and changes of this strange whirlpool of a world." 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A.D. 1826. ^ET. 31. 
 
 THE life at Hoddam Hill, singularly happy while it lasted, and 
 promising to last, was not after all of long continuance. Differ- 
 ences with the landlord, General Sharpe, rose to a quarrel, in which 
 old Mr. Carlyle took his son's part. Hoddam Hill was given up ; 
 the lease of Mainhill, expiring at the same time, was not renewed, 
 and the whole family, Carlyle himself with the rest, removed to 
 Scotsbrig, a substantial farm in the neighborhood of Ecclefechan, 
 where the elder Carlyles remained to the end of their lives, and 
 where their youngest son succeeded them. 
 
 The break-up at Hoddam precipitated the conclusion of Carlyle's 
 protracted relations with Miss Welsh. He sums up briefly his rec- 
 ollections of the story of this year, which was in every way so mo- 
 mentous io him : 
 
 "My translation (German Romance) went steadily on, the pleas- 
 antest labor I ever had; could be done by task in whatever humor 
 or condition one was in, and was day by day (ten pages a day, I 
 think) punctually and comfortably so performed. Internally, too, 
 there were far higher things going on ; a grand and ever-joyful 
 victory getting itself achieved at last! The final chaining down, 
 
 i The last paragraph is taken from a contemporary description of the scene. The 
 rest. MS most complete, is from the "Reminiscences," vol. i. p. 290, and is a curious 
 illustration of the miuute exactness of Carlyle's memory.
 
 192 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 trampling home ' for good,' home into their caves forever of all my 
 spiritual dragons, which had wrought me such woe, and for a dec- 
 ade past had made my life black and bitter. 1 This year 1826 saw 
 the end of all that, with such a feeling on my part as may be fan- 
 cied. I found it to be essentially what Methodist people call their 
 'conversion,' the deliverance of their souls from the devil and the 
 pit; precisely enough that, in new form. And there burnt accord- 
 ingly a sacred flame of joy in me, silent in my inmost being, as of 
 one henceforth superior to fate, able to look down on its stupid in- 
 juries, with contempt, pardon, and almost with a kind of thanks and 
 pity. This 'holy joy,' of which I kept silence, lasted sensibly in 
 me for several years in blessed countcipoise to sufferings and dis- 
 couragements enough ; nor has it proved what I can call fallacious 
 at any time since. My ' spiritual dragons,' thank Heaven, do still re- 
 main strictly in their caves, forgotten and dead, which is indeed a 
 conquest, and the beginning of conquests. I rode about a great deal 
 in all kinds of weather that winter and summer, generally quite 
 alone, and did not want for meditations, no longer of defiantly hope- 
 less or quite impious nature. 
 
 "Meanwhile, if on the spiritual side all went well, one poor 
 item on the temporal side went ill : a paltry but essential item our 
 lease arrangements of Hoddam Hill. The lease had been hurriedly 
 settled, on word of mouth merely, by my father, who stood well with 
 his landlord otherwise, and had perfect trust in him. But when it 
 came to practical settlement, to 'demands of outgoing tenant,' who 
 was completely right as against his landlord, and completely wrong 
 as against us, there arose difficulties which, the farther they were 
 gone into, spread the wider. Arbitration was tried; much was tried ; 
 nothing would do. Arbitrators, little farmers on the neighboring 
 estates, would not give a verdict, but only talk, talk. Honorable 
 landlord owes out-going tenant (his and his father's old factor) say 
 1.501. , and other just decision there was none. Factor was foolish, 
 superannuated, impoverished, pressingly in want of his money. Land- 
 lord was not wise or liberal. Arbitrary and imperious he tried to 
 be; wrote letters, etc., but got stiff answers; over the belly of justice 
 would not be permitted to ride. The end was, after much babbling, 
 in which I meddled little, and only from the background, 2 complete 
 break ensued; Hoddam Hill to be given up, laid at his honor's feet 
 May 26, 1826 ; ditto Mainhill when the lease also expired there. My 
 father got, on another estate near by, the farm of Scotsbrig, a far 
 better farm (where our people still are), farm well capable both of 
 his stock and ours, with roomy house, etc., where, if anywhere in 
 the country, I, from and after May, 1826, must make up my mind to 
 live. To stay there till German Romance was done clear as to 
 
 i First battle won in the Rue de 1'Enfer Loith Walk four years before. Campaign 
 not ended till now. 
 
 4 Not altogether. In a letter from Hoddam Hill, Carlyle says: "My kindred can 
 now regard the ill-nature of our rural All Pacha with a degree of equanimity much 
 easier to attain than formerly. Ali I mean his honor General Sharpe and I had 
 such a schane the other day at this door. I made Graham of Burnswark laugh at it 
 yesterday all the way from Annan to Hoddam Bridge. In short, Ali sunk, in the space 
 of little more than a minute, from 212 of Fahrenheit's thermometer to 32, and re- 
 tired even below the freezing-point."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 193 
 
 that went accordingly, and after a week of joinering resumed my 
 stint of ten daily pages, steady as the town clock, no interruption 
 dreaded or occurring. Had a pleasant, diligent, and interesting 
 summer; all my loved kindred about me for the last time; hottest 
 and droughtiest summer I have ever seen, drier even than the last 
 (of 1868), though seldom quite so intolerably hot. No rain from the 
 end of March till the middle of August. l)elightful morning rides 
 (in the first months) are still present to me, ditto breakfasts in the 
 kitchen, an antique baronial one, roomy, airy, curious to me. Cook- 
 ery, company, and the cow with her produce always friendly to me. 
 Nothing to complain of but want of the old silence ; noise and bustle 
 of business now round me, and like to increase, not diminish; and 
 this thought always too, here cannot be thy continuing city ! and 
 then withal, my darling in noble silence getting so weary of dull 
 Haddington. In brief, after much survey and consideration of the 
 real interests and real feelings of both parties, I proposed, and it was 
 gently acceded to, that German Romance once done (end of Septem- 
 ber or so) we should wed, settle at Edinburgh in some small subur- 
 ban house (details and preparations there all left to her kind mother 
 and her), and thenceforth front our chances in the world, not as two 
 lots, but as one, for better for worse, till death us part ! 
 
 "In August Haddington became aware of what was toward, a 
 great enough event there, the loss of its loved and admired ' Jeannie 
 Welsh, the Flower o' Haddington' (as poor old Lizzy Baldy, a no- 
 table veteran sewing-woman, humble heroine, then sadly said), ' gaun 
 to be here na mair !' In Annandale, such my entire seclusion, noth- 
 ing was yet heard of it for a couple of months. House in Comely 
 Bank 1 suitable as possible had been chosen ; was being furnished 
 from Haddington, beautifully, perfectly, and even richly, by Mrs. 
 Welsh's great skill in such matters, aided by her daughter's, which 
 was also great, and by the frank wordless generosity of both, which 
 surely was very great ! Mrs. Welsh had decided to give up house, 
 quit Haddington, and privately even never see it more ; to live at 
 Templand thenceforth with her father and sister (Aunt Grizzie), 
 where it was well judged her help might be useful. My brave little 
 woman had by deed of law two years before settled her little estate 
 (Craigenputtock) upon her mother for life, being clearly indispen- 
 sable there. Fee simple of the place she had at the same time by 
 will bequeathed to me if I survived her." 
 
 So Carlyle, at a distance of forty-two years, describes the prelude 
 to his marriage accurately so far as substance went, and with a 
 frank acknowledgment of Mrs. Welsh's liberality, as the impression 
 was left upon his memory. But, exactly and circumstantially as he 
 remembered things which had struck and interested him, his mem- 
 ory was less tenacious of some particulars which he passed over at 
 the time with less attention than perhaps they deserved, and thus 
 allowed to drop out of his recollection. Details have to be told 
 
 i A row of houses to the north of Edinburgh, then among open fields between the 
 city and the sea.
 
 194 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 which will show him not on the most considerate side. They re- 
 quire to be mentioned for the distinct light which they throw on as- 
 pects of his character which affected materially his wife's happiness. 
 There were some things which Carlyle was constitutionally incapable 
 of apprehending, while again there are others which he apprehended 
 perhaps with essential correctness, but on which men in general do 
 not think as he thought. A man born to great place and great visi- 
 ble responsibilities in the world is allowed to consider first his posi- 
 tion and his duties, and to regard other claims upon him as subordi- 
 nate to these. A man born with extraordinary talents, which he has 
 resolved to use for some great and generous purpose, may expect and 
 demand the same privileges, but they are not so easily accorded to 
 him. In the one instance it is assumed as a matter of course that sec- 
 ondary interests must be set aside; even in marriage the heir of a 
 large estate consults the advantage of his family; his wife's pleasure, 
 even his wife's comforts, must be postponed to the supposed demands 
 of her husband's situation. The claims of a man of genius are lesa 
 tolerantly dealt with ; partly perhaps because it is held an impertinence 
 in any man to pretend to genius till he has given proof of possessing 
 it; partly because, if extraordinary gifts are rare, the power of ap- 
 preciating them is equally rare, and a fixed purpose to make a noble 
 use of them is rarer still. Men of literary faculty, it is idly supposed, 
 can do their work anywhere in any circumstances; if the work is 
 left undone the world does not know what it has lost ; and thus, 
 partly by their own fault, and partly by the world's mode of dealing 
 with them, the biographies of men of letters are, as Carlyle says, for 
 the most part the saddest chapter in the history of the human race 
 except the Newgate Calendar. 
 
 Carlyle, restless and feverish, was convinced that no real work 
 could be got out of him till he was again in a home of his own, and 
 till his affairs were settled on some permanent footing. His engage- 
 ment, while it remained uncompleted, kept him anxious and irri- 
 tated. Therefore he conceived that he must find some cottage suit- 
 ed to his circumstances, and that Miss Welsh ought to become im- 
 mediately the mistress of it. He had money enough to begin house- 
 keeping; he saw his way, he thought, to earning money enough to 
 continue it on the scale on which he had himself been bred up but 
 it was on condition that the wife that he took to himself should do 
 the work of a domestic servant as his own mother and sisters did; 
 and he was never able to understand that a lady differently educated 
 might herself, or her friends for her, find a difficulty in accepting such 
 a situation. He was in love, so far as he understood what love 
 meant. Like Hamlet, he would have challenged Miss Welsh's other 
 lovers " to weep, to fight, to fast, to tear themselves, to drink up Esil, 
 eat a crocodile," or "be buried with her quick in the earth;" but
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 195 
 
 when it came to the question how he was himself to do the work 
 which he intended to do, he chose to go his own way, and expected 
 others to accommodate themselves to it. 
 
 Plans had been suggested and efforts made to secure some perma- 
 nent situation for him. A newspaper had been projected in Edin- 
 burgh, which Lockhart and Brewster were to have conducted with 
 Carlyle under them. This would have been something; but Lock- 
 hart became editor of the Quarterly Review, and the project dropped. 
 A Bavarian Minister had applied to Professor Leslie for some one 
 who could teach English literature and science at Munich. Leslie 
 offered this to Carlyle, but he declined it. He had set his mind upon 
 a cottage outside Edinburgh, with a garden and high walls about it 
 to shut out noise. This was all which he himself wanted. He did 
 not care how poor it was so it was his own, entirely his own, safe 
 from intruding fools. 
 
 Here he thought that he and his wife might set themselves up to- 
 gether and wish for nothing more. It did, indeed, at moments oc- 
 cur to him that, although he could be happy and rich in the midst 
 of poverty, "for a woman to descend from superfluity to live in pov- 
 erty with a sick, ill-natured man, and not be wretched, would be 
 a miracle." But though the thought came more than once, it would 
 not abide. The miracle would perhaps be wrought ; or indeed with- 
 out a miracle his mother and sisters were happy, and why should 
 any one wish for more luxuries than they had ? 
 
 Mrs. Welsh being left a widow, and with no other child, the pain 
 of separation from her daughter was unusually great. Notwith- 
 standing a certain number of caprices, there was a genuine and even 
 passionate attachment between mother and daughter. It might 
 have seemed that a separation was unnecessary, and that if Mrs. 
 Welsh could endure to have Carlyle under her own roof, no difficul- 
 ty on his side ought to have arisen. Mrs. Welsh indeed, romantical- 
 ly generous, desired to restore the property, and to go back and live 
 with her father at Templand ; but her daughter decided perempto- 
 rily that she would rather live with Carlyle in poverty all the days of 
 her life sooner than encroach in the smallest degree on her mother's 
 independence. She could expect no happiness, she said, if she failed 
 in the first duty of her life. Her mother should keep the fortune, 
 or else Miss Welsh refused to leave her. 
 
 All difficulties might be got over, the entire economic problem 
 might be solved, if the family could be kept together. As soon as 
 the marriage was known to be in contemplation this arrangement 
 occurred to every one who was interested in the Welshes' welfare as 
 the most obviously desirable. Mrs. Welsh was as unhappy as ever 
 at an alliance that she regarded as not imprudent only, but in the 
 highest degree objectionable. Carlyle had neither family nor fortune
 
 196 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 nor prospect of preferment. He had no religion that she could com- 
 prehend, and she had seen him violent and unreasonable. He was 
 the very last companion that she would have selected for herself. 
 Yet for her daughter's sake she was willing to make an effort to like 
 him, and, since the marriage was to be, either to live with him or to 
 accept him as her son-in-law in her own house and in her own circle. 
 
 Her consent to take Carlyle into her family removed Miss Welsh's 
 remaining scruples, and made her perfectly happy. It never occur- 
 red to her that Carlyle himself would refuse, and the reasons which 
 he alleged might have made a less resolute woman pause before she 
 committed herself farther. It would never answer, he said ; "two 
 households could not live as if they were one, and he would never 
 have any right enjoyment of his wife's company till she was all his 
 own." Mrs. Welsh had a large acquaintance. He liked none of 
 them, and "her visitors would neither be diminished in numbers nor 
 bettered in quality. " No ! he must have the small house in Edin- 
 burgh ; and "the moment he was master of a house, the first use he 
 would turn it to would be to slam the door against nauseous intrud- 
 ers." It never occurred to him, as proved too fatally to be the case, 
 that he would care little for "the right companionship" when he 
 had got it ; that he would be absorbed in his work ; that, after all, 
 his wife would see but little of him, and that little too often under try- 
 ing conditions of temper ; that her mother's companionship, and the 
 "intrusion" of her mother's old friends, might add more to her 
 comfort than it could possibly detract from his own. 
 
 However deeply she honored her chosen husband, she could not 
 hide from herself that he was selfish extremely selfish. He had 
 changed his mind indeed about the Edinburgh house almost as soon 
 as he had made it up he was only determined that he would not 
 live with Mrs. Welsh. 
 
 " Surely [Miss Welsh wrote] you are the most tantalizing man in 
 the world, and I the most tractable woman. This time twelvemonth 
 nothing would content you but to live in the country, and though 
 a country life never before attracted my desires, it nevertheless be- 
 came my choice the instant it seemed to be yours. In truth, I dis- 
 covered a hundred beauties and properties in it which had hitherto 
 escaped my notice ; and it came at last to this, that every imagina- 
 tion of the thoughts of my heart was love in a cottage continually. 
 Eh bien! and what then? A change comes over the spirit of your 
 dream. While the birds are yet humming, the roses blooming, the 
 small birds rejoicing, and everything is in summer glory about our 
 ideal cottage, I am called away to live in prospectu in the smoke 
 and bustle and icy coldness of Edinburgh. Now this I call a trial 
 of patience and obedience and say, could I have complied more 
 readily though I had been your wedded wife ten times over? With- 
 out a moment's hesitation, without once looking behind, without
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 197 
 
 even bidding adieu to my flowers, I took my way with you out of 
 our Paradise, to raise another in the howling wilderness. A very 
 miracle of love ! Oh mind of man ! And this too must pass away. 
 Houses and walled gardens pass away like the baseless fabric of 
 a vision; and lo! we are once more a solitary pair, 'the world all 
 before us where to choose our place of rest.' Be Providence our 
 guide. Suppose we take different roads and try how that answers ? 
 
 There is , with 50,000. and a princely lineage, and 'never was 
 
 out of humor in her life ' with such a ' singularly pleasing creat- 
 ure ' you could hardly fail to find yourself admirably well off while 
 I, on the other hand, might better my fortune in many quarters. A 
 certain handsome stammering Englishman I know of would give 
 his ears to carry me away south with him. My second cousin, too, 
 the doctor at Leeds, has set up a fine establishment, and writes to 
 me that ' I am the very first of my sex.' Or, nearer home, I have 
 an interesting young widower in view, who has no scruple in mak- 
 ing me mother to his three small children, blue-stocking though I 
 be. But what am I talking about? as if we were not already mar- 
 ried, married past redemption. God knows in that case what is to 
 become of us. At times I am so disheartened that I sit down and 
 weep." 
 
 Carlyle could just perceive that he had not been gracious, that 
 Mrs. Welsh's offer had deserved "more serious consideration," and 
 at least a more courteous refusal. He could recognize also, proud 
 as he was, that he had little to offer in his companionship which 
 would be a compensation for the trials which it might bring with 
 it. He again offered to set the lady free. 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 " Oh, Jane, Jane, your half -jesting enumeration of your wooers 
 does anything but make me laugh. A thousand and a thousand 
 times I have thought the same thing in deepest earnest. That you 
 have the power of making many good matches is no secret to me ; 
 nay, it would be a piece of news for me to learn that I am not the 
 very worst you ever thought of. And you add, with the same tear- 
 ful smile, ' Alas ! we are married already. ' Let me cut off the inter- 
 jection, and say simply what is true, that we are not married al- 
 ready ; and do you hereby receive further my distinct and deliberate 
 declaration that it depends on yourself, and shall always depend on 
 yourself, whether ever we be married or not. God knows I do not 
 say this in a vulgar spirit of defiance, which in our present relation 
 were coarse and cruel ; but I say it in the spirit of disinterested af- 
 fection for you, and of fear from the reproaches of my own con 
 science, should your fair destiny be marred by me, and you wound- 
 ed in the house of your friend. Can you believe it with the good- 
 nature which I declare it deserves ? It would absolutely give me 
 satisfaction to know that you thought yourself entirely free of all 
 ties to me but those, such as they might be, of your own still renew- 
 ed election. It is reasonable and right that you should be concerned 
 for your future establishment. Look round with calm eyes on the
 
 198 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 persons you mention, and if there is any one among them whose 
 wife you had rather be I do not mean whom you love better than 
 me, but whose wife, all things considered, you had rather be than 
 mine then I call upon you, I, your brother and friend through 
 every fortune, to accept that man and leave me to my destiny. But 
 if, on the contrary, my heart and my hand, with the barren and per- 
 plexed destiny which promises to attend them, shall after all appear 
 the best that this poor world can offer you, then take me and be con- 
 tent with me, and do not vex yourself with struggling to alter what 
 is unalterable to make a man who is poor and sick suddenly become 
 rich and healthy. You tell me you often weep when you think what 
 is to become of us. It is unwise in you to weep. If you are recon- 
 ciled to be my wife (not the wife of an ideal me, but the simple act- 
 ual prosaic me), there is nothing frightful in the future. / look into 
 it with more and more confidence and composure. Alas ! Jane, you 
 do not know me. It is not the poor unknown rejected Thomas C'ar- 
 lyle that you know, but the prospective rich, known, and admired. 
 I am reconciled to my fate as it stands, or promises to stand erelong. 
 I have pronounced the word unpraised in all its cases and numbers, 
 and find nothing terrific in it, even when it means unmoneyed, and 
 even by the mass of his Majesty's subjects neglected or even partial- 
 ly contemned. I thank Heaven I have other objects in my eye than 
 either their pudding or their breath. This comes of the circumstance 
 that my apprenticeship is ending, and yours still going on. Oh Jane, 
 I could weep too, for I love you in my deepest heart. 
 
 ' ' These are hard sayings, my beloved child, but I cannot spare 
 them, and I hope, though bitter at first, they may not remain with- 
 out wholesome influence. Do not be angry with me. Do not. I 
 swear I deserve it not. Consider this as a tme glimpse into my 
 heart which it is good that you contemplate with the gentleness and 
 tolerance you have often shown me. If you judge it fit, I will take 
 you to my heart as my wedded wife this very week. If you judge 
 it fit, I will this very week forswear you forever. More I cannot do ; 
 but all this, when I compare myself with you, it is my duty to do. 
 Adieu. God bless you and have you in his keeping ! 
 
 "I am yours at your own disposal for ever and ever, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 That Carlyle could contemplate with equanimity being unpraised, 
 unmoneyed, and neglected all his life, that he required neither the 
 world's pudding nor its breath, and could be happy without them, 
 was pardonable and perhaps commendable. That he should expect 
 another person to share this unmoneyed, puddingless, and rather for- 
 lorn condition, was scarcely consistent with such lofty principles. 
 Men may sacrifice themselves, if they please, to imagined high du- 
 ties and ambitions, but they have no right to marry wives and sac- 
 rifice them. Nor were these ' ' hard sayings % which could not be 
 spared " exactly to the point, when he had been roughly and dis- 
 courteously rejecting proposals which would have made his un- 
 inoneyed situation of less importance.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 199 
 
 He had said that Miss Welsh did not know him, which was prob- 
 ably true ; but it is likely also that he did not know himself. She 
 had answered this last letter of his with telling him that she had 
 chosen him for her husband, and should not alter her mind. Since 
 this was so he immediately said, "she had better wed her wild man 
 of the woods at once, and come and live with him in his cavern in 
 the hope of better days." The cavern was Scotsbrig. When it had 
 been proposed that he should live with Mrs. Welsh at Haddington, 
 he would by consenting have spared the separation of a mother from 
 an only child, and would not perhaps have hurt his own intellect by 
 an effort of self-denial. It appeared impossible to him, when Mrs. 
 Welsh was in question, that two households could go on together. 
 He was positive that he must be master in his own house, free from 
 noise and interruption, and have fire and brimstone cooked for him 
 if he pleased to order it. But the two hoxiseholds were not, it seem- 
 ed, incompatible when one of them was his own "family. If Miss 
 Welsh would come to him at Scotsbrig, " he would be a new man ;" 
 "the bitterness of life would pass away like a forgotten tempest," 
 and he and she ' ' would walk in bright weather thenceforward " to 
 the end of their existence. This, too, was a mere delusion. The 
 cause of his unrest was in himself; he would carry with him, wher- 
 ever he might go or be, the wild passionate spirit, fevered with burn- 
 ing thoughts, which would make peace impossible, and cloud the 
 fairest weather with intermittent tempests. Scotsbrig would not 
 have frightened Miss Welsh. She must have perceived his incon- 
 sistency, though she did not allude to it. But if Carlyle had him- 
 self and his work to consider, she had her mother. Her answer was 
 very beautiful : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Were happiness the thing chiefly to be cared for in this world, 
 I would put my hand in yours now, as you say, and so cut the knot 
 of our destiny. But oh ! have you not told me a thousand times, 
 and my conscience tells me also, that happiness is a secondary con- 
 sideration ? It must not, must not, be sought out of the path of 
 duty. Should I do well to go into Paradise myself, and leave the 
 mother who bore me to break her heart ? She is looking forward 
 to my marriage with a more tranquil mind in the hope that our 
 separation is to be but nominal that, by living where my husband 
 lives, she may at least have every moment of my society which he 
 can spare. And how would it be possible not to disappoint her of 
 this hope if I went to reside with your people in Annandale ? Her 
 presence there would be a perpetual cloud. For the sake of all con- 
 cerned, it would be necessary to keep her quite apart from us, yet 
 so near. 1 She would be the most wretched of mothers, the most 
 
 > Templand, where Mrs. Welsh was to live if she returned to her father, was about 
 fifteen miles from Ecclefechan.
 
 200 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLTLE. 
 
 desolate woman in the world. Oh ! is it for me to make her so ? 
 me who am so unspeakably dear to her in spite of all her caprice, 
 who am her only, only child, and she a widow ? I love you, Mr. 
 Carlyle, tenderly, devotedly. But I may not put my mother away 
 from me, even for your sake. I cannot do it. I have lain awake 
 whole nights trying to reconcile this act with my conscience. But 
 my conscience will have nothing to say to it rejects it with in- 
 dignation. 
 
 "What is to be done, then ? Indeed, I see only one way to es- 
 cape out of all these perplexities. Be patient with me while I tell 
 you what it is. My mother, like myself, has ceased to feel any con- 
 tentment in this hateful Haddington, and is bent on disposing of our 
 house here as soon as may be, and hiring one elsewhere. Why should 
 it not be the vicinity of Edinburgh after all ? and why should not 
 you live with your wife in your mother's house ? Because, you say, 
 my mother would never have the grace to like you, or let you live 
 with her in peace; because you could never have any right enjoy- 
 ment of my society, so long as you had me not all to yourself; and 
 finally because you must and will ' have a door of your own to slam 
 in the face of all nauseous intruders.' These are objections which 
 sound fatal to my scheme; but I am greatly mistaken if they are not 
 more sound than substance. My mother would like you, assuredly 
 she would, if you came to live with her as her son. Her terror is 
 lest, through your means, she should be made childless, and a weak 
 imagination that you regard her with disrespect both which rocks 
 of offence would be removed by this one concession. Besides, as my 
 wedded husband, you would appear to her in a new light. Her ma- 
 ternal affection, of which there is abundance at the bottom of her 
 heart, would of necessity extend itself to him with whom I was be- 
 come inseparably connected; and mere common-sense would pre- 
 scribe a kind motherly behavior as the only expedient to make the 
 best of what could no longer be helped." 
 
 The arrangement was at least as reasonable as that which he had 
 himself proposed, and Carlyle, who was so passionately attached to 
 his own mother, might have been expected to esteem and sympathize 
 with Miss Welsh's affection for hers. At Scotsbrig he would have 
 had no door of his own "to slam against nauseous intruders;" his 
 father, as long as he lived, would be master in his own house; while 
 the self-control which would have been required of him, had he re- 
 sided with Mrs. Welsh as a son-in-law, would have been a discipline 
 which his own character especially needed. But he knew that he 
 was "gey ill to live wi'." His own family were used to him, and he 
 in turn respected them, and could, within limits, conform to their 
 ways. From others he would submit to no interference. He knew 
 that he would not, and that it would be useless for him to try. He 
 felt that he had not considered Mrs. Welsh as he ought to have done ; 
 but his consideration, even after he had recognized his fault, remain- 
 ed a most restricted quantity.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 201 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 "April 2, 1826. 
 
 "As we think mostly of our own wants and wishes alone in this roy- 
 al project, I had taken no distinct account of your mother. I merely 
 remembered the text of Scripture, ' Thou shall leave thy father and 
 mother and cleave unto thy husband, and thy desire shall be towards 
 him all the days of thy life.' I imagined perhaps she might go to 
 Dumfriesshire and gratify her heart by increasing the accommoda- 
 tions of her father, which she would then have ample means to do; 
 perhaps that she might even ' in short, that she might arrange 
 her destiny in many ways in which my presence must be a hinderance 
 rather than a furtherance. Here I was selfish and thoughtless. I 
 might have known that the love of a mother to her only child is in- 
 destructible and irreplacable ; that forcibly to cut asunder such was 
 cruel and unjust. 
 
 "Perhaps, as I have told you, I may not yet have got to the bot- 
 tom of this new plan so completely as I wished; but there is one 
 thing that strikes me more and more the longer I think of it this, 
 the grand objection of all objections, the head and front of offence, 
 the soul of all my counterpleading an objection which is too likely 
 to overset the whole project. It may be stated hi a word : ' The man 
 should bear t'ule in the house, and not the woman.' This is an eternal 
 axiom, the law of nature, which no mortal departs from unpunish- 
 ed. I have meditated on this many years, and every day it grows 
 plainer to me. I must not, and I cannot, live in a house of which I 
 am not head. I should be miserable myself, and make all about me 
 miserable. Think not this comes of an imperious temper, that I 
 shall be a harsh and tyrannical husband to thee. God forbid ! But 
 it is the nature of a man, if he is controlled by anything but his own 
 reason, that he feels himself degraded and incited, be it justly or not, 
 to rebellion and discord. It is the nature of a woman again (for she 
 is entirely passive, not active) to cling to the man for support and 
 direction, to comply with his humors and feel pleasure in doing so, 
 simply because they are his, to reverence while she loves him, to 
 conquer him not by her force, but by her weakness, and perhaps, the 
 cunning gypsy, to command him by obeying him. . . . Your moth- 
 er is of all women the best calculated for being a wife, and the worst 
 for being a husband. I know her, perhaps better than she thinks ; and 
 it is not without affection and sincere esteem that I have seen the 
 fundamental structure of her character, and the many light capri- 
 cious half graces, half follies, that sport on the surface of it. I could 
 even fancy that she might love me also and feel happy beside me, if 
 her own true and kindly character were to come into fair and free 
 communion with mine, which she might then find was neither false 
 nor cruel any more than her own. I5ut this could only be (I will 
 speak it out at once and boldly, for it is the quiet and kind convic- 
 tion of my Judgment, not the conceited and selfish conviction of my 
 vanity) this could only be in a situation where she looked up to 
 me, not I to her. 
 
 1 He probably was going to say "marry again," but checked himself.
 
 202 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Now think, Liebchen, whether your mother will consent to for- 
 get her own riches and my poverty and uncertain, more probably 
 my scanty, income, and consent, in the spirit of Christian meekness, 
 to make me her guardian and director, and be a second wife to her 
 daughter's husband. If she can, then I say she is a noble woman, 
 and in the name of truth and affection let us all live together and be 
 one household and one heart, till death or her own choice part us. 
 If she cannot, which will do anything but surprise me, then also the 
 other thing cannot be, must not/ be; and for her sake no less than 
 for yours and mine we must think of something else." 
 
 The Greek chorus would have shaken its head ominously, and ut- 
 tered its musical cautions, over the temper displayed in this letter. 
 Yet it is perfectly true that Carlyle would have been an unbearable 
 inmate of any house, except his father's, where his will was not ab- 
 solute. "Gey ill to live wi'," as his mother-said. The condition 
 which he made was perhaps not so much as communicated to Mrs. 
 Welsh, for whom it would have furnished another text for a warn- 
 ing sermon. The "judicious desperation" which Carlyle recom- 
 mended to her daughter brought her to submit to going to live at 
 Scotsbrig. Under the circumstances Mrs. Welsh, in desperation too, 
 decided that the marriage should be celebrated immediately and an 
 end made. She comforted herself with the thought that being at 
 Templand with her father, she would at least be within reach, and 
 could visit Scotsbrig as often as she pleased. Here, however, new" 
 difficulties nrose. Carlyle, it seems, had made the proposition with- 
 out so much as consulting his father and mother. They at least, if 
 not he, were sensible, when they heard of it, of the unfitness of their 
 household to receive a lady brought up as Miss Welsh had been. 
 "Even in summer," they said, "it would be difficult for her to live 
 at Scotsbrig, and in winter impossible;" while the notion that Mrs. 
 Welsh should ever be a visitor there seemed as impossible to Carlyle 
 himself. He had deliberately intended to bring his wife into a 
 circle where the suggestion of her mother's appearance was too 
 extravagant to be entertained. 
 
 "You have misconceived [he said] the condition of Scotsbrig and 
 our only possible means of existence there. You talk of your moth- 
 er visiting us. By day and night it would astonish her to see this 
 household. Oh, no. Your mother must not visit mine. What 
 good were it? By an utmost exertion on the part of both they 
 might learn, perhaps, to tolerate each other, more probably to pity 
 and partially dislike each other. Better than mutual tolerance I . 
 could anticipate nothing from them. The mere idea of such a visit 
 argued too plainly that you knew nothing of the family circle in 
 which, for my sake, you were ready to take a place." 
 
 It is sad to read such words. Carlyle pretended that he knew 
 Mrs. Welsh. Human creatures are not all equally unreasonable ;
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 203 
 
 and he knew as little of her as he said that her daughter knew of 
 Scotsbrig. The two mothers, when the family connection brought 
 them together, respected each other, could meet without difficulty, 
 and part with a mutual regard which increased with acquaintance. 
 Had the incompatibility been as real as he supposed, Carlyle's 
 strange oblivion both of his intended wife's and his wife's mother's 
 natural feelings would still be without excuse. 
 
 His mind was fixed, as men's minds are apt to be in such circum- 
 stances. He chose to have his own way, and since it was impossi- 
 ble for Miss Welsh to live at Scotsbrig, and as he had on his side 
 determined that he would not live with Mrs. Welsh, some alterna- 
 tive had to be looked for. Once more he had an opportunity of 
 showing his defective perception of common things. Mrs. Welsh 
 had resolved, to leave Haddington and to give up her house there 
 immediately. The associations of the place after her daughter was 
 gone would necessarily be most painful. All her friends, the social 
 circle of which she had been the centre, regarded the marriage with 
 Carlyle as an extraordinary mesalliance. To them he was known 
 only as an eccentric farmer's son without profession or prospects, 
 and their pity or their sympathy would be alike distressing. She 
 had herself found him moody, violent, and imperious, and she at 
 least could only regard his conduct as extremely selfish. Men in the 
 situation of lovers often are selfish. It is only in novels that they 
 are heroic or even considerate. It occurred to Carlyle that since 
 Mrs. Welsh was going away the house at Haddington would do 
 well for himself. There it stood, rea.dy provided with all that was 
 necessary. He recollected that Edinburgh was noisy and disagree- 
 able, Haddington quiet, and connected with his own most pleasant 
 recollections. It might have occurred to him that under such al- 
 tered circumstances, where she would be surrounded by a number 
 of acquaintances, to every one of whom her choice appeared like 
 madness, Miss Welsh might object to living there as much as her 
 mother. She made her objections as delicately as she could ; but 
 he pushed them aside as if they were mere disordered fancies ; and 
 the fear of ' ' nauseous intruders, " which had before appeared so 
 dreadful to him, he disposed of with the most summary serenity. 
 "To me," he calmly wrote, "among the weightier evils and bless- 
 ings of existence, the evil of impertinent visitors, and so forth, seems 
 but a small drop of the bucket, and an exceedingly little thing. I 
 have nerve in me to despatch that sort of deer forever by dozens in 
 the day." 
 
 "That sort of deer" were the companions who had grown up be- 
 side Miss Welsh for twenty years. She was obliged to tell him per- 
 emptorily that she would not hear of this plan. It would have been 
 happier and perhaps better both for her and for him had she taken
 
 204 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 warning from the unconscious exhibition which he had made of his 
 inner nature. After forty years of life with him forty years of 
 splendid labor, in which his essential conduct had been pure as 
 snow, and unblemished by a serious fault, when she saw him at 
 length rewarded by the honor and admiration of Europe and Amer- 
 ica she had to preach nevertheless to her younger friends as the 
 sad lesson of her own experience, "My dear, whatever you do, never 
 marry a man of genius." The mountain-peaks of intellect are no 
 homes for quiet people. Those who are cursed or blessed with lofty 
 gifts and lofty purposes may be gods in their glory and their great- 
 ness, but are rarely tolerable as human companions. Carlyle con- 
 sented to drop the Haddington proposal, not, however, without show- 
 ing that he thought Miss Welsh less wise than he had hoped. 
 
 "The vacant house at Haddington [he said] occurred to my rec- 
 ollection like a sort of godsend expressly suited to our purpose. It 
 seemed so easy, and on other accounts so indispensable, to let it 
 stand undisposed of for another year, that I doubted not a moment 
 but the whole matter was arranged. If it turned out, which I reck- 
 oned to be impossible if you were not distracted in mind, that you 
 really liked better to front the plashes and puddles and the thou- 
 sand inclemencies of Scotsbrig through winter than live another six 
 months in the house where you had lived all your days, it was the 
 simplest process imaginable to stay where we were. The loss was 
 but of a few months' rent for your mother's house, and the certain- 
 ty it gave us made its great gain. Even yet I cannot, with the whole 
 force of my vast intellect, understand how my project has failed. I 
 wish not to undervalue your objections to the place, or your opin- 
 ion on any subject whatever, but I confess my inability with my 
 present knowledge to reconcile this very peremptory distaste with 
 your usual good-sense." 
 
 Again the plans were all astray. An Annandale cottage was once 
 more thought of, and once more, again, the difference in point of 
 view became prominent. 
 
 "I should have 200?. to begin with [Carlyle said], and many an 
 honest couple has begun with less. I know that wives are support- 
 ed, some in peace and dignity, others in contention and disgrace, 
 according to their wisdom or their folly, on all incomes from 14. a 
 year to 200,000?., and I trusted in Jane Welsh, and still trust in her, 
 for good-sense enough to accommodate her wants to the means of 
 the man she has chosen before all others, and to live with him con- 
 tented on whatever it should please Providence to allot him, keeping 
 within their revenue, not struggling to get without it, and therefore 
 rich, by whatever arithmetical symbol, whether tens, hundreds, or 
 thousands, by which that same revenue might be expressed. This 
 is not impossible, or even very difficult, provided the will be truly 
 there. Say what we like, it is in general our stupidity that makes 
 us straitened or contemptible. The sum of money is a very second- 
 ary matter. One of the happiest, most praiseworthy, and really
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 205 
 
 most enviable families on the earth at present lives within two bow- 
 shots of me that of Wightman, the hedger on the produce of fif- 
 teenpence per diem, which the man earns peacefully with his mat- 
 tock and bill, not counting himself any philosopher for so doing. 
 Their cottage on our hill is as tidy as a cabinet. They have a black- 
 eyed boy whom few squires can parallel. Their girnel is always 
 full of meal. The man is a true, honest, most wisely-conditioned 
 man, an elder of the congregation, and meekly but firmly persuaded 
 that he shall go to heaven when his hedging here below is done. 
 What want these knaves that a king should have?" 
 
 If Carlyle had looked into the economics of the Wightman house- 
 hold, he would have seen that the wife made her own and her hus- 
 band's and the child's clothes, that she cooked the meals, swept and 
 cleaned the house that was " tidy as a cabinet," washed the flannels 
 and the linen, and weeded the garden when she required fresh air 
 that she worked, in fact, at severe bodily labor from sunrise to sun- 
 set. Had he inquired into this, it is possible (though it would have 
 depended on his mood) that he might have asked himself whether 
 Miss AYelsh, setting aside her education and habits, was physically 
 capable of these exertions, and whether he had a right to expect her 
 to undertake them. Happily neither she nor her mother had com- 
 pletely parted with their senses. They settled the matter at last in 
 their own fashion. The Haddington establishment was broken up. 
 They moved to Edinburgh, and took the house in Comely Bank 
 which Carlyle mentioned. Mrs. Welsh undertook to pay the rent, 
 and the Haddington furniture was carried thither. She proposed to 
 remain there with her daughter till October, and was then to remove 
 finally to her father's house at Templand, where the ceremony was 
 to come off. Carlyle, when once married and settled in Edinburgh, 
 would be in the way of any employment which might offer for him. 
 At Comely Bank, at any rate, Mrs. Welsh could be received occa- 
 sionally as a visitor. For immediate expenses of living there was 
 Carlyle's 2(HK, and such additions to it as he could earn. Miss 
 Welsh recovered hope and spirit, and wrote in June from the new 
 home, describing it and its position : 
 
 "It is by no means everything one might wish [she said]; but it 
 is by much the most suitable that could be got, particularly in situa- 
 tion, being within a few minutes' walk of the town, and at the same 
 time well out of its smoke and bustle. Indeed, it would be quite 
 country -looking, only that it is one of a range ; for there is a real 
 flower-garden in front, overshadowed by a fair spreading tree, while 
 the windows look out on the greenest fields with never a street to be 
 seen. As for interior accommodation, there are a dining-room and a 
 drawing-room, three sleeping-rooms, a kitchen, and more closets than 
 I can see the least occasion for unless you design to be another Blue 
 Beard. So you see we shall have apartments enough, on a small 
 I. 10
 
 206 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 scale indeed, almost laughably small; but if this is no objection in 
 your eyes, neither is it any in mine." 
 
 Carlyle was supremely satisfied. The knotty problem "which had 
 seemed so hopeless was now perfectly solved. 
 
 To Miss Welsh. 
 
 "Scotsbrig: July 19, 1826. 
 
 "It is thus the mind of man cafl learn to command the most com- 
 plex destiny, and like an experienced steersman (to speak in a most 
 original figure) to steer its bark through all imaginable currents, un- 
 dercurrents, quicksands, reefs, and stormy weather. Here are two 
 swallows in the corner of my window that have taken a house (not 
 at Comely Bank) this summer ; and, in spite of drought and bad 
 crops, are bringing up a family together with the highest content- 
 ment and unity of soul. Surely, surely, Jane Welsh and Thomas 
 Carlyle here as they stand have in them conjunctly the wisdom of 
 many swallows. Let them exercise it then, in God's name, and live 
 happy as these birds of passage are doing. It is not nature that made 
 men unhappy, but their own despicable perversities. The Deuce is 
 in the people! Have they not food and raiment fit for all the wants 
 of the body; and wives, and children, and brothers, and parents, and 
 holiest duties for the wants of the soul ? What ails them, then, the 
 ninnies? Their vanity, their despicable, very despicable self-conceit, 
 conjoined with, or rather grounded on.their lowness of mind. They 
 want to be happy, and by happiness they mean pleasure, a series of 
 passive enjoyments. If they had a quarter of an eye they would 
 see that there not only was not, but could not be such a thing in 
 God's creation. I often seriously thank this otherwise my infernal 
 distemper for having helped to teach me these things. They are 
 not to be learned without sore affliction. Happy he to whom even 
 affliction will teach them! and here ends my present lecture." 
 
 The great business having been once arranged, the rest of the 
 summer flew swiftly by. "German Romance" was finished, and 
 paid for the marriage expenses. The world was taken into confi- 
 dence by a formal announcement of what was impending : Miss 
 Welsh, writing for the first time to her relations, sent a description 
 of her intended husband to the wife of her youngest uncle, Mrs. 
 George Welsh. She was not blinded by affection no one ever less 
 so in her circumstances. I have not kept back what I believe to 
 have been faults in Carlyle, and the lady to whom he was to be mar- 
 ried knew what they were better than any one else can know; yet 
 here was her deliberate opinion of him. He stood there such as he 
 had made himself: a peasant's son who had run about barefoot in 
 Ecclefechan street, with no outward advantages, worn with many 
 troubles bodily and mental. His life had been pure and without 
 spot. He was an admirable son, a faithful and affectionate brother, 
 in all private relations blamelessly innocent. He had splendid tal-
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 207 
 
 ents, which he rather felt than understood; only he was determined, 
 in the same high spirit and duty which had governed his personal 
 conduct, to use them well, whatever they might be, as a trust com- 
 mitted to him, and never, never to sell his soul by travelling the 
 primrose path to wealth and distinction. If honor came to him, 
 honor was to come unsought. I feel as if, in dwelling on his wil- 
 
 fulness, 
 
 " I did him wrong, being so majestical, 
 To offer him the show of violence." 
 
 But I learned my duty from himself: to paint him as he was, to keep 
 back nothing and extenuate nothing. I never knew a man whose 
 reputation, take him for all in all, would emerge less scathed from 
 so hard a scrutiny. 
 
 Miss "Welsh's letter was sent to Carlyle after her death in 1866. 
 It came to him, as he said, "as a flash of radiance from above." 
 One or two slight notes which he attached are marked with his 
 initials, "T. C." 
 
 To Mrs. George Welsh, Boreland, Dumfries. 
 
 "Templand: September, 1826. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Welsh, You must think me just about the most 
 faithless character in the nation ; but I know, myself, that I am far 
 from being so bad as I seem. The truth is, the many strange things 
 I have had to do and think of in late months left me no leisure of 
 mind for writing mere complimentary letters; but still you, as well 
 as others of my friends, have not been remembered by me with the 
 less kindness that you have seen no expression of my remembrance 
 on paper. So pray do not go to entertain any hard thoughts of me, 
 my good little aunt, seeing that at bottom I deserve nothing but lov- 
 ing-kindness at your hands. Better add a spice of long-suffering to 
 your loving-kindness, which will make us the very best friends in 
 the world. 
 
 " It were no news to you what a momentous matter I have been 
 busied with. 'Not to know that would argue yourself unknown.' 
 For a marriage is a topic suited to the capacities of all living; and 
 in this, as in every other known instance, has been made the most of. 
 But, forasmuch as much breath has been wasted on 'my situation,' 
 I have my own doubts whether they have given you any right idea 
 of it. They would tell you, I should suppose, first and foremost, 
 that my intended is poor (for that it requires no great depth of sagac- 
 ity to discover) ; and in the next place, most likely, indulge in some 
 criticisms scarce flattering on his birth, 1 the more likely if their own 
 birth happened to be mean or doubtful ; and if they happened to be 
 vulgar fine people, with disputed pretensions to good looks, they 
 
 1 "Gracie, of Dumfries, kind of 'genealogist by trade,' had marked long since (of 
 lr> own accord, not knowing me) my grandfather to be lineally descended from the 
 lirs-t Lord Carlyle, 'and brings us down from the brother of the murdered Duncan. 
 What laughing my darling and I had when that document arrived. T. C."
 
 208 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 would to a certainty set him down as unpolished and ill-looking. 
 But a hundred chances to one they would not tell you he is among 
 the cleverest men of his day and not the cleverest only, but the 
 most enlightened; that he possesses all the qualities I deem essential 
 in my husband a warm, true heart to love me, a towering intellect 
 to command me, and a spirit of fire to be the guiding-star of my 
 life. 1 Excellence of this sort always requires some degree of supe- 
 riority in those who duly appreciate it. In the eyes of the canaille, 
 poor soulless wretches, it is mere foolishness; and it is only the 
 canaille who babble about other people's affairs. 
 
 ' ' Such, then, is this future husband of mine not a great man ac- 
 cording to the most common sense of the word, but truly great in its 
 natural proper sense : a scholar, a poet, a philosopher, a wise and 
 noble man, one 'who holds his patent of nobility from Almighty 
 God,' and whose high stature of manhood is not to be measured by 
 the inch rule of Lilliputs. Will you like him? No matter whether 
 you do or not, since I like him in the deepest part of my soul." 
 
 "I would invite you to my wedding if I meant to invite any one; 
 but to my taste such ceremonies cannot be too private. Besides, by 
 making distinctions amongst my relations on the occasion, I should 
 be sure to give offence ; and by God's blessing I will have no one 
 there who does not feel kindly both towards him and me. 
 
 ' ' My affectionate regards to my uncle ; a kiss to wee John ; and 
 believe me always, 
 
 " Your sincere friend and dutiful niece, JANE WELSH. " 3 
 
 The wedding-day drew on; not without (as was natural) more than 
 the usual nervousness on both sides at the irrevocable step which 
 was about to be ventured. Carlyle knew too well "that he was a 
 perverse mortal to deal with," "that the best resolutions made ship- 
 wreck in practice," and that " it was a chance if any woman could 
 be happy with him." "The brightest moment of his existence," 
 as in anticipation he had regarded his marriage, was within three 
 weeks of him, yet he found himself "splenetic, sick, sleepless, void 
 of faith, hope, and charity in short, altogether bad and worthless." 
 "I trust Heaven I shall be better soon," he said; "a certain incident 
 otherwise will wear a quite original aspect." Clothes had to be pro- 
 vided, gloves thought of. Scotch custom not recognizing licenses 
 in such cases, required that the names of the intending pair should 
 be proclaimed in their respective 'churches ; and this to both of them 
 was intolerable. They were to be married in the morning at Temp- 
 land church, and to go the same day to Comely Bank. 
 
 Carlyle, thrifty always, considered it might be expedient "to take 
 
 i "Alas! alas! T. C." 
 
 * "God bless thee, dear one! T. C. " 
 
 8 " Letter read now .January 24, 1808 after a sleepless night withal such as has too 
 often befallen latterly, cuts me through the soul with inexpressible feelings remorse 
 no small portion of them. Oh, my ever dear one! How was all this fulfilled for thee 
 fulfilled!!-!. C."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 209 
 
 seats in the coach from Dumfries." The coach would be safer than 
 a carriage, more certain of arriving, etc. So nervous was he, too, 
 that he wished his brother John to accompany them on their journey 
 at least part of the way. In her mind the aspect of the affair 
 varied between tragic and comic, Carlyle's troubles over the details 
 being ludicrous enough. 
 
 "I am resolved in spirit [she said], and even joyful joyful in 
 the face of the dreaded ceremony, of starvation, and of every horri- 
 ble fate. Oh, my dearest friend, be always so good to me, and I 
 shall make the best and happiest wife. When I read in your looks 
 and words that you love me, then I care not one straw for the whole 
 universe besides. But when you fly from me to smoke tobacco, or 
 speak of me as a mere circumstance of your lot, then indeed my 
 heart is troubled about many things." 
 
 Miss Welsh, too, as well as Carlyle, had a fiery temper. When 
 provoked she was as hard as flint, with possibilities of dangerous 
 sparks of fire. She knew her tendencies and made the best resolu- 
 tions : 
 
 " I am going really to be a very meek- tempered wife [she wrote 
 to him]. Indeed, I am begun to be meek-tempered already. My 
 aunt tells me she could live forever with me without quarrelling, I 
 am so reasonable and equable in my humor. There is something 
 to gladden your heart withal. And more than this, my grandfather 
 observed, while I was supping my porridge last night, that ' she was 
 really a douce peaceable body that Pen.' Do you perceive, my 
 good sir, the fault will be wholly your own if we do not get on 
 most harmoniously together." 
 
 The grandfather, as Carlyle was coming into his family, was 
 studying what he had already written. 
 
 "My grandfather [she added] has been particularly picturesque 
 these two days. On coming down-stairs on Sunday evening I found 
 him poring over ' Wilhelm Meister.' ' A strange choice.' I observed, 
 by way of taking the first word with him, 'for Sunday reading.' 
 He answered me quite sharply, ' Not at all, miss; the book is a very 
 good book; it is all about David and Goliah.' " 
 
 Jest as she would, however, Miss Welsh was frightened and Car- 
 lyle was frightened. The coach suggestion had sent a shiver through 
 her. They comforted one another as if they were going to be exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 To TJwmas Carlyle. 
 
 " Templand : October 10. 
 
 " You desired me to answer your letter on Thursday, but I have 
 waited another post that I might do it better, if indeed any good 
 thing is to be said under such horrid circumstances. Oh do, for 
 Heaven's sake, get into a more benignant humor, or the incident 
 will not only wear a very original aspect, but likewise a very heart-
 
 210 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 breaking one. I see not how I am to go through with it. I turn 
 quite sick at the thought. But it were Job's comfort to vex you 
 with my anxieties and 'severe affection.' I will rather set before 
 you, by way of encouragement, that the purgatory will soon be past, 
 and would speak peace where there is no peace, only that you would 
 easily see through such affected philosophy. There is nothing for 
 us then but, like the Annan congregation, to pray to the Lord. 
 
 " I have said that I delayed writing that I might do it more satis- 
 factorily for this reason. I expected to know last night when my 
 mother is to come from Edinburgh, in which case I should have 
 been able to name some day, though not so early a one as that pro- 
 posed; but alas! alas! my mother is dilatory and uncertain as ever, 
 and the only satisfaction I can give you at this time is to promise I 
 will soon write again. What has taken her to Edinburgh so inop- 
 portunely ? to set some fractions of women cutting out white gowns, 
 a thing which might have been done with all convenience when we 
 were there last month. But some people are wise, and some are 
 otherwise, and I shall be glad to get the gowns anyway, for I should 
 like ill to put you to charge in that article for a very great while. 
 Besides, you know it would be a bad omen to marry in mourning. 
 When I first put it on, six years ago, 1 1 thought to wear it forever; 
 but I have found a second father, and it were ungrateful not to 
 show, even externally, how much I rejoice in him. 
 
 ' ' I fear you must be proclaimed to your own parish. Pity, since 
 you are so ashamed of me ; but I will enlighten you on that head 
 also in my next. 
 
 "With respect to the journey part of the business, I loudly de- 
 clare for running the risk of being stuck up part of the way (which 
 at this season of the year is next to none) rather than undergo the 
 unheard-of horror of being thrown into the company of strangers in 
 such severe circumstances, or possibly, which would be still worse, 
 of some acquaintance in the stage-coach. For the same reason I 
 prohibit John from going with us an inch of the road ; and he must 
 not think there is any unkindness in this. I hope your mother is 
 praying for me. Give her my affectionate regards. 
 
 "JANE WELSH." 
 
 Carlyle, on his side, tried to allay his fears of what Miss Welsh 
 called "the odious ceremony" by reading Kant, and had reached 
 the hundred and fiftieth page of the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft," 
 when he found that it was too abstnise for his condition, and that 
 Scott's novels would answer better. With this assistance he tried 
 to look more cheerfully on the adventure. 
 
 "After all [he said] I believe we take this impending ceremony 
 far too much to heart. Bless me ! Have not many people been 
 married before now ? and were they not all carried through with 
 some measure of Christian co-mfoart, and taught to see that marriage 
 was simply nothing but marriage? Take courage, then, and let 
 
 i For her father She had worn mourning ever since.
 
 - LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 211 
 
 no ' cold shudder ' come over you ; and call not this an odious cere- 
 mony, but rather a blessed ordinance sanctioning by earthly laws 
 what is already sanctioned in heaven; uniting two souls for worldly 
 joy and woe which in God's sight have chosen one another from 
 amongst all men. Can any road be dark which is leading thither ? 
 You will see it will be all 'smooth as oil,' notwithstanding our 
 forebodings. Consider Goethe's saying, ' We look on our scholars 
 as so many swimmers, each of whom in the element that threatened 
 to devour him, unexpectedly feels himself borne up and able to 
 make progress; and so it is with all that man undertakes' with 
 marriage as with other things. By all reason, therefore, German 
 and English, I call on you to be composed in spirit, and to fear no 
 evil in this really blessed matter. 
 
 "To your arrangements about the journey and the other items of 
 the how* and when, I can only answer as becomes me. Be it as thou 
 hast said. Let me know your will and it shall be my pleasure. 
 And so by the blessing of Heaven we shall roll along side by side 
 with the speed of post-horses till we arrive at Comely Bank. I shall 
 only stipulate that you will let me, by the road, as occasion serves, 
 smoke three cigars without criticism or reluctance, as things essential 
 to my perfect contentment. Yet if you object to this article, think 
 not that I will break off the match on that account, but rather, like 
 a dutiful husband, submit to the everlasting ordinance of Provi- 
 dence, and let my wife have her way. 
 
 " You are very kind, and more just than I have reason to expect, 
 in imputing my ill-natured speeches (for which Heaven forgive me) 
 to their true cause a disordered nervous system. Believe me, Jane, 
 it is not I, but the devil speaking out of me, which could utter one 
 harsh word to a heart that so little deserves it. Oh, I were blind 
 and wretched if I could make thee unhappy. But it will not and 
 shall not be, for I am not naturally a villain; and at bottom I do 
 love you well. And so when we have learned to know each other 
 as we are, and got all our arrangements accomplished and our 
 household set in order, I dare promise you that it will all be well, 
 and we shall live far happier than we have ever hoped. Sickness 
 is the origin, but no good cause, of indiscriminating spleen ; if we 
 are wise we must learn, if not to resist, at least to evade its influences 
 a science in which even I in the midst of my own establishment 
 fancy I have made some progress, and despair not of making more. 
 
 "As to the proclamation, on which I expect your advice, I pro- 
 test I had rather be proclaimed in all the parish churches of the 
 empire than miss the little bird I have in my eye, whom I see not 
 how I am to do without. So get the gowns made ready and loiter 
 not, and tell me, and in a twinkling me toila! Thank your aunt for 
 her kind invitation, which I do not refuse or accept till the next 
 letter, waiting to see how matters turn. I was surely born to be a 
 Bedouin. Without freedom 'I should soon die and do nocht ava.' 
 My chosen abode is in my own house in preference to the palace of 
 Windsor; and next to this shall I not, with the man in the play, take 
 my ease at mine inn? 
 
 "My mother's prayers (to speak with all seriousness) are, I do 
 believe, not wanting either to you or to me, and if the sincere wishes
 
 212 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of a true soul can have any virtue, we shall not want a blessing. 
 She bids me send you the kindest message I can contrive, which I 
 send by itself without contrivance. She says she will have one good 
 greet when we set off, and then be at peace. Now, then, what re- 
 mains but that you appoint the date, that you look forward to it 
 with trust in me and trust in yourself, and come with trust to your 
 husband's arms and heart, there to abide through all chances for- 
 ever ? Oh, we are two ungrateful wretches, or we should be happy. 
 Write soon, and love me forever ; and so good-night, mein Herzens- 
 kind. Thine auf ewig, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 So the long drama came to its conclusion. The banns were pub- 
 lished, the clothes made, the gloves duly provided. The day was 
 the 17th of October, 1826. Miss Welsh's final letter, informing Car- 
 lyle of the details to be observed, is humorously headed, " The last 
 Speech and marrying Words of that unfortunate young woman, Jane 
 Baillie Welsh." 
 
 "Truly [answered Carlyle], a most delightful and swan-like mel- 
 ody is in them a tenderness and warm devoted trust worthy of such 
 a maiden bidding farewell to the unmarried earth of which she was 
 the fairest ornament. Let us pray to God that our holy purpose is 
 not frustrated. Let us trust in him and in each other, and fear no 
 evil that can befall us." 
 
 They were married in the parish church of Templand in the 
 quietest fashion, the minister officiating, John Carlyle the only 
 other person present except Miss Welsh's family. Breakfast over, 
 they drove off, not in the coach, but in a post-chaise, and without 
 the brother. No delays or difficulties befell them on the road. 
 Whether Carlyle did or did not smoke his three cigars remains 
 unrecorded. In the evening they arrived safely at Comely Bank. 
 
 Regrets and speculations on "the might have beens" of life are 
 proverbially vain. Nor is it certain that there is anything to re- 
 gret. The married life of Carlyle and Jane Welsh was not happy 
 in the roseate sense of happiness. In the fret and chafe of daily 
 life the sharp edges of the facets of two diamonds remain keen, and 
 they never wear into surfaces which harmoniously correspond. A 
 man and a woman of exceptional originality and genius are proper 
 mates for one another only if they have some other object before 
 them besides happiness, and are content to do without it. For the 
 forty years which these two extraordinary persons lived together, 
 their essential conduct to the world and to each other was sternly 
 iipright. They had to encounter poverty in its most threatening 
 aspect poverty which they might at any moment have escaped if 
 Carlyle would have sacrificed his intellectual integrity, would have 
 carried his talents to the market, and written down to the level of 
 the multitude. If he ever flagged, it was his wife who spurred him
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 213 
 
 on; nor would she ever allow him to do less than his very best. 
 She never flattered any one, least of all her husband; and when she 
 saw cause for it, the sarcasms flashed out from her as the sparks fly 
 from lacerated steel. Carlyle, on his side, did not find in his marriage 
 the miraculous transformation of nature which he had promised him- 
 self. He remained lonely and dyspeptic, possessed by thoughts and 
 convictions which struggled in him for utterance, and which could 
 be fused and cast into form only (as I have heard him say) when his 
 whole mind was like a furnace at white heat. The work which he 
 has done is before the world, and the world has long acknowledged 
 what it owes to him. It would not have been done as well, perhaps 
 it would never have been done at all, if he had not had a woman at 
 his side who would bear, without resenting it, the outbreaks of his 
 dyspeptic humor, and would shield him from the petty troubles of 
 a poor man's life from vexations which would have irritated him 
 to madness by her own incessant toil. 
 
 The victory was won, but, as of old in Aulis, not without a vic- 
 tim. Miss Welsh had looked forward to being Carlyle's intellectual 
 companion, to sharing his thoughts and helping him with his writ- 
 ings. She was not overrating her natural powers when she felt be- 
 ing equal to such a position and deserving it. The reality was not 
 like the dream. Poor as they were, she had to work as a menial 
 servant. She, who had never known a wish ungratified for any ob- 
 ject which money could buy; she, who had seen the rich of the land 
 at her feet, and might have chosen among them at pleasure, with a 
 weak frame withal which had never recovered the shock of her fa- 
 ther's death she after all was obliged to slave like the wife of her 
 husband's friend Wightman, the hedger, and cook and wash and 
 scour and mend shoes and clothes for many a weary year. Bravely 
 she went through it all ; and she would have gone through it cheer- 
 fully if she had been rewarded with ordinary gratitude. But if 
 things were done rightly, Carlyle did not inquire who did them. 
 Partly he was occupied, partly he was naturally undemonstrative, 
 and partly she in generosity concealed from him the worst which 
 she had to bear. The hardest part of all was that he did not see 
 that there was occasion for any special acknowledgment. Poor men's 
 wives had to work. She was a poor man's wife, and it was fit and 
 natural that she should work. He had seen his mother and his sis- 
 ters doing the drudgery of his father's household without expecting 
 to be admired for doing it. Mrs. Carlyle's life was entirely lonely, 
 save so far as she had other friends. He consulted her judgment 
 about his writings, for he knew the value of it, but in his concep- 
 tions and elaborations he chose to be always by himself. He said 
 truly that he was a Bedouin. When he was at work he could 
 bear no one in the room; and, at least through middle life, he rode 
 
 10*
 
 214 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and walked alone, not choosing to have his thoughts interrupted. 
 The slightest noise or movement at night shattered his nervous sys- 
 tem; therefore he required a bedroom to himself; thus from the first 
 she saw little of him, and as time went on less and less ; and she, 
 too, was human and irritable. Carlyle proved, as his mother had 
 known him, "ill to live with." Generous and kind as he was at 
 heart, and as he always showed. himself when he had leisure to 
 reflect, "the devil," as he had said, "continued to speak out of 
 him in distempered sentences," and the bitter arrow was occasion- 
 ally shot back. 
 
 Miss Welsh, it is probable, would have passed through life more 
 pleasantly had she married some one in her own rank of life; Car- 
 lyle might have gone through it successfully with his mother or a 
 sister to look after him. But, after all is said, trials and sufferings 
 are only to be regretted when they have proved too severe to be borne. 
 Though the lives of the Carlyles were not happy, yet if we look at 
 them from the beginning to the end they were grandly beautiful. 
 Neither of them probably under other conditions would have risen 
 to as high an excellence as in fact they each achieved; and the main 
 question is not how happy men and women have been in this world, 
 but what they have made of themselves. I well remember the 
 bright assenting laugh with which she once responded to some 
 words of mine when the propriety was being discussed of relaxing 
 the marriage laws. I had said that the true way to look at mar- 
 riage was as a discipline of character. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 A.D. 1826. ,ET. 31. 
 
 MARRIED life had begun ; and the first eighteen months of his 
 new existence Carlyle afterwards looked back upon as the happiest 
 that he had ever known. Yet the rest which he had expected did 
 not come immediately. He could not rest without work, and work 
 was yet to be found. Men think to mend their condition by a 
 change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from 
 their shadows. His wife was tender, careful, thoughtful, patient, 
 but the spirit which possessed her husband, whether devil or angel 
 he could hardly tell, still left him without peace. 
 
 "I am still dreadfully confused [he wrote to his mother a few 
 days after his arrival at Comely Bank], I am still far from being at 
 home in my new situation, but I have reason to say that I have been 
 mercifully dealt with ; and if an outward man worn with continual 
 harassments and spirits wasted with so many agitations would let
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 215 
 
 me see it, that I may fairly calculate on being far happier than I 
 have ever been. The house is a perfect model, furnished with every 
 accommodation that heart could desire ; and for my wife, I may say 
 in my heart that she is far better than any wife, and loves me with 
 a devotedness which it is a mystery to me how I have ever de- 
 served. She is gay and happy as a lark, and looks with such soft 
 cheerfulness into my gloomy countenance, that new hope passed 
 into me every time I met her eye. In truth, I was very sullen yes- 
 terday, sick with sleeplessness, nervous, bilious, splenetic, and all 
 the rest of it." 
 
 His days were spent in solitary wanderings by the sad autumnal 
 sea. He begged his brother John to come to him. 
 
 " I am all in a maze [he said], scarce knowing the right hand from 
 the left in the path I have to walk. I am still insufficiently supplied 
 with sleep ; no wonder, therefore, that my sky should be tinged with 
 gloom. Tell my mother, however, that I do believe I shall get heft- 
 ed to my new situation, and then be one of the happiest men alive. 
 Tell her also that by Jane's express request I am to read a sermon 
 and a chapter with commentary, at least every Sabbath day, to my 
 household ; also that we are taking seats in church, and design to 
 live soberly and devoutly as beseems us. On the whole this wife of 
 mine surpasses my hopes. She is so tolerant, so kind, so cheerful, 
 so devoted to me : oh that I were worthy of her ! Why am I not 
 happy then? Alas! Jack I am bilious. I have to swallow salts and 
 oil ; the physic leaves me pensive yet quiet in heart, and on the whole 
 happy enough ; but the next day comes a burning stomach and a 
 heart full of bitterness and gloom." 
 
 The entries in his diary are still more desponding : 
 
 "December 7, 1826. My whole life has been, a continual night- 
 mare, and my awakening will be in hell. TIECK. 
 
 "There is just one man unhappy: he who is possessed by some 
 idea which he cannot convert into action, or still more, which re- 
 strains or withdraws him from action. GOETHE. 
 
 " The end of man is an action, not a thought. ARISTOTLE. 
 
 "Adam is fabled by the Talmudists to have had a wife before 
 Eve : she was called Lilith, and their progeny was all manner of 
 aquatic and aerial devils. BURTON." 
 
 As he grew more composed Carlyle thought of writing some 
 kind of didactic novel. He could not write a novel, any more than 
 he could write poetry. He had no invention. His genius was for 
 fact : to lay hold on truth, with all his intellect and all his imagina- 
 tion. He could no more invent than he could lie. Still he labored 
 at it in his thoughts, and in the intervals he threw himself into a 
 course of wide and miscellaneous reading. Sir Thomas Browne, 
 Raleigh, Shaftesbury, Herder, Tieck, Hans Sachs, Werner, Sir Will- 
 iam Temple, Scaliger, Burton, Alison, Mendelssohn, Fichte, Schell- 
 ing, Kant, Heine, Italian books, Spanish books, French books, occu-
 
 216 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 pied or at least distracted him, and short extracts or observations 
 mark his steps as he went along : 
 
 "December 3, 1826. The conclusion of the essay on Urn-burial 
 (Sir Thomas Browne) is absolutely beautiful: a still elegiac mood, 
 so soft, so deep, so solemn and tender, like the song of some depart- 
 ed saint flitting faint under the everlasting canopy of night ; an echo 
 of deepest meaning ' from the great and famous nations of the dead.' 
 Browne must have been a good man. What was his history? What 
 the real form of his character? Abiit ad plures. ' He hath gone to 
 the greater number. ' Two infants reasoning in the womb about the 
 nature of this life might be no unhandsome type of two men reason- 
 ing here about the life that is to come. I should like to know more 
 of Browne ; but I ought to understand his time better also. What 
 are we to make of this old English literature? Touches of true beau- 
 ty are thickly scattered over these works ; great learning, solidity of 
 thought; but much, much that now cannot avail any longer. Cer- 
 tainly the spirit of that age was far better than that of ours. Is 
 the form of our literature an improvement intrinsically, or only a 
 form better adapted to our actual condition? I often think the lat- 
 ter. Difficulty of speaking on these points without affectation. 
 We know not what to think, and would gladly think something 
 very striking and pretty. 
 
 "Sir Walter Raleigh's 'Advice to his Son,' worldly-wise, sharp, 
 far-seeing. The motto, 'Nothing like getting on.' Of Burghley's 
 'Advice ' the motto is the same; the execution, if I rightly remem- 
 ber, is in a gentler and more loving spirit. Walsingham's ' Manual ' 
 I did not read. These men of Elizabeth's are like so many Romans 
 or Greeks. Were we to seek for the Caesars, the Ciceros, Pericles, 
 Alcibiades of England, we should find them nowhere if not in that 
 era. Wherefore are these things hid, or worse than hid, presented 
 in false tinsel colors, originating in affected ignorance and producing 
 affected ignorance? Would I knew rightly about it and could pre- 
 sent it rightly to others. For 'hear, alas! this mournful truth, nor 
 hear it with a frown.' There in that old age lies the only true poeti- 
 cal literature of England. The poets of the last age took to peda- 
 gogy (Pope and his school), and shrewd men they were; those of the 
 present age to ground and lofty tumbling, and it will do your heart 
 good to see how they vault. 
 
 "It is a damnable heresy in criticism to maintain either expressly 
 or implicitly that the ultimate object of poetry is sensation. That 
 of cookery is such, but not that of poetry. Sir Walter Scott is the 
 great intellectual restaurateur of Europe. He might have been num- 
 bered among the Conscript Fathers. He has chosen the worser part, 
 and is only a huge Publicanus. What are his novels any one of 
 them ? A bout of champagne, claret, port, or even ale drinking. 
 Are we wiser, better, holier, stronger? No. We have been amused. 
 Oh, Sir Walter, thou knowest so well that Virtus laudatur et algctf 
 Byron good, generous, hapless Byron! And yet when he died he 
 was only a Kraftmann (Powerman as the Germans call them). Had 
 he lived he would have been a poet. 
 
 "What shall I say of Herder's 'Ideen zur Philosophic der Ge-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 217 
 
 schichte der Menschheit?' An extraordinary book, yet one which 
 by no means wholly pleaseth me. If Herder were not known as a 
 devout man and clerk, his book would be reckoned atheistical. Ev- 
 erything is the effect of circumstances or organization. Er war was 
 er seyn konnte. The breath of life is but a higher intensation of light 
 and electricity. This is surely very dubious, to say no worse of it. 
 Theories of this and kindred sorts deform his whole work immor- 
 tality not shown us, but left us to be hoped for and to be believed by 
 faith. This world sufficiently explainable without reference to an- 
 other. Strange ideas about the Bible and religion; passing strange 
 we think them for a clergyman. Must see more of Herder. He is 
 a new species in some degree. 
 
 "December 1. Chateaubriand, Friedrich Schlegel, Werner, and 
 that class of man among ourselves, are one of the distinctive feat- 
 ures of the time. When Babylon the Great is about to be destroyed, 
 her doom is already appointed by infidelity ; and religion, too much 
 interwoven with that same Babylon, has not yet risen on her mind, 
 but seems rather, only seems, as if about to perish with her. A cu- 
 rious essay might be written on the customary grounds of human 
 belief. Yes, it is true. The decisions of reason ( Vernunft) are su- 
 perior to those of understanding (Verstand). The latter vary in 
 every age (by what law?), while the former last forever, and are the 
 same in all forms of manhood. 
 
 "Oh, Parson Alison, what an essay 'On Taste' is that of thine ! 
 Oh, most intellectual Athenian, what accounts are those you give us 
 of Morality and Faith, and all that really makes a man a man? Can 
 you believe that the ' Beautiful ' and ' Good ' have no deeper root 
 in us than 'association,' 'sympathy,' 'calculation?' Then, if so, 
 whence, in Heaven's name, comes this sympathy, the pleasure of 
 this association, the obligancy of this utility? You strive, like the 
 witch in Hoffmann, to work from the outside inwards, and two 
 inches below the surface you will never get. 
 
 " The philosophy of Voltaire and his tribe exhilarates and fills us 
 with glorying for a season the comfort of the Indian who warmed 
 himself at the flames of his bed. 
 
 "A clown that killed his ass for drinking up the moon, ut lunam 
 mundo redderet. In Lud. vines. True of many critics of sceptics. 
 The sceptics have not drunk up the moon, but the reflection of it in 
 their own dirty puddles; therefore need not be slam. 
 
 "January, 1827. Read Mendelssohn's 'Phaedon,' a half transla- 
 tion, half imitation of Plato's 'Phaidon,' or last thoughts of Socra- 
 tes on the immortality of the soul. On the whole a good book 
 and convincing? Ay de mi! These things, I fear, are not to be 
 proved but believed; not seized by the understanding, but by faith. 
 However, it is something to remove errors if not introduce truths ; 
 and to show us that our analogies drawn from corporeal things are 
 entirely inapplicable to the case. For the present, I will confess it, 
 I scarce see how we can reason with absolute certainty on the nat- 
 ure or fate of anything, for it seems to me we only see our own per- 
 ceptions and their relations ; that is to say, our soul sees only its own 
 partial reflex and manner of existing and conceiving. 
 
 " Sapientia prima, est stultitid caruisse. Fully as well thus, Stulti-
 
 218 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 tiaprima est sapientid caruisse: the case of all materialist metaphy- 
 sicians, most utilitarians, moralists, and generally all negative phi- 
 losophers, by whatever name they call themselves. It was God that 
 said Yes. It is the devil that forever says No. 
 
 "Leibnitz and Descartes found all truth to rest on our seeing and 
 believing in God. We English have found our seeing and believing 
 in God to rest on all truth, and pretty work we have made of it. 
 
 "Is not political economy useful? and ought not Joseph Hume 
 and Macculloch to be honored of all men ? My cow is useful, and 
 I keep her in the stable, and feed her with oil-cake and ' chaff and 
 dregs,' and esteem her truly. But shall she live in my parlor? No; 
 by the Fates, she shall live in the stall. 
 
 " Virtue is its own reward, but in a very different sense than you 
 suppose, Dr. Gowkthrapple. The pleasure it brings! Had you ever 
 a diseased liver? I will maintain, and appeal to all competent 
 judges, that no evil conscience with a good nervous system ever 
 caused a tenth part of the misery that a bad nervous system, con- 
 joined with the best conscience in nature, will always produce. 
 What follows, then? Pay off your moralist, and hire two apothe- 
 caries and two cooks. Socrates is inferior to Captain Barclay ; and 
 the ' Enchiridion ' of Epictetus must hide its head before Kitchener's 
 'Peptic Receipts.' Heed not the immortality of the soul so long as 
 you have beefsteaks, porter, and blue pills. Das hole der Teufel! 
 Virtue is its own reward, because it needs no reward. 
 
 "To prove the existence of God, as Paley has attempted to do, is 
 like lighting a lantern to seek for the sun. If you look hard by 
 your lantern, you may miss your search. 
 
 "An historian must write, so to speak, in lines; but every event is 
 a superficies. Nay, if we search out its causes, a solid. Hence a pri 
 mary and almost incurable defect in the art of narration, which only 
 the very best can so much as approximately remedy. N.B. I un- 
 derstand this myself. I have known it for years, and have written 
 it now, with the purpose, perhaps, of writing it at large elsewhere. 
 
 "The courtesies of political life too often amount to little more 
 than this, ' Sir, you and I care not two brass farthings the one for 
 the other. We have and can have no friendship for each other. 
 Nevertheless, let us enact it if we cannot practise it. Do you tell 
 so many lies, and I shall tell so many; and depend on it, the re- 
 sult will be of great service to both. For is not this December 
 weather very cold ? And though our grates are full of ice, yet if you 
 keep a picture of fire before yours, and I another before mine, will 
 not this be next to a real coal and wood affair ?' 
 
 "Goethe ('Dichtung und Wahrheit,' ii. 14) asserts that the sub- 
 lime is natural to all young persons and peoples; but that daylight 
 (of reason) destroys it unless it can unite itself with the Beautiful ; 
 in which case it remains indestructible a fine observation." 
 
 The economies, all this time, had to be attended to, and the pros- 
 pect refused to brighten ; and this did not mend Carlyle's spirits : 
 
 "No talent for the market, thought I none; the reverse rather 
 [so he says of himself, looking back in later years]. Indeed, I was
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 219 
 
 conscious of no considerable talent whatever, only of infinite shy- 
 ness and abstruse humor, veiled pride, etc., and looked out oftenest 
 on a scene that was abundantly menacing to me. What folly was 
 in all this, what pusillanimity and begirarly want of hope. Nothing 
 in it now seems respectable except that of ' unfitness for the mar- 
 ket,' etc., namely, the faith I had in me, and never would let go, 
 that it was better to perish than do dishonest work, or do one's hon- 
 est work otherwise than well. All the rest I may now blush for, 
 and perhaps pit}-; blush for especially." 
 
 One piece of good-fortune the Garlyles had. He had some friends 
 in Edinburgh and she many; and he was thus forced out of himself. 
 He was not allowed after all to treat visitors as " nauseous intrud- 
 ers." His wife had a genius for small evening entertainments; lit- 
 tle tea-parties such as in after-days the survivors of us remember in 
 Cheyne Row, over which she presided with a grace all her own, 
 and where wit and humor were to be heard flashing as in no other 
 house we ever found or hoped to find. These began in Edinburgh; 
 and no one who had been once at Comely Bank refused a second 
 invitation. Brewster came and De Quincey, penitent for his article 
 on "Meister," and Sir William Hamilton and Wilson (though Wil- 
 son for some reason was shy of Carlyle), and many more. 
 
 Carlyle, finding no employment offered him, was trying to make it. 
 He sketched a prospectus for a literary Annual Register, "a work 
 which should perform for the intelligent part of the reading world 
 such services as 'Forget-me-Nots,' ' Souvenirs, ' etc. , seemed to per- 
 form for the idle part of it." "It was to exhibit a compressed view 
 of the actual progress of mind in its various manifestations during 
 the past year." The subjects were to be "biographical portraits of 
 distinguished persons lately deceased," "essays, sketches, miscel- 
 lanies of various sorts, illustrating the existing state of literature, 
 morals, and manners on which points," Carlyle thought, "several 
 things might be adduced not a little surprising to the optimists and 
 the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease." "Thirdly, critiques 
 with extracts from the few really good books produced in England, 
 Germany, and France, an essence of reviewing, a spirit of the liter- 
 ary produce of the year." "Fourthly, a similar account might be 
 given of works of art and discoveries of science. " ' ' Fifthly, though 
 politics were to be excluded, any incidents, misfortunes, delusions, 
 crimes, or heroic actions illustrative of the existing spiritual condi- 
 tion of man, might be collected and preserved." Poetry was to be 
 admitted if it could be had good of its kind, only "with rigid exclu- 
 sion of Odes written at , Verses to , and the whole genus of 
 
 Songs by a Person of Quality." 
 
 Pity that no Edinburgh or London publisher could see his way to 
 assisting Carlyle in this enterprise ; for he would have written most
 
 220 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of it himself, and such a record would now be of priceless value. 
 But he was unknown and unprepossessing. Neither the "Meister" 
 nor the " Schiller" were selling as well as had been expected. The 
 booksellers hung back, and they judged rightly, perhaps, for their 
 own interests. Carlyle, like all really original writers, had to create 
 the taste which could appreciate him. The scheme came to noth- 
 ing, and his small capital was sloTntfy melting away. 
 
 The picture of the Comely Bank life given in the " Reminiscences " 
 may be supplemented from the family letters : 
 
 Jane Welsh Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. ' 
 
 "Comely Bank: December 9, 1826. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I must not let the letter go without adding my 
 ' Be of good cheer. ' You would rejoice to see how much better my 
 husband is since we came hither. And we are really very happy. 
 When he falls on some work we shall be still happier. Indeed, I 
 should be very stupid or very thankless if I did not congratulate my- 
 self every hour of the day on the lot which it has pleased Providence 
 to assign me. My husband is so kind, so in all respects after my 
 own heart. I was sick one day, and he nursed me as well as my 
 own mother could have done, and he never says a hard word to me 
 unless I richly deserve it. We see great numbers of people, but are 
 always most content alone. My husband reads then, and I read or 
 work, or just sit and look at him, which I really find as profitable an 
 employment as any other. God bless you and my little Jean, whom 
 I hope to see at no very distant date." 
 
 Tlwmas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Comely Bank: January 2, 1827. 
 
 "My dear Mother, At length Tait [the publisher] has given me 
 an opportunity of sending off the weary book, 2 and along with it a 
 word or two to assure you of my welfare. The ' German Romance ' 
 I have inscribed to my father, though I know he will not read a line 
 of it. From you, however, I hope better things ; and at any rate I 
 have "sent you a book which I am sure you icill read, because it re- 
 lates to a really good man, and one engaged in a cause which all 
 men must reckon good. You must accept this ' Life of Henry Mar- 
 tyn ' as a New-year's gift from me ; and while reading it believe that 
 your son is a kind of missionary in his way not to the heathen of 
 India, but to the British heathen, an innumerable class whom he 
 would gladly do something to convert if his perplexities and mani- 
 fold infirmities would give him leave. . . . We must wait patiently 
 and study to do what service we can, not despising the day of 
 small things, but meekly trusting that hereafter it may be the day 
 of greater. 
 
 "I am beginning to be very instant for some sort of occupation, 
 which, indeed, is my chief want at present. I must stir the waters 
 
 1 Being a postscript to a letter of Carlyle's own. * " German Romance. "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 221 
 
 and see what is to be done. Many, many plans I have, but few of 
 them, I doubt, are likely to prove acceptable at present; the times 
 are so bad, and bookselling trade so dull. Something, however, I 
 will fix upon, for work is as essential to me as meat and drink. Of 
 money we arc not in want. The other morning Mrs. Welsh sent us 
 a letter with sixty pounds enclosed, fearing lest cleanness of teeth 
 might be ready to overtake us. I thought it extremely kind and 
 handsome ; but we returned the cash with many thanks, wishing to 
 fight our own battle at least till the season of need arrive. 
 
 ' ' I have not said a word yet about your kind Scotsbrig package. 
 It was all right and in order, only that a few of the eggs (the box 
 not being completely stuffed firm) had suffered by the carriage. 
 Most part of them Jane has already converted into custards, pan- 
 cakes, or the other like ware ; the others I am eating and find excel- 
 lent. A woman comes here weekly with a fresh stock to us, and I 
 eat just one daily, the price being IJxZ. per dozen. Now, my dear 
 mother, you must make Alick write to me, and tell me all that is 
 going on with himself or you. Wish all hands a happy new year 
 in my name, and assure them all, one by one, that I will love them 
 truly all my days." 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 "Comely Bank: February 3. 
 
 "Our situation at Comely Bank continues to be unexceptionable 
 nay, in many points truly enviable. Ill-health is not harder on us 
 than usual, and all other things are about as one could wish them. 
 It is strange, too, how one gcTs habituated to sickness. I bear my 
 pain as Christian did his pack in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' strapped 
 on too tightly for throwing off; but the straps do not gall as they 
 once did; in fact, I believe I am rather better, and certainly I have 
 not been happier for many a year. Last week, too, I fairly began 
 a book. 1 Heaven only knows what it will turn to, but I have 
 sworn to finish it. You shall hear about it as it proceeds, but as 
 
 ict we are only got through the first chapter. You would wonder 
 ow much happier steady occupation makes us, and how smoothly 
 we all get along. Directly after breakfast the good wife and the 
 Doctor 8 retire up-stairs to the drawing-room, a little place all fitted 
 up like a lady's work-box, where a spunk of fire is lit for the fore- 
 noon ; and I meanwhile sit scribbling and meditating and wrestling 
 with the powers of dulness, till one or two o'clock, when I sally 
 forth into the city or towards the sea-shore, taking care only to be 
 home for the important purpose of consuming my mutton-chop at 
 four. After dinner we all read learned languages till coffee (which 
 we now often take at night instead of tea), and so on till bedtime ; 
 only that Jane often sews; and the Doctor goes up to the celestial 
 globe, studying the fixed stars through an upshoved window, and 
 generally comes down to his porridge about ten with a nose drop- 
 ping at the extremity. Thus pass our days in our trim little cot- 
 tage, far from all the uproars and putrescences (material and spirit- 
 
 i The novel. * John Carlyle, now staying with them.
 
 222 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ual) of the reeky town, the sound of which we hear not, and only 
 see over the knowe the reflection of its gas-light8 against the dusky 
 sky, and bless ourselves that we have neither part nor lot in the 
 matter. Many a time on a soft mild night I smoke my pipe in our 
 little flower-garden, and look upon all this, and think of all absent 
 and present friends, and feel that I have good reason ' to be thank- 
 ful I am not in Purgatory.' 
 
 "Of society we might have abundance. People come on foot, 
 on horseback, and even in wheeled carriages to see us, most of whom 
 Jane receives up -stairs, and despatches with assurances that the 
 weather is good, bad, or indifferent, and hints that their friendship 
 passes the love of women. We receive invitations to dinner also ; 
 but Jane has a circular or rather two circulars one for those she 
 values, and one for those she does not value ; and one or the other 
 of these she sends in excuse. Thus we give no dinners and take 
 none, and by the blessing of Heaven design to persist in this course 
 so long as we shall see it to be best. Only to some three or four 
 chosen people we give notice that on Wednesday nights we shall 
 always be at home, and glad if they will call and talk for two hours 
 with no other entertainment but a cordial welcome and a cup of in-, 
 nocent tea. Few Wednesday evenings pass accordingly when some 
 decent soul or other does not step in and take his place among us; 
 and we converse and really, I think, enjoy ourselves more than I 
 have witnessed at any beef-eating and wine-bibbing convention 
 which I have been trysted with attending. 
 
 " I had almost forgot to tell you that I have in my pocket a letter 
 of introduction to Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review. It was sent to 
 me from Procter of London. One of these days I design presenting 
 it, and you shall hear the result. " 
 
 Jane Welsh Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "21 Comely Bank: February 17. 
 
 " My husband is busy below-stairs, and I, it seems, am this time to 
 be the writer with greater willingness than ability, indeed, for I 
 have been very stupid these some days with cold. But you must 
 not be left in the idea that we are so neglectful as we have seemed. 
 A little packet was actually written to go by the carrier on Wednes- 
 day; when the rain fell and the wind blew, so that no living creature 
 dared venture to his quarters. The Doctor proceeded thither as 
 early as was good for his health, in case fortune in the shape of bad 
 weather, or whiskey, had interposed delay. By that time, however, 
 carrier, boxes, and Bobby were all far on the road ; so you see there 
 was nothing for it but to write by post, which I lose no time in doing. 
 
 "And now let me thank you for the nice eggs and butter, which 
 arrived in best preservation and so opportunely just as I was lament- 
 ing over the emptied cans as one who had no hope. Really it is 
 most kind in you to be so mindful and helpful of our town wants, 
 and most gratifying to us to see ourselves so cared for. 
 
 " The new book is going on at a regular rate, and I would fain 
 persuade myself that his health and spirits are at the same regular 
 rate improving. More contented he certainly is since he applied
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 223 
 
 himself to this task, for he was not born to be anything but miserable 
 in idleness. Oh that he were indeed well, well beside me, and oc- 
 cupied as he ought. How plain and clear life would then lie before 
 us! I verily believe there would not be such a happy pair of people 
 on the face of the whole earth. Yet we must not wish this too ear- 
 nestly. How many precious things do we not already possess which 
 others have not, have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy them then, 
 and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them rather than im- 
 portune his goodness with vain longing for more. Indeed we had a 
 most quiet and even happy life here. Within-doors all is warm, is 
 swept and garnished, and without the country is no longer winter- 
 like, but beginning to be gay and green. Many pleasant people come 
 to see us; and such of our visitors as are not pleasant people have at 
 least the good effect of enhancing the pleasures to us of being alone. 
 Alone we are never weary. If I have not Jean's enviable gift of 
 talking, I am at least among the best listeners in the kingdom, and 
 my husband has always something interesting and instructive to say. 
 Then we have books to read alt sorts of them, from Scott's Bible 
 down to novels and I have sewing-needles, and purse-needles, and 
 all conceivable implements for ladies' work. There is a piano, too, 
 for 'soothing the savage breast' when one cares for its charms; but 
 I am sorry to say neither my playing nor my singing seems to give 
 Mr. C. much delight. I console myself, however, with imputing the 
 blame to his want of taste rather than to my want of skill. 
 
 " So Jean is not coming yet. Well, I am sorry for it; but I hope 
 the time is coming. In the mean time she must be a good girl, and 
 read as much as she has time for, and above all things cultivate this 
 talent of speech. It is my husband's worst fault to me that I will 
 not or cannot speak. Often when he has talked for an hour without 
 answer, he will beg for some signs of life on my part, and the only 
 sign I can give is a little kiss. Well, that is better than nothing ; 
 don't you think so?" 
 
 She might well say, "He has talked for an hour without answer." 
 It was not easy to answer Carlyle. Already it seems his power of 
 speech, unequalled so far as my experience goes by that of any other 
 man, had begun to open itself. "Carlyle first, and all the rest no- 
 where," was the description of him by one of the best judges in Lon- 
 don, when speaking of the great talkers of the day. His vast reading, 
 his minute observation, his miraculously retentive memory, gave him 
 something valuable to say on every subject which could be raised. 
 What he took into his mind was dissolved and recrystallized into 
 original combinations of his own. His writing, too, was as fluent 
 as his speech. His early letters even the most exquisitely finished 
 sentences of them are in an even and beautiful hand, without eras- 
 ure or alteration of a phrase. Words flowed from him with a com- 
 pleteness of form which no effort could improve. When he was 
 excited it was like the eruption of a volcano, thunder and lightning, 
 hot stones and smoke and ashes. He had a natural tendency to ex-
 
 224 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 aggeration, and although at such times his extraordinary metaphors 
 and flashes of Titanesque humor made him always worth listening 
 to, he was at his best when talking of history or poetry or biography, 
 or of some contemporary person or incident which had either touched 
 his sympathy or amused his delicate sense of absurdity. His laugh 
 was from his whole nature, voice, eyes, and even his whole body. 
 And there was never any malice in it. His own definition of humor, 
 " a genial sympathy with the under side," was the definition also of 
 his own feeling about all things and all persons, when it was himself 
 that was speaking, and not what he called the devil that was occa- 
 sionally in possession. In the long years that I was intimate with 
 him I never heard him tell a malicious story or say a malicious word 
 of any human being. His language was sometimes like the rolling 
 of a great cathedral organ, sometimes like the softest flute-notes, sad 
 or playful as the mood or the subject might be ; and you listened 
 threw in, perhaps, an occasional word to show that you went along 
 with him, but you were simply charmed, and listened on without 
 caring to interrupt. Interruption, indeed, would answer little pur- 
 pose, for Carlyle did not bear contradiction any better than Johnson. 
 Contradiction would make him angry and unreasonable. He gave 
 you a full picture of what was in his own mind, and you took it 
 away with you and reflected on it. 
 
 This singular faculty which, from Mrs. Carlyle's language, ap- 
 pears to have been shared in some degree by his sister Jean had 
 been the spell which had won his wife, as Othello's tales of his advent- 
 ures won the heart of Desdemona ; and it was already brightening 
 the evenings at Comely Bank. She on her side gives an imperfect 
 idea of her own occupations when she describes herself as busy with 
 needle-work and books and the piano. They kept but one servant, 
 and neither she nor her husband could endure either dirt or disorder, 
 while Carlyle's sensitive stomach required a more delicate hand in 
 the kitchen than belonged to a maid of all work. The days of the 
 loaf her first baking adventure, which she watched as Benvenuto 
 Cellini watched his " Perseus " were not yet. Edinburgh bread was 
 eatable, and it was not till they were at Craigenputtock that she took 
 charge of the oven. But Carlyle himself has already described her 
 as making the damaged Scotsbrig eggs into custards and puddings. 
 "When they married," Miss Jewsbury says, "she had determined 
 that he should never write for money, but only when he had some- 
 thing to say, and that she would make whatever money he gave her 
 answer for all needful purposes. She managed so well that comfort 
 was never absent from her house, and no one looking on could have 
 guessed whether they were rich or poor. Whatever she had to do 
 she did with a peculiar personal grace that gave a charm to the most 
 prosaic details. But she had to put her hand to tasks of the rudest
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 235 
 
 kind. No one who in later years saw her lying on the sofa in bro- 
 ken health and languor would guess the amount of energetic hard 
 work she had done in her life. Her insight was like witchcraft. 
 When she was to make her first pudding she went into the kitchen 
 and locked the door on herself, having got the servant out of the 
 road. It was to be such a pudding not just a common pudding but 
 something special, and it was good, being made with care by weight 
 and measure." 
 
 Thus prettily Carlyle's married life began, the kind friends at 
 Scotsbrig sending weekly supplies by the carrier. But even with 
 Mrs. Carlyle to husband them the visible financial resources were 
 ebbing and must soon come to low water; and on this side the pros- 
 pect resolutely refused to mend. The novel was a failure, and event- 
 ually had to be burnt. The hope which had vaguely lingered of 
 some regular and salaried appointment faded away. Overtures of 
 various kinds to London publishers had met with no acceptance. 
 "German Romance" was financially a failure also, and the Edin- 
 burgh publishers would make no future ventures. Under these 
 conditions it is not wonderful that (resolved as he was never to get 
 into money difficulties) Carlyle's mind reverted before long to his 
 old scheme of settling at Craigenputtock. He no longer thought of 
 turning farmer himself. His wife's ridicule would have saved him 
 from any rash enterprise of that kind. But his brother Alick was 
 still willing to undertake the farm, and to make a rent out of it. 
 For himself he looked to it only as a cheap and quiet residence. 
 His Hoddam experience had taught him the superior economy of a 
 country life. At Craigenputtock he could have his horse, pure air, 
 milk diet, all really or theoretically essential to his health. Edin- 
 burgh society he considered was of no use to him; practical Edin- 
 burgh, he was equally sure, would do nothing for him ; and away 
 on the moors "iie could go on with his literature and with his life- 
 task generally in the absolute solitude and pure silence of nature, 
 with nothing but loving and helpful faces round him under clearly 
 improved omens." To his wife he did recognize that the experi- 
 ment would be unwelcome. She had told him before her marriage 
 that she could not live a month at Craigenputtock with an angel, 
 while at Comely Bank she had little to suffer and something to 
 enjoy. 
 
 "Her modest days [he says], which never demanded much to 
 make them happy, were beginning to have many little joys and 
 amusements of their own in that bright scene, and she would have 
 to change it for one of the loneliest, mooriest, and dullest in nature. 
 To her it was a great sacrifice, if to me it was the reverse ; but at no 
 moment, even by a look, did she ever say so. Indeed I think she 
 never felt so at all. She would have gone to Nova Zembla with
 
 326 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 me, and found it the right place had benefit to me or set purpose of 
 mine lain there." 
 
 Only one recommendation Craigenputtock could have had to Mrs. 
 Carlyle that it was her own ancestral property, and that her father 
 had been born there. Happily her mother, when the scheme was 
 mentioned to her, approved heartily. Templand was but fifteen 
 miles from Craigenputtock gate, not more than a morning's ride, 
 and frequent meetings could be looked forward to. The present 
 tenant of Craigenputtock was in arrears with his rent, and was al- 
 lowing house and fences to go to ruin. Some change or other had 
 become indispensable, and Mrs. Welsh was so anxious to have the 
 Carlyles there that she undertook to put the rooms in repair and to 
 pay the expenses of the move. 
 
 After a week or two of consideration Carlyle joined his brother 
 Alick in the middle of April at Dumfries, Mrs. Welsh paying her 
 daughter a visit during his absence. They drove out together and 
 examined the place, and the result was that the tenant was to go, 
 while Carlyle was to enter into possession at Whitsuntide ; the house 
 was to be made habitable, and, unless some unforeseen good-luck 
 should befall Carlyle meanwhile, he and his wife were to follow 
 when it was ready to receive them. One pretty letter from her has 
 been preserved, which was written to her husband when he was ab- 
 sent on this expedition : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Comely Bank: April, 1827. 
 
 ' ' Dear, Dear Cheap, Cheap, ' I met the postman yesterday morn- 
 ing, and something bade me ask if there were any letters. Imagine 
 my agitation when he gave me yours four-and-twenty hours before 
 the appointed time. I was so glad and so frightened, so eager to 
 know the whole contents that I could hardly make out any part. In 
 the little tobacconist's, where 1 was fain to seek a quiet place, I did 
 at length, with much heart-beating, get through the precious paper, 
 and found that you still loved me pretty well, and that the ' Craig o' 
 Putta ' was still a hope ; as also that if you come not back to poor 
 Goody on Saturday it will not be for want of will. 2 Ah ! nor yet 
 will it be for want of the most fervent prayers to Heaven that a 
 longing Goody can put up; for I am sick sick to the heart of 
 this absence, which indeed I can only bear in the faith of its being 
 brief. . . . 
 
 "Alas, the poor Craig o' Putta! What a way it is in with these 
 good-for-nothing sluggards ! I need not recommend to you to do all 
 that is possible nay, ' to do the impossible' to get them out. Even 
 suppose we did not wish the place for ourselves, it would be misera- 
 
 1 "Cheap! cheap!" was an answer with which Carlyle had replied once to some 
 endearment of hers. 
 3 "Goody " was Carlyle's name for his wife at this time.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 227 
 
 ble to consign it to such hands. You will use all fair means, there- 
 fore, to recover it from them that is, all honest means; for, as to 
 the tenderness and delicacy which would have been becoming to- 
 wards a worthy tenant, it were here out of place. I shall be very 
 anxious until I hear from you again. Would to Heaven the business 
 was settled, and in the way we" wish! These perplexities and sus- 
 penses are not good for bilious people: indeed, they are making me 
 positively ill. How often since you went have I been reminded of 
 your figure about the hot ashes (?), and my head has ached more con- 
 tinuously than at any time these six months. But health and spirits 
 will come back when my husband comes back with good news or 
 rather, when he comes back at all, whether his news be good or 
 bad. . . . To be separated from you one week is frightful as a fore- 
 taste of what it might be, but I will not think of this if I can help 
 it; and after all why should I think of life without you? Is not my 
 being interwoven with yours so close that it can have no separate ex- 
 istence? Yes, surely, we will live together and die together and be 
 together through all eternity. But you will be calling this 'French 
 sentimentality,' I fear; and even 'the style of mockery is better than 
 that.' 
 
 ' ' I have not been altogether idle since we parted, though I threat- 
 ened I would take to bed. I have finished my review, the represen- 
 tation of female character in the Greek poets, and the comparison 
 between Caesar and Alexander, with all that I could understand of 
 the ' Friend ;' over and above which I have transacted a good deal 
 of shaping and sewing, the result of which will be complete, I hope, 
 by the day of your return, and fill you with ' weender and amaze- 
 ment.' 1 Gilbert Burns is gone. Mr. Brodie told us of his death 
 last week. Besides him, Mrs. Binnie, the Bruce people, and Mrs. 
 Aitken, we have had no visitors, and I have paid no visits. Last 
 night I was engaged to Mrs. Bruce, but I wrapped a piece of flannel 
 about my throat and made my mother carry an apology of cold. 
 But I may cut short these insipidities. My kindest love to all, from 
 the wee'est up to Lord Moon." 8 
 
 Here is Carlyle's answer, coming from his best, his real self the 
 true Carlyle, which always lay below, however irritable or moody 
 the surface : 
 
 To the Wife. 
 
 "Scotsbrig: April 17, 1827. 
 
 " Not unlike what the drop of water from Lazarus's finger might 
 have been to Dives in the flame was my dearest Goody's letter to 
 her husband yesterday afternoon. Blacklock 3 had retired to the 
 bank for fifteen minutes; the whirlwind was sleeping for that brief 
 season, and I smoking my pipe in grim repose, when Alick came 
 back with your messenger. No; I do not love you in the least 
 
 1 " Report of little Jean's of some preacher wlio had profusely employed that locu- 
 tion, pronounced as here. T. C." This is one of the letters specially annotated by Car- 
 lyle for publication. 
 
 * "The lx>rd Moon is brother John = the Lord Mohun of Hamilton's tragic ballad, 
 which is still sung in those parta Epithet from brother Alirk indicating breadth of 
 lace. T. C." 3 The outgoing tenant of Craigenputtock.
 
 228 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 only a little sympathy and admiration, and a certain esteem. Nothing 
 more ! oh my dear best wee woman but not a word of all this. 
 
 ' ' Such a day I never had in my life, but it is all over and well, 
 and now ' Home, brothers, home !' 
 
 " Oh, Jeannie, how happy shall we be in this Craig o' Putta! Not 
 that I look for an Arcadia or a Lubberland there; but we shall sit 
 under our bramble and our saugh tree, and none to make us afraid; 
 and my little wife will be there forever beside me, and I shall be 
 well and blessed, and ' the latter end of that man will be better than 
 the beginning.' 
 
 "Surely I shall learn at length to prize the pearl of great price 
 which God has given to me unworthy. Surely I already know that 
 to me the richest treasure of this sublunary life has been awarded 
 the heart of my own noble Jane. Shame on me for complaining, 
 sick and wretched though I be. Bourbon and Braganza, when I 
 think of it, are but poor men to me. Oh Jeannie ! oh my wife ! we 
 will never part, never through eternity itself; but I will love thee 
 and keep thee in my heart of hearts ! that is, unless I grow a very 
 great fool which, indeed, this talk doth somewhat betoken. 
 
 "God bless thee ! Ever thine, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A. D. 1827. MI. 32. 
 
 ALEXANDER CARLYLE, with his sister Mary, went into occupation 
 of Craigenputtock at Whitsuntide, 1827. His brother had intended 
 to join him before the end of the summer, but at this moment affairs 
 in Edinburgh began to brighten, and took a turn which seemed at 
 one time likely to lead into an entirely new set of conditions. Car- 
 lyle had mentioned that he had a letter of introduction to Jeffrey. 
 He had delayed presenting it, partly, perhaps, on account of the ab- 
 solute silence with which some years before Jeffrey had received 
 a volunteered contribution from him for the Edinburgh Review. 
 Irving had urged the experiment, and it had been made. The MS. 
 was not only not accepted, but was neither acknowledged nor re- 
 turned. Carlyle naturally hesitated before making another advance 
 where he had been repulsed so absolutely. He determined, how- 
 ever, shortly after his return from his Craigenputtock visit, to try 
 the experiment. He called on the great man and was kindly re- 
 ceived. Jeffrey was struck with him ; did not take particularly to 
 his opinions; but perceived at once, as he frankly said to him, that 
 "he was a man of original character and right heart, "and that he 
 would "be proud and happy to know more of him." A day or two 
 after he called with Mrs. Jeffrey at Comely Bank, and was as much 
 perhaps even more attracted by the lady whom he found there, 
 and whom he discovered to be some remote Scotch kinswoman. It
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 229 
 
 was the beginning of a close and interesting intimacy, entered upon, 
 on Jeffrey's part, with a genuine recognition of Carlyle's qualities 
 and a desire to be useful to him, which, no doubt, would have as- 
 sumed a practical form had he found his new friend amenable to 
 influence or inclined to work in harness with the party to which 
 Jeffrey belonged. But Jeffrey was a Benthamite on the surface, and 
 underneath an Epicurean, with a good-humored contempt for enthu- 
 siasm and high aspirations. Between him and a man so " dreadfully 
 in earnest " as Carlyle there could be little effective communion, 
 and Carlyle soon ceased to hope, what at first he had allowed him- 
 self to expect, that Jeffrey might be the means of assisting him into 
 some independent situation. 
 
 The immediate effect of the acquaintance, however, was Carlyle's 
 admission, freely offered by the editor, into the Edinburgh Review, a 
 matter just then of infinite benefit to him, drawing him off from di- 
 dactic novels into writing the series of essays now so well known as 
 the ' ' Miscellanies, " in which he tried his wings for his higher flights, 
 and which in themselves contain some of his finest thoughts and 
 most brilliant pictures. His first contribution was to be for the 
 number immediately to appear, and Jeffrey was eager to receive it. 
 
 Carlyle was not particularly elated, and mentions the subject 
 slightly in a letter to his brother Alick about the establishment at 
 Craigenputtock : 
 
 To Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 "Comely Bank: June 3. 
 
 "It gave us much pleasure to find that you had in very deed made 
 a settlement in your new abode, and were actually boiling your pot 
 at the Craig o' Putta under circumstances however unpropitious. 
 Your tears for parting (from Scotsbrig) will scarcely be dried yet, 
 but in a little while you will look upon this movement in its real 
 light, not as a parting, but as a truly blessed reunion for us all, 
 where, I hope and believe, many good days are in store for every 
 one of us. It will not be long till you have scrubbed up the old 
 Craig, put in the broken slates, and burnt or buried the rotten rags 
 of the late housewife, who, I am told, is indeed a slattern, and not 
 only so, but a drunkard, which is far worse. Mary's nimble fingers 
 and an orderly head will have introduced new arrangements into 
 the niansion ; things will begin to go their usual course, and the 
 mavis and tomtit will no longer sing to sad hearts. Poor Mary! 
 Be good to her in this her first removal from home, and remember 
 that you are not only a brother to her, but, as it were, a husband 
 and father. 
 
 "As to the house, I think with you it were better if we all saw it 
 before the plans were settled. Jane and I are both for coming down 
 shortly. We shall not be long in seeing you. The only thing that 
 absolutely detains me is a little article which I have to write before 
 the end of this month for the Edinburgh Retitic a very brief one 
 which I begin to-morrow." 
 I. 11
 
 230 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 To his brother John he was more explicit : 
 
 To John CarlyU. 
 
 "Comely Bank: June 4. 
 
 "Of my own history since I wrote last I need mention only one 
 or two particulars. Everything goes its course. I fight with dul- 
 ness and bile in the forenoons as of old; I still walk diligently, talk 
 de omni scibili when I can find fit or unfit audience, and so live on 
 in the old light and shadow fashion much as you knew me before, 
 only with rather more comfort and hope than with less. Our ev&n- 
 ing parties continue their modest existence. Last Wednesday we 
 had Malcolm 1 and one Paterson, said to be ' the hope of the Scot- 
 tish Church,' a very feckless young man so far as externals go, for 
 his voice is the shrillest treble, he wears spectacles, and would scarcely 
 weigh six stone avoirdupois ; but evidently shrewd, vehement, mod- 
 est, and, on the whole, well gifted and conditioned. . . . 
 
 "One day I resolutely buckled myself up and set forth to the Par- 
 liament House for the purpose of seeing our Reviewer (Jeffrey). 
 The little Jewel of Advocates was at his post. I accosted him, and, 
 with a little explanation, was cheerfully recognized. ' The Article 
 where is the Article ?' seemed to be the gist of his talk to me : for 
 he was, to all appearance, anxious that I would undertake the task 
 of Germanizing the public, and ready even to let me do it con amore, 
 so I did not treat the whole earth not vet Germanized as ' a parcel of 
 blockheads, ' which surely seemed a fair enough request. We walked 
 to his lodgings discussing these matters. Two days after, having 
 revolved the thing, I met him again with notice that I would ' under- 
 take.' The next number of the Review, it appeared, was actually in 
 the press, and to be printed off before the end of June, so that no large 
 article could find place there till the succeeding quarter. However, 
 I engaged, as it were for paving the way, to give him in this present 
 publication some little short paper, I think on the subject of Jean 
 Paul, though that is not quite settled with myself yet. And thus, 
 oh Jack, thou see'st me occupied with a new trade ! On the whole 
 I am rather glad of this adventure, for I think it promises to be the 
 means of a pleasant connection. Certainly Jeffrey is by much the 
 most lovable of all the literary men I have seen; and he seemed 
 ready, nay, desirous, if time would but permit, to cultivate a farther 
 intimacy." 
 
 Jean Paul was decided on, to be followed in the autumn by a more 
 elaborate article on the general state of German literature. It was 
 written at once, and forms the first of the "Miscellaneous Essays " in 
 the collected edition of Carlyle's works. Carlyle's "style," which 
 has been a rock of offence to so many people, has been attributed to 
 his study of Jean Paul. No criticism could be worse founded. His 
 style shaped itself as he gathered confidence in his own powers, and 
 had its origin in his father's house in Annandale. His mode of ex- 
 pressing himself remained undistinguished by its special character- 
 
 1 See "Reminiscences," vol. i. p. 266.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 231 
 
 till lie had ceased to occupy himself with the German poets. 
 Of his present undertaking Carlyle says : 
 
 "Perhaps it was little De Quincey's reported admiration of Jean 
 Paul Goethe a mere corrupted pygmy to him that first put me 
 upon trying to be orthodox and admire. I dimly felt poor De 
 Quincey, who passed for a mighty seer in such things, to have ex- 
 aggerated, and to know, perhaps, but little of either Jean Paul or 
 Goethe. However, I held on reading and considerably admiring 
 Jean Paul on my own score, though always with something of 
 secret disappointment. I could now wish, perhaps, that I hadn't. 
 My first favorite books had been ' Hudibras' and ' Tristram Shandy.' 
 Everybody was proclaiming it such a feat for a man to have wit, to 
 have humor above all. There was always a small secret something 
 of affectation, which is not now secret to me, in that part of my 
 affairs. As to my poor style, Edward Irving and his admiration of 
 the old Puritans and Elizabethans whom at heart I never could 
 entirely adore, though trying hard his and everybody's doctrine on 
 that head played a much more important part than Jean Paul upon 
 it. And the most important by far was that of nature, you would 
 perhaps say, if you had ever heard my father speak, or my mother, 
 and her inward melodies of heart and voice. " 
 
 Carlyle's acquaintance with Wilson Christopher North had been 
 slight, Wilson, perhaps, dreading his Radicalism. In the course of 
 the summer, however, accident threw them more closely together, 
 and one of their meetings is thus described: 
 
 To Jolin Carlyle, 
 
 "21 Comely Bank. 
 
 ' ' Last night I supped with John Wilson, Professor of Moral Phi- 
 losophy here, author of the 'Isle of Palms,' etc., a man of the most 
 fervid temperament, fond of all stimulating things, from tragic 
 poetry down to whiskey punch. He snuffed and smoked cigars 
 and drank liquors, and talked in the most indescribable style. It was 
 at the lodging of one John Gordon, a young very good man from 
 Kirkcudbright, who sometimes comes here. Daylight came on us 
 before we parted ; indeed, it was towards three o'clock as the Pro- 
 fessor and I walked home, smoking as we went. I had scarcely 
 either eaten or drunk, being a privileged person, but merely enjoyed 
 the strange volcanic eruptions of our poet's convivial genius. He 
 is a broad sincere man of six feet, with long dishevelled flax-colored 
 hair, and two blue eyes keen as an eagle's. Now and then he sunk 
 into a brown-study, and seemed dead in the eye of law. About 
 two o'clock he was sitting in this state smoking languidly, his nose 
 begrimed with snuff, his face hazy and inert, when all at once flash- 
 ing into existence, he inquired of John Gordon, with an irresistible 
 air, "I hope, Mr. Gordon, you don't believe in universal damna- 
 tion ?" It was wicked, but all hands burst into inextinguishable 
 laughter. But I expect to see Wilson in a more philosophic key ere- 
 long ; he has promised to call on me, and is, on the whole, a man I
 
 232 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 should like to know better. Geniuses of any sort, especially of so 
 kindly a sort, are so very rare in this world." 
 
 Another and yet brighter episode of this summer was a second 
 and far more remarkable letter from Goethe. Carlyle had sent the 
 "Life of Schiller " to Weimar, and afterwards the volumes of ' ' Ger- 
 man Romance." They were acknowledged with a gracious interest 
 which went infinitely beyond his warmest hopes. There was not 
 a letter only, but little remembrances for himself and his wife ; and 
 better even than the presents, a few lines of verse addressed to each 
 of them. 
 
 Carlyle sends the account to his mother : 
 
 "Comely Bank: August 18. 
 
 "News came directly after breakfast that a packet from Goethe 
 had arrived in Leith. Without delay I proceeded thither, and found 
 a little box carefully overlapped in wax cloth, and directed to me. 
 After infinite wranglings and perplexed misdirected higglings I suc- 
 ceeded in rescuing the precious packet from the fangs of the Cus- 
 tom-house sharks, and in the afternoon it was safely deposited in 
 our little parlor the daintiest boxie you ever saw so carefully 
 packed, so neatly and tastefully contrived was everything. There 
 was a copy of Goethe's poems in five beautiful little volumes for 
 ' the valued marriage pair Carlyle ;' two other little books for my- 
 self, then two medals, one of Goethe himself and another of his 
 father and mother ; and, lastly, the prettiest wrought-iron necklace 
 with a little figure of the poet's face set in gold for 'my dear 
 spouse,' and a most dashing pocket-book for me. In the box con- 
 taining the necklace, and in each pocket of the pocket-book were 
 cards, each with a verse of poetry on it in the old master's own 
 hand. All these I will translate to you by-and-by as well as the 
 long letter which lay at the bottom of all one of the kindest and 
 gravest epistles I ever read. He praises me for the ' Life of Schiller ' 
 and the others ; asks me to send him some account of my own pre- 
 vious history, etc. In short, it was all extremely graceful, affection- 
 ate and patriarchal. You may conceive how much it pleased us. 
 I believe a ribbon with the Order of the Garter would scarcely have 
 flattered either of us more." 
 
 Tke letter from Goethe was this :' 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Weimar: July 20, 1827. 
 
 "In a letter of the 15th of March which I sent by the post, and 
 which I trust has reached you safely, I mentioned the great pleasure 
 which your present had given me. It found me in the country, where 
 I could study and enjoy it with greater leisure. I now am enabled 
 
 1 "In einem Schreiben vom 15. Miirz, welches ich mil der Post absendcte und Sie 
 hoffentlich zu rechter Zeit werden erhalten haben, vermeldete ich wie viol Vergnugen 
 mir Ihre Sendung gebracht. Sie fand mich auf dem Lande, wo ich sie mil mehrerer
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 233 
 
 to send a packet to you likewise, which I hope that you will be kind 
 enough to accept from me. 
 
 "Let me, in the first place, tell you, my dear sir, how very highly 
 I esteem your ' Biography of Schiller.' It is remarkable for the care- 
 ful study which it displays of the incidents of Schiller's life, and one 
 clearly perceives in it a study of his works and a hearty sympathy 
 with them. The complete insight which you have thus obtained 
 into the character and high merits of this man is really admirable, 
 so clear it is, and so appropriate, so far beyond what might have 
 been looked for in a writer in a distant country. 
 
 " Here the old saying is verified, ' a good will helps to a full un- 
 derstanding.' It is just because the Scot can look with affection on 
 a German and can honor and love him, that he acquires a sure eye 
 for that German's finest qualities. He raises himself into a clearness 
 of vision which Schiller's own countrymen could not arrive at in 
 earlier days. For those who live with superior men are easily mis- 
 taken in their judgment. Personal peculiarities irritate them. The 
 swift changing current of life displaces their points of view, and 
 hinders them from perceiving and recognizing the true worth of 
 such men. 
 
 ' ' Schiller's character, however, was so extraordinary that his biog- 
 rapher could start with the idea of an excellent man before him. 
 He could carry that idea through all individual destinies and achieve- 
 ments, and thus see his task accomplished. 
 
 "The notices, prefixed to 'German Romance,' of the lives of Mu- 
 saeus, Hoffmann, Richter, etc., can be approved of equally in their 
 several kinds. They are compiled with care, are briefly set out, and 
 provide an adequate notion of each author's personal character, and 
 of the effect of it upon his writings. 
 
 "Mr. Carlyle displays throughout a calm, clear sympathy with 
 poetical literary activity in Germany. He throws himself into the 
 
 Ruhe betrachten und gcnicssen konnte. Gegenwartig sehe ich mich in dem Stande, 
 auch ein Packet an Sie abzuscbickcn mit dem Wunsche freundlichcr Aufnahme. 
 
 " Lassen Sie mich vorerst, mein Theuerster, von Ihrer Biographie Schillers das Beste 
 sagcn. Sie ist merkwurdig, indem sie ein genaues Studium der Vorfiille seines Lebens 
 beweist, so wie denn auch das Studium seiner Werke und cine innige Theilnahmo an 
 denselben daraus hervorgeht. Bewundernswurdig ist es wie Sie sich auf diese Weise 
 eine genugende Einsicht in den Character und das hohe Verdienstliche dieses Manncs 
 verscbafft, so klar und so gehorig als es kaum aus der Feme zu erwartcn gewesen. 
 
 " Hier bewahrheitet sich jedoch ein altes Wort : ' Der gute Willo hilft zu vollkomme- 
 ner Kenntniss. ' Denn gerade dass der Schottlander den deutschen Mann mit Wohl- 
 wollen anerkennt. inn verehrt und licbt, dadurch wirder dessen treffliche Eigenschaflen 
 am sichersten gewahr, dadurch erhebt er sicb zu einer Klarheit zu der sogarLandsleute 
 des Trefflichen in fruheren Tagen nicht gelangen konnten; denn die Mitlebenden wer- 
 den an vorzuglichen Menschen gar leicht irre : das Besondere der Person stort sie, das 
 laufende bewegliche Leben verriickt ihre Standpunkte und hindert das Kenneii und 
 Auerkenncn eines solchen Mannes. 
 
 "Dieser aber war von so ausserordcntlicher Art. dass der Biograph die Idee eines 
 vorzuglicheu Manncs vor Augen halten und sie durch individuelle Schicksale und Lei- 
 stungen durrhfuhren konnte, und sein Tagewcrk dergestalt vollbracht sah. 
 
 " Die vor den 'German Romances ' mitgetheilten N'otizen uber das Leben Musaus.HofT- 
 manns. Richters, etc.. kann man in ihrer Art gleichfalls mit Beyfall aufnehmen ; sie sind 
 mit Sorgfalt gesammelt, kurzlich dargestellt und geben von eines jeden Autors individu- 
 ellem Character und der Einwirkung dessslbcn auf seine Schriflen genugsame Vor- 
 kenntniss. 
 
 "Durchaus beweist Hcrr Carlyle eine rubige, klare Tueilnahme an den deutschen
 
 234 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 especial national tendency, and gives individuals their credit each in 
 his place. 
 
 "Let me add a few general observations which I have long har- 
 bored in silence, and which have been stirred up by these present 
 works. 
 
 "It is obvious that for a considerable time the efforts of the best 
 poets and aesthetic writers throughout the world have been directed 
 towards the general characteristics of humanity. In each particular 
 sphere, be it history, mythology, fiction, more or less arbitrarily con- 
 ceived, the universal is made to show and shine through what is 
 merely individual or national. 
 
 ' ' In practical life we perceive the same tendency, which pervades 
 all that is of the earth earthy, crude, wild, cruel, false, selfish, and 
 treacherous, and tries everywhere to spread a certain sereneness. 
 We may not, indeed, hope from this the approach of an era of uni- 
 versal peace ; but yet that strifes which are unavoidable may grow 
 less extreme, wars less savage, and victory less overbearing. 
 
 "Whatever in the poetry of all nations aims and tends towards 
 this, is what the others should appropriate. And one must study 
 and make allowances for the peculiarities of each nation, in order to 
 have real intercourse with it. The special characteristics of a people 
 are like its language and its currency. They facilitate exchange ; 
 indeed, they first make exchange possible. 
 
 "Pardon me, my dear sir, for these remarks, which perhaps are 
 not quite coherent, nor to be scanned all at once ; they are drawn 
 from the great ocean of observations, which, as life passes on, swells 
 up more and more round every thinking person. Let me add some 
 more observations which I wrote down on another occasion, but 
 which apply specially to the business on which you are now en- 
 
 poetisch-literarischen Beginnen ; er giebt sich bin an das eigenthumliche Bestreben 
 dcr Nation, er lilsst den Einzelnen gelten, jeden an seiner Stelle. 
 
 "Sey mir nun erlaubt allgemeine Betrachtungen hinzuzufugen,welclio ich liingst bey 
 mir im Stillen hege und die mir bey den vorliegenden Arbeiten abermals frisch aufge- 
 regt worden. 
 
 "Oflenbar ist das Bestreben der besten Pichter und asthetischen Schriftstcller aller 
 Kationen schon seit geraumer Zeit auf das allgemoin Menschliche gerichtet. In jedem 
 Besondern, es sey nun historisch, mythologisch, fabelhaft, mehr oder weniger willkuhr- 
 lich ersonnen, wird man durch Nationalitat und Personlichkeit bindurcb jencs Allge- 
 meine immer mehr durchleucuten und durchschitnmern sehn. 
 
 " Da nun auch im practischen Lebensgange ein gleiches obwaltet nnd durch alles 
 Irdisch-Rohe, Wilde, Grausame, Falsche, Kigennutzige, Lugenhafte sich durchschlingt. 
 und uberall einige Milde zu verbreiten trachtet, so ist zwar nicht zu hoflen dass ein 
 allgemeiner Friede dadurch sich einleite, aber doch dass der unvermeidliche Streit 
 iiiicli und nach lassliche'r werde, der Krieg wcnigcr grausani, der Sieg weniger iiber- 
 muthig. 
 
 " Was nun in den Dichtungen aller Xationen hierauf hindeutet und hinwirkt, djess 
 ist es was die ubrigen sich anzueignen haben. Die Besonderheiten einer jeden muss 
 man kennen lemon, und sio ihr zu lassen, um gerade dadurch mit ihr zu verkehren; 
 dcnn die Eigenheiten einer Nation sind wio ihre Sprache und ihre Munzsorten, sie 
 erleichtern den Verkehr, ja, sie machen ihn erst vollkommen moglich. 
 
 " Verzeihen Sie mir, mein Werthester, diese vielleicht nicht ganz zusammenhangcn- 
 den noch alsbald zu uberschauenden Aetisserungen ; sie sind geschiipft aus dem Ocean 
 der Betrachtungen, der um einen jeden Denkenden mit den Jahren immer mehr an- 
 schwillt. Lassen Sie mich noch Einiges hinzufugen, welches ich bey einer amlern 
 Gelegenhcit niederschrieb, das sich jcdocu hauptsachlich auf Ihr Geschafll unmit- 
 telbar beziehen lasst
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CAKLYLE. 235 
 
 "We arrive best at a true general toleration when we can let pass 
 individual peculiarities, whether of persons or peoples, without quar- 
 relling with them; hoWing fast nevertheless to the conviction that 
 genuine excellence is distinguished by this mark, that it belongs to 
 all mankind. To such intercourse and mutual recognition the Ger- 
 mans have long contributed. 
 
 "He who knows and studies German finds himself in the market 
 where the wares of all countries are oifered for sale ; while he en- 
 riches himself, he is officiating as interpreter. 
 
 "A translator, therefore, should be regarded as a trader in this 
 great spiritual commerce, and as one who makes it his business to 
 advance the exchange of commodities. For say what we will of the 
 inadequacy of translation, it always will be among the weightiest 
 and worthiest factors in the world's affairs. 
 
 "The Koran says that God has given each people a prophet in its 
 own tongue. Each translator is also a prophet to his people. The 
 effects of Luther's translation of the Bible have been immeasurable, 
 though criticism has been at work picking holes in it to the present 
 day. What is the enormous business of the Bible Society but to 
 make known the Gospel to every nation in its own tongue ? 
 
 "But from this point we might be led into endless speculations. 
 Let me conclude. 
 
 "Oblige me with an early reply, that I may know that my packet 
 has reached your hands. 
 
 " Commend me to your excellent wife, for whom I send a few 
 trifles. Give me pleasure by accepting them in return for her charm- 
 ing present. May your life together be happy, and may many years 
 be your portion. 
 
 "I have yet something to add. May Mr. Carlyle take in friendly 
 
 " Eino wahrhaft allgcmcine Duldung wird am sirhcrston crreicht, wcnn man das 
 Besondcro dor cinzclnen Menschen und Volkerschaftcn auf sich beruhen liisst, bey dor 
 Ueberzeugung jedoch fcsthiilt, dass das wahrhaft Vcrdienstliche sich dadurch aus- 
 zeichnet dass es der ganzen Mcnschheit angehtfrt. Zu einer solchen Vermittlung und 
 wechselseitigen Anorkennung tragcn die Dcutschcn scit langer Zeit schon bey. 
 
 " Wer die deutsche Sprache verstcht und studirt befindet sich auf dem Markte wo 
 allc Nationeu ihrc Waaren anbieten. Er spielt den Dolmetscher indem er sich selbst 
 bereichert. 
 
 "Und so ist jcdor Uebersetzcr anzusehen, dass or sich als Vcrmittler dieses allge- 
 mein geistigen Handels bemuht, und den Wcchseltuusch zu befordern sich zum Ge- 
 schull't macht. Denn was man auch von der Unzulanglichkeit des Uebersetzens sagon 
 mag, so ist und bleibt es doch eines der wichtigsten und wurdigsten GeschaflXe in dem 
 allgemeinen Weltwesen. 
 
 "Der Koran sagt: 'Gott hat jedem Volke einen Prophcten gegeben in seiner eignen 
 Sprache.' So ist jeder Uebersetzer ein Prophet seinem Volke. Luthers Bibelubcrset- 
 zung hat die griissten Wirkungen hervorgebracht, wenn schon die Kritik daran bis auf 
 den heutigen Tag immerfort bedingt und miikelt. Und was ist dcnn das ganze unge- 
 heure Geschaflft der Bibelgesellschaft als das Evangelium einem jedeu Volke in seiner 
 eignen Sprache zu verkundigen? 
 
 "Hier lassen Sie mien schliessen, wo man ins Unendlicho fortfahren konnte, und 
 erfreuen Sie mich bald rait einiger Erwiederung, wodurch icb. Nachricht erhalte, dass 
 gegenwiirtigo Senduug zu Ibnen gekommen ist. 
 
 "Zum Schlusse lassen Sie mich denn auch Hire liebe Gattin begriissnn, fur die ich 
 einigo Kleinigkciten. als Erwiedening ihrer anniuthigen (Jabe. beyzulepcn mir die 
 Freude macho. Miige Ihneu ein gluckliches Zusainmenleben viele Jahre bescheert 
 scyn. 
 
 "Nacb allem diesem flnde ich mich angeregt Eiuiges hinzuzufugcn: MOgc Hcrr
 
 236 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 part what I have said above. May he consider it well, and throw it 
 into dialogue, as if he and I had been conversing in person together. 
 ' ' I have now to thank him for the pains which he has taken with 
 my own writings, and for the good and affectionate tone in which 
 he has been pleased to speak of myself and of my history. I may 
 thus gratify myself with a belief that hereafter, on more complete 
 acquaintance with my works, and after the publication especially of 
 my correspondence with Schiller, he will not alter his opinion either 
 of my friend or of me, but will find it confirmed by fresh particulars. 
 Wishing him from my heart all good things, and with genuine sym- 
 pathy with him, , J. W. GOETHE." 
 
 Such was Goethe's letter, which so much and so justly delighted 
 Carlyle. On a card in the pocket-book was written, "Mr. Carlyle 
 will give me especial pleasure by some account of his past life." 
 
 On another card were the lines: 
 
 "Augenblicklich aufzuwarten 
 Schicken Freunde solche Karten ; 
 Dicsmal aber heissts nicht gern, 
 Eucr Freund ist weit uud fern. GOETHE. 
 "Weimar, 20. Juli, 1827." 
 
 A third card was in the box with the wrought-iron necklace which 
 was intended for Mrs. Carlyle. On this was written: 
 
 "Wirst du in den Spiegel blicken 
 Und vor deinen heitern Blicken 
 Dich die ernste Zierde schmOcken: 
 Denke dass nichts besser schmuckt 
 Als wenn man den Freund begluckt. G." 
 
 The "books" were "Faust," the first five volumes of the latest 
 edition of Goethe's works, and the last published number of " Kunst 
 und Alterthum." There were two medallions, as Carlyle had told 
 his mother one of them of Goethe, with an eagle on the reverse ; 
 the other of himself also, with his father and mother on the reverse. 
 The whole present, Carlyle said, was most tasteful, and to him as 
 precious as any such present could possibly be. 
 
 A still more charming, because unintended, compliment was to 
 follow from the same quarter. When the purposed removal to 
 Craigenputtock came to be talked of among Carlyle's Edinburgh 
 
 Carlyle allcs obige freundlich aufnehmen nd durch anhaltendc Betrachtung in ein 
 Gesprach verwandeln, damit es ihm zu Muthe werde als wenn wir persOnlich cinander 
 gegenuber stiinden. 
 
 " Habe ich ihm ja sogar noch far die Bemiihung zu danken,die er an meine Arbeiten 
 gewendet hat, fur den gutcn und wohlwollenden Sinn mil dem er von meiner Person- 
 lichkeit und meinen Lebenereignissen zu sprechen geneigt war. In dieser Ueberzeu- 
 gung darf ich mich deun auch zum voraus freuen. dass kunftighin,wenn noch mehrere 
 von meinen Arbeiten ihm bekannt werden, besonders auch wenn meine Correspondenz 
 mil Schiller erscheinen wird, er wcder von diescm Freunde noch von mir seine Mei- 
 nung andern, sondern sie vielmehr durch manches Besondere noch mehr bestatigt 
 flnden wird. Das Beste herzlich wunschend treu theiluehmend, J. W. GOETHE. 
 
 " Weimar, a. 20. Jul. 1827."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 237 
 
 friends, it seemed to them "considerably fantastic and unreason- 
 able." 
 
 "Prospects in Edinburgh [he says] had begun to brighten eco- 
 nomically and otherwise ; the main origin of this was our acquaint- 
 ance with the brilliant Jeffrey, a happy accident rather than a mat- 
 ter of forethought on either side. My poor article on Jean Paul, 
 willingly enough admitted into his Review, excited a considerable, 
 though questionable, sensation in Edinburgh, as did the next still 
 weightier discharge of ' German Literature ' in that unexpected ve- 
 hicle, and at all events denoted me as a fit head for that kind of 
 adventure. In London, shortly after, had arisen a Foreign Quar- 
 terly Review, and then in a month or two, on some booksellers' quar- 
 rel, a Foreign Review, on both of which I was employed, courted, 
 etc., till their brabble healed itself. This and the like of this form- 
 ed our principal finance fund during all the Craigenputtock time. 
 For nothing had shaken our determination to the new home. Very 
 well, very well, I said to all this. It will go much farther there 
 instead of straitened as here." 
 
 The article on German literature reached Weimar. It was of 
 course anonymous. Goethe read it, and, curious to know the au- 
 thorship of such an unexpected appearance, wrote to Carlyle for 
 information. "Can you tell me," he said, "who has written the 
 paper on the state of German literature in the Edinburgh Review ? 
 It is believed here to be by Mr. Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's step-son. 
 They are both serious, well-disposed men, and equally deserving of 
 honor." 1 Goethe could not be suspected of insincere politeness, and 
 every sentence of the previous letter was a genuine expression of 
 true feeling ; but this indirect praise was so clearly undesigned that 
 it was doubly encouraging. 
 
 Carlyle was still determined on Craigenputtock, but various causes 
 continued to detain him in Edinburgh. The acquaintance with 
 Jeffrey ripened into a warm intimacy. Jeffrey was a frequent vis- 
 itor in Comely Bank ; the Carlyles were as often his guests at Craig- 
 crook. They met interesting persons there, whose society was pleas- 
 ant and valuable. Jeffrey was himself influential in the great world 
 of politics, and hopes revived never, perhaps, very ardently in Car- 
 lyle himself, but distinctly in his wife and among his friends that 
 he would be rescued by some fitting appointment from banishment 
 to the Dumfriesshire moors. Carlyle was now famous in a limited 
 circle, and might reasonably be selected for a professorship or other 
 similar situation; while other possibilities opened on various sides 
 to which it was at least his duty to attend. Meanwhile demands 
 
 1 I am sorry that of this letter from Goethe only this s'ngle jrassage is preserved. 
 Indeed, as I have already said, the originals of all Goethe's letters to Carlyle have dis- 
 appeared, and there remain only the copies of some of them which he sent to his 
 brother. 
 
 11*
 
 238 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 came in thick for fresh articles : Jeffrey wanted one on Tasso; the 
 Foreign Quarterly wanted anything that he pleased to send, with 
 liberal offers of pay. He could not afford at such a moment to be 
 out of the reach of libraries, and therefore for the present he left his 
 brother alone in the moorland home. 
 
 In the summer he and his wife ran down for a short holiday at 
 Scotsbrig, giving a few brief days to Templand, and a glance at 
 Craigenputtock. By August they were again settled in Comely 
 Bank. The Carlyles, as he said long before, were a clannish set, 
 and clung tenaciously together. The partings after ever so brief a 
 visit were always sorrowful. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "21 Comely Bank: August 
 
 "My dear Mother, It was pity that we were all so wae that 
 day we went off; but we cannot well help it. This life is but a 
 series of meetings and partings, and many a tear one might shed, 
 while these 'few and evil days' pass over us. But we hope there 
 is another scene to which this is but the passage, where good and 
 holy affections shall live as in their home, and for true friends there 
 shall be no more partings appointed. God grant we may all have 
 our lot made sure in that earnest and enduring country; for surely 
 this world, the more one thinks of it, seems the more fluctuating, 
 hollow, and unstable. What are its proudest hopes but bubbles on 
 the stream of time, which the next rushing wave will scatter into 
 air ? You have heard of Canning's death the Prime-minister of 
 Britain, the skilful statesman on whom all eyes in England and 
 Europe were expectingly fixed. 
 
 ' What is life ? a thawing ice-board 
 
 On a sea with sunny shore; 
 Gay we sail, it melts beneath us ; 
 We are sunk and seen no more. ' 
 
 But I must leave these moralities, in which, perhaps, I am too apt 
 to indulge. Before this time Mary will be with vou and have 
 reported progress up to Monday last, the day when I left Craigen- 
 puttock. She will have told you how Jane and I were overtaken 
 by rain at Dumfries, and how we spent the night with the hospital 
 man in Academy Street, and how his daft maid came bouncing into 
 the room after we were in bed, to the astonishment of Goody, alto- 
 gether unaccustomed to such familiarity. For the rest, however, 
 we did as well as might be, and the order of ' Mary Stuart's ' apart- 
 ment was considerably admired. On Monday evening, after part- 
 ing with the Doctor, I cantered along without adventure to Temp- 
 land; was met two bow-shots from the house by a young wife well 
 known to me and glad to get me back, and next morning by ten 
 o'clock both she and I were safely mounted on the roof of the Edin- 
 burgh coach, where, the day being fine, we continued comfortably 
 enough seated, till about half-past eight the natural progress of the 
 vehicle landed us safe and sound in our own neighborhood. The
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 239 
 
 house was standing quiet and almost overgrown with flowers. Next 
 d;iy everything returned to its old routine, and we were sitting in 
 our bright, still little cottage as if we had never stirred out of it. I 
 set to work to trim the garden till my mind should settle after its 
 wanderings, but as yet I am not half through with it. 
 
 "You must come hither in winter, that is a settled point. My 
 father and you may journey together by Hawick in many ways. 
 Alick was even calculating the relative costs and profits of coming 
 to Edinburgh himself with a cartload of potatoes and other necessa- 
 ries. In case of his visiting us, you might all then come together. 
 But any way you MUST come. It would be a grievous disappoint- 
 ment if I could not have the pleasure of showing you this city and 
 its wonders, and if we missed this opportunity there is no saying 
 when another might occur. So settle it with yourself that you are 
 to come, and in the mean time consider when you can do it best, 
 and we will study to conform. 
 
 " I went on Saturday to see Jeffrey, but found him from home 
 for a week. So soon as I have got Goethe a letter written, and 
 various other little odd things transacted, I design sitting down to 
 my large article for his Renew; after which I shall be ready for the 
 poor book, 1 which, alas ! has been dreadfully overlooked of late. It 
 is a pity one had not twenty minds and hands ; double pity one did 
 not faithfully employ the mind and hands one has; but I will turn 
 a new leaf shortly, for idle I cannot and must not be. The sweat 
 of the brow is not a curse but the wholesomest blessing in life. 
 Remember me in warmest affection to every one at Scotsbrig. I 
 would gire a shilling for a long letter. Surely you may club one 
 up amongst you. I am ever, my dear mother's son, 
 
 "T. CARLTLE." 
 
 "With reputation growing, and economics looking less gloomy, 
 Carlyle's spirits were evidently rising. "We hear no more of pain 
 and sickness and bilious lamentations, and he looked about him in 
 hope and comfort. The London University was getting itself es- 
 tablished, offering opportunities for Non-conformist genius such as 
 England had never before provided. Professors were wanted there 
 in various departments of knowledge. He was advised to offer 
 himself to be one of them, and he wrote to Irving to inquire, with 
 no particular result. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Comely Bank : September 5. 
 
 "I had a letter from Edward Irving the other day about the ^s- 
 thetical Professorship in the London University. 51 In a strange, 
 austere, puritanical, yet on the whole honest and friendly looking 
 style, he advises me to proceed and make the attempt. ' The Lord,' 
 he says, blesses him; his Church rejoices in 'the Lord;' in fact, the 
 
 1 Not yet consciously abandoned, but never again taken up. 
 
 1 It was not yet decided what the chair was to be Rhetoric, Taste, Moral Philoso- 
 phy, English Literature, or what.
 
 240 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Lord and he seem to be quite hand and glove. He looks unhappy, 
 for his tone sounds hollow, like some voice from a sepulchral aisle; 
 yet I do honestly believe there is much worth among his failings, 
 much precious truth among all this cant. I must even regret that 
 he goes into those matters with so very disunited a heart ; but there 
 where he stands, I wish I and every one of us were half as good 
 men. As to this 'projection,' as he calls it, I have not yet taken any 
 steps, being indeed too busy for doing anything. I was to write to 
 him again, but have not. I wait for counsel from Jeffrey, whom I 
 have not since seen." 
 
 In appointments to the London University, the great Brougham, 
 not yet Chancellor or peer, but member for Yorkshire, and greatest 
 orator in the House of Commons, was likely to be omnipotent. 
 Jeffrey, it was equally probable, would carry weight with Brougham ; 
 and Jeffrey, when Carlyle consulted him, expressed the utmost per- 
 sonal willingness to be of use to Carlyle. But his reply illustrates 
 what Goethe had just observed about Schiller, that genius rarely 
 finds recognition from contemporaries as long as it can possibly be 
 withheld. At all times, Jeffrey said, he would be willing to recom- 
 mend Carlyle as a man of genius and learning ; he did not conceal, 
 however, that difficulties would lie in the way of his success in this 
 especial enterprise. Carlyle, he said.was a sectary in taste and litera- 
 ture, and was inspired with the zeal by which sectaries were distin- 
 guished. He was inclined to magnify the special doctrines of his 
 sect, and rather to aggravate than reconcile the differences which 
 divided them from others. He confessed, therefore, that he doubted 
 whether the patrons either would or ought to appoint such a person 
 to such a charge. The sincerity and frankness of Carlyle's character 
 increased the objection, for such a person would insist the more 
 peremptorily on the articles of his philosophic creed a creed which 
 no one of the patrons adopted, and most of them regarded as dam- 
 nable heresy. It was therefore but too likely that this would prove 
 an insuperable obstacle. In all other respects Jeffrey considered 
 Carlyle fully qualified, and likely, if appointed, to do great credit to 
 the Establishment. But he was afraid that Carlyle would not wish 
 to disguise those singularities of opinion from which he foresaw the 
 obstructions to his success ; and as a farther difficulty he added that 
 the chair at which Carlyle was aiming had long been designed for 
 Thomas Campbell, and would probably be given to him. 
 
 Jeffrey invited Carlyle and his wife to dinner, however, to talk the 
 chances over. Carlyle assured Jeffrey ' ' that there was no sectarian- 
 ism or heresy in the matter. He was more open to light," he said, 
 "than others of his craft; and he was satisfied for himself that the 
 patrons of the University would do excellently well to make him 
 professor." "Jeffrey," Mrs. Carlyle thought, "was in his heart of 
 the same opinion." She was herself uncertain whether she wished
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 241 
 
 her husband to succeed or not ; but London would at all events be 
 an escape from Craigenputtock. Reflection had not tended to make 
 the moor more palatable to her. Her little sister-in-law Jean had 
 just been sent out thither to keep her brother company. 
 
 "Poor Jean!" Mrs. Carlyle wrote about this. " She is seeing the 
 world all on a sudden. What will the creature make of herself at 
 Craigenputtock? I hope they took her garters from her, and every- 
 thing in the shape of hemp or steel." 
 
 Jeffrey did what he could, perhaps not with very great ardor, but 
 with vigor enough to save him from the charge of neglecting his 
 friend. He went on a visit to Brougham in the autumn. He men- 
 tioned Carlyle, and in high terms of praise. He "found Brougham, 
 however, singularly shy on the subject, and though the subject was 
 introduced half a dozen times during Jeffrey's stay, Brougham was 
 careful to evade it, in a way that showed that he did not wish to be 
 pressed for an answer even by an intimate friend." 
 
 "I may add in confidence," Jeffrey said, "that he made very 
 light of Irving's recommendation, and it was not likely to be of 
 much weight with any of the other directors either." 
 
 Notwithstanding these discouragements, Carlyle silently nourished 
 some hope of success. 
 
 "I believe [he wrote to his brother in October] that no appoint- 
 ment to the London chair will take place for a considerable time, 
 and in the mean while Brougham will keep his eye on me, and if he 
 finds that I prosper may apply to me ; if not, will leave me standing. 
 At all events the thing is right. I am before these people in some 
 shape, perhaps as near my real one as I could expect; and if they 
 want nothing with me, 'the deil be in me,' as daft Wull said, if I 
 want anything with them either. I am still as undetermined as ever 
 whether their acceptance of me would be for my good or not." 
 
 He came to know Brougham better in after years. There was 
 probably no person in England less likely to recognize Carlyle's 
 qualities; and the more distinguished Carlyle became, the more 
 Brougham was sure to have congratulated himself on having kept 
 his new University clear of such an influence. It must be admitted 
 that the "diseateem" was equally marked on both sides. 
 
 Carlyle meanwhile did not rest on the vain imagination of help 
 from others. He worked with all his might on the new line which 
 had been opened to him, and here I have to mention one of those 
 peculiarly honorable characteristics which meet us suddenly at all 
 turns of his career. He had paid his brother's expenses at the Uni- 
 versity out of his salary as the Bullers' tutor. He was now poor 
 himself with increased demands upon him, but the first use which 
 he made of his slightly improved finances was to send John Carlyle 
 to complete his education in the medical schools in Germany. He
 
 243 LITE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 estimated John's talents with a brother's affection, and he was re- 
 solved to give him the best chances of distinguishing himself. The 
 cost was greater than he had calculated on, but he was not dis- 
 couraged. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Comely Bank : November 29, 1827. 
 
 "Do not, good brother, let thy heart be cast down for the Mam- 
 mon of this world. A few more hard sovereigns we are yet, thank 
 Heaven, in a condition to furnish. Write for what is necessary and 
 it will be sent. Above all do not neglect dissection and surgery for 
 the sake of any poor thrift there might be in the omission of it. Go 
 on and prosper. Learn all and everything that is to be learned ; and 
 if you come home to us a good well-appointed man and physician, 
 we will not think the money ill-bestowed. " 
 
 The remainder of the same letter carries on the picture of daily 
 life at Comely Bank : 
 
 "The Edinburgh Review is out some time ago, and the ' State of 
 German Literature ' has been received with considerable surprise 
 and approbation by the Universe. Thus, for instance, De Quincey 
 praises it in his Saturday Post. Sir William Hamilton tells me it is 
 'cap-tal,' and Wilson informs John Gordon that it 'has done me a 
 deil o' good.' De Quincey was here last Wednesday and sate till 
 midnight. He is one of the smallest men you ever in your life be- 
 held ; but with a most gentle and sensible face, only that the teeth 
 are destroyed by opium, and the little bit of an under lip projects 
 like a shelf. He speaks with a slow, sad, and soft voice in the po- 
 litest manner I have almost ever witnessed, and with great graceful- 
 ness and sense, were it not that he seems decidedly given to prosing. 
 Poor little fellow ! It might soften a very hard heart to see him so 
 courteous, yet so weak and poor; retiring home with his two chil- 
 dren to a miserable lodging-house, and writing all day for the king 
 of donkeys, the proprietor of the Saturday Post. I lent him Jean 
 Paul's autobiography, which I got lately from Hamburg, and ad- 
 vised him to translate it for Blackwood, that so he might raise a 
 few pounds, and fence off the Genius of Hunger yet a little while. 
 Poor little De Quincey! He is an innocent man, and, as you said, 
 extremely wasliable away." 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 A.D. 1827. .ET. 32. 
 
 WHILE Carlyle was taking care of his brother, an active interest 
 was rising in Edinburgh about himself. Scotch people were begin- 
 ning to see that a remarkable man had appeared among them, and 
 that they ought not to let him slip through their hands. A new 
 opening presented itself, which he thus describes to his father :
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 243 
 
 To Mr. James Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Comely Bank: December 22. 
 
 " There has been a fresh enterprise started for me, no less than to 
 attempt to be successor to Dr. Chalmers in the St. Andrew's Univer- 
 sity. He (Chalmers) is at present Professor of Moral Philosophy 
 there, but is just removing to Edinburgh to be Professor of Divinity, 
 and I have been consulting with my friends whether it would be 
 prudent in me to offer myself as a candidate for the vacant office. 
 They all seem to think sincerely that if the election proceeded on 
 fair principles I might have a chance of rather a good sort ; but this 
 proviso is only a doubtful one, the custom having long been to de- 
 cide such tlu'ngs by very wwfair principles. As yet nothing is deter- 
 mined ; but my patrons are making inquiries to see how the land lies ; 
 and some time next week we shall know what to do. Most part are 
 inclined to think I ought to try." 
 
 Among those who encouraged Carlyle in this ambition, and lent 
 active help, Jeffrey was now the first, and, besides general recom- 
 mendations, wrote most strongly in his favor to Dr. Nicol, the Prin- 
 cipal of the University. Equal testimonials, viewed by the intrinsic 
 quality of the givers, to those which were collected or spontaneously 
 offered on this occasion, were perhaps never presented by any candi- 
 date for a Scotch professorship. Goethe himself wrote one, which 
 in these times might have carried the day; but Goethe was then only 
 known in Scotland as a German dreamer. Carlyle, though again 
 personally pretending indifference, exerted himself to the utmost, 
 and was, perhaps, more anxious than he was aware of being. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 " Comely Bank: January, 1821. 
 
 "I am as diligent as possible storming the battlements of St. An- 
 drew's University for tJie professorship for which I have actually 
 eight days ago declared myself formally a candidate! This was 
 after all due investigation conducted by Jeffrey and others, from 
 which, if I could gather no fixed hope of my succeeding, it seemed 
 at least that there was no fixed determination against me ; that I 
 might try without censure nay, in my circumstances, ougut to try. 
 I accordingly wrote off to St. Andrew's, and next day to all the four 
 winds, in quest of recommendations to Goethe, to Irving, to Buller, 
 to Brewster, etc. These same recommendations are now beginning 
 to come in upon me. I had one from Brewster two days ago (with 
 the offer of farther help), and this morning came a decent testifica- 
 tory letter from Buller, and a most majestic certificate in three pages 
 from Edward Irving. The good orator speaks as from the heart, 
 and truly says, as he has ever done, that he thinks me a most worthy 
 man not forgetting to mention among my other advantages the 
 ' prayers of religious parents,' a blessing which, if I speak less of it, 
 I hope I do not feel less than he. On the whole it is a splendid af- 
 fair this of his; and being tempered by the recommendation of John
 
 244 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Leslie, 1 may do me much good. Before the end of next week I ex- 
 pect to have all my testimonials sent off; and there the matter may 
 for a long time rest, the period of election being still unfixed. Of 
 my hopes and calculations as to success I can say nothing, being my- 
 self able to form no judgment. I am taught to believe that if merit 
 gain it, I shall gain; which is a proud belief, and ought to render 
 failure a matter of comparative indifference to me; more especially 
 as, like the weather in Cowthwaitcs' calculations, I can do ' owther 
 way.' I often care not sixpence whether I get it or no; but we shall 
 see. If it is laid out for me it will come; if not, not." 
 
 Jeffrey had been alert making inquiries. The nomination he had 
 found to rest in substance with the Principal, Dr. Nicol, an active, 
 jobbing, popular man, who had placed most of the present professors 
 and conferred obligations on all, and who, through his influence in 
 earlier days with Lord Melville, had acquired an absolute ascendency 
 in the St. Andrew's Senate. Nicol secured, the rest of the votes 
 might be counted on; without Nicol they could not. The Princi- 
 pal was described by Jeffrey as good-natured, sensible, and worldly, 
 not without some sense of the propriety of attracting men of talent 
 and reputation into the University staff; but cautious and prudent, 
 possessing neither genius nor learning, and without reverence for 
 them. In Church matters Nicol was moderate, with distrust and 
 contempt for* every kind of enthusiasm. It was not unlikely, there- 
 fore, that he had already cast his eyes on some decent, manageable, 
 and judicious priest for the office. With such a man testimonials 
 from Irving would be rather injurious than useful. Men of rank 
 would weigh most, and next to them men of repute for learning. 
 
 There is a certain humor in the claims of Thomas Carlyle, sup- 
 ported by the most famous man of letters in Europe, being submitted 
 to be tried in the scales by such a person as this. But so it was, and 
 is, and perhaps must be, in constitutional countries, where high of- 
 fice may fall on the worthy, but rarely or never on the most worthy. 
 It is difficult everywhere for the highest order of merit to find rec- 
 ognition. Under a system of popular election it is almost impos- 
 sible. 
 
 "My testimonials [Carlyle wrote to his brother John] 5 arc in such 
 terms that if I cannot carry the place I think it may seem vain to 
 attempt to carry any such place by means of testimonials to merit 
 alone. The dear little Duke 3 Jane says she could kiss him has 
 written me a paper which might of itself bring me any professorship 
 in the island. Irving also spends five heroical pages on my merits, 
 and Wilson says there is no man known to him fitter for the of- 
 fice ; so what more can I do but let the matter take its course and 
 
 1 Sir John Leslie, Professor of Mathematics in Edinburgh, who had been Carlyle'a 
 teacher. 1 February 1, 1828. 
 
 a Duke of Craigcrook, the name by which Jeffrey went.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 345 
 
 await the issue 'with indescribable composure.' The truth is, I 
 hardly care which way it go. A man, if you give him meat and 
 clothes, is, or ought to be, sufficient for himself in this world; and 
 his culture is but beginning if he think that any outward influence 
 of person or thing can either make him or mar him. If I do not go 
 
 thither (which, after all, is very likely; for , an old stager, talks 
 
 of applying), why then /shall not go, and they will not get me; and 
 the sun will rise and set, and the grass will grow, and I shall have 
 eyes to see and ears to hear notwithstanding. Do all that you can 
 in honesty, and reckon the result indubitable ; for the inward result 
 will not fail if rightly endeavored; and for the outward, ' non flocci 
 facias,' do not value it a rush." 
 
 After a few weeks the suspense was over. Carlyle was not ap- 
 pointed ; some one else was ; and some one else's church was made 
 over to another some one else whom it was desirable to oblige ; 
 ' ' and so the whole matter was rounded off in the neatest manner 
 possible." Such at least was Carlyle's account of what he under- 
 stood to be the arrangement. Perhaps the "some one else" was a 
 fitter person after all. Education in countries so jealous of novelty 
 as Great Britain is, or at least was sixty years ago, follows naturally 
 upon lines traced out by custom, and the conduct of it falls as a 
 matter of course to persons who have never deviated from those 
 lines. New truths are the nutriment of the world's progress. Men 
 of genius discover them, insist upon them, prove them in the face of 
 opposition, and if the genius is not merely a phosphorescent glitter, 
 but an abiding light, their teaching enters in time into the Univer- 
 sity curriculum. But out of new ideas time alone can distinguish 
 the sound and real from the illusive and imaginary; and it was 
 enough that Carlyle was described as a man of original and extraor- 
 dinary gifts to make college patrons shrink from contact with him. 
 
 Carlyle himself dimly felt that St. Andrew's might not be the 
 best place for him. It seemed hard to refuse promotion to a man 
 because he was too good for it, and no doubt he would have been 
 pleased to be appointed. But for the work which Carlyle had to 
 do a position of intellectual independence was indispensable, and 
 his apprenticeship to poverty and hardship had to be prolonged still 
 farther to harden his nerves and perhaps to test his sincerity. The 
 loss of this professorship may be regretted for Mrs. Carlyle's sake, 
 who did not need the trials which lay before her. Carlyle himself 
 in a University chair would have been famous in his day, and have 
 risen to wealth and consequence, but he might not have been the 
 Carlyle who has conquered a place for himself among the Im- 
 mortals. 
 
 So ended the only fair prospect which ever was opened to him of 
 entering any of the beaten roads of life ; and fate having thus de- 
 cided in spite of the loud remonstrance of all friends, of Jeffrey
 
 246 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 especially, Carlyle became once more bent on removing to Craigen- 
 puttock. 
 
 "The certificate of the angel Gabriel [he said] would not have 
 availed me a pin's worth. The devil may care; I can still live inde- 
 pendent of all persons whatever. At the Craig, if we stick together 
 as we have done, we may fairly bid defiance to the constable. 
 Praised be Heaven! for of all curses that of being baited for debt, 
 or even frightened of falling into it, is surely the bitterest." 
 
 The repairs in the old house were hastened forward, that it might 
 be ready for them in the spring. 
 
 The domestic scene in Comely Bank had been meantime bright- 
 ened by the long-talked-of event of the visit of old Mrs. Carlyle to 
 Edinburgh. In all her long life she had never yet been beyond 
 Annandale, had never seen the interior of any better residence than 
 a Scottish farm-house. To the infinite heaven spread above the 
 narrow circle of her horizon she had perhaps risen as near on wings 
 of prayer and piety as any human being who was upon the earth 
 beside her ; but of the earth itself, of her own Scotland, she knew 
 no more than could be descried from Burnswark Hill. She was to 
 spend Christmas week at Comely Bank. She arrived at the begin- 
 ning of December. 
 
 To James Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 " Comely Bank : December 22, 1827. 
 
 "My dear Father, My mother will not let me rest any longer 
 till I write to you; she says it was promised that a letter should go 
 off the very night Jean and she arrived ; and nevertheless it is a 
 mela'ncholy fact that above two weeks have elapsed since that event, 
 and no better tidings been sent you than a word or two in the blank 
 line of the Courier. I would have written sooner had I been in 
 right case, or indeed had there been anything more to communicate 
 than what so brief an announcement might convey as well as a 
 much larger one. 
 
 "The two wayfarers did not find me waiting for them at the 
 coach that Wednesday evening. Unhappily it was quite out of my 
 power to keep that or any other appointment. I had been seized 
 about a week before with a most virulent sore throat, which detained 
 me close prisoner in the house. All that I could do under these 
 circumstances was to send out a trusty substitute, a Mr. Gordon, 
 who kindly undertook the office. But he, mistaking one coach for 
 another, went and waited at the wrong inn ; so that our beloved pil- 
 grims were left to their own resources, and had to pilot their way 
 hither under the guidance of the porter who carried their box. 
 This, however, they accomplished without difficulty or accident, 
 and rejoiced us all by their safe and, in part at least, unexpected 
 arrival. 
 
 " Since then all things have gone on prosperously. Jane has been 
 busy, and still is so, getting ready suitable apparel of bonnets and
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLTLE. 247 
 
 frocks. My mother has heard Andrew Thomson in his ' braw kirk,' 
 not much to her satisfaction, since ' he had to light four candles be- 
 fore even he could strike.' She has also seen old Mrs. Hope, the 
 Castle of Edinburgh, the Martyrs' Graves, John Knox's house, and 
 who knows how many other wonders, of which I doubt not she will 
 give you a true and full description when she returns. As yet, how- 
 ever, the half has not been seen. The weather has been so stormy 
 that travelling out was difficult, and I have been hi no high condi- 
 tion for officiating as guide. In stormy days she smokes along with 
 me, or sews wearing raiment, or reads the wonderful articles of my 
 writing in the Edinburgh Ratiew. She has also had a glimpse of 
 Francis Jeffrey, the great critic and advocate, and a shake of the 
 hand from a true German doctor. 
 
 " Nevertheless she is extremely anxious about getting home, and 
 indeed fails no day to tell us several times that she ought to be off. 
 'She is doing nothing,' she says ; 'and they'll a' be in a bubble o' 
 work ' at home. I tell her she was never idle for two weeks in her 
 life before, and ought therefore to give it a fair trial ; that ' the bub- 
 ble at home ' will all go on rightly enough in her absence ; that, in 
 short, she should not go this year but the next. So I am in hopes 
 we shall get her persuaded to stay where she is till after New-year's- 
 day, which is now only nine or ten days distant, and then we will 
 let her go in peace. The two Janes and she are all out in the town 
 at present buying muslin for sundry necessary articles of dress which 
 we have persuaded the mother to undertake the wearing of. These 
 may keep her, I hope, in some sort of occupation ; for idle, I see, she 
 cannot arid will not be. We will warn you duly when to expect 
 her. 
 
 "I trust you will soon be well enough for a journey hither; for 
 you too, my dear father, must see Edinburgh before we leave it. I 
 have thought of compelling you to come back with me when I come 
 down. I am ever, your affectionate son, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 James Carlyle did not come. He was with his son once after- 
 wards at Craigenputtock, but he never saw Edinburgh. 
 
 "My mother [Carlyle wrote to his brother on the 1st of February] 
 stayed about four weeks, then went home by Hawick, pausing a few 
 days there. She was in her usual health, wondered much at Edin- 
 burgh, but did not seem to relish it excessively. I had her at the 
 pier of Leith and showed her where your ship vanished, and she 
 looked over the blue waters eastward with wettish eyes, and asked 
 the dumb waters 'when he would be back again.' Good mother ! 
 but the time of her departure came on, and she left us stupefied by 
 the magnitude of such an enterprise as riding over eighty miles in 
 the Sir Walter Scott without jumping out of the window, which I 
 told her was the problem. Dear mother! let us thank God that she 
 is still here in the earth spared for us, and, I hope, to see good. I 
 would not exchange her for any ten mothers I have ever seen. Jane 
 (Jean) the less she left behind her, 'to improve her mind.' The 
 creature seems to be doing very fairly, and is well and contented. 
 My Jane, I grieve to say, is yet far enough from well, but I hope
 
 248 LITE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 much from summer weather and a smart pony in the south. She is 
 not by any means an established valetudinarian, yet she seldom has 
 a day of true health, and has not gamed strength entirely since you 
 left her." 
 
 I give a few more extracts from letters written to his brother 
 during the remainder of the Comely Bank tune : 
 
 To JoJin^Carlyle. 
 
 "Comely Bank: March 7. 
 
 "Explain to me how I may send you a matter of twenty pounds, 
 or such other sum as you may require, to bring you home to us 
 again. I have no want of money for all needful purposes at present ; 
 and (I thank God for it) I am able to earn more; neither is there any 
 investment for it half so good as these in the bank of affection, where 
 perishable silver and gold is converted into imperishable remem- 
 brances of kind feelings. Speak, therefore, plainly and speedily, and 
 it shall be done. . . . 
 
 "I am glad to find that you admire Schelling, and know that you 
 do not understand him. That is right, my dear Greatheart. Look 
 into the deeply significant regions of Transcendental philosophy 
 (as all philosophy must be), and feel that there are wonders and 
 mighty truths hidden in them ; but look with your clear gray Scot- 
 tish eyes and shrewd Scottish understanding, and refuse to be mys- 
 tified even by your admiration. Meanwhile, Diligence, Truth ; Truth, 
 Diligence. These are our watchwords, whether we have ten talents 
 or only a decimal fraction of one. 
 
 "I have not a syllable to tell you about the London University ex- 
 cept that, according to all human probability, the people neither now 
 nor at any other time will have the least to do with me. I heard the 
 other day from Charles Buller the younger. He says that, hearing 
 of my purpose, he went to Mill (the British India Philister), who is 
 one of the directors, and spoke with him; but found that my Ger- 
 man metaphysics were an unspeakable stone of stumbling to that 
 great thinker, whereby Buller began to perceive that my chances 
 had diminished to the neighborhood of zero. It appears, however, 
 that I am become a sort of newspaper Literatim in London on the 
 strength of these articles (bless them), and that certain persons won- 
 der what manner of man I am. A critic in the Courier (apparent- 
 ly the worst in nature from the one sentence that I read of him) says 
 I am 'the supremest German scholar in the British Empire.' Das 
 Jiole der Teufel! However, I am rather amused at the naivete with 
 which Crabb Robinson talks to me on this subject. He characterizes 
 the papers as a splendid instance of literary ratting on the part of the 
 
 editor, and, imputing the whole composition to a Sir Hamilton, 
 
 advocate, says it has some eloquence, and though it cuts its own 
 throat (to speak as a figure), will do GOOD. 
 
 "The Foreign Review gave me 47. for my trash on "Werner. 1 I 
 have sent them a far better paper on Goethe's ' Helena, " 2 for which I 
 shall not get so much. I have engaged to send in a long paper on 
 
 i "Miscellanies," vol. i. p. 101. a Ibid., p. 171.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 249 
 
 Goethe's character generally, this of ' Helena ' being a sort of intro- 
 duction. 
 
 "How matters stand at Craigenputtock I can only gpess, but am 
 going down to see. I am in no small uncertainty. This Edinburgh 
 is getting more agreeable to me, more and more a sort of home; and 
 I can live in it, if I like to live perpetually unhealthy, and strive for- 
 ever against becoming a Tiack; for that I cannot be. On the other 
 hand, I should have liberty and solitude for aught I like best among 
 the moors only Jane, though like a good wife she says nothing, 
 seems evidently getting more and more afraid of the whole enter- 
 prise. She is not at all stout in health. But I must go and look at 
 things with my own eyes, and now as ever there is need of mature 
 resolve, and steadfast when mature." 
 
 "March 12. 
 
 "Jeffrey and I continue to love one another like a new Pylades 
 and Orestes. At least, such is often my feeling towards him. Good 
 little Duke ! There are few men like thee in this world, Epicurean 
 in creed though thou be, and living all thy days among Turks in 
 grain. 
 
 " Wilson I can get little good of, though we are as great as ever. 
 Poor Wilson ! It seems as if he shrunk from too close a union with 
 any one. His whole being seems hollowed out, as it were, and false 
 and counterfeit in his own eyes. So he encircles himself with wild 
 cloudy sportf ulness, which to me often seems reckless and at bottom 
 full of sharp sorrow. Oh that a man would not halt between two 
 opinions. How can any one love poetry and rizzered haddocks with 
 whiskey toddy, outwatch the Bear with Peter Robinson, and at the 
 same time with William Wordsworth ? For the last four weeks he 
 has been very unwell, and his friends are not without apprehension 
 for him. He purposes to visit Switzerland in summer and take De 
 Quincey with him. I called yesterday on De Quincey about two 
 o'clock and found him invisible in bed. His landlady, a dirty, very 
 wicked looking woman, said, if he rose at all, it was usually about 
 five o'clock. Unhappy little opium-eater, and a quicker little fellow, 
 or of meeker soul (if he had but lived in Paradise or Lubberland) 
 is not to be found in these parts. 
 
 " The intellectual city is at present entertaining itself not a little 
 with the Apocrypha controversy, in which Grey the minister and 
 Thomson the minister are exhibiting the various manner of offence 
 and defence, to the edification of all parties interested. Translated 
 into the language of the shambles, where their spirit clearly enough 
 originates, these pamphlets of theirs mean simply, ' Sir, you are a 
 d d rascal,' and ' No, sir, you are a d d rascal.' Happily I have 
 read next to nothing of the whole, and heard as little of it as I possi- 
 bly could. But now some private wag has taken up the task of 
 caricaturing in pictorial wise these reverend persons ; and a crowd 
 shoving and shouldering for a clear and clearer view may be seen 
 at all print-shop windows contemplating the distorted figures of 
 their pawstors depicted as bull-dogs and greyhounds, as preachers 
 and prize-fighters climbing the steeple like orthodox men, or throt- 
 tling one another like exasperated fish-women ; for there are said to 
 be twelve caricatures in the course of publication, and a fresh one
 
 250 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 comes out every now and then. What Thomson and Grey say to it 
 I know not. For myself I should only say, in the words of the old 
 poem 
 
 ' May the Lord put an end unto all cruel wars. 
 And send peace and contentment unto all British tars.' " 
 
 Eager as Carlyle was to be gone from Edinburgh, he confessed 
 that in his wife's manner he had detected an unwillingness to bury 
 herself in the moors. The evident weakness of her health alarmed 
 him, and he could scarcely have forgotten the aversion with which 
 she had received his first suggestion of making Craigenputtock their 
 home. For himself his mind was made up ; and usually when Car- 
 lyle wished anything he was not easily impressed with objections 
 to it. In this instance, however, he was evidently hesitating. Craig- 
 enputtock, sixteen miles from the nearest town and the nearest doc- 
 tor, cut off from the outer world through the winter months by snow 
 and flood, in itself gaunt, grim, comfortless, and utterly solitary, was 
 not a spot exactly suited to a delicate and daintily nurtured woman. 
 In the counter scale was her mother, living a few miles below in 
 Nithsdale. But for this attraction Mrs. Carlyle would have declined 
 the adventure altogether ; as it was she trembled at the thought 
 of it. 
 
 The house in Comely Bank was held only by the year. They 
 were called on to determine whether they would take it for another 
 twelve months or not. Before deciding they resolved to see Craig- 
 enputtock together once more. Little Jean was left in charge at 
 Edinburgh, and Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle went down to Dumfries- 
 shire. "I still remember, "he said in the " Reminiscences," "two 
 gray blusterous March days at Craigenputtock, with the proof-sheets 
 of Goethe's ' Helena ' in my hand, and Dumfries architects chaotic- 
 ally joined therewith." 
 
 On a blusterous March day Craigenputtock could not look to ad- 
 vantage. They left it still irresolute, and perhaps inclining to re- 
 main among their friends. But the question had been settled for 
 them in their absence; on returning to Comely Bank they found that 
 their landlord, not caring to wait longer till they had made up their 
 minds, had let the house to another tenant, and that at all events 
 they would have to leave it at Whitsuntide. This ended the uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 "We found all well at Comely Bank [Carlyle wrote to his moth- 
 er, when he came back], only the fire a little low, and the maid gone 
 out seeking places, so that it was some space before tea could be 
 raised. The wise young stewardess 1 had sunk considerably into 
 pecuniary embarrassments, but in all other points was well and hap- 
 py, and had managed herself throughout with a degree of prudence 
 
 1 Jean, his sister.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 251 
 
 and gumption far beyond her years. Indeed, both Jane and I TV ere 
 surprised at the acuteness the little crow had displayed in all emer- 
 gencies, and perhaps still more at the strange growth she had made 
 in manner and bearing during our absence, for she seemed to have 
 enlarged into a sort of woman during that period of self -direction. 
 The best of our news is that we are coming down to the Craig this 
 Whitsunday to take up our abode there. This house was found to 
 have been let during our absence. Since we had to flit any way, 
 wlrithcr should we flit but to our own house on the moor? We are 
 coming down then against the term, to neighbor you. Will you be 
 good neighbors or bad ? I cannot say, Mrs. Carlyle, but I jealouse 
 you, I jealouse you. However, we are to try; for Jane and I were 
 out this very day, buying paper for the two rooms, which is already 
 on its way to Dumfries; and the painters we trust are busy, and 
 Alick and Uncle John doing great things, that the mansion house 
 may be swept and smooth by the 26th of May, when we will visit it 
 with bag and baggage, we hope as a permanent home. 
 
 "I anticipate 'with confidence [he wrote at the same time to his 
 brother] a friendly and rather comfortable arrangement at the Craig, 
 in which, not in idleness, yet in peace and more self -selected occu- 
 pations, I may find more health, and, what I reckon weightier, more 
 scope to improve and worthily employ myself, which either here t>r 
 there I reckon to be the great end of existence and the only happi- 
 ness." 
 
 So ended the life at 21 Comely Bank the first married home of 
 the Carlyles; which began ominously, as a vessel rolls when first 
 launched, threatening an overturn, and closed with improved health 
 and spirits on Carlyle's part, and prospects which, if not brilliant, 
 were encouraging and improving. He had been fairly introduced 
 into the higher walks of his profession, and was noticed and talked 
 about. Besides the two articles on Jean Paul and on German lit- 
 erature, he had written the paper on Werner, the essay on Goethe's 
 "Helena," and the more elaborate and remarkable essay on Goethe 
 himself, which now stand among the "Miscellanies." 1 Goethe per- 
 sonally remained kind and attentive. He had studied Carlyle's in- 
 tellectual temperament, and had used an expression about him hi 
 the St. Andrew's testimonial which showed how clear an insight he 
 had gained into the character of it. Carlyle was resting, he said, on 
 an original foundation, and was so happily constituted that he could 
 develop out of himself the requirements of what was good and beau- 
 tiful 2 out of himself, not out of contact with others. The work could 
 be done, therefore, as well, or perhaps better, in solitude. Along with 
 the testimonial had come a fresh set of presents, with more cards and 
 
 i Vol. i. p. 233. 
 
 5 " Wodurch an den Tag gelcgt wird. dass er auf einem originalen Grund beruhe, 
 und die Erfordernisse des Guten und SchOnen aus sich selbst zu entwickeln das Ver- 
 gnugen habc. " This, so far as I know, is the only sentence of this testimonial which 
 survives.
 
 352 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 verses and books, and with a remembrance of himself which Carlyle 
 was to deliver to Sir Walter Scott. It was a proud tribute, and proud 
 he was to report of it to Scotsbrig. 
 
 "I must tell you [he wrote] of the arrival 6f Goethe's box, with 
 such a catalogue of rarities as would astonish you. There was a 
 bracelet and gold breast-pin (with the poet's bust on a ground of 
 steel), besides two gilt books for Jane, and for the husband I know 
 not how many verses and cards and beautiful volumes, the whole 
 wrapped in about half a quire of German newspapers. Sir Walter 
 Scott's medals are not yet delivered, the baronet being at present in 
 London; but I have written to him announcing what lies here for 
 his acceptance, and in some week or two I cannot but expect that I 
 shall speak with the great man, and, having delivered my commis- 
 sion, wish him good-morning. To Goethe I have already written to 
 thank him for such kindness." 
 
 This was the last of Comely Bank. A few days later the Carlyles 
 were gone to the Dumfriesshire moorland where for seven years was 
 now to be their dwelling-place. Carlyle never spoke to Scott, as he 
 hoped to do; nor did Sir Walter even acknowledge his letter. It 
 seems that the medals and the letter to Scott from Goethe were in- 
 trusted to Wilson, by whom, or by Jeffrey, they were delivered to 
 Scott on the arrival of the latter soon after in Edinburgh. Carlyle's 
 letter, of which Wilson had also taken charge, was perhaps forgotten 
 by him. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
 
 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 
 From a miniature inpossestion of J. A. Frottde, Etq.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FIKST FOETY YEAES OF HIS LIFE 
 
 1Y95-1835 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 
 VOL. II. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1882
 
 
 
 ,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 OIIAP. PAOR 
 
 I. A.D. 1828. ^ET. 33 1 
 
 II. A.D. 1828. ^ET. 33 14 
 
 III. A.D. 1829. JET. 34 26 
 
 IV. A.D. 1830. ^ET. 35 41 
 
 V. A.D. 1830. ^ET. 33 57 
 
 VI. A.D. 1830. JET. 35 71 
 
 VII. A.D. 1831. /Ex. 30 80 
 
 VIII. A.D. 1831. JET. 36 93 
 
 IX. A.D. 1831. ^E-r. 36 114 
 
 X. A.D. 1831. ^ET. 36 131 
 
 XL A.D. 1832. ^E-r. 37 138 
 
 XII. A.D. 1832. ^Er. 37 152 
 
 XIII. A.D. 1832. JE-r. 37 170 
 
 XIV. A. D. 1833. ^ET. 38 189- 
 
 XV. A.D. 1833. JET. 38 . . 202
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 OIIAP. PAGE 
 
 XVI. A.D. 1833. J3T. 38 212 
 
 XVII. A.D. 1834. Mi. 39 227 
 
 XVIII. A.D. 1834. JET. 39 247 
 
 INDEX . 281 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 JANE WELSH CARLYLE Frontispiece 
 
 CRAIGENPUTTOCK To face page 14
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A.D. 1828. MT. 33. 
 
 GOETHE had said of Carlyle that he was fortunate in having in 
 himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which he could 
 develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men. Goethe 
 had discerned what had not yet become articulately clear to Carlyle 
 himself. But it is no less true that this principle of conviction was 
 already active in his mind, underlying his thoughts on every subject 
 which he touched. It is implied everywhere, though nowhere defi- 
 nitely stated in his published writings. We have arrived at a period 
 when he had become master of his powers, when he began distinctly 
 to utter the "poor message," as he sometimes called it, which he had 
 to deliver to his contemporaries. From this time his opinions on 
 details might vary, but the main structure of his philosophy re- 
 mained unchanged. It is desirable, therefore, before pursuing fur- 
 ther the story of his life, to describe briefly what the originating 
 principle was. The secret of a man's nature lies in his religion, in 
 what he really believes about this world, and his own place in it. 
 What was Carlyle's religion? I am able to explain it, partly from 
 his conversations with myself, but happily not from this source 
 only, into which alien opinions might too probably intrude. There 
 remain among his unpublished papers the fragments of two unfin- 
 ished essays which he was never able to complete satisfactorily to 
 himself, but which he told me were, and had been, an imperfect ex- 
 pression of his actual thoughts. 
 
 We have seen him confessing to Irving that he did not believe, as 
 his friend did, in the Christian religion, and that it was vain to hope 
 that he ever would so believe. He tells his mother, and he so con- 
 tinued to tell her as long as she lived, that their belief was essentially 
 the same, although their language was different. Both these state- 
 ments were true. He was a Calvinist without the theology. The 
 
 II. 1
 
 2 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. . 
 
 materialistic theory of things that intellect is a phenomenon of mat- 
 ter, that conscience is the growth of social convenience and other 
 kindred speculations, he utterly repudiated. Scepticism on the 
 nature of right and wrong, as on man's responsibility to his Maker, 
 never touched or tempted him. On the broad facts of the Divine 
 government of the universe he was as well assured as Calvin him- 
 self; but he based his faith, not on a supposed revelation, or on fal- 
 lible human authority. He had sought the evidence for it, where 
 the foundations lie of all other forms of knowledge, in the experi- 
 enced facts of things interpreted by the intelligence of man. Expe- 
 rienced fact was to him revelation, and the only true revelation. 
 Historical religions, Christianity included, he believed to have been 
 successive efforts of humanity, loyally and nobly made in the light 
 of existing knowledge, to explain human duty, and to insist on the 
 fulfilment of it; and the reading of the moral constitution and posi- 
 tion of man, in the creed, for instance, of his own family, he be- 
 lieved to be truer far, incommensurably truer, than was to be found 
 in the elaborate metaphysics of utilitarian ethics. In revelation, 
 technically so called, revelation confirmed by historical miracles, he 
 was unable to believe he felt himself forbidden to believe by the 
 light that was in him. In other ages men had seen miracles where 
 there were none, and had related them in perfect good faith in their 
 eagerness to realize the divine presence in the world. They did not 
 know enough of nature to be on their guard against alleged suspen- 
 sions of its unvarying order. To Carlyle the universe was itself a 
 miracle, and all its phenomena were equally in themselves incom- 
 prehensible. But the special miraculous occurrences of sacred his- 
 tory were not credible to him. "It is as certain as mathematics," 
 he said to me late in his own life, "that no such thing ever has been 
 or can be." He had learned that effects succeeded causes uniformly 
 and inexorably without intermission or interruption, and that tales 
 of wonder were as little the true accounts of real occurrences as the 
 theory of epicycles was a correct explanation of the movements of 
 the planets. 
 
 So far his thoughts on this subject did not differ widely from 
 those of his sceptical contemporaries, but his further conclusions 
 ot only were not their conclusions, but were opposed to them by 
 whole diameters; for, while he rejected the literal narrative of the 
 sacred writers, he believed as strongly as any Jewish prophet or 
 Catholic saint in the spiritual truths of religion. The effort of his 
 life was to rescue and reassert those truths which were being dragged 
 down by the weight with which they were encumbered. He ex- 
 plained his meaning by a remarkable illustration. He had not come 
 (so far as he knew his own puipose) to destroy the law and the 
 prophets, but to fulfil them to expand the conception of religion
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 
 
 \vith something wider, grander, and more glorious than the wildest 
 enthusiasm had imagined. 
 
 The old world had believed that the earth was stationary, and 
 that sun and stars moved round it as its guardian attendants. Sci- 
 ence had discovered that sun and stars, if they had proper motion 
 of their own, yet in respect of the earth were motionless, and that 
 the varying aspect of the sky was due to the movements of the 
 earth itself. The change was humbling to superficial vanity. "The 
 stars in their courses " could no longer be supposed to fight against 
 earthly warriors, or comets to foretell the havoc on fields of slaugh- 
 ter, or the fate and character of a prince to be affected by the con- 
 stellation under which he was born. But if the conceit of the rel- 
 ative importance of man was diminished, his conception of the 
 system of which he was a part had become immeasurably more 
 magnificent ; while every phenomenon which had been actually and 
 faithfully observed remained unaffected. Sun and moon were still 
 the earthly time - keepers ; and the mariner still could guide his 
 course across the ocean, by the rising and setting of the same stars 
 which Ulysses had watched upon his raft. 
 
 Carlyle conceived that a revolution precisely analogous to that 
 which Galileo had wrought in our apprehension of the material 
 heaven was silently in progress in our attitude towards spiritual phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 The spiritual universe, like the visible, Avas the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and forever; and legends and theologies were, like the as- 
 tronomical theories of the Babylonians, Egyptians, or Greeks, true 
 so far as they were based on facts, which entered largely into the 
 composition of the worst of them true so far as they were the hon- 
 est efforts of man's intellect and conscience and imagination to in- 
 terpret the laws under which he was living, and regulate his life by 
 them. But underneath or beyond all these speculations lay the facts 
 of spiritual life, the moral and intellectual constitution of things as 
 it actually was in eternal consistence. The theories which dis- 
 pensed with God and the soul Carlyle utterly abhorred. It was not 
 credible to him, he said, that intellect and conscience could have 
 been placed in him by a Being which had none of its own. He 
 rarely spoke of this. The word God was too awful for common 
 use, and he veiled his meaning in metaphors to avoid it. But God 
 to him was the fact of facts. He looked on this whole system of 
 visible or spiritual phenomena as a manifestation of the will of God 
 in constant forces forces not mechanical but dynamic, interpene- 
 trating and controlling all existing things, from the utmost bounds 
 of space to the smallest granule on the earth's surface from the 
 making of the world to, the lightest action of a man. God's law 
 was everywhere : man's welfare depended on the faithful reading of
 
 4 LITE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 it. Society was but a higher organism, no accidental agreement of 
 individual persons or families to live together on conditions which 
 they could arrange for themselves, but a natural growth, the con- 
 ditions of which were already inflexibly laid down. Human life 
 was like a garden, "to which the will was gardener," and the moral 
 fruits and flowers, or the immoral poisonous weeds, grew inevita- 
 bly according as the rules already appointed were discovered and 
 obeyed, or slighted, overlooked, or defied. Nothing was indifferent. 
 Every step which a man could take was in the right direction or 
 the wrong. If in the right, the result was as it should be; if in the 
 wrong, the excuse of ignorance would not avail to prevent the inev- 
 itable consequence. 
 
 These in themselves are but commonplace propositions which no 
 one denies in words; but Carlyle saw in the entire tone of modern 
 thought, that practically men no longer really believed them. They 
 believed in expediency, in the rights of man, in government by ma- 
 jorities; as if they could make their laws for themselves. The law, 
 did they but know it, was already made; and their wisdom, if they 
 wished to prosper, was not to look for what was convenient to 
 themselves, but for what had been decided already in Nature's 
 chancery. 
 
 Many corollaries followed from such a creed when sincerely and 
 passionately held. In arts and sciences the authority is the expert 
 who understands his business. No one dreamed of discovering a 
 longitude by the vote of a majority; and those who trusted to any 
 such methods would learn that they had been fools by running 
 upon the rocks. The science of life was no easier was harder far 
 than the science of navigation ; the phenomena were infinitely more 
 complex; and the consequences of error were infinitely more terri- 
 ble. The rights of man, properly understood, meant the right of 
 the wise to rule, and the right of the ignorant to be ruled. "The 
 gospel of force," of the divine right of the strong, with which Car- 
 lyle has been so often taunted with teaching, merely meant that 
 when a man has visibly exercised any great power in this world, 
 it has been because he has truly and faithfully seen into the facts 
 around him ; seen them more accurately and interpreted them more 
 correctly than his contemporaries. He has become in himself, as 
 it were, one of nature's forces, imperatively insisting that certain 
 things must be done. Success may blind him, and then he mis-sees 
 the facts and comes to ruin. But while his strength remains he is 
 strong through the working of a power greater than himself . The 
 old Bible language that God raised up such and such a man for a 
 special purpose represents a genuine truth. 
 
 But let us hear Carlyle himself. The following passages were 
 written in 1852, more than twenty years after the tune at which we
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 5 
 
 have now arrived. Figure and argument were borrowed from new 
 appliances which had sprung into being in the interval. But the 
 thought expressed in them was as old as Hoddam Hill when they 
 furnished the armor in which he encountered Apollyon. They are 
 but broken thoughts, flung out as they presented themselves, and 
 wanting the careful touch with which Carlyle finished work which 
 he himself passed through the press; but I give them as they remain 
 in his own handwriting. 
 
 "SPIRITUAL OPTICS. 
 
 "Why do men shriek so over one another's creeds? A certain 
 greatness of heart for all manner of conceptions and misconcep- 
 tions of the Inconceivable is now, if ever, in season. Reassure thy- 
 self, my poor assaulted brother. Starting from the east, a man's 
 road seems horribly discordant with thine, which is so resolutely 
 forcing itself forward by tunnel and incline, victorious over imped- 
 iments from the western quarter. Yet see, you are both strug- 
 gling, more or less honestly, towards the centre all mortals are 
 unless they be diabolic and not human. Recollect with pity, with 
 smiles and tears, however high thou be, the efforts of the meanest 
 man. Intolerance coiled like a dragon round treasures which were 
 the palladium of mankind was not so bad; nay, rather was indis- 
 pensable and good. But intolerance, coiled aad hissing in that 
 horrid manner, now when the treasures are all fled, and there are 
 nothing but empty pots new and old pots proposing that they 
 shall be filled, and pots asserting that they were once full what am 
 I to make of that? Intolerance, with nothing to protest but empty 
 pots and eggs that are fairly addle, is doubly and trebly intol- 
 erable. I do not praise the tolerance talked of in these times ; 
 but I do see the wisdom of a Truce of God being appointed, which 
 you may christen tolerance, and everywhere proclaim by drum and 
 trumpet, by public cannon from the high places, and by private 
 fiddle, till once there be achieved for us something to be intolerant 
 about again. There are a few men who have even at present a 
 certain right, call it rather a certain terrible duty, to be intol- 
 erant, and I hope that these will be even more, and that their 
 intolerance will grow ever nobler, diviner, more victorious. But 
 how few are there in all the earth ! Be not so much alarmed 
 at the opulences, spiritual or material, of this world. Wheth- 
 er they be of the hand or the mind, whether consisting of St. 
 Katherine's Docks, blooming cornfields, and filled treasuries, or of 
 sacred philosophies, theologies, bodies of science, recorded heroisms, 
 and accumulated conquests of wisdom and harmonious human 
 utterances they have all been amassed by little and little. Poor 
 insignificant transitory bipeds little better than thyself have ant- 
 wise accumulated them all. How inconsiderable was the contri- 
 bution of each! yet, working with hand or with head in the strenu- 
 ous ardor of their heart, they did what was in them ; and here, so 
 magnificent, overwhelming, almost divine and immeasurable, is the 
 summed-up result. Be modest towards it ; loyally reverent towards 
 it : that is well thy part. But begin at last to understand withal
 
 6 LITE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 what thy own real relation to it is ; and that if it, in its greatness, is 
 divine, so then in thy littleness art thou [not so?] ! Lasts Dich nicht 
 verblitffen, ' Don't let thyself be put upon ' [no]. ' Stand up for thy- 
 self withal.' That, say the Germans, is the eleventh commandment ; 
 and truly in these times for an ingenuous soul there is not perhaps 
 in the whole Decalogue a more important one. 
 
 " And in all kinds of times, if the ingenuous soul could but un- 
 derstand that only in proportion to its own divineness can any part 
 or lot in those divine possessions be vouchsafed it, how inexpressi- 
 bly important would it be! Such is forever the fact; though not 
 one in the hundred now knows it or surmises it. Of all these divine 
 possessions it is only what thou art become equal to that thou canst 
 take away with thee. Except thy own eye have got to see it, except 
 thy own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision and belief 
 of it, what is the thing seen and the thing believed by another or by 
 never so many others ? Alas ! it is not thine, though thou look on it, 
 brag about it, and bully and fight about it till thou die, striving to 
 persuade thyself and all men how much it is thine. Not it is thine, 
 but only a windy echo and tradition of it bedded in hypocrisy, end- 
 ing sure enough in tragical futility, is thine. What a result for a 
 human soul! In all ages, but in this age, named of the printing- 
 press, with its multiform pulpits and platforms, beyond all others, 
 the accumulated sum of such results over the general posterity of 
 Adam in countries called civilized is tragic to contemplate; is, in 
 fact, the raw material of every insincerity, of every scandal, plati- 
 tude, and ignavia to be seen under the sun. If men were only 
 ignorant, and knew that they were so, only void of belief and sorry 
 for it, instead of filled with sham belief and proud of it ah me ! 
 
 ' ' The primary conception by rude nations in regard to all great 
 attainments and achievements by men is that each was a miracle 
 and the gift of the gods. Language was taught man by a heavenly 
 power. Minerva gave him the olive, Neptune the horse, Triptole- 
 mus taught him agriculture, etc. The effects of optics in this strange 
 camera-obscura of our existence are most of all singular ! The 
 grand centre of the modern revolution of ideas is even this we be- 
 gin to have a notion that all this is the effect of optics, and that the 
 intrinsic fact is very different from our old conception of it. Not 
 less 'miraculous, 'not less divine, but with an altogether totally new 
 (or hitherto unconceived) species of divineness; a divineness lying 
 much nearer home than formerly ; a divineness that does not come 
 from Judrea, from Olympus, Asgard, Mount Meru, but is in man 
 himself; in the heart of every one born of man a grand revolution, 
 indeed, which is altering our ideas of heaven and earth to an amaz- 
 ing extent in every particular whatsoever. From top to bottom our 
 spiritual world, and all that depends on the same, which means 
 nearly everything in the furniture of our life, outward as well as 
 inward, is, as this idea advances, undergoing change of the most 
 essential sort, is slowly getting 'overturned,' as they angrily say, 
 which, in the sense of being gradually turned over and having its 
 vertex set where its base used to be, is indisputably true, and means 
 a ' revolution ' such as never was before, or at least since letters and 
 recorded history existed among us never was. The great Galileo,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 7 
 
 or numerous small Galileos, have appeared in our spiritual world 
 too, and are making known to us that the sun stands still ; that, as 
 for the sun and stars and eternal immensities, they do not move at 
 all. and, indeed, have something else to do than dance round the like 
 of us and our paltry little dog-hutch of a dwelling-place ; that it is 
 we and our dog-hutch that are moving all this while, giving rise to 
 such phenomena ; and that if we would ever be wise about our sit- 
 uation we must now attend to that fact. I would fain sometimes 
 write a book about all that, and try to make it plain to everybody. 
 But, alas! I find again there is next to nothing to be said about it in 
 words at present and, indeed, till lately I had vaguely supposed 
 that everybody understood it, or at least understood me to mean it, 
 which it would appear that they don't at all. 
 
 " A word to express that extensive or universal operation of re- 
 ferring the motion from yourself to the object you look at, or vice 
 versa ? Is there none ? 
 
 ' ' A notable tendency of the human being, in case of mutual motions 
 on the part of himself and another object, is to misinterpret the said 
 motion and impute it to the wrong party. Riding in this whirled 
 vehicle, how the hedges seem to be in full gallop on each side of him ; 
 how the woods and houses, and all objects but the fixed blue of 
 heaven, seem to be madly careering at the top of their speed, storm- 
 fully waltzing round transient centres, the whole earth gone into 
 menadic enthusiasm, he himself all the while locked into dead qui- 
 escence! And, again, if he is really sitting still in his railway car- 
 riage at some station when an opposite train is getting under way, 
 his eye informs him at once that he is at length setting out and leav- 
 ing his poor friends in a stagnant state. How often does he com- 
 mit this error ? It is only in exceptional cases, when helps are ex- 
 pressly provided, that he avoids it and judges right of the matter. 
 
 " It is very notable of the outward eye, and would be insupportable, 
 did not the experience of each man incessantly correct it for him, in 
 the common businesses and locomotions of this world. In the un- 
 common locomotion it is not so capable of correction. During how 
 many ages and aeons, for example, did not the sun and the moon 
 and the stars go all swashing in their tremendously rapid revolution 
 every twenty-four hours round this little indolent earth of ours, and 
 were evidently seen to do it by all creatures, till at length the Galileo 
 appeared, and the Newtons in the rear of him! The experience 
 necessary to correct that erroneous impression of the eyesight was 
 not so easy of attainment. No. It lay far apart from the common 
 businesses, and was of a kind that quite escaped the duller eye. It 
 was attained nevertheless; gradually got together in the requisite 
 quantity; promulgated, too, in spite of impediments, Holy Offices, 
 and such like; and is now the general property of the world, and 
 only the horses and oxen cannot profit by it. These are notable 
 facts of the outward eyesight and the history of its progress in sur- 
 veying this material world. 
 
 "But now, will the favorable reader permit me to suggest to him 
 a fact which, though it has long been present to the consciousness 
 of here and there a meditative individual, has not, perhaps, struck 
 the favorable reader hitherto that with the inward eyesight and
 
 8 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the spiritual universe there is always, and has always been, the same 
 game going on. Precisely a similar game, to infer motion of your 
 own when it is the object seen that moves; and rest of your own 
 with menadic storming of all the gods and demons; while it is your- 
 self, with the devilish and divine impulses that you have, that are 
 going at express train speed! I say the Galileo of this, many small 
 Galileos of this, have appeared some time ago having at length 
 likewise collected (with what infinitely greater labor, sorrow, and 
 endurance than your material GalHeo needed !) the experience neces- 
 sary for correcting such illusions of the inner eyesight in its turn 
 a crowning discovery, as I sometimes call it, the essence and sum- 
 mary of all the sad struggles and wrestlings of these last three cen- 
 turies. No man that reflects need be admonished what a pregnant 
 discovery this is ; how it is the discovery of discoveries, and, as men 
 become more and more sensible of it, will remodel the whole world 
 for us in a most blessed and surprising manner. Such continents 
 of sordid delirium (for it is really growing now very sordid) will 
 vanish like a foul Walpurgis night at the first streaks of dawn. Do 
 but consider it. The delirious dancing of the universe is stilled, 
 but the universe itself (what scepticism did not suspect) is still all 
 there. God, heaven, hell, are none of them annihilated for us, any 
 more than the material woods and houses. Nothing that was divine, 
 sublime, demonic, beautiful, or terrible is in the least abolished for 
 us as the poor pre-Galileo fancied it might be ; only their mad danc- 
 ing has ceased, and they are all reduced to dignified composure; 
 any madness that was in it being recognized as our own henceforth. 
 "What continents of error, world-devouring armies of illusions 
 and of foul realities that have their too true habitation and too sad 
 function among such, will disappear at last wholly from our field of 
 vision, and leave a serener veritable world for us ! Scavengerism, 
 which under Chadwick makes such progress in the material streets 
 and beneath them, will alarmingly but beneficently reign in the 
 spiritual fields and thoroughfares; and deluges of spiritual water, 
 which is light, which is clear, pious vision and conviction, will have 
 washed our inner world clean too with truly celestial results for us. 
 Oh, my friend, I advise thee awake to that fact, now discovered of 
 the inner eyesight, as it was long since of the outer, that not the sun 
 and the stars are so rapidly dashing round, nor the woods and dis- 
 tant steeples and country mansions are deliriously dancing and 
 waltzing round accidental centres: that it is thyself, and thy little 
 dog-hole of a planet or dwelling-place, that are doing it merely. " 
 
 "It was God, I suppose, that made the Jewish people, and gave 
 them their hook-noses, obstinate characters, and all the other gifts, 
 faculties, tendencies, and equipments they were launched upon the 
 world with. No doubt about that in any quarter. These were the 
 general outfit of the Jews, given them by God and none else what- 
 ever. And now, if in the sedulous use of said equipments, facul- 
 ties, and general outfit, with such opportunities as then were, the 
 Jew people did in the course of ages work out for themselves a set 
 of convictions about this universe which were undeniable to them, 
 and of practices grounded thereon which were felt to be salutary
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 9 
 
 and imperative upon them, were not the Jew people bound at their 
 peril, temporal and eternal, to cherish such convictions and observe 
 said practices with whatever strictest punctuality was possible, and 
 to be supremely thankful that they had achieved such a possession? 
 I fancy they would do all this with a punctuality and devoutness 
 and sacred rigor in exact proportion to the quantity of obstinate 
 human method, piety, persistence, or of that Jewhood and manhood, 
 and general worth and wisdom, that were in them; for which be 
 they honored as Jews and men. And if now they please to call all 
 this by the highest names in their vocabulary, and think silently, 
 and reverently speak of it, as promulgated by their great Jehovah 
 and Creator for them, where was the harm for the time being? 
 Was it not intrinsically true that their and our unnamable Creator 
 had revealed it to them having given them the outfit of faculties, 
 character, and situation for discerning and believing the same ? 
 Poor souls! they fancied their railway carriage (going really at a 
 great rate, I think, and with a terrible noise through the country) 
 was perfectly motionless, and that they at least saw the landscape, 
 discerned what landscape there was dancing and waltzing round 
 them. Their error was the common one incidental to all passengers 
 and movers through this world except those overloaded, busy, eat- 
 ing individuals that make their transit sleeping. Yes: fall well 
 asleep; you will not think the landscape waltzes; you will see no 
 landscape, but in their dim vastness the turbid whirlpools of your 
 own indigestions and nightmare dreams. You will be troubled with 
 no misconceptions of a Godhood, Providence, Judgment-day, eter- 
 nal soul of night, or other sublimity in this world. Looking into 
 your own digestive apparatus when sleep has melted it into the im- 
 mense, you snore quietly and are free from all that. " 
 
 So far Carlyle had written, and then threw it aside as unsatisfac- 
 tory, as not adequately expressing his meaning, and therefore not to 
 be proceeded with. But a very intelligible meaning shines through 
 it; and when I told him that I had found and read it, he said that it 
 contained his real conviction, a conviction that lay at the bottom of 
 all his thoughts about man and man's doings in this world. A sense 
 lay upon him that this particular truth was one which he was spe- 
 cially called on to insist upon, yet he could never get it completely 
 accomplished. On another loose sheet of rejected MS. I find the 
 same idea stated somewhat differently: 
 
 " Singular what difficulty I have in getting my poor message de- 
 livered to the world in this epoch: things I imperatively need still 
 to say. 
 
 "1. That all history is a Bible a thing stated in words by me 
 more than once, and adopted in a sentimental way ; but nobody can 
 I bring fairly into it, nobody persuade to take it up practically as a 
 fact. 
 
 "2. Part of the 'grand Unintelligible,' that we are now learning 
 spiritually too that the earth turns, not the sun and heavenly 
 spheres. One day the spiritual astronomers will find that this is the 
 
 II 1*
 
 10 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 infinitely greater miracle. The universe is not an orrery, theological, 
 or other, but a universe; and instead of paltry theologic brass spin- 
 dles for axis, etc., has laws of gravitation, laws of attraction and 
 repulsion; is not a Ptolemaic but a Newtonian universe. As Hum- 
 boldt's ' Cosmos ' to a fable of children, so will the new world be in 
 comparison with what the old one was, etc. 
 
 " 3. And flowing out of this, that the work of genius is not fiction 
 but fact. How dead are all people to that truth, recognizing it in 
 word merely, not in deed at all ! Histories of Europe ! Our own 
 history! Eheu! If we had any vivacity of soul and could get the 
 old Hebrew spectacles off our nose, should we run to Judea or 
 Houndsditch to look at the doings of the Supreme? Who conquered 
 anarchy and chained it everywhere under their feet? Not the Jews 
 with their morbid imaginations and foolish sheepskin Targums. 
 The Norse with their steel swords, guided by fresh valiant hearts 
 and clear veracious understanding, it was tliey, and not the Jews. 
 The supreme splendor will be seen there, I should imagine, not in 
 Palestine or Houndsditch any more. Man of genius to interpret 
 history ! After interpreting the Greeks and Romans for a thousand 
 years, let us now try our own a little. (How clear this has been to 
 myself for a long while!) Not one soul, I believe, has yet taken it 
 into him. Universities founded by monk ages are not fit at all for 
 this age. 'Learn to read Greek, to read Latin!' You cannot be 
 saved (religiously speaking, too) with those languages. What of 
 reason there was in that! Beautiful loyalty to the ancients Dante 
 and Virgil, il duca mio. Beautiful truly so far as it goes! But the 
 superf Dotation is now grown perilous, deadly, horrible, if you could 
 see it! 
 
 "Old piety was wont to say that God's judgments tracked the 
 footsteps of the criminal ; that all violation of the eternal laws, done 
 in the deepest recesses or on the conspicuous high places of the 
 world, was absolutely certain of its punishment. You could do no 
 evil, you could do no good, but a god would repay it to you. It 
 was as certain as that, when you shot an arrow from the earth, gravi- 
 tation would bring it back to the earth. The all-embracing law of 
 right and wrong was as inflexible, as sure and exact, as that of gravi- 
 tation. Furies with their serpent -hair and infernal maddening 
 .torches followed Orestes, who had murdered his mother. In the 
 still deeper soul of modern Christendom there hung the tremendous 
 image of a Doomsday Dies irce, dies ilia when the All-just, with- 
 out mercy now, with only terrific accuracy now, would judge the 
 quick and the dead, and to each soul measure out the reward of his 
 deeds done in the body eternal Heaven to the good, to the bad eter- 
 nal Hell. The Moslem too, and generally the Oriental peoples, who 
 are of a more religious nature, have conceived it so, and taken it, not 
 as a conceit, but as a terrible fact, and have studiously founded, or 
 studiously tried to found, their practical existence upon the same. 
 
 "My friend, it well behooves us to reflect how true essentially all 
 this still is: that it continues, and will continue, fundamentally a 
 fact in all essential particulars its certainty, I say its infallible cer- 
 tainty, its absolute justness, and all the other particulars, the eternity 
 itself included. He that has with his eyes and soul looked into
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 11 
 
 nature from any point and not merely into distracted theological, 
 metaphysical, modern philosophical, or other cobweb representations 
 t f nature at second-hand will find this true, that only the vesture 
 of it is changed for us; that the essence of it cannot change at all. 
 Banish all miracles from it. Do not name the name of God; it is 
 still true. 
 
 "Once more it is in religion with us, as in astronomy we know 
 now that the earth moves. But it has not annihilated the stars for 
 us; it has infinitely exalted and expanded the stars and universe. 
 Once it seemed evident the sun did daily rise in the east; the big sun 
 a sun-god did travel for us, driving his chariot over the crystal 
 floor all days : at any rate, the sun went. Now we find it is only the 
 earth that goes. So, too, all mythologies, religious conceptions, etc., 
 we begin to discover, are the necessary products of man's God-made 
 mind." 
 
 I need add little to these two fragments, save to repeat that they 
 are the key to Carlyle's mind; that the thought which they contain, 
 although nowhere more articulately written out, governed all his 
 judgments of men and things. In this faith he had "trampled down 
 his own spiritual dragons." In this faith he interpreted human his- 
 tory, which history witnessed in turn to the truth of his convictions. 
 He saw that now as much as ever the fate of nations depended not 
 on their material development, but, as had been said in the Bible, 
 and among all serious peoples, on the moral virtues courage, verac- 
 ity, purity, justice, and good sense. Nations where these were hon- 
 ored prospered and became strong; nations which professed well 
 "with their lips, while their hearts were set on wealth and pleasure, 
 were overtaken, as truly in modern Europe as in ancient Palestine, 
 by the judgment of God. 
 
 "I should not have known what to make of this world at all," 
 Carlyle once said to me, "if it had not been for the French Revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 This might be enough to say on Carlyle's religion ; but there is 
 one aspect of religion on which every one who thinks at all will wish 
 to know his opinion. What room could there be for prayer in such 
 a scheme of belief as his? In one form or other it has been a uni- 
 versal difficulty. How should ignorant man presume to attempt to 
 influence the will of his Creator, who by the necessity of his nature 
 cannot change, and must and will on all occasions and to all persons 
 do what is just and right ? 
 
 Reason cannot meet the objection. Yet nevertheless men of the 
 highest powers have' prayed, and continue to pray. I am permitted 
 to publish the following letters, which show what Carlyle thought 
 about it in 1870. And as he thought in 1870, he thought in 1828. 
 His mind when it was once made up never wavered, never even 
 varied.
 
 12 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 From George A. Duncan to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "4 Eyre Place, Edinburgh: June 4, 1870. 
 
 " Honored Sir, I am a stranger to you, but my grandfather, Dr. 
 Henry Duncan, of Ruthwell, was not, and it is a good deal on that 
 ground that I rest my plea for addressing you. Of all the things I 
 possess there is none I value more than a copy of your translation 
 of 'Meister's Apprenticeship,' presented to my grandfather by you, 
 and bearing on its fly-leaf these to me thrice-precious words : ' To 
 the Rev. Dr. Duncan, from his grateful and affectionate friend T. 
 Carlyle.' I show it to all my friends with the utmost pride. But I 
 have another plea. I was one of those Edinburgh students to 
 whom, as a father to his sons, you addressed words which I have 
 read over at least six times, and mean, while I live, to remember and 
 obey. I have still one plea more. You know that in this country, 
 when people are perplexed or in doubt, they go to their minister for 
 counsel: you are my minister, my only minister, my honored and 
 trusted teacher, and to you I, having for more than a year back 
 ceased to believe as my fathers believed in matters of religion, and 
 being now an inquirer in that field, come for light on the subject of 
 prayer. There are repeated expressions in your works which con- 
 vince me that in some form or other you believe in prayer; and the 
 fact that the wisest men, Luther, Knox, Cromwell, and that greater 
 Man whose servants they were, were pre-eminently men of prayer, 
 is at variance with the thought which still forces itself upon me 
 that to attempt to change the Will of Him who is Best and Wisest 
 (and what is prayer, if it is not that?) is in the last degree absurd. 
 The only right prayer, it seems to me, is 'Thy will be done;' and 
 that is a needless one, for God's will shall assuredly be done at any 
 rate. Is it too much to hope that you will kindly write me a few 
 lines throwing light on this subject? I have read Goethe's ' Con- 
 fessions of a Fair Saint,' and also what you say with regard to 
 Cromwell's prayers, but still I have not been able to arrive at a con- 
 viction. Lest these remarks should seem to you intolerably shal- 
 low, I must inform you that I am only twenty. 
 
 " Would it interest you in any measure to read some letters written 
 by you to Mr. Robert Mitchell when this old century was in its 
 teens, and thus recall from your own beloved past a thousand per- 
 sons, thoughts, and scenes and schemes by-gone? Mr. M. left my 
 grand-uncle, Mr. Craig, one of his trustees, and among the papers 
 which thus fell into Mr. Craig's hands were several letters from you 
 to Mr. Mitchell. Mr. C.'s daughters lately gave them to one of my 
 sisters, and I believe that, if you expressed the slightest wish to see 
 them, I should be able to persuade her to let me send them to you, 
 though she guards them very jealously. 
 
 "Believe me, yours ever gratefully, 
 
 . A. DUNCAN." 
 
 Thomas Carlyle to George A. Duncan. 
 
 " Chelsea: June 9, 187(X 
 
 "Dear Sir, You need no apology for addressing me; your letter 
 itself is of amiable ingenuous character; pleasant and interesting to
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 13 
 
 me in no common degree. I am sorry only that I cannot set at rest, 
 or settle into clearness, your doubts on that important subject. What 
 I myself practically, in a half-articulate way, believe on it I \vill try 
 to express for you. 
 
 "First, then, as to your objection of setting up our poor wish or 
 will in opposition to the will of the Eternal, I have not the least 
 word to say in contradiction of it. And this seems to close, and 
 does, in a sense, though not perhaps in all senses, close the question 
 of our prayers being granted, or what is called 'heard;' but that is 
 not the whole question. 
 
 " For, on the other hand, prayer is, and remains always, a native 
 and deepest impulse of the soul of man; and, correctly gone about, 
 is of the very highest benefit (nay, one might say, indispensability) 
 to every man aiming morally high in this world. No prayer no re- 
 ligion, or at least only a dumb and lamed one! Prayer is a turning 
 of one's soul, in heroic reverence, in infinite desire and endeavor, 
 towards the Highest, the All-Excellent, Omnipotent, Supreme. The 
 modern Hero, therefore, ought not to give up praying, as he has 
 latterly all but done. 
 
 " Words of prayer, in this epoch, I know hardly any. But the 
 act of prayer, in great moments, I believe to be still possible; and 
 that one should gratefully accept such moments, and count them 
 blest, when they come, if come they do which latter is a most rig- 
 orous preliminary question with us in all cases. ' Can I pray in this 
 moment ' (much as I may wish to do so)V ' If not, then NO!' I can 
 at least stand silent, inquiring, and not blasphemously lie in this 
 Presence ! 
 
 "On the whole, Silence is the one safe form of prayer known to 
 me, in this poor sordid era though there are ejaculatory words too 
 which occasionally rise on one, with a felt propriety and veracity; 
 words very welcome in such case! Prayer is the aspiration of our 
 poor struggling heavy-laden soul towards its Eternal Father; and, 
 with or without words, ought not to become impossible, nor, I per- 
 suade myself, need it ever. Loyal sons and subjects can approach 
 the King's throne who have no ' request ' to make there, except that 
 they may continue loyal. Cannot they? 
 
 ' ' This is all I can say to you, my good young friend ; and even 
 this, on my part and on yours, is perhaps too much. Silence, si- 
 lence! ' The Highest cannot be spoken of in words,' says Goethe. 
 Nothing so desecrates mankind as their continual babbling, both 
 about the spc;ik;ible and the unspeakable, in this bad time! 
 
 " Your grandfather was the amiablest and kindliest of men ; to me 
 pretty much a unique in those young years, the one cultivated man 
 whom I could feel myself permitted to call friend as well. Never 
 can I forget that Ruthwell Manse, and the beautiful souls (your 
 grandmother, your grand-aunts, and others) who then made it bright 
 to me. All vanished now, all vanished ! 
 
 "Please tell me whose son you are not George John's, I think, 
 but Wallace's, whom I can remember only as a grave boy? Also 
 whether bonny little 'Barbara Duncan' is still living; or, indeed, if 
 she ever lived to be your aunt? I have some sad notion No. I will 
 not trouble you about the Mitchell letters: I wrote many letters to
 
 14 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the good Mitchell; but I fear now they were all of a foolish type, 
 fitter to burn than to read at present. Tell me also, if you like, a 
 little more about yourself, your pursuits and endeavors, your in- 
 tended course in the world. You perceive I expect from you one 
 more letter at least, though it is doubtful whether I can answer any 
 more, for reasons yon may see sufficiently! 
 " Believe me, dear sir, 
 
 "Yours, with sincere good wishes, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A.D. 1828. .ET. 33. 
 
 I HATE already described Craigenputtock as the dreariest spot in 
 all the British dominions. The nearest cottage is more than a mile 
 from it; the elevation, 700 feet above the sea, stunts the trees and 
 limits the garden produce to the hardiest vegetables. The house is 
 gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached 
 as an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed 
 either by grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and 
 heather, with peat bogs in the hollows between them. The belts of 
 firs which now relieve the eye and furnish some kind of shelter 
 were scarcely planted when the Carlyles were in possession. No 
 wonder Mrs. Carlyle shuddered at the thought of making her home 
 in so stern a solitude, delicate as she was, with a weak chest, and 
 with the fatal nervous disorder of which she eventually died already 
 beginning to show itself. Yet so it was to be. She had seen the 
 place in March for the first time in her life, and then, probably, it 
 had looked its very worst. But in May, when they came to settle, 
 the aspect would have scarcely been mended. The spring is late in 
 Scotland ; on the high moors the trees are still bare. The fields are 
 scarcely colored with the first shoots of green, and winter lingers in 
 the lengthening days as if unwilling to relax its grasp. To Mrs. 
 Carlyle herself the adventure might well seem desperate. She con- 
 cealed the extent of her anxiety from her husband, though not en- 
 tirely from others. Jeff rey especially felt serious alarm. He feared, 
 not without reason, that Carlyle was too much occupied with his 
 own thoughts to be trusted in such a situation with the charge of a 
 delicate and high-spirited woman, who would not spare herself in 
 the hard duties of her situation. 
 
 The decision had been made, however, and was not to be recon- 
 sidered. Jeffrey could only hope that the exile to Siberia would be 
 of short duration. When the furniture at Comely Bank was packed 
 and despatched, he invited Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle to stay with him in 
 Moray Place while the carts were on the road. After two days
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 15 
 
 they followed, and in the last week of May they were set down at 
 the door of the house which was now to be their home. The one 
 bright feature in the situation to Carlyle was the continual presence 
 of his brother at the farm. The cottage in which Alexander Carlyle 
 lived was attached to the premises; and the out-door establishment 
 of field, stall, and dairy servants was common to both households. 
 I resume the letters. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : June 10, 1828. 
 
 "My dear Jack, "We received your much-longed-for letter two 
 days before leaving Edinburgh in such a scene of chaotic uproar as 
 I had never witnessed, and do earnestly hope I shall never witness 
 again, for the house was full of mats and deal boxes and straw and 
 packthread, and there was a wrapping and a stitching and a ham- 
 mering and tumbling ; and Alick and Jamie came with six carts to 
 take away our goods; and all things were wrenched from their old 
 fixtures, and dispersed and scattered asunder, or united only by a 
 common element of dust and noise. What would the sack of a city 
 be, when the dismantling of a house is such ! From all packers and 
 carpenters, and Sittings by night or day, good Lord deliver us. 
 
 " I have waited here above two weeks in the vain hope that some 
 calmness would supervene. But painters and joiners still desecrate 
 every corner of our dwelling, and I write in the midst of confusion 
 worse confounded as better than not writing at all. 
 
 "We have arrived at Craigenputtock and found much done, but 
 still much to do ; we must still rush and run with carts and saddle- 
 horses to Dumfries every second day, and rejoice when we return if 
 the course of events have left us a bed to sleep on. However, by the 
 strength of men's heads and arms a mighty improvement is and will 
 be accomplished, and one day we calculate a quiet house must stand 
 dry and clean for us amid this wilderness ; and the philosopher will 
 hoe his potatoes in peace on his own soil, and none to make him 
 afraid. Had we come hither out of whim one might have sickened 
 and grown melancholy over such an outlook; but we came only in 
 search of food and raiment, and will not start at straws. Away then 
 with Unmuth und Verdruss! Man is born to trouble and toil as the 
 sparks fly upwards. Let him toil, therefore, as his best is, and make 
 no noise about the matter. Is the day wearisome, dusty, and full 
 of midges that the galled limbs are like to fail? 
 
 1 F.in guter Abend kommt heran, 
 Wenn ich den ganzen Tag gethan. ' . . . 
 
 Next evening, after the arrival of your letter, I wrote to Messrs. Black 
 & Young, booksellers, London (of the Foreign Review), directing 
 them to pay twenty out of forty pounds which they had ordered me 
 to draw on them for, into the hands of Messrs. Ransome & Co., to be 
 paid to the Baron von Eichthal at Munich. 1 I hope the money may 
 have reached you by this time. I sent these booksellers a long paper 
 
 1 With whom John Carlyle was then living.
 
 16 LIFE OF THOMAS CABLYLE. 
 
 on Goethe for their next still imprinted number; the forty pounds 
 was for an essay on his 'Helena.' I meant to send them another 
 piece (on the life of Heyne) for this number; but where is the cunning 
 that could write a paper here in the midst of uncreated night? But I 
 am getting very sick, and must leave you till after dinner, and go stick 
 some rows of pease which are already flourishing in our new garden. 
 
 "... Alas ! Jack, there is no sticking of pease for me at this hour, 
 the cutting-tools being all in active operation elsewhere ; so I sit down to 
 talk with you again, still impransus, though in better health than I was 
 an hour ago. Indeed, I have been in considerably better health ever 
 since I came hither, and found my red chestnut Irish doctor (though 
 ill) saddled, waiting for me in his stall. By degrees I do think I 
 shall grow as sound as another man; and then, when the German 
 doctor is settled within sight of me at Dumfries, 1 and we see him 
 twice a week, and all is fixed on its own footing, will not times be 
 brighter than they have been with us? One blessing we have always 
 to be thankful for unity and brotherly love, which makes us, though 
 a struggling, still a united family; and are we not all spared together 
 in this wonderful existence still to hope as we struggle? Let us ever 
 be grateful to the Giver of all good, and struggle onward in the path 
 He directs. Some traces of our presence may also be left behind us in 
 this pilgrimage of life, some grains added to the great pyramid of 
 human endeavor. What more has man to wish for? 
 
 "Of the Craig o' Putta I cannot yet rightly speak till we have 
 seen what adjustment matters will assume. Hitherto, to say truth, 
 all prospers as well as we could have hoped. The house stands 
 heightened and white with rough-cast, a light hewn porch in front 
 and cans on the chimney-heads; and within it all seems firm and 
 sound. During summer, as we calculate, it will dry ; and the smoke, 
 we have reason to believe, is now pretty well subdued, so that on this 
 side some satisfaction is to be looked for. We appear also to have 
 been rather lucky in our servants. An active maid came with us 
 from Edinburgh. A dairywoman, also of good omen, conies to us 
 to-morrow from Thornhill ; and a good-humored slut of a byre-wom- 
 an was retained after half a year's previous trial. Then we have two 
 sufficient farming -men and a bonneted stripling skilful in sheep, 
 from this glen. Alick himself is an active little fellow as ever bent 
 
 , and, though careworn, is diligent, hearty, and compliant. He 
 
 lives in his little room, which is still but half furnished like the rest 
 of the house. 3 Mary has been visiting at Scotsbrig, and is now learn- 
 ing to sew at Dumfries. Jane the lesser (Jean) has taken her place 
 here and furnishes butter and afterings (jibbings) * for tea, though we 
 are still in terrible want of a cheese-board, and by the blessing of 
 Heaven shall get one to-morrow afternoon. Jane (the greater) is 
 surveying all things, proving all things, that she may hold fast to 
 what is good. She watches over her joiners and painters with an 
 eye like any hawk's, from which nothing crooked, unplumb, or other- 
 wise irregular can hide itself in a moment. And then, to crown our 
 
 1 John Carlyle's present intention. 2 Xot yet in occupation of his own cottage. 
 3 Amiandule expression, meaning what? The explanatory word itself requires ex- 
 plaining. .
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 17 
 
 felicity, we have two fowls hatching iu the wood, a duck with twelve 
 eggs, and a hen with (if I mistake not) eleven; from which, for they 
 are properly fed and cared for, great things are expected. Nay, it 
 was but these three nights ago that we slew a Highland stot and 
 salted him in a barrel, and his puddings even now adorn the kitchen 
 ceiling. 
 
 ' ' From Edinburgh or other peopled quarters of the world I have 
 yet heard nothing. We left Edward Irving there preaching like a 
 Boanerges, with (as Henry Inglis very naively remarked) the town 
 divided about him, ' one party thinking that he was quite mad, an- 
 other that he was an entire humbug. ' For my own share, I would 
 not be intolerant of any so worthy a man; but I cannot help think- 
 ing that, if Irving is on the road to truth, it is no straight one. We 
 had a visit from him, and positively there does seem a touch of ex- 
 treme exaltation in him. I do not think he will go altogether mad, 
 yet what else he will do I cannot so well conjecture. Cant and 
 enthusiasm are strangely commingled in him. He preaches in steam- 
 boats and all open places, wears clothes of an antique cut (his waist- 
 coat has flaps or tails midway down the thigh), and in place of ordi- 
 nary salutation bids 'the Lord bless you.' I hear some faint rumor 
 of his outheroding Herod since we left the North, but we have not 
 yet got our newspaper, and so know nothing positive. So 'the 
 Laurt bless HIM !! for the present; and if you pass through London 
 on your return, you are engaged to go and see him, and, I think he 
 said, ' abide with him ' or ' tarry with him ' on your way. 
 
 "The last two nights we spent in Edinburgh were spent where 
 think you? In the house of Francis Jeffrey, surely one of the kind- 
 est little men I have ever in my life met with. He and his house- 
 hold (wife and daughter) have positively engaged to come and pay 
 us a visit here this very summer! I am to write him an article on 
 Burns as well as on Tasso. But alas, alas! all writing is as yet far 
 from my hand. Walter Scott I did not see because he was in Lon- 
 don; nor hear of, perhaps because he was a busy or uncourteous 
 man, so I left his Goethe medals to be given him by Jeffrey. 1 Lock- 
 hart had written a kind of ' Life of Burns,' and men in general were 
 making another uproar about Burns. It is this book, a trivial one 
 enough, which I am to pretend reviewing. Further, except contin- 
 ued abuse of Leigh Hunt for his ' Lord Byron, and Some of his Con- 
 temporaries,' there seemed no news in the literary world, or rather 
 universe; for was there ever such a world as it has grown? 
 
 "Be steady and active and of good cheer, my dear Doctor, and 
 come home and live beside us, and let us all be as happy as we can. 
 ' ' I am ever your true brother, 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The carpenters and plasterers were at last dismissed. Craigen- 
 puttock became tolerable, if not yet "cosmic;" and as soon as all was 
 quiet again, Carlyle settled himself to work." Tasso was abandoned, 
 
 ' They had been originally intrusted to Wilson. How they had been passed to Jef- 
 frey I do not know. 
 
 a It was now that the "bread " problem had to be encountered, of which Miss Jews- 
 bury speaks in her '-Recollections of Mrs. Carlyle." Carlyle could not eat such bread
 
 18 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 or at least postponed, but the article on Burns was written not so 
 ungraciously, so far as regarded Lockhart, as the epithet "trivial" 
 which had been applied to his book might have foreboded. But it 
 is rather on Burns himself than on his biographer's account of him 
 that Carlyle's attention was concentrated. It is one of the very best 
 of his essays, and was composed with an evidently peculiar interest, 
 because the outward circumstances of Burns's life, his origin, his 
 early surroundings, his situation as a man of genius born in a farm- 
 house not many miles distant, among the same people and the same 
 
 as the Craigcnputtock servants could bake for him, or as could be bought at Dumfries, 
 and Mrs. Carlyle had to make it herself. Miss 'Smith, an accomplished lady living at 
 Carlisle, has kindly sent me a letter in which the story is characteristically told by 
 Mrs. Carlyle herself. It is dated January 11, 1857 after an interval of nearly thirty 
 years. Mrs. Carlyle -writes : 
 
 "So many talents are wasted, so many enthusiasms turned to smoke, so many lives 
 spilled for want of a little patience and endurance, for want of understanding and laying 
 to heart what you have so well expressed in your verses the meaning of the Present 
 for want of recognizing that it is not the greatness or littleness of ' the duty nearest 
 hand," but the spirit in which one does it, that makes one's doing noble or mean. I 
 can't think how people who have any natural ambition and any sense of power in them 
 escape going mad in a world like this without the recognition of that. I know I was 
 very near mad when I found it out for myself (as one has to find out for one's self every- 
 thing that is to be of any real practical use to one). 
 
 "Shall I tell you how it came into my head? Perhaps it may be of comfort to you in 
 similar moments of fatigue and disgust. I had gone with my husband to live on a little 
 estate of peat bog that had descended to me all the way down from John Welsh the 
 Covenanter, who married a daughter of John Knox. Thai didn't, I am ashamed to 
 say, make me feel Craigenputtock a whit less of a peat bog, and a most dreary, untow- 
 ard place to live at. In fact, it was sixteen miles distant on every side from all the 
 conveniences of life, shops, and even post-office. Further, we were very poor, and, 
 further and worst, being an only child, and brought up to 'great prospects,' I was 
 sublimely ignorant of every branch of useful knowledge, though a capital Latin scholar 
 and very fair mathematician ! ! It behooved me in these astonishing circumstances to 
 learn to sew! Husbands, I was shocked to find, wore their stockings into holes, and 
 were always losing buttons, and /was expected to 'look to all that;' also it behooved 
 me to learn to cook! no capable servant choosing to live at such an out-of-the-way 
 place, and my husband having bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties dread- 
 fully. The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, 'soured on his stomach' (oh. 
 Heaven !), and it was plainly my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home. So I sent 
 for Cobbett's ' Cottage Economy, ' and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But knowing noth- 
 ing about the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came to pass that my 
 loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed ; and 
 I remained the only person not asleep in a house in the middle of a desert. One o'clock 
 struck, and then two, and then three; and still I was sitting there in an immense soli- 
 tude, my whole body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense of forlorn- 
 ness and degradation. That I, who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had 
 been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything 
 but cultivate my mind, should have to pass all those hours of the night in watching a 
 loaf of bread which mightn't turn out bread after all ! Such thoughts maddened me, 
 till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the 
 idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came 
 into my head, and suddenly I asked myself, 'After all, in the sight of the Upper 
 Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, 
 so that each be the thing one's hand has found to do? The man's determined will, his 
 energy, his patience, his resource, were the really admirable things, of which his 
 statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman living at 
 Craigenputtock, with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad 
 one. all these same qualities would have come out more fitly in & good loaf of bread. 
 
 " I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea spread over my uncongenial 
 life during the years we lived at that savage place, where my two immediate predeces- 
 sors had gone mad, and the third had taken to drink."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 19 
 
 associations as were so familiar to himself, could not fail lo make 
 him think often of himself while he was writing about his country- 
 man. How this article was judged by the contemporary critics will 
 be presently seen. For himself, it is too plain that before he came 
 to the end of it the pastoral simplicities of the moorland had not 
 cured Carlyle of his humors and hypochondrias. He had expected 
 that change of scene would enable him to fling off his shadow. His 
 shadow remained sticking to him; and the poor place where he had 
 cast his lot had, as usual, to bear the blame of his disappointment. 
 In his diary there stands a note: "Finished a paper on Burns, Sep- 
 tember 16, 1828, at this Devil's Den, Craigenputtock. " 
 
 Meanwhile, though he complained of hearing little from the world 
 outside, his friends had not forgotten him. Letters came by the 
 carrier from Dumfries, and the Saturday's post was the event of the 
 week. Jeffrey especially was affectionate and assiduous. He re- 
 proached Carlyle for not writing to him, complained of being so 
 soon forgotten, and evidently wished to keep his friend as close to 
 him as possible. The papers on German literature had brought a 
 pamphlet upon Jeffrey about Kant, from "some horrid German 
 blockhead;" but he was patient under the affliction and forgave the 
 cause. King's College had been set on foot in London on orthodox 
 principles, under the patronage of the Duke of Wellington and the 
 bishops. He offered to recommend Carlyle to them as Professor of 
 Mysticism; although mysticism itself, he said, he should like less 
 than ever if it turned such a man as Carlyle into a morbid misan- 
 thrope, which seemed to be its present effect. Sir Walter had re- 
 ceived his medals and had acknowledged them; had spoken of 
 Goethe as his master, and had said civil things of Carlyle, which 
 was more than he had deserved. Jeffrey cautioned Carlyle to be 
 careful of the delicate companion who had been trusted to him; of- 
 fered his services in any direction in which he could be of use, and 
 throughout, and almost weekly, sent to one or other of the "her- 
 mits " some note or letter, short or long, but always sparkling, airy, 
 and honestly affectionate. I am sorry that I am not at liberty to 
 print these letters in extcnso; for they would show that Jeffrey had 
 a genuine regard and admiration for Carlyle, which was never com- 
 pletely appreciated. It was impossible from their relative positions 
 that there should not be at least an appearance of patronage on 
 Jeffrey's part. The reader has probably discovered that Carlyle 
 was proud, and proud men never wholly forgive those to whom 
 they feel themselves obliged. 
 
 Late in the summer there came a letter from the young Charles 
 Buller, now grown to intellectual manhood, and thinking about en- 
 tering public life. He and his old tutor had not forgotten each other. 
 Carlyle had watched him through Cambridge, and had written to
 
 20 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 caution him against certain forms of Liberal opinion towards which 
 Mrs. Strachey had seen, with alarm, that her brilliant nephew was 
 tending. Buller replies : 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "August 31, 1828. 
 
 "I can hardly say I feel sorry for your disappointment respect- 
 ing St. Andrews and the London University, since you seem to have 
 been utterly careless of success. The former, I suppose, went almost 
 solely by ministerial influence; and as my father has not quite ar- 
 rived at the degree of Toryism and baseness which would make a 
 man support the Duke of Wellington's government, he could hardly 
 have done any good in that way. You have, I see, left Edinburgh. 
 Which and where is the awfully cacophonious place where you 
 have taken up your residence? I would venture to hint that you 
 have kept a perplexing silence respecting the posture of your pres- 
 ent life. 
 
 "I see the London University allows people to give lectures in 
 some manner of connection with them without being appointed by 
 them. Suppose you were to propose to give lectures on German 
 literature and philosophy, I should think you would get an innumer- 
 able quantity of pupils. I do not know whether the new ' King's 
 College ' is closed to all teachers by M. A.'s and Reverends. If not, 
 I should think you might possibly stand a good chance of getting 
 some appointment there, and it would certainly be a great thing to 
 have one person in that establishment who knows anything beyond 
 that slender and antique lore which the two venerable universities 
 of Oxford and Cambridge impart to their eleves. But I only men- 
 tion this, for I am utterly ignorant whether this new King's College 
 is to teach anything beyond loyalty and Church-of-Englandarianism, 
 or to have any teachers except a Greek and Latin lecturer, and per- 
 haps one in Divinity to explain the Catechism. But, if you think it 
 worth while, I would obtain information from the Bishop of Llandaff, 
 who is the best of the people who have anything to do with it. 
 
 " We forwarded your letter to Mrs. Strachey, who, I dare say, will 
 not have acknowledged it, because she has just had the misfortune 
 of a tenth child. We have some expectation of seeing Miss Kirk- 
 patrick soon, but she is in great trouble. Her brother William, per- 
 haps you already know, died in May after a lingering and painful 
 illness. His poor young wife has gone mad, and Kitty, after all 
 this, has been involved in a very wearisome and distressing dispute 
 with Mrs. Kirkpatrick's sister respecting the care of her brother's 
 children. 
 
 "And now I refer once more to what you said in your letter to 
 me about myself. You seem to hope that my Utilitarianism and 
 blankness in religion will not last long. If they are wrong, that is, 
 not a true conclusion of my reason, I hope that I may abandon them, 
 and that soon. But I have adopted Utilitarianism because I think 
 it affords the best explanation of men's opinions on morals, and be- 
 cause on it may be built, I think, the best framework on which we 
 may form and instruct the natural feelings of men to do that which 
 produces peace and good-will among them.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 21 
 
 "I think, moreover, that the doctrines of the Utilitarians, whether 
 promulgated under that name or under others, have already done no 
 little good in shaming the world out of some of its worst theories of 
 right and wrong respecting most important matters of practice. 
 That many of the Utilitarians are grossly intolerant I am very ready 
 to admit. But is not this the invariable concomitant (except in the 
 very first geniuses) of zeal for the truth? and especially so when 
 men have, like the Utilitarians, to keep their new principles by main 
 force of logic against the intolerance of the stupid champions of 
 orthodoxy, and the general disfavor even of the better and wiser 
 part of the community? 
 
 "With regard to my blankness in religion you call by a mild 
 name a set of opinions to which men usually attach a name that 
 burns worse than Inquisitor's fire and fagot I have fixed myself 
 in that, because I have not yet found that faith which I could be- 
 lieve, and none among the creeds of this world that I could wish to 
 be true. I could picture to myself a bright creed truly; but to think 
 that it could be real because it was pretty would be childish indeed. 
 
 " But my steed awaits me. 
 
 "Believe me, ever yours sincerely, 
 
 "CHARLES BULLER." 
 
 July this year had been intensely hot. Jeffrey had complained 
 of being stifled in the courts, and for the moment had actually en- 
 vied his friends their cool mountain breezes. The heat had been 
 followed in August by rain. It had been "the wettest, warmest 
 summer ever known." Alexander Carlyle had been living hitherto 
 with his brother, the cottage which he was to occupy with one of 
 his sisters not being yet ready. The storms had delayed the masons; 
 while the article on Burns was being written the premises were still 
 littered with dirt, and Carlyle's impatience with small misfortunes 
 perhaps had inspired the unpleasant epithet of Devil's Den with 
 which he had already christened his home. He appears to have re- 
 mained, however, in a for him tolerable humor. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "August 25, 1828. 
 
 " In this mansion we have had a battle like that of St. George and 
 the Dragon. Neither are we yet conquerors. Smoke and wet and 
 chaos. The first we have subdued; the last two we are subduing. 
 May the Lord keep all Christian men from flitting. 
 
 "As to literature, which also is bread-making, I have done noth- 
 ing since Whitsunday but a shortish paper on Heyne * for the 
 Foreign Review which will appear m No. 4. A long article on 
 Goethe is just publishing in No. 3, a which has been, for want of 
 cash, I believe, exceedingly delayed ; and at this very date I am very 
 busy, and third part done, with a ' fair, full, and free ' essay on Burns 
 for the Edinburgh Review. None can say how bilious I am, and am 
 
 > "Miscellanies," vol. ii. p. 75. Ibid., vol. i. p. 233.
 
 32 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 like to be; but I have begun to ride daily on Larry, 'and so Jeffrey 
 shall have his article at the appointed time. That wonderful little 
 man is expected here very soon with Weib und Kind. He takes no 
 little interest in us, writes often, and half hates, half loves, me with 
 the utmost sincerity. Nay, he even offers me, in the coolest, lightest 
 manner, the use of his purse, and evidently rather wishes I would 
 use it. Proh dcA/n atgue hominum fidem ! This from a Scotchman 
 and a lawyer! Jane is in considerable trepidation getting the house 
 fully equipped for these august visitors. Surely I think she will 
 succeed. Nay, already we are very smart. Here is a drawing-room 
 with Goethe's picture in it, and a piano, and the finest papering on 
 the walls; and I write even now behind it, in my own little library, 
 out of which truly I can see nothing but a barn-roof, tree tops, and 
 empty hay-carts, and under it perhaps a stagnant midden, cock with 
 hens, overfed or else dazed with wet and starvation; but within 
 which I may see a clear fire (of peats and Sanquhar coals), with my 
 desk and books and every accoutrement I need in fairest order. 
 Shame befall me if I ought to complain, except it be of my own 
 stupidity and pusillanimity ! Unhappily, we still want a front door 
 road, and the lawn is mostly a quagmire. 
 
 " Several weeks ago I had a long letter from Goethe " enclosing 
 another from Dr. Eckermann, his secretary, full of commendations 
 and congratulations about my criticism of his ' Helena. ' I ought 
 to have written to him long ago, but cannot and must not, till I 
 have done v/ith Burns. If you pass within any manageable distance 
 of Weimar, you will surely wait on this sage man. Seriously, I ven- 
 erate such a person considerably more not only than any king or em- 
 peror, but than any man that handles never so expertly the tools of 
 kings and emperors. Sein Excellenz already knows you by name, 
 and will welcome you in his choicest mood. 
 
 "Did you hear of the horrible accident at Kirkcaldy? Irving 
 was going to preach there, and the kirk fell and killed eight-and- 
 twenty persons. ' What think'st a he means,' said my father, ' gawn 
 up and down the country levelling and screeching like a wild 
 bear? ' Heaven only knows completely. Walter Welsh wonders 
 they do not ' lay him up. ' I add no more. 
 
 "Your brother, 
 
 " T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The Jeffreys were to have come in September, while the 
 weather was still fine, but they had gone first to the Western High- 
 lands, and their visit was put off till the next month. Meanwhile 
 the article on Burns had been sent off, and before the appearance of 
 the visitors at Craigenputtock a sharp altercation had commenced 
 between the editor and his contributor on certain portions of it, 
 which was not easily ended. On the article itself the world has 
 pronounced a more than favorable verdict. Goethe considered it 
 so excellent that he translated long passages from it, and published 
 
 'The Irish horse of "genius," who had thrown him at Hoddam Hill. 
 
 I find no copy of this letter. The original appears to be lost among the rest.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 23 
 
 them in his collected works ; * but, as Goethe had observed about 
 Schiller, contemporaries always stumble at first over the writings of 
 an original man. The novelty seems like presumption. The 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review found the article long and diffuse, 
 though he did not deny that ' ' it contained much beauty and 
 felicity of diction." He insisted that it must be cut down cut 
 down perhaps to half its dimensions. He was vexed with Carlyle 
 for standing, as he supposed, in his own light, misusing his talents 
 and throwing away his prospects. He took the opportunity of 
 reading him a general lecture. 
 
 " I suppose," he said, " that you will treat me as something worse 
 than an ass when I say that I am firmly persuaded the great source 
 of your extravagance, and of all that makes your writings intoler- 
 able to many and ridiculous to not a few, is not so much any real 
 peculiarity of opinions as an unlucky ambition to appear more 
 original than you are, or the humbler and still more delusive hope 
 of converting our English intellects to the creed of Germany and 
 being the apostle of another Reformation. I wish to God I could 
 persuade you to fling away these affectations, and be contented to 
 write like your famous countrymen of all ages: as long at least as 
 you write to your countrymen and for them. The nationality for 
 which you commend Burns so highly might teach you, I think, 
 that there are nobler tasks for a man like you than to vamp up the 
 vulgar dreams of these Dousterswivels you are so anxious to cram 
 down our throats; but which I venture to predict no good judge 
 among us will swallow, and the nation at large speedily reject 
 with loathing." 
 
 So spoke the great literary authority of the day. The adventur- 
 ous Prince who would win the golden water on the mountain's crest 
 is always assailed by cries that he is a fool and must turn back 
 from the enchanted stones which litter the track on which he is as- 
 cending. They too have once gone on the same quest. They have 
 wanted faith, and are become blocks of rock echoing common- 
 places; and, if the Prince turns his head to listen to them, he too be- 
 comes as they. Jeffrey tried to sweeten his admonitions by com- 
 pliments on the article upon Goethe; but here too he soon fell to 
 scolding. " Though I admire," he said, " the talent of your paper, 
 I am more and more convinced of the utter fallacy of your opinions 
 and the grossness of your idolatry. I predict too, with full and 
 calm assurance, that your cause is hopeless, and that England never 
 will admire, or indeed endure, your German divinities. It thinks 
 better and more of them indeed than it ever will again. Your elo- 
 quence and ingenuity a little mask their dull extravagance and tire- 
 
 i Goethe's "Works," vol. xxsiii. pp. 181 et seq.
 
 24 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 some presumption. As soon as they appear in their own persons 
 everybody will laugh. I am anxious to save you from this fceda 
 superstitio. The only harm it has yet done you is to make you a 
 little verbose and prone to exaggeration. There are strong symp- 
 toms of both in your Burns. I have tried to stanch the first, but 
 the latter is in the grain; and we must just risk the wonder and the 
 ridicule it may bring on us." 
 
 This was not merely the protest of an editor, but the reproach of 
 a sincere friend. Jeffrey ardently desired to recommend Carlyle and 
 to help him forward in the world. For Carlyle's own sake, and 
 still more for the sake of his young and delicate relative, he was 
 vexed and irritated that he should have buried himself at Craigen- 
 puttock. He imagined, and in a certain sense with justice, that 
 Carlyle looked on himself as the apostle of a new faith (to a clever 
 man of the world the most absurd and provoking of illusions), which 
 the solitude of the moors only tended to encourage. 
 
 With October the promised visit was accomplished. How he 
 came with Mrs. Jeffrey and his daughter, how the big carriage stood 
 wondering how it had got there in the rough farm-yard, how Car- 
 lyle and he rode about the country, with what astonishment he learned 
 that his dinner had been cooked for him by his hostess's own hands, 
 how he delighted them all in the evenings with his brilliant anec- 
 dotes and mimicries all this has been told elsewhere and need not 
 be repeated. Those two days were a sunny island in the general 
 dreariness, an Indian summer before winter cut the Carlyles off 
 from the outside world and wrapped them round with snow and 
 desolation. During the greater part of the Jeffreys' stay contro- 
 verted subjects were successfully avoided. But Carlyle's talk had 
 none the less provoked Jeffrey. He himself, with a spiritual creed 
 which sat easy on him, believed nevertheless that it was the business 
 of a sensible man to make his way in the world, use his faculties to 
 practical purposes, and provide for those who were dependent upon 
 him. He saw his friend given over, as he supposed, to a self-delusion 
 which approached near to foolish vanity, to have fallen in love with 
 clouds like Ixion, and to be begetting chimeras which he imagined 
 to be divine truths. All this to a clear practical intelligence like 
 that of Jeffrey was mere nonsense, and on the last night of the stay 
 he ended a long argument in a tone of severe reproach for which he 
 felt himself afterwards obliged to apologize. His excuse, if excuse 
 was needed, was a genuine anxiety for Carlyle's welfare, and an 
 equal alarm for his wife, whose delicacy, like enough, her husband 
 was too much occupied with his own thoughts to consider suffi- 
 ciently. " I cannot bring myself to think," he said, in a letter which 
 he wrote after he had left them, " that either you or Mrs. Carlyle are 
 naturally placed at Craigenputtock ; and though I know and rever-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 25 
 
 ence the feelings which have led you to fix there for the present, I 
 must hope it will not be long necessary to obey them in that retreat. 
 I dare not advise, and do not even know very well what to suggest 
 to a mind so constituted as yours ; but I shall be proud to give you 
 my views upon anything that occurs to yourself, and pray under- 
 stand that few things in this world can give me more gratification 
 than being able to be of any serious use to you. Take care of the 
 fair creature who has trusted herself so entirely to you. Do not let 
 her ride about in the wet, nor expose herself to the wintry winds 
 that will by-and-by visit your lofty retreat; and think seriously of 
 taking shelter in Moray Place l for a month or two, and in the 
 meantime be gay and playful and foolish with her, at least as often 
 as you require her to be wise and heroic with you. You have no 
 mission upon earth, whatever you may fancy, half so important as 
 to be innocently happy and all that is good for you of poetic feel- 
 ing and sympathy with majestic nature will come of its own accord 
 without your straining after it. That is my creed, and, right or 
 wrong, I am sure it is both a simpler and a humbler one than 
 yours. " 
 
 The trouble with the article on Burns was not over. Jeffrey, as 
 editor, had to consider the taste of the great Liberal party in litera- 
 ture and politics; and to disciples of Bentham, as indeed to the aver- 
 age reader of any political persuasion, Carlyle's views were neither 
 welcome nor intelligible. When the proof-sheets came, he found 
 "the first part cut all into shreds the body of a quadruped with 
 the head of a bird, a man shortened by cutting out his thighs and 
 fixing the knee-caps on his hips." Carlyle refused to let it appear 
 "in such a horrid shape." He replaced the most important pas- 
 sages, and returned the sheets with an intimation that the paper might 
 be cancelled, but should not be mutilated. Few editors would have 
 been so forbearing as Jeffrey when so audaciously defied. He com- 
 plained, but he acquiesced. He admitted that the article would do 
 the Review credit, though it would be called tedious and sprawling 
 by people of weight whose mouths he could have stopped. He 
 had wished to be of use to Carlyle by keeping out of sight in the 
 Renew his mannerism and affectation; but, if Carlyle persisted, he 
 might have his way. 
 
 Carlyle was touched ; such kindness was more than he had looked 
 for. The proud self-assertion was followed by humility and almost 
 penitence, and the gentle tone in which he wrote conquered Jeffrey 
 in turn. Jeffrey said that he admired and approved of Carlyle's 
 letter to him in all respects. "The candor and sweet blood" which 
 was shown in it deserved the highest praise; and, as the dying pa- 
 
 1 Jeffrey's house in Edinburgh. 
 II.-2
 
 26 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 gan said in the play, "If these are Christian virtues I am a Chris- 
 tian," so Jeffrey, hating as he did what he called Carlyle's mysticism, 
 was ready to exclaim, if these were mystic virtues he was mystic. 
 "But your virtues are your own," he said, "and you possess them 
 not in consequence of your mysticism, but in spite of it. You shall 
 have anything you like. I cannot chaffer with such a man, or do 
 anything to vex him; and you shall write mysticism for me if it will 
 not be otherwise, and I will print it too, at all hazards, with very 
 few and temperate corrections. I think you have a great deal of 
 eloquence and talent, and might do considerable things if But no 
 matter; I will not tire of you; after all, I believe there are many 
 more things as to which we agree than about which we differ, and the 
 difference is not radical, but formal chiefly." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A.D. 1829. .ST. 34. 
 
 So the winter settled down over Craigenputtock. The weekly 
 cart struggled up, when possible, from Dumfries with letters and par- 
 cels, but storms and rain made the communications more and more 
 difficult. Old James Carlyle came over from Scotsbrig for a week 
 after the Jeffreys went, an Edinburgh friend followed for three 
 days more, and after that few faces save those of their own house- 
 hold were seen at the Carlyles' door. Happily for him, he was fully 
 employed. The Foreign Review and the Edinburgh gave him as 
 much work as he could do. He had little need of money; Scotsbrig 
 supplied him with wheat flour and oatmeal, and the farm with milk 
 and eggs and hams and poultry. There was little that needed buy- 
 ing save tea and sugar and tobacco ; and his finances (for his articles 
 were long and handsomely paid for) promised for a time to be on an 
 easy footing, in spite of the constant expenses of his brother John at 
 Munich. There were two horses in the stable Larry, the Irish 
 horse of ' ' genius, " and Harry, Mrs. Carlyle's pony. * In fine weather 
 
 1 Carlyle told me a story of these two horses, Illustrative of the sense of humor in 
 animals. I cannot date it either by day or year, and therefore I give it in a note. 
 They had a vicious old sow, who was the tyrant and the terror of the farm -yard. One 
 day Carlyle was smoking his pipe outside his front door, when he heard shrieks of rage 
 and agony combined from the back of the house. Ho went round to see what was the 
 matter. A deep drain had been opened across the yard, the bottom of which was 
 stiff clay. Into this, by some unlucky curiosity, the sow had been tempted to descend, 
 and, being there, found a difficulty in getting out. The horses were loose. The pony 
 saw the opportunity the sow was struggling to extricate herself. The pony stood 
 over her, and at each effort cuffed her back again with a stroke of the fore-hoof. The 
 sow was screaming more from fury than pain. Larry stood by watching the perform- 
 ance and smiling approval, nodding his head every time that the beast was knocked 
 back into the clay, with (as Carlyle declared) the most obvious and exquisite percep- 
 tion of the nature of the situation.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 27 
 
 they occasionally rode or walked together. But the occasions grew 
 rarer and rarer. Carlyle was essentially solitary. He went out 
 in all weathers, indifferent to wet, and, in spite of his imagined 
 ill-health, impervious to cold. But he preferred to be alone with 
 his thoughts, and Mrs. Carlyle was left at home to keep the 
 house in proper order. She by education, and he by tempera- 
 ment, liked everything to be well kept and trim. He was ex- 
 tremely dainty about his food. He did not care for delicacies, but 
 cleanliness and perfect cookery of common things he always insisted 
 on ; and if the porridge was smoked, or the bread heavy, or the but- 
 ter less than perfect, or a plate or a dish ill-washed, he was entirely 
 intolerable. Thus the necessary imperfections of Scotch farm-ser- 
 vant girls had to be supplemented by Mrs. Carlyle herself. She 
 baked the bread, she dressed the dinner or saw it dressed, she cleaned 
 the rooms. Among her other accomplishments, she had to learn to 
 milk the cows, in case the byre-woman should be out of the way, for 
 fresh milk was the most essential article of Carlyle's diet. Nay, it 
 might happen that she had to black the grates to the proper polish, 
 or even scour the floors while Carlyle looked on encouragingly with 
 his pipe. In addition to this, she had charge of dairy and poultry ; 
 not herself necessarily making butter or killing fowls, but directing 
 what was to be done, and seeing that it was done properly. Her 
 department, in short, was the whole establishment. This winter she 
 was tolerably well, and as long as her health lasted she complained 
 of nothing. Her one object was to keep Carlyle contented, to pre- 
 vent him from being fretted by any petty annoyance, and prevent 
 him also from knowing with how much labor to herself his own 
 comfort was secured. 
 
 Thus the months passed on pleasantly. The "tempests," about 
 which Jeffrey had been so anxious, howled over the moors, but did 
 not much affect them. Carlyle's letters were written in fair spirits. 
 The Devil's Den had become a tolerable home. Mrs. Carlyle, it 
 seems, when she could spare time, galloped down alone to Temp- 
 land (fifteen miles) to see her mother. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigenputtock: November 26, 1828. 
 
 "This house, bating some outskirt things, which must be left till 
 spring, is really substantial, comfortable, and even half elegant. I 
 sit here in my little library and laugh at the howling tempests, for 
 there are green curtains and a clear fire and papered walls. The 
 ' old kitchen,' also, is as tight a dining-room as you would wish for 
 me, and has a black, clean-barred grate, at which, when filled with 
 Sanquhar coals, you might roast Boreas himself. The good wife, too, 
 is happy and contented with me and her solitude, which I believe is 
 not to be equalled out of Sahara itself. You cannot figure the still- 
 ness of these moors in a November drizzle. Nevertheless, I walk
 
 28 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 often under cloud of night, in good Ecclefechan clogs, down as far 
 as Carstammon Burn, sometimes to Sandy Wells, conversing with 
 the void heaven in the most pleasant fashion. Besides, Jane also 
 has a pony now, which can canter to perfection even by the side of 
 Larry. To-morrow she is going over to Templand with it, and it is 
 by her that I send this letter. Grace, our servant, a tight, tidy, 
 careful, sharp - tempered woman, is the only other inmate of the 
 house. 
 
 " I write hard all day, and then Jane and I, both learning Span- 
 ish for the last month, read a chapter of ' Don Quixote ' between din- 
 ner and tea, and are already half through the first volume, and eager 
 to persevere. After tea I sometimes write again, being dreadfully 
 slow at the business, and then generally go over to Alick and Mary 
 and smoke my last pipe with them ; and so I end the day, having 
 done little good, perhaps, but almost no ill that I could help to any 
 creature of God's. 
 
 " So pass our days, except that sometimes I stroll with my axe or 
 bill in the plantations, and when I am not writing I am reading. 
 We had Henry Inglis here for three days, and our father for a week 
 lately, both of whom seemed highly contented with this wonderful 
 Craig. Alick and Mary, you already understand, live in their own 
 cottage, or rather double farm-house; for were it once dried it will 
 be the bieldest, tightest mansion of its sort within some miles of it. 
 They have two man-servants and two maid-servants; are fattening, 
 or merely boarding, quantities of black cattle ; have almost a dozen 
 pigs, and plenty of weak corn, and about eighty cart-loads of pota- 
 toes, to say nothing of turnip acres, to feed them with. Alick is 
 about thatching a cattle shed, long since built (of dry stones), down 
 near the moor, and we have had roadsmen for many weeks gravel- 
 ling the front of this door (a most marked improvement), making us 
 a proper road to it, and thoroughly repairing the old road. Thus, 
 you see, chaos is rolling himself back from us by degrees, and all 
 winter we are to have stone-diking and planting and draining (if I 
 can write for the cash), till by-and-by I think this hermitage will 
 positively become a very tolerable place. For the rest, we drink tea 
 together every Sunday night and live in good brotherhood, having 
 no neighbors that do not wish us well. 
 
 "As to my writing, it is only at present a most despicable 'ar- 
 ticle' entitled 'German Playwrights,' with which I expect to be 
 done in a week. 
 
 " Next I mean to write one on Novalis, and probably a larger one 
 on Voltaire. Some day these roads will be made and skylights 
 mended, and all tight and pargeted, and I shall have leisure to 
 cease reviewing, and try to give work for reviewing. 
 
 ' ' Our news, beyond our own household, are mostly of a sombre 
 cast. James Anderson, the young Laird of Straquhar, our kind 
 neighbor and acquaintance, died after two days' illness a few weeks 
 ago. John Grier, of the Grove, is gone to his long home. He also 
 died suddenly, but like a just man, and with entire composure. Is 
 not this world a mystery, and grand with terror as well as beauty? ' 
 
 1 III a previous letter, Carlyle, speaking Of another death, says, "0 God, it is a
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 29 
 
 My letter, you will see, ends in sable, like the life of man. My own 
 thoughts grow graver every day I live." 
 
 When Carlyle was in good spirits, his wife had a pleasant time 
 with him. "Ill to live wi'," impatient, irritable over little things, 
 that he always was; but he was charming, too: no conversation, in 
 my experience, ever equalled his; and, unless the evil spirit had pos- 
 session of him, even his invectives, when they burst out, piled them- 
 selves into metaphors so extravagant that they ended in convulsions 
 of laughter with his whole body and mind, and then all was well 
 again. Their Spanish studies together were delightful to both. 
 His writing was growing better and better. She, the most watch- 
 ful and severest of critics, who never praised where praise was 
 not deserved, was happy in the fulfilment of her prophecies, and 
 her hardest work was a delight to her when she could spare her 
 husband's mind an anxiety or his stomach an indigestion. At 
 Christmas she had a holiday, going down to her mother and grand- 
 father at Templand. But while away among her own people her 
 heart was on the Craig. This is one of the letters which Carlyle 
 himself annotated, in the sad days when she was lost to him for- 
 ever: 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Templand: December 30, 1828. 
 
 "Goody, Goody, dear Goody, You said you would weary, and 
 I do hope in my heart you are wearying. It will be so sweet to 
 make it all up to you in kisses when I return. You will take me 
 and hear all niy bits of experiences, and your heart will beat when 
 you find how I have longed to return to you. Darling, dearest, 
 loveliest, ' The Lord bless you. ' * I think of you every hour, every 
 moment. I love you and admire you, like like anything. My 
 own Good-good. But to get away on Sunday was not in my pow- 
 er: my mother argued, entreated, and finally grat [wept]. I held 
 out on the ground of having appointed Alick to meet me at church ; 
 but that was untenable. John Kerr 2 could be sent off at break of 
 day to tell that I could not come. I urged that the household 
 would find themselves destitute of every Christian comfoart, unless 
 I were home before Wednesday. That could be taken care of by 
 sending anything that w-as wanted from here. Tea, sugar, butch- 
 er's meat, everything was at my service. Well, but I wanted, I 
 said, to be your first foot on New Year's day. I might be gratified 
 in this also. She would hire a postchaise and take me over for 
 that day on condition I returned at night ! 
 
 ' ' In short, she had a remedy ready for everything but death, and 
 
 fearful world, this we live in, a fllm spread over bottomless abysses, into which no 
 pyo has pierced." The same expression occurs in the "French Revolution." The 
 image had already impressed itself into his mind. 
 
 1 -'Poor Edward Irviug's practice and locution, suspect of being somewhat too 
 solemn ! T. C." 
 
 2 The Templand man-servant.
 
 80 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I could not, without seeming very unkind and ungracious, refuse to 
 stay longer than I proposed. So I write this letter ' with my own 
 hand' [Ed. Irving], that you may not be disappointed from day to 
 day; but prepare to welcome me 'in your choicest mood' on Sun- 
 day. If the day is at all tolerable, perhaps Alick or you will meet 
 me at church. Mrs. Crichton, of Dabton, was very pressing that 
 you and I should spend some days with them just now, ' when their 
 house was full of company.' But I assured her it would be losing 
 labor to ask you. However, by way of consolation, I have agreed 
 to ' refresh ' a party for her with my presence on Friday, and held 
 out some hope that you would visit them at your leisure. ' I am 
 sure the kindness of those people ' ' The Lord bless them!' 1 
 
 " Dearest, I wonder if you are getting any victual. There must 
 be cocks at least, and the chickens will surely have laid their eggs. 
 I have many an anxious thought about you; and I wonder if you 
 sleep at nights, or if you are wandering about on, on smoking 
 and killing mice. Oh, if I was there I could put my arms so close 
 about your neck, and hush you into the softest sleep you have had 
 since I went away. Good-night. Dream of me. 
 
 "I am ever, Your own GOODY. " 
 
 The first year of Craigenputtock thus drew to an end. The 
 storms of December were succeeded by frost, and the moors were 
 bound fast in ice. Carlyle continued as busy as ever at what he 
 called ' ' the despicable craft of reviewing, " but doing his very best 
 with it. No slop-work ever dropped from his pen. He never 
 wrote down a word which he had not weighed, or a sentence which 
 he had not assured himself contained a truth. Every one of the 
 articles composed on this bare hill-top has come to be reprinted un- 
 altered, and most of them have a calmness too often absent from 
 his later writings. Handsome pay, as I said, came in, but not more 
 than was needed. Brother John was a constant expense : and even 
 in the "Dunscore wilderness" life was impossible without money. 
 "Alas," Carlyle said, "for the days when Diogenes could fit up 
 his tub, and let the 'literary world' and all the other worlds ex- 
 cept the only true one within his own soul wag hither and thither 
 at discretion !" 
 
 Voltaire was now his subject. His mind, was already turning with 
 an unconscious fascination towards the French Revolution. He 
 had perceived it to be the most noteworthy phenomenon of modern 
 times. It was interesting to him, as an illustration of his conviction 
 that untruthfulness and injustice were as surely followed by divine 
 retribution as the idolatries and tyrannies of Biblical Egypt and 
 Assyria; that the Power which men professed on Sundays to be- 
 lieve in was a living Power, the most real, the most tremendous of all 
 facts. France had rejected the Reformation. Truth had been of- 
 
 1 Irving.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 31 
 
 fered her in the shape of light, and she would not have it, and it 
 was now to come to her as lightning. She had murdered her 
 prophets. She had received instead of them the scoffing Encyclo- 
 paedists. Yet, with these transcendental or "mystic" notions in his 
 head, Carlyle could write about the most worldly of all men of 
 genius, as himself a man of the world. He meets Voltaire on his 
 own ground, follows him into his private history with sympathiz- 
 ing amusement ; falls into no fits of horror over his opinions or his 
 immoralities; but regards them as the natural outcome of the cir- 
 cumstances of the time. In Voltaire he sees the representative 
 Frenchman of the age, whose function was to burn up unrealities, 
 out of the ashes of which some more healthy verdure might event- 
 ually spring. He could not reverence Voltaire, but he could not 
 hate him. How could he hate a man who had fought manfully 
 against injustice in high places, and had himself many a time in 
 private done kind and generous actions? To Carlyle, Voltaire was 
 no apostle charged with any divine message of positive truth. 
 Even in his crusade against what he believed to be false, Voltaire 
 was not animated with a high and noble indignation. He was sim- 
 ply an instrument of destruction, enjoying his work with the pleas- 
 ure of some mocking imp, yet preparing the way for the tremen- 
 dous conflagration which was impending. There is, of course, 
 audible in this article a deep undertone of feeling. Yet the lan- 
 guage of it is free from everything like excited rhetoric. In the 
 earlier part of his career, Carlyle sympathized with and expected 
 more from the distinctive functions of revolution than he was able 
 to do after longer experience. "I thought," he once said to me, 
 ' ' that it was the abolition of rubbish. I find it has been only the 
 kindling of a dunghill. The dry straw on the outside burns off; 
 but the huge damp rotting mass remains where it was." 
 
 Thinking on these momentous subjects, Carlyle took his nightly 
 walks on the frozen moor, the ground crisp under his feet, the 
 stars shining over his head, and the hills of Dunscore (for advan- 
 tage had been taken of the dryness of the air) ' ' gleaming like Strom- 
 bolis or Etnas with the burning of heath." " Craigenputtock oth- 
 erwise silent, solitary as Tadmore in the wilderness; yet the infinite 
 vault still over it, and the earth a little ship of space in which he 
 was sailing, and man everywhere in his Maker's eye and hand." 
 
 The new year perhaps did not bring many letters; for Carlyle's 
 friends were still few, and his intimate friends who would write on 
 such occasions were very few. One letter, however, could not fail 
 to come from the faithful Jeffrey, who sent, as a new-year greet- 
 ing, "kind thoughts and good wishes," with a laughing lecture 
 against "dogmatism," and "the desperate darkness of audacious 
 mysticism." From this Jeffrey passed to moralizing on human life
 
 83 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and things in general. Edinburgh and the whole of Britain had 
 been shaken by the Burke and Hare business. With the light 
 touch, half jesting and half serious, which is the charm of Jeffrey's 
 style, he spoke of himself as living in fear of fever and dissection, 
 yet not less gayly, less carelessly, than usual. Men, he said, were 
 naturally predestinarians, and ran their risks patiently because they 
 could not avoid them. The pestilent and murdering angels had 
 passed him so far, and he was grateful for his escape. Carlyle had 
 been reading "Don Quixote," and in writing to Jeffrey had alluded 
 to it, contrasting old times with new. Jeffrey protested against 
 Carlyle's damnable heresy, insisting that there were plenty of shabby 
 fellows whining over petty aches and finding life irksome in the 
 age and country of Cervantes, and that in the Britain of George IV. 
 there were stout-hearted, bright-spirited men who bore up against 
 captivity and worse ills as cheerily as he did. He invited Carlyle to 
 come and stay with him in Edinburgh, and shake off his sickly 
 fancies. They might furnish swelling themes for eloquence, but 
 were out of date, and never convinced anybody; and as for Carlyle's 
 notion that a man ought to have a, right creed as to liis relations with 
 the universe, he would never persuade any one that the regulation of 
 life was such a laborious business as he would make it, or that it 
 was not better to go lightly through it with the first creed tlutt came 
 to hand, than spend the better half of it in an anxious verification 
 of its articles. It would matter less if Carlyle was but amusing 
 himself with paradoxes, but he was "so dreadfully in earnest." 
 He was neutralizing half the fame and all the use of his talents, and 
 keeping aloof from him most of the men who were fittest for his 
 society. 
 
 Never had Jeffrey written to Carlyle with more warmth. The 
 provocation to which he confessed was but the overflowing of good- 
 will to which his friend's views prevented him from giving the effect 
 which he desired. The good-will, though perfectly genuine, was 
 not entirely disinterested. Carlyle's essays had drawn the notice of 
 the distinguished band of men who were then the chief contributors 
 to the Edinburgh Review. They had recognized that he had extraor- 
 dinary talents ; that if he could be brought to his senses and would 
 subscribe the articles of the Whig faith, he might be an invaluable 
 recruit to the great party of Reform. Jeffrey himself was about to 
 retire from the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, and to become 
 Dean of the Faculty. His advice, though not decisive, would be of 
 weight in the choice of his successor, and he had seriously thought 
 of recommending Carlyle. Brougham, Macaulay, Sydney Smith 
 would all have more or less to be-consulted ; and perhaps the politi- 
 cal chiefs as well: yet if his friend would only be amenable, burn 
 his Goethe, renounce his mysticism, and let his talents and virtues
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 
 
 have fair play, Jeffrey must have thought that the objections in 
 those quarters would not be insurmountable. 
 
 So was Carlyle tempted in his hermitage, like another St. Anthony, 
 by the spirit of this world, and in a more seductive dress than that 
 in which it assailed the Christian saint. There was no situation in 
 the empire more attractive to literary ambition than the editorship 
 of the Edinburgh Review in those its palmy days of glory and 
 power. To have been even thought of for such an office implied 
 that the attention of the Reform leaders had been drawn to him; 
 and that if not in this way, yet in some others, he might, if he pleased, 
 be advanced to some lucrative and honorable office. The difficulty 
 was not on their side, it was on his. The way which they called 
 heresy he called truth; and the kind, honest, but seducing angel as- 
 sailed him in vain. 
 
 Carlyle, though in the "Reminiscences of Lord Jeffrey" he has 
 acknowledged a general wish on Jeffrey's part to serve him, which 
 was thwarted by his own persistency, has passed over without men- 
 tion this particular instance of it. He never mentioned it even in 
 conversation to myself. But the fact was so. Jeffrey is himself the 
 witness. The publishers of the Review came down to Edinburgh to 
 consult with him. Carlyle was not actually proposed. The prudent 
 and cautious views of the Longmans, and Jeffrey's wish to spare 
 Carlyle the mortification of being rejected, prevented his pretensions 
 from being brought directly under discussion. But the inflexibility 
 and independence of Carlyle's character were the chief, perhaps the 
 only, obstacles. Jeffrey was bitterly disappointed. The person se- 
 lected was Macvey Napier, the editor of the Encyclopedia, "a safe 
 man at all events." Jeffrey, writing to Carlyle, could not hide his 
 mortification. " It was with mixed sorrow and anger," he said, that 
 he saw his friend renouncing his natural titles to distinction for such 
 fantastical idolatry. The folly of his own fair cousin's ancestors, 
 who threw away their money in improving and adorning Craigen- 
 puttock, was but a faint type of Carlyle's. But he could not help 
 him; he would pray for him if it would do any good. 
 
 A further effect of the change of editorship was that it threatened 
 at first the close of Carlyle's connection with the Review, even as a 
 contributor. Jeffrey continued to edit till the middle of 1829, and 
 so long as he was in the chair Carlyle's help was still solicited. The 
 "Voltaire" had been written for the Edinburgh, if the Edinburgh 
 would have it, and a corresponding article was in contemplation 
 upon Johnson, Voltaire's direct antithesis. Neither of these subjects 
 pleased Jeffrey. Carlyle, he thought, perhaps in this case with some 
 want of judgment, could have nothing new to say on either of them. 
 But as the time of his withdrawal drew near he begged hard for a 
 parting contribution for his last number. The "Voltaire" would 
 
 II. 2*
 
 84 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 have answered well for him, but he did not even ask to look at it. 
 On any other subject Carlyle might write what he pleased; mysti- 
 cism of the worst kind should not be rejected. He was really ambi- 
 tious, he said, of having a morsel of mysticism. He was going to 
 take advantage of his approaching abdication by plaguing Brougham 
 with an attack on Utilitarianism ; and it was but reasonable that he 
 should use the same retreat from responsibility in encouraging Car- 
 lyle to commit a fresh outrage oh the rational part of his readers. 
 Any topic would serve as a text. Jeffrey suggested "Vivian Grey" or 
 ' ' Pelham. " " Vivian Grey " he considered better than the best novel 
 which any German had ever written. Carlyle proposed Southey, but 
 Macaulay had forestalled him. In the end Carlyle wrote the " Signs 
 of the Times," the first of the essays in which he brought out his 
 views of the condition of modern English society a most signal 
 outrage indeed, if that was what Jeffrey wanted, on "the Philoso- 
 phy of Progress," which was preached so continuously from the Ed- 
 inburgh pulpit. He gave Jeffrey full warning of what was coming. 
 Jeffrey only encouraged him with visibly malicious amusement. 
 But the cautious character which he ascribed to Napier made it 
 probable that this article might be his last in that periodical. 
 
 Of outward incidents meanwhile the Craigenputtock history was 
 almost entirely destitute. The year 1829 rolled by without in- 
 terruption to the tranquil routine of daily life. John Carlyle came 
 home from Germany and became sometimes his brother's guest till 
 a situation as doctor could be found for him. Carlyle himself wrote 
 and rode, and planted potatoes. His wife's faculty for spreading 
 grace about her had extended to the outside premises, and behind 
 the shelter of the trees she had raised a rose garden. An old but 
 strong and convenient gig was added to the establishment. When 
 an article was finished Carlyle allowed himself a fortnight's holiday : 
 he and Mrs. Carlyle driving off with Larry either to Templand or to 
 Scotsbrig; the pipe and tobacco duly arranged under cover on the 
 inner side of the splashboard. The Jeffreys passed through Dum- 
 fries in the summer. Their friends from the Craig drove down to 
 see them, and were even meditating afterwards an expedition in the 
 same style throughout England as far as Cornwall. 
 
 Carlyle was full of thoughts on the great social questions of the 
 day. He wished to see with his own eyes the actual condition of 
 the people of England, as they lived in their own homes. The plan 
 had to be abandoned for want of means, but he had set his own 
 heart upon it, and Mrs. Carlyle would have been glad too of a 
 change from a solitude which was growing intolerably oppressive. 
 Carlyle's ill-humors had not come back, but he was occupied and 
 indifferent. There is a letter from his wife to old Mrs. Carlyle at 
 Scotsbrig. undated, but belonging evidently to March of this year,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 35 
 
 in which she complains of the loneliness. "Carlyle," she says, 
 "never asks me to go with him, never even looks as if he desired 
 my company." 
 
 One visitor, however, came to Craigenputtock in the summer 
 whose visit was more than welcome. Margaret, the eldest of Car- 
 lyle's sisters, had the superiority of mind and talent which belonged 
 to her brother, and she had along with it an instinctive delicacy and 
 nobleness of nature which had overcome the disadvantages of her 
 education. She had become a most striking and interesting woman, 
 but unhappily along with it she had shown symptoms of consump- 
 tion. In the preceding autumn the family had been seriously alarmed 
 about her. She had been ill all through the winter, but she had ral- 
 lied with the return of warm weather. The cough ceased, the color 
 came back to her cheek, she was thought to have recovered entirely, 
 and in June or July she rode over with her brother John from Scots- 
 brig to Craigenputtock, picking up on the way a precious letter 
 which was waiting at Dumfries post-office. 
 
 "I remember [Carlyle writes] one beautiful summer evening, 
 1829, as I lounged out-of-doors smoking my evening pipe, silent in 
 the great silence, the woods and hill-tops all gilt with the flamins: 
 splendor of a summer sun just about to set, there came a rustle an3 
 a sound of hoofs into the little bending avenue on my left (sun was 
 behind the house and me), and the minute after brother John and 
 Margaret direct from Scotsbrig, fresh and handsome, as their little 
 horses ambled up, one of the gladdest sights and surprises to me. 
 ' Mag, dear Mag, once more.' l John had found a letter from Goethe 
 for me at the post-office, Dumfries. This, having sent them in 
 doors, I read in my old posture and place, pure white the fine big 
 sheet itself, still purer the noble meaning all in it, as if mutely 
 pointing to eternity letter fit to be read in such a place and time." 
 Our dear Mag stayed some couple of weeks or more (made me a 
 nice buff-colored cotton waistcoat, I remember). She was quietly 
 cheerful, and complained of nothing; but my darling, with her 
 quick eye, had noticed too well (as she then whispered to me) that 
 the recovery was only superficial, and that worse might be ahead. 
 It was the last visit Margaret ever made. " 
 
 Nothing more of special moment happened this year. Life went 
 on as usual; but the autumn brought anxieties of more than one 
 description. The letters that remain are few, for his wife and his 
 brother Alexander, to whom he wrote most confidentially, were 
 both at Craigenputtock, and his brother John also was for several 
 months with him. He was trying to produce something better than 
 review articles, and was engaged busily with an intended history of 
 
 > The account is taken from the "Reminiscences." The concluding words are 
 inserted from a letter. 
 J I discover no trace of this letter. Perhaps it may yet be found.
 
 86 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 German literature, for which he had collected a large quantity of 
 books. But John Carlyle, who was naturally listless, had to be 
 stimulated to exertion, and was sent to London to look for employ- 
 ment. Employment would not come; perhaps was less assiduously 
 looked for than it might have been. The expense of his mainte- 
 nance fell on Carlyle, and the reviews were the only source to which 
 he could look. More articles therefore had to be prdduced if a 
 market could be found for them. Jeffrey, constant in his friend- 
 ship, consulted the new editor of the Edinburgh, and various sub- 
 jects were suggested and thought over. Carlyle proposed Napo- 
 leon, but another contributor was in the way. Jeffrey was in fa- 
 vor of Wycliffe, Luther, or "the Philosophy of the Reformation." 
 Napier thought a striking article might be written on some poetical 
 subject; but when Jeffrey hinted to him some of Carlyle's views 
 on those topics, and how contemptuously he regarded all the mod- 
 ern English singers, the new editor "shuddered at the massacre of 
 the innocents to which he had dreamed of exciting him." Still, 
 for himself, Jeffrey thought that if Carlyle was in a relenting mood, 
 and wished to exalt or mystify the world by a fine rhapsody on the 
 divine art, he might be encouraged to try it. 
 
 Liking Jeffrey as Carlyle did, he was puzzled at so much interest 
 being shown in him. He called it a mystery. Jeffrey humorously 
 caught up the word, and accepted it as the highest compliment 
 which Carlyle could pay. In a humbler sense, however, he was 
 content to think it natural that one man of a kind heart should feel 
 attracted towards another, and that signal purity and loftiness of 
 character, joined to great talents and something of a romantic his- 
 tory, should excite interest and respect. 
 
 Jeffrey's anxiety to be of use did not end in recommendations to 
 Napier. He knew how the Carlyles were situated in money mat- 
 ters. He knew that they were poor, and that their poverty had 
 risen from a voluntary surrender of means which were properly 
 their own, but which they would not touch while Mrs. AYelsh was 
 alive. He knew also that Carlyle had educated, and was still sup- 
 porting, his brother out of his own slender earnings. He saw, as he 
 supposed, a man of real brilliancy and genius weighed down and 
 prevented from doing justice to himself by a drudgery which de- 
 prived him of the use of his more commanding talents; and, with a 
 generosity the merit of which was only exceeded by the delicacy 
 with which the offer was made, he proposed that Carlyle should 
 accept a small annuity from him. Here again I regret that I am 
 forbidden to print the admirable letter in which Jeffrey conveyed 
 his desire, to which Carlyle in his own mention of this transaction 
 has done but scanty justice. The whole matter, he said, should be 
 an entire secret between them. He would tell no one not even
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 37 
 
 his wife. He bade Carlyle remember that he too would have been 
 richer if he had not been himself a giver where there was less de- 
 mand upon his liberality. He ought not to wish for a monopoly 
 of generosity, and if he was really a religious man he must do as 
 he would be done to; nor, he added, would he have made the offer 
 did he not feel that in similar circumstances he would have freely 
 accepted it himself. To show his confidence he enclosed 50/., 
 which he expected Carlyle to keep, and desired only to hear in re- 
 ply that they had both done right. 
 
 Carlyle was grateful, but he was proud. He did not at the time, 
 or perhaps ever, entirely misconstrue the spirit in which Jeffrey 
 had volunteered to assist him ; but it is hard, perhaps it is impossi- 
 ble, for a man to receive pecuniary help, or even the offer of pe- 
 cuniary help, from a person who is not his relation, without some 
 sense that he is in a position of inferiority; and there is force in the 
 objection to accepting favors which Carlyle thus describes, looking 
 back over forty years : 
 
 " Jeffrey generously offered to confer on me an annuity of 100?., 
 which annual sum, had it fallen on me from the clouds, would have 
 been of very high convenience at that time, but which I could not 
 for a moment have dreamed of accepting as gift or subventionary 
 help from any fellow-mortal. It was at once in my handsomest, 
 gratefullest, but brief and conclusive way declined from Jeffrey. 
 'Republican equality,' the silently fixed law of society at present: 
 each man to live on his own resources, and have an equality of 
 economics with every other man; dangerous, and not possible ex- 
 cept through cowardice or folly to depart from said clear rule till 
 perhaps a better era rise on us again." 
 
 From a letter written at the time there appears through his genu- 
 ine gratitude a faint but perceptible tinge of wounded feeling. 
 
 " Do but think of Jeffrey [he wrote to his brother, who was really 
 the cause that he was in difficulties]. A letter was lying here from 
 him offering in the daintiest style to settle a hundred a year on 
 unworthy me. I have just sent the meekest, friendliest, but most 
 emphatic refusal for this and all coming times. Do not mention 
 this, for you see it has never gone beyond the length of a flourish 
 of rhetoric, and is scarcely fit to mention. Only whenever we think 
 of our Dean of the Faculty let us conceive him as a muUum in par- 
 vo that does credit to Scotland and humanity." 
 
 If any one thinks that Carlyle was deficient in gratitude, let him 
 remember that gratitude is but one of many feelings which are 
 equally legitimate and reputable. The gentleman commoner at 
 Pembroke College meant only kindness when he left the boots at 
 Johnson's door; but Johnson, so far from being grateful, flung the 
 boots out of window, and has been praised by all mankind for it.
 
 38 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 From his brother himself Carlyle was careful to conceal the 
 scanty state to which his resources were reduced. From his note- 
 book I find that at one time in 1830 he had but five pounds left 
 with which to face the world. Yet he still wrote cheerfully, and 
 remittances were still sent, with no word except of kind exhortation 
 to exertion. 
 
 To John Carlyle, London. 
 
 " Craigcnputtock : Febtuary 11, 1830. 
 
 "Your last letter, dear brother, though but of a sable texture, 
 gave me more real satisfaction than any you had written. It ex- 
 hibits you in a figure of decided action, which after so many weeks 
 of storm-bound inactivity we all heartily longed and prayed to see 
 you in. Spite of all difficulties, and these are too many and too 
 heavy, I now doubt not a moment that you will find yourself a 
 settlement and ultimately prosper there. But you are now at the 
 pinch of the game, Jack, and must not falter. Now or never! Oh, 
 my dear brother, do not loiter, do not linger, trusting to the chapter 
 of chances and help from other men. Know and feel that you are 
 still there yourself; one heart and head that will never desert your 
 interests. I know the many difficulties and hesitations, how wretch- 
 ed you are while others only fancy you sluggish. But, thank 
 Heaven, you are now afoot, fairly diligent and intent. What way 
 it is in you to make j'ou will make ; and already I can well believe 
 you are far happier; for evil, as Jean Paul truly says, is like a 
 nightmare the instant you begin to stir yourself it is already gone. 
 
 "Meanwhile do not fret yourself over much; a period of probation 
 and adventure is appointed for most men, is good for all men. For 
 your friends especially and testifying by deed your affection to 
 them give yourself no sorrow. There is not a friend you have, 
 Jack, who doubts for an instant of your affection ; neither is their 
 wish with regard to you to see you rich and famous, but to see you 
 self-collected, diligent, and wise, steering your way manfully through 
 this existence, resolutely and with clear heart as beseems a man, as 
 beseems such a man. Whether you ride in carriages and drink 
 Tokay, and have crowds to follow after you, or only walk in Scotch 
 clogs like the rest of us, is a matter so you do walk of far smaller 
 moment. ' Stout heart to a stay brae ' then, my brave boy ! There 
 is nothing in the world to frighten a clear heart. They can refuse 
 you guinea fees, but the godlike privilege of alleviating wretched- 
 ness, of feeling that you are a true man, let the whole host of gig- 
 men say to it what they will, no power on earth, or what is under 
 it, can take from you. Oh then, my brother, up and be doing! Be 
 my real stout brother as of old, and I will take you to my heart and 
 name you proudly, though in the world's eye you were the lowest 
 of the low. What charm is in a name? Physician, surgeon, apoth- 
 ecary all but quack is honorable. There are plenty of poor to 
 practise on. If you gain but twenty shillings during the first half- 
 year, do not despair. As for the poor ten pounds you get from me, 
 you are heartily welcome to it thrice over. My only grief is that 
 in the present posture of affairs I can furnish nothing more. The
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 39 
 
 Blacks have not so much as paid me yet. However, times will not 
 always be so bad, and while I have help to give depend on it as 
 your own. Your affectionate brother, T. C." 
 
 The Fates this winter were doing their very worst to Carlyle. 
 His wife had escaped harm from the first season at Craigenputtock, 
 but was not to be let off so easily a second time. All went well till 
 the close of December ; a fat goose had been killed for the New- 
 year's feast, when the snow fell and the frost came, and she caught 
 a violent sore-throat, which threatened to end in diphtheria. There 
 was no doctor nearer than Dumfries, and the road from the valley 
 was hardly passable. Mrs. Welsh struggled up from Templand 
 through the snow-drifts ; care and nursing kept the enemy off, and 
 the immediate danger in a few days was over ; but the shock had 
 left behind it a sense of insecurity, and the unsuitableness of such a 
 home for so frail a frame became more than ever apparent. The 
 old father at Scotsbrig fell ill, too, this January, and showed signs 
 of breaking, and, besides the illness of those dear to him, the repose 
 of the country was startled by more than one frightful tragedy. 
 The death of a Craigenputtock neighbor affected Carlyle much. 
 
 "Rob Clerk of Craigmony [he wrote to his brother John] had been 
 drinking at Minny hire, perhaps the day you were departing. He 
 tumbled off his chair with a groan, gave a snort or two on the floor, 
 and was by his companions reckoned to be dead-drunk. At their 
 convenient leisure they hoisted him and his boy, also drunk, into 
 the cart, which Johnny McCawe's 'lassie' (happily sober) drove 
 home under cloud of night to his aunt. Rob spoke none, moved 
 none, and his aunt carried him in on her back and laid him on the 
 bed, and after hours of sedulous ministering discovered him to be 
 dead ! Rob was once a man that could have tuned markets with his 
 own purse, and he would not ' taste ' in those days. But he failed 
 in trade twice ; since then has led a strange wet-and-dry existence, 
 drunk in all corners of Britain, from Sussex to Sutherland, and so 
 found his end at length. Is it not a wild world this ? Who made 
 it ? who governs it ? who gets good of it ? Without faith I think a 
 man were forced to be an atheist." 
 
 The next letter, one of the very few which Carlyle ever addressed 
 to a public journal, explains itself: 
 
 " To the Editor of the 'Dumfries and Galloway Courier.' 
 
 "April 12,1830. 
 
 "Mr. Editor, Some time last autumn a 'fatal accident' stood 
 recorded in the newspapers, of a young man having come by his 
 death at a place called Knockhill, near Ecclefechan, in this county, 
 under somewhat singular circumstances. The young man, it ap- 
 peared, had been engaged in some courtship with one of the maid- 
 servants of the house ; had come that night to see her in the fashion 
 common, or indeed universal, with men of his station in that quar-
 
 40 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ter, was overheard by the butler, was challenged, pursued, and, re- 
 fusing to answer any interrogatory, but hastening only to escape, 
 was shot dead by him on the spot. No man who has lived three 
 weeks in the south of Scotland can be ignorant that such visits oc- 
 cur nightly everywhere, and have occurred from time immemorial. 
 It is a custom by many blamed, by some applauded. In the roman- 
 tic spirit sometimes displayed in it; hi the long journeyings and 
 wistful waitings for an interview; in the faithfulness with which 
 the rustic wooer at all hazards keeps his secret which is also an- 
 other's, Dr. Currie traces among our peasants some resemblance to 
 the gallantry of a Spanish cavalier. In company with the butler, 
 so fatally watchful on this occasion, were two men to have assisted 
 him in any defence, in any seizure. Whether he knew the individ- 
 ual fugitive, then within some feet of his gun, is uncertain ; that he 
 guessed his errand there is scarcely so. Enough, the poor young 
 man who had refused to speak fell to the ground, exclaiming only, 
 ' Oh, lasses, lasses!' and in a few instants was no more. 
 
 ' Ready or not ready, no delay ! 
 On to his Judge's bar he must away.' 
 
 Last week I looked over your circuit intelligence with some anxiety 
 to see how this case had been disposed of, out unfortunately with- 
 out effect. There was no notice of it there. Interesting trials enough 
 we have had, trials for attempting to shoot rabbits, for writing mar- 
 riage-lines, for stealing a pair of breeches ; but for the ' shedder of 
 blood ' there was no trial. To none of his Majesty's justiciars, it 
 would seem, has any hint of that transaction been communicated. 
 Whether it was ever so much as glanced at, much less thoroughly 
 sifted by any official personage, high or low, appears not from the 
 record nowhere the smallest whisper of it. 
 
 "May I ask, in the name of all that is wonderful, how this has 
 been ? Is it lawful, then, to put to death any individual whom you 
 may find flirting with your maid after ten at night ? Nay, is it so 
 lawful that no inquiry can be needed on the subject ; but the whole 
 matter may be hushed up into insignificance, with a few bows or 
 shrugs? If we have an Act of Parliament to that purport, it is well; 
 only let us understand clearly how it runs. May any British sub- 
 ject, the poorest cotter, keep his loaded gun for our rural Celadons, 
 and shoot them with less ceremony than he dare do snipes? Or is 
 only men possessing certain ' ploughgates of land ' that enjoy such 
 a privilege? If so, might not it be well that they were bound to 
 take out some license or game certificate first? 
 
 " Of your Public Prosecutor I know not even the name. The mas- 
 ter of that Knockhill mansion, the unhappy creature his servant, 
 are, if possible, still more unknown to me. Hatred of them, love 
 of them, fear or hope of them, have I none. Neither say I, nor 
 know I, whether in that act the wretched homicide did right or did 
 wrong. But, in the name of God, let all official courtesies and hole- 
 and-corner work be far from us when ' man's blood ' is on our 
 floor! Let the light in on it, the clear eye of public inquiry, or the 
 spot will blacken there forever. Let the law with its fifteen good 
 men and true speak forth an open verdict, that the muttered curses 
 of a whole district may cease. Vox."
 
 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A.D. 1830. ,ET. 85. 
 
 THE outward life of a man of letters is in his works. But in his 
 works he shows only so much of himself as he considers that the 
 world will be benefited or interested by seeing; or rather, if he is 
 true artist he does not show his own self at all. The more excellent 
 the thing produced, the more it resembles a work of nature in which 
 the creation is alone perceived, while the creating hand is hidden in 
 mystery. Homer and Shakespeare are the greatest of poets, but of 
 the men Homer and Shakespeare we know next to nothing. " The 
 blind old bard of Ohio's rocky isle " has been even criticised out of 
 existence, and ingenious inquirers have been found to maintain that 
 the Stratford player furnished but a convenient name, and that the 
 true authors of "Henry IV. "or "Hamlet" were Queen Elizabeth's 
 courtiers and statesmen. 
 
 3Ien of genius do not care to hang their hearts upon their sleeve 
 for daws to peck at; yet if they have left anywhere their written 
 conversations with themselves, if they have opened a door into the 
 laboratory where the creative force can be seen hi its operation, and 
 the man himself can be made known to us as he appeared in un- 
 dress and in his own eyes, the public who are interested in his writ- 
 ings may count it as a piece of rare good-fortune. No man who 
 has any vital force in him ever lies to himself. He may assume a 
 disguise to others; but the first condition of success is that he be 
 true to his own soul and has looked his own capacities and his own 
 faults fairly in the face. I have already given some extracts from 
 Carlyle's Journal. The entries are irregular, sometimes with a blank 
 of several years. For 1829 and 1830 it is unusually ample, and that 
 the story may not be interrupted I place before the reader collec- 
 tively the picture which it gives of Carlyle's mind. Some incidents 
 arc alluded to which have still to be related. The reader will learn 
 what he may find wanting in the chapter which will follow. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY KEPT AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK. 
 
 1829-1830. 
 
 "February, 1829. Has the mind its cycles and seasons like nat- 
 ure, varying from the fermentation of werden to the clearness of 
 seyn, and this again and again, so that the history of a man is like 
 the history of the world he lives in? In my own case, I have traced 
 two or three such vicissitudes. At present, if I mistake not, there 
 is some such thing at hand for me." 
 
 "Above all things, I should like to ~know England; the essence of 
 social life in this same little island of ours. But how? No one 
 that I speak to can throw light on it; not he that has worked and
 
 42 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 lived in the midst of it for half a century. The blind following the 
 blind ! Yet each cries out, ' What glorious sunshine we have !' The 
 'old literature' only half contents me. It is ore. and not metal. I 
 have not even a history of the country half precise enough. With 
 Scotland it is little better. To me there is nothing poetical in Scot- 
 land but its religion. Perhaps because I know nothing else so well. 
 England, with its old chivalry, art, and ' creature comfort, ' looks 
 beautiful, but only as a cloud country, the distinctive features of 
 which are all melted into one gay, sunny mass of hues. After all, 
 we are a world 'within ourselves,' a 'self-contained house.' " 
 
 "The English have never had an artist except in poetry: no mu- 
 sician ; no painter. Purcell (was he a native ?) and Hogarth are not 
 exceptions, or only such as confirm the rule. " 
 
 " He who would understand England must understand her Church 
 for that is half of the whole matter. Am I not conscious of a 
 prejudice on that side ? Does not the very sight of a shovel-hat in 
 some degree indispose me to the wearer thereof ? shut up my heart 
 against him? This must be looked into. Without love there is no 
 knowledge." 
 
 "Do I not also partly despise, partly hate, the aristocracy of 
 Scotland? I fear I do, though under cover. This, too, should be 
 remedied. On the whole, I know little of the Scottish gentleman, 
 and more than enough of the Scottish gigman. All are not mere 
 rent-gatherers and game-preservers." 
 
 "Have the Scottish gentry lost their national character of late 
 years, and become mere danglers in the train of the wealthier Eng- 
 lish? Scott has seen certain characters among them of which I, 
 hitherto, have not heard of any existing specimen." 
 
 "Is the true Scotchman the peasant and yeoman; chiefly the for- 
 mer ?" 
 
 " Shall we actually go and drive through England, to see it ? Mail- 
 coaches are a mere mockery." 
 
 "A national character, that is, the description of one, tends to re- 
 alize itself, as some prophecies have produced their own fulfilment. 
 Tell a man that he is brave, and you help him to become so. The 
 national character hangs like a pattern in every head; each sensibly 
 or insensibly shapes himself thereby, and feels pleased when he can 
 in any manner realize it. " 
 
 "Is the characteristic strength of England its love of justice, its 
 deep-seated, universally active sense of fair play? On many points 
 it seems to be a very stupid people; but seldom a hide-bound, bigot- 
 ed, altogether unmanageable and unaddressable people." 
 
 "The Scotch have more enthusiasm and more consideration; that 
 is, at once more sail and ballast. They seem to have a deeper and 
 richer character as a nation. The old Scottish music, our songs, 
 are a highly distinctive feature."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 
 
 " Read Novalis's ' Schriften ' for the second time some weeks ago, 
 and wrote a review of them. A strange, mystic, unfathomable 
 book, but full of matter for most earnest meditation. What is to 
 become (next) of the world and the sciences thereof? Rather, what 
 is to become of tftee and thy sciences? Thou longest to act among 
 thy fellow-men, and canst yet scarcely breatlie among them." 
 
 ' ' Friedrich Schlegel dead at Dresden on the 9th of January. Poor 
 Schlegel, what a toilsome seeking was thine! Thou knowest now 
 whether thou hast found or thou carest not for knowing !" 
 
 "What am I to say of Voltaire? His name has stood at the top 
 of a sheet for three days, and no other word ! Writing is a dreadful 
 labor, yet not so dreadful us idleness." 
 
 "Every living man is a visible mystery; he walks between two 
 eternities and two infinitudes. Were we not blind as moles we 
 should value our humanity at oc, and our rank, influence, etc. (the 
 trappings of our humanity), at 0. Say I am a man, and you say all. 
 Whether king or tinker is a mere appendix. 'Very true, Mr. Car- 
 lyle, but then ' We must believe truth and practise error ?" 
 
 "Pray that your eyes be opened, that you may see what is before 
 them ! The whole Avorld is built, as it were, on light and glory 
 only our spiritual eye must discern it ; to the bodily eye Self is as a 
 perpetual blinder, and we see nothing but darkness and contradic- 
 tion." 
 
 "Luther, says Melanchthon, would often, though in robust health, 
 go about for four days eating and drinking nothing! ' Vidi con- 
 tinuis quatuor diebus, cum quidem recte valeret, prorsus nihil eden- 
 tem aut bibentem. Vidi srepe alias multis diebus quotidie exiguo 
 pane et halece contentum esse. ' Content for many days with a lit- 
 tle piece of bread and herring. temporal mores! 
 
 "Luther's character appears to me the most worth discussing of 
 all modern men's. He is, to say it in a word, a great man in every 
 sense; has the soul at once of a conqueror and a poet. His attach- 
 ment to music is to me a very interesting circumstance; it was the 
 channel for many of his finest emotions, for which words, even 
 words of prayer, were but an ineffectual exponent. Is it true that 
 he did leave Wittenberg for Worms with nothing but his Bible and 
 his tlute? There is no scene in European history so splendid and 
 significant. I have long had a sort of notion to write some life or 
 characteristic of Luther. A picture of the public thought in those 
 days, and of this strong, lofty mind overturning and new moulding 
 it, would be a fine affair in many senses. It would require immense 
 research. Alas! alas! when are we to have another Luther? Such 
 men are needed from century to century; there seldom has been 
 more need of one than now. " 
 
 "Wrote a paper on Voltaire for the Foreign Review. It appears 
 to have given some, very slight, satisfaction; pieces of it breathe 
 afar off the right spirit of composition. When shall I attain to write 
 wholly in tluit spirit?"
 
 44 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Paper on Novalis for F. R. just published. Written last Janu- 
 ary amid the frosts. Generally poor. Novalis is an anti-mechanist 
 a deep man the most perfect of modern spirit-seers. I thank 
 him for somewhat." 
 
 "August 5, 1829. Also just finished an article on the ' Signs of 
 the Times ' for the Edinburgh Review, as Jeffrey's last speech. Bad 
 in general, but the best I could make it under such incubus influ- 
 ences." 
 
 "Every age appears surprising and full of vicissitudes to those 
 that live therein as indeed it is and must be vicissitudes from 
 nothingness to existence; and from the tumultuous wonders of ex- 
 istence forward to the still wonders of death." 
 
 "Politics are not our life which is the practice and contempla- 
 tion of goodness but only the Jiouse wherein that life is led. Sad 
 duty that lies on us to parget and continually repair our houses, sad- 
 dest of all when it becomes our sole duty." 
 
 "An institution, a law of any kind, may become a deserted edi- 
 fice; the walls standing, no life going on within but that of bats, 
 owls, and unclean creatures. It will then be pulled down if it stand 
 interrupting any thoroughfare. If it do not so stand, people may 
 leave it alone till a grove of natural wood grow round it; and no 
 eye but that of the adventurous antiquarian may know of its exist- 
 ence, such a tangle of brush is to be struggled through before it can 
 be come at and viewed." 
 
 "All language but that concerning sensual objects is or has been 
 figurative. Prodigious influence of metaphors ! Never saw into it 
 till lately; a truly useful and philosophical work would be a good 
 'Essay on Metaphors.'" 
 
 "Begin to think more seriously of discussing Martin Luther The 
 only inspiration I know of is that of genius. It was, is, and will al- 
 ways be of a divine character." 
 
 "Wonderful universe ! Were our eyes but opened, what a 'se- 
 cret' were it that we daily see and handle without heed !" 
 
 " Understanding is to reason as the talent of a beaver (which can 
 build houses, and uses its tail for a trowel) to the genius of a prophet 
 and poet. Reason is all but extinct in this age ; it can never be alto- 
 gether extinguished." 
 
 " 'Das Seligseyn ist um eine Ewigkeit alter als das Verdammt- 
 seyn. ' JEAN PAUL. " 
 
 " ' The mixture of those things by speech which by nature are di- 
 vided is the mother of all error.' HOOKER." 
 
 "Error of political economists about improving waste lands as 
 compared with manufacturing. The manufacture is worn and done. 
 The machine itself dies. The improved land remains an addition to 
 the estate forever. What is the amount of this error? I see not, 
 but reckon it something considerable. "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 45 
 
 "Is it true that of all quacks that ever quacked (boasting them- 
 selves to be somebody) in any age of the world, the political econo- 
 mists of this age are, for their intrinsic size, the loudest ? Mercy on 
 us, what a quack-quacking; and their egg, even if not a wind one, 
 is of value simply one half -penny." 
 
 "Their whole philosophy (!) is an arithmetical computation per- 
 formed in words; requires, therefore, the intellect, not of Socrates 
 or Shakespeare, but of Cocker or Dilworth. Even if this were right 
 which it scarcely ever is, for they miss this or the other item, do 
 as they will, and must return to practice and take the low posteriori 
 road after all the question of money-making, even of national 
 money-making, is not a high but a low one ; as they treat it, among 
 the highest. Could they tell us how wealth is and should be dis- 
 tributed, it were something; but they do not attempt it." 
 
 "Political philosophy? Political philosophy should be a scien- 
 tific revelation of the whole secret mechanism whereby men cohere 
 together in society; should tell us what is meant by ' country* (pa- 
 tria), by what causes men are happy, moral, religious, or the con- 
 trary. Instead of all which, it tells us how ' flannel jackets ' are ex- 
 changed for 'pork hams,' and speaks much about 'the land last 
 taken into cultivation.' They are the hodmen of the intellectual 
 edifice, who have got upon the wall and will insist on building as if 
 they were masons." 
 
 " The Utilitarians are the ' crowning mercy ' of this age, the sum- 
 mit (now first appearing to view) of a mass of tendencies which 
 stretch downwards and spread sidewards over the whole intellect 
 and morals of the time. By-and-by the clouds will disperse, and we 
 shall see it all in dead nakedness and brutishness; our Utilitarians 
 will pass away with a great noise. You think not? Can the reason 
 of man be trodden underfoot forever by his sense? Can the brute 
 in us prevail forever over the angel?" 
 
 "The Devil has his elect." 
 
 "'Pero digan lo que quisieren los historiadores ; que desnudo 
 naci, desnudo mi hallo, ni pierdo ni gano, aunque por verme puesto 
 in libros y andar por ese mundo de mano en mano, no se me da un 
 trigo; que digan de mi todo lo que quisieren,' says Sancho. ' Quix- 
 ote,' iv. 117." 
 
 "January 14, 1830. Does it seem hard to thee that thou shouldst 
 toil in dulness, sickness, isolation? Whose lot is not even thus? 
 Toil, then, and tais-t&i." 
 
 "Either I am degenerating into a caput mortuum, and shall never 
 think another reasonable thought ; or some new and deeper view of 
 the world is about to arise in me. Pray Heaven the latter! It is 
 dreadful to live without vision. When there is no light the people 
 perish." 
 
 "With considerable sincerity I can pray at this moment, 'Grant 
 me ; O Father, enough of wisdom to live well ; prosperity to live
 
 46 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 easily grant me or not, as thou seest best.' A poor, faint prayer, 
 as such, yet surely a kind of wish, as, indeed, it has generally been 
 with me; and now a kind of comfort to feel it still in my otherwise 
 too withered heart." 
 
 "I am a 'dismembered limb,' and feel it again too deeply. Was 
 I ever other? Stand to it tightly, man, and do thy utmost. Thou 
 hast little or no hold on the world; promotion will never reach thee, 
 nor true fellowship with any active body of men ; but hast thou not 
 still a hold on thyself? Ja, beym Himmel!" 
 
 " Religion, as Novalis thinks, is a social thing. Without a church 
 there can be little or no religion. The action of mind on mind is 
 mystical, infinite; religion, worship, can hardly (perhaps not all) sup- 
 port itself without this aid. The derivation of Schwarmerey indi- 
 cates some notion of this in the Germans. To schwdrmen (to be en- 
 thusiastic) means, says Coleridge, to swarm, to crowd together and 
 excite one another." 
 
 "What is the English of all quarrels that have been, are, or can 
 be, between man and man ? Simply this. Sir, you are taking more 
 than your share of pleasure in this world, something from my share ; 
 and by the gods you shall not nay, I will fight you rather. Alas! 
 and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly account of empty 
 boxes, truly a 'feast of shells,' not eggs, for the yolks have all been 
 blown out of them. Not enough to fill half a stomach, and the 
 whole human species famishing to be at them. Better we should 
 say to our brother, 'Take it, poor fellow, take that larger share 
 which I reckon mine, and which thou so wantest; take it with a 
 blessing. Would to Heaven, I had but enough for thee !' This is 
 the moral of the Christian religion ; how easy to write, how hard to 
 practise!" 
 
 "I have now almost done with the Germans. Having seized 
 their opinions, I must turn me to inquire how true are they? That 
 truth is in them no lover of truth will doubt; but how much? And, 
 after all, one needs an intellectual scheme (or ground-plan of the uni- 
 verse) drawn with one's own instruments. I think I have got rid of 
 materialism. Matter no longer seems to me so ancient, so unsubdu- 
 able, so certain and palpable as mind, /am mind; whether matter 
 or not I know not, and can not. Glimpses into the spiritual universe 
 I have sometimes had (about the true nature of religion), the possi- 
 bility, after all, of supernatural (really natural) influences. Would 
 they could but stay with me, and ripen into a perfect view !" 
 
 "Miracle? What is a miracle? Can there be a thing more mi- 
 raculous than any other thing? I myself am a standing wonder. It 
 is the inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us understanding. " 
 
 "What is poetry? Do I really love poetry? I sometimes fancy 
 almost not. The jingle of maudlin persons with their mere (even 
 genuine) sensibility is unspeakably fatiguing to me. My greatly 
 most delightful reading is where some Goethe musically teaches me. 
 Nay, any fact relating- especially to man is still valuable and pleas-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 47 
 
 ing. My memory, which was one of the best, has failed sadly of 
 late years (principally the last two ; yet not so much by defect in the 
 faculty, I should say, as by want of earnestness in using it. I attend 
 to few things as I was wont; few things have any interest for me. I 
 live in a sort of waking dream. Doubtful it is in the highest degree 
 whether ever I shall make men hear my voice to any purpose or not. 
 Certain only that I shall be & failure if I do not, and unhappy; nay, 
 unhappy enough (that is, with suffering enough) even if I do. My 
 own talent I cannot in the remotest degree attempt at estimating. 
 Something superior often does seem to lie in me, and hitherto the 
 world has been very kind ; but many things inferior also ; so that I 
 can strike no balance. Hang it, try and leave this Q-rubeln. What 
 we have done is the only mirror that can show us what we are. One 
 great desideratum in every society is a man to hold his peace. 
 
 'Oh Time, how them fliest; 
 False heart, how thou liest! 
 
 Leave chattering and fretting ; 
 Betake thee to doing and getting.' " 
 
 "April 17. Got dreadfully ill on with a most tremendous specula- 
 tion on history, intended first as an introduction to my German work, 
 then found at last that it would not do there, and so cut it out after 
 finishing it, and gave it to my wife. I carry less weight now, and 
 skim more smoothly along. Why cannot I write books (of that 
 kind) as I write letters? They are and will be of only temporary use. " 
 
 ' ' Francis Jeffrey the other week offered me a hundred a year, 
 having learned that this sum met my yearly wants. He did it neat- 
 ly enough, and I had no doubt of his sincerity. What a state of so- 
 ciety is this in which a man would rather be shot through the heart 
 twenty times than do both himself and his neighbor a real case. 
 How separate pride from the natural necessary feeling of self? It 
 is ill to do, yet may be done. On the whole, I have been somewhat 
 in the wrong about ' independence ;' man is not independent of his 
 brother. Twenty men united in love can accomplish much that to 
 two thousand isolated men were impossible. Know this, and know 
 also that thou hast a power of thy own, and standest with a Heaven 
 above even Thcc. And so, im Tevfels Namen, get to thy work then. " 
 
 "June 8. Am about beginning the second volume of that Ger- 
 man Lit. History; dreadfully lazy to start. I know and feel that it 
 will be a trivial insignificant book, do what I can ; yet the writing 
 of it sickens me and inflames my nerves as if it were a poem ! Were 
 I done with this, I will endeavor to compile no more. " 
 
 "Is not the Christian religion, is not every truly vital interest of 
 mankind (?), a thing that grows ? Like some Nile whose springs are 
 indeed hidden, but whose full flood, bringing gladness and fertility 
 from its mysterious mountains, is seen and welcomed by all." 
 
 " Eeceived about four weeks ago a strange letter from some Saint- 
 Simonians at Paris, grounded on my little 'Signs of the Times.' 1 
 
 1 Just appeared in the Edinburgh Review, and reprinted in tho "Miscellanies."
 
 48 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 These people have strange notions, not without a large spicing of 
 truth, and are themselves among the Signs. I shall feel curious to 
 know what becomes of them. La classe la plus pauvre is evidently 
 in the way of rising from its present deepest abasement. In time it 
 is likely the world will be better divided, and he that has the toil 
 of ploughing will have the first cut at the reaping. 
 
 "A man with 200, 000 a year eats the whole fruit of 6666 men's 
 labor through a year; for you can get a stout spadesman to work 
 and maintain himself for the sum of 301. Thus we have private in- 
 dividuals whose wages are equal to the wages of seven or eight 
 thousand other individuals. What do those highly beneficed indi- 
 viduals do to society for their wages? Kill partridges. CAN this 
 last? No, by the soul that is in man, it cannot, and will not, and 
 shall not ! 
 
 " Our political economists should collect statistical facts; such as, 
 'What is the lowest sum a man can live on in various countries? 
 What is the highest he gets to live on? How many people work 
 with their hands? How many with their heads? How many not 
 at all?' and innumerable such. What all want to know is the con- 
 dition of our fellow-men; and, strange to say, it is the thing least of 
 all understood, or to be understood, as matters go. The present 
 ' science ' of political economy requires far less intellect than suc- 
 cessful bellows-mending; and perhaps does less good, if we deduct 
 all the evil it brings us. Though young, it already carries marks of 
 decrepitude. A speedy and soft death to it !" 
 
 "You see two men fronting each other. One sits dressed in red 
 cloth, the other stands dressed in threadbare blue; the first says to 
 the other, 'Be hanged and anatomized!' and it is forthwith put in 
 execution, till Number Two is a skeleton. Whence comes it? These 
 men have no physical hold of each other; they are not in contact. 
 Each of the bailiffs, etc., is included in his own skin, and not hooked 
 to any other. The reason is, Man is a spirit. Invisible influences 
 run through Society, and make it a mysterious whole full of life and 
 inscrutable activities and capabilities. Our individual existence is 
 mystery; our social, still more. 
 
 "Nothing can act but where it is? True if you will only icJiere 
 is it? Is not the distant, the dead, whom I love and sorrow for 
 HERE, in the genuine spiritual sense, as really as the table I now 
 write on? Space is a mode of our sense, so is time (this I only half 
 understand); we are we know not what light sparkles floating in 
 the ether of the Divinity! So that this solid world, after all, is but 
 an air -image; our me is the only reality, and all is godlike or 
 God. 
 
 " Thou wilt have no mystery and mysticism; wilt live in the day- 
 light (rushlight?) of truth, and see thy world and understand it? 
 Nay, thou wilt laugh at all that believe in a mystery; to whom the 
 universe is an oracle and temple, as well as a kitchen and cattle- 
 stall? Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull 
 gender? Nay, peradventure, dost not thou thyself gender? Explain 
 me that, or do one of two things : retire into private places "with thy 
 foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up and weep, not that
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 49 
 
 the world is mean and disenchanted and prosaic, but that thou art 
 vain and blind." 
 
 "Is anything more wonderful than another, if you consider it ma- 
 turely ? / have seen, no men rise from the dead ; I have seen some 
 thousands rise from nothing. I have not force to fly into the sun, 
 but I have force to lift my hand, which is equally strange." 
 
 "Wonder is the basis of worship; the reign of wonder is peren- 
 nial, indestructible ; only at certain stages (as the present) it is (for 
 some short season) in partibus iiifidelium." 
 
 " August, 1830. What is a man if you look at him with the mere 
 logical sense, with the understanding ? A pitiful hungry biped that 
 wears breeches. Often when I read of pompous ceremonials, draw- 
 ing-room levees, and coronations, on a sudden the clothes fly off the 
 whole party in my fancy, and they stand there straddling in a half- 
 ludicrous, half -horrid condition!" ' 
 
 "September!. Yesterday I received tidings that my project of 
 cutting up that thrice-wretched ' History of German Literature ' into 
 review articles, and so realizing something for my year's work, will 
 not take effect. The ' course of Providence ' (nay, sometimes I al- 
 most feel that there w such a thing even for me) seems guiding my 
 steps into new regions; the question is coming more and more tow- 
 ards a decision. Canst thou, there as thou art, accomplish aught 
 good and true ? or art thou to die miserably as a vain pretender? It 
 is above a year since I wrote one sentence that came from the right 
 place ; since I did one action that seemed to be really worthy. The 
 want of money is a comparatively insignificant affair; were I doing 
 well otherwise, I could most readily consent to go destitute and suf- 
 fer all sorts of things. On the whole, I am a . But tush!" 
 
 " The moral nature of a man is not a composite factitious concern, 
 but lies in the very heart of his being, as his very self of selves. The 
 lirst alleviation to irremediable pain is some conviction that it has 
 been merited, that it comes from the All-just from God." 
 
 " What am I but a sort of ghost? Men rise as apparitions from 
 the bosom of night, and after grinning, squeaking, gibbering some 
 space, return thither. The earth they stand on is bottomless; the 
 vault of their sky is infinitude; the life-time is encompassed with 
 eternity. O wonder! And they buy cattle or seats in Parliament, 
 and drink coarser or finer fermented liquors, as if all this were a city 
 that had foundations." 
 
 ' ' I have strange glimpses of the power of spiritual union, of asso- 
 ciation among men of like object. Therein lies the true element of 
 religion. It is a truly supernatural climate. All wondrous things, 
 from a Pennenden Heath or Penny-a-week Purgatory Society, to the 
 foundation of a Christianity, or the (now obsolete) exercise of magic, 
 take their rise here. Men work godlike miracles thereby, and the 
 horridest abominations. Society is a wonder of wonders, and poli- 
 tics (in the right sense far, very far, from the common one) is the 
 
 II 3
 
 50 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 noblest science. Cor ne ediio! Up and be doing! Hast thou not 
 the strangest, grandest of all talents committed to thee namely, LIFE 
 itself? O heaven! And it is momentarily rusting and wasting, if 
 thou use it not. Up and be doing! and pray (if thou but can) to the 
 unseen Author of all thy strength to guide thee and aid thee; to 
 give thee, if not victory and possession, unwearied activity and 
 Entsagen." 
 
 "Is not every thought properly an inspiration? Or how is one 
 thing more inspired than another? Much in this." 
 
 "Why should politeness be peculiar to the rich and well-born? 
 Is not every man alive, and is not every man infinitely venerable to 
 every other? 'There is but one temple in the universe,' says No- 
 valis, ' and that is the body of man.' " 
 
 "Franz yon Sickingen was one of the noblest men of the Refor- 
 mation period. He defended Ulrich von Hutten, warred against 
 perfidious Wurtemberg, was the terror of evil-doers, the praise of 
 whoso did well. Hutten and he read Luther together: light rising 
 in darkness! He also stood by GQtz von Berhchingen, and now 
 walks in poetry. But why I mention him here is his transcendent 
 good-breeding. He was at feud with his superior the Bishop of 
 Triers, and besieged by him, and violently defending himself against 
 injustice at the moment when he received his death-wound. His 
 castle was surrendered; Triers and others approached the brave 
 man, over whose countenance the last paleness was already spread- 
 ing: he took off his cap to Triers, there as he lay in that stern agony. 
 What a picture !" 
 
 "Nulla dies sine lined. Eheu, eheu! Yesterday, accordingly, I 
 \vrote a thing in dactyls, entitled the 'Wandering Spirits,' which 
 now fills and then filled me with ' detestation and abhorrence.' No 
 matter to-day I must do the like. Nutta dies sine lined. To the 
 persevering, they say, all things are possible. Possible or impossi- 
 ble, I have no other implement for trying." 
 
 "Last night I sat up very late reading Scott's 'History of Scot- 
 land.' An amusing narrative, clear, precise, and I suppose accurate ; 
 but no more a history of Scotland than I am Pope of Rome. A 
 series of palace intrigues and butcheries and battles, little more im- 
 portant than those of Donny brook Fair; all the while that Scotland, 
 quite unnoticed, is holding on her course in industry, in arts, in cult- 
 ure, as if ' Langside ' and ' Clean-the-Causeway ' had remained un- 
 fought. Strange that a man should think that he was writing the 
 history of a nation while he is chronicling the amours of a wanton 
 young woman called queen, and a sulky booby recommended to 
 kingship for his fine limbs, and then blown up with gunpowder for 
 his ill-behavior! Good heaven! let them fondle and pout and bicker 
 ad libitum : what has God's fair creation and man's immortal destiny 
 to do with them and their trade? 
 
 " One inference I have drawn from Scott: that the people in those 
 old days had a singular talent for nicknames: King Toom- Tabard, 
 Bell-the-Cat (less meritorious), the Foul Eaid, the Bound-about Maid,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 51 
 
 Clean -the- Causeway, the Tukhan Prelates, etc., etc. Apparently 
 there was more humor in the national mind than now. 
 
 "For the rest, the ' Scottish History ' looks like that of a gypsy en- 
 campment industry of the rudest, largely broken by sheer indo- 
 lence ; smoke, sluttishness, hunger, scab, and blood. Happily, as 
 hinted, Scotland herself was not there. 
 
 "Lastly, it is noteworthy that the nobles of the country have 
 maintained a quite despicable behavior from the times of Wallace 
 downwards. A selfish, ferocious, famishing, unprincipled set of 
 hyenas, from whom at no time and in no way has the country de- 
 rived any benefit. The day is coming when these, our modern 
 hyenas (though toothless, still mischievous and greedy beyond limit), 
 will, quietly I hope, be paid off: Canaittefaineante, que faites-vous Id ? 
 Down with your double-barrels; take spades, if ye can do no better, 
 and work or die." 
 
 "The quantity of pain thou feelest is indicative of the quantity 
 of life, of talent, thou hast: a stone feels no pain. (Is that a fact?)" 
 
 " September 9. Wrote a fractionlet of verse entitled ' The Beetle ' 1 
 (a real incident on Glaisters Moor), which, alas ! must stand for the 
 tinea, both of Tuesday and Wednesday. To-day I am to try I know 
 not what. Greater clearness will arrive. I make far most progress 
 when I walk, on solitary roads of which there are enough here." 
 
 "Last night came a whole bundle of Fraser's Magazines, etc.: 
 two little papers by my brother in them, some fables by me ; and on 
 the whole such a hurly-burly of rodomontade, punch, loyalty, and 
 Saturnalian Toryism as eye hath not seen. This out-Blackwoods 
 Blackwood. Nevertheless, the thing has its meaning a kind of 
 wild popular lower comedy, of which John Wilson is the inventor. 
 It may, perhaps (for it seems well adapted to the age), carry down 
 his name to other times, as his most remarkable achievement. All 
 the magazines (except the New Monthly) seem to aim at it; a cer- 
 tain quickness, fluency of banter, not excluding sharp insight, and 
 merry-andrew drollery, and even humor, are available -here; how- 
 ever, the grand requisite seems to be impudence, and a fearless com- 
 mitting of yourself to talk in your drink. Literature has nothing to 
 do with this, but printing has; and printing is now no more the 
 peculiar symbol and livery of literature than writing was in Guten- 
 berg's day." 
 
 "Great actions are sometimes historically barren ; smallest actions 
 have taken root in the moral soil, and grown like banana forests to 
 cover whole quarters of the world. Aristotle's philosophy and the 
 Sermon on the Mount (and both, too, had fair trial), the ' Mecanique 
 Celeste 'and the 'Sorrows of Werter,' Alexander's expedition and 
 that of Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles ! Of these, however, ' Wer- 
 ter ' is half a gourd, and only by its huge decidua (to be used as ma- 
 nure) will fertilize the future. So, too, with the rest; all are decidu- 
 ous, and must at last make manure, only at longer dates. Yet of 
 some the root also (?) seems to be undying. 
 
 1 " Miscellanies," voL i., Appendix II. No. 6
 
 53 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " What are Schiller and Goethe if you try them in that way? As 
 yet it is too soon to try them. No true effort can be lost." 
 
 "One thing we see: the moral nature of man is deeper than his 
 intellectual; things planted down into the former may grow as if 
 forever; the latter as a kind of drift mould produces only animals. 
 What is Jesus Christ's significance? AltogetJier moral. What is 
 Jeremy Beutham's significance? Altogether intellectual, logical. 
 I name him as the representative of a class important only for their 
 numbers, intrinsically wearisome, almost pitiable and pitiful. Logic 
 is their sole foundation, no other even recognized as possible; where- 
 fore their system is a machine and cannot grow or endure; but after 
 thrashing for a little (and doing good service that way) must thrash 
 itself to pieces and be made fuel. Alas, poor England ! stupid, pur- 
 blind, pudding-eating England! Bentham with his Mills grinding 
 thee out morality ; and some Macaulay, also be-aproned and a 
 grinder, testing it, and decrying' it, * because it is not his own Whig 
 established Quern-morality I mean that the Utilitarians have log- 
 ical machinery, and do grind fiercely and potently, on their ow?i 
 foundation ; whereas the Whigs have no foundation, but must stick 
 up their hand-mills, or even pepper-mills, on what fixture they can 
 come at, and then grind as it pleases Heaven. The Whigs are ama- 
 teurs, the Radicals are guild-brethren." 
 
 ' ' The sin of this age is dilettanteism ; the Whigs and all ' moderate 
 Tories ' are the grand dilettanti. I begin to feel less and less patience 
 for them. This is no world where a man should stand trimming 
 his whiskers, looking on at work or touching it with the point of a 
 gloved finger. Man sollte greifen zuf There is more hope of an 
 atheist utilitarian, of a superstitious ultra (Tory), than of such a 
 lukewarm withered mongrel. He would not believe, though one 
 rose from the dead. He is wedded to idols let him alone." 
 
 "September, about the 28t7i.* Rain! rain! rain! The crops all 
 lying tattered, scattered, and unripe; the winter's bread still under 
 the soaking clouds! God pity the poor !" 
 
 "It was a wise regulation which ordained that certain days and 
 times should be set apart for seclusion and meditation whether as 
 fasts or not may reasonably admit of doubt; the business being to 
 get out of the body to philosophize. But on the whole there is a 
 deep significance in SILENCE. Were a man forced for a length of 
 time but to hold his peace, it were, in most cases, an incalculable ben- 
 efit to his insight. Thought works in silence, so does virtue. One 
 might erect statues to Silence. I sometimes think it were good for 
 me, who after all cannot err much in loquacity here, did I impose on 
 myself, at set times, the duty of not speaking for a day. What folly 
 would one avoid did the tongue lie quiet till the mind had finished 
 and was calling for utterance. Not only our good thoughts, but our 
 good purposes, also, are frittered asunder, and dissipated by uusea- 
 
 1 Nfaaaulay's ' F.^suy on .Tntnos Mill.' 1 
 
 2 Even a regular count of days was lost at Craigenputtock.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 53 
 
 sonable speaking of them. "Words, the strangest product of our 
 nature, are also the most potent. Beware of speaking. Speech is 
 human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we 
 must learn both arts; they are both difficult. Flower roots hidden 
 under soil. Bees working in darkness, etc. The soul, too, in 
 silence. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. 
 Indeed, secrecy is the element of all goodness; every virtue, every 
 beautv, is mysterious. I hardly understand even the surface of 
 this. . . ." 
 
 " October 28. Written a strange piece ' On Clothes.' * Know not 
 what will come of it." 
 
 "Gutes Pferd 
 Ist's Hufors worth (myself? November 24)." 
 
 "Received the 'ornamented Schiller' from Goethe, and wondered 
 not a little to see poor old Craigenputtock engraved at Frankfort-on- 
 thc-Main. If I become anything, it will look well; if I become noth- 
 ing, a piece of kind dotage (on his part). Sent away the ' Clothes,' 
 of which I could make a kind of book, but cannot afford it. Have 
 still the book in petto (?), but in the most chaotic shape." 
 
 "The Whigs in office, and Baron Brougham Lord Chancellor! 
 Hay-stacks and corn-stacks burning over all the south and middle of 
 England ! Where will it end ? Revolution on the back of revolu- 
 tion for a century yet? Religion, the cement of society, is not here: 
 we can have no permanent beneficent arrangement of affairs." 
 
 "Not that we want no aristocracy, but that we want a true one. 
 While the many work with their hands, let the few work with their 
 heads and hearts, honestly, and not with a shameless villany pretend 
 to work, or even openly steal. Were the landlords all hanged, and 
 their estates given to the poor, we should be (economically) much 
 happier, perhaps, for the space of thirty years. But the population 
 would be doubled then ; and, again, the hunger of the unthrifty 
 would burn the granary of the industrious. Alas that there is no 
 Church, and, as yet, no apparent possibility of one !" 
 
 "The divine right of squires is equal to the divine right of kings, 
 and not superior ! A word has made them, and a word can unmake 
 them." 
 
 " I have no property in anything whatsoever; except, perhaps (if I 
 am a virtuous man), in my own free-will. Of my body I have only 
 a life-rent ; of all that is without my skin only an accidental posses- 
 sion, so long as I can keep it. Vain man! Are the stars thine be- 
 cause thou lookest on them? Is that piece of earth thine because 
 thou hast eaten of its fruits? Thy proudest palace, what is it but a 
 tent: pitched not indeed for days, but for years? The earth is the 
 Lord'*. Remember this, and seek other duties than game- preserving, 
 wouldst thou not be an interloper, sturdy beggar, and even thief. 
 
 Faules Pferd 
 Keines Hafcrs werth.' 
 
 1 First sketch of " Sartor Rcsartus," intended for a review article.
 
 54 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The laborer is worthy of his hire, and the idler of his also namely, 
 of starvation." 
 
 "Byron we call 'a dandy of sorrows and acquainted with grief.' 
 That is a brief definition of him." 
 
 "What is art and poetry? Is the beautiful really higher than the 
 good? A higher form thereof ? Thus were a poet not only a priest, 
 but a high-priest. " 
 
 " When Goethe and Schiller say or insinuate that art is higher than 
 religion, do they mean perhaps this? That whereas religion repre- 
 sents (what is the essence of truth for man) the good as infinitely (the 
 word is emphatic) different from the evil, but sets them in a state of 
 hostility (as in heaven and hell), art likewise admits and inculcates 
 this quite infinite difference, but witlwut hostility, with peacefulness, 
 like the difference of two poles which cannot coalesce yet do not 
 quarrel nay, should not quarrel, for both are essential to the whole. 
 In this way is Goethe's morality to be considered as a higher (apart 
 from its comprehensiveness, nay, universality) than has hitherto been 
 promulgated ? Sehr einseitiy ! Yet perhaps there is a glimpse of the 
 truth here. " 
 
 "Examine by logic the import of thy life and of all lives. What 
 is it? A making of meal into manure, and of manure into meal. To 
 the cui bono there is no answer from logic." 
 
 "December 29, 1830. The old year just expiring; one of the most 
 worthless years I have spent for a long time. Durch eigne und an- 
 derer Schuld! But words are worse than nothing. To thy review 
 (Taylor's 'Hist. Survey '). Is it the most despicable of work? Yet 
 is it not too good for thee ? Oh, I care not for poverty, little even for 
 disgrace, nothing at all for want of renown. But the horrible feel- 
 ing is when I cease my own struggle, lose the consciousness of my 
 own strength, and become positively quite worldly and wicked. 
 
 "In the paths of fortune (fortune!) I have made no advancement 
 since last year; but, on the contrary (owing chiefly to that ' German 
 Literary History ' one way and another), considerably retrograded. 
 No matter: had I but progressed in the other better path! But alas, 
 alas! howsoever, pocas palabras ! /am still here." 
 
 " Bist Du glucklich, Du Gute, dass Du unter der Erde bist? Wo 
 stehst Du? L'ebst Du mich noch? God is the God of the dead as 
 well as of the living. The dead as the living are where He wills." 
 
 " This Taylor is a wretched atheist and Philistine. It is my duty 
 (perhaps) to put the flock whom he professes to lead on their guard. 
 Let me do it well. 1 " 
 
 "February 7, 1831. Finished the review of Taylor some three 
 weeks ago, and sent it off. It is worth little, and only partially in a 
 right spirit. 
 
 " Sent to Jack to liberate my ' Teufelsdrockh ' from editorial dur- 
 ance in London, and am seriously thinking to make a book of it.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 55 
 
 The thiug is not right not art ; yet perhaps a nearer approach to 
 art than i have yet made. We ought to try. I want to get it done, 
 and then translate 'Faust,' as I have partially promised to Goethe. 
 Through ' Teufelsdrockh ' I am yet far from seeing my way; never- 
 theless, materials are partly forthcoming." 
 
 "No sense from the Foreign Quarterly Review ; have nearly deter- 
 mined on opening a correspondence on the matter of that everlasting 
 MS. 1 with Bowring of the Westminster. Could write also a paper on 
 the Saiut-Simonians. One too on Dr. Johnson, for Napier. Such 
 are the financial aspects. N. B. I have some five pounds to front tJie 
 world with and expect no more for months. Jack, too, is in the 
 neap-tide. Hand to the oar." 
 
 "All Europe is in a state of disturbance, of revolution. About 
 this very time they may be debating the question of British ' Reform' 
 in London. The Parliament opened last week. Our news of it ex- 
 pected on Wednesday. The times are big with change. Will one 
 century of constant fluctuations serve us, or shall we need two? 
 Their Parliamentary reforms and all that are of small moment; 
 a beginning (of good and evil), nothing more. The whole frame of 
 society is rotten, and must go for fuel wood and where is the new 
 frame to come from? I know not, and no man knows." 
 
 "The only sovereigns of the world in these clays are the literary 
 men (were there any such in Britain) the prophets. It is always a 
 theocracy: the king has to be anointed by the priest; and now the 
 priest the Goethe, for example will not, cannot consecrate the exist- 
 ing king, who therefore is a usurper, and reigns only by sufferance. 
 What were the bet that King William were the last of that profes- 
 sion in Britain, and Queen Victoria never troubled with the sceptre 
 at all? Mighty odds: yet nevertheless not infinite; for what thing is 
 certain now? No mortal cares twopence for any king, or obeys any 
 king except through compulsion; and society is not a ship of war. 
 Its government cannot always be a press-gang." 
 
 " What are the episcopal dignitaries saying to it ? Who knows but 
 Edward Irving may not yet be a bishop ! They will clutch round 
 them for help, and unmuzzle all manner of bull-dogs when the thief 
 is at the gate. Bull-dogs with teeth. The generality have no teeth 
 in that kennel. " 
 
 "Kings do reign by divine right, or not at all. The king that were 
 God-appointed would be an emblem of God and could demand all 
 obedience from us. But where is that king? The best man, could 
 we find him, were he. Tell us, tell us, O ye codifiers and statists and 
 economists, how we shall find him and raise him to the throne : or 
 else admit that the science of polity is worse than unknown to you." 
 
 "Earl (jarlyarl), count, duke, knight, etc., are all titles derived 
 iromf (ihting. The honor-titles in a future time will derive them- 
 selves from knowing and -well-doing. They will also be conferred 
 
 i German Literature.
 
 56 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 with more deliberation and by better judges. This is a prophecy of 
 mine." 
 
 "God is above U8, else the future of the world were well-nigh des- 
 perate. Go where we may, the deep heaven will be round us." 
 
 "Jeffrey is Lord - advocate and M.P. Sobbed and shrieked at 
 taking office, like a bride going to be married. I wish him altogether 
 well, but reckon he is on the wrong course; Whiggism, I believe, is 
 all but forever done. Away with dilettanteism and Machiavelism, 
 though we should get atheism and sansculottism in their room ! The 
 latter are at least substantial things, and do not build on a continued 
 wilful falsehood. But oh ! but oh ! where is ' Teufelsdrockh ' all 
 this while? The southwest is busy thawing off that horrible snow- 
 storm. Time rests not thou only art idle. To pen! to pen!" 
 
 " ' Benvenuto Cellini ' a very worthy book; gives more insight into 
 Italy than fifty Leo Tenths would do. A remarkable man Benve- 
 nuto, and in a remarkable scene. Religion and art with ferocity and 
 sensuality ; polished respect with stormf ul independence ; faithfully 
 obedient subjects to popes who are not hierarchs, but plain scoun- 
 drels ! Life was far sunnier and richer then ; but a time of change, 
 loudly called for, was advancing, and but lately has reached its 
 crisis. Goethe's essay on Benvenuto quite excellent. " 
 
 "Pope's 'Homer's Odyssey,' surely a very false, and, though in- 
 genious and talented, yet bad translation. The old epics are great 
 because they (musically) show us the whole world of those old days. 
 A modern epic that did the like would be equally admired, and for 
 us far more admirable. But where is the genius that can write it? 
 Patience ! patience ! he will be here one of these centuries. 
 
 "Is Homer or Shakespeare the greater genius? It were hard to 
 say. Shakespeare's world is the more complex, the more spiritual, 
 and perhaps his mastery over it was equally complete. ' We are such 
 stuff as dreams are made of.' There is the basis of a whole poetic 
 universe. To that mind all forms and figures of men and things 
 would become ideal. 
 
 "What is a whole? or how specially does a poem differ from prose? 
 Ask not a definition of it in words, which can hardly express com- 
 mon logic correctly. Study to create in thyself a feeling of it ; like 
 so much else, it cannot be made clear, hardly even to thy thought (?). 
 
 "I see some vague outline of what a whole is: also how an indi- 
 vidual delineation may be ' informed with the Infinite ;' may appear 
 hanging in the universe of time and space (partly) : in which case is 
 it a poem and a whole? Therefore are the true heroic poems of 
 these times to be written with the ink of science ? Were a correct 
 philosophic biography of a man (meaning by philosophic all that the 
 name can include) the only method of celebrating him? The true 
 history (had we any such, or even generally any dream of such) the 
 true epic poem? I partly begin to surmise so. What, after all, is 
 the true proportion of St. Matthew to Homer of the Crucifixion to 
 the fall of Troy?" 
 
 "On the whole, I wish I could define to myself the true relation of 
 moral genius to poetic genius; of religion to poetry. Are they one
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 57 
 
 and the same different forms of the same; and if so, which is to 
 stand higher, the Beautiful or the Good? Schiller and Goethe seem 
 to say the former, as if it included the latter, and might supersede it: 
 how truly I can never well see. Meanwhile that ihe faculties always 
 go together seems clear. It is a gross calumny on human nature to 
 say that there ever was a mind of surpassing talent that did not also 
 surpass in capability of virtue ; and vice versa. Nevertheless, in both 
 cases there are female geniuses too, minds that admire and receive, 
 but can hardly create. I have observed that in these also the taste for 
 religion and for poetry go together. The most wonderful words I 
 ever heard of being uttered by man are those in the four Evangelists 
 by Jesus of Nazareth. Their intellectual talent is hardly inferior to 
 their moral. On this subject, if I live, I hope to have much to say. 
 ' ' And so ends my first note-book, after nigh eight years, here at 
 Craigenputtock, at my oirn hearth, and though amid trouble and dis- 
 piritment enough, yet with better outlooks than I had then. My 
 outward world is not nmch better (yes it is, though I have far less 
 money), but my inward is, and I can promise myself never to be so 
 miserable again. Farewell, ye that have fallen asleep since then; 
 farewell, though distant, perhaps near me ! Welcome the good and 
 evil that is to come, through which God assist me to struggle wisely. 
 What have I to look back on? Little or nothing. What forward 
 to? My own small sickly force amid wild enough whirlpools ! The 
 more diligently apply it then. Nt< t-p 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A.D. 1830. JET. 35. 
 
 IT appears from the Journal that early in 1830 Carlyle had ad- 
 vanced so far with his " History of German Literature" that he was 
 hoping soon to see it published and off his hands. A first sketch 
 of " Teuf elsdrockh " the egg out of which " Sartor Resarlus" was 
 to grow had been offered without result to London magazine 
 editors. Proposals were made to him for a Life of Goethe. But 
 on Goethe he had said all that for the present he wished to say. 
 Luflier was hanging before him as the subject which he wanted 
 next to grapple, could he but find the means of doing it. But the 
 preliminary reading necessary for such a work was wide and varied. 
 The books required were not to be had at Craigenputtock; and if 
 the literary history could once be finished, and any moderate sum 
 of money realized upon it, he meditated spending six months in 
 Germany, taking Mrs. Carlyle with him, to collect materials. He 
 had great hopes of what he could do with Luther. An editor had 
 offered to bring it out in parts in a magazine, but Carlyle would not 
 hear of this. 
 
 "I rather believe [he said] that when I write that book of the 
 great German lion, it shall be the best book I have ever written ; 
 II. 3*
 
 58 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and go forth, I think, on its own legs. Do you know, we are 
 actually talking of spending the next winter in Weimar, and pre- 
 paring all the raw material of a right Luther there at the founkun- 
 head that is, of course, if I can get the history done and have 
 the cash." 
 
 Jeffrey started at the idea of the winter at Weimar, at least for 
 Mrs. Carlyle, and suggested that if it was carried out she should be 
 left in his charge at Edinburgh. He was inclined, he said, to be 
 jealous of the possible influence of Goethe, who had half bewitched 
 her at a distance unless, indeed, the spell was broken by the per- 
 sonal presence of him. But Jeffrey's fears were unnecessary; there 
 was no Weimar possible for Carlyle, and no "Life of Luther." 
 The unfortunate "German Literature" could not find a publisher 
 who would so much as look at it. Boyd, who had brought out the 
 volumes of "German Romance," wrote that he would be proud to 
 publish for Carlyle upon almost any other subject except German 
 literature. He knew that in this department Carlyle was superior 
 to any other author of the day, but the work proposed was not 
 calculated to interest the British public. Every one of the books 
 about German literature had been failures most of them ruinous 
 failures. The feeling in the public mind was that everything Ger- 
 man was especially to be avoided, and, with the highest esteem for 
 Carlyle's talent, he dared not make him an offer. Even cut up into 
 articles, he still found no one anxious to take it. There was still 
 another hope. Carlyle's various essays had been greatly noticed 
 and admired. An adventurous bookseller might perhaps be found 
 who would bid for a collected edition of them. The suggestion 
 took no effect, however. The " Teuf elsdrSckh " had to be sent 
 back from London, having created nothing but astonished dislike. 
 Nothing was to be done, therefore, but to remain at Craigenputtock 
 and work on, hoping for better times. Fresh articles were written 
 a second on Jean Paul, a slight one on Madame de Stafil, with 
 the first of the two essays on history which are published in the 
 "Miscellanies." He was thus able to live, but not, so far as money 
 was concerned, to overtake the time which he had spent over his 
 unsalable book; his finances remained sadly straitened, and he 
 needed all his energy to fight on against discouragement. One 
 bright gleam of comfort came to him from Weimar in the summer 
 of this year. Communication had been kept up constantly with 
 Goethe since the Comely Bank time. In the winter 1829-30 Mrs. 
 Carlyle, writing to her mother-in-law at Scotsbrig, says: 
 
 "Carlyle is over head and ears in business to-night writing letters 
 to all the four winds. There is a box to be despatched for Goethe 
 containing all manner of curiosities, the most precious of which is 
 a lock of my hair. There is also a smart Highland bonnet for his
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 59 
 
 daughter-in-law, accompanied by a nice little piece of poetry pro- 
 fessing to be written by me, but in truth I did not write a word 
 of it. 
 
 "Scotland prides her in the bonnet blue 
 That brooks no stain ia love or war; 
 Be it on Ottilic's head a token true 
 Of Scottish love to kind Weimar." 
 
 Goethe's answer reached Craigenputtock about June. 1 
 
 " Das werthe Schatzkiistlein, nachdem es durch den strcngsten Winter vom Con- 
 tinent lacge abgehalteu wordcu, ist cudlich uni die Hall'te Marz glucklich angelangt. 
 
 " Om von seinem Gehalt zu sprechcn, erwuhne ich zuerst die uuschiitzbare Locke, 
 die man wohl mil dem theuren Haupte verbunden mochte gesehen habcu, die aber 
 hier einzeln erblickt mich fast erschreckt hiitte. Der Gegeusatz war zu auOallend; 
 denn ich brauchte meiuen Scuiidel nicht zu beruhren, uni zu wissen, dass daselbst nur 
 Stoppeln sich hervorthun. Es war mir nicht notbig vor den Spiegel zu tretcn, um 
 zu erfahren, dass cine lange Zeitreise ihnen ein missfarbiges Anseuen gegeben. Die 
 Unmuglichkeit der verlangtcn Erwiederung Del mir aufs Herz, und uothigte mich zu 
 Gedanken, deren man sich zu entschlagen pflegt. Am Ende aber blieb mir doch 
 nichts ubrig, als mich an der Vorstellung zu beguugen, cine solche Gabe sey dankbar- 
 lichst phne Hoffnung irgend einer geniigenden Gegengabe anzunehmen. Sie soil auch 
 heilig in der ihrer wurdigen Brieftasche aufbewahrt bleibeu, uud nur das Liebenswur- 
 digsto ihr zugesellt werden. 
 
 " Der schottische elegante Turban hat, wie ich versichern darf, zu mauchem Ver- 
 gnuglichen Gelegenheit gegeben. Seit vielen Jahren werden wir von den Einwohnern 
 der drey Konigreiche besucht, welche gern cine Zeit lang bey uns vcrweilen und gute 
 Gsellschaft geniessen mogen. Hiernnter befinden sich zwar weniger Schotten, doch 
 kann es nicht fehlen, dass nicht noch das Andenken an einen solchen Landsmann sich 
 in einem schOnen Herzen so lebendig finde, um die National-Prachtmutze, die Distel 
 mil eingeschlossen, als einen wunschenswerthesten Schmuck anzusehen; und die 
 giitige Senderinn hiitte sich gewiss gefreut, das lieblichste Gesicht von der Welt darun- 
 ter Uervorgucken zu sehen. Ottilie aber daukt zum allerverbindlichsten, und wird, 
 sobald unsere Trauertage voruber sind, damit glorreich aufzutretcn nicht ermangeln. 
 
 "Lassen Sie mich nun eine niichste Gegensendung ankundigeu, welche zum Junt 
 als der gunstigsten Jahreszeit sich wohl wird zusammcngefundeu haben. Sie erhalten: 
 
 "1. Das Exemplar Ihres ubersetzten 'Schiller,' geschmiickt mil den Bildern Ihrer 
 landlichen Wohnung (by day and night!), begleitet von einigen Bogen in meiner Art, 
 wodurch ich zugleich dem Biichlein offnen Eingang zu verschaflen, besonders aber die 
 Communication beyder Lander und Literatureu lebhaftcr zu erregen tnichte. Ich 
 wunsche, dass diese nach Kenntniss des Publicums angewandteu Mittel Ihnen nicht 
 missfallen; auch der Gebrauch, den ich von Stelleu unserer Correspondenz gernacht, 
 nicht als Indiscretion m<">ge gedeutet werden. Wenn ich mich in jungeren Jahren vor 
 dergleichen Mittheilungen durchaus gehiitet. so zieint es dem hohern Alter auch solche 
 Wege nicht zu verschmiib.cn. Die guustige Aufuahme des Schillcrischen Briefwech- 
 sels gab mir eigentlich hiezu Aulass und Muth. 
 
 "Ferner Qnden Sie beygelegt: 
 
 " 2. Die vier noch fehlende Bande gedachter Briefe. Mogen Sie Ihnen als Zauber- 
 wagen zu Dienste stehen, um sich in der damaligen Zeit in unsere Mitte zu versetzen, 
 wo es eine unbedingte Strebsamkeit gait, wo niemand zu fordern dachte und nur zu 
 verdienen bemuht war. Ich habo mir die vielen Jahre her den Sinn, das Gefuhl jener 
 Tage zu erhalten gesucht und hoffe es soil mir fernerhiu gelingen. 
 
 "3. Eine funfte Sendung meiner Werke liegt sodaun bey, worin sich wohl manches 
 unterhaltende, unterrichtende, belehrende, brauchbar anzuwendende flnden wird. Man 
 gestehe zu dass es auch Ideal-Utilitarier gebe, und es sollte mir sehr zur Krcude ge- 
 reichen, wenn ich mich darunter ziihlen durfte. Noeh eine Lieferung, dann ist vorerst 
 das beabsichtigte Ganze vollbracht, dessen AbBchluss zu erleben ich mir kaum zu 
 hoffeu erlaubte. Nachtrage giebt es noch hinreichend. Meine 1'apicre sind in guter 
 Ordnung. 
 
 "i. Ein Exemplar meiner Farbenlehre und der dazu gehorigen Tafeln soil auch 
 beygefugt werden ; ich wQnsche, dass Sie den zweyten, als den historischen Theil, 
 zuerst lesen. Si schen da die Sache herankommen, stocken. sich aufkliiren und 
 weider verdustern. Sodann aber ein Bestreben nach neuem Lichto ohue allgemeinen 
 Erfolg. Alsdann wurde die erste Hiilfte des ersten Theils, als die didactische Abthei- 
 lung, eine allgemeine Vorstellung geben wie ich die Sache angegrilTen wunsche. Frey- 
 lich ist ohne Anscbauung der Experimente hier nicht durchzukomraen; wie Sie es mil
 
 60 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "The precious casket, after having been long detained from the 
 Continent through the most severe winter, has at last safely arrived 
 towards the middle of March. With regard to its contents, I men- 
 tion first the inestimable lock of hair, which one would have wished 
 to have seen together with the dear head, but which as here seen by 
 itself had almost frightened me. The contrast was too striking, for 
 there was no need for my touching my skull in order to know that 
 stubbles only would show themselves there. It was not necessary 
 for me to stand before the looking-glass in order to know that the 
 long passage of time had imparted to my hair a discolored appear- 
 ance. The impossibility of the asked-for return troubled my heart, 
 and drove me to thoughts which one is wont to put aside. In the 
 end, however, nothing remained to me but to be satisfied with the 
 thought that such a gift must be gratefully accepted, without the 
 hope of any sufficient return. It shall remain sacredly kept, in a 
 pocket-book worthy of it, and only the most loved shall ever bear it 
 company. 
 
 "The elegant Scotch turban has, as I may assure you, been the 
 occasion of much enjoyment. For many years we have had visits 
 from the inhabitants of the three kingdoms, who like to stay with 
 us for a time and enjoy good society. Though there are fewer 
 Scots among them, it cannot be but that the memory of one such 
 countryman should be so vivid in some one beautiful heart here as 
 to make it look on that splendid national head-dress, including the 
 thistle, as a most desirable ornament. The kind sender would, no 
 doubt, have been delighted to see the most charming face in the 
 world looking out from under it. Ottilie sends her most grateful 
 thanks, and will not fail, as soon as our mourning is over, to make a 
 glorious appearance in it. 
 
 "Let me now in return announce to you an approaching de- 
 spatch, which I hope to have put together by June, as the most 
 favorable time of the year. You receive 
 
 "1st. The copy of your translated 'Schiller,' adorned with the 
 pictures of your country home (by day and night), accompanied 
 by some sheets in my own style, whereby I try to gain a ready 
 entrance for the little book, and more especially to infuse greater 
 life into the intercourse of the two countries and literatures. I 
 hope that the means which I have employed, according to my 
 
 der polemischen Abtheilung halten wollen und konnen, wird sick alsdann ergeben. let 
 es mir niuglich, so lege besonders fur Sie ein einleitcndcs Wort bey. 
 
 " 5. Sagen Sie mir etwas zunachst wie Sie die deutsche Literatur bey den Ihrigen 
 einleitcn wollen; ich criiffno Ihnen gern meine Gedanken uber die Folge der Epochen. 
 Man braucbt nicht uberall ausfuhrlich zu seyn: gut aber ist's auf mancb.es voruber- 
 gebende Interessante wenigstens hinzudei'.tou, um zu zeigen dass man es kennt. 
 
 " Dr. Eckermann macht mit meinem SoUn eine Reise gegen Suden und bcdauert, 
 nicbt wie er gewunscht hattc, diesmal beyhGlflich aeyn zu konnen. Ich werde gern, 
 wie obgesagt, seine Stelle vertreten. Diesen Somuaer bleib ich zu Hause und sehe bis 
 Michael Geschafte genug vor mir. 
 
 " Gedenken Sie mit Ihrer lieben Gattinn unserer zum besten und empfangen wieder- 
 holten Uerzlichen Dank fur die schone Sendung. Treu angehorig, 
 
 'J. W. GOETHE. 
 
 " Weimar, den 13. April, 1830."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 61 
 
 knowledge of the public, may not displease you, and that the use 
 which I have made of some passages of our correspondence may 
 not be taken as an indiscretion. Though in my earlier years I have 
 carefully abstained from such communications, it behooves a more 
 advanced age not to despise even such ways. It was really the 
 favorable reception of my correspondence with Schiller which 
 gave me the impulse and courage for it. Further, you will find 
 added 
 
 " 2d. The four volumes, still wanting, of those letters. May they 
 serve as a magic chariot to transport you into our midst at that pe- 
 riod, when we thought of nothing but striving, where no one thought 
 of asking for rewards, but was only anxious to deserve them. I have 
 tried for these many years to keep alive the sense and the feeling of 
 those days. I hope I shall succeed in this for the future also. 
 
 " 3d. A fifth copy of my works is also there, in which I hope may 
 be found many things amusing, instructive, improving, and fit for 
 use. Let it be admitted that there exist ideal utilitarians also, and 
 it would give me much pleasure if I might count myself among 
 them. Still one number, and I shall have finished the whole of 
 what I intended for the present, and the completion of which I 
 hardly allowed myself to hope I should see. Supplements there are 
 plenty, and my papers are in good order. 
 
 "4th. A copy of my 'Treatise on Color,' with the tables belong- 
 ing to it, shall also be added ; and I wish you to read the second, as 
 the historical part, first. You see how the subject arose, how it 
 came to a standstill, how it grew clear, and how it became dark 
 again; then a striving after new light, without a general success. 
 Afterwards, the first half of the first part, being the didactic section, 
 would give a general idea how I wish to see the subject taken up. 
 Only without seeing the experiments, it is impossible to get on here. 
 You will then see what you wish and are able to do with the polem- 
 ical portion. If it is possible I shall add an introductory word 
 especially for you. 
 
 ' ' 5th. Please to tell me first how you wish to introduce German 
 literature among your people. I shall then open my thoughts to 
 you on the succession of the epochs. It is not necessary to be very 
 exhaustive everywhere, but it is well to point at least to many 
 things which had a passing interest, in order to show that one 
 knows them. Dr. Eckermann is making a journey with my son, 
 southwards, and regrets that this time he is not able to be useful as 
 lie had wished. I should gladly, as I said just now, take his place. 
 I shall stay at home this summer, and until Michaelmas have plenty 
 of work before me. 
 
 "May you and your dear wife keep us in best remembrance, and 
 receive once more my hearty thanks for the beautiful presents. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, J. W. GOETIIE. 
 
 "Weimar: April 13, 1830 l> 
 
 Attached to the letter to Carlyle were a few additional lines on 
 the request of Mrs. Carlyle for a lock of his hair, to which he had 
 been unable to accede. The original remains preserved among her
 
 62 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 treasures, the only autograph of Goethe which I have succeeded in 
 finding. 1 
 
 "An incomparable black ringlet demands a few more words from 
 me. I have to say with real regret that the desired exchange is, 
 alas ! impossible. 8hort and miscolored, and robbed of all its grace, 
 old-age must be content if the inner man can still throw out a flower 
 or two when the outward bloom has departed. I would gladly find 
 a substitute, but as yet I have not succeeded. My fairest greetings 
 to the admirable wife. I trust the box has arrived safe. G." 
 
 Goethe had already spoken of his inability to comply in his first 
 letter. This little note was perhaps intended for the Surrogat which 
 he had been vainly looking for; as an autograph which Mrs. Car- 
 lyle might keep for herself. 
 
 If the box came at the time which he intended, the pleasure which 
 it must have given was soon clouded. The journal alludes to the 
 death of the most dearly loved of all Carlyle's sisters. The Carlyles 
 as a family were passionately attached to each other. Margaret 
 Carlyle's apparent recovery was as delusive as her sister-in-law had 
 feared. In the winter she fell ill again ; in the spring she was car- 
 ried to Dumfries in the desperate hope that medical care might save 
 her. Carlyle has written nothing more affecting than the account 
 of her end in the "Reminiscences of Irving." A letter written at 
 the time to his brother, if wanting the mellow beauty which the 
 scene had assumed in his memory, is even more impressive from the 
 greater fulness of detail : 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : June 29, 1830. 
 
 " It was on Monday night when Alick took leave of our sister. 
 On Tuesday, if I remember rightly, she felt 'better,' but was evi- 
 dently fast growing weaker. In the afternoon it was pretty evident 
 to every one that she was far gone. The doctor, who was unwearied 
 in his assiduities, formed a worse opinion at every new examination. 
 All hope of a complete cure had vanished some days before. Our 
 mother asked her in the afternoon if she thought herself dying. 
 She answered, ' I dinna ken, mother, but I never was so sick in my 
 life. ' To a subsequent question about her hopes of a future world, 
 she replied briefly, but in terms that were comfortable to her parents. 
 It was about eight at night when John Currie was despatched to go 
 and seek a horse and proceed hither; where, as you already know, 
 
 1 " Eine unvergleichliche schwarze Haarlocke veranlasst mich noch ein Blattchen 
 beyzulegcn, und mil wahrhaftem Bedauern zu bemerken dnss die verlangte Erwiede- 
 rung leider unmoglich ist. Kurz und missfarbig, alles Schmuckes entbehrend, muss 
 das Alter sich begnugen wenn sich dem Innern noch irgend eine Bluthe aufthut, indem 
 die Aeussere verschwunden ist. Ich sinne schon auf irgend ein Surrogat; ein solches 
 zu finden hat mir aber noch nicht glucken wollea Meine schOnstcu (irusse der wur- 
 digen Gattinn. 
 
 " Moge das Kastchen glucklich angekommen seyn. G."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 
 
 he arrived about midnight. By this time the sick-room was filled 
 with sympathizing relatives. The minister, Mr. Clyde, also came 
 and feelingly addressed her. She recognized every one, was calm, 
 clear as she had ever been ; sometimes spoke in whispers, directing 
 little services te be done to her; once asked where Mary was, who 
 had gone out for a moment. Twice she asked for the ' drops,' I be- 
 lieve that ' mixture ' I spoke of. The first time, our mother, who 
 now cared chiefly for her soul's weal, and that sense and recollection 
 might be given her in that stern hour, answered dissuasively, but 
 said if she asked for them a second time they should be given her. 
 Some hours before, our mother had begged her forgiveness if she 
 had ever done her anything wrong; to which the dying one an- 
 swered, ' Oh no, no, mother, never, never,' earnestly, yet quietly, and 
 without tears. About a quarter-past ten she asked again for the 
 drink (or drops, which were taken in water), and took the glass 
 which Mary also held in her own hand. She whispered to Mary, 
 ' Pour up,' swallowed about half the liquid, threw her head on the 
 pillow, looking out with her usual look ; but her eyes quickly grew 
 bright and intense, the breath broke into long sighs, and in about 
 two minutes a slight quiver in the under-lip gave token that the 
 fight was fought and the wearied spirit at its goal. I saw her in the 
 winding-sheet about six o'clock, beautiful in death, and kissed her 
 pale brow, not without warm tears which I could not check. About 
 mid-day, when she was laid iu the coffin, I saw her face once more 
 for the last time. 
 
 "Our mother behaved in what I must call an heroic manner. 
 Seeing that the hour was now come, she cast herself and her child 
 on God's hand, and endeavored heartily to say, ' His will be done.' 
 Since then she has been calmer than any of us could have hoped 
 almost the calmest of us. No doubt the arrow still sticks in her 
 heart, and natural sorrow must have its course ; but I trust she seeks 
 and finds the only true balm, howsoever named, by which man's 
 woe can be healed and made blessed to him. 
 
 "Thus, dear brother, has our eldest and best sister been taken 
 from us, mercifully, as you said, though sorrowfully, having been 
 spared much suffering, and carried in clear possession of her sense 
 and steadfastness through that last solemn trial. We all wept sore 
 for her as you have done and now do, but will endeavor to weep no 
 more. I have often thought she had attained all in life that life 
 could give her a just, true, meekly invincible, completed character, 
 which I and so many others, by far more ambitious paths, seek for 
 in vain. She was in some points, I may say deliberately, superior 
 to any woman I have ever seen. Her simple clearness of head and 
 heart, her perfect fairness, and quiet, unpretending, brief decisive- 
 ness in thought, word, and act (for in all these she was remarkable) 
 made up so true and brave a spirit as, in that unaffected guise, we 
 shall hardly look upon again. She might have been wife to a Scot- 
 tish martyr, and spoken stern truths to the ear of tyrants, had she 
 been called to that work. As it is, she sleeps in a pure grave, and 
 our peasant maiden to us who knew her is more than a king's 
 daughter. Let us forever remember her and love her, but cease 
 from henceforth to mourn for her. She was mercifully dealt with
 
 64 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 called away when her heart, if not unwounded, wa's yet unseared 
 and fresh, amidst pain and heaviness it is true, but not in any agony 
 or without some peaceful train of hope enlightening her to the end. 
 The little current of her existence flowed onward like a Scottish 
 brook through green simple fields. Neither was it -caught into the 
 great ocean over chasms and grim cataracts, but gently and as among 
 thick clouds whereon hovered a rainbow. 
 
 "I might tell you something of the funeral arrangements, and how 
 the loss has left the rest of us. Early on Tuesday our mother and 
 Mary set off for Scotsbrig in one of Alick's carts which happened to 
 be there. A coffin was speedily got ready, with burial litter, etc. ; 
 and it was agreed that Alick and I should attend the body down to 
 Scotsbrig next day, where it was to lie till Saturday, the day of the 
 funeral. All Wednesday these things kept him and me incessantly 
 busy ; the poor Alick was sick to the heart, and cried more that day 
 than I had ever seen him do in his life. At night I had to return 
 hither and seek Jenny. I was the messenger of heavy and unex- 
 pected tidings. Jane, too, insisted on going with us ; so next morn- 
 ing (Thursday) we set out hence, Jenny and I in a gig, Jane riding 
 behind us. At Dumfries, where Alick had remained to watch all 
 night, we found Jacob with a hearse. About two o'clock we moved 
 off, the gig close following the hearse, Jane and Alick riding behind 
 us. We reached Scotsbrig about six. Poor Robert Crow was 
 dreadfully affected. He waked every night, spoke earnestly and 
 largely on the subject of the deceased, and by his honesty and sen- 
 sibility and pure sincere religious bearing endeared himself to every 
 one. On Saturday about half -past one the procession moved away. 
 Our mother stood like a priestess in the door, tearless when all were 
 weeping. Our father and Alick went in the gig. The former, ill 
 in health, looked resolute, austere, and to trivial condolers and ad- 
 visers almost indignant. The coffin was lowered into a very deep 
 grave on the east side of our headstone in the Ecclefechan church- 
 yard, and the mourners, a numerous company, separated; W. 
 Graham and a few others accompanying us home to that stupid 
 horrid ceremony, a funeral tea, which in our case was speedily 
 transacted. 
 
 "Yesterday morning we set out on our return. It had been set- 
 tled that Mary was to stay yonder for a fortnight or ten days, our 
 mother and Jenny to come hither. I drove the former in the gig; 
 Jenny came in a cart with Bretton. We settled various accounts, 
 etc., at Dumfries, and arrived here about eleven, all well. Mother 
 had a good sleep, and is pretty well in health. She talked of re- 
 turning to the Sacrament. Our father was complaining much, 
 and evidently suffering somewhat severely. His appetite is bad. 
 He has a cold, coughs a little, and is in bad spirits when left to him- 
 self. I bought him some paregoric, but he was breathless, dispirited, 
 and could not eat. We hope the good weather would mend him 
 would it come. The rest of us are well. God bless you, dear brother. 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 "We are all sad and dull [he wrote a fortnight later] about her 
 that is laid in the earth. I dream of her almost nightly, and feel
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 65 
 
 not indeed sorrow, for what is life but a continual dying ? Yet a 
 strange obstruction and haunting remembrance. Let us banish all 
 this, for it is profitless and foolish. 
 
 Thy quiet goodness, spirit pure and brave, 
 
 What boots it now with tears to tell; 
 The path to rest lies through the grave: 
 
 L&ved sister, take our long farewelL 
 
 We shall meet again, too, if God will. If he will not, then better 
 we should not meet." 
 
 From the Journal I add a few more words: 
 
 ' ' On the 22d of June my sister Margaret died at Dumfries, whith- 
 er she had been removed exactly a week before for medical help. 
 It was a Thursday night, about ten minutes past ten. Alick and I 
 were roused by express about midnight, and we arrived there about 
 four. That solstice night, with its singing birds and sad thoughts, 
 I shall never forget. She was interred next Saturday at Ecclefechan. 
 I reckoned her the best of all my sisters in some respects, the best 
 woman I had ever seen. 
 
 Whom bring ye to the still dwelling? 
 
 'Tis a tired playmate whom we bring you ; 
 
 Let her rest in your still dwelling 
 
 Till the songs of her heavenly sisters awaken her. 
 
 And so let me betake myself again, with what energy I can, to the 
 commencement of my task. Work is for the living, rest is for the 
 dead." 
 
 Margaret Carlyle sleeps in Ecclefechan churchyard. Her father 
 followed soon, and was laid beside her. Then after him, but not for 
 many years, the pious, tender, original, beautiful - minded mother. 
 John Carlyle was the next-of their children who rejoined them, and 
 next he of whom I am now writing. The world and the world's 
 business scatter families to the four winds, but they collect again in 
 death. Alick lies far off in a Canadian resting-place ; but in his last 
 illness, when the memory wanders, he too had travelled in spirit back 
 to Annandale and the old days when his brother was at college, and, 
 with the films of the last struggle closing over his eyes, he asked anx- 
 iously if ' ' Tom was come back from Edinburgh. " 
 
 The loss of this sister weighed heavily on Carlyle's spirits, and the 
 disappointment about his book fretted him on the side to which he 
 might naturally have turned to seek relief in work. Goethe's steady 
 encouragement was, of course, inspiriting, but it brought no grist to 
 the mill, and the problem of how he was to live was becoming ex- 
 tremely serious. Conscious though he was of exceptional powers, 
 which the most grudging of his critics could not refuse to acknowl- 
 edge, he was discovering to his cost that they were not marketable. 
 He could not throw his thoughts into a shape for which the Sosii of 
 the day would give him money. He had tried poetry, but his verse 
 was cramped and unmelodious. He had tried to write stories, but
 
 66 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 his convictions were too intense for fiction. The " dreadful earnest- 
 ness " of which Jeffrey complained was again in his way, and he 
 could have as little written an entertaining novel as St. Paul or St. 
 John. His entire faculty intellect and imagination alike was 
 directed upon the sternest problems of human life. It was not pos- 
 sible for him, like his friend at Craigcrook, to take up with the first 
 creed that came to hand and make the best of it. He required 
 something which he could really believe. Thus his thoughts re- 
 fused to move in any common groove. He had himself to form the 
 taste by which he could be appreciated, and when he spoke his 
 words provoked the same antagonism which every original thinker 
 is inevitably condemned to encounter antagonism first in the form 
 of wonder, and, when the wonder ceased, of irritation and angry en- 
 mity. He taught like one that had authority a tone which men 
 naturally resent, and must resent, till the teacher has made his pre- 
 tensions good. Every element was absent from his writing which 
 would command popularity, the quality to which booksellers and 
 review editors are obliged to look if they would live themselves. 
 Carlyle's articles were magnetic enough, but with the magnetism 
 which repelled, not which attracted. His faith in himself and in his 
 own purposes never wavered; but it was becoming a subject of seri- 
 ous doubt to him whether he could make a living, even the humblest, 
 by literature. The fair promises of the last year at Comely Bank 
 had clouded over; instead of invitations to write, he was receiving 
 cold answers to his own proposals. Editors, who had perhaps re- 
 sented his haughty style, were making him ' ' feel the difference, " 
 neglecting to pay him even for the articles which had been accepted 
 and put in type. His brother John, finding also patients who would 
 pay slow in sending for him, and not willing to give his services 
 gratuitously, was thinking that he too would become a man of let- 
 ters, and earn his bread by writing for magazines. Carlyle warned 
 him off so dangerous an enterprise with the most impressive ear- 
 nestness. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: Augusts, 1830. 
 
 " I sympathize in your reluctance to enter on the practice of med- 
 icine, or indeed of any professional duty, well understanding the 
 difficulties that lie at the porch of all and threaten the solitary ad- 
 venturer. Neither can I be surprised at your hankering after a lit- 
 erary life, so congenial as I have often heard you hint it would be to 
 your tastes. Nevertheless, it would greatly astonish me if, beyond 
 mere preliminary reveries, these feelings produced any influence on 
 your conduct. The voice of all experience seems to be in favor of a 
 profession. You sail there as under convoy in the middle of a fleet, 
 and have a thousandfold chance of reaching port. Neither is it Hap- 
 py Islands and halcyon seas alone that you miss, for literature is
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 
 
 thickly strewed with cold Russian Nova Zemblas, where you shiver 
 and despair in loneliness; nay, often, as in the case of this ' Literary 
 History of Germany, ' you anchor on some slumbering whale, and it 
 ducks under and leaves you spinning in the eddies. To my mind, 
 nothing justifies me for having adopted the trade of literature except 
 the remembrance that I had no other but these two that of a school- 
 master or that of a priest : in the one case with the fair prospect of 
 speedy maceration and starvation; in the other of perjury, which is 
 infinitely worse. As it is, I look confidently forward to a life of 
 poverty, toil, and dispiritment so long as I remain on this earth, and 
 hope only that God will grant me patience and strength to struggle 
 onwards through the midst of it, working out his will as I best can 
 in this lonely clay-pit where I am set to dig. The pitifullest of all 
 resources is complaining, which accordingly I strive not to practise: 
 only let these things be known for my brother's warning, that he may 
 order his life better than I could do mine. 
 
 " For the rest, I pretend not to thwart your own judgment, which 
 ought to be mature enough for much deeper considerations; neither 
 would I check these overflowings of discouragement, poured as they 
 naturally should be into a brother's ear; but, after all that is come 
 and gone, I expect to learn that your medical talent, sought over all 
 Europe, and indisputably the most honorable a man can have, is no 
 longer to be hidden in a napkin, still less to be thrown away into 
 the lumber-room; but to come forth into the light of day for your 
 own profit and that of your fellow-men. 
 
 ' ' Tell me, therefore, dear Jack, that you are in your own lodging 
 resolute, compacted, girt for the fight, at least endeavoring to do 
 your true duty. Now, as ever, I have predicted that success was 
 certain for you; my sole fear is that such wavering and waiting at 
 the pool may in the end settle into a habit of fluctuation and irresolu- 
 tion far enough from your natural character; a fear which, of course, 
 every new week spent in drifting to and fro tends to strengthen. 
 
 ' ' Fear nothing, Jack. Men are but poor spindle-shanked whiffling 
 wonners, when you clutch them through the mass of drapery they 
 wear. To throw plenty of them over the house-ridge were no such 
 feat for a right fellow. Neither is their favor, their envy, their ad- 
 miration, or anything else the poor devils can give or withhold, our 
 life or our death. Nay, the worst we and they fear is but a bugbear, 
 a hollow shadow, which, if you grasp it and smite it, dissolves into air. 
 March boldly up to it and to them; strong and still like the stars, 
 ' Ohne Hast, doch ohne liast. ' ' There is a soul in some men yet, even 
 yet, and God's sky is above us, and God's commandment is in us 
 
 1 Und wcnn die Welt voll Teufel war ', 
 
 Und wollt' uns gar yerschlingen, 
 So furrhten wir uns nicht so sehr: 
 Es muss uns doch gelingen. ' a 
 
 Up and be doing. Be my brother and life companion, not in word 
 and feeling only, but in deepest deed ! 
 
 " With regard to that manuscript of the ' Literary History of Ger- 
 many, 'get it out of 's claws if you have not, as I trust, already 
 
 i Without haste, yet without rest. a From Luther's Hymn.
 
 68 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 done so. To which now add an article on Schiller that Fraser has, 
 that he talked of giving to some magazine or other, but that I de- 
 sire to have the privilege of giving of retaining myself, being 
 minded, as I said already, to have no more business transactions 
 with that gentleman. Get the two MSS. therefore, dear Jack, and 
 wrap them up tightly till I send for them. The Schiller by-and-by 
 I intend for the Foreign Quarterly Review. 1 About the history I 
 wrote to Gleig, 2 Colburn's editor of some' Library of General Knowl- 
 edge,' three weeks ago, and again to-day, having received no an- 
 swer. Fraser offered to negotiate for me-4here in a letter he sent 
 me last week, but he need not mingle further in the matter, I think. 
 If I do not hear in a week, I shall decide for myself, and cut Gleig 
 as I have done other editors, and try some different method of real- 
 izing a pound or two. Get you the MSS. in the first place. Tait, 
 to whom I wrote, declines. I am now got as far as Luther; and if 
 I can get no bookseller, I will stop short there, and for the present 
 slit it up into review articles, and publish it that way. 3 Magazine 
 Fraser has never offered me a doit for Richter's critique, and not 
 even printed it at all. If you can get any cash from the fellow, it 
 will come in fine stead just now, when I have above 200. worth of 
 writing returned on my hands, and no Fortunatus's hat close by. 
 Adieu, Jack. We are poor men, but nothing worse. 
 
 " Your brother, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 To a proud, gifted man it was no pleasant thing to chaffer with 
 publishers and dun for payments, which were withheld perhaps to 
 bend the spirit of their too independent contributor. Carlyle bore 
 his humiliation better than might have been expected. Indeed, as a 
 rule, all serious trials he endured as nobly as man could do. When 
 his temper failed it was when some metaphorical gnat was buzzing 
 in his ear. John Carlyle succeeded in extorting the few pounds 
 that were owing from Fraser. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: August 21, 1830. 
 
 " In returning from Scotsbrig this day week, whither I had gone 
 on the Thursday before, I found your letter lying safe for me at 
 Dumfries, and in spite of its valuable enclosure only bearing single 
 postage. That last circumstance was an error on the part of his 
 Majesty which it did not strike me in the least to rectify. We hear 
 that Providence is a rich provider, and truly in my case I may 
 thankfully say so. Many are the times when some seasonable sup- 
 ply in time of need has arrived when it was not in the least looked 
 
 i It was, however, published after all in Eraser's Magazine, and stands now in the 
 third volume of the "Miscellanies." 
 
 a Afterwards the well-known Chaplain-general. 
 
 3 Partially accomplished in the following years, after many difficulties. The " Xibe- 
 lnngen Lied " appeared in the Westminster Review, and " Karly German Literature : ' in 
 the Foreign Quarterly. These essays, which are still the best upon their special subjects 
 which exist in the English language, are specimens of the book which could dud no 
 publisher. They too arc in the third volume of the " Miscellanies. "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 69 
 
 for. I was not by any means quite out of money when your bank 
 paper came to hand; but I saw clearly the likelihood, or rather 
 the necessity, of such an event, which now by this ' seasonable 
 interposition ' is put off to a safer distance. Pity that poor fellows 
 should hang so much on cash! But it is the general lot; and 
 whether it be ten pounds or ten thousand that would relieve us, the 
 case is all the same, and the tie that binds us equally mean. If I 
 had money to carry me up and down the world in search of good 
 men and fellow-laborers with whom to hold communion, and heat 
 myself into clearer activity, I should think myself happier; but in 
 the meantime I have myself here for better or worse; and who 
 knows but my imprisonment in these moors, sulkily as I may some- 
 times take it, is really for my good? If I have any right strength it 
 will. If not, then what is the matter whether I sink or swim? Oh 
 that I had but a little real wisdom! then would all things work 
 beautifully together for the best ends. Meanwhile the Dunscore 
 Patmos is simply the place where of all others in the known world 
 I can live cheapest, which in the case of a man living by literature, 
 with little salable talent, and who would very fain not prove a liar 
 and a scoundrel, this is a momentous point. So let us abide here 
 and work, or at least rest and be thankful. 
 
 "I am happy to tell you that if this 'Literary History' is not 
 finished, it is now at least concluded. On Tuesday last I had a very 
 
 short note from Captain, or rather Curate , which had been 
 
 twice requested from him, stating that he found ' the publishers 
 averse,' chiefly on the score of terms (which terms I had never hinted 
 at), and indicating that he himself was averse chiefly on the score of 
 size, as one volume would have suited the Library better. Further, 
 it appeared from this note that the Reverend Editor was, in all hu- 
 man probability, a cold-hearted, shabbyish, dandy parson and lieu- 
 tenant, who, being disappointed that I would not work for him at 
 low wages and any kind of work, wished to have nothing more to 
 do with me, in which implied wish I could not but heartily, though 
 sorrowf ully, coincide ; so that nothing remains for you but to send 
 me back that ill-starred MS. as soon as you can, that I may consign 
 it to its ultimate distinction. 
 
 "Assure Fraser that I feel no shadow of spleen against him, but a 
 true sentiment of friendship and regret at all the trouble he has had. 
 For your satisfaction, understand 1 am positively glad this intolera- 
 ble business is done; nay, glad that it is done in this way rather than 
 another. What part of the MS. I can split into review articles I 
 will serve in that way; for the present leaving the whole narrative 
 complete down to Luther, to serve as an Introduction to my various 
 essays on German literature, in the compass of which essays (had I 
 one or two more ; for example, Luther, Lessing, Herder) there already 
 lies the best History of German Literature that I can easily write; 
 and so were there a flourishing prophetic and circumspective essay 
 appended by way of conclusion, we had a very fair Gescfrichte, or at 
 least a zur Geschichte, all lying cut and dry, which can be published 
 at any time if it is wanted ; if not in my lifetime, then in some other, 
 till which consummation it will lie here eating no bread. And so 
 for all things, my brother, let us be thankful. I will work no more
 
 70 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 in 'Libraries,' or, if I can help it, in compilation. If my writing 
 cannot be sold, it shall at least have been written out of my own 
 heart. Also henceforth I will endeavor to be my own editor, hav- 
 ing now arrived at the years for it. Nay, in the Devil's name, have 
 I not a kail garden here that will grow potatoes and onions? The 
 highest of men have often not had so much. 
 
 "Too much of your sheet is already filled with my own concerns. 
 At Scotsbrig, as I must tell you, matters wore a more tolerable aspect 
 than I anticipated. Our mother was as well as usual, rather better, 
 having been out at haymaking. Our father was still weak and 
 somewhat dispirited; but as far as I could see he had no disease 
 working on him, save loss of appetite and the general feebleness be- 
 longing to those years he has now arrived at. He sits most of the 
 day, reading miscellaneously enough, wanders sometimes among the 
 laborers, or even does little jobs himself. He seemed much quieter 
 and better-tempered. 
 
 " Alick has written that he cannot keep this farm longer than 
 Whitsunday, finding it a ruinous concern. Let Mrs. Welsh arrange 
 the rest herself. Alick knows not well what he is to turn him to. 
 Other farms might be had, but it is a ticklish business taking farms 
 at present. Poor outlook there, nothing but loss and embarrass- 
 ment. I often calculate that the land is all let some thirty per cent. 
 too high ; and that before it can be reduced the whole existing race 
 of farmers must be ruined: that is, the whole agricultural tools 
 (which are capital) broken in pieces and burnt in the landlords' fire, 
 to warm his pointers with. 
 
 " Ach Gott! The time is sick and out of joint. The perversities 
 and mismanagements, moral and physical, of this best-of-all stage 
 of society are rising to a head ; and one day, see it who may, the 
 whole concern will be blown up to Heaven, and fall thence to Tar- 
 tarus, and a new and fairer era will rise in its room. Since the time 
 of Nero and Jesus Christ there is no record of such embarrassments 
 and crying, or, what is still worse, silent, abominations. But the 
 day, as we said, will come; for God is still in heaven, whether 
 Henry Brougham and Jeremiah Bentham know it or not; and the 
 gig, and gigmania, * must rot or start into thousand shivers, and 
 bury itself in the ditch, that Man may have clean roadway towards 
 the goal whither through all ages he is tending. Fiat, fiat! 
 
 "Make my kindest compliments to my old friend your landlord, 5 
 whose like, take him for all in all, I have not yet looked upon. 
 Tell him that none more honestly desires his welfare, Oh were I 
 but joined to such a man! Would the Scotch Kirk but expel him, 
 and his own better genius lead him far away from all Apocalypses, 
 and prophetic and theologic chimeras, utterly unworthy of such a 
 head, to see the world as it here lies visible, and is, that we might 
 fight together for God's true cause even to the death! With one such 
 man I feel as if I could defy the earth. But patience ! patience ! I 
 shall find one, perhaps. At all events, courage! courage! What 
 
 1 Allusion to Thurtcll's trial: " I always thought him a respectable man." "What 
 do you mean by respectable?" " He kept a gig." 
 a Irving, who had taken John Carlyle to live with him.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 71 
 
 have we to look for but toil and trouble? What drivellers are we to 
 whimper when it comes, and not front it, and triumph over it! 
 ' ' God forever bless you, dear brother. 
 
 " Heartily yours, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A.D. 1830. JET. 35. 
 
 TRIALS had fallen sharply on Carlyle, entirely, as Jeffrey had said, 
 through his own generosity. He had advanced 240?. in the educa- 
 tion and support of his brother John. He had found the capital to 
 stock the farm at Craigenputtock, and his brother Alick thus had 
 received from him half as much more small sums, as rich men 
 estimate such matters, but wrung out by Carlyle as from the rock by 
 desperate labor, and spared out of his own and his wife's necessities. 
 John (perhaps ultimately Alexander, but of this I am not sure) 
 honorably repaid his share of this debt hi the better days which 
 were coming to him, many years before fortune looked more kindly 
 on Carlyle himself. But as yet John Carlyle was struggling almost 
 penniless in London. Alick's farming at Craigenputtock, which. 
 Carlyle had once rashly thought of undertaking for himself, had 
 proved a disastrous failure, and was now to be abandoned. 1 The 
 pleasant family party there had to be broken up, and his brother was 
 to lose the companionship which softened the dreariness of his soli- 
 tude. Alick Carlyle had the family gift of humor. His letters 
 show that had he been educated he too might have grown into 
 something remarkable. Alick could laugh with all his heart, and 
 make others laugh. His departure changed the character of the 
 whole scene. Carlyle himself grew discontented. An impatient 
 Radicalism rings through his remarks on the things which were go- 
 ing on round him. The political world was shaken by the three 
 glorious days in Paris. England, following the example, was agi- 
 tating for Reform, and a universal and increasing distress flung its 
 ominous shadow over the whole working community. Reports of 
 it all, leaking in through chance visitors, local newspapers, or letters 
 of friends, combined with his own and his brother's indifferent and 
 
 1 Carlyle, however, had brought his genius to bear on the cultivation in a single in- 
 stance, though he could not save the farm. A field at Craigenputtock was made use- 
 less by a crop of nettles which covered the whole of it. They had been mowed down 
 many times, but only grew the thicker; and to root them out would have been a seri- 
 ous expense. It struck Carlyle that all plants were exhausted by the effort of flower- 
 ing and seeding, and if an injury would ever prove mortal to the nettle it would be at 
 that particular crisis. He watched the field till the seed was almost ripe, then mowed 
 it once more, and with complete success. So at least he described the experiment to 
 me. Gardeners will know if the success was accidental or was due to some other 
 cause.
 
 73 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 almost hopeless prospects, tended too naturally to encourage his 
 gloomy tendencies. Ever on the watch to be of use to him, the 
 warm-hearted Jeffrey was again at hand to seduce him into con- 
 formity with the dominant Liberal ways of thinking; that in the 
 approaching storm he might at least open a road for himself to his 
 own personal advancement. In August, Jeffrey pressed his two 
 friends in his most winning language to visit him at Craigcrook. 
 Carlyle, he said, was doing nothing, and could employ himself no 
 better than to come down with his blooming Eve out of his "blasted 
 Paradise, " and seek shelter in the lower world. To Mrs. Carlyle 
 he promised roses and a blue sea, and broad shadows stretching 
 over the fields. He said that he felt as if destined to do them 
 real service, and could now succeed at last. Carlyle would 
 not be persuaded; so, in September, the Jeffreys came again, 
 unlocked for, to Craigenputtock. Carlyle was with his family at 
 Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Returning [he said, Sept. 18, 1830] late in the evening, from a 
 long ride, I found an express from Dumfries that the Jeffreys would 
 be all at Craigenputtock that night. Of the riding and running, the 
 scouring and scraping, and Caleb Balderstone arranging my unfort- 
 unate but shifty and invincible Goody must have had, I say noth- 
 ing. Enough, she is the cleverest of housewives, and might put 
 innumerable blues to shame. I set out next morning, and, on arriv- 
 ing here, actually found the Dean of the Faculty, with his adherents, 
 sitting comfortably in a house swept and garnished, awaiting my 
 arrival. Of the shine itself I have room for no description. It all 
 went prosperously on, and yesterday morning they set out home- 
 wards, reducing us instantly to our own more commodious farthing 
 rushlight, which is our usual illumination. The worthy Dean is not 
 very well, and I fear not very happy. We all like him better than 
 we did. He is the most sparkling, pleasant little fellow I ever eaw 
 in my life." 
 
 How brilliant Jeffrey was, how he delighted them all with his 
 anecdotes, his mockeries, and his mimicries, Carlyle has amply con- 
 fessed; and he has acknowledged the serious excellence which lay 
 behind the light exterior. It was on this occasion that he sent the 
 501. to Hazlitt, which came too late, and found poor Hazlitt dying. 
 It was on this occasion that he renewed his generous offer to lift 
 Carlyle for a time over his difficulties out of his own purse, and, 
 when he could not prevail, promised to help John Carlyle in Lon- 
 don, give him introductions, and, if possible, launch him in his pro- 
 fession. He charged himself with the "Literary History," carried 
 it off with him, and undertook to recommend it to Longman. From 
 all this Jeffrey had nothing to gain : it was but the expression of 
 hearty good-will to Carlyle himself, for his own sake and for the 
 sake of his wife, in whom he had at least an equal interest. He
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 73 
 
 wrote to her as cousin : what the exact relationship was I know not ; 
 but it was near enough, as he thought, to give him a right to watch 
 over her welfare; and the thought of Carlyle persisting, in the face 
 of imminent ruin, in what to him appeared a vain hallucination, and 
 the thought still more of this delicate woman degraded to the duties 
 of the mistress of a farm-house, and obliged to face another winter 
 in so frightful a climate, was simply horrible to him. She had not 
 concealed from him that she was not happy at Craigenputtock; and 
 the longer he reflected upon it the more out of humor he became 
 with the obstinate philosopher who had doomed her to live there 
 under such conditions. 
 
 It is evident from his letters that he held Carlyle to be gravely re- 
 sponsible. He respected many sides of his character, but he looked 
 on him as under the influence of a curious but most reprehensible 
 vanity, which would not, and could not, land him anywhere but in 
 poverty and disappointment, while all the time the world was ready 
 and eager to open its arms and lavish its liberality upon him if he 
 would but consent to walk in its ways and be like other men. In 
 this humor nothing that Carlyle did would please him. He quar- 
 relled with the " Literary History." He disliked the views in it; he 
 found fault with the style. After reading it, he had to say that he 
 did not see how he could be of use in the obstetrical department to 
 which he had aspired in its behalf. 
 
 "Hang them! [said Carlyle bitterly, as one disappointment trod 
 on the heels of another] hang them! "I have a book in me that will 
 cause ears to tingle, and one day out it must and will issue. In this 
 valley of the shadow of magazine editors we shall not always linger. 
 Courage ! Not hope for she was always a liar but courage ! cour- 
 age!" 
 
 An account of Jeffrey's visit is inserted in the "Journal." Car- 
 lyle was evidently trying to think as well as he could about his great 
 friend, and was not altogether succeeding. 
 
 " The Jeffreys were here for about a week. Very good and inter- 
 esting beyond wont was our worthy Dean. He is growing old, and 
 seems dispirited and partly unhappy. The fairest cloak has its 
 wrong side, where the seams and straggling stitches afflict the eye! 
 Envy no man. Nescis quo urit. Thou knowest not where the shoe 
 pinches. 
 
 "Jeffrey's essential talent sometimes seems to me to have been 
 that of a Goldoni, some comic dramatist, not without a touch of fine 
 lyrical pathos. He is the best mimic in the lowest and highest 
 senses I ever saw. All matters that have come before him he has 
 taken up in little dainty comprehensible forms; chiefly logical for 
 he is a Scotchman and a lawyer and encircled with sparkles of 
 conversational wit or persiflage ; yet with deeper study he would 
 have found poetical forms for them, and his persiflage miiht have 
 
 II.-4
 
 74 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLK 
 
 incorporated itself with the love and pure human feeling that dwells 
 deeply in him. This last is his highest strength, though he himself 
 hardly knows the significance of it; he is one of the~ most loving 
 men alive; has a true kindness, not of blood and habit only, but of 
 soul and spirit. He cannot do without being loved. He "is in the 
 highest degree social; and, in defect of this, gregarious ; which last 
 condition he. in these bad times, has for the most part had to con- 
 tent himself withal. Every way, indeed, he has fallen on evil days; 
 the prose spirit of the world to which world his kindliness draws 
 him so strongly and so closely has choked up, and all but withered, 
 the better poetic spirit he derived from nature. Whatever is high- 
 est he entertains, like other Whigs, only as an ornament, as an ap- 
 pendage. The great business of man he, intellectually, considers, as 
 a worldling does, to be happy. I have heard him say,' ' If folly were 
 the happiest, I would be a fool.' Yet his daily life belies this doc- 
 trine, and says, ' Though goodness were the most wretched, I would 
 be good.' 
 
 " In conversation he is brilliant, or rather sparkling, lively, kind, 
 willing either to speak or listen, and, above all men I have ever seen, 
 ready and copious, on the whole exceedingly pleasant hi light talk 
 yet, alas! light, light, too light. He wilTtalk of nothing earMtBy, 
 though his look sometimes betrays an earnest feeling. *" He starts 
 contradictions in such cases, and argues, argues. Neither is his 
 arguing like that of a thinker, but of the advocate victory, not 
 truth. A right terra jftiu* would feel irresistibly disposed to wash 
 him away. He is not a strong man hi any shape, but nimble and 
 tough. 
 
 "He stands midway between God and Mammon, and his preach- 
 ing through Me has been an attempt to reconcile them. Hence his 
 popularity a thing easily accountable when one looks at the world 
 and at him, but litUe honorable to either. Literature! poetry! Ex- 
 cept by a dun indestructible instinct, which he has never dared to 
 avow, yet, being a true poet hi his way. could never eradicate, he 
 knows not what they mean. A true newspaper critic on the great 
 scale; no priest, but a concionator. 
 
 " Yet, on the whole, he is about the be*t man I ever saw. Some- 
 times I think he will abjure the devil if he live, and become a pure 
 light. Already he is a most tricksy, dainty, beautiful little spirit. 
 I have seen gleams on the face and eyes of the man that let you look 
 into a higher country. God bless him! These jottings are as sin- 
 cere as I could write "them; yet too dun and inaccurately compacted. 
 I see the nail, but have not here hit it on the head." 
 
 Meanwhile, and in the midst of Jeffrey's animadversions, Carlyle 
 himself was about to take a higher flight. He " had a book hi him 
 which would cause ears to tingle." Out of his discontent, out of his 
 impatience with the hard circumstances which crossed, thwarted, 
 and pressed him, there was growing hi his mind "Sartor Resartus." 
 He had thoughts fermenting hi him which were struggling to be 
 uttered. He had something real to say about the world and man's 
 position hi it to which, could it but find fit expression, he knew that
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 75 
 
 attention must be paid. The "clothes philosophy," which had per- 
 haps been all which his first sketch contained, gave him the neces- 
 sary form. His own history, inward and outward, furnished sub- 
 stance; some slight invention being all that was needed to disguise 
 his literal individuality ; and in the autumn of the year he set him- 
 self down passionately to work. Fast as he could throw his ideas 
 upon paper the material grew upon him. The origin of the book is 
 still traceable in the half-fused, tumultuous condition in which the 
 metal was poured into the mould. With all his efforts in calmer 
 times to give it artistic harmony he could never fully succeed. 
 "There are but a few pages in it," he said to me, " which are rightly 
 done." It is well, perhaps, that he did not succeed. The incom- 
 pleteness of the smelting shows all the more the actual condition of 
 his mind. If defective as a work of art, " Sartor" is for that very 
 reason a revelation of Carlyle's individuality. 
 
 The idea had first struck him when on a visit with Mrs. Carlyle 
 at Templand. Customs, institutions, religious creeds, what were they 
 but clothes in which human creatures covered their native nakedness, 
 and enabled men themselves to live harmoniously and decently to- 
 gether? Clothes, dress, changed with the times; they grew old, they 
 were elaborate, they were simple; they varied with fashion or habit 
 of life ; they were the outward indicators of the inward and spiritual 
 nature. The analogy gave the freest scope and play for the wilful- 
 lest and wildest humor. The ' ' Teuf elsdrockh, " which we have seen 
 seeking in vain for admission into London magazines, was but a 
 first rude draft. Parts of this perhaps survive as they were origi- 
 nally written in the opening chapters. The single article, when it 
 was returned to him, first expanded into two; then he determined to 
 make a book of it, into which he could project his entire self. The 
 Foreign Quarterly continued good to him. He could count on an 
 occasional place in Fraser. The part already written of his "Liter- 
 ary History," slit into separate articles, would keep him alive till the 
 book was finished. He had been well paid for his " Life of Schil- 
 ler. " If the execution corresponded to the conception, that ' ' Sartor " 
 would be ten times better. 
 
 On the 19th of October he described what he was about to hia 
 brother. ' ' I am leading the stillest life, musing amidst the pale 
 sunshine, or rude winds of October Tirl the Trees, when I go walk- 
 ing in this almost ghastly solitude, and for the rest writing with im- 
 petuosity. I think it not impossible that I may see you this winter 
 in London. I mean to come whenever I can spare the money, that 
 I may look about me among men for a little. What I am writing 
 at is the strangest of all things. A very singular piece, I assure you. 
 It glances from heaven to earth and back again, in a strange satirical 
 frenzy, whether fine or not remains to be seen."
 
 76 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Near the same date he writes to his mother: 
 
 "The wife and I are very quiet here, and accustoming ourselves 
 as fast as we can to the stillness of winter, which is fast coming on. 
 These are the grayest and most silent days I ever saw. My besom, 
 as I sweep up the withered leaves, might be heard at a furlong's dis- 
 tance. The woods are getting very parti-colored; the old trees quite 
 bare. All witnesses that another year has travelled away. What 
 good and evil has it brought us? May God sanctify them both to 
 every one of us! I study not to get too wae; but often I think of 
 many solemn and sad things, which, indeed, I do not wish to forget. 
 We are all in God's hand; otherwise this world, which is not wholly 
 a valley of the shadow of death, were too frightful. Why should 
 we fear ? Let us hope. We are in the place of hope. Our life is 
 a hope. But far better than all reasonings for cheerfulness is the 
 diligence I use in following my daily business. For the last three 
 weeks I have been writing by task-work again, and get along won- 
 derfully well. What it is to be I cannot yet tell whether a book or 
 a string of magazine articles. We hope the former; but in either 
 case it may be worth something. " 
 
 "Sartor" was indeed a free-flowing torrent, the outbursting of 
 emotions which as yet had found no escape. The discontent which 
 in a lower shape was rushing into French Revolutions, Reform Bills, 
 Emancipation Acts, Socialism, and Bristol riots and rick-burnings, 
 had driven Carlyle into far deeper inquiries inquiries into the how 
 and why of these convulsions of the surface. The Hebrew spiritual 
 robes he conceived were no longer suitable, and that this had some- 
 thing to do with it. The Hebrew clothes had become " old clothes " 
 not the fresh-wrought garments adapted to man's real wants, but 
 sold at second-hand, and gaping at all their seams. Radical also po- 
 litically Carlyle was at this time. The constitution of society, as he 
 looked at it, was unjust from end to end. The workers were starv- 
 ing; the idle were revelling in luxury. Radicalism, as he understood 
 it, meant the return of Astrsea an approach to equity in the appor- 
 tionment of good and evil in this world; and on the intellectual side, 
 if not encouragement of truth, at least the withdrawal of exclusive 
 public support of what was not true, or only partially true. He did 
 then actually suppose that the Reform Bill meant something of that 
 kind ; that it was a genuine effort of honorable men to clear the air 
 of imposture. He had not realized, what life afterwards taught him, 
 that the work of centuries was not to be accomplished by a single 
 political change, and that the Reform Bill was but a singeing of the 
 dung-heap. Even then he was no believer in the miraculous effects 
 to be expected from an extended suffrage. He knew well enough 
 that the welfare of the State, like the welfare of everything else, re- 
 quired that the wise and good should govern, and the unwise and 
 selfish should be governed; that of all methods of discovering and 
 promoting your wise man the voice of a mob was the least promis-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 77 
 
 ing, and that if Reform meant only liberty, and the abolition of all 
 authority, just or unjust, we might be worse off, perhaps, than we 
 were already. But he was impatient and restless; stung, no doubt, 
 by resentment at the alternative offered to himself either to become a 
 humbug or to be beaten from the field by starvation ; and the memor- 
 able epitaph on Count Zaehdarm and his achievements hi this world 
 showed in what direction his intellectual passions were running. 
 
 It seems that when Jeffrey was at Craigenputtock Carlyle must 
 have opened his mind to him on these matters, and still more fully in 
 some letter afterwards. Jeffrey, who was a Whig of the Whigs, who 
 believed in liberty, but by liberty meant the right of every man to do 
 as he pleased with his own as long as he did not interfere with his 
 neighbor, had been made seriously angry. Mysticism was a pardon- 
 able illusion, provoking enough while it lasted, but likely to clear off, 
 as the morning mist when the sun rises higher above the horizon ; 
 but these political views, taken up especially by a man so determined 
 and so passionately in earnest as Carlyle, were another thing, and an 
 infinitely more dangerous thing. Reform within moderate limits 
 waa well enough, but these new opinions, if they led to anything, 
 must lead to revolution. Jeffrey believed that they were wild and 
 impracticable; that if ever misguided missionaries of sedition could 
 by eloquence and resolute persistence persuade the multitude to adopt 
 notions subversive of the rights of property, the result could only be 
 universal ruin. His regard, and even esteem, for Carlyle seem to 
 have sensibly diminished from this time. He half feared him for 
 the mischief which he might do, half gave him up as beyond help 
 at least as beyond help from himself. He continued friendly. He 
 was still willing to help Carlyle within the limits which his con- 
 science allowed, but from this moment the desire to push him for- 
 ward in the politico-literary world cooled down or altogether ceased. 
 
 He tried the effect, however, of one more lecture, the traces of 
 which are visible in " Sartor." He had a horror of Radicalism, he 
 said. It was nothing but the old feud against property, made for- 
 midable by the intelligence and conceit of those who had none. 
 Carlyle's views either meant the destruction of the right of property 
 altogether, and the establishment of a universal co-operative system 
 and this no one in his senses could contemplate or they were non- 
 sense. Anything short of the abolition of property, sumptuary laws, 
 limitation of the accumulation of fortunes, compulsory charity, or 
 redivision of land, would not make the poor better off, but would 
 make all poor; would lead to the destruction of all luxury, elegance, 
 art, and intellectual culture, and reduce men to a set of savages 
 scrambling for animal subsistence. The institution of property 
 brought some evils with it, and a revolting spectacle of inequality. 
 But to touch it would entail evils still greater ; for, though the poor
 
 78 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 suffered, their lot was only what the lot of the great mass of mankind 
 must necessarily be under every conceivable condition. They would 
 escape the pain of seeing others better off than they were, but they 
 would be no better off themselves, while they would lose the mental 
 improvement which to a certain extent spread downwards through 
 society as long as culture existed anywhere, and at the same time the 
 hope and chance of rising to a higher level, which was itself enjoy- 
 ment even if it were never realized. Rich men, after all, spent most 
 of their income on the poor. Except a small waste of food on their 
 servants and horses, they were mere distributors among frugal and 
 industrious workmen. 
 
 If Carlyle meant to be a politician, Jeffrey begged him to set 
 about it modestly and patiently, and submit to study the questions 
 a little under those who had studied them longer. If he was a 
 Radical, why did he keep two horses himself, producing nothing 
 and consuming the food of six human creatures, that his own dia- 
 phragm might be healthily agitated? Riding-horses interfered with 
 the subsistence of men five hundred times more than the unfortu- 
 nate partridges. 1 So again Carlyle had adopted the Radical objec- 
 tions to machinery. Jeffrey inquired if he meant to burn carts and 
 ploughs nay, even spades too, for spades were but machines? Per- 
 haps he would end by only allowing men to work with one hand, 2 
 that the available work might employ a larger number of persons. 
 Yet for such aims as these Carlyle thought a Radical insurrection 
 justifiable and its success to be desired. The very first enactments 
 of a successful revolution would be in this spirit : the overseers of 
 the poor would be ordered to give twelve or twenty shillings to 
 every man who could not, or said he could not, earn as much by 
 the labor to which he had been accustomed. 
 
 Speculations on these and kindred subjects are found scattered 
 up and down in " Sartor." Jeffrey was crediting Carlyle with ex- 
 travagances which it is impossible that even in his then bitter hu- 
 mor he could have seriously entertained. He was far enough from 
 desiring insurrection, although a conviction did lay at the very bot- 
 tom of his mind that incurably unjust societies would find in in- 
 surrection and conflagration their natural consummation and end. 
 But it is likely that he talked with fierce exaggeration on such sub- 
 jects. He always did talk so. It is likely, too, that he had come to 
 some hasty conclusions on the intractable problems of social life, 
 and believed changes to be possible and useful which fuller knowl- 
 edge of mankind showed him to be dreams. Before a just allot- 
 ment of wages in this world could be arrived at just payment ac- 
 
 1 See the Zaehdarm Epitaph. 
 
 9 A curiously accurate prophecy on Jeffrey's part, not as regarded Carlyle, but as to 
 the necessary tendency of the unionist theory.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 79 
 
 cording to real desert he perceived at last that mankind must be 
 themselves made just, and that such a transformation is no work of 
 a political revolution. Carlyle, too, had been attracted to the Saint- 
 Simonians. He had even, hi a letter to Goethe, expressed some in- 
 terest and hope hi them ; and the wise old man had warned him off 
 from the dangerous illusion. ' ' Von der Societe Saint-Simonien bitte 
 Dich fern zu halten," Goethe had said. " From the Society of the 
 Saint-Simonians I entreat you to hold yourself clear. " ' Jeffrey's prac- 
 tical sense had probably suggested difficulties to Carlyle which he 
 had overlooked; and Goethe carried more weight with him than 
 Jeffrey. ' ' Sartor " may have been improved by their remonstrances ; 
 yet there lie in it the germs of all Carlyle's future teaching a clear 
 statement of problems of the gravest import, which cry for a solu- 
 tion, which insist on a solution, yet on which political economy and 
 Whig political philosophy fail utterly to throw the slightest light. 
 I will mention one to which Carlyle to his latest hour was continu- 
 ally returning. Jeffrey was a Malthusian. He had a horror and 
 dread of over-population. "Sartor" answers him with a scorn 
 which recalls Swift's famous suggestion of a remedy for the dis- 
 tresses of Ireland : 
 
 " The old Spartans had a wiser method, and went out and hunted 
 down their Helots, and speared and spitted them when they grew too 
 numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, now, after the 
 invention of firearms and standing armies, how much easier were 
 such a hunt ! Perhaps in the most thickly peopled countries some 
 three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied pau- 
 pers that had accumulated within the year. Let government think 
 of this. The expense were trifling ; the very carcasses would pay it. 
 Have them salted and barrelled. Could you not victual therewith, 
 if not army and navy, yet richly such infirm paupers, in workhouses 
 and elsewhere, as enlightened charity, dreading no evil of them, 
 might see good to keep alive? 
 
 " And yet there must be something wrong. A full-formed horse 
 will 'in any market bring from twenty to two hundred friedrichs- 
 d'or. Such is his worth to the world. A full-formed man is not 
 only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a 
 good round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. 
 Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised ar- 
 ticle, even as an engine ? Good heavens ! a white European man, 
 standing on his two legs, with his two five-fingered hands at his 
 shacklebones, and miraculous head on his shoulders, is worth, I 
 should say, from fifty to a hundred horses ! 
 
 "What portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous globe have ye 
 actually tilled and delved till it will grow no more ? How thick 
 stands your population in the pampas and savannas of America, 
 round ancient Carthage and in the interior of Africa, on both slopes 
 
 i This sentence alone survives of Goethe's letter on the occasion, extracted in one of 
 Carlyle's own.
 
 80 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of the Atlantic chain, in the central platform of Asia, in Spain, 
 Greece, Turkey, Grim Tartary, and the Curragh of Kildare ? One 
 man in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him earth, will 
 feed himself and nine others. Alas! where are now the Hengsts 
 and Alarics of our still growing, still expanding Europe, who when 
 their home is grown too narrow will enlist, and like fire-pillars guide 
 onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living valor, 
 equipped not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the 
 steam-engine and ploughshare ? Where are they? Preserving their 
 game !" 
 
 When Carlyle published his views on "the Nigger question," his 
 friends on both sides of the Atlantic were astonished and outraged. 
 Yet the thought in that pamphlet and the thought in " Sartor" is 
 precisely the same. When a man can be taught to work and made 
 to work, he has a distinct value in the world appreciable by money 
 like the value of a horse. In the state of liberty where he belongs 
 to nobody, and his industry cannot be calculated upon, he makes 
 his father poorer when he is born. Slavery might be a bad system, 
 but under it a child was worth at least as much as a foal, and the 
 master was interested in rearing it. Abolish slavery and substitute 
 anarchy in the place of it, and the parents, themselves hardly able 
 to keep body and soul together, will bless God when a timely fever 
 relieves them of a troublesome charge. 
 
 This fact, for fact it is, still waits for elucidation, and I often 
 heard Carlyle refer to it; jet he was always able to see "the other 
 side." No Hengst or Alaric had risen in the fifty years which had 
 passed since he had written " Sartor;" yet not long before his death 
 he was talking to me of America and of the success with which the 
 surplus population of Europe had been carried across the sea and 
 distributed over that enormous continent. Frederick himself, he 
 said, could not have done it' better, even with absolute power and 
 unlimited resources, than it had "done itself" by the mere action 
 of unfettered liberty. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A.D. 1831. .ET. 36. 
 
 A CHANGE meanwhile came over the face of English politics. 
 Lord Grey became Prime-minister, and Brougham Chancellor, and 
 all Britain was wild over Reform and the coming millennium. 
 Jeffrey went into Parliament and was rewarded for his long services 
 by being taken into the new government as Lord - advocate. Of 
 course he had to remove to London, and his letters, which hence- 
 forward were addressed chiefly to Mrs. Carlyle, were filled with ac- 
 counts of Cabinet meetings, dinners. Parliamentary speeches all for
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 81 
 
 the present going merry as a marriage bell. Carlyle at Craigenput- 
 tock continued steady to his work. His money difficulties seemed 
 likely to mend a little. Napier was overcoming his terror, and 
 might perhaps take articles again from him for the Edinburgh. 
 The new Westminster was open to him. The Foreign Quarterly had 
 not deserted him, and between them and Fraser he might still find 
 room enough at his disposal. The " Literary History " was cut up 
 as had been proposed; the best parts of it were published in the 
 coming year in the form of essays, and now constitute the greater 
 part of the third volume of the "Miscellanies." A second paper on 
 Schiller, and another on Jean Paul, both of which had been for some 
 time seeking in vain for an editor who would take them, were ad- 
 mitted into the Foreign Review and Fraser. Sufficient money was 
 thus ultimately obtained to secure the household from starvation. 
 But some months passed before these arrangements could be com- 
 pleted, and " Sartor" had to go on with the prospect still gloomy in 
 the extreme. Irving had seen and glanced over the first sketch of it 
 when it was in London, and had sent a favorable opinion. Carlyle 
 himself, notwithstanding his work, found time for letters to his 
 brother, who was still hankering after literature. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigcuputtock : February 26, 1831. 
 
 "Till "Wednesday I am preparing 'Reineke' and various little 
 etceteras, after which I purpose seriously inclining heart and hand 
 to the finishing of ' Teuf elsdrockh ' if, indeed, it be finishable. How 
 could you remember Irving's criticism so well? Tell him it was 
 quite like himself; he said all that was friendly, flattering, and en- 
 couraging, yet with the right faults kindly indicated a true picture 
 painted couleur de rose. I will make the attempt. And now, dear 
 Jack, as to the last fraction of the letter ; a word about you. Sorry 
 am I to see your supplies running so low, and so little outlook for 
 bettering them : yet what advice to give you? I have said a thousand 
 times, when you could not believe me, that the trade of literature 
 was worse as a trade than that of honest street-sweeping; that I 
 know not how a man without some degree of prostitution could live 
 by it, unless indeed he were situated like me, and could live upon 
 potatoes and point if need were as indeed need has been, is, and 
 will be, with better men than me. If the angels have any humor, 
 I am sure they laughed heartily to-day, as I myself have repeatedly 
 done, to see Alick setting off with twelvepence of copper, a long 
 roll like a pencase, the whole disposable capital of both our house- 
 holds. I realized six, he six, so he was enabled to go. I was for 
 keeping three, but he looked wistfully, and I gave him them with 
 loud laughter. He had borrowed all our money and did not get pay- 
 ments last Wednesday, but surely will on Monday. ... I could also 
 prove that a life of scribbling is the worst conceivable for cultivat- 
 ing thought, which is the noblest, and the only noble, thing in us. 
 Your ideas never get root, cannot be sown, but are ground down 
 
 II. 4*
 
 83 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 from day to day. Oh that I heard of any medicine for your practis- 
 ing, were it only on the lower animals! However, patience cour- 
 age. The time is coming dear Jack, keep a stout heart; I think I 
 notice in you a considerable improvement since you left us; a far 
 more manly bearing. Never despond. If you see no feasible method 
 of ever fairly attempting to get professional employment in London, 
 why then I think I would leave London. Do not fall into straits. 
 Do not involve yourself in debt. Come out of it. Come hither. 
 Share our provisions, such as the good God gives us our roof and 
 our welcome, and we will consider which way you are next to try 
 it. Above all, hide nothing from me, and I will hide it from the 
 Scotsbrig people whenever you bid me. 
 
 "And so God bless you, clear brother. Fear nothing but behaving 
 unwisely. T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Alick Carlyle was to leave Craigenputtock at Whitsuntide, a 
 neighboring grazier having offered the full rent for the farm, which 
 Alick was unable to afford. Where he was to go and what was to 
 become of him was the great family anxiety. 
 
 " Little things [said Carlyle] are great to little men, to little man; 
 for what was the Moscow expedition to Napoleon but the offering 
 also for a new and larger farm whereon to till? and this too was but 
 a mere clout of a farm compared with the great farm whose name 
 is Time, or the quite boundless freehold which is called Eternity. 
 Let us feel our bits of anxieties therefore, and make our bits of ef- 
 forts, and think no shame of them." 
 
 Both brothers were virtually thrown upon his hands, while he 
 seemingly was scarce able to take care of himself and his wife. 
 When Alick was gone he and she would be left "literally unter vier 
 Augen, alone among the whinstone deserts; within fifteen miles not 
 one creature they could so much as speak to," and " Sartor " was to 
 be written under such conditions. Another winter at Craigenput- 
 tock in absolute solitude was a prospect too formidable to be faced. 
 They calculated that with the utmost economy they might have 501. 
 in hand by the end of the summer, " Teuf elsdrSckh " could by that 
 time be finished. Mrs. Carlyle could stay and take care of Craigen- 
 puttock, while Carlyle himself would visit "the great beehive and 
 wasp's nest of London, "find a publisher for his book, and then see 
 whether there was any other outlook for him. If none offered, there 
 was still a resource behind, suggested perhaps by the first success of 
 Irving and advised by Charles Buller. 
 
 "I have half a mind [he wrote to John, warning him at the same 
 time to be secret about it] to start when I come there, if the ground 
 promise well, and deliver a dozen lectures in my own Annandale ac- 
 cent with my own God-created brain and heart, to such audience as 
 will gather round me, on some section or aspect of this strange life 
 in this strange era, of which my soul, like Eliphaz the Temanite's, is
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 83 
 
 getting fuller and fuller. Does there seem to thee any propriety in 
 a man that has organs of speech and even some semblance of under- 
 standing and sincerity sitting forever, mute as a milestone, while 
 quacks of every color are quacking as with lungs of brass? True, I 
 have no pulpit ; but, as I once said, cannot any man make him a pul- 
 pit simply by inverting the nearest tub? And what are your Whigs, 
 and Lorn-advocates, and Lord-chancellors, and the whole host of 
 unspeakably gabbling parliamenteers and pulpiteers and pamphlet- 
 eers, if a man suspect that there is fire enough in his belly to burn 
 up the entire creation of such? These all build on mechanism; one 
 spark of dynamism, of inspiration, were it in the poorest soul, is 
 stronger than they all 
 
 " As for the Whig Ministry with whom Jeffrey might appear to 
 connect me, I partly see two things: first, that they will have noth- 
 ing in any shape to do with me, did I show them the virtue of a 
 Paul ; nay, the more virtue the less chance, for virtue is the will to 
 choose the good, not tool-usefulness, to forge at the expedient: sec- 
 ondly, that they, the Whigs, except perhaps Brougham and his im- 
 plements, will not endure. The latter, indeed, I should wonder little 
 to see one day a second Cromwell. He is the cunningest and the 
 strongest man in England now, as I construe him, and with no bet- 
 ter principle than a Napoleon has a worship and self-devotion to 
 power. God be thanked that I had nothing to do with his univer- 
 sity and its committees. So that Providence seems saying to me, 
 ' Thou wilt never find pulpit, were it but a rhetoric chair, provided 
 for thee. Invert thy tub, and speak if thou hast aught to say.' 
 
 "Keep this inviolably secret, and know meanwhile that if I can 
 raise 501. at the right season, to London I will certainly come." 
 
 John Carlyle on his own account needed fresh admonition. Pa- 
 tients he could hear of none. The magazine editors were inclining, 
 for his name's sake, to listen to him. Carlyle's feeling about it was 
 like that of the rich man in torment. 
 
 To John CarlyU. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : March 27, 183L 
 
 "I am clear for your straining every sinew simply to get medical 
 employment, whether as assistant surgeon or in any other honest ca- 
 pacity. Without any doubt, as the world now stands, your safety 
 lies there. Neither are you so destitute of friends and influence 
 that on any given reasonable plan a considerable force of help could 
 not be brought to bear. There are several, of weight, that would on 
 more than one ground rejoice to do their best for you. Your world 
 of London lies too dim before me for specification in this matter. 
 Towards this, however, all your endeavors ought doubtless to be di* 
 rected. Think and scheme and inquire, or rather continue to do so : 
 once foiled is nothing like final defeat. So long as life is in a man 
 there is strength in him. Ein anderes Mai tcollen icir u use-re Sacfw 
 besser macJien ' the next time we will manage our affairs better ' 
 this was Fritz's Wahlspruch; and in this place of hope, where in- 
 deed there is nothing for us but hope, every brave man in reverses 
 says the like.
 
 84 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "For your success with the New Monthly, or even with Napier, I 
 care little, except so far as it might enable you to continue longer in 
 London on the outlook. In other respects I am nearly sure failure 
 would even be for your good. Periodical-writing is, as I have often 
 said, simply the worst of all existing employments. No mortal that 
 had another noble art, the noblest with but one single exception, but 
 would turn from it with abhorrence and cleave with his whole heart 
 to the other. I am of opinion that you have a talent in you, perhaps 
 far deeper than you yourself have often suspected ; but also that it 
 will never come to growth in that way. Incessant scribbling is in- 
 evitable death to thought. What can grow in the soil of that mind 
 which must all be riddled monthly to see if there are any grains in 
 it that will sell? A hack that contents himself with gathering any 
 offal of novelty or the like, and simply spreads this out on a stand 
 and begs the passengers to buy it, may flourish in such craft ; an 
 honest man, much more a man of any original talent, cannot. 
 Thoughts fall on us, as I said, like seed. This you will find to be 
 true. It is time only and silence that can ripen them. So convinced 
 am I of the dangerous, precarious, and, on the whole, despicable and 
 ungainly nature of a life by scribbling in any shape, that I am re- 
 solved to investigate again whether even I am forever doomed 
 to it. 
 
 "I will not leave literature; neither should you leave it. Nay, 
 had I but two potatoes in the world, and one true idea, I should hold 
 it my duty to part with one potato for paper and ink, and live upon 
 the other till I got it written. To such extremities may a mere man 
 of letters be brought in Britain at present; but nowise you, who 
 have another footing, and can live in a steady genial climate till ex- 
 perience have evoked into purity what is in you then to be spoken 
 with authority in the ears of all. 
 
 " Such lesson, my dear brother, had you to learn in London be- 
 fore even the right effort could begin. It is a real satisfaction that, 
 however bitterly you are learning or have learnt it, henceforth 
 your face and force are turned in the true direction. If not to-day, 
 then to-morrow you must and will advance prosperously and tri- 
 umph. Forward, then,festen Muth's undfrohen Sinn's, and God be 
 with you. Fear nothing; die Zeit bringt Rosen. 
 
 "Of public matters I could write much; but, greatly as the spec- 
 tacle of these times a whole world quitting its old anchorage and 
 venturing into new untried seas with little science of sailing aboard 
 solicits one's attention, they do not interest either of us chiefly. I 
 have signed no petition ; nay, I know not whether, had I the power 
 by speaking a word to delay that consummation or hasten it, I would 
 speak the word. It is a thing I have either longed for passionately 
 or with confidence carelessly predicted any time these fifteen years. 
 If I with any zeal approve of it now, it is simply on the ground of 
 this incontrovertible aphorism which the state of all the industrious 
 in these quarters too lamentably confirms 
 
 ' Hungry guts and empty purse 
 May be better, cau't be worse.' 
 
 There is no logic yet discovered that can get behind this. Yes, in.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 85 
 
 God's name, let us try it tho other way. Jane 'salutes you with 
 greetings and sisterly blessings.' l Adieu, dear Jack, fur jetzt. 
 
 " Ever your brother, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 In this period of "potatoes and point " and "farthing rushlights " 
 for illumination after dark, the reader may be anxious to know how 
 Mrs. Carlyle was getting on. Little can be said about this, for Car- 
 lyle tells next to nothing of her save in sad letters to Jeffrey, the nat- 
 ure of which, for they have not been preserved, can only be conject- 
 ured from Jeffrey's replies to them. We are left pretty much to guess 
 her condition ; and of guesses, the fewer that are ventured the better. 
 Here, however, is one letter of her own inquiring after a servant for 
 her mother one of the collection which Carlyle has himself made, 
 and has attached notes and preface to it. 
 
 To Miss Jean Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 [Betty Smail, mother of the two servant-girls treated of here, was 
 a dependant and cottager at Scotsbrig, come of very honest farmer 
 people, though now reduced. She was herself a hardy, striving, 
 noteworthy, lithe body, stood a great deal of sorrow and world-con- 
 tradiction well, and died, still at Scotsbrig, very deaf, and latterly 
 gone quite blind, age about ninety, only last year (1868), or the year 
 before. Her girl Jean did not go, I think. Both these poor girls 
 died in their mother's lifetime: one, probably Jean, soon after this 
 of sudden fever; the other still more tragically of some neuralgic ac- 
 cident suicide, thought not to be voluntary, hardly two weeks be- 
 fore my own great loss. Ah me! T. C.] 
 
 "Craigenputtock: Spring, 1831. 
 
 " My dearest Jean, I was meaning to write you a long letter by 
 Alick, but I have been in bed all day with a headache, and am risen 
 so confused and dull that for your sake as well as my own I shall 
 keep my speculations news I have none till another opportunity, 
 merely "despatching in a few words a small piece of business I have 
 to trouble you with, which will not wait. 
 
 "My mother is wanting a woman at next term to take charge of 
 her few cattle, work out, and assist at the washings. Not wishing 
 to hire one out of Thornhill, she has requested me to look about for 
 her, and would have liked Betty Smail, whom I formerly recom- 
 mended, provided she had been leaving the Andersons. But I was 
 happy to find (having been the means of placing there) that she is 
 not leaving them, and continues to give great satisfaction by her hon- 
 est, careful, obliging character. Miss Anderson happened to men- 
 tion to Betty that I had been inquiring about her for my mother, 
 when she suggested that her sister Jean, who is out of a place, might 
 possibly answer. You know this Jean. Is she still disengaged? 
 would she be willing to come? and do you think she would be fit for 
 the place ? 
 
 i Phrase of Edward Irv-ing's.
 
 86 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "That you may be better able to form a judgment in the matter, 
 I must tell you my mother has already one Jean, who is & favorite of 
 some standing; and you know there is not houseroom at Templand 
 for two favorites at once. 
 
 " The present Jean maintains her ground partly by good service, 
 partly by wheedling. To get the good- will of her mistress, and so 
 have a comfortable life, the new-comer, besides the usual requisites 
 in a byre-woman, should possess the art of wheedling in a still high- 
 er degree, 'or she should be an obtuse, imperturbable character that 
 would take ' the good the gods provided/ and for the rest ' jouk un- 
 til the jaw gaed by, ' would go on honestly milking her cows and 
 ' clatting' her byre 'in maiden meditation fancy free,' till, under a 
 change of ministry, which always comes at last, she might find her- 
 self suddenly promoted in her turn. 
 
 " Now all this is very ill-natured, and you will mind it only so far 
 as you see sense in it. It means simply that if Jean Smail be a very 
 sensitive or quarrelsome character, and at the same time without tact, 
 she would not be likely to prosper. Send me word by Alick what 
 you think. I need hardly add that a servant who pleases could not 
 possibly find a better place. 
 
 " Tell your mother, with my love, that the hen she has sent to be 
 eaten has laid the first egg of our whole stock. 
 
 " God bless you. More next time, as the Doctor says. 
 
 " Ever affectionately yours, JANE W. CARLYLE." 
 
 Meanwhile the affairs of the poor Doctor were coming to extrem- 
 ity. Excellent advice might be given from Craigenputtock ; but 
 advice now was all that could be afforded. Even his magazine art- 
 icles, for which he had been rebuked for writing, could not be sold, 
 after all. It was time clearly for a deus ex machind to appear and 
 help him. Happily there was a deus in London able and willing to 
 do it hi the shape of Jeffrey. Though he had failed in inducing 
 Carlyle to accept pecuniary help from him, he could not be prevent- 
 ed from assisting his brother, and giving him or lending him some 
 subvention till something better could be arranged. Here, too, Car- 
 lyle's pride took alarm. It was pain and humiliation to him that 
 any member of his family should subsist on the bounty of a stranger. 
 He had a just horror of debt. The unlucky John himself fell in for 
 bitter observations upon his indolence. John, he said, should come 
 down to Scotland and live with him. There was shelter for him 
 and food enough, such as it was. He did not choose that a brother 
 of his should be degraded by accepting obligations. But this time 
 Jeffrey refused to listen. It might be very wrong, he admitted, for 
 a man to sit waiting by the pool till an angel stirred the water; but 
 it was not necessarily right, therefore, that because he could not im- 
 mediately find employment in his profession, he should renounce his 
 chances and sit down to eat potatoes and read German at Craigen- 
 
 i "Truish emphatic for business' sake. T. C."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 87 
 
 puttock. He had no disposition to throw away money without a 
 prospect of doing good with it, but he knew no better use to which 
 it could be put than in floating an industrious man over the shoals 
 into a fair way of doing good for himself. Even towards Carlyle, 
 angry as he had been, his genuine kindness obliged him to relent. 
 If only he would not be so impracticable and so arrogant ! If only 
 he could be persuaded that he was not an inspired, being, and des- 
 tined to be the founder of a new religion! But a solitary life and a 
 bad stomach had so spoiled him, all but the heart, that he despaired 
 of being able to mend him. 
 
 Jeffrey was so evidently sincere that even Carlyle could object no 
 longer on his brother's account. "My pride, "he said, "were true 
 pride savage, satanic, and utterly damnable if it offered any oppo- 
 sition to such a project when my own brother and his future happi- 
 ness was concerned." Jeffrey did not mean to confine himself to 
 immediate assistance with his purse. He was determined to find, if 
 possible, some active work for John. Nothing could be done imme- 
 diately, for he was obliged to leave London on election business. 
 Help in money at least was to be given as soon as he returned Car- 
 lyle using the interval for another admonition. 
 
 "Consider your situation [he wrote to his brother on the 8th of 
 May] with unprejudiced, fearless mind, listening no moment to the 
 syren melodies of hope, which are only melodies of sloth, but taking 
 cold prudence and calculation with you at every step. Nimm Dich 
 zusammen. Gather yourself up. Feel your feet upon the rock be- 
 fore you rest, not upon the quicksand, where resting will but in- 
 gulf you deeper. In your calculations, too, I Avould have you 
 throw out literature altogether. Indeed, I rather believe it were for 
 your good if you quite burned your magazine pen and devoted your- 
 self exclusively and wholly to medicine, and nothing but medicine. 
 Magazine work is below street-sweeping as a trade. Even I who 
 have no other, am determined to try by all methods whether it is not 
 possible to abandon it. " 
 
 At Craigenputtock the most desperate pinch was not yet over. 
 One slip of the ' ' Literary History" came out in the April number of the 
 Edinburgh in the form of a review of Taylor's "Historic Survey of 
 German Poetry," 1 but payment for it was delayed or forgotten. 
 Meanwhile the farm-horses had been sold. Old Larry, doing double 
 duty on the road and in the cart, had laid himself down and died 
 died from overwork. So clever was Larry, so humorous, that it was 
 as if the last human friend had been taken away. The pony had 
 been parted with also, though it was recovered afterwards; and 
 before payment came from Napier for the article they were in 
 real extremity. Alick by his four years of occupation was out of 
 
 >" Miscellanies, "voLiii.
 
 88 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 pocket 300Z. These were the saddest days which Carlyle had 
 ever known. 
 
 The summer came, and the Dunscore moors grew beautiful in the 
 dry warm season. " So pure was the air, the foliage, the herbage, 
 and everything round him," that he said, if Arcadianly given, he 
 " might fancy the yellow buttercups were asphodel, and the whole 
 scene a portion of Hades some outskirt of the Elysian Fields, the 
 very perfection of solitude. " Between the softness of the scene and 
 the apparent hopelessness of his prospects, Carlyle's own heart seems 
 for a moment to have failed. He wrote to Jeffrey in extreme de- 
 pression, as if he felt he had lost the game, and that there was noth- 
 ing for it but to turn cynic and live and die in silence. The letter I 
 have not seen, and I do not know whether it has been preserved; 
 but Jeffrey's answer shows what the tone of it must have been. 
 " The cynic tub," " the primitive lot of man," Jeff rey frankly called 
 an unseemly and unworthy romance. If Carlyle did not care for 
 himself, he ought to think of his young and delicate wife, whose 
 great heart and willing martyrdom would make the sacrifice more 
 agonizing in the end. It was not necessary. He should have aid 
 effective aid ; and if he pleased he might repay it some day ten times 
 over. Something should be found for him to do neither unglorious 
 nor unprofitable. He was fit for many things, and there were more 
 tasks in the world fit for him than he was willing to believe, He 
 complimented him on his last article in the Edinburgh. Empson 
 had praised it warmly. Macaulay and several others, who had 
 laughed at his " Signs of the Times," had been struck with its force 
 and originality. If he would but give himself fair play, if he could but 
 believe that men might differ from him without being in damnable 
 error, he would make his way to the front without difficulty. If 
 Jeffrey had been the most tender of brothers, he could not have 
 written more kindly. Carlyle, if one of the proudest, was also one 
 of the humblest of mortals. He replied "that he was ready to work 
 at any honest thing whatsoever;" " that he did not see that litera- 
 ture could support an honest man otherwise than a la Diogenes." 
 "In this fashion he meant to experiment, if nothing else could be 
 found, which, however, through all channels of investigation he was 
 minded to try for." 
 
 It is not easy to see precisely what kind of employment Jeffrey 
 had really in view for Carlyle. At one time, no doubt, he had 
 thought of recommending him strongly to the government. At an- 
 other he had confessedly thought of him as his own successor on the 
 Edinburgh Review. But he had been frightened at Carlyle's Rad- 
 icalism. He had been offended at his arrogance. Perhaps he thought 
 that it indicated fundamental unsoundness of mind. He little con- 
 jectured that the person for whom he was concerning himself was
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 89 
 
 really one of the most remarkable men in Europe, destined to make 
 a deeper impression upon his contemporaries than any thinker then 
 alive. This was not to be expected; but it must be supposed that 
 he was wishing rather to try the sincerity of Carlyle's professions 
 than that he was really serious in what he now suggested. He gave 
 a list of possible situations: a clerkship at the Excise or the Board 
 of Longitude or the Record Office, or librarianship at the British 
 .Museum, or some secretaryship in a merchant's house of business. 
 He asked him which of these he would detest the least, that he might 
 knov^ before he applied for it. 
 
 Poor Carlyle ! It was a bitter draught which was being commend- 
 ed to his lips. But he was very meek; he answered that he would 
 gratefully accept any one of them : but even such posts as these he 
 thought, in his despondency, to be beyond his reach. He was like 
 the pilgrim in the valley of humiliation. "I do not expect," he 
 told his mother, ' ' that he will be able to accomplish anything for 
 me. I must even get through life without a trade, always in pov- 
 erty, as far better men have done. Our want is the want of faith. 
 Jesus of Nazareth was not poor, though he had not where to lay his 
 head. Socrates was rich enough. I have a deep, irrevocable, all- 
 comprehending Ernulphus curse to read upon Gigmanity : that is the 
 Baal-worship of our time." 
 
 Though brought down so low, he could not entirely love the hand 
 which had made him feel where he stood in the world's estimation. 
 His unwillingness that John should accept money from Jeffrey was 
 not removed. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : July 7, 1831. 
 
 "Help towards work I would solicit from any reasonable man. 
 Mere pecuniary help for its own sake is a thing one should always 
 be cautious of accepting. Few are worthy to give it, still fewer ca- 
 pable of worthily receiving it. Such is the way of the time we live 
 in. Meanwhile, relax not your own efforts for a moment. Think, 
 project, investigate. You are like a soul struggling towards birth ; 
 the skilfullest accoucheur (pardon the horrible figure) can but help 
 the process. Here, too, the Caesarean operation, as I have seen, is 
 oftenest fatal to the foetus. In short, Jack, there lie the rudiments 
 of a most sufficient man and doctor in thee; but wise will must first 
 body them forth. Oh, I know the thrice-cursed state you are in 
 hopeless, grim, death-defying thoughts; a world shut against you by 
 inexpugnable walls. Rough it out; toil it out; other way of mak- 
 ing a man have I never seen. One day you will see it all to have 
 been needed, and your highest, properly your only blessing. 
 
 " I must not take all your encomiums about my scriptorial genius. 
 Nevertheless, I am coming up to look about me, and if possible even 
 to establish myself in London. This place is as good as done ; not 
 even the last advantage, that of living in any pecuniary sufficiency,
 
 90 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 for I never was as poor. Naso, ' the blockhead, has neither paid me 
 nor written to me. But we are in no strait. I shall even raise the 
 wind for a London voyage without much difficulty. I can write to 
 Naso, if he will not to me. I have some thoughts of cutting him 
 and his calcined caput mortuum dead men's ashes of Whiggisrn 
 at any rate. But fair and soft. I now see through Teufel, write at 
 him literally night and day, yet cannot be done within say fifteen 
 days. Then I should like to have a week's rest, for I am somewhat 
 in the inflammatory vein. As to the Teufel itself, whereof 122 solid 
 pages lie written off, and some 40 above half ready are to follow, I 
 cannot pretend to prophecy. My humor is of the stoical sort as 
 concerns it. Sometimes I think it goodish, at other times bad ; at 
 most times the best I can make it here. A strange book all men will 
 admit it to be. Partially intended to be a true book I know it to be. 
 It shall be printed if there is a possibility. You anticipate me in 
 the suggestion of lodgings. There must I live, and nowhere as a 
 guest. Dreitdgiger Oast wird eine Last. A guest after three days is 
 a burden. Have you no little bedroom even where you are ; and 
 one little parlor would serve us both. I care about nothing but a 
 bed where I can sleep. That is to say, where are no bugs and no 
 noises about midnight; for I am pretty invincible when once fairly 
 sealed. The horrors of nerves are somewhat laid in me, I think ; yet 
 the memory of them is frightfully vivid. For the rest, my visit to 
 London is antigigmanic from heart to skin. The venerable old man 
 (Goethe) sends me ten days ago the noblest letter I ever read. 2 
 Scarcely could I read it without tears. Let me die the death of the 
 righteous ; let my last end be like his. Goethe is well and serene. 
 Another box on the way hither. We all salute you. T. C." 
 
 The picture of Carlyle's condition poor, almost without hope; 
 the companions which had made the charm of his solitude (his 
 brother Alick, his horse Larry) all gone or going, the place itself 
 disenchanted has now a peculiar interest, for it was under these 
 conditions that "Sartor Resartus" was composed. A wild sorrow 
 sounds through its sentences like the wind over the strings of an 
 seolian-harp. Pride, too, at intervals fiercely defiant, yet yielding 
 to the inevitable, as if the stern lesson had done its work. Carlyle's 
 pride needed breaking. His reluctance to allow his brother to ac- 
 cept help from Jeffrey had only plunged him into worse perplexities. 
 John had borrowed money, hoping that his articles would enable 
 him to repay it. The articles had not been accepted, and the hope 
 had proved a quicksand. Other friends were willing to lend what 
 was required, but he would take nothing more ; and the only re- 
 source left was to draw again upon Carlyle's almost exhausted funds. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : July 12, 1831. 
 
 "I wrote last Thursday under cover to the Lord-advocate, which 
 letter you have before this received. However, not knowing the 
 
 1 Napier, of the Edinburgh Review. * Not to be found.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 91 
 
 right address, I was obliged to address the M.P. at 'London,' so 
 that some delay may have occurred. Alick and 1 1 were down at 
 the kirk on Sunday. I went for the first time these many months, 
 on account of the Irish collection ; and there your letter was lying 
 which demands a quite instantaneous reply. I regretted greatly that 
 no device of mine could take effect sooner than to-night ; but, as if it 
 had been some relief, I made ready another letter for your behoof (of 
 which anon) that very night, and have had it lying here sealed ever 
 since. It was a letter to Bowring, requesting him to pay the Nibe- 
 lungen article 2 forthwith into your hands. I did this as courteous- 
 ly as possible, and imagine he will not fail. However, a day or two 
 may elapse; and in the meantime you have nothing. Had I been at 
 Dumfries I would have got a Bank of England note; but there is 
 none such here : we have not even a better than this of one pound, 
 though I tried to borrow a fire in vain. So you must receive it as 
 our poor n&n plus ultra. Take it to William Hamilton in Cheap- 
 side. Say your brother was sending you money, and requested that 
 he would give you a sovereign for this. If Bowring do not send 
 before it is done, I think you may call on him. I suppose there will 
 be three sheets, and their pay is only ten guineas. Take off it what 
 you have need of till I come. Write also a word on the papers to 
 say how it is, 3 and how you are. I have had you little out of my 
 head since Sunday last. 
 
 ' ' Shocking as your situation is, however, we all here agree that it is 
 more hopeful than we have ever yet had clear argument to think it. 
 Thank God you have done no wrong. Your conscience is free, and 
 you yourself are there. We all reckon that your conduct in that 
 matter of Jeffrey's 20?. was entitled to be called heroic. Sooner or 
 later, my dear brother, it must have come to this namely, that your 
 own miscellaneous industry could not support you in London, and 
 that you ceased to borrow, better, we say, now than never. Bear 
 up ; front it bravely. There are friendly eyes upon you, and hearts 
 praying for you. Were we once together it will be peremptorily 
 necessary to consider how the land lies and what is to be done. In 
 all situations (put of Tophet) there is a duty, and our highest blessed- 
 ness lies in doing it. I know not whether Jeffrey may be able to do 
 anything for you. He speaks to me rather more hopefully than he 
 seems to have done to you. 
 
 "I shall study to be "with you about the beginning of August. I 
 have written, as you suggested, to Napier for a note to Longman, 
 also for payment of what he owes me. I am struggling forward 
 with Dreck, sick enough, but not in bad heart. I think the world 
 will no wise be enraptured with this medicinal Detil's-dung ; that 
 the critical republic will cackle vituperatively, or perhaps maintain 
 total silence a. la bonne heure ! It was the best I had in me. What 
 God has given me, that the Devil shall not take away. Be of good 
 cheer, my brother. Behave wisely, and continue to trust in God. 
 
 1 Alick Carlyle, unable to find another farm or occupation, had come back for a time, 
 and was living in a small room in the yard at Craigeuputtock. 
 
 8 I.e., the money due for It. 
 
 * The Carlyles communicated with one another by cipher on newspapers, to save 
 postage.
 
 02 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 No doubt He sent you hither to work out his will. It is man's mis- 
 sion and blessedness could he but rightly walk in it. Write to me. 
 Trust in me. Ever your brother, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Once more, on the 17th of the same month: 
 
 "I am laboring at Teufel with considerable impetuosity, and cal- 
 culate that, unless accidents intervene, I may be actually ready to 
 get under way at the end of the month. But there will not be a 
 minute to lose. I sometimes think the book will prove a kind of 
 medicinal assafcetida for the pudding stomach of England, and pro- 
 duce new secretions there. Jacta est alea! I will speak out what 
 is in me, though far harder chances threatened. I have no other 
 trade, no other strength or portion in this earth. Be it so. Hourly 
 you come into my head, sitting in your lone cabin in that human 
 chaos with mehr als ein Schilling and bread-and-water for your din- 
 ner; and I cannot say but I respect you more and love you more 
 than ever I did. Courage! courage! TapferJceit, 'deliberate valor,' 
 is God's highest gift, and comes not without trial to any. Times will 
 mend ; or, if times never mend, then, in the Devil's name, let them 
 stay as they are, or grow worse, and we will mend. I know but one 
 true wretchedness the want of work (want of wages is comparative- 
 ly trifling), which want, however, in such a world as this planet of 
 ours, cannot be permanent unless we continue blind therein. I must 
 to my Dreck, for the hours go. Gott mit Dir !" 
 
 It was a sad, stern time to these struggling brothers ; and it is with 
 a feeling like what the Scots mean by woe that one reads the letters 
 that Jeffrey was writing during the worst of it to Mrs. Carlyle. He 
 had done what he was allowed to do. Perhaps he thought they un- 
 derstood their own matters best; and it was not easy to thrust his 
 services on so proud a person as Mrs. Carlyle's husband, when they 
 were treated so cavalierly; but he did not choose to let the corre- 
 spondence fall, and to her he continued to write lightly and brillantly 
 on London gayeties and his own exploits in the House of Commons. 
 The tone of these letters must have been out of harmony with the 
 heavy hearts at Craigenputtock, but he was still acting as a real 
 friend, and remained on the watch for opportunities to be of use, if 
 not to Carlyle himself, yet at least to his brother. 
 
 So July ran out, and " Sartor" was finished, and Carlyle prepared 
 to start, with the MS. and the yet unpublished sections of the "Lite- 
 rary History " in his portmanteau, to find a publisher for one or 
 both of them ; to find also, if possible, some humble employment to 
 which his past work might have recommended him ; to launch him- 
 self, at any rate, into the great world, and light on something among 
 its floating possibilities to save him from drowning, which of late 
 had seemed likely to be his fate. With Craigenputtock as a home 
 he believed that he had finally done. The farm which was to have 
 helped him to subsist had proved a failure, and had passed to stran- 
 gers. Living retired in those remote moorlands, he had experienced
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 93 
 
 too painfully that from articles in reviews he could count on no reg- 
 ular revenue, while the labor lost in the writing led to nothing. 
 Work of such a kind, if it was to be profitable, must become an in- 
 tellectual prostitution ; and to escape from this was the chief object 
 of his London journey. He had so far swallowed his pride as to ac- 
 cept, after all, a loan of 501. from Jeffrey for his expenses. The 
 sums due to him would provide food and lodging during his stay. 
 Such hopes as he still may have entertained of the realization of his 
 old dream of making a mark in the world, lay in the MS. of " Sar- 
 tor." " It is a work of genius, dear," Mrs. Carlyle said to him, as 
 she finished the last page she whose judgment was unerring, who 
 flattered no one, and least of all her husband. A work of genius! 
 Yes; but of genius so original that a conventional world, measuring 
 by established rules, could not fail to regard it as a monster. Orig- 
 inality, from the necessity of its nature, offends at its first appear- 
 ance. Certain ways of acting, thinking, and speaking are in posses- 
 sion of the field, and claim to be the only legitimate ways. A man 
 of genius strikes into a road of his own, and the first estimate of 
 such a man has been, is, and always will be, unfavorable. Carlyle 
 knew that he had done his best, and he knew the worth of it. He 
 had yet to learn how hard a battle still lay ahead of him before that 
 worth could be recognized by others. Jeffrey compared him to Par- 
 son Adams going to seek his fortune with his manuscript in his 
 pocket. Charles Buller, more hopeful, foretold gold and glory. 
 Jeffrey, at any rate, had made it possible for him to go; and, let it 
 be added, John Carlyle, notwithstanding his struggles to avoid obli- 
 gations, had been forced to accept pecuniary help from the same 
 kind hand. 
 
 "Night before going [he wrote in 1866], how I still remember 
 it ! I was lying on my back on the sofa in the drawing-room. She 
 sitting by the table late at night, packing all done, I suppose. Her 
 words had a guise of sport, but were profoundly plaintive in mean- 
 ing. ' About to part ; and who knows for how long, and what may 
 have come in the interim. ' This was her thought, and she was evi- 
 dently much out of spirits. 'Courage, dear only for a month,' I 
 would say to her, in some form or other. I went next morning early, 
 Alick driving; embarked at Glencaple Quay. Voyage as far as 
 Liverpool still vivid to me. The rest, till arrival in London, gone 
 mostly extinct." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A.D. 1831. ^ET. 36. 
 
 Extracts from Carlyle's Note-book, begun in London, 1831. 
 "August 4. Left Craigenputtock and my kind little wife, 
 Alick driving me, at two o'clock in the morni^. Shipped at Glen-
 
 94 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 caple; hazy day; saw Esbie in the steerage; talked mysticism with 
 him during six weary hours we had to stay at Whitehaven. Re-em- 
 barkment there amidst bellowing and tumult and fiddling unutterable, 
 all like a spectral vision. 'She is not there.' St. Bees Head. Man 
 with the nose. Sleep in the steamboat cabin : confusion worse 
 confounded. Morning views of Cheshire the Rock, Liverpool, 
 and steamboats. 
 
 "August 5,9.30m the morning. Land at Liverpool; all abed 
 at Maryland Street. 1 Boy Alick" accompanies me over Liverpool. 
 Exchange, dome : dim view there. Dust, toil, cotton-bags, hampers, 
 repairing ships, disloading stones. Carson a hash : melancholy body 
 of the name of Sloan. Wifekin's assiduity in caring for me. 
 
 "August 6 (Saturday). Taken to one Johnstone, a frenchified 
 Lockerby man, who leads me to ' Change. Place in ' Independent 
 Tally Ho, ' sir ! See George Johnstone, surgeon, whom I had un- 
 earthed the night before. Patient of his. He dines with us. Walk 
 on the Terrace, near the Cemetery. Have seen the steam-coaches in 
 the morning. Liverpool a dismembered aggregate of streets and 
 sand-pits. Market ! hubbub ! 
 
 "Augusts. Go out to find Esbie. He calls on me. Confused 
 family dinner; ditto tea. G. Johnstone again; talk; to bed. 
 
 "August 9. Off on Monday morning. Shipped through the 
 Mersey; coached through Eastham, Chester, Overton (in Wales), 
 Ellesmere, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Birmingham; attempt at 
 tea there. Discover, not without laughter, the villany of the Liver- 
 pool coach-bookers. Henley-in-Arden. Stratford-on-Avon (horses 
 lost there). Get to sleep. Oxford at three in the morning. Out 
 again, there; chill but pleasant. Henley, Maidenhead, etc. Arrive, 
 full of sulphur, at White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly. Dismount at the 
 Regent Circus, and am wheeled (not whirled) hither 3 about half- past 
 ten. Poor Jack waiting all the while at the Angel, Islington. Talk 
 together when he returns; dine at an eating-house among French- 
 men, one of whom ceases eating to hear me talk of the Saint-Simoni- 
 ans. Leave my card at the Lord-advocate's, with promise to call 
 next morning. Sulphurous enough." 
 
 These extracts supply the lost places in Carlyle's memory, and 
 serve as a frame into which to fit the following letter to his wife. 
 The intense affection which he felt for her is visible in every line. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Craigenputtock. 
 
 "6 Woburn Buildings, Tavistock Square: August 11,1831. 
 
 "Dearest and Wife, I have got a frank for you and will write 
 from the heart whatever is in the heart. A blessing it was that you 
 made me give such a promise; for I feel that an hour's speech in 
 speaking with my own will do me infinite good. It is very sweet 
 
 1 Liverpool home of Mrs. Carlyle's uncle John the uncle who was made bankrupt 
 through a fraudulent partner, and afterwards paid all his creditors in full. 
 
 ' John's son. 
 
 3 To 6 Woburn Buildings, Tavistock Square the house of George Irving, Edward 
 Irving's brother, where Jolh Carlyle lodged.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 95 
 
 in the midst of this soul-confusing phantasmagoria to know that I 
 have a fixed possession elsewhere; that my own Jeannie is thinking 
 of me, loving me; that her heart is no dream like all the rest of it. 
 Oh, love me, my dearest always love me. I am richer with thee than 
 the whole world could make me otherwise. 
 
 "But to the practical. Expect no connected or even intelligible 
 narrative of all the chaotic sights, sounds, movements, counter- 
 movements, I have experienced since your lips parted from mine on 
 our threshold still less of all the higher chaotic feelings that have 
 danced their wild torch-dance within me. For the present I must 
 content myself, like Sir William Hamilton, with ' stating a fact or 
 two.' Understand then, Goodykin,. that after infinite confusion, I 
 arrived at Liverpool about eight o'clock on the morning after I 
 left you, quite sleepless, and but for your dinner (which I parted 
 with a certain 'Esbie,' whom Alick knows well, whom I found 
 in the boat and preached mysticism to for six hours) quite victual- 
 less. The Maryland Street people ' were not up, but soon rose and 
 received me well. Delightful it was to get into a room and have 
 my face washed ; and then on opening my trunk to find everywhere 
 traces of my good ' coagitor's ' 2 care and love. The very jujube box 
 with its worsted and darning-needle did not escape me; it was so 
 beautiful I could almost have cried over it. Heaven reward thee, 
 my clear-headed, warm-hearted, dearest little Screamikin! 
 
 ' ' John Welsh was the same substantial, honest fellow whom we 
 have always known him: he and I got along, as we always do, 
 beautifully together. 
 
 "The Auntie was loud, talkative, argumentative, infinitely bus- 
 tling, but also very assiduous in showing me kindness. To make a 
 long tale short, I left them on Sunday morning at half -past seven 
 with many blessings and two cups of sufficient coffee, which the 
 good housewife would not be prevented from making me at that 
 early hour. 
 
 " Which last hospitality, I may well say, was doubly blest; for it 
 so turned out this was the only refection I received till my arrival 
 in London on the following day about ten o'clock. I must except a 
 penny loaf snatched from the landlady of an inn in Shropshire, and 
 a cup of hot sugar-and-water (as the whole time proved only fifteen 
 minutes), for which I had the pleasure of paying half a crown in 
 the village of Birmingham. How all this happened, and I was sent 
 circulating over the whole West of England, set my watch by the 
 Shrewsbury clock, and saw portions of Wales, and had the delight- 
 fullest drive, only no victual, or knowledge by what route I was 
 bound all this depended on the art of the Liverpool coach agents, 
 at which, villanous as it was, I could not help laughing when, after 
 leaving Birmingham, I came to see into the mystery. There are 
 men in Liverpool who will book you to go by any coach you like, 
 and to enter London at any place and hour you like, and then send 
 you thither by any coach or combination of coaches they like. I 
 was booked for a certain imaginary 'Tally Ho,' went by seven suc- 
 
 i Mr. John Welsh and his family. 
 
 * His wife. Somebody's pronunciation of "coadjutor."
 
 06 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 cessive vehicles, none of which had that name, and entered London 
 three hours later, and by quite the opposite side than I had appoint- 
 ed John to wait at. Sulphurous enough. However, I have now 
 had sleep and am well. The only mischief done was tlw breaking 
 of the eggs, which, however, the warehouseman has now made good 
 again. So do not grieve thyself, dearest. The broken eggs are 
 dearer to me than the whole ones would have been; there is a 
 pathos in them, and I love Jeannie more. 
 
 "With little difficulty I conveyed myself and luggage to Jack's 
 old lodgings, and there learnt his actual address at no great dis- 
 tance, and, to my astonishment, in the upper floor of George Ir- 
 ving's house, who also lets lodgings. It is a very beautiful sitting- 
 room, an immense bedroom above (and John sleeps with George), 
 for which we are to pay 25s. weekly. Quiet and airy, and among 
 known people. All is right in this respect. 
 
 "The first day I did little; yet walked over to the Duke's, 'found 
 him out, and left my card with a promise for next morning. It is 
 between two and three miles from this. On arriving there I was 
 asked my name, and then instantly ushered in and welcomed in their 
 choicest mood by the whole family. Mrs. Jeffrey was as kind as 
 ever; Charlotte, too, came simpering in, and looked as if she would 
 let me live. The Advocate retired and re-entered with your picture, 
 which was shown round; for little, I could have grat over it. After 
 a time, by some movements I got the company dispersed, and the 
 Advocate by himself, and began to take counsel with him about 
 'Teufelsdrockh.' He thought Murray, in spite of the Radicalism, 
 would be the better publisher; to him, accordingly, he gave me a 
 line, saying that I was a genius, and would likely become eminent; 
 further, that he (Jeffrey) would like well to confer with him about 
 that book. I directly set off with this to Albemarle Street; found 
 Murray out; returned afterwards and found him in, gave an outline 
 of the book, at which the Arimaspian smiled; stated, also, that I had 
 nothing else to do here but the getting of it published, and was, above 
 all, anxious that his decision should be given soon. He answered 
 that he would begin this very afternoon, and that on Wednesday 
 next he would give me an answer. I then went off; despatched my 
 ' Teufelsdrockh ' with your tape round him. Of the probable issue 
 I can form no conjecture: only Murray seemed to know me, and I 
 dare say is very anxious to keep well with Ministers, so will risk 
 what he dares. 
 
 "Napier's letter is also come, with a note to Rces, which I think 
 I shall perhaps not deliver (perhaps, too, I may) till after next 
 Wednesday. 
 
 ' ' Badams called here an hour after I came : he brought his wife 
 next day. I was out, but saw them in the evening. She is a good 
 woman, and good-looking, whom I think you will like. He is in no 
 good way, I doubt; yet not without hope. I have also seen Mrs. 
 Montagu; talked longer with her than I shall speedily do again, for 
 she seems to me embittered and exasperated ; and what have I to do 
 with her quarrels? Jack she seems positively to have cut, because 
 
 1 Jeffrey's house in Jcnnyn Street.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 97 
 
 he would not turn with her in a day from a transcendental apotheo- 
 sis of Badarns to excommunication. All things go round and round. 
 For me, as I told her, I would continue to love all parties and pity 
 all, and hate or quarrel with none. 
 
 "Jack stands glowering o'er me, as you know is his wont. Tell 
 Alick all my news ; read him the letter (so much of it as you can 
 read), and give to every one my kindest brotherly love." 
 
 "August 15. 
 
 ' ' Your kind precious letter came to me on Friday like a cup of 
 water in the hot desert. It is all like yourself: so clear, precise, 
 loving, and true to the death. I see poor Craigenputtock through it, 
 and the best little Goodykin sitting there, hourly meditating on me 
 and watching my return. Oh, I am very rich were I without a penny 
 in the world! But the Herzen's Goody must not fret herself and 
 torment her poor sick head. I will be back to her; not an hour will 
 I lose. Heaven knows the sun shines not on the spot that could be 
 pleasant to me where she were not. So be of comfort, my Jeannie, 
 and with thy own sweet orderly spirit make calmness out of confu- 
 sion, and the dawn (as it does in some climates) to shine through the 
 whole night till it be morning and the sun once more embraces his 
 fair kind earth. For the rest, thou canst not be too ' Theresa-like;' ' 
 it is this very fidelity to practical nature that makes the charm of 
 the picture. . . . 
 
 "I am getting a little more composed in this whirlpool, and can 
 tell you better how it whirls. 
 
 "Oil Friday morning, the day after I wrote, Jack walked down 
 with me to Longmans, and I delivered Napier's note to a staid, 
 cautious, business-like man, who read it with an approving smile, 
 listened to my description of the ' German Literary History ' with 
 the same smile in a faced state, and then (like a barbarian as he was) 
 ' declined the article. ' He was polite as possible, but seemed deter- 
 mined on risking nothing. If Murray fail me (as Wednesday will 
 probably show), I have calculated that it will be hardly worth while 
 to offer these people Dreck, but that I must try some other course 
 with him. I hope not at all, therefore hardly think that Murray will 
 accept (so lucky were it), and am already looking out what I can for 
 other resources in the worst issue. Dreck shall be printed if a man 
 in London will do it; if not with, then without, 'fee or reward.' I 
 even conjecture still that this is the time for him: everybody I see 
 participates in the feeling that society is nigh done; that she is a 
 phoenix, perhaps, not so many conjecture. I agree with my proph- 
 etess in thinking that some young adventurous bookseller were the 
 hopefullest. We shall see soon. 
 
 "Saturday morning I wrote to Goethe (with kindest love from 
 you, too) ; also to Charles Buller and to Fraser (notifying my pres- 
 ence), then off for Shooter's Hill, some ten miles away, where we ar- 
 rived in time for dinner. Strachey is as alert as ever. In his poor 
 lady I had room to mark the doings of time. She wore a sad, se- 
 cluded look; I learnt she had been for three years violently dys- 
 
 1 Theresa, in " Wilhelm Meister. '' 
 II.-5
 
 98 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 peptical. Our recognition was franker on my part than on hers ; 
 only her eyes spoke of gladness; nay, she seemed to have a kind of 
 fear of me, and in a little special conversation I had it all to myself. 
 She inquired kindly for you, whom I described as one that she would 
 like, a hater of lies, to begin with. Poor Julia Strachey ! She is like 
 a flower frozen among ice, and now contented with such soil: a hith- 
 erto unnoticed girl had rushed up to a woman, and in the long black 
 locks I noticed a streak of gray. Fleeting time ! Here, too, might 
 I partly discern that my place was changed, though still (not?) empty. 
 A ' female friend,' skilled, it is said, in the Greek tragedians (credat 
 Apella), was there, brimful of intolerant Church-of-Englandism a 
 little gray-eyed, ill-bred, fat button of a creature (very like a certain 
 white sempstress in Ecclef echan) : with her, in the course of the even- 
 ing, I was provoked for one moment, so pert was she, to run tilt, 
 and, I fear, transfix her. Strachey was beginning a hoarse laugh, but 
 suddenly checked himself, as a landlord should: the little Button 
 went off to bed without good-night, but was blithe again next morn- 
 ing. That such should be the only friend of such! Let not us, dear 
 Jeannie, complain of solitude. I have still you, with really a price- 
 less talent for silence, as Mrs. S., too, has. I say priceless, for this 
 Button wants it wholly, and thereby I felt would have driven me in 
 three days to blank despair. 
 
 ' ' The orator was at Leamington when I arrived. He only re- 
 turned Saturday night ; has already been up here to see me, and left 
 a message that he would be at home all day. From all I can see, 
 Irving seems to have taken his part: is forgotten by the intellectual 
 classes, but still flourishes as a green bay-tree (or rather green cab- 
 bage-tree) among the fanatical classes, whose ornament and beacon 
 he is. Strangely enough, it is all fashioned among these people : a 
 certain everlasting truth, ever new truth, reveals itself in them, but 
 with a body of mere froth and soap-suds and other the like ephemeral 
 impurities. Yet I love the man, and can trustfully take counsel of 
 him. His wife I saw some nights ago leaner, clearer-complexioned, 
 I should say clearer-hearted, also, and clearer-headed; but, alas! very 
 straitlaced, and living in the suds element. 
 
 ' ' I forced myself out this morning to go and breakfast with the 
 Advocate, and was there before any one was up. Charlotte, the 
 younger and the elder, received me in their choicest mood. In the 
 midst of breakfast a side door opened, and the poor Duke looked in 
 in his nightgown (for they have made the back drawing-room into a 
 bedroom) to ask for me, and, with the old quizzicality in his little 
 face, declared, 'Why, Charley, I've got the cholera, I believe.' He 
 called me afterwards into his bedroom to ask how I was progress- 
 ing ; thought it likely that Murray would publish at some time or 
 other; spoke of John; asked for your health, and what I had pre- 
 scribed for you. Letters arriving, I got your frank, and withdrew, 
 straitly charged to return. I am to take tea this evening at Bad- 
 ams's, where Godwin is promised. " 
 
 "Wednesday, August 17. 
 
 "I left off on the eve of seeing Irving and taking tea with God- 
 win. The first object I accomplished. Irving, with his huge fleece
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 99 
 
 of now grizzled hair, was eager to talk with me and see me often. I 
 was with him last night, and, being quite in his neighborhood (within 
 three minutes), shall take frequent opportunities of seeing him. He 
 is bent on our coming to London, of which I myself can yet say 
 nothing. Some vague schemes of settling within some miles of it 
 (as at Enfield, where Badams is to live) are hovering about me, which 
 I will overhaul and see through. It will all depend on this, Can I 
 get work here, and money for it to keep any sort of house ? which 
 question is yet far from answered or answerable. However, I hope, 
 and fear not. 
 
 "Next came Godwin. Did you not grudge me that pleasure, 
 now ? At least, mourn that you were not there with me ! Grudge 
 not, mourn not, dearest Jeannie ; it was the most unutterable stupid- 
 ity ever enacted on this earth. We went, Jack and I, to the huge 
 Frenchwoman, Mrs. Kenny's (once Mrs. Holcrof t), Badams's mother- 
 in-law, a sort of more masculine Aurelia (' Wilhelm Meister '), who 
 lives, moves, and has her being among plays, operas, dilettantes, and 
 playwrights. Badams and his wife had not returned from the 
 country, but in a few minutes came. Mrs. Godwin already sate gos- 
 siping 'in the dusk an old woman of no significance; by-and-by 
 dropped in various playwrightesses and playwrights, whom I did 
 not even look at ; shortly before candles Godwin himself (who had 
 been drinking good green tea by his own hearth before stirring out). 
 He is a bakC bushy-browed, thick, hoary, hale little figure, taciturn 
 enough, and speaking, when he does speak, with a certain epigram- 
 matic spirit, wherein, except a little shrewdness, there is nothing but 
 the most commonplace character. (I should have added that he 
 wears spectacles, has full gray eyes, a very large, blunt, characterless 
 nose, and ditto chin.) By degrees I hitched myself near him, and 
 was beginning to open him and to open on him, for he had stared 
 twice at me, when suddenly enough began a speaking of French 
 among the Kennys and Badamsinas (for they are all French-Eng- 
 lish), and presently Godwin was summoned off to take a hand at 
 whist ! / had already flatly declined. There did the philosopher 
 sit, and a swarm of noisy children, chattering women, noisy dilettan- 
 tes round him ; and two women literally crashing hoarse thunder out 
 of a piano (for it was louder than an iron forge) under pretext of its 
 being music by Rossini. I thought of my own piano, and the far 
 different fingering it got; looked sometimes not without sorrow at 
 the long-nosed whist-player, and in the space of an hour (seeing sup- 
 per about to be laid in another room) took myself away. 
 
 " Next morning (Tuesday) I went to Bowring's. Figure to yourself 
 a thin man about my height and bent at the middle into an angle of 
 150, the back quite straight, with large gray eyes, a huge turn-up 
 nose with straight nostrils to the very point, and large projecting 
 close-shut mouth : figure such a one walking restlessly about the 
 room (for he had been thrown out of a gig, and was in pain), frank 
 of speech, vivid, emphatic, and verstdndig. Such is the Radical Doc- 
 tor. We talked copiously, he utterly utilitarian and Radical, I ut- 
 terly mystical and Radical; and parted about noon, with a standing 
 invitation on his part to come again, and promise to introduce me to 
 the Examiner editor (Fonblanque) ; and a certain trust on my part
 
 100 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and disposition to cultivate further acquaintance. He named several 
 booksellers whom I might apply to iu case Murray balked me, as I 
 calculate he is but too like to do. 
 
 " Wednesday morning I put on clean raiment (nothing but the 
 white trousers are wearable here for the heat, and I have still only 
 two pairs), and, drawing myself a chart on a slip of paper, started 
 off to Albemarle Street according to bargain. The dog of a book- 
 seller gone to the country. I leave my card with remonstrances 
 and inquiries when? The clerk talks of 'Mr. Murray writing to 
 you, sir ?' I will call again to-morrow morning and make Mr. M. 
 speak to me, I hope. . . . 
 
 " Thursday. I went to the House of Commons last night and 
 found at the door a Speaker's order awaiting me from the Duke. 
 It is a pretty apartment that of theirs; far smaller than I expected, 1 
 hardly larger than some drawing-rooms you have seen, with some 
 four ranges of benches rising high behind each other like pews in 
 a church gallery; an oval open space in the middle, at the farther 
 extremity of which sits the Speaker in what seemed a kind of press 
 (like our wardrobe, only oaken); opposite him is the door. A very 
 narrow gallery runs all round atop for reporters, strangers, etc. I 
 was seated on the ground-floor below this. Althorp spoke, a thick, 
 large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man; Hume also, a powder- 
 ed, clean, burly fellow; and Wetherell, a beetle-browed, sagacious, 
 quizzical old gentleman ; then Davies, a Roman-nosed dandy, whom 
 I leftjannering, having left it all in some three-quarters of an hour. 
 O'Connell came and spoke to an individual before me. You would 
 call him a well-doing country shopkeeper, with a bottle-green frock 
 or great coat, and brown scratch wig. I quitted them with the 
 highest contempt; our poor Duke, or any known face, I could not 
 see. 
 
 "This morning I returned to Albemarle Street ; the bookseller was 
 first denied to me, then showed his broad, one-eyed face, and with 
 fair speeches signified that his family were all ill, and he had been 
 called into the country; and my manuscript lay still unopened ! 
 I reminded him, not without emphasis, of the engagement made, 
 and how I had nothing else to do here but see that matter brought 
 to an end, to all which he pleaded hard in extenuation, and for two 
 or three days' further allowance. I made him name a new day: 
 'Saturday first;' then I am to return and learn how the matter 
 stands. He is said to be noted for procrastination, but also for 
 honorableness, even munificence. My prospects apart from him 
 are not brilliant ; however, loss of time is the worst of all losses ; he 
 shall not keep me dancing round him very long, go how it may. 
 Of the Duke I would gladly take counsel ; but find no opportunity 
 to speak a visit profits almost nothing. Happily, however, I can 
 take counsel of myself. 
 
 " I am to dine with Drummond the banker to-morrow, an admirer 
 of mine whom I have never seen. On Saturday with Allan Cun- 
 ningham. These are my outlooks for the present." 
 
 1 The old house, before the fire.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 101 
 
 " August 22. 
 
 "My dearest little Comforter, Your dear kind letter arrived 
 that Thursday night, though not till late with the very latest of 
 the 'Twopennies,' I think; which invaluable class of men keep 
 travelling here all day from eight in the morning till ten at night. 
 My blessings on thee, little Goody, for the kind news thou sendest! 
 It is all a living picture, and the dear Screamikin artist standing in 
 the middle of it, both acting it and drawing it for my sake. I saw 
 your half-insane beer-barrel of a Fyff e, ' and the midges all buzzing 
 round him in the sultry morning; the racket of the Macturk chaise, 
 your rushing forth to the post-office, your eager devouring of my 
 letter, and all the rest of it, in which, alas! the headache and the 
 two hours of sleep did not escape me. Compose thyself, my dar- 
 ling; we shall not be separated, come of it what may. And how 
 should we do, think'st thou, with an eternal separation? O God, 
 it is fearful! fearful! But is not a little temporary separation like 
 this needful to manifest what daily mercy is in our lot which other- 
 wise we might forget, or esteem as a thing of course? Understand, 
 however, once more that I have yet taken up with no other woman. 
 Nay, many as I see light air-forms tripping it in satin along the 
 streets, or plumed amazons curbing their palfreys in the park with 
 pomp and circumstance enough there has no one yet fronted me 
 whom even to look at I would exchange with my own. Ach Oott ! 
 there is not such a one extant. Yes, as proud as I am grown (for 
 the more the Devil pecks at me, the more vehemently do I wring his 
 nose), and standing on a kind of basis which I feel to be of ada- 
 mant, I perceive that of all women my own Jeannie is the wife for 
 me; that in her true bosom (once she were a mystic) a man's head 
 is worthy to lie. Be a mystic, dearest; that is, stand with me on 
 this everlasting basis, and keep thy arms around me : through life I 
 fear nothing. 
 
 "But I must proceed with my journal of life in London. My 
 narrative must have finished on Thursday night about five o'clock. 
 Jack and I went out to walk and make calls after that; found no 
 one at home but Mrs. Badams, who was nigh weeping when she 
 spoke to us of her husband. Poor thing, she has a ticklish game to 
 play; for Badams seems to me to be hovering on the verge of ruin 
 uncertain as yet whether he will turn back, or only plunge down, 
 down. I tell all this in one word : he is in the habit of daily drink- 
 ing brandy till his head gets confused. He began this accursed 
 practice not many months ago for the sake of an intolerable head- 
 ache he had, and which brandy (then nauseous enough to him) was 
 wont to cure; but now I suspect the nauseousuess lias ceased, and 
 the brandy is chiefly coveted because it yields stupefaction. His 
 volition seems gone, or quite dormant; his gig has broken down 
 with him all to shivers, at full speed. 2 
 
 ' ' With the Montagus I have somewhat less sympathy. It seems 
 
 i A Haddington doctor, one of Miss Welsh's many suitors before her marriage. 
 3 Hadaras once one of Carlyle's truest aftid most useful friends died miserably 
 soon after.
 
 102 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 still uncertain whether they will lose anything by him, 1 and their 
 ferocity (except from Basil) is quite transcendental. On the whole, 
 my original impression of that ' noble lady ' was the true one. . . . 
 She goes upon words words. I callea once more and left my 
 card, and shall continue at rare intervals to do the like; but for 
 trust or friendship it is now more clearly than ever a chimera. I 
 smiled (better than the Duke did) at her offer of ' giving YOU mon- 
 ey ' to come hither. Jane Welsh Cartyle a taker of money in this 
 era of the gigmen ! Nimmer und nimimrmehr. . . . Tush! it is all 
 stuff and fudge and fiddle-faddle, of which I begin to grow aweary. 
 Oh no, my dearest; we will have no meetings that we cannot pur- 
 chase for ourselves. We shall meet ; nay, perhaps, ere long thou 
 shalt see London and thy husband in it, on earnings of our own. 
 From all which the practical inference is, ' let us endeavor to clear 
 our minds of cant.' 
 
 " Friday I spent with Irving in the animali parlanti region of the 
 supernatural. Understand, ladykin, that the 'gift of tongues' is 
 here also (chiefly among the women), and a positive belief that God 
 is still working miracles in the Church by hysterics. Nay, guess 
 my astonishment when I learned that poor Dow of Irongray" is a 
 wonder-worker and speaker with tongues, and had actually 'cast 
 out a devil ' (which, however, returned again in a week) between 
 you and Dumfries! I gave my widest stare; but it is quite indubi- 
 table. His autograph Tetter w.as read to me, detailing all that the 
 ' Laart ' had done for him. Poor fellow! it was four days after his 
 wife's death. I was very wae or^ him, and not a little shocked. 
 Irving hauled me off to Lincoln's Inn Fields to hear my double 
 (Mr. Scott), where I sat directly behind a speakeress with tongues, 
 who unhappily, however, did not perform till after I was gone. My 
 double is more like ' Maitland, ' the cotton-eared, I hope, than me ; a 
 thin, black-complexioned, vehement man, earnest, clear, and narrow 
 as a tailor's listing. For a stricken hour did he sit expounding in 
 the most superannuated dialect (of Chroist and so forth), yet with 
 great heartiness, the meaning of that one word Enteagen. The good 
 Irving looked at me wistfully, for he knows I cannot take miracles 
 in; yet he looks so piteously, as if he implored me to believe. Oh 
 dear ! oh dear ! was the Devil ever busier than now, when the super- 
 natural must either depart from the world, or reappear there like a 
 chapter of Hamilton's 'Diseases of Females?' 
 
 " At night I fondly trusted that we had done with the miraculous; 
 but no, Henry Drummond too is a believer in it. This Drummond, 
 who inhabits a splendid mansion in the west, proved to be a very 
 striking man. Taller and leaner than I, but erect as a plummet, 
 with a high-carried, quick, penetrating head, some fiye-and-forty 
 years of age, a singular mixture of all things of the saint, the wit, 
 the philosopher swimming, if I mistake not, in an element of dan- 
 dyism. His dinner was dandiacal in the extreme: a meagre series 
 of pretentious kickshaws, on which no hungry jaw could satisfac- 
 torily bite; flunkies on all hands, yet I had to ask four times before 
 
 > Badams had led them into some speculation which had not been successful. 
 A Craigenputtock neighbor.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 103 
 
 I could get a morsel of bread. His wife has had ' twenty miscar- 
 riages, ' and looks pitiful enough. Besides her we were five : Spen- 
 cer Percival, member of the House (of Stupids, called of Commons); 
 Tudor, a Welshman, editor of the Morning Watch; our host, Irv- 
 ing, and I. They were all prophetical, Toryish, ultra-religious. I 
 emitted, notwithstanding, floods of JTeufelsdrockhist Radicalism, 
 which seemed to fill them with weender and amazement, but was 
 not ill received, and indeed refused to be gainsaid. We parted 
 with friendliest indifference, and shall all be happy to meet again 
 and to part again. This Drummond, who is a great pamphleteer, 
 has ' quoted ' me often, it seems, etc. He is also a most munificent 
 and beneficent man as his friends say. 
 
 " On Saturday morning I set out for Albemarle Street. Murray, 
 as usual, was not in ; but an answer lay for me my poor ' Teuf els- 
 drOckh, ' wrapped in new paper, with a letter stuck under the pack- 
 thread. I took it with a silent fury and walked off. The let- 
 ter said he regretted exceedingly, etc. ; all his literary friends were 
 out of town; he himself occupied with a sick family in the country; 
 that he had conceived the finest hopes, etc. In short, that ' Teufels- 
 drockh' had never been looked into; but that, if I would let him 
 keep it for a month, he would flien be able to say a word, and by 
 God's blessing a favorable one. 
 
 " I walked on through Regent Street, and looked in upon James 
 Fraser, the bookseller. We got to talk about ' Teuf elsdrockh, ' 
 when, after much hithering and thithering about the black state of 
 trade, etc., it turned out that honest James would publish the book 
 for me on this principle: if I would give him a sum not exceeding 
 1501. sterling! 'I think you had better wait a little,' said an Edin- 
 burgh advocate to me since, when he heard of this proposal. ' Yes,' 
 I answered, ' it is my purpose to wait to the end of eternity for it.' 
 'But the public will not buy books.' 'The public has done the 
 wisest thing it could, and ought never more to buy what they call 
 books. ' 
 
 " Spurning at destiny, yet in the mildest terms taking leave of 
 Fraser, I strode through the streets carrying ' Teufelsdrockh ' openly 
 in my hand. I took a pipe and a glass of water, and counsel with 
 myself. I was bilious and sad, and thought of my dear Jeannie, for 
 whom also were these struggles. Having rested a little, I set out 
 again to the Longmans, to hear what they had to say. The ' German 
 Literary History ' having soon been despatched, I describe ' Teufels- 
 drockh,' bargain that they are to look at it themselves, and send it 
 back again in two days; that is, to-morrow. They are honest, rug- 
 ged, punctual-looking people, and will keep their word; but the 
 chance of declining seems to me a hundred to one. A la bonne 
 heure ! I have a problem which is possible : either to get ' Dreck ' 
 printed, or to ascertain that I cannat, and so tie him up and come 
 home with him. So fear nothing, love. I care not a doit for the 
 worst; and thou too hast the heart of a heroine art worthv of me 
 were I the highest of heroes. Nay, my persuasion that ' Teufels- 
 drockh ' is in his place and his time here grows stronger the more I 
 see of London and its philosophy. The doctrine of the Phoenix, 
 of Natural Supernaturalism, and the whole Clothes Philosophy
 
 104 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 (be it but well stated) is exactly what all intelligent men are 
 wanting. 
 
 " Sunday morning had a snip of a note from Empson. Walked 
 over to Jermyn Street; saw the Duke; had to tell him openly (or not 
 at all) how it stood with my manuscript; felt clear and sharp as a 
 war weapon, for the world was not brotherly to me. The Charlottes 
 were at church. I consulted the Duke about Napier; found my own 
 idea confirmed that he was anxious enough to have me write, but 
 afraid lest I committed him; so that ' agreeing about subjects ' would 
 be the difficulty. Jeffrey asked to see my MS. when the Longmans 
 had done with it: he would look through it and see what he could 
 talk to Murray concerning it. I gladly consented; and thus for a 
 while the matter rests. Murray is clearly the man if he will ; only I 
 have lost ten days by him already, for he might have told rue what 
 he did finally tell in one day." 
 
 Carlyle, little sanguine as he was, had a right to be surprised at 
 the difficulty of finding a publisher for his book. Seven years be- 
 fore he had received a hundred pounds for his "Life of Schiller." 
 It had been successful in England. It had been translated into Ger- 
 man under the eye of Goethe himself. ' ' Sartor " Carlyle reckoned 
 to be at least three times as good, and no one seemed inclined to look 
 at it. 
 
 Meanwhile, on another side of his affairs the prospect unexpect- 
 edly brightened. His brother had been the heaviest of his anxieties. 
 A great lady, "the Countess of Clare," was going abroad and re- 
 quired a travelling physician. Jeffrey heard of it, and with more 
 real practical kindness than Carlyle in his impatience had been in- 
 clined to credit him with, successfully recommended John Car- 
 lyle to her. The arrangements were swiftly concluded. The strug- 
 gling, penniless John was lifted at once into a situation of respon- 
 sibility and security, with a salary which placed him far beyond 
 need of further help, and promised to enable him to repay at 
 no distant time both his debt to Jeffrey, and all the money which 
 Carlyle had laid out for him. Here was more than compensation 
 for the other disappointments. Not only Carlyle had no longer to 
 feel that he must divide his poor earnings to provide for his broth- 
 er's wants in London, but he could look without anxiety on his own 
 situation. He even thought himself permitted, instead of returning 
 to Craigenputtoek, to propose that Mrs. Carlyle should join him in 
 London without the help of Mrs. Montagu. He was making friends; 
 he was being talked about as a new phenomenon of a consequence 
 as yet unknown. Review and magazine editors were recovering 
 heart, and again seeking his assistance. He could write his articles 
 as well in a London lodging as in the snowy solitudes of Dunscore, 
 while he could look about him and weigh at more leisure the possi- 
 bilities of finally removing thither. He wrote to propose it, and
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 105 
 
 awaited his wife's decision. Meanwhile his letters continue his 
 story. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "London: August 26, 1831. 
 
 "My dear Mother, As Jack proposes writing to my father, doubt- 
 less lie will mention the good tidings he has to tell ; namely, of an 
 appointment to be travelling physician to a lady of great rank, the 
 Countess of Clare, with a salary of 300 guineas a yedY, all travelling 
 expenses included. This is the work of the Lord-advocate, Jeffrey, 
 and is looked on by every one as a piece of real good-fortune. For 
 yourself, my dear mother, I know how you dislike foreign voyaging, 
 and that all your maternal fears will be awakened by this arrange- 
 ment. However, you too will reflect that anything in honesty is 
 better than forced idleness, which was poor Doil's * condition here ; 
 also you may take my word for it that the dangers of such a course 
 of travel are altogether trifling not equal to those of walking the 
 London streets, and running, every time you cross, lest couches 
 break a limb of you. The lady herself is an invalid, and must jour- 
 ney with every convenience. Italy, whither they are bound, is the 
 finest of climates; and the sailing part of it is simply of three hours' 
 continuance in whole, twenty-Jive miles. I have seen some people 
 who know the Countess, and all give her a good character. She is 
 young (perhaps thirty-three), courteous, and has behaved in this 
 transaction with great liberality. Jack also is much more prudent 
 and manly in his ways than he was; so that I think there is a fair pros- 
 pect of his even doing the poor lady some good, and getting into a 
 friendly relation to her, which also may eventually do himself 
 much good. Something mysterious there is in the condition of this 
 high personage. She was married some years ago, and shortly after 
 that event she parted from her husband (they say by her own deter- 
 mination), the nearest friends know not for what reason; and now 
 she lives in a sort of widowhood (her husband is Governor of Bom- 
 bay, and said to be ' a very good sort of man '), so that being farther 
 in ill-health she is probably unhappy enough, and has need of good 
 counsel every way. 
 
 "The business of the book proceeds but crabbedly. The whole 
 English world, I find, has ceased to read books, which, as I often say 
 to the booksellers, is the wisest thing the English world could do, 
 considering what wretched froth it has been dosed with for many 
 years, under the false title of ' books.' Every mind is engrossed with 
 political questions, and in a more earnest mood than to put up with 
 such stuff as has been called literature. Meanwhile, though I cannot 
 but rejoice in this state of public opinion, yet the consequences to 
 myself are far from favorable. The present, too, I find, is the dead- 
 est part of the whole year for business, so that every way the matter 
 moves heavily, and I require to have my own shoulder at it always 
 or it would not move at all. Hitherto I have made no approxima- 
 tion to a bargain, except finding that man after man will not act, and 
 only at best demands ' time for consideration,' which, except in very 
 
 > Family nickname of John Carlyle. 
 II. 5*
 
 106 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 limited measure, I cannot afford to give him. The MS. is at pres- 
 ent in Jeffrey's hands, whence I expect to receive it in some two 
 days with a favorable, or at worst an unfavorable, judgment in 
 either of which cases I shall find out what to do. Little money, I 
 think, will be had for my work, but I will have it printed if there be 
 a man in London that will do it, even without payment to myself. 
 If there be no such man, why, then, what is to be done but tie a piece 
 of good skeenyie about my papers, stick the whole in my pocket, and 
 march home again with it, where at least potatoes and onions are to 
 be had, and I can wait till better times. Nay, in any case I find that, 
 either in possession or pretty certain expectation, I am otherwise 
 worth almost 1001. of cash; so that while the whinstone house stands 
 on the moor, what care I for one of them, or for all of them with the 
 Arch-enemy at their head? 
 
 "Of any permanent settlement here there is as yet nothing defi- 
 nite to be said. I see many persons here, some of them kind and in- 
 fluential, almost all of them ignorant enough, and hi need of a teach- 
 er; but no offer that can be laid hold of presents itself or fixedly 
 promises itself. This, also, I will see through. If God who made me 
 and keeps me alive have work for me here, then here must I pitch 
 my tent; if not, then elsewhere, still under his kind sky, under his 
 all-seeing eye, to me alike where. I am rather resolute sometimes, 
 not without a touch of grimness, but never timid or discouraged; 
 indeed, generally quite quiet and cheerful. If I see no way of get- 
 ting home soon, I have some thoughts of bringing Jane up hither, 
 for she must be very lonely where she is. We shall see. 
 
 "Thus, my dear mother, does it stand with us. I write you all 
 this to satisfy your anxieties. Be of good cheer; trust for us, as for 
 all things, in the Giver of good, who will order att things well. As- 
 sure my father of my entire love; and say that I hope to tell him 
 many things when I return. 
 
 "My kindest love to all, not forgetting Jean or any of the girls. 
 God keep you and all of them. That is ever my heart's prayer. 
 Many times, too, does sfie that is not now with us 1 revisit my thoughts: 
 inexpressibly sad, inexpressibly mild ; but I mourn not. I rather 
 rejoice that she is now safe in the land of eternity, not in the troub- 
 lous, ever-shifting land of time and of dreams. Oh, often I think 
 that she is with me in my heart whispering to me to bear and for- 
 bear even as she did, to endure to the end, and then we shall meet 
 again and part no more. Even as God will be it ! 
 
 " I conclude mournfully but not unhappily. Shall not the Great 
 Father wipe away the tears from all eyes? Again and again I say, 
 let us trust in Him, and Him only. Let us ever live in hope, in faith! 
 God bless you all! 
 
 "I am, dear mother, your affectionate son, T. CAKLTLE." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Craigenputtock. 
 
 " August 29. 
 
 "Dearest Wife, This is Monday, and I have already, taking no 
 counsel with flesh and blood, discharged two little duties : first, gone 
 
 > His sister Margaret.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 107 
 
 and seen Empson (whom I had heretofore missed) before breakfast; 
 second, arranged my washerwoman's goods, and made an invoice 
 thereof, that she may call for them, which duty it were my dear 
 Goody's part to do were I not for a time Goodyless ; so that now at 
 noontide I can sit down with a clear conscience, and talk heartily 
 and heartsomely with my own child about all things and about noth- 
 ing, as is my wont and my delight. Thus in this spectre-crowded 
 desert I have a living person whose heart I can clasp to mine, and so 
 feel that I too am alive. Do you not love me better than ever now? 
 I feel in my own soul that thou dost and must. Therefore let us 
 never mourn over this little separation which is but to make the re- 
 union more blessed and entire. 
 
 " Your two letters are here in due season, like angels (angel means 
 heavenly messenger) from a far country. The first, as I prophesied, 
 lay waiting for me at my return ; the second I found lying on the 
 Duke's table on Saturday, and snatched it up and read it in the hub- 
 bub of Piccadilly so soon as I could tear myself out into the solitude 
 of crowds. Bless thee, my darling! I could almost wish thee the 
 pain of a ride to Dumfries weekly for the sake of such a letter. But 
 /*<wZ you actually to faint all the way up? Heaven forbid ! And the 
 'disease' on that fair face how is it? If no better, never mind; I 
 swear that it shall and will get better, or if it do not, that I will love 
 you more than ever while it lasts. Will that make amends? It is 
 no vain parade of rhetoric ; it is a serious fact : my love for you does 
 not depend on looks, and defies old-age and decay, and, I can proph- 
 esy, will grow stronger the longer we live and toil together. Yes, 
 Jeannie, though I have brought you into rough, rugged conditions, 
 I feel that I have saved you : as Gigmaness you could not have lived ; 
 as woman and wife you need but to see your duties in order to do 
 them, and to say from the heart, It is good for me to be here. So 
 keep thy .arms round me, and be my own prophetess and second 
 self, and fear nothing, let the Devil do his worst. Poor Elizabeth ! ' 
 I fear, as you fear, that it is not well with her. Nevertheless, who 
 knows the issues of life and death? Let us hope the best. Above 
 all, do not you be a coward. I love you for your bravery, and be- 
 cause you have the heart of a valiant woman. Oh, my darling, is it 
 conceivable that we should live divided in this unfriendly scene? 
 Crown me with all laurels that ever decorated man's brow: were it 
 other than the bitterest of mockeries if &fie who had struggled with 
 me were not there to share it? 
 
 ' ' But I must check this lyrical tendency. Of history there is little 
 to be told. Slowly, slowly does the business of poor ' Dreck ' get 
 along, let me push it as I may. Heaven bless my own prophetess, 
 who has from the first prophesied only good of it. Yes, good will 
 come of it; for it was honestly meant, and the best we could do. 
 Meanwhile do but mark how sluggishly it loiters. 
 
 " Yesterday I returned (to Jermyn Street), found the family coach 
 at the door, and all in the act of drawing on gloves to go out, ex- 
 cept the Duke, with whom, after some gabblement with the others, 
 I had the unwonted satisfaction of a private conversation for ten 
 
 1 I do not know to whom this refers.
 
 108 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 minuter Inquiring for 'TeufelsdrSckh,' as I was privileged to do, 
 the critic professed that he had ' honestly read ' twenty - eight pages 
 of it (surprising feat); that he objected to the dilatoriness of the in- 
 troductory part (as we both did also), and very much admired the 
 scene of the sleeping city; further, that he would write to Murray 
 that very day, 1 as I gather from Empson he has since done, to ap- 
 point a meeting with him, and, if possible, attain some finish with 
 that individual at least. He (Jeffrey) would look through the book 
 further in the interim, etc. , etc. 
 
 " Patience, patience! Hard times I said, dearest, for literary men. 
 Nevertheless, let us take them as they come. Nay, Allan Cunning- 
 ham advises me that it were almost 'madness' to press forward a 
 literary work at this so inauspicious season and not to wait for a 
 while which, nevertheless, I cannot listen to. Why wait? Rxxti- 
 cus expectat; besides 'Dreck' must be printed as the first condition. 
 Whether we get any money for him, or how much, is a quite sec- 
 ondary question. I have nothing for it but to try try to the utter- 
 most and in the villanous interval of expectation to explore this 
 wild, immeasurable chaos, and ascertain whether I can build aught 
 in it. Such remains my outlook hitherto. Jeffrey and I also spoke 
 about the 'place under government. Dawn wird Nichts, 'All 
 filled up; 'Applicants;' 'Economical Ministry,' etc., etc. all 
 which the Devil is welcome to, if he like. Aide-tot, le ciel t'aidera. 
 I think of these things with considerable composure, at times with a 
 certain silent ferocity. ' That my wife should walk on foot!' Yet, 
 is she not my wife, and shall I not love her the more that she shares 
 evil with me as if it were good? Let us fear nothing. I have the 
 strength of 20,000 Cockneys while thou art with me. Let hard 
 come to hard as it will ; we will study to be ready for it. ... 
 
 "Of all the deplorables and despicables of this city and time the 
 saddest are the 'literary men.' Infandum! infandum! It makes 
 my heart sick and wae. Except Churchill, and perhaps chiefly be- 
 cause he liked me, I have hardly found a man of common sense or 
 common honesty. They are the Devil's own vermin, whom the 
 Devil, in his good time, will snare and successively eat. The creat- 
 ure called again ; the most insignificant haddock in nature a 
 
 dirty, greasy Cockney apprentice, altogether empty, and non-extant 
 except for one or two metaphysical quibbles (about every lawr of 
 nature being an idear of the mind, etc.), and the completest outfit of 
 innocent blank self-conceit I ever in life chanced to witness. He is 
 a blown bladder, wherein no substance is to be sought. And yet a 
 curious figure, intrinsically small, small ; yet with a touch of genial- 
 ity which, far apart from Coleridge and cockneyism, might have 
 made him a small reality. God be with him! He was almost as 
 
 wearisome as , and very much detached, as it struck me; knew 
 
 nothing of men or things more than a sucking dove, at the same 
 time looked out with an occasional gleam of geniality in his eyes; 
 seemed even to like me, though I had barbarously enough entreated 
 him. 
 
 "The more comfortable was it to meet Empson this morning, 
 
 > Longman, after looking through the MS., had civilly declined iL
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 109 
 
 in whom I at least found sanity, and what I have all along had to 
 dispense with the bearing of at least a gentleman. I am glad I 
 went to Empson went through two miles of tumultuous streets; 
 found Empson in the solitude of the Temple, reading a newspaper 
 in a flannel nightgown (which reminded me of Goody's, for it had a 
 belt, only it was twice as large); a tall, broad, thin man, with wrin- 
 kled face, baldish head, and large, mild, melancholy, dreamy blue 
 eyes under bushy brows. He has a defect in his trachea, and can 
 only mumble in speech, which he does with great copiousness in a 
 very kindly style, confused enough, at the same time listening with 
 the profoundest attention and toleration to whatever you offer in 
 reply. He is, as I thought, on the threshold of mysticism, but I 
 think will go deeper. Probably enough one might grow to like 
 such a man; at all events, I will try, and so I think will you; with 
 your mother (were she more cultivated, or he more ignorant) he 
 were the man according to God's heart. Of young Mill (the Spirit 
 of the Age man) he speaks very highly, as of a converted Utilita- 
 rian who is studying German ; so we are all to meet, along with a 
 certain Mrs. Austin, a young Germanist and mutual intercessor (be- 
 tween Mill and Empson), and breakfast some day in the Templar's 
 lodgings. Quod felix faustumque sit! It does my soul good to meet 
 a true soul. Poor inexperienced Glen is the only phenomenon of 
 that sort I have yet seen here, but I will riddle creation till I find 
 more. Thus before your arrival (if such be our decision) I may per- 
 haps have a little pleasant circle to present you to, for of the old 
 there is very little to be made ; Irving alone stands true, and he (poor 
 fellow!) is working miracles, while the Montagus, Stracheys, etc., 
 have mostly, I fear, drifted quite to leeward. 
 
 ' ' About your journey to London I myself know not what to say. 
 The persuasion groAvs more and more upon me that we should spend 
 the winter here. Say, Goody, would it not be pleasant to THEE? 
 Tell me distinctly; and yet I already know it would, but that (as 
 beseems a good wife) you subordinate your wishes to the common 
 good, and will not even speak of them. Well, but here in this lodg- 
 ing we live actually (Jack and I) for some two guineas a week; or 
 suppose in the winter season, and with many little gracefulnesses 
 which Goody would superadd, it cost us two three guineas: what 
 then? It is little more than we used to spend in Edinburgh, includ- 
 ing rent ; and we can thoroughly investigate London. I cannot 
 promise you the comforts of our own poor Craig; yet it is a hand- 
 some lodging, and with purely honest people. Our drawing-room 
 (for such it is) will be of the coldest, I doubt ; but coals are not so 
 very dear, and the female mind can devise thicker clothes. How 
 then? shall it be decided on? We have to go somewhither: why 
 not come hither, where my part of the going is already finished? 
 Thyself shall say it. Use thy prophetic gift. If it answer yes, then 
 will I strive to obey. " 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 " September 4. 
 
 "Thursday was the wettest of wet days, even till after bedtime; 
 the first day wherein I did not once stir out (except after dark to Irv- 
 ing's, who was not at home). Highgate and Coleridge were not
 
 110 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to be thought of. After reading Goody's letter, I sat diligently 
 over my proof-sheets the day unvisited by any adventure except a 
 little message from Mrs. Austin. 
 
 " On Friday Jack and I walked over to the House of Lords; saw 
 the Chancellor sitting between two Lords (two are necessary : one of 
 them Earl Ferrers, son of him that was hanged, and the ugliest man 
 extant, very like David Laing), a considerable handful of listeners 
 and loiterers, and the poor little darling (Jeffrey) with a gray wig on 
 it, and queer coatee with bugles or buttons on the cuffs, snapping 
 away and speaking there in a foreign country among entire stran- 
 gers. The fat Rutherford sate also within the ring, with Dr. Lush- 
 ington (the divorcer) and certain of the clerk species. I declare I 
 was partly touched with something of human feeling. However, 
 our little darling seemed as gleg as ever; the ' trachea ' in moderate 
 order; and was telling his story like a little king of elves. The 
 Chancellor is a very particularly ignoble-looking man; a face not 
 unlike your uncle Robert's, but stonier, and with a deeper, more 
 restless, more dangerous eye ; nothing but business in his face no 
 ray of genius, and even a considerable tincture of insincerity. He 
 was yawning awfully, with an occasional twitching-up of the cor- 
 ners of the upper lip and point of the nose. A politician truly, and 
 nothing more. Learning that the Duke's speech would not end for 
 two hours, I willingly took myself away. 
 
 "After dinner came your letter, which I read twice; then had tea 
 (black tea of my own) ; then off to the Austins, where I knew there 
 would be green tea, which I had privately determined not to have. 
 The Frau Austin herself was as loving as ever a true Germanized 
 spiritual screamikin. We were five of a party: her husband, a lean 
 gray-headed painful-looking man, with large earnest timid eyes and 
 a clanging metallic voice, that at great length set forth Utilitarianism 
 steeped in German metaphysics, not dissolved therein ; a very worthy 
 sort of limited man and professor of law. Secondly, a Frenchman, 
 of no importance whatever, for he uttered not a word except some 
 compliments in his own tongue. Thirdly, John Mill, ' Spirit of the 
 Age.' The other two you know already. This young Mill, I fancy 
 and hope, is ' a baying you can love. ' A slender, rather tall and ele- 
 gant youth, with small clear Roman-nosed face, two small earnestly 
 smiling eyes; modest, remarkably gifted with precision of utterance, 
 enthusiastic, yet lucid, calm; not a great, yet distinctly a gifted and 
 amiable youth. We had almost four hours of the best talk I have 
 mingled in for long. The youth walked home with me almost to 
 the door; seemed to profess, almost as plainly as modesty would al- 
 low, that he had been converted by the head of the Mystic School, 
 to whom personally he testified very hearty-looking regard. Emp- 
 son did not appear (having caught cold, or something of that sort), 
 but by letter (while we were together) engaged Mill and me to 
 breakfast with him on Tuesday. I met poor Empson to-day riding 
 towards Holborn, the large melancholy eyes of the man turned 
 downwards, so that he did not observe me. On the whole, Goody- 
 kin, these rudiments of a mystic school (better than I anticipated 
 here) are by far the most cheering phenomenon I see in London. 
 Good will come of it. Let us wait and see in what way.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. Ill 
 
 "At the Duke's this morning, where I found Rutherford and 
 Jayme Relish, the Galloway stot, who stared at me as if minded to 
 gore, or afraid of being gored, till I bowed. I was led by his lord- 
 ship into a private room, and there indulged with ten minutes' pri- 
 vate talk on the subject of ' Teuf elsdrSckh. ' The short of it is this: 
 Murray will print a short edition (750 copies) of ' Dreck ' on the 
 half-profits system (that is, I getting nothing, but also giving noth- 
 ing); after which the sole copyright of the book is to be mine ; 
 which offer he makes, partly out of love to ' your lordship ;' chiefly 
 from 'my great opinion of the originality, ' etc. A poorish offer, 
 Goody, yet perhaps, after all, the best I shall get. Better considera- 
 bly than my giving 1501. for the frolic of having written such a 
 work ! I mean to set off to-morrow morning to Colburn and Bent- 
 ley (whom Fraser has prepared for me), and ascertain whether they 
 will pay me anything for a first edition. Unless they say about 100. 
 I will prefer Murray. Murray wished me to try everywhere. You 
 shall hear to-morrow how I speed, and then prophesy upon it. 
 
 "I have this day written off to Napier to say that I have an article 
 on Luther^ ready to write, and ask whether he will have it. Fifty 
 pounds will be highly useful (thank God, not yet quite indispensa- 
 ble),-and I can gain it handsomely in this way. These, dearest, are 
 all my news. It is all very wooden, and would be dull to any 
 one but her it is written for. She will not think it dull, but in- 
 teresting as the Epistle of a Paul to the church which is at Craig o' 
 Putto. 
 
 ' 'Monday, 4 o'clock. I was at Colburn's about eleven. After wait- 
 ing a weary hour in the Bentleian apartments, saw a muddy char- 
 acter enter, to whom I explained myself and ' Dreck.' 1 The muddy 
 man uttered the common cant of compliments, hinted at the sole 
 object of publishers being money, the difference between talent and 
 popularity, etc., etc. The purport will be that we shall have noth- 
 ing to do with one another. So much I could gather partly from 
 the muddy man. I shall go over and see Murray to-morrow morn- 
 ing, and if he will put his hand to the plough and get on with 
 the printing forthwith, I mean to close with him and have done. 
 The offer is not so bad: 750 copies for the task of publishing poor 
 Dreck, and the rest of him our own. If he do not succeed, how 
 could I ask any man to do more? If he do, then we have opening 
 for another bargain. Let us hope nothing. Goody; then we fear 
 nothing. By one or the other means our poor little pot will keep 
 boiling, and shall, though the Devil himself said nay." 
 
 Anticipating slightly, I may finish here the adventures of "Sar- 
 tor," or " Dreck," and for the present have done with it. Murray, at 
 Jeffrey's instance, had agreed to take the book on the terms which 
 Carlyle mentioned not, however, particularly willingly. Jeffrey 
 himself, who had good practical knowledge of such things, thought 
 that it "was too much of the nature of a rhapsody to command 
 success or respectful attention." Murray perhaps rather wished to 
 
 > Neither Colburn nor Bentley in person, as appeared after.
 
 112 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 attach to himself a young man of unquestionable genius, whose 
 works might be profitable hereafter, than expected much from this 
 immediate enterprise. He decided to run the risk, however. The 
 MS. was sent to the printer, and a page was set in type for consid- 
 eration, when poor Murray, already repenting of what he had done, 
 heard that while he was hesitating "Sartor" had been offered to 
 Longman, and had been declined by him. He snatched at the es- 
 cape, and tried to end his bargain. He professed to think, and 
 perhaps he really thought, that he had been treated unfairly. The 
 correspondence that ensued must have made Murray more and 
 more wonder what strange being he was in contact with, and may 
 be preserved as a curiosity. 
 
 To TJwmas Carlyle, Esq. 
 
 "Ramsgate: September 17. 
 
 "Dear Sir, Your conversation with me respecting the publica- 
 tion of your MS. led me to infer that you had given me the prefer- 
 ence, and certainly not that you had already submitted it to the 
 greatest publishers in London, who had declined to engage in it. 
 Under these circumstances, it will be necessary for me also'to get it 
 read by some literary friend before I can, in justice to myself, en- 
 gage in the printing of it. 
 "I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Your faithful servant, JOHN MURRAY." 
 
 The apparent reflection on a want of sincerity in Carlyle was not 
 altogether generous on Murray's part, but perhaps only too natural. 
 
 Carlyle answers: 
 
 To John Murray, Esq. 
 
 "Sir, I am this moment favored with your note of the 17th 
 from Ramsgate, and beg to say in reply 
 
 "First, that your idea derived from conversation with me of my 
 giving you the preference to all other publishers was perfectly cor- 
 rect: I had heard you described as a man of honor, frankness, and 
 even generosity, and knew you to have the best and widest con- 
 nections; on which grounds I might well say, and can still well 
 say, that a transaction with you would please me better than a sim- 
 ilar one with any other member of the trade. 
 
 "Secondly, that your information of my having submitted my 
 manuscript to the greatest publishers in London, if you mean there- 
 by that after it first came out of your hands it lay two days in those 
 of Messrs. Longman and Rees, and was from them delivered over 
 to the Lord-advocate, is also perfectly correct. If you mean any- 
 thing else, incorrect. 
 
 "Thirdly, that if you wish the bargain which I had understood 
 myself to have made with you unmade, you have only to cause 
 your printer who is now working on my manuscript to return the 
 same without danger or delay, and consider the business as fin- 
 ished. "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 113 
 
 To TJwmas Cartyle. 
 
 " Albemarle Street : Wednesday. 
 
 " My dear Sir, Had I been informed that during the interval in 
 which I had returned the MS. to you it had been offered to Messrs. 
 Longman and sent back after remaining with them two days, I cer- 
 tainly should have requested permission to have it left to me for 
 perusal before I determined upon its publication, and I only wish 
 to be placed in the same position as I should have been had I been 
 previously informed of that fact. 
 " I am, my dear sir, 
 
 " Your obliged servant, JOHN MURRAY." 
 
 Rmigh Draft of Reply. 
 
 " Sir, Though I cannot well discover what damage or alteration 
 my MS. has sustained by passing through the hands of Messrs. 
 Longman and Rees, I with great readiness enter into your views, 
 and shall cheerfully release you from all engagement, or shadow of 
 engagement, with me in regard to it, the rather as it seems reason- 
 able for me to expect some higher remuneration for a work that 
 has caused me so much effort, were it once fairly examined. Such 
 remuneration as was talked of between us can, I believe, at all 
 times be procured. 
 
 "Perhaps you could now fix some date at which I might look 
 for your decision on a quite new negotiation, if you incline to en- 
 gage in such. I shall then see whether the limited extent of my 
 time YI ill still allow me to wait yours. 
 
 "It 1 not, pray have the goodness to cause my papers to be re- 
 turned with the least possible delay." 
 
 The result was the letter from the "bookseller," enclosing the 
 critical communication from his literary adviser, which Carlyle 
 with pardonable malice attached as an appendix to "Sartor" when 
 it was ultimately published, and which has been thus preserved as 
 a singular evidence of critical fallibility. But neither is Murray to 
 be blamed in the matter, nor his critic. Their business was to as- 
 certain whether the book, if published, would pay for the printing; 
 and it was quite certain, both that the taste which could appreciate 
 Carlyle did not exist till he himself created it, and 1 that to " Sartor," 
 beautiful and brilliant as it now seems, the world would then have 
 remained blind. Carlyle himself, proud, scornful, knowing, if no 
 one else knew, the value of the estimate ' ' of the gentleman in the 
 highest class of men of letters" who had been consulted in the 
 matter, judged Murray, after his fashion, far too harshly. In a let- 
 ter to his wife he says : 
 
 "The printing of ' Teufelsdrockh,' which I announced as com- 
 mencing, and even sent you a specimen of, has altogether stopped, 
 and Murray's bargain with me has burst into air. The man be- 
 haved like a pig, and was speared, not perhaps without art; Jack
 
 114 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and I at least laughed that night d gorge deployee at the answer I 
 wrote his base glare of a letter: he has written again in mucli po- 
 liter style, and I shall answer him, as McLeod advised my grand- 
 father's people, 'sharp but mannerly.' The truth of the matter is 
 now clear enough ; ' Dreck ' cannot be disposed of in London at this 
 time. Whether he lie in my trunk or in a bookseller's coffer seems 
 partly indifferent. Neither, on the whole, do I know whether it is 
 not better that we have stopped for the present. Money I was to 
 have none; author's vanity embarked on that bottom I have almost 
 none; nay, some time or other that the book can be so disposed 
 of it is certain enough." 
 
 Carlyle was not alone in his contempt for the existing literary 
 taste. Macvey Napier, to whom he had expressed an opinion that 
 the public had been for some time "fed with froth," and was get- 
 ting tired of it, agreed that "he saw no indication in that vast 
 body of any appetite for solid aliments." Nay, he added (and the 
 words deserve to be remarked), "I am thoroughly convinced that 
 were another Gibbon to appear and produce another such work as 
 the "Decline and Fall," the half of an impression of 750 copies 
 would be left to load the shelves of its publisher." 
 
 The article on Luther which Carlyle had offered for the Edin- 
 burgh could not get itself accepted. Napier recognized that Luther 
 was a noble subject, but he could not spare space for the effective 
 treatment of it. He recommended instead a review of Thomas 
 Hope's book on Man; and Carlyle, accepting the change, made 
 Hope the text for the paper which he called "Characteristics." 
 This essay, more profound and far-reaching even than "Sartor," 
 was written in these autumn weeks in London.. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 A.D. 1831. MT. 36. 
 
 MRS. CARLYLE had entered eagerly into the scheme for joining- 
 her husband in London. Six weeks' solitude at Craigenputtock, 
 with strangers now in occupation of the farm, had tried even her 
 fortitude beyond her strength, and Alick and Jean Carlyle had gone 
 from Scotsbrig to take care of her. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: September, 1831. 
 
 " A thousand thanks, my dear kind mother, for sending Jean and 
 Alick to my rescue. If some such mercy had not been vouchsafed 
 me, I think I must soon have worked myself into a fever or other 
 violent disorder; for my talent for fancying things, which is quite as 
 great as your own, had so entirely got the upperhand of me that I 
 could neither sleep by night nor* rest by day. I have slept more,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 115 
 
 since they came and have kept me from falling into dreams, than I 
 had done for a fortnight before. 
 
 " I have news, if you have not heard it already, more joyful to me, 
 I suspect, than to you : I am going to my husband, and as soon as I 
 can get ready for leaving. Now do not grieve that he is not to return 
 so soon as we expected. I am sure it is for his good, and, therefore, 
 for all our goods. Here he was getting more and more unhappy, 
 more and more dissatisfied with the world and himself. I durst not 
 have counselled him to such a step; but whenever he proposed it him- 
 self, I cordially approved. But I will tell you all about this and 
 other matters when I come and see you all again before I set out. 
 
 "Carlyle wants me to bring some butter, oatmeal, etc., which are 
 not to be got good in London for love or money, and without the 
 smallest remorse I apply to you to help me. I hate some butter of 
 our own cows ; but as it has been salted in small quantities, some- 
 times in warm weather and by my own hands, which are not the 
 most expert, I am afraid it will not be good enough; at all rates, in- 
 ferior to the Scotsbrig thing. 
 
 "Jean is going with me to Templand to-day, as a sort of protec- 
 tion against my mother's agitations. Next week she will help me 
 to pack. Your affectionate JAKE W. CARLYLE." 
 
 Carlyle, meanwhile, continued his account of himself in his letters. 
 Napier had not then written conclusively about his article, and he 
 was restless. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Craigenputtock. 
 
 "London: September 11. 
 
 " My days flow rather uselessly along. If Naso do not write soon, 
 I will seek some other task, were it the meanest. No one can force 
 you to be idle, but only yourself. Neither is the world shut against 
 any one; but it is HE that is shut. God grant us some little touch 
 of wisdom ; let Fate turn up what card she likes, so we can play it 
 well. I feel as if I had yet much to suffer, but also something to do. 
 E)o thou help me, my little woman ; thou art worthy of that destiny, 
 and perhaps it is appointed thee. These are fearful times, yet is 
 there greatness in them. Now is the hour when he that feels him- 
 self a man should stand forth and prove himself such. Oh, could I 
 but live in the light of that holy purpose and keep it ever present 
 before me, I were happy too happy ! 
 
 "Meanwhile, unfortunately for these many months, and now as 
 formerly, I am rather wicked. Alas! Why should I dwell in the 
 element of contempt and indignation, not rather in that of patience 
 and love? I was reading in Luther's 'Tischreden,' and absolutely 
 felt ashamed. What have I suffered? What did he suffer? One 
 should actually, as Irving advises, ' pray to the Lord, ' did one but 
 know how to do it. The lest worship, however, is stout working. 
 Frisch zu ! 
 
 " I have not seen the Duke for a week. I acknowledge in mvself a 
 certain despicable tendency to think crabbedly of the poor Duke ; 
 a quite vulgar feeling it is. Merely as if he were not kind enough 
 to me. Is he not kinder than most other men are? Shaine on me !
 
 116 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Out of various motives, among which love is not wholly wanting, 
 he really wishes to do me good. Are not all others of his order in- 
 different to me? Should not he be at all times more and not less? 
 Yet his path is not my path, nor are his thoughts my thoughts. It 
 is more and more clear to me that we shall never do any good to- 
 gether. Let him come and sit with you in that ' flower- pot tub,' if 
 he like; let us do him what kindness we can, which is not much, 
 and stand ever with kind looks in that direction, yet always, too, on 
 our side of the Strand. Frivolous gigmanity cannot unite itself to 
 our stern destiny; let it pass by on the other side. But oh, my dear 
 Jeannie, do help me to be a little softer, to be a little merciful to all 
 men, even gigmen. Why should a man, though bilious, never so 
 'nervous,' impoverished, bug-bitten, and bedevilled, let Satan have 
 dominion over him? Save me, save me, my Goody! It is on this 
 side that I am threatened; nevertheless we will prevail, I tell thee: 
 by God's grace we will and shall." 
 
 "September 14. 
 
 "On Monday night I walked round from putting in your letter 
 and borrowed me the last Quarterly Review, to read the article 
 there on the Saint-Simonians, by Southey; it is an altogether miser- 
 able article, written in the spirit not of a philosopher, but of a parish 
 precentor. He knows what they are not, so far, at least, as the 
 Thirty-nine Articles go; but nothing whatsoever of what they are. 
 ' My brother, I say unto thee, thou art a poor creature. ' The rest 
 of the Review is also despicable enough blind, shovel-hatted, 
 hysterically lachrymose. Lockhart, it seems, edits it out of Rox- 
 burghshire, rusticating by some ' burn ' in that country. Tuesday 
 night John Mill came in and sate talking with me till near eleven 
 a fine clear enthusiast, who will one day come to something; yet to 
 nothing poetical, I think: his fancy is not rich; furthermore, he 
 cannot laugh with any compass. You will like Mill. Glen * is a 
 man of greatly more natural material; but hitherto he is like a blind 
 Cyclops, ill educated, yet capable of good education; he may, per- 
 haps, reap great profit from us. 
 
 ' ' Edward Irving is graver than usual, yet has still the old faculty 
 of laughter; on the whole, a true, sufficient kind of man, very anx- 
 ious to have me stay here, where, ' in two years or so,' I should not 
 fail to find some appointment. What I lament is that such a mind 
 should not be in the van, but wilfully standing in the rear, bringing 
 up the tag-rag and bobtail, however well he do it. ' .Miracles' are 
 the commonest things in the world here. Irving said to Glen, 
 'Wlien I work miracles.' He and I have never fastened upon that 
 topic yet, but by-and-by he shall hear my whole mind on it, for he 
 deserves such confidence. 
 
 "I gave your compliments to Empson, who received them with 
 wreathed smiles and mumbles of heartiest welcome. I think you 
 will like him a bushy-faced kind-looking creature with most mel- 
 
 1 "Glen, who was mentioned before, was a young graduate of Glasgow studying law 
 in London, of very considerable though utterly confused talent. Ultimately went mad, 
 and was boarded in a farm-house nea.r Craigenputtock, within reach of us, where in. 
 Beveu or eight years he died. T. C."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 117 
 
 ancholy short-sighted eyes. He is from Lincolnshire ; walks much, 
 I take it, with women, men being too harsh and contradictory with 
 him. He was sitting in yellow nightgown, without neckcloth, 
 shaggy enough, and writing with his whole might for Naso [Na- 
 pier]. 
 
 "Of Macaulay I hear nothing very good a sophistical, rhetorical, 
 ambitious young man of talent ; ' set in there, ' as Mill said, ' to make 
 flash speeches, and he makes them.' It seems to me of small conse- 
 quence whether we meet at all." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "September 19, 1831. 
 
 "My dear Mother, . . . Jane will have told you how languidly 
 everything proceeds with me; how the ' people are all out of town,' 
 everything stagnating because of this Reform Bill the book trade, in 
 particular, nearly altogether at a standstill; and, lastly, how I, as the 
 best thing I could do, have been obliged to give my poor book away 
 (that is, the first edition of it), J and am even glad to see it printed on 
 these terms. This is not very flattering news of the encourage- 
 ment for men of my craft; nevertheless, I study to say with as much 
 cheerfulness as I can, Be it so ! The Giver of all Good has enabled 
 me to write the thing, and also to do without any pay for it: the pay 
 would have been wasted away and flitted out of the bit as other pay 
 does; but if there stand any truth recorded there, it will not 'flit.' 
 Nay, if there be even no truth (as where is the man that can say with 
 confidence the inspiration of the Almighty has given me understand- 
 ing), yet it was the nearest approach to such that I could make ; and 
 so, in God's name, let it take its fortune in the world, and sink or 
 swim as the All-disposer orders. There remains forever the maxim 
 In all thy ways acknowledge Him.' 
 
 "I am earnestly expecting Jane, that some sort of establishment 
 may be formed here, where we can spend the winter with more regu- 
 larity and composure than I have hitherto enjoyed. Then we can 
 look about us over this whirlpool, and I, in the meantime, shall most 
 probably write some considerable essay for the Edinburgh Review, 
 that so, when we return, Mall may not be altogether out of shaft*. 
 Of any permanent appointment here I as yet see, with my own eyes, 
 not the slightest outlook; neither, indeed, is my heart set on such, 
 for I feel that the King's palace with all it holds would in good truth 
 do little for me ; and the prayer I ever endeavor to make is, ' Show me 
 my duty, and enable me to do it.' If my duty be to endure a life of 
 poverty and what ' light afflictions ' attend on it, this also will not 
 terrify me. 
 
 " Meanwhile, I am not without my comforts; one of the greatest 
 of which is to have found various well-disposed men, most of them 
 young men, who can feel a sort of scholarship towards me. My 
 poor performances in the writing way are better known here than I 
 expected; clearly enough, also, there is want of instruction and light 
 in this mirk midnight of human affairs ; such want as probably for 
 eighteen hundred years there has not been. If / have any light to 
 
 1 This was written a day or two before the final collapse with Murray.
 
 118 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 give them, let me give it; if none, then what is to be done but seek 
 for it, and hold my peace till I find it." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Liverpool. 1 
 
 " London : September 23. 
 
 ' ' My poor Goody, All yesterday my thoughts were with thee in thy 
 lone voyage, which now I pray the great Giver of Good may have 
 terminated prosperously. Never before did I so well understand my 
 mother's anxious forecasting ways. I felt that my best possession 
 was trusted to the false sea, and all my cares for it could avail noth- 
 ing. Do not wait a moment in writing. I shall have no peace till 
 I know that you are safe. Meanwhile, in truth there is no use in 
 tormenting myself; the weather, here at least, was good. I struggle 
 while I can to believe that it has all passed without accident, and 
 that you are now resting in comparative safety in your uncle's house 
 among friends. 
 
 " Of rest I can well understand you have need enough. I grieve to 
 think how harassed you have been of late, all which, I fear, has 
 acted badly on your health; these bustlings and tossings to and fro 
 are far too rough work for you. I can see, by your two last letters 
 especially, that it is not well with you; your heart is, as it were, 
 choked up, if not depressed. You are agitated and provoked, which 
 is almost the worse way of the two. Alas! and I have no soft Alad- 
 din's Palace here to bid you hasten and take repose in. Nothing 
 but a noisy, untoward lodging-house, and no better shelter than my 
 own bosom. Yet is not this the best of all shelters for you? the 
 only safe place in this wide world? Thank God, this still is yours, 
 and I can receive you there without distrust, and wrap you close 
 with the solacements of a true heart's love. Hasten thither, then, 
 my own wife. Betide what may, we will not despair, were the 
 world never so unfriendly. We are indivisible, and will help each 
 other to endure its evils nay, to conquer them." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle arrived in London on the 1st of October, a good deal 
 shattered by the journey and the charge of the miscellaneous cargo 
 of luggage which she had brought with her: oatmeal, hams, butter, 
 etc., supplied by the generous Scotsbrig to lighten the expense of 
 the London winter. George Irving's lodgings, being found to con- 
 tain bugs, were exchanged for others. John Carlyle departed with 
 Lady Clare for Italy. Carlyle and his wife quartered themselves at 
 Ampton Street, turning out of Gray's Inn Road, where they had 
 two comfortable rooms in the house of an excellent family named 
 Miles, who belonged to Irving's congregation. Here friends came 
 to see them: Mill, Empson, later on Leigh Hunt, drawn by the arti- 
 cle on Hope (" Characteristics ") which Carlyle was now assiduously 
 writing, Jeffrey, and afterwards many more, the Carlyles going out 
 into society, and reconnoitring literary London. Mrs. Carlyle in 
 her way was as brilliant as her husband was in his own; she at- 
 
 1 His wife had gone by water from Annan to her uncle's house at Liverpool: from 
 thence to proceed by coach to London.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 119 
 
 trading every one, he wondered at as a prodigy, which the world 
 was yet uncertain whether it was to love or execrate. 
 
 Carlyle's Journal tells us generally what was passing within him 
 and round him, how London affected him, etc. His and Mrs. Car- 
 lyle's letters fill out the picture. 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 ' ' October 10. Wife arrived ten days ago. We here quietly enough 
 in 4 Ampton Street, and the world jogging on at the old rate. Jack 
 must be by this time in Paris. ' Teufelsdrockh, ' after various per- 
 plexed destinies, returned to me, and now lying safe in his box. The 
 book contents me little; yet perhaps there is material in it; hi any 
 case, I did my best." 
 
 "The Reform Bill lost (on Saturday morning at six o'clock) by a 
 majority of forty-one. The politicians will have it the people must 
 rise. The people will do nothing half so foolish for the present. 
 London seems altogether quiet. Here they are afraid of Scotland, 
 in Scotland of us." 
 
 " On Saturday saw Sir James Mackintosh (at Jeffrey's), and looked 
 at and listened to him, though without speech. A broadish, middle- 
 sized, gray-headed man, well dressed, and with a plain courteous 
 bearing; gray intelligent (unhealthy yellow-whited) eyes, in which 
 plays a dash of cautious vivacity (uncertain whether fear or latent 
 ire) ; triangular unmeaning nose, business mouth and chin: on the 
 whole, a sensible official air, not without a due spicing of hypocrisy 
 and something of pedantry, both, no doubt, involuntary. The ruau 
 is a Whig philosopher and politician, such -as the time yields, our 
 best of that sort, which will soon be extinct. He was talking mys- 
 teriously with other 'Hon. Members' about 'what was to bo done' 
 something a la Dogberry the thing looked to me, though I deny 
 not that it is a serious conjuncture, only believe that change has some 
 chance to be for the better, and so see it all with composure. " 
 
 "Meanwhile, what was the true duty of a man? Were it to stand 
 utterly aloof from politics (not ephemeral only, for that of course, 
 but generally from all speculation about social systems, etc.), or is 
 not, perhaps, the very want of this time an infinite want of governors, 
 of knowledge how to govern itself? Canst thou in any measure 
 spread abroad reverence over the hearts of men? That were a far 
 higher task than any other. Is it to be done by art? or are men's 
 minds as yet shut to art, and open only at best to oratory? not fit for 
 a Meister, but only for a better and better Teufelsdrockh f Think and 
 be silent." 
 
 " ' Mary Wollstonecraft's Life ' by Godwin. An Ariel imprisoned 
 in a brickbat! It is a real tragedy, and of the deepest. Sublimely 
 virtuous endowment ; in practice, misfortune, suffering, death . . . 
 by destiny, and also by desert. An English Mignon; Godwin an 
 honest boor that loves her, but cannot guide or save her." 
 
 " Strange tendency everywhere noticeable to speculate on men, 
 not on man. Another branch of the mechanical temper. Vain hope
 
 120 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to make mankind happy by politics ! You cannot drill a regiment of 
 knaves into a regiment of honest men, enregiment and organize them 
 as cunningly as you will. Give us the honest men, and the well- 
 ordered regiment comes of itself. Reform one man reform thy 
 own inner man ; it is more than scheming out reforms for a nation. " 
 
 "John told me of having seen in Holborn a man walking steadily 
 along with some six baskets all piled above each other, his name and 
 address written in large characters on each, so that he exhibited a 
 statue of some twelve feet, and so by the six separate announcements 
 had his existence sufficiently proclaimed. The trade of this man 
 was basket-making ; but he had found it needful to study a quite 
 new trade that of walking with six baskets on his head in a crowd- 
 ed street." 
 
 "In like manner, Colburn and Bentley, the booksellers, are known 
 to expend ten thousand pounds annually on what they call adver- 
 tising, more commonly called puffing. Puffing (which is simply the 
 second trade, like that of basket-carrying) flourishes in all countries ; 
 but London is the true scene of it, having this one quality beyond 
 all other cities a quite immeasurable size. It is rich also, stupid, 
 and ignorant beyond example; thus in all respects the true Goshen 
 of quacks." 
 
 "Every man I meet with mourns over this state of matters; no 
 one thinks it remediable. You must do as the others do, or they 
 will get the start of you or tread you underfoot. 'All true, Mr. 
 Carlyle BUT:' I say, 'All true, Mr. Carlyle AND.' The first begin- 
 ning of a remedy is that some one believe a remedy possible ; believe 
 that if he cannot live by truth, then he can die by it. Dost thou be- 
 lieve it? Then is the new era begun !" 
 
 " How men are hurried here; how they are hunted and terrifically 
 chased into double-quick speed ; so that in self-defence they must not 
 stay to look at one another ! Miserable is the scandal-mongery and 
 evil-speaking of the country population : more frightful still the total 
 ignorance and mutual heedlessness of these poor souls in populous 
 city pent. ' Each passes on, quick, transient, regarding not the other 
 or his woes.' Each must button himself together, and take no 
 thought (not even for evil) of his neighbor. There in their little 
 cells, divided by partitions of brick or board, they sit strangers, un- 
 knowing, unknown, like passengers in some huge ship ; each within, 
 his own cabin. Alas ! and the ship is life; and the voyage is from 
 eternity to eternity." 
 
 " Everywhere there is the most crying want of government, a true 
 all-ruining anarchy. No one has any knowledge of London, in which 
 he lives. It is a huge aggregate of little systems, each of which is 
 again a small anarchy, the members of which do not work together, 
 but scramble against each other. The soul (what can be properly 
 called the soul) lies dead in the bosom of man ; starting out in mad, 
 ghastly night-walkings e. g. the gift of tongues. Ignorance eclipses 
 all things with its owlet wings. Man walks he knows not whither; 
 walks and wanders till he walks into the jaws of death, and is then
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CAKLYLE. 121 
 
 devoured. Nevertheless, God is in it. Here, even here, is the reve- 
 lation of the Infinite in the Finite ; a majestic poem (tragic, comic, 
 or epic), couldst thou but read it or recite it! Watch it then; study 
 it; catch the secret of it; and proclaim the same in such accent as is 
 given thee. Alas ! the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 
 
 "On Thursday night last (this is Monday), the 28th of October, 
 dined with Fonblanque, editor of the Examiner. An honorable 
 Radical; might be something better. London -bred. Limited by 
 education more than by nature. Something metallic in the tone of 
 his voice (like that of Professor Austin). For the rest, a tall, loose, 
 lank-haired, wrinkly, wintry, vehement-looking flail of a man. I 
 reckon him the best of the fourth estate now extant in Britain. 
 Shall see him again. " 
 
 "Allan Cunningham with us last night. Jane calls him a genuine 
 Dumfriesshire mason still; and adds that it is delightful to see a 
 genuine man of any sort. Allan was, as usual, full of Scottish anec- 
 dotic talk. Right by instinct ; has no principles or creed that I can 
 see, but excellent old Scottish Juibite of character. An interesting 
 man." 
 
 "Walter Scott left town yesterday on his way to Naples. He is 
 to proceed from Plymouth in a frigate, which the government have 
 given him a place in. Much run after here, it seems; but he is old 
 and sick, and cannot enjoy it; has had two shocks of palsy, and 
 seems altogether in a precarious way. To me he is and has been 
 an object of very minor interest for many, many years. The novel- 
 wright of his time, its favorite child, and therefore an almost worth- 
 less one. Yet is there something in his deep recognition of the 
 worth of the past, perhaps better than anything he has expressed 
 about it, into which I do not yet fully see. Have never spoken 
 with him (though I might sometimes without great effort) ; and now 
 probably never shall." 
 
 "What an advantage has the pulpit where you address men 
 already arranged to hear you, and in a vehicle which long use has 
 rendered easy ! How infinitely harder when you have all to create 
 not the ideas only and the sentiments, but the symbols and the 
 mood of mind! Nevertheless, in all cases where man addresses man, 
 on his spiritual interests especially, there is a sacredness, could we 
 but evolve it, and think and speak in it. Consider better what it is 
 thou meanest by a symbol; how far thou hast insight into the nature 
 thereof." 
 
 "Is Art va. the old Greek sense possible for men at this late era? 
 or were not perhaps the founder of a religion our true Homer at 
 
 E resent? The whole soul must be illuminated, made harmonious, 
 hakespeare seems to have had no religion but his poetry. " 
 
 "Where is To-morrow resident even now? Somewhere or some- 
 how it is, doubt not of that. On the common theory thou mayest 
 think thyself into madness on this question." 
 
 II. 6
 
 122 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "November 2. How few people speak for Truth's sake, even in 
 its humblest modes! I return from Enfield, where I have seen 
 Lamb, etc., etc. Not one of that class will tell you a straightforward 
 story, or even a credible one, about any matter under the sun. All 
 must be packed up into epigrammatic contrasts, startling exaggera- 
 tions, claptraps that will get a plaudit from the galleries! I have 
 heard a hundred anecdotes about William Hazlitt, for example; yet 
 cannot by never so much cross-questioning even form to myself the 
 smallest notion of how it really stood with him. Wearisome, inex- 
 pressibly wearisome to me is that sort of clatter; it is not walking 
 (to the end of time you would never advance, for these persons in- 
 deed have no WHITHER); it is not bounding and frisking in graceful, 
 natural joy; it is dancing a St. Vitus's dance. Heigh-ho! Charles 
 Lamb I sincerely believe to be in some considerable degree insane. A 
 more pitiful, rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tomfool I do 
 not know. He is witty by denying truisms and abjuring good manners. 
 His speech wriggles hither and thither with an incessant painful 
 fluctuation, not an opinion in it, or a fact, or a phrase that you can 
 thank him for more like a convulsion fit than a natural systole and 
 diastole. Besides, he is now a confirmed, shameless drunkard ; asks 
 vehemently for gin-and-water in strangers' houses, tipples till he is 
 utterly mad, and is only not thrown out of doors because he is too 
 much despised for taking such trouble with him. Poor Lamb ! 
 Poor England, when such a despicable abortion is named genius ! 
 He said, there are just two things I regret in England's history: first, 
 that Guy Fawkes's plot did not take effect (there would have been so 
 glorious an explosion); second, that the Royalists did not hang Milton 
 (then we might have laughed at them), etc., etc. Armer Teufel!" 
 
 Carlyle did not know at this time the tragedy lying behind the 
 life of Charles Lamb, which explained or extenuated his faults. 
 Yet this extravagantly harsh estimate is repeated scarcely qualified 
 in a sketch written nearly forty years after. 
 
 " Among the scrambling miscellany of notables that hovered 
 about us, Leigh Hunt was probably the best, poor Charles Lamb 
 the worst. He was sinking into drink, poor creature; his fraction 
 of 'humor,' etc., I recognized, and recognize but never could ac- 
 cept for a great thing, a genuine but essentially small and Cockney 
 thing; and now, with gin, etc., superadded, one had to say ' Genius ! 
 This is not genius, but diluted insanity. Please remove this ! ' " 
 
 The gentle Elia deserved a kinder judgment. Carlyle considered 
 " humor " to be the characteristic of the highest order of mind. He 
 had heard Lamb extravagantly praised, perhaps, for this particular 
 quality, and he was provoked to find it combined with habits which 
 his own stern Calvinism was unable to tolerate. 
 
 To return to the letters : 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, ScotsMg. 
 
 " 4 Ampton Street, Mecklenburgh Square, London : October 20, 1831. 
 
 " My dear Mother, We have nestled down here in our tight little 
 lodging, and are as quiet as we could wish to be. Jane is in better
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 123 
 
 health than she has enjoyed for many months ; I, too, am fully better. 
 We live thriftily, have companions and conversation of the best that 
 can be had; and except that I cannot honestly tell myself that I am 
 working (though I daily make the attempt to work and keep scraf- 
 fling and feltering), we ought to call ourselves very well off indeed. 
 The people of the house are cleanly, orderly, and seem honest no 
 noises, no bugs disturb us through the night; on the whole, it is 
 among the best places for sleep I have been in, as you may judge by 
 this fact, that more than once we have slept almost ten hours at a 
 stretch a noble spell of sleeping, of which, however, both of us, so 
 long disturbed and tost about, had need enough. The worst thing 
 about our establishment is its hamperedness, which is so much the 
 more sensible to us coming from the desert vastness of the moor at 
 Craigenputtock. I have a sort of feeling as if I were tied up in a 
 sack and could not get my fins stirred. No doubt this will wear off, 
 for one needs but little room to work profitably in; my craft espe- 
 cially requires nothing but a chair, a table, and a piece of paper. 
 Were I once fairly heated at my work, I shall not mind what sort 
 of harness I am in. Napier writes to me that he expects a ' striking 
 essay ' from my hand for his next Edinburgh Review, so I must be- 
 stir me, for there is little more than a month to work in. 
 
 " Some of my friends here are talking of possible situations for me, 
 but as yet on no ground that I can fairly see with my own eyes. I 
 let it be known to every one who takes interest in me that I am very 
 desirous to work at any honest employment I am acquainted with ; but 
 for the rest, able to hold on my way whether I find other employment 
 or not. If I can earn myself a more liberal livelihood, I hope I shall 
 be thankful for it, and use it as it beseems me ; nay, I would even live 
 in London for the sake of such a blessing; but if nothing of the kind 
 turn up, as is most likely, then I can also, with all contentment, re- 
 turn to the Whinstone Craig, and rejoice that this city of refuge is 
 left me. Truly thankful ought I to be that the Giver of all Good 
 has imparted to me this highest of all blessings; light to discern His 
 hand in the confused workings of this evil world ; and to follow fear- 
 lessly whithersoever He beckons! Ever be praised God for it! I 
 was once the miserablest of all men, but shall not be so any more. 
 On the whole, however, there is work hi abundance for me here 
 men ignorant, on all hands of me, of what it most concerns them to 
 know ; neither will I turn me from the task of teaching them as it is 
 given me. Had I once investigated the ground fully, I may perhaps 
 lift up my voice so that it shall be heard a little farther than hereto- 
 fore. But I wish to do nothing rashly, to take no step which I might 
 wish in vain to retrace. 
 
 "Meanwhile, my book, withdrawn from all bookselling consulta- 
 tions, lies safe in the box, waiting till the book-trade revive before I 
 make a farther attempt. The Reform Sill, I suppose, must be dis- 
 posed of first; and when that may be I know not, neither, indeed, 
 care. If the world will not have my bit-book, then, of a truth, my 
 bit-book can do without the world. One good thing in the middle 
 of all this stagnation is that we are perfectly peaceable here, though 
 the contrary was by some apprehended. The newspapers will tell 
 you, as their way is, about wars and rumors of wars; but you need
 
 124 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 not believe them, or heed them. I see no symptom of revolting 
 among the people, neither do I believe that anything short of hunger 
 will raise them of which, happily, there is as yet no approach. So 
 keep yourself perfectly easy, my dear mother, and know that we are 
 as safe as we could anywhere be ; nay, at the first stir of ' revolution ' 
 cannot we hasten to the Craig and sit there and see them revolve it 
 out for their own behoof. 
 
 " I dare say you have not seen in the newspapers, but will soon 
 see, something extraordinary about poor Edward Irving. His friends 
 here are all much grieved about him. For many months he has 
 been puddling and muddling in the midst of certain insane jargon- 
 ings of hysterical women and crack-brained enthusiasts, who start 
 up from time to time in public companies, and utter confused stuff, 
 mostly ' Ohs ' and ' Ahs, ' and absurd interjections about ' the body 
 of Jesus;' they also pretend to ' work miracles,' and have raised more 
 than one weak bedrid woman, and cured people of 'nerves,' or, as 
 they themselves say, 'cast devils out of them.' All which poor Ir- 
 ving is pleased to consider as the ' work of the Spirit, ' and to janner 
 about at great length, as making his church the peculiarly blessed of 
 Heaven, and equal to or greater than the primitive one at Corinth. 
 This, greatly to my sorrow and that of many, has gone on privately 
 a good while, with increasing vigor; but last Sabbath it burst out 
 publicly in the open church ; for one of the ' Prophetesses, ' a woman 
 on the verge of derangement, started up in the time of worship, and 
 began to speak with tongues, and, as the thing was encouraged by 
 Irving, there were some three or four fresh hands who started up in 
 the evening sermon and began their ragings; whereupon the whole 
 congregation got into foul uproar, some groaning, some laughing, 
 some shrieking, not a few falling into swoons : more like a Bedlam 
 than a Christian church. Happily, neither Jane nor I were there, 
 though we had been the previous day. We had not even heard of 
 it. When going next evening to call on Irving, we found the house 
 all decked out for a ' meeting ' (that is, about this same ' speaking 
 with tongues '), and as we talked a moment with Irving, who had 
 come down to us, there rose a shriek in the upper story of the 
 house, and presently he exclaimed, ' There is one prophesying; come 
 and hear her!' We hesitated to go, but he forced us up into a back 
 room, and there we could hear the wretched creature raving like one 
 possessed: hooing, and Aaing, and talking as sensibly as one would 
 do with a pint of brandy in his stomach, till after some ten minutes 
 she seemed to grow tired and become silent. 
 
 " Nothing so shocking and altogether unspeakably deplorable was 
 it ever my lot to hear. Poor Jane was on the verge of fainting, and 
 did not recover the whole night. And now the newspapers have 
 got wind of it and are groaning loudly over it, and the congregation 
 itself is like to split on the matter; and for poor Irving, in any case, 
 dark mad times are coming. You need not speak of all this, at least 
 not be the first to speak of it ; most likely it will be too public. 
 What the final issue for our most worthy but most misguided friend 
 may be, I dare not so much as guess. Could I do anything to save 
 him, it were well my part, but I despair of being able to accomplish 
 anything. I began a letter to him yesterday, but gave it up as hope-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 125 
 
 less when I heard that the newspapers had interfered, for now Ir- 
 ving, I reckon, will not draw back, lest it should seem fear of men 
 rather than of God. The unhappy man! Let us nevertheless hope 
 that he is not utterly lost, but only gone astray for a time. Be 
 thankful also that our wits are still in some measure left with us." 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "October 21. 
 ******** 
 
 "The newspapers call on Irving's people, for the honor of Scot- 
 land, to leave him or muzzle him. The most general hypothesis is 
 that he is a quack, the milder that he is getting cracked. Poor 
 George is the man I pity most; he spoke to us of it, almost with 
 tears in eyes, and earnestly entreated me to deal with his brother, 
 which, when he comes hither (by appointment on Tuesday), I partly 
 mean to attempt, though now I fear it will be useless. It seems 
 likely that all the Loselism of London will be about the church next 
 Sunday, that his people will quarrel with him ; in any case, that 
 troublous times are appointed him. My poor friend ! And yet the 
 punishment was not unjust, that he who believed without inquiry 
 should now believe against all light, and portentously call upon the 
 world to admire as inspiration what is but a dancing on the verge of 
 bottomless abysses of madness. I see not the end of it who does?" 
 
 Carlyle did attempt, as he has related in the "Reminiscences," 
 and as he tells in his letters, to drag Irving back from the precipice ; 
 but it proved as vain as he had feared ; and all that he could do was 
 but to stand aside and watch the ruin of his true and noble-minded 
 friend. The last touch was added to the tragedy by the presence of 
 Mrs. Carlyle to witness the catastrophe. 
 
 Meanwhile London was filling again after the holidays; and the 
 autumn brought back old faces of other friends whom Carlyle was 
 glad to see again. The Bullers were among the earliest arrivals. 
 Charles Buller, then beginning his brief and brilliant career, was an 
 advanced Radical in politics, and equally advanced in matters of 
 speculation. He had not yet found a creed, as he had said, which 
 he could even wish to believe true. He had a generous scorn of af- 
 fectation, and did not choose, like many of his contemporaries, to 
 wear a mask of veiled hypocrisy. The hen is terrified when the 
 ducklings she has hatched take to water. Mrs. Buller, indeed, shared 
 her son's feelings and felt no alarm; but her sister, Mrs. Strachey, 
 who, a good religious woman, was shocked at a freedom less com- 
 mon then than it is now, because it could be less safely avowed, and, 
 in despair of help from the professional authorities, to whom she 
 knew that her nephew would not listen, she turned to Carlyle, whose 
 opinions she perhaps imperfectly understood, but of whose piety of 
 heart she was assured. 
 
 Carlyle was extremely fond of Charles Buller. He was the only 
 person of distinction or promise of distinction with whom he came
 
 123 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 in contact that he heartily admired; and he, too, had regretted to see 
 his old pupil rushing off into the ways of agnosticism. Well he 
 knew that no man ever came, or ever could come, to any greatness 
 in this world in irreverent occupation with the mere phenomena of 
 earth. The agnostic doctrines, he once said to me, were to appear- 
 ance like the finest flour, from which you might expect the most ex- 
 cellent bread; but when you came to feed on it you found it was 
 powdered glass and you had been eating the deadliest poison. What 
 he valued in Buller was his hatred of cant, his frank contempt of in- 
 sincere professions. But refusal even to appear to conform with 
 opinions which the world holds it decent to profess is but the clear- 
 ing of the soil from weeds. Carlyle, without waiting to be urged by 
 Mrs. Strachey, had long been laboring to sow the seeds in Buller of a 
 nobler belief ; but a faith which can stand the wear and tear of work 
 cannot be taught like a mathematical problem; and if Carlyle had 
 shown Mrs. Strachey the condition of his own mind, she would 
 scarcely have applied to him for assistance. Buller died before it 
 had been seen to what seed sown such a mind as his might eventu-. 
 ally have grown. 
 
 TJwmas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle, Scotabrig. 
 
 1 ' November 10, 1831. 
 ******** 
 
 "I feel in some measure getting to my feet again after so long 
 stumbling. Some time ago, I actually began a paper for the Edin- 
 burgh Review, at which I am daily working. My hand was sadly 
 out; but by resolute endeavor I feel that it will come in again, and I 
 shall perhaps make a tolerable story of it. So long as I can work, it 
 is all well with me : I care for nothing. The only thing I have to 
 struggle against is idleness and falsehood. These are the two Devil's 
 emissaries that, did I give them heed, would work all my woe. A 
 considerable paper of mine came out in the Foreign Quarterly Re- 
 view (Cochrane's), which, with several other things that you have not 
 yet seen, I hope to show you and get you to read when I return. 
 Cochrane's pay will serve to keep Mall in shaft till we turn north- 
 ward. Meanwhile all goes on as well as we could hope; our lodg- 
 ings continue very comfortable and very cheap ; so that we can both 
 live for little more than it used in my last London residence to cost 
 me alone. The people are very cleanly, polite, decent-minded peo- 
 ple; they have seen better days, and seem to have a heart above 
 their lot. Both of us sleep well; our health is fully of the old quali- 
 ty: we eat and breathe, and have wherewith to eat and breathe; for 
 honest thinking and honest acting the materials are everywhere laid 
 down to one. 
 
 "Except the printing of my book, or rather the trying for it so 
 long as there seems any good chance, I have no special call at Lon- 
 don. Nevertheless, there are many profitable chances for me here; 
 especially many persons with whom I find much encouragement and 
 perhaps improvement in associating. A considerable knot of young
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 127 
 
 men, in particular, I discover here that have had their eves on me, 
 and wish for insight from me; with these it seems quite possible 
 some good may be done. Among the number was my landlord this 
 morning, 1 a secretary in one of the government offices, whom I met 
 with for the first time. He had a whole party to meet me: four of 
 the best-mannered, most pleasant persons 1 have for a long time seen; 
 all ingenuous persons ' lying,' what so few do, ' open to light.' The 
 disciple or associate I have most to do with is one John Mill (the sou 
 of a Scotchman of eminence), acquainted with the Bullers, etc. , who 
 is a great favorite here. It was he that brought about my meeting 
 this morning with my secretary (Taylor) and his friends, whom I 
 hope to see again. Charles Buller also has come to town ; he made 
 his appearance here the other day, was in about an hour followed by 
 Mill, and the two made what Jane called ' a pleasant forenoon call 
 of seven hours and a half. ' Charles is grown a great tower of a fel- 
 low, six feet three in height, a yard in breadth, shows great talent 
 and great natural goodness, which I hope he will by-and-by turn to 
 notable account. I met him and Strachey amid the raw, frosty fog 
 of Piccadilly this morning, and expect to see him some evening soon. 
 Mrs. Strachey is just returned from Devonshire, whence she had 
 written us a very kind and true-looking letter, and we expect to see 
 her soon. The Montagus go hovering much about us ; but their in- 
 tercourse is of inferior profit their whole way of life has a certain 
 hollowness, so that you nowhere find firm bottom. One must try to 
 take the good out of each and keep aloof from the evil that lies 
 everywhere mixed with it. 
 
 "Irving comes but little in our way; and one does not like to go 
 and seek him in his own house in a whole posse of enthusiasts, rant- 
 ers, and silly women. He was here once, taking tea, since that work 
 of the ' Tongues ' began. I told him with great earnestness my deep- 
 seated, unhesitating conviction that it was no special work of the 
 Holy Spirit, or of any spirit, save of that black, frightful, unclean 
 one that dwells in Bedlam. He persists, mildly obstinate, in his 
 course, greatly strengthened therein by his wife, who is reckoned the 
 beginner of it all. What it will all lead to I pretend not to prophesy. 
 I do not think it can spread to any extent even among the vulgar 
 here at this time of day; only a small knot of ravers now rave in 
 that old worn-out direction. But for Irving himself the conse- 
 quences frighten me. That he will lose his congregation seems cal- 
 culated on by his friends ; but perhaps a far darker fear is not out 
 of the question namely, that he may lose his own wits. God guard 
 him from such a consummation! None of you, I am sure, will join 
 in any ill-natured clamors against him. Defend him rather with 
 brotherly charity, and hope always that he will yet be delivered from 
 this real delusion of the Devil. 
 
 " Jane wanted me to tell you of the Examiner editor, 8 but I have 
 not space here. The poor fellow has been thrown out of a gig, and 
 is tediously lame ; so I have not yet seen him here, neither was he at 
 home when I pilgrimed over the other day, but gone to Brighton for 
 
 > Henry (now Sir Henry) Taylor, with whom he had been at breakfast. 
 * Fonblan<iue.
 
 128 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 sea air. My ideas, therefore, were only formed by candle-light. He 
 is a long, thin, towfa'e-headed man, with wrinkly, even baggy face, 
 keen, zealous-looking eyes, a sort of well-toned, honestly argumenta- 
 tive voice; very much the air of a true-hearted Radical. He was 
 all braced with straps, moving on crutches, and hung together loose- 
 ly, you would have said, as by flail-cappins. However, we got along 
 bravely together, and parted, after arguing and assenting and laugh- 
 ing and mourning at considerable length, with mutual purposes to 
 meet again. I rather like the man; there is far more in him than in 
 most of Radicals; besides, he means honestly, and has a real feeling 
 where the shoe pinches namely, that the grand misery is the con- 
 dition of the poor classes. 
 
 " I had much to write about the state of matters here, and to quiet 
 your fears especially about the cholera, which so many torment 
 themselves with. It is in truth a disease of no such terrific quality, 
 only that its effect is sudden, and the people have heard so much 
 about it. Scarcely a year but there is a typhus fever in Glasgow or 
 Edinburgh that kills far more than the cholera does in like cases. 
 For my part, I am even satisfied that it has reached our coasts 
 (where I have long inevitably expected it), and that now the reality, 
 which is measurable, will succeed the terror, which is unmeasurable, 
 and doing great mischief both to individual peace of mind and all 
 kinds of commercial intercourse. The worst effect here will be 
 that same interruption; thus already the coals which come from 
 Northumberland are beginning to rise. On the whole, however, it 
 is our purpose to run no unnecessary risks; therefore, should the 
 danger really come near us, and the disease break out in London 
 under a shape in any measure formidable, we will forthwith bundle 
 our gear, and return to Puttock till it is over. This we have re- 
 solved on, so disquiet not yourself, my dear mother; there is no peril 
 for the moment ; nay, it is a hundred miles nearer you than us. As 
 to rioting and all that sort of matter, there is no symptom of it here ; 
 neither in case of its actual occurrence have persons like us any- 
 thing to fear. We are safer here, I take it, than we should be m 
 Dunscore itself. ... I will write, if aught notable happen, instant- 
 ly. Farewell, dear mother. God bless you all ! T. CARLYLE." 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "November 13, 1831. 
 *#*##*** 
 
 " As to Irving, expect little tidings of him. I think I shall hence- 
 forth see little of him. His ' gift of tongues ' goes on apace. Glen 
 says there was one performing yesterday; but, on the whole, the 
 Cockneys are too old for such lullabies they simply think he is 
 gone distracted, or means to ' do ' them ; and so, having seen it once, 
 come no more back. Edward himself came here about a fortnight 
 ago, to tea, and I told him solemnly, with a tone of friendly warn- 
 ing, such as he well merited from me, what I thought of that scan- 
 dalous delusion. He was almost at crying, but remained as I ex- 
 pected him to remain. It sometimes appears to me the darkest fears 
 are actually not groundless in regard to him. God deliver him! If 
 that is not the Devil's own work, then let the Devil lay down the gun.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 129 
 
 " I know not whether you get any Galignanfs Messenger or the like, 
 BO whether it is worth while to send you any public news. There 
 have been frightful riots at Bristol, some hundreds of lives lost, all 
 the public buildings burnt, and many private houses quite a George 
 Gordon affair on occasion of Wetherell's arrival there as Recorder, 
 whom unhappily they took that method of convincing that there 
 was not ' a reaction ' (in regard to lief orm). Oh, the unspeakable, 
 blundering, braying, brass-throated, leather-headed fool and fools! 
 If they do not pass that Bill of theirs soon, the country will be a 
 chaos, and 200 Tory lords crying out, Who shall deliver us? The 
 Duke of Northumberland is actually fortifying his house here. 
 Other riots there have been at Coventry, at Worcester, etc. Swing 
 also is as busy as last winter; all London, all Britain, is organizing 
 itself into political unions. Finally, the cholera has actually arrived 
 at Sunderland; a precious outlook! Truly the political aspects of 
 England give even me alarms. A second edition of the French 
 Revolution is distinctly within the range of chances; for there is no- 
 where any tie remaining among men. Everywhere, in court and 
 cathedral, brazen Falsehood now at length stands convicted of a lie, 
 and famishing Ignorance cries, Away with her, away with her ! 
 God deliver us. Nay, God will deliver us ; for this is His world, not 
 the Devil's. All is perfectly quiet in London hitherto ; only great 
 apprehension, swearing-in of constables. Neither is the cholera yet 
 dangerous. It has not spread from Sunderland, where it has now 
 been some ten days. Should the danger grow imminent, we two 
 have determined to fly to Puttock. Meanwhile, I cannot say that 
 twenty choleras and twenty Revolutions ought to terrify one. The 
 crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you 
 once. 'I have cast away base fear from me forever,' says Dreck, 
 and he is seldom wholly wrong. " 
 
 To Mrs. Welsh, 1 Maryland Street, Liverpool. 
 
 "4 Arnpton Street: Tuesday, December, 1831. 
 
 "My dear Aunt. "When I returned from Enfield, where I had 
 been for a week, I found the box containing the memorials of my 
 heedlessness 2 awaiting me on the top of a cistern outside our stair- 
 case window; and our landlady assured me, with the utmost self- 
 complacency, that she had done all she could for it in the way of 
 keeping it cool ! She looked rather blank when, after duly com- 
 mending her care, I informed her it was probably a cloak and shawl, 
 which she might now bring in out of the rain with all despatch. 
 Only to the intellect of a Cockney would a deal box have suggested 
 the exclusive idea of game. 
 
 " The cloak I got dyed a more sober color and lined and furred, 
 so as effectually to exclude the cold, no slight conquest of Art over 
 Nature in these days. Some people here have the impudence or 
 ignorance to congratulate me on the agreeable change of climate I 
 have made; but truly, if my contentment depended mainly on 
 weather, I should wish myself back to our own hill-top without de- 
 
 ' Wife of Mrs. Carlyle's Liverpool uncle. 
 
 * Things which she had left at Liverpool in passing through. 
 
 II. 6*
 
 130 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 lay. Regarded as a place merely, this noble city is simply the most 
 detestable I ever lived in one day a ferocious frost, the next a fog 
 so thick you might put it in your pocket ; a Dead Sea of green-col- 
 ored filth underfoot, and above an atmosphere like one of my un- 
 cle's sugar-boilers. But, as the French say, ilfaut se ranger; and so 
 day after day I rush forth with desperate resignation, and even find 
 a sort of sublimity in the infinite horror through which I must make 
 my way, or die of indigestion. 
 
 " If I am inclined to reflect on the place, however (perhaps not with- 
 out a touch of national prejudice), it is certainly my bounden duty 
 to speak well of the people. Nowhere have I found more worth, 
 more talent, or more kindness; and I must doubly regret the ill- 
 health I have been suffering under, since it has so curtailed my en- 
 joyment of all this. Nevertheless, though I dare seldom accept an 
 invitation out, I have the pleasantest evenings at home. Scarce a 
 night passes that some acquaintance, new or old, does not drop in at 
 tea; and then follow such bouts at talking! Not of our 'Book '(as 
 my uncle named Carlyle), but of several books. 
 
 "I have seen most of the literary people here, and, as Edward 
 Irving said after his first interview with Wordsworth, ' I think not 
 of them so highly as I was wont. ' 
 
 " These people, who have made themselves snug little reputations, 
 and on the strength of such hold up their heads as ' one and some- 
 what/ are by no means the most distinguished that I meet with 
 either for talent or cultivation; some of them, indeed (Charles 
 Lamb, for instance), would not be tolerated in any society out of 
 England. . . . 
 
 "... My kindest love to my uncle and all the weans. Happy 
 New-year and many of them ; always the last the best ! God bless 
 you all! Your affectionate JAKE W. CARLYLE." 
 
 To Miss Jean Carlyle, ScotsMg. 
 
 "4 Ampton Street: December, 1831. 
 
 "My dear Jean, You do not write to me; but you write, and I 
 am content. The proverb says ' It is not lost that a friend gets ;' to 
 which I readily accede, the more readily because a letter with us is 
 always regarded as a common good. 
 
 " 1 do not forget you in London, as you predicted. My recollec- 
 tions of all I love are more vivid than at any former period. Often 
 when I have been lying ill here among strangers, it has been my 
 pleasantest thought that there were kind hearts at home to whom 
 my sickness would not be a weariness; to whom I could return out 
 of all this hubbub with affection and trust. Not that I am not 
 kindly used here ; from ' the noble lady ' * down to the mistress of 
 the lodging, I have everywhere found unlooked-for civility, and at 
 least the show of kindness. With the ' noble lady,' however, I may 
 mention my intercourse seems to be dying an easy natural death. 
 Now that we know each other, the 'fine enthu-si-asm ' cannot be 
 kept alive without more hypocrisy than one of us at least can bring 
 to bear on it. Mrs. Montagu is an actress. I admire her to a 
 
 i Mrs. Montagu.
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 131 
 
 certain extent, but friendship for such a person is out of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Mrs. Austin I have now seen, and like infinitely better. She is 
 coming to tea to-morrow night. If I ' swear everlasting friendship ' 
 with any woman here, it will be with her. 
 
 ' ' But the most interesting acquaintances we have made are the 
 Saint-Simonians. * You may fancy how my heart beat when a card 
 bearing the name of Gusto. ve d' Eichth-al was sent up the other day, 
 when I happened to be alone. Our meeting was most cordial ; and, 
 as he talks good English, we contrived to carry on a pretty voluble 
 conversation till Carlyle came home and relieved me. He (Gustave) 
 is a creature to love at first sight so gentle and trustful and earnest- 
 looking, ready to do and suffer all for his faith. A friend accom- 
 panies him, whom we had here to-day along with Mill and Detro- 
 sier; a stronger, perhaps nobler MAN than Gustave, with whom Car- 
 lyle seems to be exceedingly taken. He (Duverrier, I think they call 
 him) is at first sight ugly; all pitted with the small-pox ; but by-and- 
 by you wonder at your first impression, his countenance is so pre- 
 possessing and commanding. We hope to see a great deal of these 
 men before we leave London. Both seem to entertain a high re- 
 spect for Carlyle as, indeed, everybody I see does. Glen continues 
 to come a great deal about us ; and blethers more like a man growing 
 mad than one growing wiser. Carlyle maintains, in opposition to 
 me, that there is ' method ha his madness,' but his idea of the quan- 
 tity seems daily diminishing. 
 
 "Of the Irvings we see nothing and hear little good. Carlyle 
 dined at a literary party the other day, where he met Hogg, Lock- 
 hart, Gait, Allan Cunningham, etc. 
 
 " And now God bless you, one and all of you! My love to every 
 one. Your affectionate JANE W, CABLYLE. " 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A.D. 1831. JET. 36. 
 
 Extract* from Note-book. 
 
 " November 2. All the world is in apprehension about the chol- 
 era pestilence, which, indeed, seems advancing towards us with a 
 frightful, slow, unswerving constancy. For myself, I cannot say 
 that it costs me great suffering; we are all appointed once to die. 
 Death is the g^-and sum total of it all. Generally now it seems to 
 me as if this life were but the inconsiderable portico of man's exist- 
 ence, which afterwards, in new mysterious environment, were to 
 be continued without end. I say, 'seems to me,' for the proof of it 
 were hard to state by logic; it is the fruit of faith; begins to show 
 itself with more ana more decisiveness the instant you have dared 
 to say, ' Be it either way !' But, on the whole, our conception of 
 immortality depends on that of time, which latter is the deepest 
 
 i "The Saint-Simonians, Detrosier, etc., wcro stirring and conspicuous objects in 
 that epoch, but have now fallen all dark and silent again. T. C., 1806."
 
 132 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 belonging to philosophy, and the one perhaps wherein modern phi- 
 losophy has earned its best triumph. Believe that properly there is no 
 space and no time, how many contradictions become reconciled!" 
 
 " Sports are all gone from among men; there is now no holiday 
 either for rich or poor. Hard toiling, then hard drinking or hard 
 fox-hunting ! This is not the era of sport, but of martyrdom and 
 persecution. Will the new morning never dawn? It requires a 
 certain vigor of the imagination and of the social faculties before 
 amusement, popular sports, can exist, which vigor at this era is all 
 but total inanition. Do but think of the Christmas carols and 
 games, the Abbots of Unreason, the Maypoles, etc., etc. Then look 
 at your Manchesters on Saturdays and Sundays." 
 
 " 'Education' is beyond being so much as despised. We must 
 praise it, when it is not Deducation, or an utter annihilation of 
 what it professes to foster. The best educated man you will often 
 find to be the artisan at all rates, the man of business. For why? 
 He has put forth his hand and operated on Nature ; must actually 
 attain some true insight, or he cannot live. The worst educated 
 man is usually your man of fortune. He has not put forth his hand 
 upon anything except upon his bell-rope. Your scholar proper, too, 
 your so-called man of letters, is a thing with clearer vision, through 
 the hundredth part of an eye. A Burns is infinitely better educated 
 than a Byron." 
 
 " A common persuasion among serious ill-informed persons that 
 the end of the world is at hand Henry Drummond, Edward Irving, 
 and all that class. So it was at the beginning of the Christian era, 
 say rather at the termination of the Pagan one. Which is the most 
 ignorant creature of his class even in Britain? Generally speaking, 
 the Cockney, the London-bred man. What does the Cockney boy 
 know of the muffin he eats? Simply that a hawker brings it to the 
 door and charges a penny for it. The country youth sees it grow in 
 the fields, in the mill, in the bakehouse. Thus of all things per- 
 taining to the life of man." 
 
 "November 4. To it, thou TaugenicJits ! Gird thyself! stirf 
 struggle! forward! forward! Thou art bundled up here and tied 
 as in a sack. On, then, as in a sack race, ' Running, not raging. ' 
 Gott sey mir gnadig." 
 
 "November 12. Have been two days as good as idle hampered, 
 disturbed, quite out of sorts, as it were quite stranded ; no tackle 
 left, no tools but my ten fingers, nothing but accidental drift-wood 
 to build even a raft of. ' This is no my ain house." Art thou aware 
 that no man and no thing, but simply thy own self, can permanently 
 keep this down? Act on that conviction. 
 
 "How sad and stern is all life to me! Homeless! homeless! 
 would my task were done. I think I should not care to die; in real 
 earnestness, should care very little : this earthly sun has shown me 
 only roads full of mire and thorns. Why cannot I be a kind of 
 artist? Politics are angry, agitating. What have I to do with it? 
 will any Parliamentary Reform ever reform mef"
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 133 
 
 "This I begin to see, that evil and good are everywhere, like 
 Bhadow and substance; inseparable (for men), yet not hostile, only 
 opposed. There is considerable significance in this fact, perhaps 
 the n-ew moral principle of our era. (How ?) It was familiar to 
 Goethe's mind." 
 
 "November 17. The nobleness of silence. . The highest melody 
 dwells only in silence (the sphere melody, the melody of health); 
 the eye cannot see shadow, cannot see light, but only the two com- 
 bined. General law of being. Think farther of this. 
 
 " As it is but a small portion of our thinking that we can articu- 
 late into thoughts, so again it is but a small portion, properly only 
 the outer surface of our morality, that we can shape into action, or 
 into express rules of action. Remark farther that it is but the cor- 
 rect, coherent shaping of this outward surface, or the incorrect, 
 incoherent, monstrous shaping of it, and nowise the moral force 
 which shaped it, which lies under it, vague, indefinite, unseen, that 
 constitutes what in common speech we call a moral conduct or an 
 immoral. Hence, too, the necessity of tolerance, of insight, in judg- 
 ing of men. For the correctness of that same outer surface may be 
 out of all proportion to the inward depth and quantity; nay, often 
 enough they are in inverse proportion; only in some highly favored 
 individuals can the great endowment utter itself without irregu- 
 larity. Thus in great men, with whom inward, and as it were latent, 
 morality must ever be the root and beginning of greatness, how 
 often do we find a conduct defaced by many a moral impropriety, 
 and have to love them with sorrow ! Thus, too, poor Burns must 
 record that almost the only noble-minded men he had ever met with 
 were among the class named Blackguards. 
 
 ' ' Extremes meet. Perfect morality were no more an object of 
 consciousness than perfect immorality, as pure light cannot any 
 more be seen than pure darkness. The healthy moral nature loves 
 virtue, the unhealthy at best makes love to it." 
 
 " December 23. Finished the ' Characteristics' about a week ago; 
 baddish, with a certain beginning of deeper insight in it." 
 
 "January 13, 1832. Plenty of magazine editors applying to me, 
 indeed sometimes pestering me. Do not like to break with any, yet 
 must not close with any. Strange state of literature, periodical and 
 other! A man must just lay out his manufacture in one of those 
 old-clothes shops and see whether any one will buy it. The Editor 
 has little to do with the matter except as commercial broker; he sells 
 it and pays you for it. 
 
 "Lytton Bulwer has not yet come into sight of me. Is there 
 aught more in him than a dandiacal philosophist? Fear not. Of 
 the infatuated Fraser, with his dog's-meat tart of a magazine, what? 
 His pay is certain, and he means honestly; but he is a goose. It was 
 he that sent me Croker's ' Boswell ;' am I bound to offer him the 
 (future) article? or were this the rule in such cases: write thy best 
 and the truth. Then publish it where thou canst best. An indubi- 
 table rule, but is it rule enough?"
 
 184 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Last Friday saw my name in large letters at the Athenaum 
 office in Catherine Street, Strand; hurried on with downcast eyes as 
 if I had seen myself in the pillory. Dilke (to whom I had intrusted 
 ' Dreck ' to read it, and see if he could help me with it) asked me for a 
 scrap of writing with my name. I could not quite clearly see my 
 way through the business, for he had twice or thrice been civil to 
 me, and I did reckon his Athenaeum to be the bad-best of literary 
 syllabubs, and thought I might harmlessly say so much ; gave him 
 Paust's curse, which hung printed there. Incline now to believe 
 that I did wrong; at least imprudently. "Why yield even half a 
 hair's-breadth to puffing? Abhor it, utterly divorce it, and kick it 
 to the Devil. 
 
 "Singular how little wisdom or light of any kind I have met with 
 in London. Do not find a single creature that has communicated 
 an idea to me ; at best, one or two that can understand an idea. Yet 
 the sight of London works on me strongly. I have not perhaps lost 
 my journey hither. 
 
 "Hayward of the Temple, a small but active and vivacious 'man 
 of the time,' by a strange impetus takes to me; the first time, they 
 say, he ever did such a thing, being one that lives in a chiaroscuro 
 element of which good-humored contempt is the basis. Dined in 
 his rooms (over Dunning's) with a set of Oxonian Templars, stupid 
 (in part), limited (wholly), conceited. A dirty evening; I at last 
 sunk utterly silent. None of the great personages of letters have 
 come in my way here, and except as sights they are of little moment 
 to me. Jeffrey says he 'praised me to Rogers,' who, etc., etc. It 
 sometimes rather surprises me that his lordship does not think it 
 would be kind to show me the faces of those people. Something 
 discourages or hinders him; what it is I know not, and indeed care 
 not. The Austins, at least the (Lady) Austin, I like ; eine verstandige 
 herzhafte Fi'au. Empson, a diluted, good-natured, languid Anemp- 
 finder. The strongest young man, one Macaulay (now in Parlia- 
 ment, as I from the first predicted), an emphatic, hottish, really forci- 
 ble person, but unhappily without divine idea. Rogers (an elegant, 
 politely malignant old lady, I think) is in town, and probably I might 
 see him. Moore is I know not where, a lascivious triviality of great 
 name. Bentham is said to have become a driveller and garrulous 
 old man. Perhaps I will try for a look of him. I have much to see 
 and many things to wind up in London before we leave it." 
 
 "I went one day searching for Johnson's place of abode. Found 
 with difficulty the house in Gough (Goff) Square, where the Diction- 
 ary was composed. The landlord, whom Glen and I incidentally in- 
 quired of, was just scraping his feet at the door, invited us to walk 
 in, showed us the garret rooms, etc. (of which he seemed to have the 
 obscurest traditions, taking Johnson for a schoolmaster), interested 
 us much; but at length (dog of a fellow) began to hint that he had 
 all these rooms to let as lodgings." 
 
 " Biography is the only history. Political history as now written 
 and hitherto, with its kings and changes of tax-gatherers, is little 
 (very little) more than a mockery of our want. This I see more and 
 more."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 135 
 
 "The world grows to me even more as a magic picture a true 
 supernatural revelation, infinitely stern, but also infinitely grand. 
 Shall I ever succeed in copying a little therefrom?" 
 
 "January 18. Came upon Shepherd, the Unitarian parson of 
 Liverpool, yesterday, for the first time, at Mrs. Austin's. A very 
 large, purfly, flabby man; massive head with long, thin gray hair; 
 eyes both squinting, both overlapped at the corners by a little roof of 
 a brow, giving him (with his ill-shut mouth) a kind of lazy, good- 
 humored aspect. For the rest, a Unitarian Radical, clear, steadfast, 
 but every way limited. One rather trivial-looking young lady, and 
 another excessively ill-looking, sat opposite to him, seeming to be- 
 long to him. He said Jeffrey did not strike him as ' a very taking 
 man.' Lancashire accent, or some provincial one. Have long known 
 the Unitarians intus et in cute, and never got any good of them, or 
 any ill." 
 
 "January 21. Yesterday sat scribbling some stuff close on the 
 borders of nonsense, about biography as a kind of introduction to 
 'Johnson.' How is it to be? I see not well; know only that it 
 should be light, and written (by way of experiment) currente calamo. 
 I am sickly, not dispirited; yet saVl, as is my wont. When did I 
 laugh last?" Alas! 'light laughter, like heavy money, has altogether 
 fled from us.' The reason is, we have no communion; company 
 enough, but no fellowship. Time brings roses. Meanwhile, the 
 grand perennial Communion of Saints is ever open to us. Enter 
 and worthily comport thyself there." 
 
 "Nothing in this world is to me more mournful, distressing, and 
 in the end intolerable, than mirth not based on earnestness (for it is 
 false mirth), than wit pretending to be wit and yet not based on 
 wisdom. Two objects would reduce me to gravity had I the spirits 
 of a merry-andrew a death's-head and a modern London wit. The 
 besom of destruction should be swept over these people, or else per- 
 petual silence (except when they needed victuals or the like) im- 
 posed on them. 
 
 "In the afternoon Jeffrey, as he is often wont, called in on us; 
 very lively, quick, and light. Chatted about cholera, a subject far 
 more interesting to him than it is to us. Walked with him to Re- 
 gent Street in hurried assiduous talk. O'Connell I called a real 
 specimen of the almost obsolete species clemagogut. Why should it 
 be obsolete, this being the very scene for it? Chiefly because we are 
 all dilettantes, and have no heart of faith, even for the coarsest of 
 beliefs. His ' cunning ' the sign, as cunning ever is, of a weak intel- 
 lect or a weak character. 
 
 "Soon after my return home Arthur Buller called with a mein 
 bester Freundf A goodish youth affectionate, at least attached; 
 not so handsome as I had expected, though more so than enough. 
 He walked with me to Eraser's dinner in Regent Street, or rather to 
 the door of Eraser's house, and then took leave, with stipulation of 
 speedy re-meeting. Enter through Eraser's bookshop into a back 
 room, where sit Allan Cunningham, W. Eraser (the only two known 
 to me personally), James Hogg (in the easy-chair of honor), Gait,
 
 136 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and one or two nameless persons, patiently waiting for dinner. 
 Lockhart (whom I did not know) requests to be introduced to me 
 a precise, brief, active person of considerable faculty, which, how- 
 ever, had shaped itself gigmanically only. Fond of quizzing, yet 
 not very maliciously. Has a broad black brow, indicating force and 
 penetration, but a lower half of face diminishing into the character 
 at best of distinctness, almost of triviality. Rather liked the man, 
 and shall like to meet him again. Gait looks old, is deafish, has the 
 air of a sedate Greenock burgher; mouth indicating sly humor and 
 self-satisfaction; the eyes, old and without lashes, gave me a sort of 
 woe interest for him. He Avears spectacles, and is hard of hearing; 
 a very large man, and eats and drinks with a certain west-country 
 gusto and research. Said little, but that little peaceable, clear, and 
 gutmuthig. Wish to see him also again. Hogg is a little red- 
 skinned stiff sack of a body, with quite the common air of an 
 Ettrick shepherd, except that he has a highish though sloping brow 
 (among his yellow grizzled hair), and two clear little beads of blue 
 or gray eyes, that sparkle, if not with thought, yet with animation. 
 Behaves himself quite easily and well; speaks Scotch, and mostly 
 narrative absurdity (or even obscenity) therewith. Appears in 
 the mingled character of zany and raree-show. All bent on ban- 
 tering him, especially Lockhart; Hogg walking through it as if un- 
 conscious, or almost flattered. His vanity seems to be immense, but 
 also his good-nature. I felt interest for the poor "herd body," 
 wondered to see him blown hither from his sheepf olds, and how, 
 quite friendless as he was, he went along cheerful, mirthful, and 
 musical. I do not well understand the man ; his significance is 
 perhaps considerable. His poetic talent is authentic, yet his intel- 
 lect seems of the weakest ; his morality also limits itself to the pre- 
 cept "Be not angry." Is the charm of this poor man chiefly to be 
 found herein, that he is a real product of nature, and able to speak 
 naturally, which not one in a thousand is ? An ' unconscious tal- 
 ent,' though of the smallest, emphatically naive. Once or twice in 
 singing (for he sung of his own) there was an emphasis in poor 
 Hogg's look expression of feeling, almost of enthusiasm. The 
 man is a very curious specimen. Alas! he is a man; yet how few 
 will so much as treat him like a specimen, and not like a mere wood- 
 en Punch or Judy! For the rest, our talk was utterly despicable: 
 stupidity, insipidity, even not a little obscenity (in which all save 
 Gait, Fraser, and myself seemed to join), was the only outcome of 
 the night. Literary men! They are not worthy to be valets of 
 such. Was a thing said that did not even solicit in mercy to be 
 forgotten? Not so much as the attempt or wish to speak profitably. 
 Trimalitas trivialitatum, omnia trimalitas! I went to see, and I 
 saw; and have now said, and mean to be silent, or try if I can 
 speak elsewhere." 
 
 Charles Buller entertained as unfavorable an opinion of London 
 magazine writers as Carlyle himself. Mrs. Strachey's alarm about 
 Buller's theories of life may be corrected by a letter from himself. 
 The Bullers were at this time at Looe, in Cornwall. They came to 
 town in October.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 137 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Looe: September 12, 1831. 
 
 "My dear Friend, I am very happy to hear from Mrs. Austin 
 that you had called on her, because I was really anxious that you 
 should know so admirable a specimen of the disciples of Bentham 
 and be known to her. But I felt half afraid to introduce you be- 
 cause I did not know how you would get on with not herself, be- 
 cause she being a Benthamite has taken on herself human form and 
 nature, and is a most delightful specimen of the union of Bentham- 
 ite opinions and human feelings but with the more regular Rad- 
 icals who render the approach to her house dangerous. Conceive 
 how great was my pleasure at learning from her that you had called 
 on her; that you had come for the purpose of making acquaintance 
 with John Mill ; and that you had met him to your mutual delight. 
 I knew well that, to make you esteem one another, nothing was 
 wanting but that you should understand each other. But I did 
 not do sufficient justice to the Catholicism of both of you to feel 
 quite confident that this would be the certain effect of your meeting. 
 In this world of sects people rarely talk to each other for any pur- 
 pose but to find out the sectarian names which they may fasten on 
 each other ; and, if the name but differs, they only spend their time 
 in finding out the various ramifications of each other's dissensions. 
 In names and professed doctrines you and John Mill differ as wide- 
 ly as the poles; but you may well meet on that point where all 
 clear spirits find each other, the love of truth, which all must attain 
 in their road to truth. To you without any fear I point out John 
 Mill as a true Utilitarian, and as one who does honor to his creed 
 and to his fellow-believers; because it is a creed that in him is with- 
 out sectarian narrowness or unkindness, because it has not impaired 
 his philosophy or his relish for the beautiful, or repressed any one 
 of those good honest feelings which God gave all men before Ben- 
 tham made them Utilitarians. 
 
 "I am delighted at the certain prospect which you hold out to me 
 of seeing you, and of making the acquaintance of Mrs. Carlyle. I 
 shall be delighted to talk once more of old times, and of those 
 which are coming, to tell of what we used to do and think together, 
 and of all that we have done and learned and planned since we 
 have wandered many a weary foot from one another. Thus I shall 
 learn from you what are the outlines of the great work which you 
 are now committing to the judgment of a thoughtless age; and 
 what manner of life you have been leading in the North, and what 
 kind of one you propose now. I, in my turn, will tell you of some 
 little time well employed, and of much misspent; of various studies, 
 and creeds, and theories, of many great designs, and of a very small 
 portion of successful fulfilment thereof. I will tell you of my as- 
 siduous study of the law, of how the worthy burghers of Liskeard 
 have come to me and offered me a seat for this borough whenever 
 the Reform Bill shall be passed, and of all that I propose to do 
 when I become the most eminent of lawyers and the most furious 
 of demagogues. These matters I promise myself to talk over with 
 you in the city of smoke and season of fog, where I trust I shall 
 meet you in exactly a month.
 
 138 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "I rejoice that you think so highly of John Mill. I have just 
 heard from him, and I am happy that he understands and esteems 
 you, as you do him. This is as it should be. I do not see how it 
 matters to one right-minded man in what course the opinions of 
 another fly as long as both spring from the same sacred well of 
 love of truth. I do not believe that you really differ very much 
 in opinion; sure I am that you will find none of any set of men 
 more deserving to think rightly than John Mill, who thinks deeply 
 and honestly always. He is very different from the herd of creat- 
 ures whom you have been pestered with in that great mart of con- 
 ceited folly, where the hawkers of every kind of shallowness 
 and quackery vend their wares in such numbers and with such 
 clamor. This age is the millennium of fools. They have certainly 
 by some means or another obtained a mastery over better men. I do 
 believe that in this land of ours there still exists the good old spirit 
 of industry and thoughtfulness and honesty which used to animate 
 our fathers. Yet in literature we are represented by our magazine 
 writers and reviewers (verbo sit venia), and annals, and fashionable 
 novels, and fashionable metaphysics and philosophy; and our con- 
 cerns are managed by the creatures whom you heard gabbling in the 
 House of Commons with a gravity and an ignorance which are not 
 found combined even in the servants' hall. 
 
 " I do believe, with you, that the end of this world of Insipids is 
 coming. We must kick away the distaff of Omphale and get up 
 and bestir ourselves to rid the world of monsters. Whether we 
 shall labor to good purpose, or only show our strength as Hercules 
 did in tearing ourselves to pieces, it is not yet given us to know; 
 but, whenever there is a day of awakening, I trust that all good men 
 and true will unite against the fools, and take at least 30,000 of them 
 into the valley of salt and slay them. 
 
 " All other matters I reserve for our meeting, which will certainly 
 take place before long, unless the cholera or such like curse severs 
 us, or unless the Reform Bill is thrown out, in which case I shall as- 
 suredly remain here with any two or three who may be found to 
 fight against the ' Rotten-hearted Lords. ' But there will be more 
 than that ; almost as many as there are men. 
 
 "Adieu! with my father's and mother's and Arthur's best re- 
 gards. Yours sincerely, 
 
 " CHARLES BULLER." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A.D. 1832. JET. 37. 
 
 A GREAT catastrophe was now impending in Carlyle's life. His 
 father had been ailing for more than two years, sometimes recover- 
 ing a little, then relapsing again; and after each oscillation he had 
 visibly sunk to a lower level. The family anticipated no immedi- 
 ate danger, but he had himself been steadily contemplating the end 
 as fast approaching him, as appears plainly from a small feeble note 
 which had been written on the 21st of September of this year, and
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 139 
 
 remains fastened into his son's note-book, where it is endorsed as 
 "My father's last letter perhaps the last thing he ever wrote." 
 
 "My dear Son, I cannot write you a letter, but just tell you that 
 I am a frail old sinner that is very likely never to see you any more 
 in this world. Be that as it may, I could not help telling you that 
 I feel myself gradually drawing' towards the hour appointed for all 
 living. And, O God! may that awful change be much at heart 
 with every one of us. May we be daily dying to sin and living to 
 righteousness. And may the God of Jacob be with you and bless 
 you, and keep you in his ways and fear. I add no more, but leave 
 you in his hands and care. JAMES CARLYLE. " 
 
 The old man at parting with his son in the summer gave him 
 some money out of a drawer with the peculiar manner which the 
 Scotch call fey the sign of death when a man does something which 
 is unlike himself. Carlyle paid no particular attention to it, how- 
 ever, till the meaning of the unusual action was afterwards made 
 intelligible to him. The reports from Scotsbrig in the autumn and 
 early winter had been more favorable than usual. On the 13th of 
 December, Carlyle sent him, evidently without any great misgiving, 
 the last letter which he on his side ever wrote to his father: 
 
 "4 Ampton Street, London: December 13, 1831. 
 
 " My dear Father, I have long proposed to myself the pleasure 
 of writing you a letter, and must now do it much more hurriedly 
 than I could have wished. I did not mean to undertake it till next 
 week, for at present I am engaged every moment against time, finish- 
 ing an article for the Edinburgh Review, and can expect no respite 
 till after Saturday night. However, our Lord-advocate having called 
 to-day and furnished me with a frank, I embrace the opportunity 
 lest none so good occur afterwards. 
 
 " Alick informed me in general, about ten days ago, that you were 
 ' all well.' In the last newspaper 1 stood a word from Jean that she 
 ' would write soon. ' I can only pray that she would do so, and 
 hope in the meantime that she may have no worse news to tell me. 
 This weather is very unhealthy the worst of the whole year; I 
 often think how my mother and you are getting on under it. I hope 
 at least you will take every care, and do not needlessly or needfully 
 expose yourself; it is bad policy to brave the weather, especially for 
 you at this season. I pray you keep much within-doors ; beware of 
 cold, especially of damp feet. A cup of tea night and morning I 
 should also think a good preventive. But perhaps Jean will be able 
 to inform me that ' all is well ;' one of the blessings I ought to be 
 most thankful for, as it is among the most precious for me. 
 
 " We are struggling forward here as well as we can. My health 
 is not worse than it was wont to be. 1 think I am even clearer and 
 fresher than when you saw me last. Jane has been complaining 
 
 The family still communicated with one another ty hieroglyphics on the news- 
 papers.
 
 140 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 somewhat, but is not regularly sick. Her cold has left her, and now 
 she has a little occasional cough with weakliness, the like of which 
 is very prevalent here at present. George Irving has been attempt- 
 ing to prescribe for her; she even let him draw a little blood. I 
 rather think, however, that her faith in physicians is somewhat on a 
 level with my own; that she will give them no more of her blood, 
 but trust to exercise, diet, and the return of settled weather. 
 
 " I cannot get on with the publishing of my book. Nobody will 
 so much as look at a thing of the sort till this Reform business be 
 done. Nay, I begin to doubt whether I shall at all during the pres- 
 ent posture of affairs get my speculation put into print. There is 
 only a limited time that I will consent to wait looking after it. If 
 they do not want it, why then let them leave it alone. Either way 
 will do for me; I only want to know which. Meanwhile I am mak- 
 ing what little attempts about it seem prudent. If I altogether fail 
 here, I may still have Edinburgh to try in. One way or another, I 
 wish to be at the end of it, and will be so. Our Advocate, who is 
 now quite recovered again and as brisk as a bee, would fain do 
 something useful for me find me some place or other that would 
 keep me here. I know he has spoken of me to Chancellors and 
 Secretaries of State, and would take all manner of pains ; neverthe- 
 less, I compute simply that the result of it all will be Nothing ; and 
 I still look back to my whinstone fortress among the mountains as 
 the stronghold wherefrom I am to defy the world. I have applica- 
 tions enough for writing, some of them new since I came hither. 
 So long as I can wag the pen there is no fear of me. I also incline 
 to think that something might and perhaps should be done by such 
 as me in the way of lecturing; but not at this time not under these 
 circumstances. We will wait, and, if it seems good, try it again. On 
 the whole, I always return to this. As the great Guide orders, so be 
 it! While I can say His will be mine, there is no power in earth or 
 out of it that can put me to fear. 
 
 " I could describe our way of life here, which is very simple, had 
 I room. Plenty of people come about us; we go out little to any- 
 thing like parties, never to dinners, or anywhere willingly except 
 for profit. I transact sometimes immense quantities of talk indeed, 
 often talk more than I listen; which course I think of altering. It 
 is and continues a wild wondrous chaotic den of discord, this Lon- 
 don. I am often woe and awe-struck at once to wander along its 
 crowded streets, and see and hear the roaring torrent of men and 
 animals and carriages and wagons, all rushing they know not 
 whence, they know not whither! Nevertheless, there is a deep divine 
 meaning in it, and God is in the midst of it, had we but eyes to see. 
 Towards two o'clock I am about laying down my pen, to walk till 
 as near dinner (at four) as I like; then comes usually resting stretched 
 on a sofa, with such small talk as may be going till tea ; after which, 
 unless some interloper drop in (as happens fully oftener than not), I 
 again open my desk and work till bedtime about eleven. I have 
 had a tough struggle indeed with this paper ; but my hand is now in 
 again, and I am doing better. Charles Buller comes now and then 
 about us; a fine honest fellow, among the best we see. There is also 
 one Glen (a young unhewed philosopher, a friend of Jack's), and one
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 141 
 
 Mill, a young hewed philosopher and partial disciple of mine : both 
 great favorites here. W. Graham, of Barnswark, was in our neigh- 
 borhood for three weeks, and will be arriving in Glasgow again 
 about this very night, unless he have struck in by Ecclef echan and 
 home. He is busy with some American patents, and so forth ; from 
 which he is sure of a salary for one year, but I think scarcely of 
 anything more. The American Consulship, of which he hoped 
 much, has gone another road. He is fresh and healthy, and I hope 
 will fall in with something. Irving does not come much here; only 
 once since that gift-of-tongues work began, and we have not been 
 even once with him. It was last week that he called. He looked 
 hollow and haggard; thin, gray-whiskered, almost an old man; yet 
 he was composed and affectionate and patient. I could almost have 
 wept over him, and did tell him my mind with all plainness. It 
 seems likely they will take his church from him, and then difficul- 
 ties of all sorts may multiply on him; but I do not think he will al- 
 together lose his wits at least, not so as to land in Bedlam ; and per- 
 haps he may yet see his way through all this, and leave it all behind 
 him. God grant it be so. I have hardly another scrap of room here. 
 I must scrawl my mother a line, and then bid you all good-night. 
 ' ' I remain always, my dear father, 
 
 "Your affectionate son, T. CARLTLE." 
 
 John Carlyle was now with Lady Clare at Rome. To him, busy 
 as he was, his brother continued to write with anxious fulness. 
 John Carlyle, with considerable talent, had shown an instability of 
 purpose, for which he received, if he did not require, a steadily sus- 
 tained stream of admonition. 
 
 ' ' It was very gratifying to us [Carlyle wrote on the 20th of Decem- 
 ber] to learn that all went tolerably with you, both as person and as 
 doctor. Continue to wish honestly with your whole heart to act 
 rightly, and you will not go far wrong: no other advice is needed, or 
 can be given. I have never despaired, and now I feel more and more 
 certain, of one day seeing you a man; this, too, in a time like ours, 
 when such a result is of all others the hardest to realize. One has to 
 learn the hard lesson of martyrdom, and that he has arrived in this 
 earth, not to receive, but to give. Let him be ready then ' to spend 
 and be spent ' for God's cause ; let him, as he needs must, ' set his face 
 like a flint ' against all dishonesty and indolence, and puffery and 
 quackery, and malice and delusion, whereof earth is full, and once 
 for all flatly refuse to do the Devil's work in this which is God's 
 earth, let the issue be simply what it may. 'I must live, sir,' say 
 many ; to which I answer, ' No, sir, you need not live ; if your body 
 cannot be kept together without selling your soul, then let the body 
 fall asunder, and the soul be unsold.' In brief, Jack, defy the Devil 
 in all his figures, and spit upon him; he cannot hurt you." 
 
 The good old mother at Scotsbrig was fluttered about her scat- 
 tered children. 
 
 "Our mother [wrote one of the sisters] has been healthier than 
 usual this winter, but terribly hadden down wi' anxiety. She told
 
 143 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 me the other day the first gaet she gaed every morning was to Lon- 
 don, then to Italy, then to Craigenputtock, 1 and then to Mary's, and 
 finally began to think them at name were, maybe, no safer than the 
 rest. When I asked her what she wished me to say to you, she said 
 she had a thousand things to say if she had you here; 'and thou 
 may tell them, I'm very little fra' them.' You are to pray for us all 
 daily, while separated from one another, that our ways be in God's 
 keeping. You are also to tell the doctor, when you write, with her 
 love, that he is to read his Bible carefully, and not to forget that 
 God sees him in whatever land he may be. " 
 
 This message Carlyle duly sent on, and with it the continued 
 diary of his own doings. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " I have had such a bout as never man had in finishing a kind of 
 paper for Macvey." I called the thing 'Characteristics,' and de- 
 spatched it, according to engagement, by the Saturday mail-coach. 
 Whether Napier will have it or not is uncertain to me ; but no mat- 
 ter, or only a secondary one, for the thing has some truth in it, and 
 could find vent elsewhere. It is Teufelsdr5ckhish, and preaches 
 from this text : ' The healthy know not of their health, but only the 
 sick. ' As to Teuf elsdrockh himself, hope has not yet risen for him ; 
 nay, rather, certainly begins to show itself that he has no hope. 
 Glen read the MS. ' with infinite satisfaction;' John Mill with fears 
 that ' the world would take some time to see what meaning was in 
 it. ' ' Perhaps all eternity, ' I answered. For the rest, we have par- 
 tially made up our minds here and see the course we have to fol- 
 low. Preferment there is none to be looked for; living here by lit- 
 erature is either serving the Devil, or fighting against him at fearful 
 odds; in lecturing it is also quite clear there could no profitable 
 audience be had as yet, where every lecturer is by nature a quack 
 and tinkling cymbal. So what will remain but to thank God that 
 our whinstoue castle is still standing among the mountains; and re- 
 turn thither to work there, till we can make a new sally. God be 
 thanked, neither my wife nor I am capable of being staggered by 
 any future that the world can proffer. ' From the bosom of eternity 
 shine for us radiant guiding stars.' Nay, our task is essentially high 
 and glorious and happy; God only give us strength to do it well! 
 Meanwhile, offers in the literary periodical way come thick enough. 
 Three or four weeks ago Procter wrote to me that E. L. Bulwer had 
 ' some disposition ' to employ me in the New Monthly Magazine, of 
 which he is editor, and that it would be advisable for me to call on 
 him ; to which proposal of course there could be no answer, except 
 mild silence der Inbegriff aller Harmonieen. Whereupon in ten 
 days more the mystagogue of the dandiacal body wrote to me a most 
 bland and euphuistically flattering note, soliciting an interview as 
 my 'admirer.' I answered that for some days I was too busy to 
 call, but would when I had leisure, as I yesterday did; and found 
 
 1 Where Alexander Carlyle was still stayiug, without the farm; having found no 
 other in its place. 
 * Napier, for the Edinburgh.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 143 
 
 him from home. I have also looked into his magazine, and find it 
 polished, sharp, and barren yet not altogether the work as of gig- 
 men, or rather g\^-boys and whig-boys aiming blindly enough tow- 
 ards something higher; Ahndungen einer bessern Zeit! My business 
 being to see all men, I will in time look towards the ' Inspired Pen- 
 man ' once more and ascertain better what his relation to me really 
 is. I have articles in my head, but if Naso [Napier] behave himself 
 he shall have the pick of them." 
 
 Napier unexpectedly and even gratefully accepted "Characteris- 
 tics." He confessed that he could not understand it; but every- 
 thing which Carlyle wrote, he said, had the indisputable stamp of 
 genius upon it, and was therefore most welcome to the Edinburgh 
 Review. Lytton Bulwer pressed for an article on Frederick the 
 Great ; Hay ward was anxious that a final article should be written 
 on Goethe, to punish Wilson for his outrages against the great Ger- 
 man in the "Noctes Ambrosiana?." Hay ward, too, had done Car- 
 lyle a still more seasonable service, for he had induced Dr. Lardner 
 to promise to take Carlyle's "History of German Literature " for the 
 "Cabinet Encyclopedia." The articles on the subject which had 
 already appeared were to form part of it ; some new matter was to 
 be added to round off the story; and the whole was to be bound up 
 into a Zur Geschichte, for which Carlyle was to receive 300J. To 
 Hay ward, then and always, he was heartily grateful for this piece of 
 service, though eventually, as will be seen, it came to nothing. These 
 brightening prospects were saddened by the deaths of various emi- 
 nent persons whom he held in honor. Dr. Becker died of cholera 
 at Berlin, then Hegel from cholera also ; and, still worse, his old friend 
 Mr. Strachey, whom he had met lately in full health, was seized with 
 inflammation of the lungs, and was carried off hi a few days. 
 
 Worst of all the worse because entirely unlocked for came fatal 
 news from Scotsbrig, contained in a sternly tender characteristic 
 note from his sister Jean. 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 "Scotsbrig: January 22, 1832. 
 
 '' My dear Brother, It is now my painful duty to inform you that 
 our dear father took what we thought was a severe cold last Mon- 
 day night ; he had great difficulty in breathing, but was always able 
 to sit up most of the day, and sometimes to walk about. Last night 
 he was in the kitchen about six o'clock, but he was evidently turning 
 very fast worse in breathing. He got only one right night's sleep 
 since he turned ill, and had been sometimes insensible; but when one 
 spoke to him, he generally recollected himself. But last night he 
 fell into a sort of stupor about ten o'clock, still breathing higher and 
 with greater difficulty. He spoke little to any of us. Seemingly 
 unconscious of what he did, he came over the bedside, and offered 
 up a prayer to Heaven in such accents as it is impossible to forget.
 
 144 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 He departed almost without a struggle this morning at half -past 
 six. The funeral is to be on Friday; but my mother says she can- 
 not expect you to be here. However, you must write to her directly. 
 She needs consolation, though she is not unreasonable; but it was 
 very unexpected. The doctor durst do nothing. Oh, my dear 
 brother, how often have we written ' all well! ' I cannot write more 
 at present. Your affectionate sister, 
 
 "JEAN CAKLYLE." 
 Subjoined were these few words: 
 
 " It is God that has done it; be still my dear children. 
 
 " Your affectionate Mother." 
 
 "The common theme 
 Is death of fathers; reason still hath cried, 
 From the first corse till he that died to-day, 
 This must be so;" 
 
 yet, being so common, it was still "particular" to Carlyle. The 
 entire family were knit together with an extremely peculiar bond. 
 Their affections, if not limited within their own circle, yet were re- 
 served for one another in their tenderest form. Friendship the Car- 
 lyles might have for others; their love was for those of their own 
 household; while, again, independently of his feeling as a son, Car- 
 lyle saw, or believed he saw, in his. father personal qualities of the 
 rarest and loftiest kind. Though the old man had no sense of poetry, 
 Carlyle deliberately says that if he had been asked whether his father 
 or Robert Burns had the finest intellect, he could not have answered. 
 Carlyle's style, which has been so much wondered at, was learned in 
 the Annandale farm-house; and beyond the intellect there was an 
 inflexible integrity, in word and deed, which Carlyle honored above 
 all human qualities. The aspect in which he regarded human life, 
 the unalterable conviction that justice and truth are the only bases 
 on which successful conduct, either private or public, can be safely 
 rested, he had derived from his father, and it was the root of all that 
 was great in himself. 
 
 Being unable to be present at the funeral, he spent the intervening 
 days in composing the memoir which has been published as the first 
 of his " Reminiscences." He was now himself the head of the fam- 
 ily, and on him also fell the duty of addressing the remaining mem- 
 bers of it on the loss which had befallen them. 
 
 As the subject is "common," so all that can be said upon it the 
 sorrows, the consolations, and the hopes are common also. The 
 greatest genius that ever was born could have nothing new to say 
 about death. Carlyle could but travel along the well-worn road; 
 yet what he wrote is still beautiful, still characteristic, though the 
 subject of it is hackneyed. 
 
 "London: January 26, 1832. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I was down-stairs this morning when I heard 
 the postman's knock, and thought it might be a letter from Scots-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 145 
 
 brig. Hastening up, I found Jane with the letter open and in tears. 
 The next moment gave me the stern tidings. I had written you yes- 
 terday a light, hopeful letter, which I could now wish you might not 
 read in these days of darkness. Probably you will receive it just 
 along with this; the first red seal so soon to be again exchanged for 
 a black one. I had a certain misgiving, not seeing Jane's customary 
 ' all well ;' and I thought, but did not write (for I strive usually to 
 banish vague fears), ' the pitcher goes often to the well, but it is 
 broken at last.' I did not know that this very evil had actually 
 overtaken us. 
 
 "As yet I am in no condition to write much. The stroke, all un- 
 expected though not undreaded, as yet painfully crushes my heart 
 together. I have yet hardly had a little relief from tears. And yet 
 it will be a solace to me to speak out with you, to repeat along with 
 you that great saying which, could we lay it rightly to heart, includes 
 all that man can say, ' It is God that lias done it.' God supports us 
 all. Yes, my dear mother, it is God has done it; and our part is 
 reverent submission to His will, and trustful prayers to Him for 
 strength to bear us through every trial. 
 
 " I could have wished, or I had too confidently hoped, that God 
 had ordered it otherwise; but what are our wishes and wills? I 
 trusted that I might have had other glad meetings and pleasant 
 communings with my honored and honor-worthy father in this 
 world, but it was not so appointed. We shall meet no more till we 
 meet in that other sphere where God's presence more immediately 
 is; the nature of which we know not, only we know that it is God's 
 appointing, and therefore altogether good. Nay, already, had we 
 but faith, our father is not parted from us, but only withdrawn from 
 our bodily eyes. The dead and the living, as I often repeat to my- 
 self, are alike with God. He, fearful and wonderful, yet good and 
 infinitely gracious, encircles alike both them that we see and them 
 that we cannot see. Whoso trusteth in Him has obtained the victory 
 over death ; the King of Terrors is no longer terrible. 
 
 ' ' Yes, my dear mother, and brothers and sisters, let us see also 
 how mercy has been mingled with our calamity. Death was for a 
 long time ever present to our father's thought; daily and hourly he 
 seemed meditating on his latter end. The end, too, appears to have 
 been mild as it was speedy; he pai-ted as gently as most do from this 
 vale of tears; and, oh! in his final agony he was enabled to call with 
 his strong voice and strong heart on the God that had made him to 
 have mercy on him! Which prayer, doubt not one of you, the All- 
 merciful licard, and, in such wise as infinite mercy might, gave an- 
 swer to. And what is the death of one near to us, as I have often 
 thought, but the setting-out on a journey an hour before us, which 
 journey we have all to travel? What is the longest earthly life to 
 the eternity, the endless, the beginuingless which encircles it? The 
 oldest man and the new-born babe are but divided from each other 
 by a single hair's - breadth. For myself, I have long continually 
 meditated on death till, by God's grace, it has grown transparent for 
 me, and holy and great rather than terrific; till I see that death, 
 what mortals call death, is properly the beginning of life. One oth- 
 er comfort we have to take the bitterness out of our tears this great - 
 
 II. -7
 
 146 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 est of all comforts, and properly the only one, that our father was 
 not called away till he had done his work, and done it faithfully. 
 Yes, we can with a holy pride look at our father there where he lies 
 low, and say that his task was well and manfully performed; the 
 strength that God had given him he put forth in the ways of honesty 
 and well-doing ; no eye will ever see a hollow, deceitful work that 
 he did; the world wants one true man since he was taken away. 
 When we consider his life, through what hardships and obstructions 
 he struggled, and what he became and what he did, there is room for 
 gratitude that God so bore him on. Oh, what were it now to us that 
 he had been a king ? now, when the question is not, What wages 
 hadst thou for thy work ? but, How was thy work done? 
 
 "My dear brothers and sisters, sorrow not, I entreat you sorrow 
 is profitless and sinful; but meditate deeply every one of you on 
 this: none of us but started in life with/ar greater advantages than 
 our dear father had: we will not weep for him, but we will go and 
 do as he has done. Could I write my books as he built his houses, 
 and walk my way so manfully through this shadow world, and leave 
 it with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes. Neither are 
 you, my beloved mother, to let your heart be heavy. Faithfully 
 you toiled by his side, bearing and forbearing as you both could. 
 All that was sinful and of the earth has passed away; all that was 
 true and holy remains forever, and the parted shall meet together 
 again with God. Amen! so be it! We, your children, whom you 
 have faithfully cared for, soul and body, and brought up in the 
 nurture and admonition of the Lord, we gather round you in this 
 solemn hour, and say, Be of comfort! well done, hitherto; perse- 
 vere, and it shall be well ! We promise here, before God, and the 
 awful yet merciful work of God's hand, that we will continue to 
 love and honor you, as sinful children can. And now, do you pray 
 for us all, and let us all pray in such language as we have for one 
 another, so shall this sore division and parting be the means of a 
 closer union. Let us and every one know that, though this world 
 is full of briers, and we are wounded at every step as we go, and one 
 by one must take farewell and weep bitterly, yet ' there remaineth a 
 rest for the people of God.' Yes, for the people of God there re- 
 maineth a rest, that rest which in this world they could nowhere find. 
 
 "And now again I say, do not grieve any one of you beyond 
 what nature forces and you cannot help. Pray to God, 'if any of 
 you have a voice and utterance; all of you pray always, in secret 
 and silence if faithful, ye shall be heard openly. I cannot be with 
 you to speak, but read in the Scriptures as I would have done. 
 Kead, I especially ask, in Matthew's Gospel, that passion, and death, 
 and farewell blessing and command of Jesus of Nazareth; and see 
 if you can understand and feel what is the ' divine depth of sorrow,' 
 and how even by suffering and sin man is lifted up to God, and in 
 great darkness there shines a light. If you cannot read it aloud in 
 common, then do each of you take his Bible in private and read it for 
 -himself. Our business is not to lament, but to improve the lament- 
 able, and make it also peaceably work together for greater good. 
 
 ' ' I could have wished much to lay my honored father's head in 
 the grave; yet it could have done no one good save myself only, and
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 147 
 
 I shall not ask for it. Indeed, when I remember, that right would 
 have belonged to John of Cockermouth, to whom I offer in all 
 heartiness my brotherly love. I will be with you in spirit if not in 
 person. I have given orders that no one is to be admitted here till 
 after the funeral on Friday. I mean to spend these hours in solemn 
 meditation and self-examination, and thoughts of the Eternal ; such 
 seasons of grief are sent us even for that end. God knocks at our 
 heart: the question (is), will we open or not? I shall think every 
 night of the candle burning in that sheeted room, where our dear 
 sister also lately lay. O God, be gracious to us, and bring us all 
 one day together in himself! After Friday I return, as you too 
 must, to my worldly work; for that, also, is work appointed us by 
 the heavenly Taskmaster. I will write to John to-night or to-mor- 
 row. Let me hear from you again as soon as you have composure. 
 I shall hasten all the more homewards for this. For the present, I 
 bid God ever bless you all ! Pray for me, my dear mother, and let 
 us ah 1 seek consolation there. 
 
 ' ' I am ever your affectionate 
 
 "T. CAKLYLE." 
 
 The promised letter to his brother was written, and lies before me; 
 but a few sentences only need be extracted from what is essentially 
 a repetition of the last. 
 
 "Our father's end was happy; he had lived to do all his work, 
 and he did it manfully. His departure, too, was soft and speedy; 
 that last strong cry 01 his in the death-struggle to God for deliver- 
 ance, that is one of the things we must remember forever. Was it 
 not the fit end of a life so true and brave? For a true and brave 
 man, such as there are too few left, I must name my father. If we 
 think what an element he began in, how he with modest, unwearied 
 endeavor turned all things to the best, and what a little world of 
 good he had created for himself, we may call his life an honorable, 
 a noble one. In some respects there is perhaps no man like him 
 left. Jane and I were just remarking two days ago that we did not 
 know any man whose spiritual faculties had such a stamp of natural 
 strength. Alas! we knew not that already he was hidden from our 
 eyes. I call such a man, bred up in poor Annandale, with nothing 
 but what the chances of poor Annandale gave him, the true preacher 
 of a gospel of freedom of what men can do and be. Let his mem- 
 ory be forever holy to us: let us each in his several sphere go and 
 do likewise. 
 
 "For myself, death is the most familiar of all thoughts to me 
 my daily and hourly companion. Death no longer seems terrible; 
 and though the saddest remembrances rise round you, and natural 
 grief will have its course, we can say, with our heroic mother, ' It 
 is God that has done it.' Death, properly, is but a hiding from m, 
 from our fleshly organs. The departed are still with us; are not 
 both they and we in the hand of God? A little while and we shall 
 all meet; nay, perhaps see one another again! As God will! He is 
 great ; lie is also good. There we must leave it, weep and murmur 
 as we will.
 
 148 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "I feel, my dear brother, how this stroke must pain you. Speak 
 of it as we may, death is a stern event; yet also a great and sacred 
 one. How holy are the dead! They do rest from their labors, and 
 their works follow them. A whole section of the past seems de- 
 parted with my father shut out from me by an impassable barrier. 
 He could tell me about old things, and was wont most graphically 
 to do so when I went to Scotsbrig. Now he will do so no more : it 
 is past, past! The force that dwelt in him had expended itself; 
 he is lost from our eyes in that ocean of time wherein our little islet 
 of existence hangs suspended, ever crumbling in, ever anew bodying 
 itself forth. Fearful and wonderful ! Yet let us know that under 
 time lies eternity; if we appear and are (while here) in time and 
 through time, which means change, mortality, we also stand rooted 
 in eternity, where there is no change, no mortality. Be of comfort, 
 then ; be of courage ! ' The fair flowers of our garland, ' said Nova- 
 lis, ' are dropping off here one by one, to be united again yonder 
 fairer and forever.' Let it be so, please God. His will, not ours, be 
 done !" 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "4 Atnpton Street: January 30. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I have determined to write you a few lines 
 to-day, my mind, and I trust yours also, being in a state of compos- 
 ure; though there is specially nothing more to be said, the very 
 sound of my voice will do you good. 
 
 " Since I wrote last I have been in Scotsbrig more than in Lon- 
 don: the tumult of this chaos has rolled past me as a sound, all 
 empty, with which I had nothing to do. My thought was in the 
 house of mourning, present with you and with the departed. We 
 had excluded all external communication from us till the funeral 
 should be passed. I dwelt with my deceased father. Our whole 
 speech and action was of high, solemn matters. I walked out alone 
 or with my wife, meditating, peaceably conversing of that great 
 event. I have reason to be very thankful that much composure has 
 been vouchsafed me. I never so saw my honored father and his 
 earnest, toilsome, manful life as now when he was gone from me; I 
 never so loved him, find felt as if his spirit were still living in me 
 as if my life was but a continuation of his, and to be led in the same 
 valiant spirit that in a quite other sphere so distinguished him. Be 
 the great Father thanked for his goodness; chiefly for this, if He 
 have given us any light and faith, to discern and reverence His mys- 
 terious ways, and how from the depths of grief itself there rises 
 mildly a holy eternal joy. 
 
 " Edward Irving, on sending up his name, was admitted to me on 
 Friday afternoon. His wife was with him. He prayed with us, I 
 think, about the time they would be in the churchyard. I felt that 
 he meant kindly, yet cannot say that either his prayer or his conver- 
 sation worked otherwise on me than disturbingly. I had partly pur- 
 posed sending for him, but was then thankful I had not done it. 
 His whole mind is getting miserably crippled and weakened ; his in- 
 sane babble about his tongues and the like were for me like froth to 
 the hungry and thirsty. My father was a Man, and should be
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 
 
 mourned for like a man. We had to forget our well-meaning visit- 
 ors, and again take counsel with oursdvesf, and I trust with the God 
 that dwells in us were this last done only in silence. My father's 
 memory has become very holy to me ; not sorrowful, but great and 
 instructive. I could repeat, though with tears, yet with softly re- 
 solved heart, 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; they do 
 rest from their labors, and their works follow them.' Yes, their 
 irnrks are not lost; no grain of truth that was in them but belongs to 
 eternity and cannot die. 
 
 ' ' Jane faithfully bore and suffered with me. We spoke much. I 
 trust that she, too, is one day to ' become perfect through suffering,' 
 and even in this earth to struggle unweariedly towards perfection as 
 towards the one thing needful. We talked of death and life, with 
 the significance of each; of the friends we had lost; of the friends 
 still mercifully left us, and the duties we owed to them. In our two 
 fathers we found a great similarity with so much outward difference. 
 Both were true men, such as the world has not many to show now ; 
 both faithfully labored according to their calling in God's vineyard 
 (which this world is); both are now in the land of truth and light, 
 while we still toil in that of falsehood and shadows. A little while, 
 and we too ' shall reap if we faint not.' Of the other world it seems 
 to me we do know this, and this only : that it too' is God's world ; and 
 that for us and for our buried ones He hath done, and will do, all 
 things well. Let us rest here ; it is the anchor of the soul both sure 
 and steadfast ; other safety there is none. 
 
 "To you also, my dear mother, I trust the call has not been made 
 in vain. I know that you have borne yourself with heroism, for you 
 have the true strength in you. Sad, doubtless, will your mood long 
 be sadder, perhaps, than ours, than mine. Your loss is the keenest. 
 The companion that had pilgrimed by your side for seven-and-thirty 
 years is suddenly called away. Looking on that hand, you now see 
 yourself alone. Not alone, dear mother, if God be with you! Your 
 children also are still round you to bear up your declining years, to 
 protect and support you, to love you with the love we owed both 
 our parents. Oh, Providence is very merciful to us ! 
 
 "Neither let any one of us, looking back on the departed, mourn 
 uselessly over our faults towards him, as in all things we err and 
 come short. How holy are the dead ! How willingly we take all 
 the blame on ourselves which in life we were so willing to divide. I 
 say, let us not lament and afflict ourselves over these things. They 
 were of the earth, earthy. Now lie has done with them; they do him 
 (nay, except for his own earthly sinf ulness, they did him) no evil. Let 
 us remember only, one and all of us, this truth, and lay it well to 
 heart in our whole conduct: that the living also will one day be 
 dead ! 
 
 " On the whole, it is for the living only that we are called to live 
 'to work while it is still to-day.' We will dismiss vain sorrows, 
 and address ourselves with new heart and purer endeavor to the 
 tasks appointed us in life. Forward! forward! Let us do more 
 faithfully than ever what yet remains to be done. All else is un- 
 profitable and a wasting of our strength. 
 
 "We two are purposing to come homeward early in March, and
 
 150 LIFE OF THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 shall most likely come to Scotsbrig first. I have (or found I had al- 
 ready) as good as concluded that bargain about the ' Literary His- 
 tory.' I have a paper on Johnson to write, and many little odds and 
 ends to adjust ; after which we seem to have no business to do here, 
 and shall march and leave it for the time. For myself, I fear not 
 the world, or regard it a jot, except as the great task-garden of the 
 Highest; wherein I am called to do whatever work the Taskmaster 
 of men (wise are they that can hear and obey Him) shall please to 
 appoint me. What are its frowns or its favors ? What are its diffi- 
 culties and falsehoods and hollow threatenings to me ? With the 
 spirit of my father I will front them and conquer them. Let us f ear 
 nothing ; only being the slaves of sin and madness : these are the 
 only real slaves. 
 
 "Jane is out, or she would have sent you her blessing, her affection. 
 She is distinctly growing better, and I hope will have recovered 
 her usual strength ere long. Perhaps she, too, needed affliction, as 
 which of us does not ? Remember us always, as we do you. God 
 ever bless you all ! 
 
 " I remain, dear mother, your affectionate son, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 "4 Arapton Street: February 16, 1832. 
 
 "... I wrote copiously twice to our mother. A letter has 
 since come full of composure and peace. The survivors, our mother 
 in particular, are all well, and knit the closer for this breach among 
 them. Jamie, 1 it seems, as I had partly advised him, makes worship 
 regularly in the household ; Alick has promised to do the like in his. 
 John of Cockermouth" parted from them at Burnfoot, exhorting 
 them with affectionate tears in his eyes to live all united, as they 
 had heretofore done, and mindful and worthy of the true man whose 
 name they bore. Thus has the scene in mild solemnity closed. 
 When the news first reached me, I sat silent some minutes, the word 
 ' rsXof !' pealing mournfully through my heart till tears and sobs 
 gave me relief. Death has long been hourly present with me ; I 
 have long learned to look upon it as properly the beginning of life ; 
 its dark curtain grows more and more transparent; the departed, I 
 think, are only hidden they are still here. Both they and we, as I 
 often repeat, 'are with God.' I wrote down in my note-book all 
 that I could remember as remarkable about my father; his life grew 
 wonderfully clear to me, almost like the first stage of my own. I 
 had great peace and satisfaction in thinking of him. Let us in our 
 wider sphere live worthy of a father so true and so brave ; hope too 
 that in some inscrutable way an eternal reunion is appointed us, for 
 with God nothing is impossible ; at all events, ' that He will do all 
 things well. ' Therein lies the anchorage that cannot prove deceitful. 
 
 "Your last letter seemed to me the best I had ever got from you 
 perhaps among the best I have ever got from any one. There is 
 so much heartiness and earnestness ; the image of a mind honestly, 
 deeply laboring, in a healthy and genuine position towards nature 
 
 i The youngest brother. 
 
 8 The half-brother. Only son of Mr. James Carlyle's first marriage.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 151 
 
 and men. Continue in that right mood; strive unweariedly, and all 
 that is yet wanting will be given you. Go on and prosper. Klar- 
 heit, Beinheit, ' Im Ganzeti, Guten, Wahren rewlut zu leben.' This is 
 all that man wants on earth; even as of old, ' the one thing^ needful.' 
 Well do I understand, my dear brother, those thoughts of yours on 
 the Pincian Hill. 1 They tore my inward man in pieces for long 
 years, and literally well-nigh put an end to my life, till, by Heaven's 
 great grace, I got the victory over them nay, changed them into 
 precious everlasting possessions. I wish you could have read my 
 book 2 at this time, for it turns precisely (in its way) on these very 
 matters; in the paper 'Characteristics' also, some of my latest ex- 
 periences and insights are recorded ; these I still hope you will soon 
 see. Meanwhile be not for a moment discouraged; for the victory 
 is certain if you desire it honestly; neither imagine that it is by for- 
 getting such high questions that you are to have them answered. 
 Unless one is an animal they cannot be forgotten. This also, how- 
 ever, is true, that logic will never resolve such things ; the instinct of 
 logic is to say No. Remember always that the deepest truth, the 
 truest of all, is actually 'unspeakable,' cannot be argued of, dwells 
 far below the region of articulate demonstration; it must be felt by 
 trial and indubitable direct experience; then it is known once and 
 forever. I wish I could have speech of you from time to time; 
 perhaps I might disentangle some things for you. Yet, after all, the 
 victory must be gained by one's self. ' Dir auch gelingt es Dich durch- 
 zuarbeiten.' I will here only mention a practical maxim or two 
 which I have found of chief advantage. First, I would have you 
 know this: that 'doubt of any sort can only be removed by action.' 
 But what to act on? you cry. I answer again in the words of Goe- 
 the, ' Do the duty which lies nearest;' do it (not merely pretend to 
 have done it); the next duty will already have become clear to thee. 
 There is great truth here ; in fact, it is my opinion that he who (by 
 whatever means) has ever seen into the infinite nature of duty has 
 seen all that costs difficulty. The universe has then become a tem- 
 ple for him, and the divinity and all the divine things thereof will 
 infallibly become revealed. To the same purport is this saying, die 
 fiohe Bedeutung dcs Entsagens, once understand entsagen, then life 
 eigentlich beginnt. You may also meditate on these words, ' the di- 
 vine depth of sorrow,' ' the sanctuary of sorrow.' To me they have 
 been full of significance. But, on the whole, dear brother, study to 
 clear your heart from all selfish desire, that free will may arise and 
 reign absolute in you. True vision lies in thy heart; it is by this 
 that the eye sees, or forever only fancies that it sees. Do the duty 
 that lies there clear at hand. I must not spend your whole sheet in 
 preaching, and will add only this other precept, which I find more 
 important every day I live. Avoid all idle, untrue talk, as you 
 would the pestilence. It is the curse and all-deforming, all-choking 
 leprosy of these days. For health of mind I have the clearest belief 
 that there is no help except in this which I have been inculcating in 
 you : action religious action. If the mind is cultivated, and cannot 
 
 i Relating to religious difficulties, of the usual kind. 
 * "Sartor ttesartus."
 
 152 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 take in religion by the old vehicle, a new one must be striven after. 
 In this point of view, German literature is quite priceless. I never 
 cease to thank Heaven for such men as Richter, Schiller, Goethe. 
 The latter especially was my evangelist. His works, if you study 
 them with due earnestness, are as the day-spring visiting us in the 
 dark night. Perhaps Lady Clare may profit much by them only 
 keep away dilettantism; sweep it out of being; this is no world for 
 it; this is no revelation of a world for it. Among Goethe's admirers 
 here I find no one possessed of almost the smallest feeling of what 
 lies in him. They have eyes, but see not ; hearts, but understand not ; 
 as indeed the whole world almost has. Let them go their way; do 
 thou go thine." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 A.D. 1832. JET. 37. 
 
 A FEW weeks only now remained of Carlyle's stay in London. 
 The great change at Scotsbrig recommended, and perhaps required, 
 his presence in Scotland. His brother Alick had finally left Craig- 
 enputtock to settle on a farm elsewhere, and the house on the moor 
 could not be left unprotected. In London itself he had nothing 
 further to detain him. He had failed in the object which had chiefly 
 brought him there. "Sartor Resartus " had to lie unpublished in 
 his desk. On the other hand, he had made new and valuable ac- 
 quaintances John Mill, Leigh Hunt, Hay ward, Lytton Bulwer for 
 the first three of whom at least he entertained considerable respect. 
 He had been courted more than ever by magazines. Owing to the 
 effect of his personal presence, he had as much work before him as 
 he was able to undertake, and by Hayward's help Dr. Lardner was 
 likely to accept on favorable terms his " Literary History." He had 
 learned, once for all, that of promotion to any fixed employment there 
 was no hope for him. Literature was, and was to be, the task of his 
 life. But the doubt of being able to maintain himself honorably by 
 it was apparently removed. His thrifty farm-house habits made 
 the smallest certain income sufficient for his wants. His wife had 
 parted cheerfully with the luxuries in which she had been bred, and 
 was the most perfect of economical stewardesses. His brother John 
 was now in circumstances to repay the cost of his education, and 
 thus for two years at least he saw his way clearly before him. Some 
 editorship or share of editorship might have been attainable had he 
 cared to seek such a thing; but the conditions of the London literary 
 profession disinclined him to any close connection with it ; and he 
 had adjusted his relations with Napier, Fraser, Lytton Bulwer, and 
 the rest, on terms more satisfactory to himself than complimentary 
 to them. With Napier he was on a really pleasant footing. The 
 ' ' Characteristics " had been published without a word being altered
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 153 
 
 or omitted. He liked Napier, and excepted him from his general 
 censures. He was now writing his review of Croker's ' ' Life of 
 Johnson," which he had promised Fraser as the last piece of work 
 which he was to do in London. ' ' This is the way that I have ad- 
 justed myself," he wrote. "I say will you or your dog's carrion 
 cart take this article of mine and sell it unchanged? With the car- 
 rion cart itself I have, and can have, no personal concern." " For 
 Fraser I am partly bound as to this piece on Johnson. Bulwer, if 
 he want anything on similar terms, and I feel unoccupied, shall have 
 it; otherwise not he." In such scornful humor he prepared to re- 
 treat once more for another two years to his whinstone castle, and 
 turn his back on London and the literary world. 
 
 ' ' My attitude towards literary London [he said, in a letter to John, 
 February 18] is almost exactly what I could wish; great respect, 
 even love, from some few ; much matter of thought given me for 
 instruction and high edification by the very baseness and ignorance 
 of the many. I dined at Magazine Fraser's some five weeks ago ; 
 saw Lockhart, Gait, Cunningham, Hogg. Gait has since sent me a 
 book (new, and worth little); he is a broad gawsie Greenock man, 
 old-growing, lovable with pity; Lockhart a dandiacal, not without 
 force, but barren and unfruitful; Hogg, utterly a singing goose, 
 whom also I pitied and loved. The conversation was about the 
 basest I ever assisted in. The Scotch here afterwards got up a 
 brutish thing by way of a 'Burns dinner,' which has since been 
 called the ' Hogg dinner,' to the number of 500; famished gluttony, 
 quackery, and stupidity were the elements of the work, which has 
 been laughed at much. Enough of literary life. The Montagus 
 live far from us ; both Jane and the noble lady seem to have seen 
 each other, and found that an interview once in the six weeks was 
 enough. I have been there some thrice since you went. Procter 
 regards me as a proud mystic ; I him (mostly) as a worn-out dud ; 
 so we walk on separate roads. The other Montagus are mostly 
 mere simulacra, and not edifying ones. Peace be to all such. Of 
 male favorites, Mill stands at the top. Jeffrey, from his levity, a 
 good deal lower; yet he is ever kind and pleasant. I saw Irving 
 yesternight. He is still good-natured and patient, but enveloped in 
 the vain sound of the ' Tongues. ' I am glad to think he will not go 
 utterly mad (not madder than a Don Quixote was), but his intellect 
 seems quietly settling into a superstitious caput mortuum. He 
 has no longer any opinion to deliver worth listening to on any secu- 
 lar matter. The Chancellor can eject him. It is provided by the 
 original deed of his chapel that the worship there shall be that of 
 the Established Church of Scotland. His managers, I know, have al- 
 ready consulted Sugden. Whether and how soon they may drive 
 the matter to extremities is not to be guessed. I pity poor Irving, 
 and cannot prophesy of him. His Morning Watch, which he gave 
 me yesternight, is simply the howling of a Bedlamite." 
 
 II. 7*
 
 154 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 To Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 " 4 Ampton Street : February 19. 
 ******* 
 
 " We are coming home as early as possible in the month of March. 
 We are busy, very busy, and in our usual health ; Jane, though still 
 complaining, rather better than she has long been. I do not think 
 she is to be strong again till she has got into her home and native air, 
 which of course will quicken our motions the more. 
 
 " We have both of us determined to take better care of our health 
 were we once home again ; I feel it to be a real point of duty, were 
 it only for the greater quantityand better quality of work which 
 good health enables us to do. We are also minded to try if we can- 
 not be a little more domesticated among the moors of Puttock to 
 take a greater interest in the people there (who are all immortal 
 creatures, however poor and defaced), and to feel as if the place were 
 a home for us. Such as it is, I feel it a great blessing that we have 
 it to go to. For the whole summer and onwards to winter, I already 
 see plenty of work before me: how we turn ourselves afterwards 
 need not yet be decided on. I -was very glad to learn that you had 
 promised to my mother to keep religion in your house : without re- 
 ligion constantly present in the heart, I see not how a man can live 
 otherwise than unreasonably than desperately. I think that you 
 do really in heart wish to be a good man ' as the one thing needful ;' 
 also that you will more and more 'lay aside every weight,' and be 
 found running the race faithfully for the true and only prize of man- 
 hood. This is my hope and trust of you, dear brother; God turn it 
 for both of us more and more into fulfilment. Believe me ever, 
 " Your faithfully affectionate brother, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The Carlyles left London on the 25th of March. They returned 
 to Scotland by Liverpool, staying a few days with Mr. Welsh in 
 Maryland Street, and then going on as they had come by the Annan 
 steamer. Mrs. Carlyle suffered frightfully from sea-sickness. She 
 endured the voyage for economy's sake; but she was in bad health 
 and in worse spirits. The Craigenputtock exile, dreary and dis- 
 heartening, was again to be taken up; the prospect of release once 
 more clouded over. Her life was the dreariest of slaveries to house- 
 hold cares and toil. She was without society, except on an occa- 
 sional visit from a sister-in-law or a rare week or so with her moth- 
 er at Templand. Carlyle, intensely occupied with his thoughts and 
 his writing, was unable to bear the presence of a second person 
 when busy at his desk. He sat alone, walked alone, generally rode 
 alone. It was necessary for him, some time or other in the day, to 
 discharge in talk the volume of thought which oppressed him. But 
 it was in vehement soliloquy, to which his wife listened with admi- 
 ration perhaps, but admiration dulled by the constant repetition of 
 the dose, and without relief or comfort from it. The evenings in 
 London, with the brilliant little circle which had gathered about
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 155 
 
 them, served only to intensify the gloom of the desolate moor, which 
 her nerves, already shattered with illness, were in no condition to 
 encounter. Carlyle observed these symptoms less than he ought to 
 have done. His own health, fiercely as at times he complained of 
 it, was essentially robust He was doing his own duty with his ut- 
 most energy. His wife considered it to be part of hers to conceal 
 from him how hard her own share of the burden had become. Her 
 high principles enabled her to go through with it; but the dreams 
 of intellectual companionship with a man of genius in which she 
 had entered on her marriage had long disappeared ; and she settled 
 down into her place again with a heavy heart. Her courage never 
 gave way; but she had a bad time of it. They stayed a fortnight at 
 Scotsbrig, where they heard the news of Goethe's death. At the 
 middle of April they were on the moor once more, and Carlyle was 
 again at his work. The " Characteristics" and the article on John- 
 son had been received with the warmest admiration from the in- 
 creasing circle of young intellectual men who were looking up to 
 him as their teacher, and with wonder and applause from the read- 
 ing London world. He sat down with fresh heart to new efforts. 
 " The Death of Goethe " was written, immediately on his return, for 
 Lytton Bulwer. Das MdJirchen, " THE Tale, " so called in Germany, 
 as if there were no other fit to be compared with it, was translated 
 for Fraser, with its singular explanatory notes. * His great conclud- 
 ing article on Goethe himself, on Goethe's position and meaning in 
 European history, had to be written next for the Foreign Quarterly ; 
 another for the Edinburgh on Ebenezer Elliot, the Corn-law Rhymer; 
 and, lastly, the essay on Diderot, for which he had been collecting 
 materials in London. He had added to his correspondents the new 
 friend John Mill, between whom and himself there had sprung up 
 an ardent attachment. 
 
 His letters to Mill are not preserved, but Mill's to him remain. 
 Between Jeffrey and Mrs. Carlyle also the communication began 
 again, Mrs. Carlyle apparently telling her cousin more of her inner 
 state of feeling than she pleased to show to any one else. Jeffrey 
 had been an almost daily visitor in Ampton Street: he saw and felt 
 for her situation ; he regarded himself as, in a sense, her guardian, 
 and he insisted that she should keep him regularly informed of her 
 condition. In London he had observed that she was extremely 
 delicate; that the prospect of a return to Craigenputtock was in- 
 tolerable to her. Carlyle's views and Carlyle's actions provoked 
 him more and more. He thought him as visionary as the Astrono- 
 mer in "Rasselas," and confessed that he was irritated at seeing 
 him throwing away his talent and his prospects. 
 
 Carlyle told mo that he had asked Goethe whether he was right in his interpreta- 
 tion of this story, but that he could never get an answer from him about it
 
 156 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Carlyle, after his reception in London circles, was less than ever 
 inclined to listen to Jeffrey's protests. If in the midst of his specu- 
 lations he could have spared a moment to study his wife's condi- 
 tion, the state of things at Craigenputtock might have been less 
 satisfactory to him. He was extremely fond of her: more fond, 
 perhaps, of her than of any other living person except his mother. 
 But it was his peculiarity that, if matters were well with himself, it 
 never occurred to him that they could be going ill with any one else; 
 and, on the other hand, if he was uncomfortable, he required every- 
 body to be uncomfortable along with him. After a week of rest- 
 lessness, he was at his work in vigorous spirits especially happy 
 because he found that he could supply Larry's place, and again 
 afford to keep a horse. 
 
 Carlyle now takes up his own story. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: May 2, 1832. 
 
 "My dear Mother, We are getting along quite handsomely here, 
 though in the midst of chaos and confusion worse confounded: 
 Jemmy Aitkin and his man and innumerable oilpots being in full 
 operation. They are painting the dining-room, lobby, and stair- 
 case; and, to avoid such a slaister for the future, doing it in oil. 
 We live in the drawing-room meanwhile, and I, for my part, study 
 to 'jook and let the jaw go by,' minding my own business as 
 much as possible, and what is not my own business as little as 
 possible. 
 
 "Betty Smeal 1 and Mary, of whose safe arrival we were somewhat 
 relieved to hear, would tell you more minutely than my little note 
 how all stood with us a fortnight ago. Jane had sent off to Templand 
 for a maid, but began to regret she had not endeavored to bargain 
 with the other, who, awkward as she was, seemed faithful and punct- 
 ual. However, on the Monday a new figure made her appearance; 
 one 'Nancy,' from Thornhill, a most assiduous, blithe, fond little 
 stump of a body, who will do excellently well. The cow, too, is mend- 
 ing. Jane is far heartier now that she has got to work: to bake;" 
 and, mark this, to preserve eggs in lime-water; so that, as I said, the 
 household stands on a quite tolerable footing. 
 
 "For a week I felt exceedingly out of my element; inclined to be 
 wretched and sulky : no work would prosper with me : I had to burn 
 as fast as I wrote. However, by degrees I got hefted again, and took 
 obediently to the gang and the gear. I have got one piece of work 
 done and sent off to London; the other I have now fairly on the 
 anvil, hot before me, and will soon hammer it out. One that is still 
 in the middle ought not, as you know, to crow day. However, I 
 think I can calculate on being pretty well through before this week 
 end; so that Jane may tell Ahck that I shall be ready for a horse any 
 
 ' A Scotsbrig maid, who had been in charge of Craigenputtock in the winter. 
 * A mistake on Carlyle's part. Mrs. Carlyle had not strength for household work. 
 She did it ; but it permanently broke down her health.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 157 
 
 time after Wednesday next h^ likes. I have seen or heard nothing, 
 since his letter, of the Dumfries beast, and will wait now till I be 
 there at any rate, if we are not provided otherwise in the mean- 
 time. 
 
 "This I believe, dear mother, is the main purpose of my letter 
 that I am to see you again so soon. We will then go through every- 
 thing by the more convenient method. 
 
 "I have rooted out a thousand docks with my dock spade, which 
 I find to be an invaluable tool. 
 
 "Let me pray that I may find you as well as Jane described, 
 mending the Rackburn road? I add no more but the message of 
 my wife's true love to one and all of you. My own heart's wishes 
 are with you always. 
 
 " I remain, my dear mother, 
 
 "Ever your affectionate, T. CAHLTLE. 
 
 "Jane wishes Jemmy to be on the outlook for a pig for her; she 
 would not like to go beyond ten shillings, only wishes a good one 
 could be had so, and come \ip with Alick's cart. I know not 
 whether the scheme is feasible. T. C." 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 "May 22. 
 
 "We are contented with the appearance of your domestic posi- 
 tion, and would fain see further into it. Your noble patient seems 
 to suffer more than we anticipated. A certain real pity for her for- 
 lorn fortune, so gorgeous outwardly, within so desolate, comes over 
 me ; one could fancy it no despicable task to struggle towards recti- 
 fying a life wherein are such capabilities of good. But, alas! how 
 little can be done! Therein, as in so many other cases, must the 
 patient minister to herself. He whom experience has not taught 
 innumerable hard lessons, will be wretched at the bottom of Nature's 
 cornucopia; and some are so dull at taking up ! On the whole, the 
 higher classes of modern Europe, especially of actual England, are 
 true objects of compassion. Be thou compassionate, patiently faith- 
 ful, leave no means untried; work for thy wages, and it will be well 
 with thee. Those Herzenseryiemmyen eines Einsamen, which the 
 late letters abound in, are not singular to me. The spirit that dwells 
 in them is such as I can heartily approve of. It is an earnest mind 
 seeking some place of rest for itself, struggling to get its foot off the 
 quicksand and fixed on the rock. The only thing I regret or fear is 
 that there should be so much occupation of the mind upon itself. 
 Turn outward. Attempt not the impossibility to 'know thyself,' 
 but solely ' to know what thou canst work at. ' This last is a possi- 
 ble knowledge for every creature, and the only profitable one; neither 
 is there any way of attaining it except trial, the attempt to icork. 
 Attempt honestly; the result, even if unsuccessful, will be infinitely 
 instructive. I can see, too, you have a great want in your present 
 otherwise so prosperous condition : you have not anything like 
 enough to do. I dare say many a poor riding apothecary, with five 
 times your labor and the fifth part of your income, is happier. 
 Nevertheless, stand to it tightly; every time brings its duty. Think
 
 158 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of this, as you are wont, but think of it -with a practical intent. All 
 speculation is beginningless and endless. Do not let yourself into 
 Grubeln, even in your present state of partial inaction. I well, in- 
 finitely too well, know what Grubeln is : a wretched sink of darkness, 
 pain, a paralytic fascination. Cover it up ; that is to say, neglect it 
 for some outward piece of action; go resolutely forward, you will 
 not heed the precipices that gape on the right hand of you and on 
 the left. Finally, dear brother, ' be alive!' as my Shewsbury coach- 
 man told a Methodist parson ; be alive ! all is included in that. And 
 so, God keep you and me ! and make us all happy and honorable to 
 one another, and ' not ashamed to live ' (as a voice we have often 
 heard was wont to pray), ' nor afraid to die.' Amen. 
 
 "I was at Scotsbrig last week, and found them all struggling 
 along, much as of old. Our dear mother holds out well ; is in fair 
 health, not more dispirited than almost any one would be under her 
 bereavement, and peaceful, with a high trust in the great Guide of 
 all. We expect her here in about a week, with Alick, who is bring- 
 ing up the cart with some sort of a horse he was to buy for me. 
 We settled everything at Scotsbrig; the departed had left it all ready 
 for settlement. Your name or mine (as I had myself requested) ' is 
 not mentioned in the will: it was all between my mother and the 
 other five. Each had to claim some perhaps 120?. each of the five. 
 Our mother has the houses with some 2SI. yearly during life. 
 
 ' ' Of ourselves here there is not much new to be said. Jane seemed 
 to grow very greatly better when she set foot on her native heath ; is 
 now not so well again, but better than in London. I hare written 
 two things a short Funeral Oration on Goethe : it is for Bulwer's 
 magazine of June (the New Monthly), and pleases the lady much 
 better than me; then a paper on certain Corn-law Rhymes for Na- 
 pier, of some twenty-five pages. I am now beginning a far more 
 extensive essay on Goethe, for the Foreign Quarterly Review. I am 
 apt to be rather stupid, but do the best I can. Venerable, dear 
 Goethe ! but we will not speak a word here. Our pastoral establish- 
 ment is much like what it was ; duller a little since Alick went, but 
 also quieter. Our new neighbors have nothing to do with us except 
 little kind offices of business. Articulate speech I hear little, my 
 sole comfort and remedy is work. Work ! rather an unnatural 
 state, but not to be altered for the present. With many- blessings, 
 too: a kind, true-hearted wife, with whom a true man may share any 
 fortune, fresh air, food, and raiment fit for one. The place is even 
 a beautiful place in its kind, and may serve for a workshop as well 
 as another. Let us work, then, and be thankful. 
 
 " The Whig Ministry is all out and gone to the devil: Reform Bill 
 and all. Newspapers will tell you enough. For us here it is little 
 more than a matter of amusement : ' Whoiver's King, I'se be soob- 
 ject.' The country is all in a shriek, but will soon compose itself 
 when it finds that things are just where they were. Incapable 
 
 1 Carlyle explains in his Journal. He had represented to his father that he and his 
 brother John had received their share of his fortune in their education, and that the 
 rest ought to be divided among those who, by working on the farm, had assisted in 
 earning it.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 159 
 
 dilettantes and capable knaves which is worse ? Excuse my dul- 
 ness, dear John. Love me always, and may God bless you. 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 P. S. by Mrs. Carlyle: 
 
 "My husband says, 'I have written the dullest letter; do take the 
 pen and underline it with something lively !' But, alas ! dear brother, 
 I have dined on a peppery pie ! and judge whether what he requires 
 be possible : consok-toi. I will write you a long letter some day, and 
 all out of my own head, as the children say. In the meantime, be- 
 lieve that my affections and heartiest good wishes are with you now 
 and aiways. Your sister, JAKE W. C." 
 
 Pleasant letters came from London. John Mill, young, ingenu- 
 ous, and susceptible, had been profoundly impressed by Carlyle. He 
 had an instinct for recognizing truth in any form in which it might 
 be presented to him. Charles Buller had foretold that, although 
 Mill's and Carlyle's methods of thought were as wide asunder as the 
 poles, they would understand and appreciate each other. They 
 sympathized in a common indignation at the existing condition of 
 society, in a common contempt for the insincere professions with 
 which men were veiling from themselves and from one another 
 their emptiness of spiritual belief; and neither Mill nor Carlyle as 
 yet realized how far apart their respective principles would eventu- 
 ally draw them. The review of Boswell's " Life of Johnson " had 
 delighted Mill. He had read it so often that he could almost repeat 
 it from end to end. He recognized the immense superiority of in- 
 tellectual honesty to intellectual power. He recognized the shallow- 
 ness and feebleness of modern thought in the midst of its cant of 
 progress. He professed himself a humble disciple of Carlyle, eager 
 to be convinced (which as yet he admitted that he was not) of the 
 greatness of Goethe ; eager to admit with innocent modesty Carlyle's 
 own superiority to himself. 
 
 The letters from Mill were agreeable interludes in the life at 
 Craigenputtock, pictures of which Carlyle continued regularly to 
 send to his brother, while he recorded in his Diary the workings of 
 his own mind. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 " Craigenputtork : July 31, 1832. 
 
 "My dear Brother, Goodwife Macadam brought us your letter 
 of the 4th from church with her on Sunday evening. It is the way 
 the three last have happened to come, so we shall esteem it a happy 
 omen when our neighbor thinks of getting a sermon. God be 
 thanked, it is all right. You are well, and have now heard that we 
 are well. Another letter, sent off through the Advocate by the For- 
 eign Office, will be already in your hands. We shall henceforth 
 eschew William Fraser as we would the genius of impotence itself, 
 and trust mainly to the Post, which, though it has loitered, has never
 
 160 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 yet absolutely deceived us. I lament for poor Fraser a worthy, 
 friendly creature, but whose utter unpunctuality in a world built on 
 time will frustrate every endeavor he may engage in, except the last 
 that of quitting life which will probably be transacted in right 
 season. I am angry, too, as well as sorry ; the idle losing of letters is 
 a stretch of carelessness to which even the peasants of Glenessland 
 are superior. Intrust any of them with a letter, he knows it must 
 be attended to. Fraser, to all appearance, has also wasted my last 
 letter to Goethe ; at least, no message yet reaches me from Weimar, 
 and I wrote to Eckermann last week on that hypothesis. Fie, fie, 
 the foolish Fraser ! And now, Doctor, taking to ourselves this prac- 
 tical lesson to be for our share in all things doubly and trebly punct- 
 ual, we will leave the unfortunate man. All is right at last. 
 
 " Both of us were heartily gratified with your letter. I have the 
 cheering sight before me of a prophecy, often pronounced and 
 asserted, realizing itself. Jack is to be a man, after all. Your out- 
 ward relations seem all prosperous and well managed. Your char- 
 acter is unfolding itself into true self-subsistence. In the work 
 appointed you to do, you not only seem to work, but actually work. 
 For the rest, let us be patient under this delay and separation. Both 
 were, perhaps, necessary; in any case, if we improve them, will turn 
 to good fruits. I quarrel not with your solitude, nor with anything 
 
 3U do, so it bring yourself contentment and the feeling of profit, 
 his is the best and only role you can have. Nevertheless, I have 
 always found that companionship with any man that will speak out 
 truly his experiences and persuasions (so he have such) was a most 
 precious ingredient in the history of one's life; a thing one turns 
 back to, and finds evermore new meaning in; for, indeed, this is real, 
 and therefore inexhaustible. God made that man you speak with ; 
 all else is more or less theoretical and incomplete. Indeed, in every 
 sense one is but an unhealthy fraction while alone ; only in society 
 with his equals a whole. For which reason it gratifies me that you 
 make acquaintance with Gell and old Squares, the doctor. I could 
 like well to know both of them. Sir W. (ein Bornirter, den man muss 
 gelten lasseri) will make an excellent cicerone; can tell you all about 
 Troy, too, and who knows what itineraries. Quadri will satirically 
 show you Italian quackery, and how an ardent, hot temperament de- 
 means itself therein. I must also esteem it no small felicity you 
 naturally have : that of associating with a thoroughly courteous so- 
 ciety-cultivated woman. No higher piece of art is there in the world. 
 Schone sief Verehre tie! Your whole law lies there. The weak, 
 lovely one will be loved, honored, and protected. Is not, in truth, a 
 noble woman (noblewoman or not) Gottes lieUichster Oedanke, and 
 worth reverencing? Be diligent with your journal. Note every- 
 thing, let it seem noteworthy or not. Have no eye towards publica- 
 tion, but only towards self -enlightenment and pleasant recollection. 
 Publication, if it seems needful, will follow of its own accord. 
 Goethe's Italian travels are a fine model. Alles rein angeschaut, wie 
 es ist, und seyn muss. I often figure you in the Toledo Street with 
 lemonade -booths and macaroni cookeries, and loud - singing, loud- 
 speaking multitudes on the loveliest spot of earth's surface. I, here 
 on the Glaisters hillside, in the warm dusk, the wilderness all vapory
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 161 
 
 and silent except a curlew or two, the great heaven above me, around 
 me only the spirits of the distant, of the dead all has a preternatural 
 character unspeakably earnest, sad, but nowise wretched. You may 
 tell me, if you like, what German books your lady reads; and on the 
 whole be more and more minute in picturing out to me the current 
 of your natural day. I want to know what clothes you wear, what 
 sort of victual you subsist on. 
 
 "To turn now the Scottish side of the leaf. I have finished 
 ' Goethe's Works, ' and corrected the proof of it since I wrote a 
 long, desultory, rhapsodic concern of forty-four pages in the F. Q. 
 li' ic. These are no days for speaking of Goethe. I next went 
 over to Catlinns ' and Scotsbrig, leaving Jane at Templand (who rued 
 much that she had volunteered to stay behind me). The Catlinns 
 agriculture was all green and prospering. The farmer, with wife 
 and child, had gone over to Brand's of Craighorn, whither I followed 
 them; and, strange enough, was shortly after joined by Jamie and 
 my mother, all engaged that evening to have tea there! Everything 
 was as one could have hoped : crops all excellent, good health, good 
 agreement, good weather. I drove our mother to Annan next fore- 
 noon in the clatch, as we call the old gig, which the new gray mare 
 briskly draws along : went and bathed there at the ' back of the hill, ' 
 in the very spot where I was near drowned six and twenty years ago, 
 whither I will not return: found Ben Nelson (it was market day); 
 dined with him and talked immeasurably all afternoon, though I had 
 much rather have listened if he had liked. 
 
 ' ' I was at Annan another bathing-day, but missed Ben. However, 
 we chanced to meet on Dodbeck Heights next Wednesday morning 
 as I was returning home : appointed a rendezvous at our inn, and 
 then, over a thimbleful of brandy-and-water, talked again for the 
 space of two stricken hours. Waugh I now asked for, and heard 
 the strangest history. Lying among'the pots, forgotten of men, he 
 sees his aunt Margaret die (poor old Peg !) and himself thereby put 
 in possession of 50?. as inheritance. Whereupon, shaving his beard 
 and putting on change of raiment, he walks down to Benson's, and 
 there orders fodder and stall of the best ; reigns among the bagmen 
 to heart's content ; shifts after a season to the King's Arms, Dum- 
 fries, and there, or in some similar establishment, is perhaps even 
 now burning his fifty -pound candle to the socket, and going out in 
 stench! Saw ever mortal the like? The man, Doctor, is once for 
 all deprived of understanding the greatest misfortune, properly the 
 only one, that can befall a man. He hath said to the father of No 
 Work and Darkness, 'Behold, I am thine.' Let me mention here 
 more specially, before quitting Annandale, that at Scotsbrig all was 
 busy and right; hay harvest was at its height the day I came off, and 
 prospering well. Our mother seemed in better than usual health, 
 was delighted with her two bathes, and should have [had another] 
 but the clatch failed and needed repairs. She said after, ' I kenna 
 how many kind things I wanted to bid [thee say for] me to John ; 
 and thou was ay gane first.' I said you understood them all, and I 
 constantly [wrote with] pains about Scotsbrig and her. I am to 
 
 1 Alexander Carlyle's new fiirra.
 
 162 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 write thither this night, and send your letter. Alick, also, I write 
 to : our boy is going to exchange horses with him for a week [when] 
 we get the rest of our coals carted. Our newspapers go between 
 these households, and sometimes from one to the other; there is 
 all community we can kept up : frequent messages, constant good 
 wishes. 
 
 " Since I returned I have been employed translating a little piece 
 named 'Novelle,' from the fifteenth volume of Goethe, and revising 
 an old translation of ' THE Mahrchen,' with intent to add some com- 
 mentary; and offer both papers to James Fraser. I have an essay to 
 write on Diderot (for Cochrane), and all his twenty-one octavos lying 
 here to read first : shall do it, any way, invitd Minerrd, and may as 
 well begin even now. I have upwards of a hundred pages to put 
 out of me before winter. Stand to it? NuUa dies sine lined. As to 
 ' Dreck,' he lies here quite calm, bound up in twine. My partial pur- 
 pose is to spend another 50Z. on him, and have him printed by-and- 
 l>y myself. I in some measure see through the matter, not yet 
 wholly. One thing I imagine to be clear enough, that bookselling, 
 slain by puffery, is dead, and will not come alive again, though 
 worms may for some time live in the carcass. What method writers 
 who have something to write shall next take is now the question. 
 In a generation or two the answer (summed up from the procedure 
 of wise, inventive men) will be forthcoming. To us, any way, mar- 
 tyrdom is the thing appointed; in this and all other generations only 
 the degree of it, the outward figure of it, vary. Thank God we 
 have still food and vesture, and can atill get a thing spoken out and 
 printed : more we need not covet, more is not necessary. I have a 
 thing to send Napier on all this, but it is in petto yet. Meanwhile, 
 we get along tolerably enough; all, as you fancied, is tight, tidy, and 
 peaceable here a flourishing garden, with blackbirds devouring the 
 fruit, even apples a basket or two; roses innumerable; a park wall- 
 ed in (this was poor Alick's last act here), so that the ' rowan-tree 
 gate ' and all gates but the outer one are removed, and cow and 
 horses graze at ease; a monstrous peat-stack against grim winter; 
 money in one's purse, faith in one's heart. What is there wanting? 
 So we live here, a wunderliches, abgesondertes Wesen. Jane drives 
 down to Dumfries to-morrow with the boy, and takes this letter. 
 She is far enough from perfect health still, yet certainly improving. 
 She greets you affectionately; was much pleased with your letter, 
 especially that part where you speak so sensibly about a good icife 
 and the blessedness she brings. I have some thought that we shall 
 be in Edinburgh this winter, printing of ' Dreck ' and what not. I 
 have Mill, and Mrs. Austin Jane has, as occasional correspondents 
 in London. Mill and Glen are acquainted, though it is mostly on 
 Mill's side ; Glen is so fendble a character, so near madness more- 
 over. Mill's letters are too speculative; but I reckon him an excel- 
 lent person, and his love to me is great. He tells me Glen got your 
 Naples letter, was much contented therewith, and well. His other 
 news are the decease, or at least paralysis, of Saint-Simonianism; and 
 London politics, for which I care less every day. Buller is trying 
 for Liskeard borough with hopes. The election will not be for 
 several months; no dissolution all winter. George Irving was at
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 163 
 
 Annan at bis father's funeral for two days. Edward, it seems, is 
 summoned to answer for himself before the Annan Presbytery, and 
 will come, and be deposed. The time is near; whether I shall see 
 him uncertain. He is preaching in the fields about London ; at Hamp- 
 stead Heath, his precentor in a tree (last account I saw). There was 
 also a paragraph about building him a new church. His old con- 
 gregation have offered somebody 1000. a year. Whether he takes 
 it, not said. The Dpws are both out, the last of them resigned. It 
 is wholly a beastly piece of ignorance and stupidity, too stupid even 
 for the gross heads of England. That the high, the holy, can find 
 no other lodging than that swinish one is even the misery. God 
 mend it, and us. Of Badams no news since we left him in Bartlett's 
 Buildings; gone from Enfield, with no good outlook, moral or do- 
 mestic. Poor Badams, wie gem rnocht' ich Dich retten ! Graham is 
 still in Glasgow, no tidings could I get of him farther. Burnswark 
 unsold. So goes the world here, dear brother. The weather is hot, 
 the year is fertile beyond all example. The simple hope from the 
 Reform Bill. Electioneering flourishes, in which I take no interest. 
 Cholera is at Carlisle, and somewhat worse than ever in London. 
 None of us are in the least alarmed at it. Be not you, either. I 
 paid Alick 451. 8*. of your money. The 251. Ss. was a tailor's ac- 
 count; and now you owe him nothing. I sent Jeffrey word that 
 you had remitted the 43. 10*. (specifying the items) to pay him, and 
 that /, not you, was now (till I could get the Dumfries banker near) 
 his debtor. He answers, gratified by your punctuality, and I will 
 now clear him off the first time I am at Dumfries. He says you 
 have justified what I thought unjustifiable. Gott sey Dank ! I am 
 in no need of money, otherwise I would freely take your help, and 
 will continue as ready if you prove worthy. I can now pay the 
 Advocate my own debt (had I once got my accounts in), and have a 
 501. over. Another 100?. , to be earned as fast as may be, will clear 
 Edinburgh and even print 'Dreck.' As ' Dreck ' can be unprinted till 
 the means be lent me, so one hand will wash the other, and we shall 
 do very well. Jeffrey is perhaps on his way to Edinburgh to-day. 
 He is a candidate for the Membership there, and has a Radical op- 
 ponent and a Tory. All men are disappointed in him a little, but 
 remember his past services. 
 
 " Jane says she will write you a complete letter next time. This 
 is the thing she says. Let us see whether she will perform. I will 
 not fail to remind her, if that will do. And now, dear brother, adieu. 
 " Vakas mei memor, 
 
 "T. CARLTLE." 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 "May 18. About beginning an essay on Goethe's life. All still 
 dark, or rather all void ; yet thin films, of bulk enough had they be- 
 come substances, hover here and there. Have been well-nigh idle 
 again for a fortnight. Nothing spurs me but an evil conscience." 
 
 "I have often remarked that the present generation has lost the 
 faculty of giving names. The modern streets of towns (London for 
 a chief example) and innumerable other things are proofs of this. 
 They are reduced to name streets by the owner of the land, by the
 
 164 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 builder, or in some other mechanical way, almost as if by formula. 
 Thus in Dumfries they have made their old Lochmaben Gate into 
 English Street, they have their Irish Street, and so forth. In Man- 
 chester they have taken the ready-made London names, have their 
 Piccadilly and the like. In Liverpool they have named streets by 
 herbs (Vine Street, etc., etc.), by poets (Pope Street), and by other 
 desperate methods. What talent is specially requisite for giving a 
 name ? A certain geniality of insight, whereby some real property 
 of the thing reveals itself. A very little will do, but some little is 
 requisite; then, so useful are names, even an indifferent one sticks. 
 We cannot now give so much as a nickname. Giving a NAME, in- 
 deed, is a poetic art; all poetry, if we go to that with it, is but a 
 giving of names." 
 
 "What a sad want I am in of libraries, of books to gather facts 
 from ! Why is there not a Majesty's library in every county town? 
 There is a Majesty's jail and gallows in every one." " 
 
 "Wednesday, May 23. Came news that Wellington has not been 
 able to get on, so violent was the spirit of the country and Parlia- 
 ment, so had given up the concern, and ' our friends ' were once 
 more all x in their places, with liberty to create peers or do what they 
 liked. A la bonne heure ! Democracy gets along with accelerated 
 pace whither? Old borough-mongers seemingly quite desperate; 
 meetings, resolutions, black flags and white flags (some even mount 
 a petticoat in reference to the Queen), threatenings, solemn covenants 
 (to oust Toryism), run their course over all the Isles. I purely an 
 onlooker, in any other capacity there being no need of me." 
 
 " Thus, then, after eighteen months of discussion and concussion 
 (enough to shake a far firmer than our worm-eaten constitution to 
 pieces), is this grand question to be decided in the affirmative? Shall 
 we give ourselves a chance to begin to try whether we can help the 
 maladies of England, or shall we not give ourselves a chance? 
 
 " Earl Grey and his squadron have moved along like honest, solid- 
 lying luggage. Tumbled back, they had always fallen on a reso- 
 lute, unanimous people, and been borne forward again. Could they 
 have passed a Catholic Bill, any ' Bill ' requiring the smallest ad- 
 dress or management? Wellington is at the stake (in effigy) in all 
 market towns; undeservedly, as I imagine. The man seems a Tory 
 soldier; otherwise a person of great intrepidity, strategic-diplomatic 
 faculty, soldierly (Dalgettyish) principle, and even directness and 
 plainness of speech. Fond of employment doubtless, fond of 
 power. Perhaps one of the most honest men in the House of Lords. 
 Earl Grey can speak; act he apparently cannot. He should resign 
 directly after passing his Bill, if he would avoid becoming the most 
 unpopular man in England, which poor W. now is. Basta :/" 
 
 "Wednesday, June 6. Was at Templand yesterday; over the 
 'Bogra Craig' in the morning, and returned at night by the Lag 
 road. Fine scent of hawthorns and green summer herbs ; old-fash- 
 ioned thatched cottages, clean, whitened, warm - looking in their 
 hdmliche Eingezogenheit. Woman with her children peeling potatoes 
 by the water-side, down in the chasm at Scarbridge. At night, haw-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 165 
 
 thorn blossoms again, queen of the meadows, glowworms hi Glen- 
 essland, a waning moon, and gusty northeaster. My own thoughts 
 sad enough, yet not of that hateful emptiness. They are thoughts, 
 not mere sensations. Mother and Jane waiting my (late) return." 
 
 "Sir James Mackintosh is dead. A Whig of the highest ordsr, 
 the result of whose life is well-nigh exhausted with himself. Hence- 
 forth no man of such faculty is doomed to that unfortunate part of 
 a ' supposer, ' well paid for plainly supposing, and so seeming plaus- 
 ibly to act, but may become a believer, and actually set about doing. 
 I saw Mackintosh only once, and never spoke to him, only heard 
 him speaking." 
 
 "Very kind letter from Mill, whose zealous and quite credible ap- 
 probation and appropriation of ' Johnson ' gratifies me, I doubt, far 
 more than it should. Unspeakable is the importance of man to man. 
 A tailor at Thornhill, who had vehemently laid to heart the ' Char- 
 acteristics,' was also a glad phenomenon to me. Let a million 
 voices cry out, 'How clever !' it is still nothing; let one voice cry 
 out, ' How true !' it lends us quite a new force and encouragement." 
 
 ' ' I have no books, cannot by any convenient contrivance get any 
 books; a little money in this, as in one or two other matters, might 
 do something for me. Hast thou not the 'Book of Nature?' A 
 page of it ; but here, in the Dunscore Moss, well-nigh a blank leaf. 
 Not wholly so. Read it well." 
 
 " The most stupendous of gigmen was Phaeton; drove the bravest 
 gig, and with the sorrowfullest results. An instance, too, of what 
 the law of inheritance produces. He had built no sun chariot (could 
 not build a wheelbarrow), but would and could insist on driving one, 
 and so broke his own neck and set fire to the world." 
 
 "July 21. A strange feeling of supernaturalism, of 'the fearful- 
 ness and wonderf ulness ' of life, haunts me and grows upon me. 
 Saw Ben Nelson at Annan ; long talk with him. Unluckily my 
 habit (and the people's habit with me) is rather to speak than to lis- 
 ten; I mean it nowise so, but so I often find it has proved." 
 
 " 'Society for the Diffusion of Common Honesty' were the use- 
 fullest of all societies could it take effect." 
 
 "July 22. A foolish puppet figure, which I saw in a huckster's 
 shop-window at London in some lane, has awakened thoughts in me 
 which I have not yet found any words for ! To imagine ; bilden ! 
 That is an unfathomable thing. 
 
 "As yet I have never risen into the region of creation. Am I ap- 
 proaching it? AcTi Gott! sick ndhern dem unaussprechlichen ! 
 
 " Was there ever a more merry-andrew-looking thing (if we con- 
 sider it) than for a wretched creature named man, or gigman, alight- 
 ing for one instant on this ' everlasting earth, ' to say, it is mine ! It; 
 consider what it (the earth) properly is the reflex of the living spirit 
 of man, the joint production of man and God 
 
 'N";ttur ist. Schall und Ranch 
 I'mnebelnd Himmelsgluth. '
 
 166 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The greatest of all past or present anti-gigmen was Jesus Christ. 
 This age is quite especially wrecked and sunk in gigmanism." 
 
 "Homer's 'Iliad' would have brought the author, had he offered 
 it to Mr. Murray on the half -profit system, say five-and-twenty guin- 
 eas. The Prophecies of Isaiah would have made a small article in 
 a review, which, paying not under the rate of three guineas a slice t 
 (excluding extracts, whereof there are none in Isaiah), could cheer- 
 fully enough have remunerated him with a five -pound note. To 
 speak of paying the writer of a true book is, on the whole, delirium. 
 The thing is unpayable ; the whole world could not buy it. Could 
 the whole world induce him by fee or reward to write it otherwise 
 opposite-wise? Then is he no writer, only a deplorable, despica- 
 ble scribbler, waiting till the besom of destitution sweep him away. 
 
 "Authors are martyrs witnesses for the truth or else nothing. 
 Money cannot make or unmake them. They are made or unmade, 
 commanded and held back, by God Almighty alone, whose inspira- 
 tion it is that giveth them understanding; yet for the world whom 
 they address, for the fitness of their language towards it, their clear- 
 ness of insight into its interests, and the ear it shall give them for 
 all, in short, that respects their revelation of themselves (not their ex- 
 istence in, themselves) money, as the epitome and magic talisman 
 of all mechanical endeavor whatsoever, is of incalculable impor- 
 tance. Money cannot hire the writing of a book, but it can the print- 
 ing of it. The existence of a public library, or non-existence there- 
 of, in the circle where a thinker is born will forward his thinking or 
 obstruct and prevent it. When the thinker has discovered truth, it 
 depends on money whether the world shall participate in such dis- 
 covery or not participate. In how many other ways (as when your 
 nascent wise man is poor, solitary, uneducated, etc.) can the ' talisman 
 of power ' cut away impediments and open out the path ! Many a 
 fallen spark too is quenched, or lives only as a spark, which could 
 have been fanned into a cheerful light and fire. (No end to all this, 
 which is to go into that paulo post future essay on 'Authors.') 
 
 " Cholera at Carlisle; a case talked of in Annandale. The cow- 
 ardice or bravery of the world manifests itself best in such a season. 
 Nothing lies in cholera, with all its collapses, spasms, blueness of 
 skin, and what else you like, except death, which may lie equally in 
 a common catarrh in the wheel of the nearest hackney-coach. Yet 
 here death is original ; the dunce who, blinded by custom, has looked 
 at it in the usual forms, heedless, unreasoning, now sees it for the first 
 time, and shudders at it as a novelty. 1 
 
 " 'The special, sole, and deepest theme of the world's and man's 
 history, whereto all other themes are subordinated, remains the con- 
 
 i The cholera fell very heavily on Dumfries. For want of accommodation, the sick 
 were crowded together in a single large building, out of which few who had entered 
 came out alive. The town was terror-struck. Carlyle told me that the panic at last 
 reached the clergy, who were afraid to go within the door of that horrible charnel- 
 house to help the dying in their passage into eternity, but preached to them from the 
 outside through the open windows. He had no love for Catholic priests and what he 
 called their poisoned gingerbread consolations; but in this instance he bore an ungrudg- 
 ing testimony that the only minister of religion who ventured in among the sick-beds 
 was a poor priest; and the poor priest, alas! caught the infection and died.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 167 
 
 flict of unbelief and belief. All epochs wherein belief prevails, un- 
 der what form it will, are splendid, heart-elevating, fruitful for con- 
 temporaries and posterity. All epochs, on the contrary, where un- 
 belief, in what form soever, maintains its sorry victory, should they 
 even for a moment glitter with a sham splendor, vanish from the 
 eyes of posterity, because no one chooses to burden himself with a 
 study of the unfruitful.' 'Goethe's Works, 'vi. 159, on Moses and 
 his Exodus." 
 
 These notes show how powerfully Carlyle's intellect was working, 
 how he was cutting out an original road for himself, far away from 
 the Radicalism of the day. But it is in the nature of such thoughts 
 that they draw off a man's attention from what is round him, and 
 prevent him from attending to the thousand little things and the 
 many great things of which the commonplaces of life are composed. 
 Vocal as he was pouring out whatever was in him in a stream of 
 talk for hours together he was not the cheerfullest of companions. 
 He spoke much of hope, but he was never hopeful. The world was 
 not moving to his mind. His anticipations were habitually gloomy. 
 The persons with whom he had come in contact fell short of the de- 
 mands which the sternness of his temper was inclined to make on 
 them, from the drudge who had ill-cleaned a vegetable dish, to the 
 man of letters who had written a silly article, or the Phaeton who 
 was driving the State chariot through the wrong constellations. 
 Thus, although indigestion, which interfered with his working, re- 
 called his impatience to himself, he could leave his wife to ill-health 
 and toil, assuming that all was well as long as she did not complain ; 
 and it was plain to every one of her friends, before it was suspected 
 by her husband, that the hard, solitary life on the moor was trying 
 severely both her constitution and her nerves. 
 
 Carlyle saw, and yet was blind. If she suffered, she concealed her 
 trials from him, lest his work should suffer also. But she took ref- 
 uge in a kind of stoicism, which was but a thin disguise for disap- 
 pointment and at times for misery. It was a sad fate for a person 
 so bright and gifted; and if she could endure it for herself, others, 
 and especially Jeffrey, were not inclined to endure it for her. Jef- 
 frey had been often in Ampton Street, claiming the privileged inti- 
 macy of a cousin. Eyes so keen as the Lord-advocate's could not 
 fail to see how things were going with her. She herself perhaps 
 did not hide from him that the thought of being again immured in 
 Craigenputtock was horrible to her. Liking and even honoring Car- 
 lyle as he did, he did not like his faults, and the Lord-advocate was 
 slightly irritated at the reception which Carlyle had met with in 
 London, as tending to confirm him in the illusion that he was a 
 prophet of a new religion. He continued to write to Mrs. Carlyle 
 tenderly and even passionately, as he would have written to a daugh-
 
 168 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ter of his own. It was intolerable to him to think of her with her 
 fine talents lost to all the enjoyments that belonged to her age and 
 character, and provoking to feel that it was owing to moody fancies 
 too long cherished, and fantastic opinions engendered and fed in sol- 
 itude. She made the best of her position, as she always did. She 
 had been greatly interested in the daughter of her landlady in Amp- 
 ton Street, Miss Eliza Miles, who had so romantically returned Mrs. 
 Carlyle's regard that she had proposed to go back with her as a ser- 
 vant to Craigenputtock. Mrs. Carlyle knew too well what Craigen- 
 puttock was to allow her to accept Miss Miles's offer. She wrote to 
 her occasionally, however, in the summer which followed their stay 
 in London, and invited her to pay the place a visit. 
 
 To Miss Eliza Miles. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: June 16, 1832. 
 
 "My dear Eliza, I could wager you now think the Scots a less 
 amiable nation than you had supposed, least of all to be commended 
 on the score of good faith. Is it not so? Has not my whole nation 
 suffered in your opinion through my solitary fault? In February I 
 made a voluntary engagement to write to you, which now in June 
 remains to be fulfilled. Still I ana fulfilling it, which proves that it 
 is not altogether ' out of sight out of mind ' with me ; and could I 
 give you an idea of the tumult I have been in since we parted, you 
 would find me excusable, if not blameless. I never forgot my gentle 
 Ariel in Ampton Street ; it were positive sin to forget her, so helpful 
 she, so trustful, so kind and good. Besides, this is the place of all 
 others for thinking of absent friends, where one has so seldom any 
 present to think of. It is the stillest, solitariest place that it ever en- 
 tered your imagination to conceive, where one has the strangest 
 shadowy existence. Nothing is actual in it but the food we eat, the 
 bed one sleeps on, and, praised be Heaven, the fine air one breathes. 
 The rest is all a dream of the absent and distant, of things past and 
 to come. I was fatigued enough by the journey home, still more 
 by the bustling which awaited me there a dismantled house, no ef- 
 fectual servants, weak health, and, worse than the seven plagues of 
 Egypt, a necessity of painters. All these things were against me. 
 But happily there is a continual tide in human affairs ; and if a little 
 while ago I was near being swept away in the hubbub, so now I find 
 myself in a dead calm. All is again in order about us, and I fold 
 my hands and ask what is to be done next ? 
 
 " 'The duty nearest hand will show itself in course.' So my 
 Goethe teaches. No one who lays the precept to heart can ever be 
 at a stand. Impress it on your ' twenty ' children (that, I think, 
 was the number you had fixed upon). Impress it on the whole 
 twenty from the cradle upwards, and you will spare your sons 
 the vexation of many a wildgoose chase, and render your daughters 
 forever impracticable to ennui. Shame that such a malady should 
 exist in a Christian land: should not only exist, but be almost gen- 
 eral throughout the whole female population that is placed above 
 the necessity of working for daily bread. If I have an antipathy
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 169 
 
 for any class of people, it is for fine ladies. I almost match my hus- 
 band's detestation of partridge-shooting gentlemen. Woe to the 
 fine lady who should find herself set down at Craigenputtock, for 
 the first time in her life left alone with her own thoughts no 'fancy 
 bazaar' in the same kingdom with her; no place of amusement 
 within a day's journey; the very church, her last imaginable re- 
 source, seven miles off ! I can fancy with what horror she would 
 look on the ridge of mountains that seemed to enclose her from all 
 earthly bliss ; with what despair in her accents she would inquire 
 if there was not even a 'charity sale' within reach. Alas, no! no 
 outlet whatever for 'lady's work,' not even a book for a fine lady's 
 understanding. It is plain she would have nothing for it but to die 
 as speedily as possible, and so relieve the world of the expense of 
 her maintenance. For my part, I am very content. I have every- 
 thing here my heart desires that I could have anywhere else, except 
 society, and even that deprivation is not to be considered wholly an 
 evil. If people we like and take pleasure in do not come about us 
 here as in London, it is thankfully to be remembered that ' here the 
 wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' If the 
 knocker make no sound for weeks together, it is so much the better 
 for my nerves. My husband is as good company as reasonable 
 mortal could desire. Every fair morning we ride on horseback for 
 an hour before breakfast. My precious horse knew me again, and 
 neighed loud and long when he found himself in his old place. 
 And then we eat such a surprising breakfast of home-baked bread 
 and eggs, etc., etc., as might incite anyone that had breakfasted so 
 long in London to write a pastoral. Then Carlyle takes to his 
 writing, while I, like Eve, ' studious of household good,' inspect my 
 house, my garden, my live-stock, gather flowers for my drawing- 
 room, and lapfuls of eggs; and finally betake myself also to writing 
 or reading, or making or mending, or whatever work seems fittest. 
 After dinner, and only then, I lie on the sofa (to my shame be it 
 spoken), sometimee sleep, but oftenest dream waking. In the even- 
 ing I walk on the moor how different from Holborn and the 
 Strand! and read anything that does not exact much attention. 
 Such is my life, agreeable as yet from its novelty, if for nothing else. 
 Now would you not like to share it? I am sure you would be happy 
 beside us for a while, and healthy, for I would keep all drugs from 
 your lips, and pour warm milk into you. Could you not find an 
 escort and come and try ? At all rates, write and tell me how you 
 are, what doing, what intending. I shall always be interested in all 
 that concerns you. My health is slowly mending. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, JANE CARLYLE." 
 
 This is pretty, and it shows Craigenputtock on its fairest side. 
 But there was a reverse of the picture. I have not seen any of Mrs. 
 Carlyle's letters to Jeffrey, but in one of them she sent some verses. 
 It was summer, for there were rose-leaves along with them, for 
 which Jeffrey seems to have asked. That the verses below were 
 written at Craigenputtock is certain, for they are dated from ' The 
 Desert.' Time, circumstances, and Jeffrey's own acknowledgment 
 
 II. -8
 
 170 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 that she had sent him verses of some kind, make it almost certain 
 that they belong to this particular period. I find them among 
 loose fragments in her own portfolio: 
 
 " To a Swallow Building under our Eaves. 
 
 " Thou too hast travelled, little fluttering thing- 
 Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing 
 
 Thou too must rest. 
 
 But much, my little bird, couldst thou but tell, 
 I'd give to know why here thou lik'st so well 
 
 To build thy nest. 
 
 " For thou hast passed fair places in thy flight; 
 A world lay all beneath thee where to light; 
 
 And, strange thy taste, 
 Of all the varied scenes that met thine eye 
 Of all the spots for building 'nealh the sky 
 
 To choose this waste. 
 
 " Did fortune try thee ? was thy little purse 
 Perchance run low, and thou, afraid of worse, 
 
 Felt here secure ? 
 
 Ah no ! thou need'st not gold, thou happy one ! 
 Thou know'st it not. Of all God's creatures, man 
 
 Alone is poor I 
 
 " What was it, then ? some mystic turn of thought, 
 Caught under German eaves, and hither brought, 
 
 Marring thine eye 
 
 For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown 
 A sober thing that dost but mope and moan, 
 
 Not knowing why 1 
 
 " Nay, if thy mind be sound, I need not ask, 
 Since here I see thee working at thy task 
 
 With wing and beak. 
 
 A well-laid scheme doth that small head contain, 
 At which thou work'st, brave bird, with might and main, 
 
 Nor more need'st seek. 
 
 " In truth, I rather take it thou hast got 
 By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, 
 
 And hast small care 
 Whether an Eden or a desert be 
 Thy home, so thou remain'st alive, and free 
 
 To skim the air. 
 
 " God speed thee, pretty bird; may thy small nest 
 With little ones all in good time be blest. 
 
 I love thee much ; 
 
 For well thou managest that life of thine. 
 While I ! oh, ask not what I do with mine I 
 
 Would I were such! 
 "The Desert." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A.D. 1832. .ET. 37. 
 
 JEFFKEY carried Mrs. Carlyle's sad verses with him to the "glades " 
 of Richmond, to muse upon them, and fret over his helplessness. 
 To him his cousin's situation had no relieving feature, for he be- 
 lieved that Carlyle was entered on a course which would end only 
 less ruinously than Irving's that he was sacrificing his own pros-
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 171 
 
 pects, as well as his wife's happiness, to arrogant illusions. The 
 fact was not as Jeffrey saw it. Carlyle was a knight-errant, on the 
 noblest quest which can animate a man. He was on the right 
 road, though it was a hard one ; but the lot of the poor lady who 
 was dragged along at his bridle-rein to be the humble minister of his 
 necessities was scarcely less tragic. One comfort she had he had 
 recovered her pony for her, and she could occasionally ride with 
 him. His mother came now and then to Craigenputtock to stay 
 for a few days; or, when a bit of work was done, they would 
 themselves drive over to Scotsbrig. So far as Carlyle himself was 
 concerned, his letters give an unusually pleasant impression of his 
 existing condition. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyte, Scotubrig. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : June 29, 1832. 
 
 " My dear Mother, You shall have a short note from me, though 
 my task should stand half done all night. Peter Austin, I expect, 
 will take you this on Monday, and tell you all about our last peat- 
 leading, and what not ; but I imagine you will not dislike a word 
 under my own hand also. 
 
 "Thank Jean for her letter: it gave us great relief to know that 
 you were getting into your natural way again ; that the rest were all 
 in theirs. Let us hope this good state of matters still holds. As for 
 yourself, I think you must go and have a plunge in the Solway this 
 fine weather. When I come down next, I will try to keep an eye on 
 the moon, bring the clatch with me, and roll you along therein my- 
 self. I too want much to be bathed. 
 
 " We are all going on as you saw us, or better. Jane is a little 
 out-of-sorts these two or three days, but in general seems clearly 
 improving. The boy has cleaned the garden, which looks well 
 now, and is at this moment slashing like a Waterloo hero among 
 the nettle and dock hosts over the paling. I hope they will not 
 smother him up, but that his little arm and blunt hook will cut a 
 way through them. Betty has got 'Noolly' (the cow) back again, 
 little improved in temper, she says. Soft grass will soften her. 
 
 "As for myself, I am doing my utmost, and seeing, as you coun- 
 selled, not 'to make it too higli.' In spite of 'the Taylors' ap- 
 plauses,' I find myself but a handless workman too often, and can 
 only get on by a dead struggle. This thing, I calculate, will be 
 over in two weeks, and so the stone rolled from my heart again 
 for a little. I mean to run over and ask what you are doing shortly 
 after ; most probably I will write first, by Notman. ' For the rest, 
 I am well enough, and cannot complain while busy. I go riding ev- 
 ery fair morning, sometimes as early as six, and enjoy this blessed 
 June weather, oftenest on the Galloway side, the road being open 
 and good now. My beast is wholly satisfactory: learns fast to 
 ride, is already a good canterer, tame, quiet, and biddable as ever 
 horse was. The boy has had it in the cart, too, and finds no diffl- 
 
 i The carrier.
 
 172 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 culty in handling it. So, dear mother, on that head set your heart 
 at rest. 
 
 "No Examiner came this week. I have charged Alick to send 
 you over the Courier by Peter. The following week you will find 
 either it or something at the post-office at the usual time. Anjrway, 
 there are no news of moment. The poor old king has been hit (by 
 a solitary blackguard) with a stone. Wellington was peppered with 
 ' mud and dead cats ' along the whole length of London. I am sad 
 for him, yet cannot but laugh to think of the business: the cast- 
 metal man riding slowly five long miles, all the way like a pillar of 
 glass ! Every beast, you see, has its burden ; every dog its day. 
 
 ' ' Now, dear mother, you see I must finish. My brotherly love to 
 them all. Take care of yourself, and let me find you well. All 
 good be with you all, now and ever ! 
 
 " Your affectionate son, T. CARLTLE." 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : July 2, 1832. 
 
 "We are all well, and where we were. Our mother was here 
 with us for a fortnight not quite three weeks ago, and I took her 
 down in the gig, by Alick's, too, in whose house and farm 1 we found 
 all prosperous. He was making a gate when we came up to the 
 brae, but soon threw down his axes in delight to see us. It is 
 thought he has not changed for the worse, and may do well in the 
 Water of Milk, which he looks like doing, for there is a great im- 
 provement in him, and increase not only of gravity, but of earnest 
 sense and courage. His little girl is a queer, gleg, crowing creature, 
 whom he takes much delight in. Jamie, too, and the sisters are 
 doing well, and seem to go on judiciously enough together, a proper 
 enough spirit seeming to pervade all of them. Our good mother 
 is very serious, almost sad (as she well may be), yet not unhealthy, 
 not altogether heavy of heart. She has her trust on what cannot die. 
 
 "Such much for Annandale, where you see there are, as our 
 mother piously says, many mercies still allotted to us. 
 
 "As to Craigenputtock, it is, as formerly, the scene of scribble- 
 scribbling. Jane is in a weakly state still, but I think clearly gath- 
 ering strength. Her life beside me constantly writing here is but 
 a dull one; however, she seems to desire no other; has, in many 
 things, pronounced the word Entsagen, and looks with a brave if 
 with no joyful heart into the present and the fiiture. She manages 
 all things poultry, flowers, bread-loaves; keeps a house still like a 
 bandbox, then reads, or works (as at present) on some translation 
 from Goethe. I tell her many times there is much for her to do if 
 she were trained to it : her whole sex to deliver from the bondage 
 of frivolity, dollhood, and imbecility, into the freedom of valor and 
 womanhood. Our piano is quite out of tune, and little better than 
 a stocking-frame ; this is an evil not remediable just yet, so we must 
 want music. We have a boy servant named Me Whir, a brisk, wise 
 little fellow, who can scour knives, weed carrot beds, yoke gigs, trim 
 saddle-horses, go errands, and cart coals a very factotum of a boy 
 
 * New farm to which Alick Carlyle had removed, called Catlinns.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 173 
 
 at the rate of one sovereign per semestre. He brings the horses 
 round every favorable morning (Alick and Jamie got me a noble 
 gray mare at Longtown), and Jane and I go off riding, for which 
 we have now two roads, the Glaister Hill one being remade and 
 smoothed, and a bridge just about built over the Orr. Our weather 
 in these mornings would hardly do discredit to Italy itself. Fur- 
 thermore, a huge stack of the blackest peats was built up for us 
 last week. Me \Vhir has cleaned the garden, full of roses now, has 
 hewn down innumerable nettle and dock weeds hi the 'new wood,' 
 where some of the trees are quite high, and is busy this day weed- 
 ing the ' hedge ' and the walk. We have had no visits but one of 
 a day from John Welsh of Liverpool, who seemed happy and fished 
 in the Orr. I have work enough; respect more than I deserve; am 
 not without thoughts from time to time; and so we play our part. 
 Of my writings this is the list: one often mentioned on 'Samuel 
 Johnson,' which you will one day read with a little pleasure; a 
 Trauer rede, also often mentioned, on the 'Death of Goethe, ' print- 
 ed in Bulwer's Magazine, never yet paid for, or seen by me in print: 
 a speculative-radical discussion of some ' Corn-law Rhymes ' (bold 
 enough, yet with an innocent smile on its countenance), of which I 
 corrected the proof (twenty-four pages) the week before last for 
 Napier; finally, this thing I am now at the thirtieth page of, on 
 'Goethe's Works,' a baroque, incongruous concern, which I am 
 principally anxious to get done with. James Fraser is again willing 
 to employ me (though at that double rate), the people having praised 
 ' Johnson.' With the editorial world, in these mad times, I stand 
 at present on quite tolerable footing. I mean to be in Edinburgh 
 some time before very long, and keep matters going. Here, too, let 
 me mention that I am at no loss for money myself, and have safely 
 received your remittance of 1001., and written to Alick that I will 
 bring it down with me next time, or send it sooner; to Jeffrey I will 
 write a fit message on the same subject to-morrow. 1 All friends 
 were touched with a kind of woe joy to see, as I said, 'the color of 
 Jack's money,' after so many misventures and foiled struggles. 
 Poor Jack will be himself again, in spite of all that, and make the 
 world stand about, stiff as it is, and make a little (straight) pathkin 
 for him. Fear it not; you are already free of debt, and in that the 
 miserablest of all millstones is rolled from off you. I too expect to 
 pay the Advocate his money (perhaps along with yours) : then I too 
 shall owe no man anything. Anti-gigmanism is the fixed, unaltera- 
 ble Athanasian Creed of this house; Jane is almost stronger in it 
 (and in anti-fine-ladyism) than myself. So while the fingers will 
 wag, and the head and heart are uncracked, why should we care? 
 The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even 
 to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and 
 for it. 
 
 ' ' Of external persons or news we hear or see little. Mrs. Strachey 
 sent an apologetic little letter to Jane the other week. She was just 
 leaving Shooter's Hill, and about settling in Devonshire, I think at 
 
 1 John Carlylo had received money from Jeffrey besides the advances which he had 
 received from his brother. He was now diligently paying all his debts.
 
 174 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Torquay. She is earnest, sad, but not broken or dispirited. From 
 John Mill I had a kind sheet of news and speculations. Mrs. Aus- 
 tin wrote lately that Goethe's last words were, Macht die Fensterladen 
 auf, damit ich mehr Lie/it bekomme! Glorious man! Happy man! 
 I never think of him but with reverence and pride. Jeremy Ben- 
 tham is dead, and made his body be lectured over in some of their 
 anatomical school j by Southwood Smith, I think. You have like- 
 ly seen this in the papers; also that Sir Walter Scott lies struck 
 with apoplexy, deprived of consciousness, and expected inevitably 
 to die, at a hotel in Jermyn Street! He has a son and daughter 
 there too; and dies in an inn. I could almost cry for it. G all- 
 devouring Time ! O unfathomable Eternity ! Edward Irving is 
 out of his chapel, and seems to be preaching often in the fields. He 
 has rented Owen's huge, ugly bazaar (they say) in Gray's Inn Road, 
 at seven guineas a week, and lectures there every morning. Owen 
 the Atheist, and Irving the Gift-of-Tongues-ist, time about; it is a 
 mad world. Who our poor friend's audience are I hear not. It 
 is said many even of his women have given in. Some of his adher- 
 ents seem to come before the police occasionally when they gather 
 crowds on the street. His father, worthy old Gavin, was taken 
 away, a few days ago, from sight of these perversities. Electioneer- 
 ing goes on here, in which I take no interest, more than in a better 
 or worse terrier-fight. Reform bill-ing is the universal business, 
 not mine. . . . 
 
 "I wholly understand your internal contentions at this period the 
 struggling, Verwerfen, and Aufnehmen that you have. It is a heavy 
 burden on the shoulders of every true man, specially at this epoch 
 of the world. It is by action, however, that we learn and attain 
 certainty. The time for this with you is coming; be ready for it. 
 You have my deepest sympathy in these spiritual trials; neverthe- 
 less, I see them to be necessary. Not till now have you decidedly 
 looked to me as if you were about becoming a man, and finding a 
 manful basis for yourself. I have better hope than ever that it will 
 turn for good. Keep up your heart, my dear brother; show your- 
 self a valiant man, worthy of the name you bear (for you too bear 
 the name of a brave man), worthy of yourself. Trust in me; love 
 me. God forever bless you ! Your affectionate 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 So passed the summer. The Goethe paper (which did not please 
 him; "the time not having come to speak properly about Goethe") 
 being finished and despatched, Carlyle took up Diderot. Diderot's 
 works, five-and-twenty large volumes of them, were to be read through 
 before he could put pen to paper. He could read with extraordinary 
 perseverance from nine in the morning till ten at night without inter- 
 mission, save for his meals and his pipes. The twelfth of August 
 brought the grouse-shooting, and young Welsh relations with guns, 
 who drove him out of his house, and sent him on a few days' riding- 
 tour about the country. On returning he at once let the shooting of 
 Craigenputtock, that he might be troubled with such visitors no more.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 175 
 
 A small domestic catastrophe followed, the maid-servant having mis- 
 conducted herself and having to be sent away at an hour's notice. 
 Her place could not be immediately filled, and all the work fell on 
 Mrs. Carlyle. "Oh mother, mother!" exclaimed Carlyle, in telling 
 her the story, " what trouble the Devil does give us! how busy he is 
 wheresoever men are! I could not have fancied this unhappy, 
 shameless, heartless creature would have proved herself so; but she 
 was long known for a person that did not speak tJie truth, and of such 
 (as I have often remarked) there never comes good." 
 
 Meanwhile ' ' he stuck, " as he said, ' ' like a burr to his reading, and 
 managed a volume every lawful day (week-day). On Sabbath he 
 read to his assembled household (his wife, the maid, and the stable- 
 boy) in the Book of Genesis." And so the time wore on. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : August 31, 1832. 
 
 "Your letters, I see, are all opened and resealed again before they 
 arrive ; but it makes little difference, since such is the will of the Po- 
 tentates, poor fellows. We have no Carbonari secrets to treat of, and 
 are quite willing to let any biped or quadruped reign in Italy, or out 
 of it, so long as he can. 
 
 "All is well here in its old course. My article works are all pub- 
 lished and away from me. The ' Goethe, ' which was the last of them, 
 went off in a printed shape to Catlinns on Wednesdav. It is a poor, 
 fragmentary thing; some of it was put into Teufelsdrockh's mouth, 
 and I had a letter from London since asking where Teufelsdrockh's 
 great work (' Die Kleider ') was to be fallen in with! Did I say that 
 the ' Corn -law Rhymes ' was printed without the slightest mutilation? 
 So far well! I have now written to Napier to pay me for it, and 
 with the proceeds mean forthwith to clear scores with the Advocate, 
 and sign myself Nemini Debens. This is one fruit which springs 
 from my labors; and why should I calculate on any other? There 
 are two little translations of mine off to Fraser the 'Mahrchen,' 
 with a Commentary; a shorter piece named 'Novelle.' F. is very 
 complaisant with me ; whether he accept or reject these trifles is left 
 with himself. My next task is a very tedious one, an essay on Dide- 
 rot ; as a preliminary for which I have twenty-five octavo volumes 
 to read, and only some eight of them done yet. It will serve me till 
 the end of September, and be worth next to nothing when done. I 
 have engaged for it, and must accomplish it. For the rest, be under 
 no fear lest I overwork myself. Alas ! quite the other danger is to 
 be dreaded. I do not neglect walking or riding (as, for instance, this 
 morning). Besides, the air here is quite specially bracing and good. 
 I have had a kind of fixed persuasion of late that I was one day to 
 get quite well again, or nearly so some day, that is, between this 
 and the Greek kalends. Indeed, on the whole, I am full of a senti- 
 ment which I name 'desperate hope,' and have long been getting 
 fuller. We shall see what will come of it. Meanwhile, in my im- 
 prisonment here, whether for life or not, I have bethought me that I 
 ought to get infinitely more reading than I have now means of, and
 
 176 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 will get it one way or other, though the Dumfries libraries I have 
 been prying into the rules and state of as yet yield nothing. A very 
 large mass of magazines, reviews, and such like, I have consumed 
 like srfioke within the last month, gaining, I think, no knowledge ex- 
 cept of the no-knowledge of the writing world. Books produce a 
 strange effect on me here : I swallow them with such unpausing im- 
 petuosity from early morning to late night, and get altogether filled 
 and intoxicated with them. A little talk were wholesome dissipa- 
 tion for me, but it is not to be had, and one can do without it. My 
 Janekin, if not a great speaker, is the best of listeners, and what she 
 does say is in general real speech, and not clatter. 
 
 "On Monday, the 13th of this month, apprehending with reason 
 an inroad of grouse-killers, I fled about six in the morning (as it had 
 been previously arranged) into Galloway. I breakfasted with Skir- 
 ving of Croys, rode through Castle Douglas with its withered ' Re- 
 form Jubilee' triumphal arch (most villages have had such), and 
 about two o'clock was in the parlor of Kirk Christ. The Churches 
 were in high spirits to see me; I remembered with a kind of shudder 
 that it was nine years since you and I went thither on my last pre- 
 vious visit. The old people are hardly changed, look healthy and 
 prosperous; all was trim about them, flourishing crops, and the hope 
 of harvest just about to begin realizing itself. Great change in the 
 younger parties: two female infants become rather interesting young 
 ladies; John, whom I remembered in bib and tucker, shot up to six 
 feet and more, a talking, prompt, rather promising young man, in- 
 tended for the factor line. I could not but reflect, as I have done 
 more than once of late, how small a proportion of mere intellect will 
 serve a man's turn if all the rest be right. John Church, as I said, 
 promises well; James, of Calcutta, is doing admirably well; and 
 their heads are both of the smallest. Church was full of Hercula- 
 neum, and will question you strictly when he gets you. Poor Don- 
 aldson, the schoolmaster, my old comrade in Kirkcaldy, has had to 
 put away his wife for the sin of drunkenness, and was a saddish kind 
 of sight to me. I called on old Gordon; terrified him much, but 
 found him a very worthy and sensible man. Finally, on Thursday 
 morning I departed for Girthon, and by rough ways and over deep 
 rivers reached home that evening about six. Galloway was beauti- 
 ful, all green and orange under the clear mellow sky. I had glanced 
 into a peopled country, seen old friends, and not wholly wasted my 
 time. 
 
 "From Annandale I hear good news and nothing else three days 
 ago. They are all well; our mother rather better than usual. Ja- 
 mie had begun his harvest; the crops excellent; the weather rather 
 damp. 
 
 " Alick gets the Courier newspaper from us weekly; our mother 
 the Examiner, of which she is exceedingly fond. In respect of this 
 latter your punctuality is now and then desiderated ; Tom Holcrof t, 
 who sends it to us, misses about one in the month, and, I suppose, 
 cannot help it. I have just written to Mill, inquiring whether he 
 can form no other arrangement for us. Holcroft has never written, 
 and I hear not a word about him or Badams, or any one von ditsem 
 Geschlechte. Neither has the ' noble lady ' ever written, though she
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 177 
 
 was written to months ago. Perhaps I should rather honor her for 
 this omission or forbearance; Jane and I had evidently become hate- 
 ful to all that diabolic household, and on our side quite satisfied, not 
 to say sated, of it. Nevertheless, the noble lady, quick as a lynx to 
 see this, stood by us faithfully and acted with friendliest regard and 
 very reverence to the very last. Now perhaps she thinks such effort 
 superfluous, and so do we. Her feeling, we know, is kindly, and can 
 be translated into no action of importance. Poor old Montagu 
 seemed wearied out and failing. Badams used to say he would not 
 last long. Procter is an innocent kind of body, but not undeserving 
 the name our little lady here used to give him, ' that dud.' A more 
 entire dud it would, perhaps, be difficult to find in the poetical or 
 periodical world. Mrs. P. is honest, keen, and shallow. God mend 
 them and us! we can do them 'neither ill na' good.' 
 
 ' ' My British news are now nearly written. I need not trouble 
 you with Reform Bill rejoicings and then, alas! with the election- 
 eerings. It is here that the Reform Bill comes to the test. Set the 
 angel Gabriel to elect a Parliament: how shall he succeed when 
 there is none to elect. However, a new generation will rise and 
 then. The Advocate, I find, is at Edinburgh canvassing, and will 
 succeed though the whole country (that had much hope in him) 
 have been disappointed. They say he will be made a judge when 
 any vacancy occurs and will be set free of politics. It were a happy 
 change. 
 
 "Of Edward Irving I hear nothing except through the newspa- 
 pers. Last week it was said they had taken a large house (now 
 used as an exhibition establishment) in Newman Street, Oxford 
 Street, and were to put a gallery in it, and were to preach and shriek 
 there. He has published three papers in Fraser on his Tongues. I 
 read the last yesternight, and really wondered over it. He says he 
 cannot believe that God, whom they had so prayed to, etc., would 
 cheat them. Neither can I. Oh, my poor friend Irving, to what 
 base uses may we come ! 
 
 " But you have enough of this. I must now turn for a moment 
 to Naples. 
 
 "We have every reason to be satisfied with the accounts you 
 send us. All seems moving as it ought, or nearly so. If you be 
 spared to come back to us, you will have means of settling yourself 
 where you see fittest; above all, you will have inward means. We 
 shall find you, I can well perceive, a new man in many things. All 
 right; only do not turn yourself inwards. Man may doubt as he 
 will, but the great fact remains: He is here, and 'not to ask ques- 
 tions, but to do work.' Kein Orubeln! N'ecoute toi! Cor ne edito! 
 Do not come back from Italy as if you had been living in a well; 
 speak with all people; no mortal but has something to tell could you 
 once get him to speak TRUTH. Continue to mind your duties; to 
 write in your journal; to see and to do with utmost possible freedom. 
 I write these things in the shape of precept, but I know they might 
 as well be put down like commendations and encouragements, for 
 you already practise and in great part accomplish them. Do it 
 more and more. I am glad you like Naples, and find it strange and 
 notable. Had I the Oriental wishing carpet, I were soon beside you 
 
 II. 8*
 
 178 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 noting it too. Gell has proved a little worse than I expected not 
 much worse. Do you speak Italian perfectly? As for the English 
 once knowing them to be nonentities, you do right to heed them 
 no more; then- whole secret is already understood. Not so with 
 Italians. Even nonentities and simulacra (who, as Fichte says, gar 
 nicht exiatireri) of the human sort are worth studying till you see 
 how they are painted and made up. But, in any case, you are not 
 without society. Your own Countess can tell you innumerable 
 things. You see there what multitudes are so anxious to see an 
 epitome of English fashionable life; and both for theory and prac- 
 tice can learn much from it. Tell me more about the inside of your 
 household what you talk of, what you read, what you do. De- 
 scribe all your ' household epochs ' till I can figure them. Did you 
 ever see Thorvaldsen at Rome ? Have you met any Italian of a lit- 
 erary cast? any of a thinking character, literary or not? Is there 
 any ' Count Menso' now in Naples (Milton's friend and Tasso's)? 
 Is the blood of St. January now in existence? Did you see it there? 
 Where does Carlo Botta live, the historian? What of Manzoni? Or 
 are all these Lombards and unknown in your country? I could ask 
 questions without end. Finally, dear Jack, be of good heart, for 
 better things are in store for thee. There is a task for every mortal 
 in this world of the Almighty's ; for thee there is one greater than 
 for most. Let us stand to our work full of ' desperate hope.' There 
 is, on the whole, nothing to be afraid of. ' He that has looked death 
 in the face will start at no shadows.' Come home to us when the 
 time arrives to us that love you. Many hearts will give you wel- 
 come, and rejoice to see you in the way of well-doing. Our dear 
 mother you must consider, much against her will, wishing and 
 meaning to say many things, but unable. So for the rest you know 
 the affection of them all. Jane will not send compliments scarce- 
 ly even kind regards. ' She meant to write the whole letter herself, 
 but did not know there was such a hurry, and now I have done it.' 
 Patience ! there is a good time coming. The good wifie is clearly 
 very much improved in health (though troubled with a little cold 
 for the last week); and imputes her cure to no medicine so much as 
 to an invaluable threefold (trefoil) which grows in the bogs here, and 
 makes most excellent bitter infusion. Our old mother, also, is to 
 have some of it. I, too, have tried it, and find it a praiseworthy 
 pharmacy. Adieu, T. C. 
 
 "P.S. Cholera is spreading; is at Carlisle, at Ayr, at Glasgow; 
 has hardly yet been in our county at least, only as imported. It is 
 all over Cumberland. ' Four carriers, one of them from Thornhill, 
 breakfasted together at Glasgow, and all died on the way home.' 
 The Thornhill one did, we know. It has gone back to Sunderland 
 and Newcastle. Medical men can do nothing, except frighten those 
 that are frightable. The mortality, after all, is nowise so quick as 
 in typhus form; is seen every year; but men are natural blockheads, 
 and common death is not death." 
 
 Extracts from Note-book. 
 
 " August 8. I cannot understand Morals. Our current Moral Law 
 (even that of philosophers) affronts me with all manner of perplexi-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CAELYLE. 179 
 
 tics. Punishment neither is nor can be in proportion to fault; for 
 the commonest of all examples take the case of an erring woman." 
 
 ' ' And then how strange is the influence of what we call honor: 
 when our fellow-men once come to be asked for their vote, how 
 strangely do they alter everything ! Where are the limits of con- 
 science and honor? what relation (even for the anti-gigman) do the 
 two mutually bear? Moral force and moral correctness how shall 
 the litigation be settled between these? Ought there to be any un- 
 pardonable offence? Ought the judge in any case to say irrevoca- 
 bly, Be thou outcast (as proud fathers have done to erring daugh- 
 ters, for instance)? The world has declared, Yes. Neither is there 
 wanting some ground for it. Necessity rules our existence: Man 
 should step in and be as stern as Necessity, and take the word out of 
 its mouth. Perhaps ; yet not with clear certainty. This is ' the Place 
 of Hope.' Should man's mind have sudden boundless transitions of 
 that sort have vapor ific points, and freezing points, or should it not? 
 Weiss nicht. It is all confused to me : seems to be all ref ounding it- 
 self. Happily the practical is nowise dubious." 
 
 " Toleration, too, is miserably mistaken; means for most part only 
 indifference and contempt: Verachtung, ja Nichtachtung. What is 
 bad is a thing to be the sooner the better dbolislied. Whether this 
 imply hatred or not will depend on circumstances. Not toleration, 
 therefore, but the quickest possible abolition : that were our rule. A 
 wicked hatred, in abolishing, substitutes new badness (as bad or 
 worse). The pure, praiseworthy, useful Hatred were that which 
 abolished and did not substitute." ' 
 
 " I am getting very weary of the ' Nature of the Time,' ' Progress 
 of the Species,' and a'll that business. The Time is here ; men should 
 use it, not talk about it : while they talk and lay not hold, it is gone 
 and returns not. " 
 
 " Great is self-denial! Practise it where thou needest it. Life 
 goes all to ravels and tatters where that enters not. The old monks 
 meant very wisely: hit thou the just medium." 
 
 "Thou com plainest that enjoyments are withheld from thee, and 
 thereby (thou caring nothing for enjoyment for its own sake) thy 
 culture and experiences are in many ways obstructed. Be consist- 
 
 1 This sentence did not please Carlyle or adequately express his meaning. Suppose 
 wo put it in this way: A set of people are living in a village which threatens to fall 
 about their ears. The thatch is rotting, the foundations sinking, the walls cracking. 
 Is the village to be pulled down, and are the people to be left houseless? The shelter 
 is bad; but still it is some shelter better than none and likely to serve till something 
 sounder can be provided. If it be doing no harm otherwise, this would be clearly the 
 rule. Rut suppose the village to be breeding the plague by generating poisonous va- 
 pors. Then clearly the people will be better off with no roof over them but the sky. 
 Substitute for the village, Paganism, Romanism, or any other lingering creed which 
 eager persons are impatient to be rid of. Is Romanism morally poisonous? Knox 
 and Cromwell answered clearly, Yes; and with good reason, and so did not tolerate it. 
 We, with or without good reason, have found it no longer poisonous, and so do tolerate. 
 Both may be right. In our toleration there is no indifference or contempt In the in- 
 tolerance of Cromwell there was a hatred of the iutensest kind hatred of evil in its 
 concrete form.
 
 180 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ent; cultivate thyself in the want of enjoyment: gather quite pecul- 
 iar experiences therein. " 
 
 "August 11. A strange force of what I call 'desperate hope' is 
 gathering in me: I feel a kind of defiant assurance that much shall 
 yet be well with me, the rather as I care little whether or not." 
 
 "It is true: evil must always continue: yet not this evil and that 
 evil. The thing convicted of falsehood must be forthwith cast out : 
 the Radical is a believer, of the gross, heathen sort; yet our only be- 
 liever in these times. 
 
 "Politics confuse me what my duties are therein? As yet I 
 have stood^ apart, and, till quite new aspects of the matter turn up, 
 shall continue to do so. The battle is not between Tory and Radi- 
 cal (that is but like other battles), but between believer and unbe- 
 liever. " 
 
 "Am inclined to consider myself a most sorry knave; but must 
 cease considering and begin to work, whether at (?) or at Dide- 
 rot? At the latter in any case to-day; and herewith enough. 
 
 " Oh ! life turmoil to-day to-morrow 
 
 Unfathomed thing thou wcrt and art: 
 In sight, in blindness, joy and sorrow, 
 The wondrous Thomas plays his part. 
 
 "Awhile hehold him flesh-clothed spirit, 
 He reaps and sows the allotted hours, 
 Would much bequeath, did much inherit, 
 Oh! help the helpless, heavenly powers." 
 
 " Seneca was born to be of the Church of England. He is the 
 father of all that work in sentimentality, and, by fine speaking and 
 decent behavior, study to serve God and Mammon, to stand well 
 with philosophy and not ill with Nero. His force had mostly oozed 
 out of him, or 'corrupted itself into benevolence, virtue, sensibility.' 
 Oh ! the everlasting clatter about virtue ! virtue ! In the Devil's name 
 be virtuous, and no more about it! Seneca could have been a Bishop 
 Heber; Dr. Channing, too, and that set, have some kindred with him. 
 He was, and they are, better than nothing very greatly better. Sey 
 gerade, sey vertraglich." 
 
 "September 3. Beautiful autumn days! I am reading Diderot, 
 with intent to write on him; not at all in a very wholesome state of 
 mind or body, but must put up with it, the thing needs to be done. 
 
 " I thank Heaven I have still a boundless appetite for reading. I 
 have thoughts of lying buried alive here for many years, forgetting 
 all stuff about ' reputation, ' success, and so forth, and resolutely set- 
 ting myself to gain insight, by the only method not shut out from 
 me that of books. Two articles (of fifty pages) in the year will 
 keep me living; employment in that kind is open enough. For the 
 rest, I really find almost that I do best when forgotten of men, and 
 nothing above or around me but the imperishable Heaven. It never 
 wholly seems to me that I am to die in this wilderness : a feeling is 
 always dimly with me that I am to be called out of it, and have 
 work fit for me before I depart, the rather as I can do eitlier way.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 181 
 
 Let not solitude, let not silence and unparticipating isolation make 
 a savage of thee these, too, have their advantages. " 
 
 " On Saturday (September 15), being summoned to Dumfries as a 
 juryman, and my whole duty consisting in answering ' Here ' when 
 my name was called, I ran out to the Bank, got my draft from Coch- 
 rane (for ' Goethe ') converted into cash, added to it what otherwise 
 I had, and paid the Lord Advocate 1031. 10*., my own whole debt, 
 and John's (431. 10$., which had been already sent me for that end); 
 a short, grateful letter accompanied the banker's cheque, and the 
 whole would reach its destination at latest last Monday morning. I 
 now once more owe no man any money, have 51. in my possession 
 still, and a matter of 501. or 601. due to me. Be thankful!" 
 
 " I must to Edinburgh in winter; the solitude here, generally very 
 irksome, is threatening to get injurious, to get intolerable. Work, 
 work! and gather a few pounds to take thee." 
 
 "Opinions of the article 'Goethe,' Cochrane writes, are all 'emi- 
 nently unfavorable.' The 'eminently' he has inserted on second 
 thoughts by means of a caret. He is a wondrous man to see editing, 
 that Cochrane; what one might call an Editing Pig, as there are 
 learned pigs, etc. He is very punctual in paying, and indeed gener- 
 ally; that is his only merit. Use him sharply, almost contemptu- 
 ously, and he. remains civil, and does better than most. Bibliopoly, 
 bibliopoesy, in all their branches, are sick, sick, hastening to death 
 and new genesis. Enough ! Acli gar zu viel ! 
 
 " Great meaning that lies in irrevocability, as in ' eternal creeds,' 
 ' eternal forms of government, ' also in final irreversible engagements 
 we make (marriage, for one). Worth considering this. The proper 
 element of belief, and therefore of concentrated action. On a thing 
 that were seen to be temporary (finite and not infinite), who is there 
 that would spend and be spent ? 
 
 " Sir Walter Scott died nine days ago. Goethe at the spring equi- 
 nox, Scott at the autumn one. A gifted spirit then is wanting from 
 among men. Perhaps he died in good time, so far as his own repu- 
 tation is concerned. He understood what history meant; this was 
 his chief intellectual merit. As a thinker, not feeble strong, rather, 
 and healthy, yet limited, almost mean and kleinstddtisch. I never 
 spoke with Scott (had once some small epistolary intercourse with 
 him on the part of Goethe, in which he behaved not very courteous- 
 ly, I thought); have a hundred times seen him, from of old, writing 
 in the Courts, or hobbling with stout speed along the streets of Ed- 
 inburgh a large man, pale, shaggy face, fine, deep-browed gray eyes, 
 an expression of strong homely intelligence, of humor and good- 
 humor, and, perhaps (in later years among the wrinkles), of sadness 
 or weariness. A solid, well - built, effectual mind ; the merits of 
 which, after all this delirious exaggeration is done, and the reaction 
 thereof is also done, will not be forgotten. He has played his part, 
 and left none like or second to him. Plaudite!" 
 
 In the middle of October, the Diderot article being finished, the 
 Carlyles made an expedition into Annandale. They stayed for a day
 
 182 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 or two at Templand. Carlyle, " having nothing better to do," rode 
 over with Dr. Russell, of Thornhill, to Morton Castle, "a respecta- 
 ble old ruin, which looked sternly expressive, striking enough, in the 
 pale October evening." The castle had belonged to the Randolphs, 
 and had been uninhabited for two centuries. The court was then 
 a cattlef old. In the distance they saw the remains of the old Church 
 of Kilbride, where Dr. Russell told Carlyle, "there still lay open and 
 loose on the wall a circular piece of iron framing, once used for sup- 
 porting the baptismal ewer, and protected for 350 years by a super- 
 stitious feeling alone." Leaving Templand, they drove round by 
 Loch Ettrick, Kirkmichael, and Lockerby, stopping to visit Alex- 
 ander Carlyle in his new farm, and thence to Scotsbrig. Here the 
 inscription was to be fixed on old Mr. Carlyle's grave in Ecclefechan 
 churchyard. It was the last light of dusk when they arrived at the 
 spot where Carlyle himself is now lying. ' ' Gloomy empire of 
 TIME!" he wrote, after looking at it. "How all had changed, 
 changed! nothing stood still, but some old tombs with their cross- 
 stones, which I remembered from boyhood. Their strange suss- 
 schauerlicJie effect on me! Our house where we had all lived was 
 within stone-ca^t; but this, too, knew us no more again at all for- 
 ever." 
 
 After ten days they returned to Craigenputtock, bringing "sister 
 Jane " with them, who was followed afterwards by the mother. The 
 winter they meditated spending in Edinburgh. The following 
 pleasant letter to John Carlyle was written a day or two before they 
 started on this tour : 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: October 17, 1832. 
 
 "I finished my 'composition' the day before yesterday. Am 
 bound for Annandale in the end of the week; and so here we are. 
 I will not seal this till I have seen our mother, for I have Jieard 
 nothing of them in a positive shape for many weeks. 
 
 " There is little or nothing to be written of transactions, when 
 the change of weather and of nervous sensibility are almost our 
 only events. You can picture out Puttock, and how I sit here (in 
 the library), with a blazing fire of peats and coals, careless of the 
 damp, surly elements, having dulness only to struggle with. We 
 keep a Famulus to go errands, yoke the gig, curry the cattle, and so 
 forth; who proves very useful to us. Jane is sitting in the dining- 
 room ; reads, sews, rules her household, where cow, hens, human 
 menials, garden crop, all things animate and inanimate, need looking 
 to. She is not quite so brisk as she was, and the trefoil 1 has long 
 been discontinued. However, she is certainly far better than while 
 in London, and, on the whole, continuing to gather strength. The 
 
 1 The supposed tonic made of the sorrel which grew freely in the Craigenputtock 
 woods.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 183 
 
 gray mare about six weeks ago kicked her harness to pieces with us, 
 down at John McKuight's, without the slightest provocation, but did 
 us no damage ; I even brought the dame home on her back. How- 
 ever, such conduct was not to be dreamt of; so we despatched the 
 animal to Alick, to make ready for the 'rood fair,' who, as we since 
 vaguely learn (for they have not even informed us of this), has sold 
 her to Jamie, that he, in carts and plough-harness, may teach her 
 ' another road to the well.' With unexampled dexterity, having pro- 
 cured an awl and thread from Dumfries, I mended the old harness 
 again (indiscernibly to the naked eye); and now little Harry draws 
 us, and makes no bones of the matter, being in good heart and well 
 provided with fodder, both long and short: that is the way we man- 
 age. All is tight and sufficient round us, and need not be in disor- 
 der : we want for nothing in the way of earthly proviant, and have 
 many reasons to be content and diligent. Recreation we have none; 
 a walk, a ride, on some occasions a combined drive for health's sake 
 alone. Miss Whigham (of Allanton) called here the other day, and 
 this is simply our only call since we came from London ! Poor 
 "William Carson, 1 indeed, bounces up about once in the month to 
 tea; but he is nigh distracted, and one cannot count on him. I tried 
 the schoolmaster, but he is a poor raw-boned Grampus, whom I lent 
 a book to, but could get no more good of. I have tried some of the 
 peasants, but them also without fruit. In short, mortal communion 
 is not to be had for us here. What, then, but do without it? Peter 
 Austin (of Carstamon Castra Montium we, too, have had our Ro- 
 mans) is very useful to us; a decent, punctual man, the shrewdest of 
 these parts. On the whole, I do not think I shall ever get anything 
 better than a cheap and very peculiar lodging here ; no home, I im- 
 agine, has been appointed. For whom is such appointed? The 
 most have not even lodgings except by sufferance. The Advocate 
 acknowledges his debt cleared; it is the only thing we have heard of 
 him for a great while. I imagine pur relationship is a good deal 
 cooled, and may now be visibly to him, as it has long been visibly to 
 me, a rather fruitless one. His world is not our world: he dwells in 
 the glitter of saloon chandeliers, walking in the ' vain show ' of par- 
 liamenteering and gigmanity, which also he feels to be vain; we, in 
 the whirlwind and wild piping battle of fate, which, nevertheless, 
 by God's grace, we feel to be not vain and a show, but true and a 
 reality. Thus may each without disadvantage go his several ways. 
 If Jeffrey's well-being ever lay in my reach, how gladly would I in 
 crease it ! But I hope better things for him ; though he is evidently 
 declining in the world's grace, and knows as well as the world that 
 his political career has proved a nonentity. Often have I lamented 
 to think that so genial a nature had been (by the Zeitgeist who works 
 such misery) turned into that frosty, unfruitful course. But, as 
 George Rae said, ' D n you, be wae for yoursel',' so there we leave 
 it. On that busy day I got the proof-sheets of that Frascr concern, 
 ' The Tale by Goethe, ' which is his leading item for this month, but has 
 not got hither yet. It is not a bad thing; the commentary cost me 
 but a day, and does well enough. The produce belongs to my little 
 
 i A young neighbor.
 
 184 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 dame to buy pins for her; she got it as present long ago at the Hill, 
 and reckoned it unavailable. Fraser applied for a paper on ' Wal- 
 ter Scott :' I declined, having a great aversion to that obituary kind 
 of work so undertaker-like; but I said I might perhaps do it, after- 
 wards. This thing I have been cobbling together last is a long 
 paper on Diderot, for Cochrane. I had an immense reading, to 
 little purpose otherwise, and am very glad to have it all behind me. 
 And now, after a few days' sight of friends, I must back hither into 
 the wold, and dig a little more. 
 
 "We are not for Edinburgh till six weeks hence, so there is time 
 to do something previously. I shall have funds enough: there is 
 this thing; Napier, too, owes me above 601., some of it for nine or 
 ten months, and seems to be shy of paying. I shall see better what 
 he means in Edinburgh; his Revieic, except for Macaulay (who as 
 yet has only sung old songs of Liberalism and the like, with a new 
 windpipe), is the utterest 'dry rubbish shot here;' yet by a kind of 
 fatality it may linger on who knows how long, and perhaps Naso 
 does not think my moisture would improve it. A la bonne heure ! 
 There are plenty of able editors zealous enough to employ me: this 
 is all the fame (Fama Diva!) I fall in with, or need; so that when 
 you come home, Doctor, there will be a considerable volume for you 
 to read, and I, in the interim, have lived thereby. I do not mean 
 to work much at Edinburgh for a while, but to ask and look; that 
 makes me the busier at present. It is three years I have been absent, 
 and several things will be changed. 
 
 "Your offer, dear Jack, is kind, brotherly, suitable; neither shall 
 you be forbid to pay your 'debts,' and much more (if you come to 
 have the means, and we both prove worthy) : but in the meanwhile 
 it were madness to reap corn not yet in the ear (or kill the goose for 
 her golden eggs, if you like that figure better); your great outlook at 
 present is to get yourself set up in medical practice, for which end 
 all the money you can possibly save will be essential. I look to see 
 you a faithful doctor, real, not an imaginary worker in that fold 
 whereto God's endowment has qualified and appointed you. The 
 rest, I say honestly, is within the merest trifle of indifferent to me. 
 How long (were there nothing more in it) will it last ? Walter Scott 
 is now poorer than I am; has left all his wages behind. If he spoke 
 the truth, it was well for him ; if not, not well. 
 
 "Adieu, dear brother; adieu. T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Jeffrey's relations with Carlyle might be cooling. To his cousin 
 his affection was as warm as ever, though they seemed to enjoy tor- 
 menting each other. He had been long silent, finding a correspond- 
 ence which could not help Mrs. Carlyle exceedingly painful. He 
 had been busy getting himself returned for Edinburgh; but some- 
 thing more than this impatience, provocation, and conscious ina- 
 bility to do any good had stopped his pen. Now, however, he 
 heard that the Carlyles were actually coming to Edinburgh, and the 
 news brought a letter from him of warm anticipation. 
 
 The journey, which had been arranged for the beginning of De-
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 185 
 
 cember, was delayed by the illness of Mrs. Carlyle's grandfather, 
 her mother's father, old Mr. Welsh of Templand, which ended in 
 death. Mrs. Carlyle went down to assist in nursing him, leaving 
 her husband alone with his mother at Craigenputtock himself busy 
 in charge of the household economies, which his mother, either out 
 of respect for her daughter-in-law, or in fear of her, declined to 
 meddle with. He had to congratulate himself that the establish- 
 ment was not on fire ; nevertheless, he wrote that his ' ' coadjutor's 
 return would bring blessings with it." The illness, however, ended 
 fatally, and she could not come back to him till it was over. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Home. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : December 2, 1832. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Welsh, I told you in my last letter, was not well ; we had 
 driven over the moors out of Annandale, and seen her as we passed, 
 apparently in a rather better state. But scarcely had sister Jane 
 after a week got conveyed home again, and our mother got up hither, 
 on pressing invitation, to see us, when a letter came from Templand 
 with intelligence that poor old grandfather was much worse, and 
 Mrs. Welsh, throwing by all her own ailments, had started up to 
 watch over him; whereupon my Jane thought it right to set off 
 without delay, and so left my mother and me by ourselves here. It 
 is needless to fill your sheet with long accounts of comings and go- 
 ings, of agitations, sorrowings, and confusions; enough to inform 
 you that the old man now lies no more on a sick-bed, but in his last 
 home beside his loved ones in the churchyard of Crawford, where 
 we laid him on Friday gone a week. He had the gentlest death, and 
 had numbered fourscore years. Fond remembrances and a mild 
 long-anticipated sorrow attended him. Man issues from eternity; 
 walks in a ' Time Element ' encompassed by eternity, and again in 
 eternity disappears. Fearful and wonderful! This only we know, 
 that God is above it, that God made it, and rules it for good. What 
 change of life this may produce for Mrs. Welsh we have not under- 
 stood yet. Most probably she will retain the home at Templand, 
 and give up the ground and farming establishment. Such, at least, 
 were her wisest plan. But Jane and I hastened off on the Saturday 
 to relieve my mother, who was watching here in total loneliness, 
 agitated too with change of servants and so forth. 
 
 "For the rest, receive thankfully the assurance that all continues 
 well. The cholera, of which I wrote to you, 1 is gone, taking about 
 500 souls with it, which, from a population of 13,000, was, in the 
 space of some four weeks, rather an alarming proportion. The 
 terror of the adjacent people, which was excessive and indeed 
 disgraceful, has hardly yet subsided. Happily the pest does not 
 spread; a few cases occurred in the Galloway villages, elsewhere 
 none, or hardly any, and so it went its way as mysteriously as it had 
 come. Nobody connected much with us has been taken, many as 
 were exposed. Death, however, in other shapes, is as of old busy. 
 
 1 As being at Dumfries.
 
 186 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 James Thomson of Cleughside is gone lately. . . . Old Wull Nay is 
 dead ; his poor old wife (they say) bitterly lamented, and ' hung by 
 the hearse,' which, however, could not stay. ... A son of Davie 
 Corrie, married about a year ago, is also dead. What is this whole 
 earth but a kind of Golgotha, a scene of Death-Life, where inexora- 
 ble Time is producing all and devouring all? Happily there is a 
 Heaven round it; otherwise for me it were not inhabitable. Cour- 
 age! courage! 
 
 'Lus zu verewigen smd wir ja da.' 
 
 " On Wednesday I got your letter at Dumfries; called also at the 
 bank, and found 135Z. ready, for which I took a bank receipt that 
 shall be ready for you on your home-coming. I do not need the 
 money at present, and you will need it; therefore, much as I rejoice 
 in the spirit you display, let it dabey bleiben till we see how times 
 turn. You may by possibility become a moneyed man; I never. 
 The relation between us in any case is already settled. 
 
 " Alick is grown more collected, has lost none of his energy, nor 
 on occasion his biting satire, which, however, his wife is happily too 
 thick-skinned to feel. They will struggle on, I think, and not be de- 
 feated. Jamie too goes along satisfactorily, a shrewd sort of fellow 
 with much gayety, who sometimes, in his laughter-loving moods, re- 
 minds me slightly of you. No two of the house have such a heart- 
 relish for the ludicrous, though we all like it. Our good mother is 
 in tolerable health and heart. She improved much with us here the 
 first two weeks, but fell off again for want of exercise and excite- 
 ment. She read here about the persecutions of the Scotch Church, 
 and in some of Knox's writings I had ; not even disdaining Fraser's 
 Magazine, or the Reviews. She is still very zealous, and predicts 
 black times (with. us) for the world. It seemed to her that Lady 
 Clare would be much amazed with your descriptions of Scotch life, 
 and might learn much from it. From Almack's to Ecclefechan is a 
 wide interval, yet strange things come together. Strictly speaking, 
 the wretched Ecclefechan existence is the more tolerable of the two, 
 for in it there is a preordination of Destiny, and something done; 
 namely, muslin woven, and savage bipeds boarded and bedded. 
 Alas ! the hand of the Devil lies heavy on all men. But days quite 
 saturated with Antigigmanism are surely coming, and from these 
 better will arise. The completest, profoundest of all past and pres- 
 ent Antigigmen was Jesus Christ. Let us think of this, for much 
 follows from it. Better times are coming, surely coming. Cast 
 thou thy bread on the wild, agitated waters, thou wilt find it after 
 many days. That is enough. 
 
 "At Edinburgh I expect books, some conversation with reason- 
 able, earnest, or even with unreasonable, baseless men ; on the whole, 
 some guidance, economical if not spiritual. Sir William Hamilton is 
 one I hope to get a little good of; of others, too, whom hitherto I 
 have not personally known. Of my own acceptance with all man- 
 ner of persons I have reason to speak with thankfulness, indeed 
 with astonishment. It is little man can do for man, but of that lit- 
 tle I am nowise destitute. In any case we will live in our own 
 hired house, on our own earned money, and see what the world can 
 show us. I get more earnest, graver, not unhappier, every day.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 187 
 
 The whole Creation seems more and more Divine to me, the Natural 
 more and more Supernatural. Out of Goethe, who is my near neigh- 
 bor, so to speak, there is no writing that speaks to me (mir an- 
 spricht) like the Hebrew Scriptures, though they lie far remote. 
 Earnestness of soul was never shown as there. Ernst ist das Le- 
 ben ; and even to the last, soul resembles soul. Here, however, 
 speaking of Goethe, I must tell you that last week, as our mother 
 and I were passing Sandywell, a little parcel was handed in which 
 proved to be from Eckermann, at Weimar. It made me glad and 
 sad. There was a medal in it, struck since the poet's death. Ot- 
 tilic had sent it me. Then a gilt cream-colored essay on Goethe's 
 Praktinche Wirksamkeitlny oneF. vonMiiller, a Weimer Kunstfreund 
 and intimate of deceased's, with an inscription on it by him. Final- 
 ly, the third Heft of the sixth volume of ' Kunst und Alterthum,' 
 which had partly been in preparation, and now posthumously pro- 
 duced itself ; to me a touching kind of sight. Eckermann wrote a 
 very kind letter, explaining how busy he was with redacting the fif- 
 teenth volume of ' Nachgelassenen Schriften,' the titles of all which 
 he gave me. There is a volume of ' Dichtung und Wahrheit, ' and the 
 completion of 'Faust.' These are the most remarkable. I have 
 read Muller's essay, which is sensible enough several good things 
 also are in the Heft, towards the last page of which I came upon 
 these words (by Miiller, speaking of Goethe) : ' Among the younger 
 British, Bulwer and Carlyle very especially attract him. The beau- 
 tiful pure disposition of the last, with his calm, delicate perceptive- 
 ness, raises Goethe's recognition of him to the warmest regard:' 1 
 This of liebewllste Zuneigung was extremely precious to me. Alas! 
 und das Alles ist hin. Ottilie promises to write, but I think 
 not. 
 
 "And now. dear Jack, before closing let us cast a glance towards 
 Rome. Your two last letters are very descriptive of your house- 
 hold ways, and give us all much satisfaction. We can figure you 
 far better than before. Continue to send the like. I wish you 
 were well settled for the winter. There seems nothing else to be 
 wished at present. I can understand your relation to your patient 
 to be a delicate one ; but you appear to have good insight into it, 
 and to be of the most promising temper. ' Geradheit, IJrtheil und 
 Vertrar/tii'hkeit.' I miss none of these three; they make in all cases 
 a noble mixture. Be of good cheer, in omne paratus ; you will re- 
 turn home to us a much more productive kind of character than 
 you were; learned, equipped in many ways, with all that is worthy 
 in your character developed into action, or much nearer develop- 
 ment. Be diligent in business, fervent in spirit. What is all our 
 life, and all its ill-success or good success, that we should fear it? 
 An eternity is already around us. Time (wherein is the disease we 
 call Life) will soon be done, and then ! Let us have an eye on that 
 city that hath foundations. 
 
 "God ever bless you, dear brother! T. CAKLYLE." 
 
 1 "Untcr den jungern Britten ziehen Bulwer und Carlyle ihn ganz vorzuglich an, 
 und das Fchone reinc Xaturell des Ictztcrn, seine ruhigo zartsinnigo Auflassuugsgabe, 
 steigern Goethe's Anerkennung l>'s zur liebcvollsten Zuneigung."
 
 188 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 A letter follows from Mrs. Austin: 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Craigenputtock. 
 
 "26 Park Road, London: December 25, 1832. 
 
 " Dearest Friend, Writing to you, which ought from all natural 
 causes to be one of my greatest and dearest pleasures, is become a 
 sort of dread and pain and oppression. I feel as if I had no means 
 of saying anything because I have so much to say; because I would 
 fain tell you how I love you and your husband; how I look to you 
 as objects that would console and refresh and elevate one to think 
 of; how I want your sympathy and approbation, and sometimes 
 comfort; because I have endless facts to tell and thoughts to com- 
 municate, requisitions to ask and then to write thus seems mock- 
 ing myself and you. A quire of such sheets as these would not 
 hold att I should like to write. But my business is not to do as I 
 like; and you and he will not think the worse of me for my self- 
 denial. You may have seen somewhere or other that an early and 
 long toil of mine is finished; a selection from the Old Testament. 
 If I knew how I should send you a copy, just that you might 
 see that I work ! Mr. Carlyle wUl think that worth praise, though 
 there be many defects in the how. Also look, if by any chance the 
 New Monthly Magazine comes in your way, for an article entitled 
 'On the Recent Attempts to Revolutionize Germany.' I translated 
 from a journal P. Ptlcklers sent me, with commendation. Other 
 Germans admire it. I excite horror among my Radical friends for 
 not believing that all salvation comes of certain organic forms of 
 government; and, as I tell Mrs. Jeffrey, am that monster made up 
 ' of all we Whigs hate,' a Radical and an Absolutist. 
 
 " Meantime ' Falk ' goes on. Falk eigentlich has long been done; 
 but matter keeps congregating around him. Frau von Goethe sent 
 me, by Henry Reeve, ' Goethe in seiner praktischen Wirksamkeit, ' 
 by Von Miiller, Kanzler of Weimar. She sent it ' with her best 
 love,' and with the assurance that He was just about to write to me 
 when he died that one of the last things he read was my transla- 
 tion, with which he kindly said he was much pleased. You will be 
 able to estimate the value I set upon this faint shadow of a com- 
 munication with him. 
 
 " How I wish Mr. Carlyle may like in any degree what I have 
 done. And then you, like a loyal wife as you are, will like it too. 
 And yet it is nothing but compilation and translation mere drudg- 
 ery. Well, dearest friend, there are men enough and women enough 
 to dogmatize, and to invent, and to teach and preach all things, 
 Political Economy included. I can write nothing, and teach noth- 
 ing; but if I can interpret and illustrate, it is something; and I have 
 the advantage of remaining, what a remnant of womanly super- 
 stition about me makes me think best for us a woman. These are 
 ' auld-world notions. ' You know that word in my vocabulary ex- 
 cludes no particle of strength, courage, or activity. But a well- 
 chosen field is the thing. What say you? 
 
 "My husband is tolerably; working or standing against the 
 stream of washy violence which inundates us all. What is better, 
 and what the practical many dream not of, he is ever daily and
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 
 
 hourly converting, purifying, elevating himself; for which small 
 business your reformers of crowds have little time and less taste. 
 
 " Lucy grows a tall, fair girl. At least, people call her handsome. 
 She is, at any rate, intelligent and simple, and strong, and not like 
 the children of the ' upper classes. ' Mrs. Bulwer told me that her 
 little girl of four said, in answer to some question about her little 
 cousins, ' I suppose they have seen by the papers that I go to school.' 
 Here is ' diffusion of knowledge ' with a vengeance, and matter for 
 the excellent Carlyle to moralize upon, auf seine Art und Weise. 
 Would I were there to hear. Henry Reeve is at Munich, and greatly 
 attached to Schelling, who is quite fatherly to him. 
 
 ' ' And now God bless you. New years or old make no great dif- 
 ference in my wishes for you, which will outlast a year and, I trust, 
 a world. Write to me, my dear friend, and believe that my affec- 
 tion and deep esteem are not the feebler for my want of time to tell 
 of them. Yours, 
 
 "S. AUSTIN." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A.D. 1833. JET. 38. 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 "Edinburgh, January 12, 1833. Arrived here on Monday night 
 last. Nasty fog; ghastly kind of light and silence in Dalveen Pass; 
 the wearisome, dreaming-awake kind of day I always have in state- 
 coaches. Mill's letter awaiting me here. Village-like impression 
 of Edinburgh after London. People are all kind; I languid, bil- 
 ious, not very open to kindness. Dr. Irving advises immediate 
 application for a certain Glasgow Astronomy Professorship. I 
 shall hardly trouble myself with it. Deeply impressed with the 
 transiency of time ; more and more careless about all that time can 
 give or take away. Could undertake to teach astronomy, as soon 
 as most things, by way of honest day-labor: not otherwise, for I 
 have no zeal now that way. To teach any of the things I am in- 
 terested in were for the present impossible; all is unfixed, nothing 
 has yet grown; at best, is but growing. Thus, too, the futility of 
 founding universities at this time : the only university you can ad- 
 vantageously found were a public library. This is never out of 
 season ; therefore not now, when all else in that kind is. 
 
 "Have long been almost idle; have long been out of free com- 
 munion with myself. Must suffer more before I can begin thinking. 
 Will tiy to write: but what? but when? On the whole, what a 
 wretched thing is all fame ! A renown of the highest sort endures, 
 say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless 
 eternity swallows it. work for eternity: not the meagre rhetorical 
 eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity, wherein 
 dwelleth the Divine ! Alas ! all here is so dark. Keep firm in thy 
 eye what light thou hast. 
 
 "Daily and hourly the world natural grows more of a world 
 magical to me : this is as it should be. Daily, too, I see that there! 
 is no true poetry but in reality. Wilt thou ever be a poetkiu? 
 Schwerlkh : no matter."
 
 190 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "I have long been almost idle." The dark mood was back in 
 Carlyle, and these words explain it. When idle he was miserable ; 
 when miserable he made all about him miserable. At such times 
 he was " gey ill to live wi' " indeed. 
 
 Sick of Craigenputtock, sick of solitude, sick with thoughts of 
 many kinds for which he could as yet find no proper utterance, 
 Carlyle had gone to Edinburgh to find books and hear the sound of 
 human voices. Books he found in the Advocates' Library, books in 
 plenty upon every subject; on the one subject, especially, which 
 had now hold of his imagination. The French Revolution had 
 long interested him, as illustrating signally his own conclusions on 
 the Divine government of the world. Since he had written upon 
 Diderot, that tremendous convulsion had risen before him more and 
 more vividly as a portent which it was necessary for him to under- 
 stand. He had read Thiers's history lately. ' Mill, who had been a 
 careful student of the Revolution, furnished him with memoirs, 
 pamphlets, and newspapers. But these only increased his thirst. 
 
 In the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh he was able to look round 
 his subject, and examine it before and after; to look especially to 
 scattered spiritual and personal phenomena ; to look into Mirabeau's 
 life, and Danton's, and Madame Roland's ; among side-pictures to 
 observe Cagliostro's history, and as growing but of it the melo- 
 drama of the Diamond Necklace. All this Carlyle devoured 
 with voracity, and the winter so spent in Edinburgh was of im- 
 measurable moment to him. Under other aspects, the place Avas un- 
 fortunately less agreeable than he had expected to find it. In his 
 choice of a future residence, he had been hesitating between London 
 and Edinburgh. In his choice of a subject on which to write, he 
 had been doubting between " The French Revolution" and " John 
 Knox and the Scotch Reformation." On both these points a few 
 weeks' experience of the modern Athens decided him. Edinburgh 
 society was not to his mind. He discerned, probably, not for the 
 first time in human history, that a prophet is not readily acknowl- 
 edged in his own country. No circle of disciples gathered round him 
 as they had done in Ampton Street. His lodgings proved inconven- 
 ient, and even worse. Neither he nor his wife could sleep for the 
 watchman telling the hours in the street. When they moved into a 
 back room, they were disturbed by noises overhead. A woman, it ap- 
 peared, of the worst character, was nightly entertaining her friends 
 there. They could do with little money in Craigenputtock ; life in Ed- 
 inburgh, even on humble terms, was expensive. Napier was remiss 
 in his payments for the articles in the Edinburgh Review. He was 
 
 Carlyle once gave me a characteristic criticism of Thiers. It was brief "Dig 
 where you will," he said, "you co:ne to water."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 191 
 
 generally six months in arrear. He paid only after repeated dun- 
 ning, and then on a scale of growing illiberality. These, however, 
 were minor evils, and might have been endured. They had gone 
 up with light hearts, in evident hope that they would find Edin- 
 burgh an agreeable change from the moors. Carlyle himself thought 
 that, with his increasing reputation, his own country would now, 
 perhaps, do something for him. His first letter to his brother, after 
 his arrival, was written in his usual spirits. 
 
 "By Heaven's grace [he said] I nowise want merchants of a sort 
 for my wares ; and can still, even in these days, live. So long as that 
 is granted, what more is there to ask? All gigmanity is of the Devil, 
 devilish : let us rather be thankful if we are shut out even from the 
 temptation thereto. It is not want of money, or money's worth, 
 that I could ever complain of; nay, often too it seems to me as if I 
 did best when no praise was given me, and I stood alone between 
 the two eternities with my feet on the rock. But what I mourn 
 over is the too frequent obscuration of faith within me; the kind 
 of exile I must live in from all classes of articulate-speaking men; 
 the dimness that reigns over all my practical sphere; the etc., etc., 
 for there is no end to man's complaining. One thing I have as 
 good as ascertained: that Craigenputtock cannot forever be my 
 place of abode; that it is at present, and actually, one of the worst 
 abodes for me in the whole wide world. One day I will quit it, 
 either quietly or like a muir-break ; for I feel well there are things 
 in me to be told which may cause the ears that hear them to tingle ! 
 Alles mit Mass und Hegel f As yet I decide on nothing: will no- 
 wise desert the whinstone stronghold till I better see some road 
 from it. I could live again in Edinburgh, perhaps still more will- 
 ingly in London, had I means. My good wife is ready for all things, 
 so we wait what the days bring forth. Perhaps the future may 
 be kinder to us both; but is not the present kind? Full of work to 
 do? Write me all things, my dear brother, and fear not that you 
 shall ever want my sympathy. Keep diligent in business, fervent 
 in spirit, serving God; that is the sum of all wisdom." 
 
 For the first week or two Edinburgh itself was not disagreeable. 
 " The transition was singular from the bare solitary moors to crowd- 
 ed streets and the concourse of men." The streets themselves were 
 "orderly and airy." "The reek of Auld Reekie herself was the 
 clearness of mountain - tops compared to the horrible vapors of 
 London." Friends came about them, Jeffrey, Sir William Hamil- 
 ton, Harry Inglis, and many more, all kind and courteous ; but their 
 way of thinking was not Carlyle's way of thinking, " the things 
 they were running the race for were no prizes for him," and "he 
 felt a stranger among them." "When he gave voice," "they 
 stared at him." "When they had the word," he said, "he lis- 
 tened with a sigh or a smile." 1 Then came another disappoint- 
 
 1 Gibbon's expression.
 
 192 LIFE OF THOMAS CABLYLE. 
 
 ment. A professorship at Glasgow was vacant. Jeffrey, as Lord- 
 advocate, had the appointment, or a power of recommending which 
 would be as emphatic as a conge d'elire. Carlyle gave Jeffrey a 
 hint about it, but Jeffrey left for London directly after, and Carlyle 
 instinctively felt that he was not to have it. " My own private im- 
 pression," he said, " is that I shall never get any promotion in this 
 world, and happy shall I be if Providence enable me only to stand 
 my own friend. That is, or should be, all the prayer I offer to 
 Heaven." 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 "February 1, 1833. Have been exploring on all hands the foolish 
 history of the quack Cagliostro. Have read several books about 
 him, searching far and wide after him; learned, I ought to admit, 
 almost nothing. Shall I study this enigma, then write my solution 
 or no-solution. 
 
 "Am quite bewildered, deroute, know not whither to address the 
 little energy I have; sick, too, and on the whole solitary, though 
 with men enough about me. Sir William Hamilton, the one that 
 approaches nearest being earnest: he, too, does not attain earnest- 
 ness, and his faculty is not of the instructive kind. ' Help thyself; 
 heaven will help thee !' 
 
 "The Advocate is gone: to join the new Reformed Parliament, 
 where may he prosper ! Our relation is done, all but the outward 
 shell of it, which may stick there as long as it can. Respectability 
 and Fate-warfare march not long on one road. All is whiggery 
 here, which means ' I will believe whatsoever I shall be forced to 
 believe.' In this country, as in France, the main movement will 
 come from the capital. Perhaps it may be sooner than one expects. 
 The pressure of economical difficulty is rapidly augmenting; misery 
 of that and all kinds is prevalent enough here ; everything wears an 
 uneasy, decaying aspect, yet far short of what strikes one in London. 
 A sorrowful, poor, unproductive struggle, which nevertheless this 
 age was fated and bound to undertake. On with it, then ! 
 
 "Wilson I have not seen. Is he afflicted with my Radicalism? 
 Is he simply too lazy to call on me, or indisposed to take the trou- 
 ble of etiquette upon him, for object so little momentous? Shall I 
 stand on etiquette then? It is of small consequence, though per- 
 haps the issue will be that we stand not only apart, but divided, 
 which I have no wish to do. Moir has been here; in all senses a 
 neat man, in none a strong one. Great stupidity reigns here, I 
 think; but what then? Grow thou wiser! Brewster has lost his 
 canvass for Leslie's professorship, and is about entering the English 
 Church, they say, being promised a living. ' Once a noble soap bell, 
 now a drop of sour suds.' Such is the history of many men." 
 
 " The bitter old Hebrew implacability of that couplet 
 
 ' On those that do me hate 
 I my desire shall see.' 
 
 One day they will be even as / wish them ! Envy no man, for such, 
 sooner or later, will be his hard fortune. Nay, in any case does he
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 193 
 
 not at last die ! One of my best moods (many are too bad) is that of 
 sincere pity for all breathing men. Oftenest it is a sincere indiffer- 
 ence. Yesterday it seemed to me death was actually a cheerful- 
 looking thing: such a boundless possibility ; no longer hampered by 
 the so strait limits of this world's time and space. Oh for faith! 
 Truly, the greatest ' God-announcing miracle ' always is faith, and 
 now more than ever. I often look on my mother (nearly the only 
 genuine Believer I know of) with a kind of sacred admiration. 
 Know the worth of Belief. Alas ! canst thou acquire none? 
 
 " That the Supernatural differs from the Natural is a great Truth, 
 which the last century (especially in France) has been engaged in 
 demonstrating. The Philosophers went far wrong, however, in 
 this, that, instead of raising the natural to the supernatural, they 
 strove to sink the supernatural to the natural. The gist of my 
 whole way of thought is to do not the latter, but the former. I feel 
 it to be the epitome of much good for this and following generations 
 in my hands and in those of innumerable stronger ones. Belief, said 
 one the other night, has done immense evil: witness Knipperdolling 
 and the Anabaptists, etc. 'True,' rejoined I, with vehemence, al- 
 most with fury (Proh pudor /)^-' true belief has done some evil in 
 the world; but it has done all the good that was ever done in it; 
 from the time when Moses saw the Burning Bush and believed it to 
 be God appointing him deliverer of His people, down to the last 
 act of belief that you and I executed. Good never came from 
 aught else. ' " 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Edinburgh: February 10. 
 
 "I have not been idle during the last month, though not employed 
 in the way I most approve of. Since the article 'Diderot,' written 
 in October, I have never put pen to paper till last week, when I be- 
 gan a piece for Fraser to be entitled 'Cagliostro.' I had found 
 some books about that quack here: it will take me about three 
 weeks and do well enough as a parergon. A new fluctuation has 
 come over my mode of publication lately; so that the things most at 
 heart with me must lie in abeyance for some time. It begins to be 
 presumable that the Edinburgh Review can no longer be my vehicle, 
 for this reason, were there no others, that Napier is among the worst 
 of payers. What the poor man means I know not; most likely he 
 is in utter want of cash; but at any rate he needs to be twice dunned 
 before money will come from him; and at present owes me some 
 3(M., for which a third dunning will be requisite. This, then, sim- 
 ply will not do ; I will look elsewhere, take new measures, as indeed 
 solidity or permanence of any kind in authorship is at this time not 
 to be looked for. Your foundation is like that of a man support- 
 ing himself in bog-lakes on floating sheaves or sods. The massiest 
 will sink in a minute or two, and you must look out for new. 
 Fraser, whose magazine I call the mud one (in contradistinction to 
 Tail's, or the Sahara-sand one), is very fond of me, and at bottom an 
 honest creature. Tait also would be glad to employ me, as poor 
 Cochrane is. ... On the whole, we shall find means. . . . Meanwhile 
 I have been reading violently, about the Scotch Kirk, in Knox 
 and others; about the Frencli Revolution, in Thiers, which Mill 
 
 II. 9
 
 194 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 sent me; about the Diamond Necklace, the Greek Revolt, and what 
 not. I read with the appetite of one long starved; am oftenest of 
 all in the Advocates' Library, and dig, not without result, there. My 
 head is never empty; neither is my heart, though the contents of 
 both are by times rugged enough. They must even be elaborated, 
 made smooth and sweet. I could write whole volumes, were there 
 any outlet: and will (if God spare me) both write them and find an 
 outlet. These books, I fancy, will be one of our main conquests in 
 Edinburgh. As to the men here, they are beautiful to look upon 
 after mere black-faced sheep; yet not persons of whom instruction 
 or special edification in any way is to be expected. From a High- 
 lander you once for all cannot get breeches. Sir William Hamilton 
 is almost the only earnest character I find in this city: we take 
 somewhat to each other; meet sometimes with mutual satisfaction, 
 always with good-will. 
 
 "George Moir has got a house in Northumberland Street, a wife, 
 too, and infants; is become a Conservative, settled everywhere into 
 dilettante; not very happy, I think; dry, civil, and seems to feel 
 unheimlich in my company. Aus dem wird NicJits. Weir has be- 
 come a Radical spouter, and they say is gone, or going, to Glasgow 
 to start as 'able editor.' Did I tell you, by the way, that London 
 Spectator Douglas had come to Dumfries in that capacity, and 
 was weekly emitting a Radical Dumfries Times there? A com- 
 pany of malcontent writers and others had made a point-stock for 
 that end ; it is feared unsuccessfully. John Gordon is true as steel 
 to his old loves; otherwise a rather somnolent man; we see him 
 pretty often. He has got appointed college clerk (or some such 
 thing), and has now 300?. a year and is happy enough. Mitchell 
 is quiet, in very poor health, yet cheerful, hopeful even, a re- 
 spectable schoolmaster now and henceforth. I saw a large didac- 
 tic company at dinner with him yesterday (for nothing else would 
 satisfy him), and astonished them, I fear, with my exposition of 
 belief and Radicalism, as compared with opinion and Whiggism. 
 There was an 'old stager, 'a Doctor Brown, travelling tutor, college 
 lecturer, statist, geologist, spiritual scratcher and scraper in all 
 senses: a cold, sharp, hard, unmalleable ' logic-chopper,' good to be- 
 hold at rare intervals. There was also an advocate, Semple, an 
 overfoaming Kantist, the best-natured and liveliest of all small men ; 
 a very bottle of champagne (or soda-water) uncorked: we did well 
 enough. 
 
 " The Advocate came jigging up to us very often, but is now gone 
 to London. He asked kindly for you, and desired to be kindly re- 
 membered to his 'old friend the Doctor.' I dined with him once 
 (Jane could not go). Napier (besides his being ' forever in the small 
 debt court!') is a man of wooden structure, limited in all ways. I 
 do not dislike him, but feel I can get no good of him. Wilson, who 
 is said to be grown far quieter in his habits, has only come athwart 
 me once. He too, lion as he is, cannot look at me as 1 look at him 
 with free regard, but eyes me from behind veils, doubtful of some 
 mischance from me, political or other. I suppose I shall see little of 
 him, and at bottom need not care. 
 
 "As to our special Befinden, we are quite peaceable, content, for
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 195 
 
 the present ; though both of us have a dirty underfoot kind of catarrh 
 for the last three weeks, whereby Jane in particular suffers consider- 
 able vexation rather than pain. Otherwise she is at least not worse. 
 We go out not often, yet oftener than we wish ; have society enough, 
 the best the ground yields: the time for returning to Puttock will 
 too soon be here. I have not abated in my dislike for that residence, 
 in my conviction that it is no longer good for me. Of solitude I 
 have really had enough. You would be surprised, I am much sur- 
 prised myself, at the wondrous figure I often make when I rejoin my 
 fellow-creatures. The talent of conversation, though I generally 
 talk enough and to spare, has, as it were, quite forsaken me. In 
 place of skilful, adroit fencing and parrying, as was fit and usual, I 
 appear like a wild, monstrous Orson amongst the people, and (espe- 
 cially if bilious) smash everything to pieces. The very sound of my 
 voice has got something savage-prophetic. I am as a John Baptist 
 girt about with a leathern girdle, and whose food is locusts and wild 
 honey. One must civilize ; it is really quite essential. Here, too, as 
 in all things, practice alone can teach. However, we will wait and 
 watch, and do nothing rashly. Time and chance happen unto all 
 men. 
 
 "When you return to London you must see Mill; he is growing 
 quite a believer, mystuch gesinnt, yet with all his old utilitarian logic 
 quite alive in him; a remarkable sort of man, faithful, one of the 
 f aithf ullest (yet with so much calmness) in these parts. " 
 
 Carlyle, it will have been observed, had for some time spoken 
 cheerfully of his wife, as not well, but as better than she had been. 
 He observed nothing, as through his life he never did observe any- 
 thing, about her which called away his attention from his work and 
 from what was round him. A characteristic postscript in her own 
 hand gives a sadly different picture of her condition: 
 
 "My dear John, If I kept my word no better in my daily walk 
 and conversation than I do in this matter of writing, I should deserve 
 to be forthwith drummed out of creation, but I beg you to believe my 
 failure here an exception to the general rule. 
 
 "In truth, I am always so sick now, and so heartless, that I cannot 
 apply myself to any mental effort without a push from necessity ; 
 and as I get the benefit of your letters to Carlyle, and see how faith- 
 fully he pays you back, I always persuade myself when the time 
 comes that there is no call on me to strike into the correspondence. 
 But I assure you my silence has nothing to do with indifference. I 
 watch your thun und lassen with true and sisterly interest, and rejoice 
 with my husband to see you in so hopeful a course. Every one gets 
 the start of poor me. Indeed, for the last year I have not made an 
 inch of way, but have sat whimpering on a milestone lamenting over 
 the roughness of the road. If you would come home and set my 
 ' interior ' to rights, it would wonderfully facilitate the problem of 
 living. But, perhaps, it is best for me that it should not be made 
 easier." 
 
 Edinburgh society pleased less the longer the Carlyles stayed.
 
 196 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The fault partially, perhaps, was in Carlyle's own spiritual palate, 
 which neither that nor anything was likely to please. 
 
 "As for the people here [he tells his mother at the beginning of 
 March], they are very kind, and would give us three dinners for one 
 that we can eat ; otherwise, I must admit them to be rather a barren 
 set of men. The spirit of Mammon rules all their world Whig, 
 Tory, Radical. All are alike of the earth, earthy. They look upon 
 me as a strong, well-intending, utterly misguided man, who must 
 needs run his head against posts. They are very right. I shall 
 never make any fortune in the world ; unless it were that highest of 
 all conceivable fortunes, the fortune to do, in some smallest degree, 
 my All-wise Taskmaster's bidding here. May He, of His great 
 grace, enable me ! I offer up no other prayer. Are not my days 
 numbered: a span's thrift in the sea of eternity? Fool is he who 
 would speak lies or act lies, for the better or worse that can befall 
 him for that least of little whiles. I say, therefore, lie away, worthy 
 brethren ; lie to all lengths, be promoted to all lengths ; but as for 
 me and my house, we will not lie at all. Again I say, God enable 
 us ! and so there it rests. Ought not my father's and my mother's 
 son to speak even so?" 
 
 A few days later he writes to his brother Alick : 
 
 "Edinburgh continues one of the dullest and poorest, and, on the 
 whole, paltriest, of places for me. I cannot remember that I have 
 heard one sentence with true meaning in it uttered since I came 
 hither. The very power of thought seems to have forsaken this 
 Athenian city; at least, a more entirely shallow, barren, unfruitful, 
 and trivial set of persons than those I meet with, never, that I re- 
 member, came across my bodily vision. One has no right to be 
 angry with them ; poor fellows, far from it ! Yet does it remain ev- 
 ident that ' Carlyle is wasting his considerable talents on impossibil- 
 ities, and can never do any good?' Time will show. For the pres- 
 ent, poor man, he is quite fixed to try. ... At any rate, there are 
 some good books here that one can borrow and read; kindly dis- 
 posed human creatures, too, who, though they cannot without a 
 shudder see one spit in the Devil's face so, yet wish one well, almost 
 love one." 
 
 To Mill, also, he had written a letter full of discontent, and look- 
 ing, in the absence of comfort in Edinburgh society about him, for 
 sympathy from his friend. But Mill rather needed comfort for him- 
 self than was in a situation to console others. He, like many others, 
 had expected that the Reform Bill would bring the Millennium, and 
 the Millennium was as far off as ever. 
 
 To his mother, whatever his humor, Carlyle wrote regularly. To 
 her, more than even to his brother, he showed his real heart. She 
 was never satisfied without knowing the smallest incidents of his 
 life and occupation ; and he, on his part, was on the watch for op- 
 portunities to give her pleasure. He had sent her from Edinburgh 
 a copy of "Thomas d Kempis," with an introduction by Chalmers.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 197 
 
 The introduction he considered "wholly, or in great part, a dud." 
 Of the book itself he says, " None, I believe, except the Bible, has 
 been so universally read and loved by Christians of all tongues and 
 sects. It gives me pleasure to think that the Christian heart of my 
 good mother may also derive nourishment and strengthening from 
 what has already nourished and strengthened so many." In Edin- 
 burgh he described himself as at home, yet not at home ; unable to 
 gather out of the place or its inhabitants the sustenance which he 
 had looked for. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Edinburgh: February 13, 1S33. 
 
 "From the first the appearance of the place, as contrasted with 
 the boiling uproar of London, has seemed almost stagnant to us. 
 There is no such thing as getting yourself properly elbowed in a 
 'flood of life.' The noise, too (except that of the watchmen while 
 we slept in a front room), is quite trifling and inadequate ! As for 
 the people, they are now, as formerly, all of one sort : meet twenty 
 of them in a day, they are all most probably talking of the same 
 subject; and that mostly an insignificant one, and handled in an in- 
 significant way. And yet, poor fellows, how are they to be blamed? 
 It is 'more their misfortune than their crime.' What sense is in 
 them they no doubt honestly exhibit. Some cheering exceptions, 
 too, one now and then falls in with ; indeed, for my own small share, 
 I can nowise complain that honest sympathy, even love, and respect 
 far beyond desert, is withheld from me here. This I receive with 
 the greater clearness of appreciation that (hardened by long custom) 
 I had from of old learned to do without it. Nevertheless, that also is 
 a mercy, and should be thankfully made use of. I think I have 
 seen few people of note since I last wrote. I met Wilson in the 
 street one day, and exchanged civilities with him. He is looking a 
 little older; was wrapped in a cloak for cold, and undertook to come 
 and talk at home with me, 'if I would allow him,' the very first day 
 he had leisure. I am glad we met, since now there need be no awk- 
 wardness or grudge between us: whether we meet a second time 
 or not is of little or no moment. Henry Inglis has had my book 
 reading, 1 and returns it with a most ecstatic exaggerated letter; 
 wherein this is comfortable, that he has seized the drift of the specu- 
 lation, and can, if he pleases, lay it to heart. There are, perhaps, 
 many such in this island whom it may profit ; so that I stand by the 
 old resolution to print at my own risk so soon as I have QQl. to spare, 
 but not till then. Meanwhile, my dear mother, I beg you again and 
 again to take care of yourself; especially in this wild, gusty Febru- 
 ary weather. Consider your welfare not as your own, but as that 
 of others, to whom it is precious beyond price. I hope they are all 
 kind, submissive, and helpful to you : it well beseems them and me. 
 Forgive them if any of them offend; for I know well no offence is 
 intended: it is but the sinful infirmity of nature, wherein mortals 
 should bear with one another. Oh! ought we not to live in mutual 
 
 > "Sartor" in MS.
 
 198 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 love and unity, as a thing seemly for men, pleasing in the sight of 
 God! We shall so soon be parted, and then, Happy is he who has 
 forgiven much. " 
 
 From the Journal. 
 
 " Friday, 15th (March?). Beautiful spring day; the season of 
 hope! My scribble prospering very ill. Persevere, and thou wilt im- 
 prove. Sir Wm. Hamilton's supper (three nights ago) has done me 
 mischief ; will hardly go to another. Wordsworth talked of then; 
 (by Captain T. Hamilton, his neighbor). Represented verisimilar! y 
 enough as a man full of English prejudices, idle, alternately gossip- 
 ing to enormous lengths, and talking, at rare intervals, high wisdom ; 
 on the whole, endeavoring to make out a plausible life of Jiti/f/irxx 
 in the Tory way, as so many on all sides do. Am to see him if I 
 please to go thither ; would go but a shortish way for that end. 
 
 "The brevity of life; the frightful voracity of Time! This is no 
 fancy ; it is a wondrous unfathomable reality, and daily grows more 
 wondrous to me. ' Poor is what my lord doth say;' let him to work 
 then. 
 
 "Beautiful that /, here and now, am alive! Beautiful to see so 
 many incorporated spirits, all six feet high (as in the oldest heroic 
 ages), all full of force, passion, impetuosity, mystery, as at the first. 
 'The young new blood!' it flows and flows; the spirit host marches 
 unweariedly on whither?" 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 'March 10, 1833. 
 
 " I have begun a kind of scribblement. It is for Fraser; a fool- 
 ish story about a certain Italian ' King of Quacks, ' whom I have long 
 been curious about, and am now going to make known to all the 
 world for some forty guineas, if I can get them. You will see it 
 in time. The long piece I did on the Frenchman in summer came 
 to be corrected very lately. It also will soon be out, and I hope it 
 will give satisfaction at Scotsbrig. I have plenty of other things to 
 write; but should now rather lay myself out for getting books and 
 materials. Craigenputtock is the place for writing. This same 
 ' King of Quacks ' ought to pay our expenses here and back again. 
 I am growing little richer, yet also no poorer. The book can hardly 
 be printed this season, but one ought to be content. I really am 
 rather content ; the rather as I do not imagine there is any completer 
 antigigman extant in the whole world at present. 
 
 "Among the new figures I have seen, none attracts me in any 
 measure except perhaps Knox's Dr. McCrie, whom I mean (as he 
 rather pressingly invited me) to go and call on, were I a little at lei- 
 sure. A broad, large, stiff-backed, stalking kind of man, dull.heavy, 
 but intelligent and honest. We spoke a little about Scotch worthies 
 and martyrs, and I mean to ask him more. My notion of writing 
 a book on that subject rather grows than decays. 
 
 " If I tell you that our health is very much what it was (the old 
 doctor still coming about Jane, but professing his inability to help 
 her much), I think there is a very copious picture of our condition 
 here. As for you, my dear mother, Alick would persuade me that 
 you are in the usual way, ' resigned wonderfully, and even content-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 199 
 
 cd. . . . ' He says, ' it is only after having had something to do 
 with this world that we can learn rightly to love and reverence such 
 a life as hers.' Be resigned, my dear mother. ' Still trust in God.' 
 lie will not leave us nor forsake us, not in death itself, nor iu aught 
 that lies between us and death. On our love, moreover, count al- 
 ways, as on a thing yours by good right. The longer I live, the 
 more I feel how good is your right. Let us hope, then, to find you 
 well in the early days of Way, if not sooner; once again in this Pil- 
 grimage to meet in peace. Might we but meet in peace where there 
 is parting no more ! This also, if it be for good, will be provided us. 
 God is great. God is good." 
 
 "Jfarch 26. I have finished my paper on the ' Quack of Quacks,' 
 but got no new one fallen to, the house being in a kind of racket for 
 the present. Mrs. Welsh is here, and Miss Helen Welsh from Liv- 
 erpool; and though, if I determine on it, I can have my own fire and 
 room, and bolt it against all people, it seems not worth while at pres- 
 ent, for I am better resting. I had made myself bilious enough witli 
 my writing, and had need to recover as I am doing. 
 
 "As for my own dame, she agrees but indifferently with these 
 wild March winds; as I fear my mother does too. The advice I will 
 always reiterate is, take care of yourself, dear mother. Such splash- 
 ing and sleeting, with bright deceitful sun-blinks, and the firm, nip- 
 ping north wind, need in all ways to be guarded against. 
 
 "Napier has been obliged (by dunning) to pay me my money; he 
 has paid rather stintedly, but it will do. We are to dine with him 
 on Friday. My writing for him is probably over. 
 
 "Did Alick show you Irving's speech at the Annan Presbytery? 
 I read it with a mixture of admiration and deep pain; the man is of 
 such heroic temper, and of head so distracted. The whole matter 
 looked to me like a horrid kind of merry-andrew tragedy. Poor 
 Dow, I think, will end in a madhouse. Irving will end one cannot 
 prophesy how : he must go from wild to wilder. This is the issue 
 of what once appeared the highest blessing for him Popularity!" 
 
 Lady Clare was returning to England for the summer. John Car- 
 lyle was coming with her, and the family were looking eagerly for- 
 ward to his arrival in Annandale. 
 
 To John Carlylc, Florence. 
 
 "Edinburgh: March 29, 1833. 
 
 "You will find much changed in Dumfriesshire, but not the af- 
 fection of those that remain for you. There will be much to tell, 
 much to speculate upon and devise for the time that is to come. . . . 
 I have thought much about your future of late; see it like all our 
 futures, full of obstruction : nevertheless, will not cease to hope good. 
 It is a most ruinous chaotic time, this of ours, a time of confusion 
 outward and inward, of falsehood, imbecility, destitution, despera- 
 tion, unbelief; woe to him who has within him no light of Faith, 
 to guide his steps through it ! My main comfort about you is to see 
 the grand practical lesson of Entsagen 1 impressing itself in ineffacc- 
 
 This word, which so often occurs in Carlyle's letters, means, briefly, a resolution fix-
 
 200 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 able devoutness on your heart ; herein, it is well said, eigentlich beginnt 
 das Lehen. Whoso is a man may in all seasons, scenes, and circum- 
 stances live like a man. Let us take the world bravely then, and fight 
 bravely to the end, since nothing else has been appointed us. I have 
 inquired with myself often whether you should settle here, at Lon- 
 don, or where. This is but a pitiful place, but indeed all places are 
 pitiful. In the grand universal race towards ruin (economical) we 
 are, as I judge, almost a whole generation behind London. Never- 
 theless, here too things are advancing with most rapid pace ; a few 
 years will bring us a long way. Universal Poverty is already here, 
 numerous persons, and these are the wisest, determine this season to 
 fly over seas, to America, Australia, anywhither where the famine is 
 not. Ruin economical is not far distant ; and then in regard to ruin 
 spiritual I should say that it was already triumphant amongst us; 
 while in chaotic London there were blissful symptoms here and 
 there discernible of palingenesia. This makes the difference. In 
 London, amid its huge deafening hubbub of a Death-song, are to be 
 heard tones of a Birth-song; while here all is putrid, scandalous, 
 decadent, hypocritical, and sounds through your soul like lugubrious 
 universal Ncenia, chanted by foul midnight hags. There is mis- 
 anthropy and philanthropy for you expressed with poetic emphasis 
 enough. 
 
 " In sober truth, however, it might almost surprise one to consider 
 how infinitely small a quantity, not of enlightened speech, one 
 catches here, but even of speech at all ; for the jargon that is uttered 
 without conviction from the teeth outwards, who would name that 
 speech? Peace be with it! There are books to be got at; air to 
 breathe; and, lastly, a coach to carry you back moorwards when that 
 becomes more tolerable. 
 
 "Most likely I mentioned last time that I was writing a paper on 
 'Cagliostro.' I might, perhaps with advantage, have asked you 
 some questions about his last scene of life, your Roman St. Angelo, 
 but I did not recollect that possibility, and now the thing is all fin- 
 ished off, perhaps more carefully than it deserved to be. It is for 
 Fraser, and may perhaps suit him well enough; otherwise I value 
 the article below a pin's price : it will do no ill, and that is the most 
 one can say of it. I am partly minded next to set forth some small 
 narrative about the Diamond Necklace, once so celebrated a busi- 
 ness, but must wait a day or two till I have /me* Feld. It will serve 
 me till about the time of our departure homewards, which we date 
 a month hence. . . . Wilson I have met only once ; I had called on him 
 before; as he never returned it, I could not go near him again, more 
 especially after all the blathering stuff he had uttered on the matter 
 for years past. I still read his Magazine palaver with an affection- 
 ate interest; believe that there is nothing to be got from him. We 
 will not quarrel, but also we shall not agree. This night Gordon 
 invites me to meet him at supper, but I cannot resolve to go; the 
 man is not worth an indigestion. De Quincey, who has been once 
 
 edly and clearly made to do without tho vnrious pleasant things wealth, promotion, 
 fame, honor, and the other rewards with which ihe world rewards the services wh.c.b 
 it appreciates.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 201 
 
 seen out this winter, sent me word he would come and see me : he 
 will do no such thing, poor little fellow; he has hardly got out of 
 his cessio bonorum, and for the present (little Moir, his friend, pathet- 
 ically says) ' is living on game which has spoiled on the poulterer's 
 hands,' having made a bargain to that effect with him, and even run 
 up a score of fifteen pounds. Sir William Hamilton I like best of 
 any, but see little of him. I even met the 'hash B. . . . ,' who has 
 mounted a carriage now and rides prosperously. ' I saw the wicked 
 great in power.' It was at Moir's, this rencounter, at dinner; the 
 'hash' somewhat reconciled to me by his presence; I traced in him 
 several features of my friend Cagliostro, and said, honestly, Live 
 then, enjoy thyself as subaltern quack. The Devil is very busy 
 with us all. Naso I visited in the dining way yesternight, for the 
 first and probably last time. He affected to be extremely kind, and 
 our party (with an American anti-slave enthusiast in it) went off 
 quite happily; but Naso wants that first fundamental requisite of 
 genius, I fear, common honesty. He has paid me, and shabbily and 
 on compulsion, that last debt of his ; and now, as I reckon, our edi- 
 torial relation may have terminated. That pecuniary defalcation 
 of his again sorrowfully altered my scriptory method of procedure. 
 But we cannot help it. Must even turn ourselves elsewhere. 
 
 "The Reformed Parliament disappoints every one but me and the 
 Tories. Endless jargon; no business done. I do not once a month 
 look at the side of the world it sits on; let it go to the Devil its 
 own way. ... Of poor Edward Irving your Galignani will per- 
 haps have told you enough ; he came to Annan to be deposed ; made 
 a heroico-distracted speech there, Dow finishing off with a Holy 
 Ghost shriek or two ; whereupon Irving, calling on them to ' hear 
 that,' indignantly withdrew. He says, in a letter printed in the 
 newspapers, that he ' did purpose to tarry in those parts certain days, 
 and publish in the towns of the coast the great name of the Lord;' 
 which purpose ' he did accomplish, ' publishing everywhere a varie- 
 ty of things. He was at Ecclefechan, Jean writes us; gray, toil- 
 worn, haggard, with ' an immense cravat the size of a sowing-sheet 
 covering all his breast ;' the country people are full of zeal for him ; 
 but everywhere else his very name is an offence in decent society. 
 ' Publish in the towns of the coast !' Oh ! it is a Pickle-herring Trag- 
 edy : the accursedest thing one's eye could light on. As for Dow, 
 he must surely ere long end in a madhouse. For our poor friend 
 one knows not what to predict. 
 
 "Jane has walked very strictly by old Dr. Hamilton's law, without 
 any apparent advantage. Her complaint seems like mine, a kind of 
 seated dyspepsia; no medicine is of avail, only regimen (when once 
 one can find it out), free air, and, if that was possible, cheerfulness 
 of mind. She bears up with fixed resolution, appears even to enjoy 
 many things in Edinburgh, yet has grown no stronger of late. We 
 must take the good and the ill together, and still hope for the better. 
 She sends you her affection, and hopes we shall all meet at Craigen- 
 puttock once more. Be it so, if it pleases God. All things, as your 
 faith tells you, will turn out for good if we ourselves prove good. 
 Meanwhile, the only clear duty of man lies in this, and nothing else 
 work, work wisely, while it is called to-day. Nothing in this uni- 
 
 9*
 
 202 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 verse now frightens me, though yearly it grows more stupendous, 
 more divine; and the terrestrial life appointed us more poor and 
 brief. Eternity looks grander and kinder if Time grow meaner and 
 more hostile. I defy Time and the spirit of Time. 
 "Farewell, dear John, 
 
 " Ever your brother, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 The account of the visit to Edinburgh began with an extract from 
 Carlyle's Note-book. It may end with another. 
 
 "March 31. Wonderful, and, alas! most pitiful, alternations of 
 belief and unbelief in me. On the whole, no encouragement to be 
 met with here in Edinburgh; 'all men,' says John Gordon, naively, 
 ' are quite taken up with making a livelihood.' It is taken for grant- 
 ed, I find, that of me nothing can be made that I am, economically 
 speaking, but a lost man. No great error there, perhaps; but if it is 
 added by my friends themselves that therefore I am spiritually lost ? 
 One's ears are bewildered by the inane chatter of the people ; one's 
 heart is for hours and days overcast by the sad feeling: 'There is 
 none, then, not one, that will believe in me !' Great in this life is 
 the communion of man with man. Meanwhile, continue to believe 
 in thyself. Let the chattering of innumerable gigmen pass by thee as 
 what it is. Wait thou on the bounties of thy unseen Taskmaster, 
 on the hests of thy inward Daemon. Sow the seed field of Time. 
 What if thou see no fruit of it? another will. Be not weak. 
 
 "Neither fear thou that this, thy great message of the Natural 
 being the Supernatural, will wholly perish unuttered. One way or 
 other, it will and shall be uttered. Write it down on paper, anyway ; 
 speak it from thee; so shall thy painful, destitute existence not have 
 been in vain. Oh, in vain? Hadst thou, even thou, a message from 
 the Eternal, and thou grudgest the travail of thy embassy? O thou 
 of little faith !" 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A.D. 1833. JET. 38. 
 
 THE four months' experience of Edinburgh had convinced Carlyle 
 that there at least could be no permanent home for him. If driven 
 to leave his " castle on the moor," it must be for London only Lon- 
 don. In April he found that he had gathered sufficient materials 
 for his article on the Diamond Necklace, which he could work up 
 at Craigenputtock. At the beginning of May he was again in An- 
 nandale, on his way home, Mrs. Carlyle miserably ill, and craving, 
 like a wounded wild animal, to creep away out of human sight. 
 "I left Edinburgh," he wrote, " with the grieved heart customary to 
 me on visits thither; a wretched infidel place; not one man that 
 could forward you, co-operate with you in any useful thing. 
 Scarcely one I could find (except Sir William Hamilton) that could 
 speak a sincere word. I bought several books in Edinburgh, carried
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 203 
 
 back with me materials enough for reflection; the very contradic- 
 tions, even unjust ones, you meet with, arc elements of new progress. 
 My presence there was honored with many a kind civility, too ; was 
 publicly acknowledged by a kind of lampoon, laudative-vituperative 
 (as it ought to be), by one Brown, editor of a newspaper, whom I 
 have known at a distance as a blustering bubblyjock, much given to 
 fabrication; on the other hand, I relieved Professor Wilson from the 
 necessity of fabricating any more in my behalf by decidedly cutting 
 him the day before we left town. I was quite wearied with the man, 
 his deep desire to be familiar with me, his numerous evasions to 
 meet me, his lies to excuse these; and so, in mere Christian charity, 
 brought it to an end. My feelings to him remain, I hope, unchanged, 
 as much as I can make them admiration for a very superior talent, 
 for many gleams of worth and generosity; contempt, pity for his 
 cowardice, for his want of spiritual basis, which renders all his force 
 a self-destructive one, properly no force at all. Thus did I finish 
 off with Edinburgh, not in the most balsamic fashion." 
 
 The work which Carlyle had done in the winter had more than 
 paid his modest expenses. He was still undetermined how next to 
 proceed, and felt a need of rest and reflection. It seemed, he said, 
 as if "the first act of his life was closing, the second not yet opened." 
 Means to go on upon were found in the hitherto unfortunate Teu- 
 felsdrockh. Unable to find an accoucheur who would introduce him 
 to the world complete, he was to be cut in pieces and produced 
 limb by limb in Fraser's Magazine. Fraser, however, who had hith- 
 erto paid Carlyle twenty guineas a sheet for his articles (five guineas 
 more than he paid any other contributor), had to stipulate for pay- 
 ing no more than twelve upon this unlucky venture. Ten sheets 
 were to be allotted to Teufel in ten successive numbers. Thus 
 " Sartor Resartus " was to find its way into print at last, in this and 
 the following year, and sufficient money was provided for the Craig- 
 enputtock housekeeping for another twelve months. 
 
 The summer so begun was a useful and not unpleasant one. 
 John Carlyle, returning from Italy, spent two months of it in his 
 brother's house, intending, at the end of them, to rejoin Lady Clare 
 and go again abroad with her. There were occasional visits to 
 Scotsbrig. Many books were read, chiefly about the French Revo- 
 lution; while from the Journal it appears that Carlyle was putting 
 himself through a severe cross-examination, discovering, for one 
 thing, that he was too intolerant, "his own private discontent min- 
 gling considerably with his zeal against evil-doers," too contemptu- 
 ously indifferent ' ' to those who were not forwarding him on his 
 course;" wanting in courtesy, and "given to far too much emphasis 
 in the expression of his convictions." It was necessary for him to 
 ascertain what his special powers were, and what were the limits of
 
 204 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 them. "I begin to suspect," he wrote, "that I have no poetic 
 talent whatever, but of this, too, am nowise absolutely sure. It still 
 seems as if a whole magazine of faculty lay in me all undeveloped; 
 held in thraldom by the meanest physical and economical causes. " 
 
 One discovery came on him as a startling surprise. 
 
 " On the whole, art thou not among the vainest of living men? 
 At bottom, among the very vainest? Oh, the sorry, mad ambitions 
 that lurk in thee! God deliver me from vanity, from self-conceit, 
 the first sin of this universe, and the last, for I think it will never 
 leave us." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle continued ill and out of spirits, benefiting less than 
 she had hoped from her brother-in-law's skill in medicine, yet con- 
 triving now and then to sketch, in her humorous way, the accidents 
 of the moorland existence. She had an unlucky habit of dating her 
 letters only by the day of the week, or sometimes not at all, and as 
 those to Annandale were sent often by private hand, there is no 
 post-mark to make good her shortcomings. 
 
 The following letter to her mother-in-law, however, is assigned 
 by Carlyle to the summer of 1833. Written at what time it may, it 
 will serve as a genuine picture of Craigenputtock life. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Craigenputtock. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I am not satisfied it should be even so much 
 as whispered that I have been scared from Scotsbrig by the grate re- 
 form, or by any other cause. Surely I have come through earth- 
 quakes enough in my time (and with an honorable, thorough bear- 
 ing) to have acquired a character on that head more unimpeachable. 
 But, to be sure, the calumny was no invention of yours, but of 
 younger heads less eminent for charity. It was the long journey I 
 boggled at on the last occasion, being in a despairing mood at the 
 time with want of sleep, and dearly I rued, every hour of my hus- 
 band's absence, that I had not accompanied him, when, if I must 
 needs have been ill, I might at least have been so without molesta- 
 tion. Another time we will do better. 
 
 "Carlyle is toiling away at the new article, 1 and though by no 
 means content with the way he makes (when is he ever content?), 
 still, as you used to say, ' what is down will not jump out again. ' 
 In three weeks or so it will be done, and then we come. I am cer- 
 tainly mended since you were here ; but ' deed Mrs. Carle's maist 
 ashamed to say't,' a's still weakly and takes no unusual fatigue with- 
 out suffering for it. The toil and trouble I had about Betty * did me 
 great mischief, which I have scarcely yet got over ; for the rest, that 
 explosion has had no unpleasant consequences. The woman I got 
 in her stead, on an investigation of three minutes, proves to be quite 
 as clever a servant as she was whom I investigated for the space of 
 
 1 " Diamond Necklace. T.C." * A misconducted maid.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 205 
 
 three half-years, and rode, as I compute, some hundred miles after. 
 Deaf as a door-nail, the present individual has nevertheless con- 
 ducted herself quite satisfactorily, except that Carlyle's silk hand- 
 kerchief is occasionally in requisition (of tener, I think, than there is 
 any visible cause), wiping off particles of dust; and once, by awful 
 oversight, a small dead mouse was permitted to insinuate itself into 
 his bowl of porridge. We are not to keep her, however, because of 
 her deafness, which in any other place, where her ears would be 
 called into vigorous action, would make her the mere effigy of a ser- 
 vant. I got back the black button who was here when you came, 
 whom I know to be ignorant as a sucking child of almost every- 
 thing I require her to do, but whom I hope to find honest, diligent, 
 good-humored, and quick in the tip-take. 
 
 ' ' I had a very kind letter from Mrs. Montagu last week, reproach- 
 ing me with forgetf ulness of her. 
 
 ' ' We have not heard from or of Jeffrey for a very long time, but 
 he will certainly write on Wednesday to acknowledge the repay- 
 ment of his debt, which is a great load off our minds. l 
 
 "My mother writes in great alarm about cholera, which is at 
 Penpont, within three miles of her; three persons have died. I 
 have been expecting nothing else, and my dread of it is not greater 
 for its being at hand. The answer to all such terrors is simply 
 what Carlyle said a year ago to some one who told him in London, 
 ' Cholera is here:' ' When is death not here?' " 
 
 The next letter from Mrs. Carlyle bears a clear date of its own, 
 and was written while John Carlyle was staying at Craigenputtock. 
 It is to Eliza Miles. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: July 15, 1333. 
 
 "My dear Eliza, I well remember the fine evening last year 
 when I received your letter. I was riding alone across our solitary 
 moor when I met my boy returning from the post-office, and took 
 it from him and opened it and read it on horseback, too anxious for 
 news about you to keep it for a more convenient place. Had any 
 one predicted to me then that the good, kind, trustful letter was to 
 lie unanswered for a whole year, I should have treated such predic- 
 tion as an injurious calumny which there was not the remotest 
 chance of my justifying! Alas! and it is actually so! For a whole 
 year I have left my dear little friend in Ampton Street to form what 
 theory she pleased concerning the state of my mind towards her; 
 and finally, I suppose, to set me down for heartless and fickle, and 
 dismiss my remembrance with a sigh; for her gentle, affectionate 
 nature is incapable, I believe, of more indignant reproach. And 
 yet, Eliza, [it was] neither the one thing nor the other. I am capa- 
 ble of as strong attachment as yourself (which is saying much); and 
 if I do not abandon myself to my attachment as you do, it is only 
 because I am older, have had my dreams oftener brought into colli- 
 sion with the realities of life, and learnt from the heart-rending jar- 
 
 1 Carlyle's debt to Jeffrey had been paid the summer before. Either, therefore, Car- 
 lyle was mistaken in the date of this letter, and for "Diamond Necklace" we should 
 read "Diderot;" or there had been some further debt of John Carlflo's.
 
 206 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ring of such collision that ' all is not gold that glitters, ' and that 
 one's only safe dependence is in one's self I mean in the good that 
 is in one. As little am I fickle, which I must beg you to believe on 
 trust; since my past life, which would bear me out in the boast, is 
 all unknown to you. What is it, then, you will ask, that makes me 
 fail in so simple a duty of friendship as the writing of a letter? It 
 is sometimes sheer indolence, sometimes sickness, sometimes pro- 
 crastination. My first impulse, after reading your letter, was to sit 
 down and answer it by the very next post. Then I thought I will 
 wait the Lord - advocate's return, that he may frank it. Then 
 troubles thickened round me: my mother's illness, my grandfa- 
 ther's death, gave me much fatigue of body and mind. That, again, 
 increased to cruel height my own persevering ailments. About the 
 new year we removed to Edinburgh, where we stayed till the begin- 
 ning of May. It was a fully more unhealthy winter for me than the 
 previous one in London. I wrote to no one; had enough to do in 
 striving with the tempter ever present with me in the shape of head- 
 aches, heartache, and all kinds of aches, that I might not break out 
 into fiery indignation over my own destiny and all the earth's. Since 
 my home-coming I have improved to a wonder; and the days have 
 passed, I scarce know how, in the pleasant hopelessness that long- 
 continued pain sometimes leaves behind. 
 
 ' ' Nay, I must not wrong myself. I have not been quite idle. I 
 have made a gown which would delight Mrs. Page, it looks so neat 
 and clean; and a bonnet, and loaves of bread innumerable. At 
 present I am reading Italian most of the day with my medical 
 brother-in-law, who is home at present from Rome. It was my 
 husband who, for all his frightening you with some books, raised 
 me from Ariosto to-day, with the chiding words that it would be 
 altogether shameful if I let his book- parcel go without that letter for 
 Miss Miles, which I had talked of writing these six months back. 
 
 "... How is your health? I hope you do not go often to 
 Dr. Fisher's, or at all. The more I see of doctors, the more I hold 
 by my old heresy that they are all 'physicians of no value.' My 
 brother-in-law is a paragon of the class, but he is so by in as much 
 as possible undoctoring himself. He told me yesterday, ' Could I 
 give you some agreeable occupation to fill your whole mind, it 
 would do more for you than all the medicines in existence.' 
 
 " I wish I had you here to drink new milk and ride my horse. 
 
 " We are at home now for the summer and autumn, most likely 
 for the winter also. We think of France next summer, and moving 
 in the interim were scarce worth while. Surely your father might 
 find some one travelling to Edinburgh by sea,who would take charge 
 of you. It is the easiest and cheapest conveyance possible. 
 
 " Write to me all that you are thinking and wishing, and never 
 doubt my kind feelings towards you. 
 
 " Your sincere friend, JANE CARLYLE." 
 
 John Carlyle remained at Craigenputtock for a month longer, and 
 then left it to return with Lady Clare to Italy. Carlyle saw him off 
 in the Liverpool steamer from Annan, and went back to solitude and 
 work. He says that he was invariably sick and miserable before he
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 207 
 
 could write to any real purpose. His first attempt at the Diamond 
 Necklace had failed, and he had laid it aside. The entries in his 
 Journal show more than usual despondency. 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 "August 24. So now all this racketing and riding has ended, and 
 I am left here the solitaricst, stranded, most helpless creature that I 
 have been for many years. Months of suffering and painful indo- 
 lence I see before me; for in much I am wrong, and till it is righted, 
 or on the way to being so, I cannot help myself. Nobody asks me 
 to work at articles, and as need does not drive me to do it for a 
 while, I have no call in that direction. The thing I want to write 
 is quite other than an article. Happily (this is probably my great- 
 est happiness), the chief desire of my mind has again become to 
 write a masterpiece, let it be acknowledged as such or not acknowl- 
 edged. The idea of the universe struggles dark and painful in me, 
 which I must deliver out of me or be wretched. But, then, HowV 
 How? We cannot think of changing our abode at present; indeed, 
 had we even the necessary funds for living in London itself, what 
 better were it? and I in such a want, in such a mood ! Thyself only 
 art to blame. Take thyself vigorously to task. Cast out the un- 
 clean thing from thee, or go deeper and deeper hellward with it. 
 
 "For the last year my faith has lain under a most sad eclipse; I 
 have been a considerably worse man than before. 
 
 " At this moment I Write only in treble, of a situation, of a set of 
 feelings that longs to express itself in the voice of thunder. Be 
 still! Be still! 
 
 ' ' In alt times there is a word which, spoken to men, to the actual 
 generation of men, would thrill their inmost soul. But the way to 
 lind that word? The way to speak it when found? Opus est con- 
 sulto with a vengeance. 
 
 " On the whole, it is good, it is absolutely needful for one to be 
 humbled and prostrated, and thrown among the pots from time to 
 time. Life is a school: we are perverse scholars to the last, and re- 
 quire the rod. 
 
 "Above me, as I thought last night in going to sleep, is the mute 
 Immensity ; Eternity is behind and before. What are all the cares 
 of this short little Platform of existence, that they should give thee 
 Pain? But, on the whole, man is such a Dualim/i, and runs himself 
 into contradiction, the second step he makes from the beaten road 
 of the practical. I may lament meanwhile that (for want of sym- 
 bols?) those grand verities (the reallest of the real) Infinitude, Eter- 
 nity, should have so faded from the view, from the grasp, of the 
 mo'st earnest, and left the task of right licing a problem harder than 
 ever. 
 
 " Have to walk down to the smithy (my dame riding) and bring 
 up a gig: thus are the high and the low mingled. I read books 
 enough, but they are worthless, and their effect worthless. Henry's 
 'Britain,' 'Poor-law Commission,' 'Paris and Histor. Scenes,' 
 etc. , etc. , all these are naught, or nearly so ; errand ' for the gig is 
 better work for me. At any rate, it is work; so to it.' "
 
 208 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The next entry in the Journal is in another handwriting. It is 
 merely a name "Ralph Waldo Emerson." 
 
 The Carlyles were sitting alone at dinner on a Sunday afternoon 
 at the end of August, when a Dumfries carriage drove to the door, 
 and there stepped out of it a young American then unknown to 
 fame, but whose influence in his own country equals that of Carlyle 
 in ours, and whose name stands connected with his wherever the 
 English language is spoken. Emerson, the younger of the two, had 
 just broken his Unitarian fetters, and was looking out and round 
 him like a young eagle longing for light. He had read Carlyle's 
 articles, and had discerned with the instinct of genius that here was 
 a voice speaking real and fiery convictions, and no longer echoes 
 and conventionalisms. He had come to Europe to study its social 
 and spiritual phenomena; and to the young Emerson, as to the old 
 Goethe, the most important of them appeared to be Carlyle. He 
 had obtained an introduction to him from John Mill, in London, 
 armed with which he had come off to Scotland. Mill had prepared 
 Carlyle for his possible appearance not very favorably, and perhaps 
 recognized in after-years the fallibility of his judgment. Carlyle 
 made no such mistake. The fact itself of a young American hav- 
 ing been so affected by his writings as to have sought him out in the 
 Dunscore moors was a homage of the kind which he could espe- 
 cially value and appreciate. The acquaintance then begun to their 
 mutual pleasure ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained 
 unclouded in spite of wide divergences of opinion throughout their 
 working lives, and continues warm as ever, at the moment when I 
 am writing these words (June 27, 1880), when the labors of both of 
 them are over, and they wait in age and infirmity to be called away 
 from a world to which they have given freely all that they had to 
 give. 
 
 Emerson's visit at this moment is particularly welcome, since it 
 gives the only sketch we have of Carlyle's life at Craigenputtock as 
 it was seen by others. 1 
 
 "From Edinburgh [writes Emerson] I went to the Highlands, and 
 on my return I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent 
 on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, 'inquired for 
 Craigenputtock. It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dun- 
 score, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I 
 took a private carriage from the inn. I found the house amid deso- 
 late heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty 
 heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not 
 need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, 
 
 i. 165. 
 
 ition the note from Mill. Per-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 209 
 
 unknown and exiled on that hill farm, as if holding on his own 
 terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff- 
 like brow, and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in 
 easy command ; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish ; 
 full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated 
 everything he looked upon. His talk, playfully exalting the most 
 familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance 
 with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what 
 was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects 
 and lonely the man, ' not a person to speak to within sixteen miles 
 except the minister of Dunscore ;' so that books inevitably made his 
 topics. 
 
 "He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his dis- 
 course. Blackwood's was the ' Sand Magazine ;' Fraser's nearer 
 approach to possibility of life was the ' Mud Magazine ;' a piece of 
 road near by that marked some failed enterprise was ' the Grave of 
 the last Sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed 
 him, he professed largely to admire the talent shown by his pig. He 
 had spent much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to 
 one enclosure in his pen; but pig, by great strokes of judgment, 
 had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For 
 all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the 
 planet, and he liked Nero's death, Qualis artifcx pereo! better than 
 most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth to 
 him. At one time he had inquired and read a good deal about 
 America. Lander's principle was mere rebellion, and that, he feared, 
 was the American principle. The best thing he knew of that coun- 
 try was that in it a man can have meat for his labor. 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 splendid 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 Robertson's 
 ' America ' an early favorite. Rousseau's ' Confessions ' had dis- 
 covered 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 mo- 
 ment ; 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,' he said, 
 ' makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and sup- 
 plies 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
 
 210 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so found 
 a way to force the rich people to attend to them.' 
 
 "We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffc-1, 
 then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There 
 we sat down and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not 
 Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he has the natural 
 disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, 
 and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But 
 he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtle links that bind 
 ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. ' Christ 
 died on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder; that brought you 
 and me together. Time has only a relative existence.' 
 
 "He was already turning his eyes towards London with a schol- 
 ar's appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, won- 
 derful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge 
 machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muf- 
 fins 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." 
 
 Emerson stayed for a night and was gone in the morning, seeking 
 other notabilities. Carlyle liked him well. Two days later he 
 writes to his mother: 
 
 "Three little happinesses have befallen us: first, a piano-tuner, 
 procured for five shillings and sixpence, has been here, entirely re- 
 forming the piano, so that I can hear a little music now, which does 
 me no little good. Secondly, Major Irving, of Gribton, who used at 
 this season of the year to live and shoot at Craigenvey, came in one 
 day to us, and after some clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for 
 the right to shoot here, and even tabled the cash that moment, and 
 would not pocket it again. Money easilier won never sate in my 
 pocket ; money for delivering us from a great nuisance, for now I 
 will tell every gunner applicant, ' I cannot, sir; it is let,' Our third 
 happiness was the arrival of a certain young unknown friend, named 
 Emerson, from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so far 
 from his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He had 
 an introduction from Mill and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's neph- 
 ew), whom John knew at Rome. Of course we could do no other 
 than welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the most 
 lovable creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till 
 next day with us, and talked and heard talk to his heart's content, 
 and left us all really sad to part with him. Jane says it is the nrst 
 journey since Noah's Deluge undertaken to Craigenputtock for such 
 a purpose. In any case, we had a cheerful day from it, and ought 
 to be thankful. " 
 
 During these months the autumn of 1833 and the beginning of 
 the year which followed a close correspondence was maintained 
 between Carlyle and John Mill. Cavlyle's part of it I have not seen,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 211 
 
 but on both sides the letters must have been of the deepest interest. 
 Thinly sprinkled with information about common friends, they re- 
 lated almost entirely to the deepest questions which concern human- 
 ity ; and the letters of Mill are remarkable for simplicity, humility, 
 and the most disinterested desire for truth. He had much to learn 
 about Carlyle; he was not quick to understand character, and was 
 distressed to find, as their communications became more intimate, 
 how widely their views were divided. He had been bred a utilita- 
 rian. He had been taught that virtue led necessarily to happiness, 
 and was perplexed at Carlyle's insistence on Entsagen (renunciation 
 of personal happiness) as essential to noble action. He had been 
 surprised that Carlyle liked Emerson, who had appeared to him, 
 perhaps, a visionary. Carlyle, intending to write another book, 
 was hesitating between a life of John Knox and the French Revolu- 
 tion. Either subject would give him the opportunity, which he 
 wanted, of expressing his spiritual convictions. His inclination at 
 this moment was towards the history of his own country, and he 
 had recommended Mill to write on the Revolution. Mill felt that it 
 would be difficult, if not impossible, for him, without expressing 
 completely his views on Christianity, which the condition of public 
 feeling in England would not allow him to do. He spoke tenderly 
 and reverently of the personal character of the Founder of Christi- 
 anity, and on this part of the subject he wrote as if he was confident 
 that Carlyle agreed with him. But, below the truth of any particu- 
 lar Religion, there lay the harder problem of the existence and prov- 
 idence of God ; and here it seemed that Carlyle had a positive faith, 
 while Mill had no more than a sense of probability. Carlyle admit- 
 ted that, so far as external evidence went, the Being of God was a 
 supposition inadequately proved. The grounds of certainty which 
 Carlyle found in himself, Mill, much as he desired to share Carlyle's 
 belief, confessed that he was unable to recognize. So again with 
 the soul. There was no proof that it perished with the body, but 
 again there was no proof that it did not. Duty was the deepest of 
 all realities; but the origin of duty, for all Mill could tell, might be 
 the tendency of right action to promote the general happiness of 
 mankind. Such general happiness doubtless could best be promoted 
 by each person developing his own powers. Carlyle insisted that 
 every man had a special task assigned to him, which it was his busi- 
 ness to discover; but the question remained, by whom and how the 
 task was assigned ; and the truth might only be that men, in fact, 
 were born with various qualities, and that the general good was most 
 effectually promoted by the special cultivation of those qualities. 
 
 But I will not attempt to pursue further so interesting an exposi- 
 tion of Mill's, views when I am forbidden to use his own language, 
 and must express his meaning in a circuitous paraphrase. The let-
 
 212 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ters themselves may perhaps be published hereafter by those to 
 whom they belong. I have alluded to the correspondence only be- 
 cause it turned the balance in Carlyle's mind, sent him immediately 
 back again to Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace, and de- 
 cided for him that he should himself undertake the work which was 
 to make his name famous. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A.D. 1833. ^ET. 38. 
 
 WHEN John Carlyle left Craigenputtock to rejoin Lady Clare, the 
 parting between the brothers had been exceptionally sad. The 
 popularity with Review editors which had followed Carlyle's ap- 
 pearance in London was as brief as it had been sudden. His haughty 
 tone towards them, and his theory of "the Dogs' Carrion Cart," as 
 a description of the periodicals of the day, could not have recom- 
 mended him to their favor. The article on Goethe was received 
 unfavorably, Cochrane said with unqualified disapproval. "Sar- 
 tor," when it began to appear in Fraser piecemeal, met a still 
 harder judgment. No one could tell what to make of it. The 
 writer was considered a literary maniac, and the unlucky editor was 
 dreading the ruin of his magazine. The brothers had doubtless 
 talked earnestly enough of the threatening prospect. John, who 
 owed all that he had and was to his brother's care of him, and*was 
 in prosperous circumstances, was leaving that brother to loneliness 
 and depression, and to a future on which no light was breaking any- 
 where. Carlyle felt more for John than for himself, and his first 
 effort after John was gone was to comfort him. 
 
 "For me and my moorland loneliness [he wrote on the 27th of 
 August], never let it settle in your heart. I feel assured from of old 
 that the only true enemy I have to struggle with is the unreason 
 within myself. If I had given such things harbor within me, I must 
 with pain cast them out again. Still, then, still! Light will arise 
 for my outward path, too ; were my inward light once clear again, 
 and the world with all its tribulations will lie under my feet. ' Be 
 of good cheer, I have overcome the world :' so said the wisest man, 
 when what was his overcoming? Poverty, despite, forsakenness, 
 and the near prospect of an accursed Cross. 'Be of good cheer; I 
 have overcome the world.' These words, on the streets of Edin- 
 burgh last winter, almost brought tears into my eyes. But, on the 
 whole, quarrel not with my deliberate feeling that this wilderness is 
 no wholesome abode for me ; that it is my duty to strive, with all in- 
 dustry, energy, and cheerful determination, to change it for one less 
 solitary. Consider also that I am far past the years for headlong 
 changes, and will not rush out to the warfare without a plan and 
 munitions of war. Nay, for a time my first duty must be com-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 213 
 
 posure; the settling of innumerable things that are at sixes and 
 sevens within myself. 
 
 "I am writing nothing yet, but am not altogether idle. Depend 
 upon it, I shall pass the winter here far more happily than you ex- 
 pect. So fear not for me, my dear brother; continue to hope of me 
 that the work given me ' to do may be done.' " 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, who was still ailing, was carried off by her mother a 
 few days later, in the hope that change of air and relief from house- 
 hold work might be of use to her, and was taking a tour through the 
 hills about Moffat. Carlyle himself was left in utter solitude at 
 Craigenputtock. How he passed one day of it he tells in a letter, 
 which he sent after his Goody Coadjutor, as he called her, soon 
 after she had left him. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Moffat. 
 
 "September 7. 
 
 "Yesterday morning, while the bright sun was welcoming you (I 
 hope without headache) to the watering-place, I stirred little, yet was 
 not wholly idle. I adjusted various small matters, wrote a long let- 
 ter to poor Mrs. Swan ' a long one, yet the lamest utterance of my 
 feeling on that sad matter, for I was stupid and could not even feel 
 my feeling rightly, much less think it. After dinner I went to walk. 
 Sitting with my back at the big stone in the ' Sixpence,' looking out 
 over the void moor, I hear a little squeak of glad, unmelodious sing- 
 ing: and presently Midge, in red jacket with a bundle, heaves in 
 sight, clashes back astonished into a kind of minuet, answers my 
 questions with a ' Sur!' and then to the repetition of it, 'How they 
 were all at the hut?' chirps out with the strangest new old-woman's 
 tone, ' Oh, bravely !' Poor little savage ! I met her again in the 
 way back (she had been with Nancy's gown, I suppose), and did not 
 kill her with my eyes, but let her shy past me. The red Midge in 
 that vacant wilderness might have given Wordsworth a sonnet. All 
 day, I must remark, Nancy had been busy as a town taken by storm ; 
 and, indeed, still is, though I know not with what: most probably 
 washing, I think ; for yesterday there appeared once a barrow with 
 something like clothes-baskets, and to-day white sheets hang trium- 
 phantly on the rope. She gets me all my necessaries quite punctual- 
 ly ; and, as fit, no questions are asked. Notybene, after a long effort I 
 remembered the shelling of your pease, and told her of it. After 
 tea, I did what think you? composed some beautiful doggerel on 
 the Linn of Crichope and fair Ludovina (I hope she is fair): quite a 
 jewel of a piece; for which, however, there is no room on this page. 3 
 
 i Of Kirkcaldy. Her husband, Provost Swan, who had been one of Carlyle's friends 
 in the old days, was just dead. 
 3 Room was found for it on the margin of the letter: 
 
 "CRICHOPE Lass. 
 " (Loquitur genius loci. ) 
 " Cloistorod vault of living rooks, 
 
 Here have I my darksome dwelling; 
 Working, sing to stones and stocks. 
 Where beneath my waves go welling.
 
 214 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " Of the present Saturday the grandest event might be the follow- 
 ing: Sickish, with little work, I took my walk before dinner. Reach- 
 ing home, at the corner of the house I met a pig apparently in a 
 state of distraction (grating harsh thunder, its lugs over its shoulders 
 distractedly flow), pursued by Nancy in the same! The sow has 
 not so much broken the gate as rent it, the side-posts of it, into two, 
 and left it hanging 'like a bundle of flails.' After dinner I, with a 
 sublime patience, borrow 'Joseph's wimble,' and under ten thou- 
 sand midge-bites, with tools blunt as a wild Indian's, actually con- 
 struct a brand-new, most improved gate, which you shall look upon 
 not without admiration if it swing so long. 1 sent a new message 
 to the joiner, but do not in the least expect him. I had meant to 
 excerpt from Bayle and such like, but the Fates, you see, had most- 
 ly ordered it otherwise. Night found me, like Basil Montagu, ' at 
 my post,' namely, at my gate-post, and nigh done with it. I had 
 tea and Goody's letter, and so here we are. 
 
 "But now, dear wine, it is fit I turn a moment to thy side. Is 
 my little Janekin getting any sleep in that unknown cabin? Is she 
 enjoying aught, hoping aught, except the end of it, which is, and 
 should be, one of her hopes? I shall learn 'all' on Wednesday 
 (for she will write, as I do); and then 'all and everything.' When? 
 I am patient as possible hitherto, and my patience will stretch if I 
 know that you enjoy yourself, still more that your health seems to 
 profit. Take a little amusement, dear Goody, if thou canst get it. 
 God knows little comes to thee with me, and thou art right patient 
 under it. But, courage, dearest! I swear better days are coming, 
 shall come. The accursed, baleful cloud that has hung over my 
 existence must (I feel it) dissipate, and let in the sun which shines 
 on all. It must, I say. What is it but a cloud, properly a shadow, 
 
 " Beams flood-borne athwart me cast 
 
 Arches see, and aisles moist gleaming; 
 Sounds for aye my organ blast, 
 Grim cathedral, shaped in dreaming. 
 
 " Once a Lake, and next a Linn, 
 
 Still my course sinks deeper; boring 
 Cleft far up where rays steal iu, 
 That as ' Gullet ' once was roaring. 
 
 " For three thousand years or more 
 
 Savage I, none praised or blamed me ; 
 Maiden's hand unbolts my door 
 Look of loveliness hath tamed me. 
 
 " Maiden mild, this level path 
 
 Emblem is of her bright being; 
 Long through discord, darkness, scath, 
 Goes she helping, ruling, freeing. 
 
 " Thank her, wanderer, as thou now 
 
 Gazest safe through gloom so dreary: 
 Rough things plain make likewise thou, 
 And of well-doing be not weary. 
 
 " ' Gullet ' one day cleft shall be, 
 
 Crichope cave have new sunk story ; 
 Thousand years away shall flee 
 Flees not goodness or its glory. 
 
 'Ach Gott, wie lahm, wic kruppel-lahm!' "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 215 
 
 a chimera? Oh, Jeannie! But enough. If I am happy, art not 
 thou, also, happy in my happiness? Hope all things, dearest, and 
 be true to me still, as thou art. And so felicissima notte! Sleep 
 well, for it is now midnight, and dream of me if thou canst. With 
 best love to mother and cousinkiu, 
 
 " Ever thy own husband, T. CARLYLE." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbriy. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: September 20, 1833. 
 
 "My dear Mother, Jack, as you will find, has got safe over the 
 water, and begins his expedition as prosperously as could be de- 
 sired. He goes into Germany, and then up the Rhine, towards the 
 Swiss Alps, where that river springs, a beautiful road. Most likely 
 he will pass through Constance, where our noble Huss testified to 
 the death. He may tell us what he says to the 'scarlet woman,' 
 and her abominations there ! You and I shall not be with him to 
 lecture from that text; but his own thoughts (for all that he talks so) 
 will do it. The dumb ashes of Huss speak louder than a thousand 
 sermons. . . . But I must tell you something of myself; for I know 
 many a morning, my dear mother, you ' come in by me ' in your 
 rambles through the world after those precious to you. If you 
 had eyes to see on these occasions, you would find everything quite 
 tolerable here. I have been rather busy, though the fruit of my work 
 is rather inward, and has little to say for itself. I have yet hard- 
 ly put pen to paper; but foresee that there is a time coming. All 
 my griefs, I can better and better see, lie in good measure at my own 
 door : were I right in my men heart, nothing else would be far wrong 
 with me. This, as you well understand, is true of every mortal, and I 
 advise all that hear me to believe it, and to lay it practically to their own 
 case. On the whole, I am promising to occupy myself more whole- 
 somely, and to be happier here all winter than I have been of late. 
 Be ' diligent in well-doing ;' that is the only secret for happiness any- 
 where : not a universal one or infallible (so long as we continue on 
 earth), yet far the best we have. 
 
 ' ' For the last two weeks Jane has been away from me at Moff at. 
 I led the loneliest life, I suppose, of any human creature in the king's 
 dominions, yet managed wonderfully, by keeping myself continually 
 at work. I clomb to the hill-top on Sabbath-day for my walk, and 
 saw Burnswark, and fancied you all at the sermon close by. On 
 Monday morning I went over to Templand, and found my bit wifie 
 altogether defaite not a whit better, but worse, of Moffat and its 
 baths, and declaring she would not leave me so soon again in a hurry. " 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 " October 1, 1833. 
 
 ' ' If you ask what I have performed and accomplished for myself, 
 the answer might look rather meagre. I have not yet put pen to 
 paper. The new chapter of my history, as yet, lies all too confused. 
 I look round on innumerable fluctuating masses; can begin to build 
 no edifice from them. However, my mind is not empty, which is 
 the most intolerable state. I think occasionally with energy; I read 
 a good deal ; I wait, not without hope. What other can I do? Look-
 
 216 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ing back over the last seven years, I wonder at myself; looking for- 
 ward, were there not a fund of tragical indifference in me, I could 
 lose head. The economical outlook is so complex, the spiritual no 
 less. Alas! the thing I want to do is precisely the thing I cannot do. 
 My mind would so fain deliver itself adequately of that ' Divine idea 
 of the world,' and only in quite inadequate approximation is such 
 deliverance possible. I want to write what Teufelsdrockh calls a 
 story of the ' Time- Hat,' to show forth to the men of these days that 
 they also live in the age of miracles! We shall see. Meanwhile, one 
 of the subjects that engages me most is the French Revolution, which, 
 indeed, for us is the subject of subjects. My chief errand to Paris 
 were freer inquiry into this. 1 One day, if this mood continues, I 
 may have something of my own to say on it. But to stick nearer 
 home. I have as good as engaged with myself not to go even to 
 Scotsbrig till I have written something, with which view partly, on 
 Saturday last, I determined on two things I could write about (there 
 are twenty others if one had any vehicles): the first, 'A History of 
 the Diamond Necklace;' the next, an 'Essay on the Saint-Simoni- 
 ans.' I even wrote off to Cochrane as diplomatically as I could, to 
 ask whether they would suit him. Be his answer what it may, 4 I 
 think I shall fasten upon that Necklace business (to prove myself in 
 the narrative style), and commence it (sending for books from Edin- 
 burgh) in some few days. For the rest, I have books enough ; your 
 great parcel came about a fortnight ago. I have already read what 
 Mill sent for me. Finally, yesterday no farther gone, I drove over 
 to Barjarg, 3 in the middle of thick small rain, to get the keys of the 
 library, which I found most handsomely left for me, so that I could 
 seize the catalogue and some half-dozen volumes to return at discre- 
 tion. It is really a very great favor; there are various important 
 
 1 Carlyle had wished to spend the winter in Paris, but was prevented by want of 
 means. 
 
 2 The answer was unfavorable. All editors, from this time forward, gave Carlyle a 
 cold shoulder till the appearance of the "French Revolution." After the first aston- 
 ishment with which his articles had been received, the world generally had settled into 
 the view taken at Edinburgh, that fine talents, which no one had denied him, were 
 being hopelessly thrown away that what he had to say was extravagant nonsense. 
 Whigs, Tories, and Radicals were for once agreed. He was, in real truth, a Bohemian, 
 whose hand was against every man, and every man's hand, but too naturally, was 
 against him, and the battle was sadly unequal. If Carlyle had possessed the peculiar 
 musical quality which makes the form of poetry, his thoughts would have swept into 
 popularity as rapidly and as widely as Byron's. But his verse was wooden. Rhymes 
 and metre were to him no wings on which to soar to the empyrean. Happy for him 
 in the end that it was so. Poetry in these days is read for pleasure. It is not taken 
 to heart as practical truth. Carlyle's mission %vas that of a prophet and teacher aud 
 a prophet's lessons can only be driven home by prose. 
 
 3 A large country-house ten miles from Craigenputtock, the library of which had 
 been placed at Carlyle's service. Scotland had grown curious about him, however cold 
 or hostile; and the oddest questions were asked respecting his identity and history. 
 Henry Inglis, an Edinburgh friend, writes to Mrs. Carlyle: '-Swift. I think it is. who 
 says, 'Truly you may know a great man by the crowd of blockheads who press round 
 and endeavor to obstruct his path.' A blockhead of my acquaintance (I have an ox- 
 tensive acquaintance among them) chose to ask me the other day whether the Carl) lo 
 who screams hebdomadally in the church in Carruthers Close was our Carlyle. I con- 
 sider such a remark almost equal to receiving the hand of fellowship from C-oethe. It 
 is nearly the same thing to be the disclaimed or the misunderstood of an Ass, and the 
 acknowledged of a Prophet." The Barjarg acknowledgment of Carlyle's merits was a 
 kind more honorable to its owner.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 217 
 
 works there, reading which I am far better than at any university. 
 For the first time in my life I have free access to some kind of book- 
 collection. I, a book-man ! One way and another we look forward 
 to a cheerfullish kind of winter here. 
 
 " I will try for Winckelmann. ... In my heterodox heart there is 
 yearly growing up the strangest, crabbed, one-sided persuasion, that 
 art is but a reminiscence now; that for us in these days prophecy 
 (well understood), not poetry, is the thing wanted. How can we 
 sing and paint when we do not yet believe and see ? There is some 
 considerable truth in this; how much I have not yet fixed. Now, 
 what, under such point of view, is all existing art and study of art? 
 What was the great Goethe himself? The greatest of contemporary 
 men; who, however, is not to have any followers, and should not 
 have any. " 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 " October 28. No man in modern times, perhaps no man in any 
 time, ever came through more confusion with less imputation against 
 him than Lafayette. None can accuse him of variableness; he has 
 seen the world change like a conjurer's pasteboard world; fie stands 
 there unchanged as a stone pillar in the midst of it. Does this prove 
 him a great man, a good man ? Nowise ; perhaps only a limited man. " 
 
 "The difference between Socrates and Jesus Christ! The great 
 Conscious; the immeasurably great Unconscious. The one cun- 
 ningly manufactured ; the other created, living, and life-giving. The 
 epitome this of a grand and fundamental diversity among men. Did 
 any truly great man ever go through the world without offence all 
 rounded in so that the current moral systems could find no fault in 
 him? Most likely, never." 
 
 "Washington is another of our perfect characters; to me a most 
 limited, uninteresting sort. The thing is not only to avoid error, but 
 to attain immense masses of truth. The ultra-sensual surrounds 
 the sensual and gives it meaning, as eternity does time. Do I un- 
 derstand this? Yes, partly, I do." 
 
 " If I consider it well, there is hardly any book in the world that 
 lias sunk so deep into me as ' Reinecke Fuchs. ' It co-operates with 
 other tendencies. Perhaps my whole speculation about 'clothes' 
 arose out of that. It now absolutely haunts me, often very pain- 
 fully, and in shapes that I will not write even here. 
 
 " Yet, again, how beautiful, how true, is this other: 'Man is an 
 incarnate word !' Both these I habitually feel. " 
 
 " ' This little life-boat of a world, with its noisy crew of a man- 
 kind, ' vanishing ' like a cloud-speck from the azure of the All. ' How 
 that thought besieges me, elevating and annihilating ! What is 
 ' fame?' What is life?" 
 
 "All barriers are thrown down before me; but then, also, all 
 tracks and points of support. I look hesitatingly, almost bewilder- 
 edly, into a confused sea. The necessity of caution suggests itself. 
 Hope diminished burns not the less brightly, like a star of hope. 
 
 II. 10
 
 218 LIFE OF THOMAS CABLYLE. 
 
 Que fairef Que devenir? Cannot answer. It is not I only that 
 must answer, but Necessity and I." 
 
 "Meanwhile, this reading is like a kind of manuring compost 
 partly, of which my mind had need. Be thankful that thou hast it, 
 that thou hast time for applying it. In economics I can yet hold out 
 for a number of months. " 
 
 " Friday, November 1. What a time one loses in these winter 
 days lighting fires! lighting candles! I am in the dining-room, which 
 would fain smoke, for it blows a perfect storm. Twelve o'clock is 
 at hand, and not a word down yet! 
 
 "Edinburgh Review came last night. A smart, vigorous paper 
 by Macaulay on Horace Walpole. Ambitious; too antithetic; the 
 heart of the matter not struck. What will that man become? He 
 has more force and emphasis in him than any other of my British 
 contemporaries (coevals). Wants the root of belief, however. May 
 fail to accomplish much. Let us hope better things." 
 
 ' ' How confused, helpless ; how dispirited, impotent ; how miser- 
 able am I! The world is so vast and complex; my duty in it will 
 not in the least disclose itself. One has to shape and to be shaped. 
 It is all a perplexed imbroglio, and you have by toil and endeavor to 
 shape it. ' Nothing would ever come to me in my sleep !' " 
 
 "Vain to seek a ' theory of virtue;' to plague one's self with spec- 
 ulations about such a thing. Virtue is like health the harmony of 
 the whole man. Some property of it traceable hi every part of the 
 man; its complete character only in the whole man. Mark this: it 
 is not far from the truth, and, as I think it, nearer than as I here ex- 
 press it." 
 
 "My mode of writing for the last two days quite the old one, and 
 very far from the right. How alter it? It must be altered. Could 
 I not write more as I do here ? My style is like no other man's. 
 The first sentence bewrays me. How wrong is that? Mannerism 
 at least!" 
 
 " Shall I go to London and deliver a course of lectures? Shall I 
 endeavor to write a ' Time-Hat ' ? Shall I write a Life of Bonaparte? 
 A French Revolution? The decease of bookselling perplexes me. 
 Will ever a good book henceforth be paid for by the public? Per- 
 haps; perhaps not. Never more, in general. Quefaire? Live and 
 struggle. And so now to work." 
 
 The dejected tone so visible in these entries was due to no idle 
 speculative distress, but to the menacing aspect which circumstances 
 were beginning to assume. The editors and booksellers were too 
 evidently growing shy; and unless articles could find insertion or 
 books be paid for, no literary life for Carlyle would long be possible. 
 Employment of some other kind, however humble and distasteful, 
 would have to be sought for and accepted. Anything, even the 
 meanest, would be preferable to courting popularity, and writing 
 less than the very best that he could; writing ' dads,' as he called it,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 219 
 
 to please the popular taste. An experienced publisher once said to 
 me: " Sir, if you wish to write a book which will sell, consider the 
 ladies' maids. Please the ladies' maids, you please the great reading 
 world." Carlyle would not, could not, write for ladies' maids. 
 
 The dreary monotony of the Craigenputtock life on these terms 
 was interrupted in November by interesting changes in the family 
 arrangements. The Carlyles, as has been more than once said, were 
 a family whose warmest affections were confined fo their own cir- 
 cle. Jean, the youngest sister, the "little crow," was about to be 
 married to her cousin, James Aitken, who had once lived at Scots- 
 brig, and was now a rising tradesman in Dumfries ; a house-painter 
 by occupation, of a superior sort, and possessed of talents in that 
 department which, with better opportunities, might have raised him 
 to eminence as an artist. "James Aitken," Carlyle wrote, "is an 
 ingenious, clever kind of fellow, with fair prospects, no bad habit, 
 and perhaps very great skill in his craft. I saw a copied Ruys- 
 dael of his doing which amazed me." The "crow" had not fol- 
 lowed up the poetical promise of her childhood. She had edu- 
 cated herself into a clear, somewhat stern, well-informed, and sensi- 
 ble woman. Hard Annandale farm-work had left her no time for 
 more. But, like all the Carlyles, she was of a rugged, independent 
 temper. Jean, her mother said, was outgrowing the contracted 
 limits of the Scotsbrig household. Her marriage consequently 
 gave satisfaction to all parties. Carlyle himself was present at the 
 ceremony. "A cold mutton-pie of gigantic dimensions" was con- 
 sumed for the breakfast; " the stirrup-cup " was drunk, Carlyle join- 
 ing, and this domestic matter was happily ended. 
 
 But Jean's marriage was not all. James Carlyle, the youngest 
 brother, who carried on the Scotsbrig farm, had a similar scheme on 
 foot, and had for himself fallen in love; "nothing since Werter's 
 time equalling the intensity of his devotion." He, too, was eager to 
 be married; but, as this arrangement would affect his mother's posi- 
 tion, Carlyle, as the eldest of the family, had to interfere to prevent 
 precipitancy. All was well settled in the following spring, Carlyle 
 making fresh sacrifices to bring it about. His brother Alick owed 
 him more than 2001. This, if it could be paid, or when it could be 
 paid, was to be added to his younger brother's fortune. His mother 
 was either to continue at Scotsbrig, or some new home was to be 
 found for her, which Carlyle himself thought preferable. His letter 
 to the intending bridegroom will be read with an interest which ex- 
 tends beyond its immediate subject. 
 
 "You have doubtless considered [he said] that such an engage- 
 ment must presuppose one condition : our mother and sisters form- 
 ing some other establishment also. I should not be surprised, in- 
 deed, if you had fancied that our mother and your wife might try
 
 220 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to live together at Scotsbrig; but depend upon it, my dear brother, 
 this will never and in no case do. The house must belong to your 
 wife from the instant she sets foot in it; neither mother nor sister 
 must any longer be there to contest it with her. The next question 
 then for all of us, and for you too, is, What will my mother and the 
 two lassies do? I have thought of it often; and though changes are 
 always grievous, I think there are means to get a new way of life 
 devised for our dear mother and those who yet need her guidance, 
 and see them supported without burdening any one. They must 
 have, of course, a habitation of their own. With my mother's 
 money, with the interest of the girls' money, with mine (or what was 
 Alick's, now in your hands), which I think of adding to it, they will 
 be able to live decently enough, I think, if we can be judicious in 
 choosing some place for them. 
 
 "In this latter ' if ,' however, you yourself see that Martinmas is 
 by no means the fit time; that Whitsunday, the universal term-day 
 of the country, is the soonest they can be asked to find new quarters. 
 Now, as your wife cannot be brought home to Scotsbrig before that 
 time, my decided advice were that you did not wed till then. I un- 
 derstand what wonderful felicities young men like you expect from 
 marriage; I know too (for it is a truth as old as the world) that such 
 expectations hold out but for a little while. I shall rejoice much 
 (such is my experience of the world) if in your new situation you 
 feel as happy as in the old; say nothing of happier. But, in any 
 case, do I not know that you will never (whatever happens) venture 
 on any such solemn engagement with a direct duty to fly in the face 
 of? the duty, namely, of doing to your dear mother and your dear 
 sisters as you would wish that they should do to you. Believe me, my 
 dear brother, wait. Half a year for such an object is not long ! 
 If you ever repent so doing, blame me for it. 
 
 " And so now, my dear James, you have it all before you, and can 
 consider what you will do. Do nothing that is seljisfi, nothing that 
 you cannot front the world and the world's Maker upon ! May He 
 direct you right." 
 
 Carlyle, perhaps, judged of possibilities by his own recollections. 
 He, when it would have added much to his own wife's happiness, 
 and might have shielded her entirely from the worst of her suffer- 
 ings, had refused peremptorily to live with her mother, or let her 
 live with them, except on impossible terms. He knew himself and 
 his peremptory disposition, and in that instance was probably right. 
 His own mother happily found such an arrangement not impossible. 
 Her son married, and she did not leave her home, but lived out there 
 her long and honored life, and ended it under the old roof. 
 
 Carlyle himself, meanwhile, was soon back again with his "Dia- 
 mond Necklace " and his proof-sheets of " Teufelsdrockh " at Craig- 
 enputtock, where his winter life stands pictured in his correspond- 
 ence.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 221 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: November 18, 1833. 
 
 "I will now record for you a little smallest section of universal 
 history: the scene still Aunandale. The Tuesday after the wedding 
 I sate correcting the second portion of ' Teuf elsdrockh ' for Fr cuter" a 
 Magazine, but towards night Alick, according to appointment, ar- 
 rived with his 'little black mare' to drive me 'somewhither' next 
 day. We after some consultation made it Annan, and saw our- 
 selves there about one o'clock. A damp, still afternoon, quite No- 
 vemberish and pensive - making. The look of those old familiar 
 houses, the jow of the old bell, went far into my heart. A strug- 
 gling funeral proceeded up the street; Senhouse Nelson (now Re- 
 form Bill Provost), with Banker Scott, in such priggish clothes as he 
 wears, and two others of the like, stood on Benson's porch stairs 
 gazing into inanity. Annan still stood there: and I here. Ben 
 was from home; his little son gone to London, the maid thought, 
 into some hospital, some navy appointment, into she knew not what. 
 Finally, we determined on seeking out Waugh. 1 Old Marion, as 
 clean and dour as ever, hobblingly admitted us. There sate the doctor, 
 grizzle-locked (since I saw him), yellow, wrinkled, forlorn, and out- 
 cast-looking, with beeswax and other tailor or botcher apparatus on 
 a little table, the shell of an old coat lying dismembered on the floor; 
 another not yet so condemnable, which with his own hand he was 
 struggling to rehabilitate ; a new cuff I saw (after he had huddled 
 the old vestment on), evidently of his own making; the front button- 
 holes had all exploded, a huge rent lay under one armpit, extending 
 over the back; the coat demanded mending, since turning was not to 
 be thought of. There sate he; into such last corner (with the pale 
 winter sun looking through on him) had ScMcksal und eigne 8chuld 
 hunted the ill-starred Waugh. For the first time, I was truly woe for 
 him. He talked, too, with such meekness, yet is still mad ; talking 
 of 1200J. to be made by a good comedy, and such like. When we 
 came out (since the state of his coat would not allow him to come 
 with us) Alick and I settled that at least we would assure ourselves 
 of his having food ; Alick, therefore, got twenty shillings to take him 
 four hundredweight of potatoes and eight stone of meal; three 
 fourths of which have been already handed in (without explana- 
 tion); the rest will follow at Candlemas. So goes it in native An- 
 nandale. A hundred times since has that picture of Waugh, botch- 
 ing his old coat at the cottage window, stranded and cast out from 
 the whole occupied earth, risen in my head with manifold meaning." 
 His ' Prophecy Book ' has not paid its expenses. His ' Pathology ' 
 the Longmans, very naturally, would not have. I endeavored to 
 convince him that literature was hopeless, doubly and trebly hope- 
 
 ' Son of a thriving citizen of Annan, who had been Carlyle's contemporary and fellow- 
 student at Edinburgh, a friend of Irving, at whose rooms, indeed, Carlyle first became 
 acquainted with Irving : who. with money, connections, and supposed talents, had 
 studied medicine, taken his degree, and was considered to have the brightest prospoc ts ; 
 had gone into literature, among other adventures; and now, between vanity and ill- 
 fortune, had drifted into what is here described. 
 
 a The fate of unsuccessful '-literature."
 
 222 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 less for him. Further advice I did not like to urge; my sole con- 
 solation is to know that for the present he has plenty of meal and 
 potatoes, and salt cheap. Perhaps it is likely he will fall into his 
 mother's state, let an indolent insanity get the mastery over him, and 
 spend his time mostly in bed. I rather traced some symptoms of 
 that: Oott behute. 
 
 " Here at Craigenputtock everything is in its stillest condition. I 
 have read many books, put through me a vast multitude of thoughts 
 unutterable and utterable. In health we seem to improve, especial- 
 ly .Iain-kin. We have realized a shower-bath at Dumfries, and erect- 
 ed it in the room over this; the little dame fearlessly plunges it over 
 her in coldest mornings. I have had it only twice. Further, of ex- 
 ternal things, know that by science I extracted the dining-room lock, 
 had it repaired, and now it shuts like a Christian lock! This is small 
 news, yet great. In my little library are two bell-ropes (brass wire 
 and curtain-ring), the daintiest you ever saw ; finally, the ' Segretario 
 Ambulante ' in fittest framing hangs right behind my back (midway 
 between the doors and the fire) and looks beautiful; really the piece 
 of art I take most pleasure in of all my Kunst- Vorrath. He is a de- 
 lightful fellow; shows you literature in its simplest, quite steadfast 
 condition, below which it cannot sink. My own portrait was to have 
 been framed similarly and hung by him as counterpart ; but Jane 
 has put in rosewood and gilding, much to my dislike, and it hangs 
 now on the other side of the wall (in the drawing-room), and keeps 
 mostly out of my sight. If you think that our piano will still act, 
 that one reach of the peat-stack is carried in, and all else in its old 
 state, you may fancy us all tight and right, so far as the case of life 
 goes. As to the kernel or spiritual part, there can hardly any de- 
 scription be given, so much of it has not yet translated itself into 
 words. I am quiet; not idle, not unhappy; by God's blessing shall 
 yet see how I can turn myself. Cochrane refuses both my project- 
 ed articles. I have nevertheless written the ' Diamond Necklace ;' 
 at least, it is rough-hewn in the drawer here, and only these mar- 
 riages have kept me from finishing it. The other article I could not 
 now have undertaken to write, the Saint-Simonians, as you may per- 
 haps know, having very unexpectedly come to light again, and set 
 to giving missionary lectures of a most questionable sort in London. 
 Mill is not there to tell me about them, but in Paris ; so I can under- 
 stand nothing of it, except that they are not to be written of, being 
 once more in the fermenting state. Cochrane and I have probably 
 enough done; but, as Wull Brown says, 'perhaps it is just as well; 
 for I firmly intended, etc. ' I believe I must go back ere long and 
 look at London again. In the meantime learn, study, read; con- 
 sider thy ways and be wise! ' Teufelsdrockh,' as was hinted, is 
 coming out in Fraser going 'to pot' probably, yet not without 
 leaving me some money, not without making me quit of him. To 
 it again ! Try it once more ! Alick was here since Saturday ; came 
 up with two sacks of old oats for Harry; went away this morning 
 with a load of wood, etc. Not till Saturday last did we hear a word 
 from the Advocate. He now writes to Jane in the frostiest, most 
 frightened manner; makes honorable mention of you; to me he 
 hardly alludes except from a far distance. Jane will have it that he
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 223 
 
 took many things to himself in the article 'Diderot, 'a possible 
 thing, which corresponds, too, with the cessation of his letters. I 
 love the Advocate, and partially pity him, and will write to him in 
 such choicest mood as I can command at present." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Decembers, 1833. 
 
 "My dear Mother, I hope JSTotman delivered you the pills, so 
 stupidly forgotten. The hasty scrawl that went with them would 
 signify that we were here and little more ; I was hardly this twelve- 
 month in such a hurry. Since then all goes on as it was doing; in 
 spite of this most disastrous weather, the worst we have had for 
 long, we indeed sit snug and defy the tempest ; but Macadam's sta- 
 ble-slates jingling off from time to time suggest to us what many are 
 suffering; some, doubtless, far out in the ' wide and wasteful main.' 
 Both Jane and I go walking by night, if not by day, if there is a 
 gleam of clearness. I take now and then a kind of deck-walk to and 
 fro at the foot of the avenue, in a spot where you know the wood 
 shelters one from all winds that can blow. 
 
 " We saw Jean and her man and household as we passed through 
 Dumfries; it was all looking right enough; one could hope that they 
 might do very well there. Aitken, I^find, by a picture over his 
 mantel-piece, has quite another talent for painting than I gave him 
 the smallest credit for; it is really a surprising piece to have been 
 executed there. Ae to Jean, we have always known her as a most 
 reasonable, clear, and resolute little creature; of her, in all scenes 
 and situations, good is to be anticipated. So we will wish them 
 heartily a blessing with hope. 
 
 " Ever since Alick left us I have been writing with all my old ve- 
 hemence. This day, too, insisted on doing my task. It is about the 
 ' Diamond Necklace, ' that story you heard some hint of in Caglios- 
 tro ; we shall see what it turns to. I am in the drawing-room to- 
 night, with my big table (and side half to the fire, which is hot 
 enough); Jane at my back also writing; what she will not tell me. 
 We have been here together these three days ; the rain had run down 
 the vents actually in large streams and damped everything. This is 
 what I call descriptive minuteness. Let me also say I have been 
 reading in poor Waugh's book, and find your opinion of it verified ; 
 it is actually ' far better than one could have expected, ' and contains 
 some interesting things. Poor Waugh! Poor fellow after all! 
 
 " Alick's little letter (one of the smallest I ever read, but not the 
 emptiest) informed us of what had been passing at Catlinns, and that 
 you were there, he said, well. Have you returned from the expedi- 
 tion still well? I cannot too often impress on you the danger of 
 winter weather; you have a tendency to apprehension for every one 
 but yourself. Catlinns is not a good place in winter, and were Jen- 
 ny not the healthiest of women, must have been very trying for her. 
 
 "But there is another expedition, my dear mother, to which you 
 are bound, which I hope you are getting ready for. Come up with 
 Austin and Mary to Jean; stay with her till you rest; sending me 
 up word when; on Wednesday or any other day I will come driving 
 down and fetch you. In about a week hence, as I calculate, I shall
 
 224 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 be done with this scribblement, and then we can read together and 
 talk together and walk together. Besides, this, in the horrid winter 
 weather, is a better lodging for you than any other, and we will take 
 better care of you we promise. The blue room shall be dry as fire 
 can make it; no such drying, except those you make at Scotsbrig, 
 where on one occasion, as I remember, you spent the whole time of 
 my visit in drying my clothes. Lastly, that when ' you come you 
 may come.' Jane bids me communicate to Jamie that she wants 
 three stone of meal, but will not take it unless he take pay for it. 
 
 "And so, dear mother, this scribble must end, as others have 
 done. To-morrow, I believe, is my eight -and-thirtieth birthday! 
 You were then young in life : I had not yet entered it. Since then 
 how much! how much! They are in the land of silence (but, while 
 we live, not of f orgetfulness ! ) whom we once knew, and, often 
 with thoughts too deep for words, wistfully ask of their and our 
 Father above that we may again know. God is great; God is good! 
 It is written ' He will wipe away all tears from every eye. ' Be it as 
 He wills, not as we wish. These things continually almost dwell 
 with me, loved figures hovering in the background or foreground of 
 my mind. A few years more and we too shall be with them in eter- 
 nity. Meanwhile it is this Time that is ours: let us be busy with it 
 and work, work, for the night cometh. 
 
 " I send you all, young and' old, my heart's blessing, and remain 
 as ever, my dear mother, Your affectionate 
 
 "T. CARLYLE." 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : December 24, 1833. 
 
 "My dear Brother, The description you give us of your Roman 
 life is copious and clear: very gratifying to us; such matter as we 
 like best to see in your letter. For myself, however, I can discern, 
 what perhaps our good mother does not so well, that with all favor- 
 able circumstances you have need of your philosophy there. Alas ! 
 all modes of existence need such : we are, once for all, ' in a condi- 
 tional world. ' Your great grievance doubtless is that properly your 
 office gives you nothing to do. Three hundred a year with sump- 
 tuous accommodation you have, but that is all. The days have to 
 fly over you, and you seem to remain, as it were, wind-bound ; little 
 more than an article of aristocratic state so far as your own house- 
 hold goes. This I can well see and sympathize in. It is hard, in- 
 deed, and grating to one's love of action ; a thing intolerable, did it 
 threaten to continue forever. But you are no longer a headstrong 
 youth, but grown a deliberate man. Accordingly, I see you adjust 
 yourself to this also, from this also gather nourishment and strength. 
 You are equipping yourself (in that strange way, so it was ordered) 
 for your life voyage; patience, and the anchor is lifted. In the 
 meanwhile, too, you know well no situation imposes on us the ne- 
 cessity of idleness ; if not in one way, if not in one of a hundred 
 ways, you will work in the hundred and first. Continue, I beg you, 
 to be mild, and either tolerant or silently intolerant. Let them go 
 their way : go thou thine. What medical practice is to be come at, 
 eagerly take. In defect of this, read your Winckelmann, or any
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 225 
 
 other solid book most appropriate to the place; converse with all 
 manner of mortals whose knowledge, as above ignorance, can di- 
 rectly or indirectly teach you aught. I should prefer Romans, I 
 think, to any such a set of English as you have; in any case, if it is 
 a man, and not a shadow of a man, one can get some good of him. 
 My poor ' Segretario Ambulante,' actually converting disorder into 
 order here in a small way, and realizing victual for himself, is 
 worth a hundred mere Clothes-horses and Patent Digesters, by 
 what glorious name soever they may call themselves, that either 
 do nothing, or the reverse of doing, which is even lower than 
 nothing. Patience, therefore, my dear brother ! Ohne Hast aber 
 ohne Rast. Let the cooks boil, and the tailors sew, and the shovel- 
 hat emit weekly his modicum of dish-water disguised as water of 
 life ; it is all in the course of nature : ' like the crane's hoarse jingling 
 flight that over our heads in long-drawn shriek sends down its 
 creaking gabble, and tempts the silent wanderer that he look aloft 
 at them a moment. These go their way and he goes his; so like- 
 wise shall it be with us.' 
 
 "And so now for a little Dumfriesshire news. Our good mother 
 continues in her old state of health, or rather better, as they report 
 to me. I expect her about Wednesday week. Austin and Mary l 
 will bring her to Jean's, and then on some appointed day I go down 
 to fetch her with the gig. Austin can find no farm, he told us. 
 What arrangement he will make for the coming year is not yet 
 apparent. Many a time, I think, the foolish creatures, had they 
 known better what stuff hope is made of, might as well have stayed 
 where they were. But, at any rate, it was a change to be made 
 whether to-day or to-morrow is perhaps of little moment. A kind 
 of sadness naturally came over our mother's mind at this new proof 
 of terrestrial vicissitude, but withal she is quite peaceful and reso- 
 lute, having indeed a deeper basis than earth and its vicissitudes to 
 stand upon. I hardly know now another person in the world that 
 so entirely believes and acts on her belief. Doubt not that all will 
 shape itself, or be shapen, in some tolerable way. Jean, as you 
 heard, is in her own house at Lochmaben Gate; to all appearances 
 doing perfectly well. Alick has got a new son, whom he has 
 named, or purposes naming, Tom, after me. He can get along 
 amid the black mud acres of Catlinns, but with a continual struggle. 
 One of his day-dreams for many a year has been America. I have 
 ceased to oppose it so firmly of late; indeed, I often enough think 
 what if I should go to America myself ! Thousands and millions 
 must yet go; it is properly but another section of our own country, 
 though they rebelled very justly against George Guelph, and bout 
 him, as they ought. W T e shall do or determine nothing rashly, the 
 rather as for the present nothing-presses. 
 
 "As for Craigenputtock, it stands here in winter grimness, in 
 winter seclusion. Nothing could exceed the violence of the Decem- 
 ber weather we have had ; trees uprooted, Macadam slates jingling 
 down, deluges of rain: Friday, in particular, did immense mischief 
 to ships and edifices all over the island ; such a day as has not been 
 
 1 Carlyle's sister. 
 II. 9*
 
 226 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 seen for a quarter of a century, they say. We nestled ourselves 
 down here: 'better a wee bush than no bield.' The shortest day is 
 now behind us; we shall look forward to a spring which will be all 
 the gladder. I continue to read great quantities of books. I have 
 also, with an effort, accomplished the projected piece on the Dia- 
 mond Necklace. It was finished this day week; really, a queer 
 kind of thing, of some forty and odd pages. Jane, at first, thought 
 we should print it at our own charges, set our name on it, and 
 send it out in God's name. Neither she nor I are now so sure of 
 this, but will consider it. My attempt was to make reality ideal; 
 there is considerable significance in that notion of mine, and I have 
 not yet seen the limits of it, nor shall till I have tried to go as far as 
 it will carry me. The story of the Diamond Necklace is all told in 
 that paper with the strictest fidelity, yet in a kind of musical way. 
 It seems to me there is no epic possible that does not first of all 
 ground itself on belief. What a man does not believe can never at 
 bottom be of true interest to him. For the rest, I remain in the 
 completes! isolation from all manner of editors. ' Teufelsdrockh ' is 
 coming regularly out in Fraser's, with what effect or non-effect I 
 know not, consider not ; and this is all I have to do with the world 
 of letters and types. Before very long I shall most probably begin 
 something else : at all events, go over again to the Barjarg library, 
 and so use my time and not waste it. I have a considerable quan- 
 tity and quality of things to impart to my brothers in this earth, if 
 God see meet to keep me in it, and no editor, nor body of editors, 
 nor, indeed, the whole world and the Devil to back it out, can wholly 
 prevent me from imparting them. Forward, then getrosten Muthes. 
 
 "My thirty-eighth birthday happened on the 4th last. I am fast 
 verging towards forty, either as fool or physician. The flight of 
 lime is a world-old topic. I was much struck and consoled to see 
 it handled quite in my own spirit in the Book of Job, as I read there 
 lately. Oh, Jack! Jack! what unutterable things one would have 
 to utter, had one organs! We have had some five or six letters from 
 the Advocate: mostly unanswered yet. He asks me why I am not 
 as cheerful a man as you ? Babbles greatly about one thing and 
 the other. They gave him a dinner at Edinburgh, listened patiently 
 to his account of himself, pardoned him for the sake of langsyne. 
 We hear now, not from himself, that some Lord Cringletie or other 
 is about resigning, and that Jeffrey is to be made a JUDGE. It will 
 be a happy change. Macaulay goes to India with 10,000?. a year. 
 Jeffrey calls him the greatest (if I remember rightly) man in Eng- 
 land, not excepting the Chancellor. How are we to get on without 
 him at all? Depend upon it, we shall get on better or worse. 
 
 "And now, my dear brother, leaving these extraneous things and 
 persons, let me commend us all again to you, the absent, and there- 
 fore best loved. We shall not see you at our New Year's day, but I 
 here promise to think of you quite specially, and even drink your 
 health (from my heart), though it were only in water, that day. Let 
 us, as I said, be patient and peaceable. There are other new j^ears 
 coming, when we shall not be so far apart. Meanwhile, be strong. 
 Remember always what you said of the rush-bush here at Puttock 
 on the wayside : ' It stands there because the whole world could not
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 227 
 
 prevent it standing;' one of the best thoughts I ever heard you utter 
 a really true and pregnant thought. So, too, with ourselves. Let 
 us resist the devil, the world, and the flesh. Alas! it is ill to do; yet 
 one should forever endeavor. Cheer up your low heart in the midst 
 of those Roman ruins. There is a time still young and fruitful, 
 which belongs to us. Get impatient with nobody. How easy it is 
 to bid you do this ; yet really it is right and true: the thing we 
 have to do were to abolish and abandon the worthless. If we can- 
 not do this all at once, let us, at least, not make it worse by adding 
 our own badness to it. 
 
 " God be with you, my dear John. BROTHER TOM." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle writes a postscript between the lines 
 
 " My dear Brother, I am told there is great space left for me to 
 add anything. Say, judge with your own eyes, where. If I had 
 known a letter was to go this week, I should have been first in field. 
 My good intentions, always unfortunate, were frustrated last time; 
 but Carlyle always chooses a day for writing when I am particu- 
 larly engaged with household good and individual evil. God bless 
 you, however! Some day I shall certainly repay your long, kind 
 letter as it deserves. I continue to take your pills. The prescrip- 
 tion is in four pieces. I am better than last whiter, but ' association 
 of ideas ' is still hard on me." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A.D. 1834. MT. 39. 
 
 THE economical situation of the Carlyles at Craigenputtock grew 
 daily more pressing. The editors gave no sign of desiring any fur- 
 ther-articles. " Teuf elsdrockh " was still coming out in Fraser; 
 but the public verdict upon it was almost universally unfavorable. 
 The "Diamond Necklace," which in my opinion is the very finest 
 illustration of Carlyle's literary power, had been refused in its first 
 form by the editor of the Foreign Quarterly. Fevered as he was 
 with the burning thoughts which were consuming his very soul, 
 which he felt instinctively, if once expressed, would make their 
 mark on the mind of his country, Carlyle yet knew that his first 
 duty was to provide honest maintenance for himself and his wife 
 somewhere and by some means; if not in England or Scotland, then 
 in America. His aims in this direction were of the very humblest, 
 not going beyond St. Paul's. With "food and raiment" both he 
 and his wife could be well content. But even for these, the supplies 
 to be derived from literature threatened to fail, and what to do next 
 he knew not. In this situation he learned from a paragraph in a 
 newspaper that a new Astronomy Professorship was about to be 
 established in Edinburgh. Some Rhetoric chair .was also likely to 
 be immediately vacant. One or other of these, especially the first,
 
 228 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 he thought that Jeffrey could, if he wished, procure for him. Hith- 
 erto all attempts to enter on the established roads of life had failed. 
 He had little hopes that another would succeed; but he thought it 
 to be his duty to make the attempt. He was justly conscious of his 
 qualifications. The mathematical ability which he had shown in 
 earlier times had been so remarkable as to have drawn the attention 
 of Legendre. Though by the high standard by which he habitually 
 tried himself Carlyle could speak, and did speak, of his own capa- 
 bilities with mere contempt, yet he was above the affectation of 
 pretending to believe that any really fitter candidate was likely to 
 offer himself. " I will this day write to Jeffrey about it," he says 
 in his Diary on the llth of January. "Any hope? Little. My 
 care for it also not much. Let us do what we can. The issue not 
 with us." He cared perhaps more than he had acknowledged to 
 himself. He allowed his imagination to rest on a possible future, 
 where, delivered from the fiery unrest which was distracting him, 
 he might spend the remainder of his life in the calm and calm- 
 ing study of the stars and their movements. It was a last effort to 
 lay down the burden which had been laid upon him, yet not a cow- 
 ardly effort rather a wise and laudable one undertaken as it was 
 in submission to the Higher Will. 
 
 It failed failed with an emphasis of which the effects can be 
 traced in Carlyle's Reminiscences of his connection with Jeffrey. 
 He condemns especially the tone of Jeffrey, which he thought both 
 ungenerous and insincere. Insincere it certainly was, if Jeffrey had 
 any real influence, for he said that he had none, and if he had al- 
 ready secured the appointment for his own secretary, for he said 
 that he had not recommended his secretary. It may have been un- 
 generous if, as Carlyle suspected, Jeffrey had resented some remarks 
 in the article on Diderot as directed against himself, for he endeav- 
 ored to lay the blame of unfitness for promotion upon Carlyle him- 
 self; but there is no proof at all that Carlyle's surmise was correct. 
 
 " Within the last few days [Carlyle wrote to his brother] I have 
 made a proposal for a public office, and been rejected! There is to 
 be an Astronomical Professor and Observer in Edinburgh, and no 
 man of the smallest likelihood to fill it. I thought what an honest 
 kind of work it was; how honestly I would work at it for my bread, 
 and harmonize it with what tended infinitely higher than bread, 
 and so wrote to the poor Advocate with great heartiness, telling him 
 all this. He answered me by return of post in a kind of polite fish- 
 woman shriek ; adds that my doctrines (in literature) are ' arrogant, 
 anti-national, absurd;' and to crown the whole, ' in conclusion,' that 
 the place withal is for an old secretary of his (who has not applied 
 to him), unless I can convince the electors that I am fitter; which I 
 have not the faintest disposition to do. I have written back to the 
 poor body, suppressing all indignation, if there were any; diffusing
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 229 
 
 over all the balm of pity, and so in a handsome manner terminate 
 the business. One has ever and anon a kind of desire to 'wash 
 away' this correspondent of ours; yet really it were not right. I 
 can see him even in this letter to be very thoroughly miserable, and 
 am bound to help him, not aggravate him. His censures, too, have 
 something flattering even in their violence otherwise impertinent 
 enough; he cannot tolerate me, but also he cannot despise me; and 
 that is the sole misery. On the whole, dear Jack, I feel it very 
 wholesome to have my vanity humbled from time to time. Would 
 it were rooted out forever and a day! My mother said when I 
 showed her the purport of the letter, ' He canna hinder thee of God's 
 providence, ' which also was a glorious truth." 
 
 In this severe judgment there was possibly some justice. The 
 doubt which Jeffrey pretended to feel, whether Carlyle was equal 
 to the duties of handling delicate instruments without injuring them, 
 cannot have been quite sincere. The supposition that a man of su- 
 preme intellectual qualification could fail in mastering a mere me- 
 chanical operation couid only have originated in irritation. Carlyle 
 already possessed a scientific knowledge of his subject. A few days' 
 instruction might easily have taught him the mere manual exercise. 
 It is possible, too, that if Jeffrey had gone out of his way to repre- 
 sent to Airy and Herschel, with whom the choice rested, what Car- 
 lyle's qualities really were, he might have saved to a Scotch univer- 
 sity Scotland's greatest son, who would have made the School of 
 Astronomy at Edinburgh famous throughout Europe, and have 
 saved Scotland the scandal of neglect of him till his fame made neg- 
 lect impossible. 
 
 In fairness to Jeffrey, however, whose own name will be remem- 
 bered in connection with Carlyle as his first literary friend, we must 
 put the Lord-advocate's case in his own way. If he was mistaken, 
 he was mistaken about Carlyle's character with all the world. Every 
 one in Jeffrey's high Whig circle, the Broughams and Macaulays 
 and such like, thought of Carlyle as he did. High original genius 
 is always ridiculed on its first appearance ; most of all by those who 
 have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the estab- 
 lished lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has cre- 
 ated the taste which is to appreciate it. Carlyle acknowledged " that 
 no more unpromotable man than he was perhaps at present extant." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle had answered Jeffrey's frosty communication in the 
 preceding November with a playfulness which, so far as she was 
 concerned, had disarmed his anger with her, and he had fallen near- 
 ly back into his old tone. 
 
 Unpermitted though I am to publish Jeffrey's letters, I must, in 
 allowing him to vindicate himself, adhere, as nearly as I can with- 
 out trespassing, to his own language. 
 
 In the first week in December he had written affectionately to
 
 230 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle and kindly to Carlyle himself, pressing them to pay 
 him a visit at Craigcrook. He professed, and assuredly felt (for his 
 active kindness in the past years places his sincerity above suspicion), 
 a continued interest in Carlyle, some provocation, some admiration, 
 and a genuine desire for his happiness. Carlyle thought that he did 
 not please Jeffrey because he was so " dreadfully in earnest." The 
 expression had in fact been used by Jeffrey; but what retlly offend- 
 ed and estranged him was Carlyle's extraordinary arrogance a fault 
 of which no one who knew Carlyle, or who has ever read his letters, 
 can possibly acquit him. He was superior to the people that he came 
 in contact with. He knew that he was, and being incapable of dis- 
 guise or affectation, he let it be seen hi every sentence that he spoke 
 or wrote. It was arrogance, but not the arrogance of a fool, swollen 
 with conceit and vapor, but the arrogance of Aristotle's "man of 
 lofty soul," "who being of great merit" knows that he is so, and 
 chooses to be so regarded. It was not that Carlyle ever said to him- 
 self that he was wiser than others. When it came to introspection, 
 never had any one a lower opinion of himself; but let him be crossed 
 in argument, let some rash person, whoever he might be, dare to 
 contradict him, and Johnson himself was not more rude, disdainful, 
 and imperious; and this quality in him had very naturally dis- 
 pleased Jeffrey, and had served to blind him, at least in some de- 
 gree, to the actual greatness of Carlyle's powers. In this letter Jeffrey 
 frankly admitted that he disliked the wrangling to which Carlyle 
 treated him. Never having had much of a creed himself, he thought 
 he had daily less ; and having no tendency to dogmatism and no im- 
 patience of indecision, he thought zeal for creeds and anxiety about 
 positive opinions more and more ludicrous. In fact, he regarded 
 discussions which aimed at more than exercising the faculties and 
 exposing intolerance very tiresome and foolish. 
 
 But, for all that, he invited Carlyle with genuine heartiness to come 
 down from his mountains and join the Christmas party at Craig- 
 crook. Carlyle professed to be a lover of his fellow-creatures. Jef- 
 frey said he had no patience with a philanthropy that drew people 
 into the desert and made them fly from the face of man. 
 
 The good-humored tone of his letter, and the pleasant banter of it, 
 ending as it did with reiterated professions of a willingness to serve 
 Carlyle if an opportunity offered, made it natural on Carlyle's part 
 to apply to him when an opportunity did present itself immediately 
 after. Jeffrey's letter had been written on December 8. Three 
 weeks later the news of the intended Astronomy Professorship 
 reached Craigenputtock, while Carlyle was told also that Jeffrey 
 would probably have the decisive voice in the appointment. Car- 
 lyle wrote to him at once to ask for his good word, and there came 
 by return of post the answer which he calls the "fishwoman's
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 231 
 
 shriek," and which it is clear that he never forgave. For some rea- 
 son for the reason, possibly, which Carlyle surmised, that he ex- 
 pected the situation to be given to his own secretary Jeffrey was 
 certainly put out by being taken thus at his word when he had vol- 
 unteered to be of use. 
 
 Impatiently, and even abruptly, he told Carlyle that he had no 
 chance of getting the Astronomy Chair, and that it would be idle 
 for him (Jeffrey) to ask for it. The appointment was entirely out 
 of his own sphere, and he would be laughed at if he interfered. As 
 a matter of fact, the most promising candidate was his secretary, a 
 gentleman who had already been nominated for the Observatory at 
 the Cape, and wished to go through some preliminary observing 
 work at Edinburgh. But this gentleman, he said, had not applied 
 to him for a recommendation, but trusted to his own merits. It was 
 matter of notoriety that no testimonial would be looked at except 
 from persons of weight and authority in that particular branch of 
 science, and he was perfectly certain indeed he knew that the 
 government would be entirely guided by their opinions. The place 
 would be given, and it was difficult to say that it ought not to be 
 given, according to the recommendations of Herschel, Airy, Bab- 
 bage, and six or seven other men of unquestionable eminence in the 
 astronomical department, without the least regard to unprofessional 
 advisers. If Carlyle could satisfy tfiem that he was the fittest per- 
 son for the place, he might be sure of obtaining it ; if he could not, 
 he might be equally sure that it was needless to think of it. Whether 
 Carlyle's scientific qualifications were such that he would be able to 
 satisfy them, Jeffrey would not pretend to judge. But he added a 
 further reason for thinking that Carlyle had no chance of success. 
 He had had no practice in observing, and nobody would be appoint- 
 ed who was not both practised and of acknowledged skill. Sir 
 David Brewster and Lord Napier looked on this as the most im- 
 portant qualification of all, and would abate much scientific attain- 
 ment to secure tactical dexterity and acquired habits of observa- 
 tion. Herschel, it was said, was of the same opinion, and they were 
 unlikely to trust the handling of their instruments to one who had 
 not served an apprenticeship in the mechanical parts of the business. 
 They were already crying out about the mischief which another 
 professor had occasioned by his awkwardness, mischief which it 
 would cost 500?. and many months of work to repair. The place to 
 be given was, in fact, essentially an observer's place, there being 
 little expectation that a class of practical astronomy would be 
 formed out of the students at Edinburgh. It was not to be won- 
 dered at, therefore, that this qualification was regarded as indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 Had Jeffrey stopped here, Carlyle would have had no right to
 
 233 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 complain. It is probable, but, after all, it is not certain, that Car- 
 lyle would have made a good observer, even if the technical knowl- 
 edge could have been acquired without damage to the equatorials. 
 Carlyle, no doubt, was a person whom the electors should have been 
 grateful for the opportunity of choosing, if they had known what 
 his intellectual powers were ; but it is not clear that they could 
 have known, or that Jeffrey could have persuaded them if he had 
 tried. The "secretary" was not only qualified as an observer, 
 but he had been already selected for a most responsible place at 
 Cape Town. Brewster could have spoken for Carlyle's knowledge 
 of mathematics; but mathematics alone were insufficient; and, in 
 fact, it is difficult to see by what reasons any conceivable board 
 or body of men would have at that time been justified in preferring 
 Carlyle. 
 
 But Jeffrey went beyond what was necessary, in using the occa- 
 sion to give Carlyle a lecture. He was very sorry, he said ; but the 
 disappointment revived and increased the regret which he had al- 
 ways felt, that Carlyle was without the occupation, and consequent 
 independence, of some regular profession. The profession of teacJier 
 was, no doubt, a useful and noble one ; but it could not be exercised 
 unless a man had something to teach which was thought worth 
 learning, and in a way that was thought agreeable ; and neither of 
 those conditions was fulfilled by Carlyle. Jeffrey frankly said that 
 he could not set much value on paradoxes and exaggerations, and 
 no man ever did more than Carlyle to obstruct the success of his 
 doctrines by the tone in which he set them forth. It was arrogant, 
 obscure vituperation, and carried no conviction. It might impress 
 weak, fanciful minds, but it would only revolt calm, candid, and 
 thoughtful persons. It might seem harsh to speak as he was doing; 
 but he was speaking the truth, and Carlyle was being taught by ex- 
 perience to know that it was the truth. Never, never would he find 
 or make the world friendly to him if he persisted in addressing it in 
 so extravagant a tone. One thing he was glad to find, that Carlyle 
 was growing tired of solitude. He would be on his way to amend- 
 ment if he would live gently, humbly, and, if possible, gayly, with 
 other men ; let him once fairly come down from the barren and misty 
 eminence where he had his bodily abode, and he would soon be rec- 
 onciled to a no less salutary intellectual subsidence. 
 
 Disagreeable as language of this kind might be to Carlyle, it was, 
 after all, not unnatural from Jeffrey's point of view ; and there was 
 still nothing in it which he was entitled to resent : certainly nothing 
 of the " fishwoman." It was the language of a sensible man of the 
 world who had long earnestly endeavored to befriend Carlyle, and 
 had been thwarted by peculiarities in Carlyle's conduct and charac- 
 ter which had neutralized all his efforts. There was, in fact, very
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 233 
 
 little in what Jeffrey said which Carlyle, in his note-book, was not 
 often saying to and of himself. We must look further to explain 
 the deep, ineffaceable resentment which Carlyle evidently nourished 
 against Jeffrey for his behavior on this occasion. The Astronomical 
 chair was not the only situation vacant to which Carlyle believed 
 that he might aspire. There was a Rhetoric chair whether at Ed- 
 inburgh or in London University, I am not certain. To this it ap- 
 pears that there had been some allusion, for Jeffrey went on to say 
 that if he was himself the patron of that chair he would appoint Car- 
 lyle, though not without misgivings. But the University Commis- 
 sioners had decided that the Rhetoric chair was not to be refilled 
 unless some man of great and established reputation was willing to 
 accept it, and such a man Jeffrey said he could not in his conscience 
 declare Carlyle to be. Had it been Macaulay that was the candi- 
 date, then, indeed, the commissioners would see their way. Macau- 
 lay was the greatest of living Englishmen, not excepting the great 
 Brougham himself. But Carlyle was Carlyle. It was melancholy 
 and provoking to feel that perversions and absurdities (for as such 
 alone he could regard Carlyle's peculiar methods and doctrines) were 
 heaping up obstacles against his obtaining either the public position 
 or the general respect to which his talents and his diligence would 
 have otherwise entitled him. As long as society remained as it was 
 and thought as it did, there was not the least chance of his ever being 
 admitted as a teacher into any regular seminary. 
 
 There was no occasion for Jeffrey to have written with such ex- 
 treme harshness. If he felt obliged to expostulate, he might have 
 dressed his censures in a kinder form. To Carlyle such language 
 was doubly wounding, for he was under obligations to Jeffrey, 
 which his pride already endured with difficulty, and the tone of con- 
 descending superiority was infinitely galling. He was conscious, 
 too, that Jeffrey did not understand him. His extravagances, as Jef- 
 frey considered them, were but efforts to express thoughts of im- 
 measurable consequence. From his boyhood upwards he had strug- 
 gled to use his faculties honestly for the best purposes; to consider 
 only what was true and good, and never to be led astray by any 
 worldly interest; and for reward every door of preferment was 
 closed in his face, and poverty and absolute want seemed advancing 
 to overwhelm him. If he was tried in the fire, if he bore the worst 
 that the world could do to him and came out at last triumphant, let 
 those who think that they would have behaved better blame Carlyle 
 for his occasional bursts of impatience and resentment. High-toned 
 moral lectures were the harder to bear because Goethe, far off in 
 Germany, could recognize in the same qualities at which Jeffrey was 
 railing the workings of true original genius. 
 
 Even so, it is strange that Carlyle, after the victory had long been
 
 234 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 won, when his trials were all over and he was standing on the high- 
 est point of literary fame, known, honored, and admired over two 
 continents, should have nourished still an evident grudge against 
 the poor Lord-advocate, especially as, after the appearance of the 
 "French Revolution," Jeffrey had freely and without reserve ac- 
 knowledged that he had all along been wrong in his judgment of 
 Carlyle. One expression casually let fall at the end of one of Jef- 
 frey's letters, to which I need not do more than allude, contains a 
 possible explanation. Jeffrey was always gentlemanlike, and it is 
 not conceivable that he intended to affront Carlyle, but Carlyle may 
 have taken the words to himself in a sense which they were not 
 meant to bear; and a misunderstanding, to which self-respect would 
 have forbidden him to refer, may have infected his recollections of 
 a friend whom he had once cordially esteemed, and to whom both 
 he and his brothers were under obligations which could hardly be 
 overrated. But this is mere conjecture. It may be simply that Jef- 
 frey had once led Carlyle to hope for his assistance in obtaining pro- 
 motion in the world, and that, when an opportunity seemed to offer 
 itself, the assistance was not given. 
 
 Never any more did Carlyle seek admission into the beaten tracks 
 of established industry. He was impatient of harness, and had felt 
 all along that no official situation was fit for him, or he fit for it. 
 He would have endeavored loyally to do his duty in any position in 
 which he might be placed. Never would he have accepted employ- 
 ment merely for its salary, going through the perfunctory forms, 
 and reserving his best powers for other occupations. Anything 
 which he undertook to do he would have done with all his might; 
 but he would have carried into it the stern integrity which refused 
 to bend to conventional exigencies. His tenure of office, whether of 
 professor's chair or of office under government, would probably have 
 been brief, and would have come to a violent end. He never offered 
 himself again, and in later times, when a professorship might have 
 been found for him at Edinburgh, he refused to be nominated. He 
 called himself a Bedouin, and a Bedouin he was; a free lance owing 
 no allegiance save to his Maker and his own conscience. 
 
 On receiving Jeffrey's letter, he adjusted himself resolutely and 
 without complaining to the facts as they stood. He determined to 
 make one more attempt, either at Craigenputtock or elsewhere, to 
 conquer a place for himself, and earn an honest livelihood as an 
 English man of letters. If that failed, he had privately made up his 
 mind to try his fortune in America, where he had learned from Em- 
 erson, and where he himself instinctively felt, that he might expect 
 more favorable hearing. He was in no hurry. In all that he did 
 he acted with a deliberate circumspection scarcely to have been 
 looked for in so irritable a man. The words "judicious despera-
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 235 
 
 tion," by which he describes the principle on which he guided hia 
 earlier life, are exactly appropriate. 
 
 Including Fraser's payments for " Teuf elsdr5ckh, " he was pos- 
 sessed of about two hundred pounds, and until his brother John 
 could repay him the sums which had been advanced for his educa- 
 tion, he had no definite prospect of earning any more a very seri- 
 ous outlook, but he did not allow it to discompose him. At any 
 rate, he had no debts; never had a debt in his life except the fifty 
 pounds which he had borrowed from Jeffrey, and this, with the Ad- 
 vocate's loan to his brother, was now cleared off. The " Diamond 
 Necklace " had proved unsalable, but he worked quietly on upon 
 it, making additions and alterations as new books came in. He was 
 not solitary this winter. In some respects he was worse off than if 
 he had been solitary. With characteristic kindness he had taken 
 charge of the young Scotchman whom he had met in London, Wil- 
 liam Glen, gifted, accomplished, with the fragments in him of a true 
 man of genius, but with symptoms showing themselves of approach- 
 ing insanity, in which after a year or two he sank into total eclipse. 
 With Glen, half for his friend's sake, he read Homer and mathemat- 
 ics. Glen, who was a good scholar, taught Carlyle Greek. Carlyle 
 taught Glen Newtonian geometry ; in the intervals studying hard at 
 French Revolution history. His inward experience lies written in 
 his Diary. 
 
 "Saturday, January 11, 1834. So long since my pen was put to 
 paper here. The bustle, the confusion, has been excessive. Above 
 three weeks ago by writing violently I finished the 'Diamond 
 Necklace,' a singular sort of thing which is very far from pleasing 
 me. Scarcely was the ' Necklace ' laid by, when the Glens arrived, 
 and with them the entirest earthquake. Nothing could be done, 
 nothing so much as thought of. Archy l often only went off on 
 Sunday; William not near so ill as we anticipated. I have him at 
 geometry, which he actually learns; mean to begin reading Homer 
 with him. Will he ever recover? We have hope and ought to en- 
 deavor. " 
 
 " Wednesday gone a week I went down to Dumfries and brought 
 up my mother, who is still here reading and sewing. She is won- 
 derfully peaceful, not unhappy; intrinsically an admirable woman 
 whom I ought to be right thankful that I have for mother." 
 
 "Letter from Mill about a new Radical Review in which my co- 
 operation is requested. Shall be ready to give it if they have any 
 payment to offer. Dog's-meat Bazaar which you enter muffled up, 
 holding your nose, with ' Here, you master, able editor, or whatever 
 your name is, take this mess of mine and sell it for me at the old 
 rate, you know.' This is the relation I am forced to stand in with 
 publishers as the time now runs. May God mend it." 
 
 i Brother of William Glen.
 
 236 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Magazine Fraser writes that ' Teufelsdrockh ' excites the most 
 unqualified disapprobation a la bonne heure." 
 
 ' 'February 9. Nothing done yet nothing feasible devised. Innu- 
 merable confused half -thoughts ; a kind of moulting season with me ; 
 very disconsolate, yet tending, as I believe, or would fain believe, to 
 profit. Almost all things go by systole and diastole, even one's 
 spiritual progress. Neglect, humiliation, all these things are good, 
 if I will use them wisely. From the uttermost deeps of darkness a 
 kind of unsubduable hope rises in me; grows stronger and stronger." 
 
 " Began Homer two weeks ago : nearly through the first book now 
 like it very considerably. Simplicity, sincerity, the singleness (not 
 quite the word) and massive repose as of an ancient picture. In- 
 deed, all the engravings of Pompeii antiques, and such like, that I 
 have seen grow singularly present with me as I read. A most quiet- 
 ing, wholesome task too; will persist in it. Poor Glen is my very 
 sufficient help here. Have sent for Heyne, Blackwell, and other 
 books, as further helps. Dacier here, but nearly unproductive for 
 me." 
 
 "Read 'Seattle's Life, 'by Sir Wm. Forbes (from Barjarg, where 
 I was some days ago). Schneidermdssiff, religious 'Gigmanity,' yet 
 lovable, pitiable, in many respects worthy. Of all literary men, 
 Beattie, according to his deserts, was perhaps (in those times) the 
 best rewarded; yet, alas! also, at length, among the unhappiest. 
 How much he enjoyed that is far from theef converse with minds 
 congenial ; an element not of Naek-eattleism, but of refinement, plen- 
 ty, and encouragement. Repine not; or, what is more to be dread- 
 ed, rebel not." 
 
 " February 13. Reading in those larger quartos about the Collier. 
 Nearly done with it now. View of the rascaldom of Paris, tragical 
 at this distance of time (for where is now that reiving and stealing, 
 that squeaking and jabbering of lies?): otherwise unprofitable. 
 What to do with that 'Diamond Necklace' affair I wrote? must 
 correct it in some parts which these new books have illuminated a 
 little." 
 
 "Letter from Jeffrey indicating that Tie can or will do nothing in 
 the 'Rhetoric Professor' business had I resolved on trying him. 
 Better to be done with all that business, and know that I have 
 nothing to hope for in that quarter, or any such, and adjust myself 
 thereto. Rebel not; be still; still and strong!" 
 
 "Finished the first book of Homer last night. Pleasantest, most 
 purely poetical reading I have had for long. Simplicity (not mul- 
 tiplicity), almost vacuity, yet sincerity, and the richest-toned artless 
 music. The question at present with me, What does he mean by 
 his gods? In the question of belief some light to be sought from 
 Homer still ; he is still far from clear to me. 
 
 "Bulwer's 'England and the English:' 
 
 Weightiest of harrows, what horse will ply it? 
 Cheeriest of sparrows meanwhile will try it. 
 
 Intrinsically a poor creature this Bulwer; has a bustling, whisking 
 agility and restlessness which may support him in a certain degree
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 237 
 
 of significance with some, but which partakes much of the nature 
 of levity. Nothing truly notable can come of him or of it." 
 
 "Sunday, February 16. Beautiful days ; this is the third of them. 
 Unspeakably grateful after the long loud-howling deluge of a win- 
 ter. Blackbirds singing this morning had I not been so sick!" 
 
 "Friday, February 21. Still reading, but with indifferent effect. 
 Homer still grateful grows easier; one hundred lines have been done 
 more than once in an evening. Was Thersites intended to have 
 any wit, humor, or even fun in his raillery? Nothing (with my 
 actual knowledge of Greek) comes to light but mere beggarly abuse 
 and miry blackguardism. When Ulysses weals his back with that 
 bang of his sceptre, how he sinks annihilated like a cracked bug! 
 Mark too the sugar-loaf head, bald but for down; the squint, the 
 shoulders drawn together over his back : a perfect beauty in his kind. 
 How free otherwise is Ulysses with his sceptre ! ' Whatever man 
 of the A}/ioc he met,' he clanked him over the crown. It does not 
 seem to me so incredible as it did, that opinion of Voss's. The 
 ' characters ' in Homer, might they not be like the pantaloon, harle- 
 quin, etc. , of the Italian comedy, and sustained (what is there meant 
 by sustaining?) by various hands? One thing is clear, and little 
 more to me at present. The whole is very old. 'Achilles sitting 
 weeping by the hoary beach looking out into the dark-colored sea;' 
 still, einfach, with a kind of greatness." 
 
 " Mem Leben gehtsehr ubel : all dim, misty, squally, disheartening, 
 at times almost heart-breaking. Nevertheless, it seems to me clear 
 that I am in a growing state: call this a 'moulting season for the 
 mind; say I shall come out of it new-coated, made young again!" 
 
 "Yesterday we for the first time spoke seriously of setting off for 
 London to take up our abode there next Whitsunday. Nothing 
 but the wretchedest, forsaken, discontented existence here, where 
 almost your whole energy is spent in keeping yourself from flying 
 out into exasperation. I had never much hope of foreign help: 
 perhaps the only man I put even a shadow of dependence upon was 
 Jeffrey; and he has, two or three weeks ago, convinced me that he 
 will never do anything for me; that he dares not; that he cannot; 
 ihat he does not wish to do it. Why not try for ourselves, while 
 as yet we have strength left, and old-age has not finally lamed us? 
 Andar con Dios ! Unutterable thoughts are in me, and these words 
 are but faint chirpings. May God direct us and go with us! My 
 poor mother ! But, once for all, one must cut himself loose though 
 his heart bleed; it is better than perennial torpor which ends in 
 death." 
 
 "March 25. Strange days these are ; again quite original days in 
 my life. Cannot express any portion of their meaning in words ; 
 cannot even try it." 
 
 "I dig the garden flower - beds, though not hoping to see them 
 spring. It is a bodeful, huge feeling I have, like one to be delivered 
 from a Bastile; and who says, delivered? or cast out ?"
 
 238 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Thousaud voices speak to me from the distance out of the dim 
 depths of the old years. I sit speechless. If I live, I shall speak." 
 
 "Many things are sad to me: the saddest is to forsake my poor 
 mother; for it is kind of forsaking, though she, too, sees well the ne- 
 cessity of it. May He to whom she ever looks not forsake her!" 
 
 ' ' Be still, be wise, be brave ! The world is all before thee ; its pains 
 will soon (how very soon!) be over; the icork to be done in it will 
 continue through eternity. Oh, how fearful, yet how great!" 
 
 So far the Diary. The letters, or portions of them, fill the inter- 
 val between the notes, and wind up the story of the Carlyles' life in 
 
 the Dumfriesshire highlands. 
 % 
 
 To John Carlyle, Borne. 
 
 "Craigenputtock: January 21, 1834 
 
 " On Wednesday gone a fortnight I drove down to Dumfries to 
 fetch up our mother, who had been waiting at Jean's there for seve- 
 ral days. We got home betimes; found Archy Glen and William, 
 the former of whom went off on the following day and left us a lit- 
 tle more composure. My mother was wonderfully cheerful and 
 composed. She read various things Campan's ' Memoirs, ' and such 
 like, with great interest; sewed a little, smoked, and talked, and, on 
 the whole, was very tolerably off. Her calmness in the midst of so 
 many vicissitudes, and now while her immediate future is still so 
 problematical, was very gratifying to me ; showed the admirable spirit 
 she is of. It is one of the saddest possibilities now that lies before 
 me, the losing of such a parent. One thing with another, and alto- 
 gether apart from natural affection, I have seen no woman in the 
 whole world whom I would have preferred as a mother. On the 
 following Sunday Alick and Jamie both arrived, so that again we 
 had a full house. They stayed till Wednesday morning, when I 
 accompanied them as far as Straquhar; it had been arranged that 
 Alick was to come next Saturday to Dumfries and meet our mother 
 there if the day was tolerable. She and I accordingly set off; met 
 Alick there, who had his cart, and I reyoked poor Harry and turned 
 back again to the solitude of our moors. Our mother was wrapped 
 to all lengths, and, having the wind favorable, I hope would not 
 suffer much from cold. 
 
 ' ' As for our household, it is much as you can fancy it. Jane con- 
 tinues in a tolerable, in an improving state of health, though the last 
 five weeks of bustle have done her no good. I, when I take walk- 
 ing enough, get along as I was wont in that particular. Continued 
 sickness is a miserable thing, yet one learns to brave it. ... 
 
 " What you say of periodicals is mournfully true; yet it is true 
 also that a man must provide food and clothes for himself as long 
 as he honestly can. While you write down a truth you do an honest 
 duty, were the Devil himself your editor, and all fellow-contributors 
 mere incubi and foul creatures. One loses repute by it, but nothing 
 more; and must front that loss for a gain which is indispensable. 
 Indeed, had I [written] the best book possible for me, I see not, such 
 is the condition of things, where I could so much as get it printed.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 239 
 
 Tour money, my dear boy, I will not take at this time till you are 
 settled with it, and making more. Come home, and let us settle in 
 London together, and front the world together, and see whether it 
 will beat us ! Let us try it. And in the meanwhile never fear but 
 I hold on ; now as ever it lies with myself. Mill tells me that he and 
 Buller and a number of Radicals with money capital, and what they 
 reckon talents, have determined on a new Radical Review, which 
 they want me to write in. Unitarian Fox is to be editor. I calcu- 
 late that it may last three years at any rate, for money is found to 
 that length. If they pay me rightly, they shall have a paper or two; 
 if not, not. The Radicals, I say always, are barren as Sahara, but not 
 poisonous. In my prophecy of the world, they are my enfant* per- 
 dus, whom I honestly wish well to. James Fraser writes me that 
 ' Teufelsdrockh ' meets with the most .unqualified disapproval, which 
 is all extremely proper. His payment arrives, which is still more 
 proper. On the whole, dear Jack, it is a contending world ; and he 
 that is born into it must fight for his place or lose it. If we are un- 
 der the right flag, let the world do its worst and heartily welcome. 
 " God bless thee, dear brother ! Auf ewig, T. 'CARLYLE." 
 
 To Mrs Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "January 28, 1834. 
 
 " I wrote to poor Jeffrey, but not till any anger I felt had gone 
 off, and given place to a kind of pity. 'Poor fellow !' I thought: 
 ' what a miserable fuff thou gettest into, poor old exasperated poli- 
 tician ! I will positively have pity on thee, and do thee a little good 
 if I can !' In this spirit was my letter written; a short, careless let- 
 ter winding up the business handsomely, not ravelling it further. 
 He is off to London to-day, I fancy, to worry and be worried in that 
 den of discord and dishonesty; actually, I doubt, to lose his last al- 
 lotment of health, almost his life, if he be not soon delivered. ' He 
 cannot hinder thee of God's providence,' is also a most precious 
 truth : not he, nor the whole world with the Devil to back it out ! 
 This is a fact one ought to lay seriously to heart and see into the 
 meaning of. Did we see it rightly, what were there beneath the 
 moon that should throw us into commotion ? Except writing let- 
 ters, I have not put pen to paper yet. I sent word to Mill that I 
 would write two essays for his new periodical, the second of which is 
 perhaps to be on John Knox; but I suppose there is no great hurry." 
 
 To Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 "February 18, 1834. 
 
 "... Poor Mrs. Clow, it seems, has been called away. She was 
 not long left a superfluity in the world, but has found a home beside 
 her old partner, where there will be none to grudge her. O Time ! 
 Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of 
 existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing! Already of 
 those that we looked up to as grown men, as towers of defence and 
 authority in our boyhood, the most are clean gone. We ourselves 
 have stept into their position, where also we cannot linger. Un- 
 happy they that have no footing in eternity; for here in time all is 
 but cloud and the baseless fabric of a vision 1
 
 240 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "But to turn back to the earth; for in the earth too lies the pledge 
 of a higher world namely, a duty allotted us. Tell me, my dear 
 brother, how you fare on that wild Knowhead, what kind of cheer 
 you are of. The little children, I imagine, must be your chief bless- 
 ing; and surely you are thankful for them, and will struggle with 
 your whole strength to instruct them and protect them, and fit them 
 for the long journey (long, for it is as long as eternity) that lies be- 
 fore them. Little Jane will be beginning to have many notions of 
 things now. Train her to this as the corner-stone of all morality : to 
 stand by the truth; to abhor a lie as she does hell-fire. Actually the 
 longer I live I see the greater cause to look on falsehood with detes- 
 tation, with terror, as the beginning of all else that is of the Devil. 
 My poor little namesake has no knowledge of good or evil yet ; but 
 I hope he will grow to be a strong man and do his name credit. 
 For yourself, I am glad to see you make so manful a struggle on 
 that uncomfortable clay footing, which, however, you must not quite 
 quarrel with. In the darkest weather I always predict better days. 
 The world is God's world, and wide and fair. If they hamper us 
 too far, we will try another side of it. Meanwhile I will tell you a 
 fault you have to guard against, and is not that the truest friendship 
 that I can show you? Every position of man has its temptation, its 
 evil tendency. Now yours and mine I suspect to be this : a tendency 
 to imperiousness, to indignant self-help, and if nowise theoretical, 
 yet practical, forgetfulness and tyrannical contempt of other men. 
 This is wrong; this is tyranny, I say; and we ought to guard against 
 it. Be merciful ; repress much indignation ; too much of it will get 
 vent, after all. Evil destiny is nothing; let it labor us and impoverish 
 us as it will, if it only do not lame and distort us. Alas ! I feel well 
 one cannot wholly help even this; but we ought unweariedly to en- 
 deavor. " 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 " Craigenputtock : February 25, 1834. 
 
 "We learned incidentally last week that Grace, our servant, 
 though ' without fault to us, ' and whom we, with all her inertness, 
 were nothing but purposing to keep, had resolved on ' going home 
 next summer.' The cup that had long been filling ran over with 
 that smallest of drops. After meditating on it for a few minutes, 
 we said to one another : ' Why not bolt out of all these sooty despica- 
 bilities, of Kerrags and lying draggle-tails of byre-women, and peat- 
 moss and isolation and exasperation and confusion, and go at once 
 to London ? Gedacht, gethan! Two days after we had a letter on 
 the road to Mrs. Austin, to look out among the ' houses to let ' for us, 
 and an advertisement to MacDiarmid to try for the letting of our 
 own. Since then, you may fancy, our heads and hearts have been 
 full of this great enterprise, the greatest (small as it is) that I ever 
 knowingly engaged in. We bring anxiously together all the experi- 
 ence we have gathered or got reported, look back and look forward, 
 make the bravest resolutions, and, in fine, seem to see a trembling 
 hope that we may master the enterprise (of an honest life in Lon- 
 don) ; at all events, a certainty that we ought to try it. Yes, we must 
 try it ! Life here is but a kind of life-in-death, or rather, one might
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 241 
 
 say, a not-being-born : one sits as in the belly of some Trojan horse, 
 weather-screened, but pining, inactive, neck and heels crushed to- 
 gether. Let us burst it, in the name of God ! Let us take such an 
 existence as He will give us, working where work is to be found 
 while it is called to-day. A strange shiver runs through every nerve 
 of me when I think of taking that plunge; yet also a kind of sacred 
 faith, sweet after the dreary vacuity of soul I have through long sea- 
 sons lived in as under an eclipsing shadow. I purpose to be prudent, 
 watchful of my words, to look well about me, and with all the 
 faculty I have pick my steps in that new arena. Thousands of sillier 
 fellows than I flourish in it : the whole promotion I strive for is sim- 
 plest food and shelter in exchange for the honestest work I can do. 
 
 "We purpose for many reasons to make this a whole measure, 
 not a half one : thus the first thing will be to give up our establish- 
 ment here, to sell off all the furniture but what will equip a very 
 modest house in the suburbs of London ; to let this house if we can ; 
 if we cannot, to let it stand there and not waste more money. This 
 Jane calls a ' burning of our ships, ' which suits better with our pres- 
 ent aims than anything else would. For indeed I feel this is as if the 
 last chance I shall ever have to redeem my existence from pain and 
 imprisonment, and make something of the faculty I have, before it 
 be forever hid from my eyes. No looking back, then ! Forward ! 
 Advance or perish ! We imagine some suburban house may be got 
 for 401. Leigh Hunt talked much about a quite delightful one he 
 had (for 'ten children' too) at Chelsea, all wainscoted, etc., for 
 thirty guineas. With 2001. we fancy the rigor of economy may en- 
 able us to meet the year. I must work and seek work ; before sink- 
 ing utterly I will make an ' a-fu ' struggle. 
 
 ' ' Our dear mother has not heard of this ; for though I wrote to 
 Alick a week ago, it was not then thought of. It will be a heavy 
 stroke, yet not quite unanticipated, and she will brave it. My 
 brother and she are the only ties I have to Scotland. I will tell her 
 that, though at a greater distance, we are not to be disunited. Regu- 
 lar letters frequent visits. I will say who knows but what you and 
 I may yet bring her up to London to pass her old days, waited on by 
 both of us? Go whither she may, she will have her Bible with her 
 and her faith in God. She is the truest Christian believer I have 
 ever met with; nay, I might almost say the only true one." 
 
 P.S. from Mrs. Carlyle: 
 
 "My dear Brother, Here is a new prospect opened up to us with 
 a vengeance ! Am I frightened ? Not a bit. I almost wish that I 
 felt more anxiety about our future; for this composure is not cour- 
 age, but diseased indifference. There is a sort of incrustation about the 
 inward me which renders it alike insensible to fear and to hope. I 
 suppose I am in what Glen calls the chrysalis state or the state of in- 
 ciAation. Let us trust that like all other states which have a begin- 
 ning it will also have an end, and that the poor Pysche shall at last 
 get freed. In the meantime, I do what I see to be my duty as well 
 as I can, and wish that I could do it better. It seems as if the prob- 
 lem of living would be immensely simplified to me if I had health. 
 It does require such an effort to keep one's self from growing quite 
 
 II. 11
 
 242 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 wicked, while that weary weaver's shuttle is plying between my 
 temples. Unhappy Melina, etc. ! I have reason to be thankful that 
 I have had less sickness this winter than in the two preceding ones, 
 which I attribute partly to the change in my pills. Your recipe is 
 worn to tatters, but Glen copied it for me. The note-book you gave 
 me is half filled with such multifarious matter ! No mortal gets a 
 glimpse of it. I wish Carlyle would let me begin a letter instead of 
 ending it. He leaves me nothing but dregs to impart. Would you 
 recommend me to sup on porridge and beer? Carlyle takes it. We 
 have got a dear little canary-bird which we call Chico, which sings 
 all day long ' like like any tiling.' 
 
 So ends the last letter from Craigenputtock. "The ships were 
 burnt, "two busy months being spent in burning them disposing 
 of old books, old bedsteads, kitchen things, all the rubbish of the es- 
 tablishment. The cows and poultry were sold. Mrs. Carlyle's pony 
 was sent to Scotsbrig. Friends in London were busy looking out 
 for houses. Carlyle, unable to work in the confusion, grew unbear- 
 able, naturally enough, to himself and every one, and finally, at the 
 beginning of May, rushed off alone, believing that house-letting in 
 London was conducted on the same rule as in Edinburgh, and that, 
 unless he could secure a home for himself at Whitsuntide, he would 
 have to wait till the year had gone round. In this hurried fashion 
 he took his own departure, leaving his wife to pack what they did 
 not intend to part with, and to follow at her leisure when the new 
 habitation had been decided on. Mill had sent his warmest con- 
 gratulations when he learned that the final resolution had been taken. 
 Carlyle, who had settled himself while house -hunting at his old 
 lodgings in Ampton Street, sent his brother John a brief account of 
 his final leave-taking of Scotland. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 "4 Ampton Street : May 18. 
 
 " With regard to our dear mother, I bid you comfort yourself with 
 the assurance that she is moderately well. She adjusts herself with 
 the old heroism to the new circumstances ; agrees that I must come 
 hither; parts from me with the stillest face, more touching than if it 
 had been all beteared. I said to Alick, as we drove up the Purdams- 
 town brae that morning, that I thought, if I had all the mothers I 
 ever saw to choose from, I would have chosen my own. She is to 
 have Harry, 1 and can ride very well on him, will go down awhile to 
 sea-bathing at Mary's, and will spend the summer tolerably enough. 
 For winter I left her the task of spinning me a plaid dressing-gown, 
 with which, if she get too soon done, she may spin another for you. 
 She has books, above all her Book, She trusts in God, and shall not 
 be put to shame. While she was at Craigenputtock I made her train 
 me to two song- tunes; and we often sang them together, and tried 
 
 1 The pony.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 243 
 
 them often again in coming down into Annandale. One of them I 
 actually found myself humming with a strange cheerfully pathetic 
 feeling when I first came in sight of huge smoky Babylon 
 
 ' For there's seven foresters in yon forest, 
 And them I want to see, see, 
 And them I want to see. ' 
 
 I wrote her a little note yesterday, and told her this. " 
 
 Thus the six years' imprisonment on the Dumfriesshire moors 
 came to an end. To Carlyle himself they had been years of inesti- 
 mable value. If we compare the essay on Jean Paul, which he 
 wrote at Comely Bank, with the "Diamond Necklace," his last work 
 at Craigenputtock, we see the leap from promise to fulfilment, from 
 the immature energy of youth to the full intellectual strength of 
 completed manhood. The solitude had compelled him to digest his 
 thoughts. In "Sartor "he had relieved his soul of its perilous se- 
 cretions by throwing out of himself his personal sufferings and phys- 
 ical and spiritual experience. He had read omnivorously far and 
 wide. His memory was a magazine of facts gathered over the whole 
 surface of European literature and history. The multiplied allu- 
 sions in every page of his later essays, so easy, so unlabored, reveal 
 the wealth which he had accumulated, and the fulness of his com- 
 mand over his possessions. His religious faith had gained solidity. 
 His confidence in the soundness of his own convictions was no longer 
 clouded with the shadow of a doubt. The "History of the French 
 Revolution, "the most powerful of all his works, and the only one 
 which has the character of a work of art, was the production of the 
 mind which he brought with him from Craigenputtock, undisturbed 
 by the contradictions and excitements of London society and Lon- 
 don triumphs. He had been tried in the furnace. Poverty, morti- 
 fication, and disappointment had done their work upon him, and he 
 had risen above them elevated, purified, and strengthened. Even 
 the arrogance and self-assertion which Lord Jeffrey supposed to 
 have been developed in him by living away from conflict with other 
 minds, had been rather tamed than encouraged by his lonely medita- 
 tions. It was rather collision with those who differed with him 
 which fostered his imperiousness; for Carlyle rarely met with an 
 antagonist whom he could not overbear with the torrent of his met- 
 aphors, while to himself his note-books show that he read many a 
 lecture on humility. 
 
 He had laid in, too, on the moors, a stock of robust health. Lam- 
 entations over indigestion and want of sleep are almost totally absent 
 from the letters written from Craigenputtock. The simple, natural 
 life, the wholesome air, the daily rides or drives, the pure food 
 milk, cream, eggs, oatmeal, the best of their kind had restored com- 
 pletely the functions of a stomach never, perhaps, so far wrong as
 
 244 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 he had imagined. Carlyle had ceased to complain on this head, and 
 in a person so extremely vocal when anything was amiss with him, 
 silence is the best evidence that there was nothing to complain of. 
 On the moors, as at Mainhill, at Edinburgh, or in London afterwards, 
 he was always impatient, moody, irritable, violent. These humors 
 were in his nature, and could no more be separated from them than 
 his body could leap off its shadow. But, intolerable as he had found 
 Craigenputtock in the later years of his residence there, he looked 
 back to it afterwards as the happiest and wholesomest home that he 
 had ever known. He could do fully twice as much work there, he 
 said, as he could ever do afterwards in London ; and many a time, 
 when sick of fame and clatter and interruption, he longed to return 
 to it. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle Craigenputtock had been a less salutary home. 
 She might have borne the climate, and even benefited by it, if the 
 other conditions had been less ungenial. But her life there, to be- 
 gin with, had been a life of menial drudgery, unsolaced (for she 
 could have endured and even enjoyed mere hardship) by more than 
 an occasional word of encouragement or sympathy or compassion 
 from her husband. To him it seemed perfectly natural that what 
 his mother did at Scotsbrig his wife should do for him. Every 
 household duty fell upon her, either directly, or in supplying the 
 shortcomings of a Scotch maid-of-all-work. She had to cook, to 
 sew, to scour, to clean; to gallop down alone to Dumfries if any- 
 thing was wanted ; to keep the house, and even on occasions to milk 
 the cows. Miss Jewsbury has preserved many anecdotes of the Craig- 
 enputtock life, showing how hard a time her friend had of it there. 
 Carlyle, though disposed at first to dismiss these memories as leg- 
 ends, yet admitted, on reflection, that for all there was a certain foun- 
 dation. The errors, if any, can be no more than the slight altera- 
 tions of form which stories naturally receive in repetition. A lady 
 brought up in luxury has been educated into physical unfitness for 
 so sharp a discipline. Mrs. Carlyle's bodily health never recovered 
 from the strain of those six years. The trial to her mind and to her 
 nervous system was still more severe. Nature had given her, along 
 with a powerful understanding, a disposition singularly bright and 
 buoyant. The Irving disappointment had been a blow to her; but 
 wounds which do not kill are cured. They leave a scar, but the pain 
 ceases. It was long over; and if Carlyle had been a real companion 
 to her, she would have been as happy with him as wives usually are. 
 But he was not a companion at all. "When he was busy she rarely 
 so much as saw him, save, as he himself pathetically tells, when she 
 would steal into his dressing-room in the morning when he was shav- 
 ing, to secure that little of his society. The loneliness of Craigen- 
 puttock was dreadful to her. Her hard work, perhaps, had so far
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 245 
 
 something of a blessing in it, that it was a relief from the intolera- 
 ble pressure. For months together, especially after Alick Carlyle 
 had gone, they never saw the face of guest or passing stranger. So 
 still the moors were that she could hear the sheep nibbling the grass 
 a quarter of a mile off. For the many weeks when the snow was on 
 the ground she could not stir beyond the garden, or even beyond her 
 door. She had no great thoughts, as Carlyle had, to occupy her with 
 the administration of the universe. He had deranged the faith in 
 which she had been brought up, but he had not inoculated her with 
 his own; and a dull gloom, sinking at last almost to apathy, fell 
 upon her spirits. She fought against it, like a brave woman as she 
 was. Carlyle's own views of the prospects of men in this world were 
 not brilliant. In his " Miscellanies " is a small poem, written at 
 Craigenputtock, called "Cui Bono?" giving a most unpromising 
 sketch of human destiny : 
 
 " Cut Bono? 
 
 " What is Hope ? a smiling rainbow 
 
 Children follow through the wet; 
 'Tis not here, still yonder, yonder I 
 Never urchin found it yet. 
 
 " What is Life ? a thawing iceboard 
 
 On a sea with sunny shore. 
 Gay we sail it melts beneath us! 
 We are sunk, and seen no more. 
 
 " What is Man ? a foolish baby ; 
 
 Vainly strives and fights and frets; 
 Demanding all deserving nothing ! 
 One small grave is what he gets. " 
 
 In one of Mrs. Carlyle's note-books I find an "Answer" to this, 
 dated 1830: 
 
 " Nay, this is Hope: a gentle dove, 
 
 That nestles in the gentle breast, 
 Bringing glad tidings from above 
 Of joys to come and heavenly rest. 
 
 "And this is Life: ethereal fire 
 
 Striving aloft through smothering clay; 
 Mounting, tlaming, higher, higherl 
 Till lost in immortality. 
 
 " And Mau oh ! hate not nor despise 
 The fairest, lordliest work of God ! 
 Think not He made the good and wise 
 Only to sleep beneath the sod!" 
 
 Carlyle himself recognized occasionally that she was not happy. 
 Intentionally unkind it was not in his nature to be. After his 
 mother, he loved his wife better than any one in the world. He was 
 only occupied, unperceiving, negligent; and, when he did see that 
 anything was wrong with her, he was at once the tenderest of hus- 
 bands.
 
 246 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 In some such transient state of consciousness, he wrote, on Janu- 
 ary 29, 1830: 
 
 The Sigh. 
 
 " Oh ! sigh not so, my fond and faithful wife, 
 
 In sad remembrance or in boding fear: 
 This is not life this phantasm type of life ! 
 What is there to rejoice or mourn for hereT 
 
 " Be it no wealth, nor fame, nor post is ours 
 
 Small blessedness for infinite desire; 
 But has the King his wish in Windsor's towers? 
 Or but the common lot meat, clothes, and lire ? 
 
 " Lone stands our home amid the sullen moor, 
 
 Its threshold by few friendly feet betrod; 
 Yet we are here, we two, still true though poor: 
 And this, too, is the world the ' city of God ! ' 
 
 " O'erhangs us not the infinitude of sky, 
 
 Where all the starry lights revolve'and shine 1 
 Does not that universe within us lie 
 And move its Maker or itself divine? 
 
 "And we, my love, life's waking dream once done, 
 Shall sleep to wondrous lands on other's breast; 
 And all we loved and toiled for, one by one, 
 Shall join us there, and, wearied, be at rest. 
 
 "Then sigh not so, my fond and faithful wife, 
 
 But, striving well, have hope, be of good cheer; 
 Not rest, but worthy labor, is the soul of life ; 
 
 Not that, but this, is to be looked and wished for here." 
 
 If the occasional tenderness of these lines could have been formed 
 into a habit, Mrs. Carlyle might have borne Craigenputtock less im- 
 patiently, and, as her bodily ailments were chiefly caused by exposure 
 and overwork, she would probably have escaped the worst of them, 
 because she would have thought it worth while to take care of herself. 
 
 Of the solitude and of the strange figures moving about the moor, to 
 make the desolation more sensible, Carlyle has left a singular picture. 
 
 " Old Esther, whose death came one of our early Avinters, was a bit 
 of memorability in that altogether vacant scene. I forget the old 
 woman's surname, perhaps McGeorge, but well recall her heavy, 
 lumpish figure, lame of a foot, and her honest, quiet, not stupid 
 countenance of mixed ugliness and stoicism. She lived above a 
 mile from us in a poor cottage of the next farm. J Esther had been 
 a laird's daughter, riding her palfrey at one time, but had gone to 
 wreck, father and self; a special 'misfortune' (so they delicately 
 name it) being of Esther's producing. Misfortune in the shape ulti- 
 mately of a solid tall ditcher, very good to his old mother Esther, 
 had just before our coming perished miserably one night on the 
 shoulder of Dunscore Hill (found dead there next morning), which 
 had driven his poor old mother up to this thriftier hut and silent 
 mode of living in our moorland part of the parish. She did not 
 beg, nor had my Jeannie much to have given her of help (perhaps 
 
 1 " Carson's, of Nether Craigenputtock, very stupid young brother used to come and 
 bore me at rare intervals. T. C. "
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 247 
 
 on occasions milk, old warm clothes, etc.), though always very sorry 
 for her last sad bereavement of the stalwart, affectionate son. I re- 
 member one frosty kind of forenoon, while walking meditative to 
 the top of our hill, the silence was complete, all but one ' click 
 clack ' heard regularly like a far-off spondee or iambus, a great way 
 to my right, no other sound in nature. On looking sharply, I dis- 
 covered it to be old Esther, on the highway, crippling along, tow- 
 ards our house most probably. Poor old soul! thought I. What a 
 desolation! But you will meet a kind face too, perhaps. Heaven 
 is over all. 
 
 "Not long after poor old Esther sank to bed death-bed, as my 
 Jane, who had a quick and sure eye in these things, well judged it 
 would be. Sickness did not last above ten days : my poor wife zeal- 
 ously assiduous and with a minimum of fuss and noise. I remem- 
 ber those few poor days full of human interest to her, and through 
 her to me; and of a human pity not painful, but sweet and genuine. 
 She went walking every morning, especially every night, to arrange 
 the poor bed, etc. nothing but rudish hands, rude though kind 
 enough, being about ; the poor old woman evidently gratified by it, 
 and heart thankful, and almost to the very end giving clear sign of 
 that. Something pathetic in old Esther and her exit; nay, if I right- 
 ly bethink me, that ' click-clack ' pilgrimage had, in fact, been a last 
 visit to Craigenputtock with some poor bit of crockery, some gray- 
 lettered butter-plate, which I used to see ' as a wee memorandum o' 
 me, mem, when I am gone.' 'Memorandum' was her word, and I 
 remember the poor little platter for years after. Poor old Esther 
 had awoke that frosty morning with the feeling that she would soon 
 die, that the ' bonny leddy ' had been ' unco guid ' to her, and that 
 there was still that 'wee bit memorandum.' Nay, I think she had, 
 or had once had, the remains or complete ghost of a ' fine old riding 
 habit,' once her own, which the curious had seen, but this she had 
 judged it more polite to leave to the parish." 
 
 Enough of Craigenputtock. The scene shifts to London. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 A. D. 1834. ,ET. 39. 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 " London: May 24, 1834. What a word is there ! I left home on 
 Thursday last (five days ago), and see myself still with astonishment 
 here seeking houses. The parting with my sister Jean, who had 
 driven down with me to Dumfries, was the first of the partings; that 
 with my dear mother next day, with poor Mary at Annan, with my 
 two brothers Alick and Jamie all these things were to be done. 
 Shall we meet again? Shall our meeting again be for good? God 
 grant it. We are in his hands. This is all the comfort I have. As 
 to my beloved and now aged mother, it is sore upon me so sore as 
 I have felt nothing of the sort since boyhood. She'paid her last vis- 
 it at Craigenputtock the week before, and had attached me much, if
 
 248 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 I could have been more attached, by her quiet way of taking that 
 sore trial. She studied not to sink my heart; she shed no tear at 
 parting, and so I drove off with poor Alick in quest of new fortunes. 
 May the Father of all, to whom she daily prays for me, be ever near 
 her ! May He, if it be His will, grant us a glad re-meeting and re- 
 union in a higher country. But no more of this. Words are worse 
 than vain. I am here in my old lodging at Ampton Street, wearied, 
 and without books, company, or other resource. The Umpire coach 
 from Liverpool. Through the arch at Holloway came first in sight 
 of huge smoky London, humming, in a kind of defiance, my moth- 
 er's tune of ' Johnny O'Cox.' Find this lodging. Mrs. Austin very 
 kind. See several houses. Disappointed in all. Kensington very 
 dirty and confused. Sleep sweet sleep. This day busy, with little 
 work done; my feet all lamed, and not above one house seen that in 
 any measure looks like fitting. 
 
 "Went to Mrs. Austin, through the Park and Gardens. Find a 
 Mrs. Jamieson a shrewd-looking, hard-tempered, red-haired woman, 
 whom I care little about meeting again. Look at many houses with 
 them. Edward Irving starts up from a seat in Kensington Gardens, 
 as I was crossing it with these two, and runs towards me. The good 
 Edward ! He looked pale, worn, unsound, very unhealthy. At the 
 house we were going to no key could be got: no this, no that. Miss 
 my dinner. Innkeepers can give me none. Dine with a dairyman 
 on bread and milk beside his cows a most interesting meal. Charge 
 three-halfpence, I having furnished bread. Gave the man sixpence, 
 because I liked him. Will see the poor fellow again, perhaps. Hunt's ' 
 household in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Nondescript ! unutterable ! 
 Mrs. Hunt asleep on cushions; four or five beautiful, strange, gypsy- 
 looking children running about in undress, whom the lady ordered 
 to get us tea. The eldest boy, Percy, a sallow, black-haired youth of 
 sixteen, with a kind of dark cotton nightgown on, went whirling 
 about like a familiar, providing everything : an indescribable dream- 
 like household. Am to go again to-morrow to see if there be any 
 houses, and what they are. Bedtime now, and so good - night, ye 
 loved ones. My heart's blessing be with all!" 
 
 Those who have studied Carlyle's writings as they ought to be 
 studied know that shrewd practical sense underlies always his met- 
 aphorical extravagances. In matters of business he was the most 
 prudent of men. He had left his wife at Craigenputtock to pack up, 
 and had plunged, himself, into the whirlpool of house-hunting. He 
 very soon discovered that there was no hurry, and that he was not 
 the best judge in such matters. He understood the second best 
 form of wisdom that he did not understand, and forbore to come 
 to any resolution till Mrs. Carlyle could join him. He wrote to her, 
 giving a full account of his experiences: 
 
 "The female head [he said] is not without a shrewdness of its own 
 in these affairs. Moreover, ought not nay little coagitor to have a 
 
 ' Leigh Hunt.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 249 
 
 vote herself in the choice of an abode which is to be ours? The 
 sweet word ours! The blessed ordinance let Hunt say what he 
 will ' by which all things are forever one between us and separa- 
 tion an impossibility. Unless you specially order it, no final arrange- 
 ment shall be made till we both make it." 
 
 Carlyle had not been idle had walked, as he said, till his feet 
 were lamed under him. He had searched in Brompton, in Kensing- 
 ton, about the Regent's Park. He had seen many houses more or 
 less desirable, more or less objectionable. For himself, he inclined, 
 on the whole, to one which Leigh Hunt had found for him near the 
 river in Chelsea. Leigh Hunt lived with his singular family at No. 
 4 Upper Cheyne Row. About sixty yards off, about the middle of 
 Great Cheyne Row, which runs at right angles to the other, there 
 was a house which fixed his attention. Twice he went over it. "It 
 is notable,' he said, 'how at each new visit your opinion gets a little 
 hitch the contrary way from its former tendency. Imagination has 
 outgone the reality. I nevertheless still feel a great liking for this 
 excellent old house. Chelsea is unfashionable : it was once the re- 
 sort of the Court and great, however; hence numerous old houses 
 in it at once cheap and excellent." 
 
 A third inspection produced a fuller description description of 
 the place as it was fifty years ago, and not wholly incorrect of its pres- 
 ent condition; for Cheyne Row has changed less than most other 
 streets in London. The Embankment had yet forty years to wait. 
 
 "The street [Carlyle wrote] runs down upon the river, which I 
 suppose you might see by stretching out your head from the front 
 window, at a distance of fifty yards on the left. We are called 
 ' Cheyne Row ' proper (pronounced Chainie Row), and are a ' gen- 
 teel neighborhood;' two old ladies on one side, unknown character 
 on the other, but with ' pianos.' The street is flag-pathed, sunk-sto- 
 ried, iron-railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up; looks out on 
 a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is, beheaded) lime-trees standing 
 there like giants in tatrtie wigs (for the new boughs are still young); 
 beyond this a high brick wall ; backwards a garden, the size of our 
 back one at Comely Bank, with trees, etc., in bad culture; beyond 
 tin* trreen hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop's pleasure- 
 grounds, and unpicturesque yet rather cheerful outlook. The house 
 itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has 
 been all new-painted and repaired; broadish stair with massive bal- 
 ustrade (in the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors 
 thick as a rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capa- 
 ble of cleanness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. 
 And then as to rooms, Goody! Three stories beside the sunk story, 
 in every one of them three apartments, in depth something like forty 
 feet in 'all a front dining-room (marble chimney-piece, etc.), then a 
 back dining-room or breakfast-room, a little narrower by reason of 
 
 i Leigh Hunt advocated "women's rights" in marriage arrangements. 
 II. 11*
 
 250 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the kitchen stairs; then out of this, and narrower still (to allow a 
 back-window, you consider) a china-room or pantry, or I know 
 not what, all shelved and fit to hold crockery for the whole street. 
 Such is the ground area, which of course continues to the top, and 
 furnishes every bedroom with a dressing-room or second bedroom; 
 on the whole, a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house, with places, 
 for example, to hang, say three dozen hats or cloaks on, and as 
 many crevices and queer old presses and shelved closets (all tight 
 and new-painted in their way) as would gratify the most covetous 
 Goody rent thirty-five pounds! I confess I am strongly tempted. 
 Chelsea is a singular, heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and con- 
 fused in some places, quite beautiful in others, abounding with an- 
 tiquities and the traces of great men Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smol- 
 lett, etc. Our row, which for the last three doors or so is a street, and 
 none of the noblest, runs out upon a ' Parade ' (perhaps they call it) 
 running along the shore of the river, a broad highway with huge 
 shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of shipping and tan. 
 Battersea Bridge (of wood) a few yards off; the broad river with 
 white-trousered, white-shirted Cockneys dashing by like arrows in 
 thin long canoes of boats ; beyond, the green beautiful knolls of Sur- 
 rey with their villages on the whole, a most artificial, green-paint- 
 ed, yet lively, fresh, almost opera-looking business, such as you can 
 fancy. Finally, Chelsea abounds more than any place in omnibi, 
 and they take you to Coventry Street for sixpence. Revolve all 
 this in thy fancy and judgment, my child, and see what thou canst 
 make of it." 
 
 The discovery of this Chelsea house had been so gratifying that 
 more amiable views could be taken, and more interest felt, with the 
 other conditions of London life. 
 
 "Let me now treat thee to a budget of small news [he goes on]. 
 Mill I have not yet seen again : we could make no appointment, be- 
 ing so unfixed as yet. Mrs. Austin had a tragical story of his hav- 
 ing fallen desperately in love with some young philosophic beauty 
 (yet with the innocence of two sucking doves), and being lost 
 to all his friends and to himself, and what not; but I traced nothing 
 of this in poor Mill ; and even incline to think that what truth there 
 is or was in his adventure may have done him good. Buller also 
 spoke of it, but in the comic vein. Irving I have not again seen, 
 though I have tried four times; yesterday twice (at Bayswater), and 
 the second time with great disappointment. He seems to be under 
 the care of a Scotch sick-nurse there ; was said to be ' asleep ' when I 
 called first, then gone (contrary to my appointment) when I called 
 the second time. He rides twice a day down to that Domdaniel in 
 Newman Street, rises at five in the morning, goes to bed at nine, is 
 'very weak.' I had refused dinner at the Austins' for his sake; it 
 seemed to me as if I might have clutched him from perdition and 
 death, and now we were not to meet again. My poor Edward ! Heu, 
 quantum mutatus! But I will make a new trial. Heraud said to me, 
 quite in the cursory style, ' Aaving [Irving] is dying and a a !' 
 Heraud himself ('mad as a March hare,' Fraser said) lives close by
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 251 
 
 Ampton Street, and is exceedingly hedge about me, anxious beyond 
 measure for golden opinions of his God-dedicated Epic of which I 
 would not tell him any lie, greatly as he tempted me. 
 
 "Fraser did not open freely to me, yet was opening. Literature 
 still all a mystery; nothing ' paying;' ' Teuf elsdrdckh ' beyond meas- 
 ure unpopular. An oldest subscriber came in to him and said, ' If 
 there is any more of that d d stuff, I will, etc. , etc. ;' on the other 
 hand, an order from America (Boston or Philadelphia) to send a copy 
 of the magazine 'so long as there was anything of Carlyle's in it.' 
 ' One spake up and the other spake down :' on the whole, Goody, I 
 have a great defiance of all that. As to ' fame ' and the like, in very 
 truth, in this state of the public, it is a thing one is always better 
 without; so I really saw and felt the other night, clearly for the first 
 time. Miss Martineau, for example, is done again; going 'to Ameri- 
 ca to try a new tack when she returns so are they all, or will inev- 
 itably all be done; extinguished and abolished; for they are nothing, 
 and were only called (and made to fancy themselves) something. 
 Mrs. Austin herself seems to me in a kind of trial state; risen or ris- 
 ing to where she cannot hope to stand; where it will be well if she 
 feels no giddiness, as indeed I really hope she will. A most excel- 
 lent creature, of surveyable limits; her goodness will in all cases 
 save her. Buller is better and went yesterday (I fancy) to 'the 
 House.' We have had two long talks (on occasion of the franks) 
 with great mutual delight. An intelligent, clear, honest, most kind- 
 ly vivacious creature; the geniallest Radical I have ever met. He 
 throws light for me on many things, being very ready to speak. 
 Mrs. Austin spoke ominously of his health, but to my seeing with- 
 out much ground. Charlie, I think, will be among my little com- 
 forts here. 
 
 "The Duke, now plain Mr. Jeffrey, but soon to be Lord Jeffrey, 
 is still here for a week; he has left his address for me with Mr. Aus- 
 tin. I determined to call some morning in passing, and did it on 
 Monday. Reception anxiously cordial from all three; hurried, in- 
 significant talk from him still at the breakfast-table ; kindness play* 
 ing over ' iron gravity ' from me. I felt it to be a farewell visit, and 
 that it should be ' hallowed in our choicest mood.' The poor Duke 
 is so tremulous, he bade me 'good evening' at the door; immense 
 jerking from Mrs. Jeffrey, yet many kind words and invitations 
 back. . . . And so ends our dealing with bright Jeffreydom, once 
 so sparkling, cheerful, now gone out into darkness which shall not 
 become foul candlestuff vapor, but darkness only. Empson is still 
 alive; but I surely will not seek him. Napier, too, is here, or was; 
 him, too, I will nowise seek or meddle with the hungry simula- 
 crum." 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "4 Ampton Street, London: May 30, 1834. 
 
 "My dear Mother, How often have I thought of you since we 
 parted, in all varieties of solemn moods, only seldom or never in a 
 purely sad or painful one ! My most constant feeling is one not 
 without a certain sacredness: I determine to live worthily of such a 
 mother; to know always, like her, that we are ever in our great
 
 252 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Taskmaster's eye, with whom are the issues not of time only, which 
 is but a short vision, but of eternity, which ends not and is a reality. 
 Oh that I could keep these things forever clear before me! my whole 
 prayer with regard to life were gratified. But these things also 
 should not make us gloomy or sorrowful : far from that. Have we 
 not, as you often say, ' many mercies ' ? Is not the light to see that 
 they are mercies the first and greatest of these? 
 
 "Assure yourself, my dear mother, that all goes well. In regard 
 to health, this incessant toil, and even irregular living, seems to agree 
 with me. I take no drugs. I really feel fresher and stronger than 
 I used to do among the moorlands. Moreover, I never was farther 
 in my life from ' fining heart,' which I know well were to ' tine all." 
 Not a bit of me! I walk along these tumultuous streets with noth- 
 ing but a feeling of kindness, of brotherly pity, towards all. No 
 loudest boasting of man's strikes any, the smallest, terror into me for 
 the present; indeed, how should it when no loudest boasting and 
 threatening of the Devil himself would? He nor they 'cannot hin- 
 der thee of God's providence.' No, they cannot. I have the clear- 
 est certainty that, if work is appointed me here to do, it must and 
 will be done, and means found for doing it. So fear nothing, my 
 dear mother. Tom will endeavor not to disgrace you in this new 
 position more than in others. 
 
 "I have seen some book-publishing persons, some ' literary men ' 
 also. The great proportion are indubitablest duds: these, top, we 
 must let pass, and even welcome when they meet us with kindliness. 
 By far the sensiblest man I see is Mill, who seems almost fonder of 
 me than ever. The class he belongs to has the farther merit of "being 
 genuine and honest so far as they go. I think it is rather with that 
 class that I shall connect myself than with any other; 1 but still, in 
 many important respects, I have to expect to find myself alone. 
 Charles Buller is grown a very promising man, likely to do good in 
 the world, if his health were only better, which as yet hampers him 
 much. He evidently likes me well, as do all his household, and will 
 be a considerable pleasure to me. I was dining there this day week. 
 I saw various notable persons Radical members, and such like; 
 among whom a young, very rich man, named Sir William Moles- 
 worth, pleased me considerably. We have met since, and shall prob- 
 ably see much more of one another. He seems very honest : needs, 
 or will need, guidance much, and with it may do not a little good. 
 
 " I like the frank manners of the young man; so beautiful in con- 
 trast with Scottish gigmanity. I pitied his darkness of mind, and 
 heartily wished him well. He is, among other things, a vehement 
 smoker of tobacco. This Molesworth is one of the main men that 
 are to support that Radical Review of theirs, with which it seems 
 likely that I may rather heartily connect myself, if it take a form 
 I can do with. The rest of the reviews arc sick and lean, ready for 
 nothing, so far as I can see, but a gentle death. I also mean to 
 write a new book; and in a serious enough style, you may depend 
 upon it. By the time we have got the flitting rightly over, I shall 
 
 i " No poison in the Radicals. If little apprehension of positive truth, no hypocrisy; 
 DO wilful taking up with falsehood."
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 253 
 
 have settled what and how it is to be. Either on the French Revo- 
 lution, or on John Knox and our Scottish Kirk. 
 
 "By dint of incessant industry I again got to see Edward Irving; 
 and on Saturday last spent two hours with him. He seemed to 
 have wonderfully recovered his health, and I trust will not perish 
 in these delusions of his. He is still a good man, yet wofully given 
 over to his idols, and enveloped for the present, and nigh choked, in 
 the despicablest coil of cobwebs ever man sate hi the midst of. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Strachey I have seen some three times, but not in very ad- 
 vantageous circumstances. She is the same true woman she ever 
 was, indignant at the oppressing of the poor, at the wrong and false- 
 hood with which the earth is filled; yet rather gently withdrawn 
 from it, and hoping in what is beyond it, than actively at war 
 with it." 
 
 Carlyle was not long left alone. Mrs. Carlyle arrived she came 
 by Annan steamer and the coach from Liverpool at the beginning 
 of June; old Mrs. Carlyle, standing with a crowd on the Annan pier, 
 waving her handkerchief as the vessel moved away. Carlyle, as he 
 returned from his walk to his lodgings in Ampton Street, was re- 
 ceived by the chirping of little Chico, the canary-bird; his wife rest- 
 ing, after her journey, in bed. They had been fortunate in securing 
 a remarkable woman, who was more a friend and a companion than 
 a servant, to help them through their first difficulties Bessy Barnet, 
 the daughter of Mr. Badams's housekeeper at Birmingham, whom 
 Carlyle had known there as a child. Badatns was now dead, and 
 this Bessy, who had remained with him to the last, now attached 
 herself to Carlyle for the sake of her late master. The Chelsea 
 house was seen by Mrs. Carlyle, and, after some hesitation, was 
 approved; and three days after they had taken possession of their 
 future home, and Pickford's vans were at the door unloading the 
 furniture from Craigenputtock. 
 
 Thirty-four years later Carlyle wrote : 
 
 "Tuesday, 10th of June, 1834, was the day of our alighting, amidst 
 heaped furniture, in this house, where we were to continue for life. 
 I well remember bits of the drive from Ampton Street : what damp- 
 clouded kind of sky it was ; how in crossing Belgrave Square Chico, 
 whom site had brought from Craigenputtock in her lap, burst out 
 into singing, which we all (Bessy Barnet, our romantic maid, sate 
 with us in the old hackney-coach) strove to accept as a promising 
 omen. The business of sorting and settling with two or three good 
 carpenters, already on the ground, was at once gone into with bound- 
 less alacrity, 1 and under such management as hers went on at a 
 
 i Carlyle's memory was perfectly accurate in what it retained. His account to his 
 brother at the time gives fuller detail to the picture : " A hackney-coach, loaded to the 
 roof and beyond it with luggage and the passengers, tumbled us all down here at eleven 
 in the morning. By all I mean my dame and myself, Bessy Barnet, who had come the 
 night before, and little Chico, the canary-bird, who, multum jactalus, did nevertheless 
 arrive living and well from Puttock, and even sang violently all the way, by sea and
 
 254 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 mighty rate: even the three or four days of quasi camp life, or gypsy 
 life, had a kind of gay charm to us; and hour by hour we saw the 
 confusion abating growing into victorious order. Leigh Hunt was 
 continually sending us notes; most probably would in person step 
 across before bedtime, and give us an hour of the prettiest melodious 
 discourse. In about a week, it seems to me, all was swept and gar- 
 nished, fairly habitable, and continued incessantly to get itself pol- 
 ished, civilized, and beautiful to a degree that surprised me. I have 
 elsewhere alluded to all that, and to my little Jeannie's conduct of it. 
 Heroic, lovely, mournfully beautiful as in the light of eternity that 
 little scene of time now looks to me. From birth upwards she had 
 lived in opulence, and now for my sake had become poor so nobly 
 poor. No such house for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous nay, 
 as it were, unconscious minimum of money reconciled to human 
 comfort and dignity, have I anywhere looked upon where I have 
 been." 
 
 The auspices under which the new life began, not from Chico's 
 song only, were altogether favorable. The weather was fine; the 
 cherries were ripening on a tree in the garden. Carlyle got his gar- 
 den tools to work and repaired the borders, and set in slips of jessa- 
 mine and gooseberry bushes brought from Scotland. To his mother, 
 who was curious about the minutest details, he reported: 
 
 "We lie safe at a bend of the river, away from all the great roads, 
 have air and quiet hardly inferior to Craigenputtock, an outlook 
 from the back-windows into mere leafy regions with here and there 
 a red high-peaked old roof looking through ; and see nothing of Lon- 
 don, except by day the summits of St. Paul's Cathedral and West- 
 minster Abbey, and by night the gleam of the great Babylon affront- 
 ing the peaceful skies. The house itself is probably the best we 
 have ever lived in a right old, strong, roomy brick house, built 
 nearly 150 years ago, and likely to see three races of these modern 
 fashionables fall before it comes down." 
 
 The French Revolution had been finally decided on as the subject 
 for the next book, and was to be set about immediately; Fraser hav- 
 ing offered, not indeed to give money for it, but to do what neither 
 he nor any other publisher would venture for "Sartor" take the 
 risk of printing it. Mill furnished volumes on the subject in "bar- 
 rowf uls. " Leigh Hunt was a pleasant immediate neighbor, and an 
 increasing circle of Radical notabilities began to court Carlyle's 
 society. There was money enough to last for a year at least. In a 
 year he hoped that his book might be finished; that he might then 
 give lectures; that either then or before some editorship might fall 
 to him the editorship, perhaps (for it is evident that he hoped for it), 
 
 land nay, struck up his lilt in the very London streets whenever he could see green 
 leaves and feel the free air. There we sate on three trunks. I, however, with a match- 
 box soon lit a cigar, as Bessy did a flre; and thus with a kind of cheerful solemnity we 
 took possession by "raising reek," and even dined in an extempore fashion on a box- 
 lid covered with some accidental towel." (To John Carlyle, June 17, 1834.)
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 255 
 
 of Mill and Molesworth's new Radical Review. Thus at the outset 
 he was for him tolerably cheerful. On the 27th of June he sent 
 a full account of things to Scotsbrig. 
 
 To Alexander Carlyle. 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea: June 27, 1834. 
 
 ' ' The process of installation is all but terminated, and we, in rather 
 good health and spirits, and all doing well, are beginning to feel our- 
 selves at home in our new hadding. We have nothing to complain 
 of, much to be piously grateful for; and thus, with a kind of serious 
 cheerfulness, may gird ourselves up for a new career. As it was en- 
 tered on without dishonest purposes, the issue, unless we change for 
 the worse, is not to be dreaded, prove as it may. 
 
 "One of the greatest moments of niy life, I think, was when I 
 waved my hat to you and Jamie from on board the steamboat. My 
 two brothers, the last of my kindred I had to leave, stood there, and 
 I stood liere, already flying fast from them. I would not desecrate 
 so solemn an hour by childish weakness. I turned my thoughts 
 heavenward, for it is in heaven only that I find any basis for our 
 poor pilgrimage on this earth. Courage, my brave brothers all ! 
 Let us be found faithful and we shall not fail. Surely as the blue 
 dome of heaven encircles us all, so does the providence of the Lord 
 of Heaven. He will withhold no good thing from those that love 
 Him! This, as it was the ancient Psalmist's faith, let it likewise be 
 ours. It is the Alpha and Omega, I reckon, of all possessions that 
 can belong to man. 
 
 "Neither my mother nor you will interpret these reflections of 
 mine as if they betokened gloom of temper but, indeed, rather the 
 reverse. I hope we have left great quantities of gloom safe behind 
 us at Puttock, and indeed hitherto have given little harbor to such a 
 guest here. It is strange often to myself, with what a kind of not 
 only fearlessness, but meek contempt and indifference, I can walk 
 through the grinding press of these restless millions, 'listening,' as 
 Teufelsdrockh says, 'to its loudest threatenings with a still smile.' 
 I mean to work according to my strength. As to riches, fame, suc- 
 cess, and so forth, I ask no questions. Were the work laid out for 
 us but the kneading of a clay brick, let us, in God's name, do it faith- 
 fully, and look for our reward elsewhere. So, on the whole, to end 
 moralizing, let us sing 
 
 ' Come, fingers five, come now be live, 
 And stout heart fail me not, not ' 
 
 or, what is far before singing, let us do it, and go on doing it. 
 
 " In respect of society, we have what perfectly sufBces having in- 
 deed here the best chance. Mill comes sometimes; the Bullers were 
 all here, paying us their first visit, Mrs. Austin, etc. There is really 
 enough, and might easily be to spare. Things go in the strangest 
 course in that respect here. A man becomes for some reason, or for 
 no reason, in some way or other notable. Straightway his door from 
 dawn to dusk is beset with idlers and loungers, and empty persons 
 on foot and in carriages, who come to gather of his supposed fulness 
 one five minutes of tolerable sensation ; and so the poor man (most
 
 256 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 frequently it is a poor woman) sits in studied attitude all day, ' doing 
 what he can dp,' which is, alas! all too little; for gradually or sud- 
 denly the carriage and foot empty persons start some other scent 
 and crowd elsewhither; and so the poor notable man, now fallen 
 into midnight obscurity, sits in his studied attitude within forsaken 
 walls, either to rise and set about some work (which were the best), 
 or mournfully chant Icliabod! according to his convenience. 
 
 " On the whole, as I often say, what is society? What is the help of 
 others in any shape? None but thyself can effectually help thee, can 
 effectually hinder thee ! A man must have lived to little purpose 
 six years in the wilderness of Puttock if he have not made this clear 
 to himself. 
 
 "Hunt and the Hunts, as you have heard, live only in the next 
 street from us. Hunt is always ready to go and walk with me, or 
 sit and talk with me to all lengths if I want him. He comes in once 
 a week (when invited, for he is very modest), takes a cup of tea, and 
 sits discoursing in his brisk, fanciful way till supper-time, and then 
 cheerfully eats a cup of porridge (to sugar only), which he praises to 
 the skies, and vows he will make his supper of at home. He is a 
 man of thoroughly London make, such as you could not find else- 
 where, and I think about the best possible to be made of his sort : an 
 airy, crotchety, most copious clever talker, with an honest undercur- 
 rent of reason too, but unfortunately not the deepest, not the most 
 practical or rather it is the most unpractical ever man dealt in. 
 His hair is grizzled, eyes black-hazel, complexion of the clearest 
 dusky-brown; a thin glimmer of a smile plays over a face of cast- 
 iron gravity. He never laughs can only titter, which I thiuk in- 
 dicates his worst deficiency. His house excels all you have ever 
 read of a poetical Tinkerdom, without parallel even in literature. 
 In his family room, where are a sickly large wife and a whole shoal 
 of well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old 
 rickety chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all 
 seemingly engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On 
 these and around them, and over the dusty table and ragged carpet, 
 lie all kinds of litter books, papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last 
 night when I was there the torn heart of a half -quartern loaf. His 
 own room above-stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps 
 cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing-table; yet 
 the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the spirit of a king, 
 apologizes for nothing, places you in the best seat, takes a window- 
 sill himself if there is no other, and there folding closer his loose- 
 flowing ' muslin-cloud ' of a printed nightgown in which he always 
 writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the pros- 
 pects of man (who is to be beyond measure 'happy' yet); which 
 again he will courteously terminate the moment you are bound to 
 go : a most interesting, pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly but 
 with discretion. After all, it is perhaps rather a comfort to be 
 near honest, friendly people at least an honest, friendly man of 
 that sort. We stand sharp but mannerly for his sake and for ours, 
 and endeavor to get and do what good we can, and avoid the 
 evil."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 257 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 "5 Cheyne Row: July 22, 1834. 
 
 " We are getting along here as we can without cause of complaint. 
 Our house and whole household, inanimate and rational, continue to 
 yield all contentment. Bessy is a clever, clear-minded girl; lives 
 quietly not only as a servant, but can cheer her mistress as a com- 
 panion and friend. Most favorable change. Jane keeps in decided- 
 ly better health and spirits. Within-doors I have all manner of 
 scope. Out-of-doors, unhappily, the prospect is vague enough, yet 
 I myself am not without fixed aim. The bookselling world, I seem 
 to see, is all but a hopeless one for me. Periodical-editors will em- 
 ploy me, as they have employed me, on this principle: for the sake 
 of my name, and to help them to season a new enterprise. That 
 once accomplished, they want little more to do with me. Amateurs 
 enough exist that will dirty paper gratis, and puffery, and so forth, 
 is expected to do the rest. Thus they kept a gusting bone in the four 
 towns, and lent it out to give a flavor to weak soup ; otherwise hung 
 it in the nook. I am much dissatisfied with the arrangement and 
 little minded to continue it. Meanwhile, by Heaven's blessing, I 
 find I can get a book printed with my name on it. I have fixed on 
 my book, and am laboring (ohne Hast, ohne Host) as yet afar off to 
 get it ready. Did I not tell you the subject? The French Revolu- 
 tion. I mean to make an artistic picture of it. Alas! the subject is 
 high and huge. Ich zittre nur, ich stottre nur, und kann es doch nicht 
 laasen. Mill has lent me above a hundred books; I read continu- 
 ally, s.nd the matter is dimly shaping itself in me. Much is in the 
 Museum for me, too, in the shape of books and pamphlets. I was 
 there a week ago seeking pictures: found none; but got a sight of 
 Albert Dilrer, and (I find) some shadow of his old teutechen, deep, 
 still soul, which was well worth the getting. This being my task 
 till the end of the year, why should 1 curiously inquire what is to 
 become of me next? 'There is aye life for a living body,' as my 
 mother's proverb has it ; also, as she reminded me, ' if thou tine heart, 
 thou tines a'.' I will do my best and calmest; then wait and ask. 
 As yet, I find myself much cut off from practical companions and 
 instructors ; my visitors and collocutors are all of the theoretic sort, 
 and worth comparatively little to me, but I shall gradually approach 
 the other sort, and try to profit by them. With able editors I figure 
 my course as terminated. Fraser cannot afford to pay me, besides 
 seems more and more bent on Toryism and Irish reporterism, to me 
 infinitely detestable. 
 
 "With regard to neighborhood,! might say we were very quiet, even 
 solitary, yet not oppressively so. Of visitors that merely call here 
 we have absolutely none ; our day is our own, and those that do 
 come are worth something to us. Our most interesting new friend 
 is a Mrs. Taylor, who came here for the first time yesterday, and 
 stayed long. She is a living romance heroine, of the clearest insight, 
 of the royallest volition, very interesting, of questionable destiny, not 
 above twenty-five. Jane is to go and pass a day with her soon, 
 being greatly taken with her. Allan Cunningham, with his wife and 
 daughter, made us out last night. We are to dine there some day.
 
 258 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Hunt is always at hand; but, as the modestest of men, never comes 
 unless sent for. His theory of life and mine have already declared 
 themselves to be from top to bottom at variance, which shocks him 
 considerably ; to me his talk is occasionally pleasant, is always clear and 
 lively, but all too foisonless, baseless, and shallow. He has a theory 
 that the world is, or should, and shall be, a gingerbread Lubberland, 
 where evil (that is, pain) shall never come : a theory in very consid- 
 erable favor here, which to me is pleasant as streams of unambrosial 
 dish-water a thing -I simply shut my mouth against, as the shortest 
 way. Irving I have not succeeded in seeing again, though I went 
 up to Bayswater once and left my name. I rather think his wife 
 will incline to secrete him from me, and may even have been ca- 
 pable of suppressing my card. I will try again, for his sake and 
 my own. Mill is, on the whole, our best figure, yet all too narrow in 
 shape, though of wide susceptibilities and very fond of us. He 
 hunts me out old books, does all he can for me ; he is busy about the 
 new Radical Review, and doubtless will need me there, at least as 
 ' gusting bone.' Ought he to get me ? Not altogether for the ask- 
 ing, perhaps, for I am wearied of that. Voyons. Thus, dear brother, 
 have you a most full and artless picture of our existence here. You 
 do not despair of us; your sympathies are blended with hopes for 
 us. You will make out of all this food enough for musing. Muse 
 plentifully about us : to me, also, you continue precious. With you 
 I am double strong. God be with you, dear Jack ! Jane stipulated 
 for a paragraph, so I stop here." 
 
 P.S. by Mrs. Carlyle: 
 
 " Again only a postscript, my dear John, but I will write one time 
 or other. I will : as yet I am too unsettled. In trying to write or 
 read, above all things, I feel I am in a new position. When I look 
 round on my floors once more laid with carpets, my chairs all in a 
 row, etc., I flatter myself the tumult is subsided. But when I look 
 within alas! I find my wits by no means in a row, but still engaged 
 at an uproarious game of ' Change seats, the king's coming.' I read 
 dozens of pages, and find at the end that I have not the slightest 
 knowledge what they were about. I take out a note-book day after 
 day and write the day of the week and mouth, and so return it. 
 Pity the poor white woman. She will find herself by-and-by, and 
 communicate the news to you among the first; for I am sure you 
 care for her, and would rejoice in her attainment of a calm, well- 
 ordered being for her own sake. At all rates, we are well out of 
 Puttock everywhere." 
 
 These first letters from London would seem to indicate that Carlyle 
 was tolerably "hefted" to his new home and condition; but the 
 desponding mood was never long absent. Happy those to whom 
 nature has given good animal spirits. There is no fairy gift equal 
 to this for helping a man to fight his way, and animal spirits Car- 
 lyle never had. He had the keenest sense of the ridiculous; but 
 humor and sadness are inseparable properties of the same nature; 
 his constitutional unhopefulness soon returned upon him, and was
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 259 
 
 taking deeper hold than he cared to let others see. The good ef- 
 fects of this change wore off in a few weeks: the old enemy was in 
 possession again, and the entries in his diary were more desponding 
 than even at Craigenputtock. 
 
 " Saturday night (#>.tn*c-t), July 26, 1834. Have written nothing 
 here for above a month ; my state has been one of those it was al- 
 most frightful to speak of: an undetermined, unspeakable state. 
 Little better yet; but the book being open, I will put down a word. 
 
 "Nothing can exceed the (/rarity of my situation here. 'Do or 
 die' seems the word; and, alas! what to dp? 1 have no practical 
 friend, no confidant, properly no companion. For five days to- 
 
 f ether I sit without so much as speaking to any one except my wife, 
 lood tragical, gloomy, as of one forsaken, who had nothing left him 
 but to get thrvityh hi* 'task and die. No periodical-editor wants me: 
 no man will give me money for my Avork. Bad health, too (at least, 
 singularly changed health), brings all manner of dispiritment. Des- 
 picablest fears of coming to absolute beggary, etc. , etc. , besiege me. 
 On brighter days I cast these off into the dim distance, and see a 
 world fearful, indeed, but grand: a task to do in it which no poverty 
 or beggary shall hinder. 
 
 " Can friends do much for one? Conversing here, I find that I 
 get almost nothing; the utmost, and that rarely, is honest, clear re- 
 ception of what I give. Surely I go wrong to work. I question 
 everybody too, but none, or almost none, can answer me on any sub- 
 ject. Hunt is limited, even bigoted, and, seeing that I utterly dis- 
 sent from him, fears that I despise him; a kindly clever man, fan- 
 tastic, brilliant, shallow, of one topic, loquacious, unproductive. 
 Mrs. A. (alas!) a ' Niagara of gossip; ' in certain of my humors fear- 
 ful ! Mill is the best; unhappily he is speculative merely; can open 
 out for me no practical road, nor even direct me where I may 
 search after such. The Unitarian-philosophic fraternity (likely to 
 open through Mrs. Taylor) also bodes little. Alone! alone! 'May 
 we say ' (my good father used to pray) ' may we say we are not 
 alone.'for the Lord is with us.' True! true! Keep thy heart reso- 
 lute and still; look prudently out, take diligent advantage of what 
 time and chance will offer (to thee as to all); toil along and fear 
 nothing. O thou of little faith! Weak of faith indeed ! God 
 help me ! 
 
 " For about a month past, finding that no editor had need of me, 
 that it would be imprudent to ask him to have need of me, and, 
 moreover, that booksellers now would print books for nothing, I 
 have again been resolute about the writing of a book, and even work- 
 ing in the direction of one. Subject, 'the French Revolution.' 
 Whole boxes of books about me. Gloomy, huge, of almost bound- 
 less meaning; but obscure, dubious all too deep for me; will and 
 must do my best. Alas ! gleams, too, of a work of art hover past 
 me ; as if this should be a work of art. Poor me 1 
 
 " In the midst of innumerable discouragements, all men indiffer- 
 ent or finding fault, let me mention two small circumstances that 
 are comfortable. The first is a letter from some nameless Irishman 
 in Cork to another here (Fraser read it to me without names), actu-
 
 260 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ally containing a true and one of the friendliest possible recognitions 
 of me. One mortal, then, says I am not utterly wrong. Blessings 
 on him for it! The second is a letter I got to-day from Emerson, 
 of Boston in America; sincere, not baseless, of most exaggerated 
 estimation. Precious is man to man. 
 
 "It was long ago written, ' Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.' 
 Such woe at least is not thine ! 
 
 " ' Tout va Hen ici, le pain manque.' " 
 
 "August 12. Good news out of Annandale that they are all well; 
 the like from Jack. I still lonely, how lonely ! Health, and with it 
 spirits fluctuating, feeble, usually bad. At times nothing can ex- 
 ceed my gloom. Foolish weakling! However, so it is; light alter- 
 nates with darkness ; sorrow itself must be followed by cessation of 
 sorrow which is joy. As yet no prospect whatever. Mill, I dis- 
 cern, has given Fox the editorship of that new Molesworth periodi- 
 cal ; seems rather ashamed of it d la bonne heure; is it not probably 
 better so? Trust in God and in thyself! Oh, could I but ! all else 
 were so light, so trivial ! Enough now." 
 
 "August 13. Weary, dispirited, sick, forsaken, every way heavy- 
 laden ! cannot tell what is to become of that ' French Revolution ; ' 
 vague, boundless, without form and void Gott hilf mir ! 
 
 "The idea of not very distant death often presents itself to me, 
 without satisfaction, yet without much terror, much aversion ein 
 verfehltes Leben? Poor coward! At lowest I say nothing; what I 
 suffer is, as much as may be, locked up within myself. A long lane 
 that has no turning ? Despair not. " 
 
 How to keep living was the problem. The "French Revolu- 
 tion," Carlyle thought at this time, must be a mere sketch; finished 
 and sold by the following spring if he was to escape entire bank- 
 ruptcy. He had hoped more than he knew for the editorship of 
 the new Review. It had been given to Fox, " as the safer man." 
 
 " I can already picture to myself the Radical periodical [he wrote 
 to his brother John], and can even prophesy its destiny. With my- 
 self it had not been so; [but] the only thing certain would have 
 been difficulty, pain, and contradiction, which I should probably 
 have undertaken; which I am far from breaking my heart that I 
 have missed. Mill likes me well, and on his embarrassed face, 
 when Fox happened to be talked of, I read both that editorship 
 business, and also that Mill had known my want of it, which latter 
 was all I desired to read. As you well say, disappointment on dis- 
 appointment only simplifies one's course; your possibilities become 
 diminished; your choice is rendered easier. In general. I abate no 
 jot of confidence in myself and in my cause. Nay, it often seems 
 to me as if the extremity of suffering, if such were appointed me, 
 might bring out an extremity of energy as yet unknown to myself. 
 God grant me faith, clearness, and peaceableness of heart. I make 
 no other prayer." 
 
 No doubt it was hard to bear. By Mill, if by no one else, 
 Carlyle thought that he was recognized and appreciated; and
 
 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 261 
 
 Mill had preferred Fox to him. The Rcvieio fared as Carlyle 
 expected: lived its short day as long as Molesworth's money 
 held out, and then withered. Perhaps, as he said, "With him 
 it had not been so." Yet no one who knows how such things 
 are managed could blame Mill. To the bookselling world Car- 
 lyle's name, since the appearance of "Sartor Resartus" in Fraser, 
 had become an abomination, and so far was Mill from really al- 
 tering his own estimate of Carlyle that he offered to publish the 
 "Diamond Necklace" as a book at his own expense, "that he 
 might have the pleasure of reviewing it !" Carlyle at bottom under- 
 stood that it could not have been otherwise, and that essentially it 
 was better for him as it was. Through his own thrift and his wife's 
 skill, the extremity of poverty never really came, and his time and 
 faculties were left unincumbered for his own work. Even of Fox 
 himself, whom he met at a dinner-party, he could speak kindly ; not 
 unappreciatively. The cloud lifted now and then, oftener, probably, 
 than his diary would lead one to suppose. Carlyle's sense of the 
 ridiculous stronger than that of any contemporary man was the 
 complement to his dejection. In his better moments he could see 
 and enjoy the brighter side of his position. On the 15th of August, 
 two days after he had been meditating on his verfehltes Leben, he 
 could write to his brother in a happier tone. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Naples. 
 
 " 5 Cheyne Row : August 15. 
 
 "All of us have tolerable health, Jane generally better than be- 
 fore ; I certainly not worse, and now more in the ancient accus- 
 tomed fashion. I am diligent with the shower-bath; my pilgrim- 
 ages to the Museum and on other town errands keep me in walking 
 enough; once or twice weekly on an evening Jane and I stroll out 
 along the bank of the river or about the College, and see white- 
 shirted Cockneys in their green canoes, or old pensioners pensively 
 smoking tobacco. The London street tumult has become a kind of 
 marching music to me ; I walk along following my own meditations 
 without thinking of it. Company comes in desirable quantity, not 
 deficient, not excessive, and there is talk enough from time to time. 
 I myself, however, when I consider it, find the whole all too thin, 
 unnutritive, unavailing. All London-born men, without exception, 
 seem to me narrow-built, considerably perverted men, rather frac- 
 tions of a man. Hunt, by nature a very clever man, is one instance ; 
 Mill, in quite another manner, is another. These and others con- 
 tinue to come about me as with the cheering sound of temporary 
 music, and are right welcome so. A higher co-operation will per- 
 haps somewhere else or some time hence disclose itself. 
 
 ' There was a piper had a cow, 
 
 And he had nought to give her; 
 He took his pipes and played a spring, 
 And bade the cow consider.'
 
 262 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 "Allan Cunningham was here two nights ago: very friendly, 
 full of Nithsdale, a pleasant Naturmcnsch. Mill gives me logical 
 developments of hoic men act (chiefly in politics); Hunt, tricksy de- 
 vices and crotchety whimsicalities on the same theme. What they 
 act is a thing neither of them much sympathizes in, much seems to 
 know. I sometimes long greatly for Irving for the old Irving of 
 fifteen years ago; nay, the poor actual gift-of -tongues Irving has 
 seemed desirable to me. We dined with Mrs. (Platonica) Taylor 
 and the Unitarian Fox one day. Mill was also of the party, and 
 the husband an obtuse, most joypus-natured man, the pink of so- 
 cial hospitality. Fox is a little thick-set, bushy-locked man of five- 
 and-foity, with bright, sympathetic, thoughtful eyes, with a ten- 
 dency to pot-belly and snuffiness. From these hints you can con- 
 strue him ; the best Socinian philosophist going, but not a whit more. 
 I shall like well enough to meet the man again, but I doubt he will 
 not me. Mrs. Taylor herself did not yield unmixed satisfaction, I 
 think, or receive it. She affects, with a kind of sultana noble-mind- 
 edness, a certain girlish petulance, and felt that it did not wholly 
 prosper. We walked home, however, even Jane did, all the way 
 from the Regent's Park, and felt that we had done a duty. For 
 me, from the Socinians as I take it, icird nichts. 
 
 "The French Revolution perplexes me much. More books on 
 it, I find, are but a repetition of those before read; I learn nothing, 
 or almost nothing, further by books, yet am I as far as possible 
 from understanding it. Bedenklichkeiten of all kinds environ me. 
 To be true or not to be true: there is the risk. And then to be 
 popular, or not to be popular? That, too, is a question that plays 
 most completely with the other. We shall see ; we shall try. Par 
 ma, tete seule ! 
 
 "My good Jack has now a clear view of me. We may say, in the 
 words of the Sansculotte Deputy writing to the Convention of the 
 Progress of Right Principles, Tout va bien ici, le pain inanque! 
 Jane and I often repeat this with laughter. But, in truth, we live 
 very cheap here (perhaps not much above 50. a year dearer than at 
 Puttock), and so can hold out a long while independent of chance. 
 Utter poverty itself (if I hold fast by the faith) has no terrors for me, 
 should it ever come. 
 
 ' ' I told you I had seen Irving. It was but yesterday in Newman 
 Street, after four prior ineffectual attempts. William Hamilton, 
 who was here on Saturday, told me Irving was grown worse again, 
 and Mrs. Irving had been extremely ill ; he, too, seemed to think 
 my cards had been withheld. Much grieved at this news, I called 
 once more on Monday: a new failure. Yesterday I went again, 
 with an insuppressible indignation mixed with my pity; after some 
 shying, I was admitted. Poor Irving! he lay there on a sofa, begged 
 my pardon for not rising; his wife, who also did not, and probably 
 could not well, rise, sate at his feet all the time I was there, miserable 
 and haggard. Irving once lovingly ordered her away ; but she lov- 
 ingly excused herself, and sate still. He complains of biliousness, 
 of pain at his right short rib; has a short, thick cough, which comes 
 on at the smallest irritation. Poor fellow, I brought a short gleam 
 of old Scottish laughter into his face, into his voice; and that, too,
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 263 
 
 set him coughing. He said it was the Lord's will; looked weak, 
 dispirited, partly embarrassed. He continues toiling daily, though 
 the doctor says rest only can cure him. Is it not mournful, hyper- 
 tragical? There are moments when I determine on sweeping in 
 upon all tongue work and accursed choking cobwebberies, and 
 snatching away my old best friend, to save him from death and the 
 grave. " 
 
 So passed on the first summer of Carlyle's life in London. " The 
 weather," he says, "defying it in hard, almost brimless hat, which 
 was obbligato in that time of slavery, did sometimes throw me into 
 colic." In the British Museum lay concealed somewhere "a collec- 
 tion of French pamphlets " on the Revolution, the completes! in the 
 world, which, after six weeks' wrestle with officiality, he was obliged 
 to find " inaccessible " to him. Idle obstruction will put the most en- 
 during of men now and then out of patience, and Carlyle was not 
 enduring in such matters; but his wife was able on the first of Sep- 
 tember to send to Scotsbrig a very tolerable picture of his condition. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotebrig. 
 
 "Chelsea: September 1, 1834. 
 
 "My dear Mother, Could I have supposed it possible that any 
 mortal was so stupid as not to feel disappointed in receiving a letter 
 from me instead of my husband, I should have written to you very 
 long ago. But while this humility becomes me, it is also my duty 
 (too long neglected) to send a little adjunct to my husband's letters, 
 just to assure you ' with my own hand ' that I continue to love you 
 amidst the hubbub of this ' noble city ' * just the same as in the quiet 
 of Craigenputtock, and to cherish a grateful recollection of your 
 many kindnesses to me; especially of that magnanimous purpose to 
 ' sit at my bedside ' through the night preceding my departure, ' that 
 I might be sure to sleep.' I certainly shall never forget that night, 
 and the several preceding and following: but for the kindness and 
 helpfulness shown me on all hands I must have traiked," one would 
 suppose. I had every reason to be thankful then to Providence 
 and my friends, and I have had the same reason since. 
 
 "All things since we came here have gone more smoothly with 
 us than I at all anticipated. Our little household has been set up 
 again at a quite moderate expense of money and trouble ; wherein, 
 I cannot help thinking, with a cliastened vanity, that the superior 
 shiftiness and thriftiuess of the Scotch character has strikingly 
 manifested itself. The Englishwomen turn up the whites of their 
 ryi-s and call on the ' good heavens ' at the bare idea of enterprises 
 which seem to me in the most ordinary course of human affairs. I 
 told Mrs. Hunt one day I had been very busy painting. ' What?' 
 she asked; ' is it a portrait? ' Oh no, I told her, something of more 
 importance: a large wardrobe. She could not imagine, she said, 
 
 i " Phrase of Basil Montagu's. T. C." 
 
 <> 'Treiked ' means perished Contemptuous term, applied to cattle, etc. Traik= 
 German Drccfc.T. C."
 
 264 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 'how I could have patience for such things.' And so, having no 
 patience for them herself, what is the result? She is every other 
 day reduced to borrow my tumblers, my teacups; even a cupful of 
 porridge, a few spoonfuls of tea, are begged of me, because ' Missus 
 has got company, and happens to be out of the article;' in plain, 
 unadorned English, because ' missus ' is the most wretched of man- 
 agers, and is often at the point of not having a copper in her purse. 
 To see how they live and waste here, it is a wonder the whole city 
 does not ' bankrape ' and go out of sicht; ' flinging platefuls of what 
 they are pleased to denominate ' crusts ' (that is, what I consider the 
 best of the bread) into the ash-pits. I often say, with honest self- 
 congratulation, ' In Scotland we have no such thing as crusts.' On 
 the whole, though the English ladies eeem to have their wits more 
 at their finger-ends, and have a great advantage over me in that re- 
 spect, I never cease to be glad that I was born on the other side of 
 the Tweed, and that those who are nearest and dearest to me are 
 Scotch. 
 
 "I must tell you what Carlyle will not tell of himself, that he is 
 rapidly mending of his Craigenputtock gloom and acerbity. He is 
 really at times a tolerably social character, and seems to be re- 
 garded with a feeling of mingled terror and love in all companies, 
 which I should think the diffusion of ' Teufelsdrockh ' will tend to 
 increase. 
 
 " I have just been called away to John Macqueen, who was fol- 
 lowed by a Jock Thomson, of Annan, whom I received in my choic- 
 est mood to make amends for Carlyle's unreadiness, 5 who was posi- 
 tively going to let him leave the door without asking him in, a 
 neglect which he would have reproached himself for after. 
 
 " My love to all. Tell my kind Mary to write to me; she is the 
 only one that ever does. 
 
 " Your affectionate JANE "W. CAKLYLE." 
 
 Carlyle's letter under the same cover (franked by Sir John Rom- 
 illy) communicates that the writing of the "French Revolution" 
 was actually begun. 
 
 " Of Chelsea news we have as good as none to send you, which, 
 indeed, means intrinsically good enough news. We go on in the 
 old fashion, adhering pretty steadily to our work, and looking for 
 our main happiness in that. This is the dull season in London, and 
 several of our friends are fled to the country. However, we have 
 still a fair allowance of company left us ; and, what is best, the com- 
 pany we have is none of it bad, or merely 'a consuming of time,' 
 but rational and leads to something, The best news I have is that 
 
 i "To 'bankrape' is to 'bankrupt' (used as a verb passive). 'And then he bank- 
 rapit and gaed out of sicht.' A phrase of my father's in the little sketches of Annan- 
 dale biography he would sometimes give me. T. C." 
 
 a "Macqueen and Thomson were two big graziers of respectability Macqueen a 
 native of Craigenputtock. Thomson, from near Annan, had been a schoolfellow of 
 mine. They had called here without very specific errand; and I confess what the letter 
 intimates (of my silent wish to have evaded such interruption, etc.) is the exact truth. 
 T. C."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 363 
 
 this day (September 1) I mean to begin writing my book; nay, bad 
 it not been for tbe present sheet, would already have been "at it! 
 Wish me good speed; I have meditated the business as I could, and 
 must surely strive to do my best. With a kind of trembling hope, I 
 calculate that the enterprise may prosper with me; that the book 
 may be at least a true one, and tend to do God's service, not the 
 Devil's. It will keep me greatly on the stretch these winter months, 
 but I hope to have it printed and out early in spring; what is to 
 be done next, we shall then see. The world must be a tougher 
 article than I have ever found it if it altogether beats me. I have 
 defied it, and set my trust elsewhere, and so it can do whatsoever is 
 permitted and appointed it. As to our other doings and outlooks, 
 I have written of them all at great length to Alick the other day, so 
 that, as you are likely to see his letter, I need not dwell on them 
 I have seen Mill and various other agreeable persons since (for 
 our company comes often in rushes), but met with no further ad- 
 venture." 
 
 The close of the letter refers to economics, and to the generous 
 contributions furnished by Scotsbrig to the Cheyne Row establish- 
 ment. 
 
 "The sheet is fading very fast; Jane's little note too is ready, 
 and I have still some business to do. We spoke long ago about a 
 freight of eatable goods we wanted out of Aunandale, at the fall of 
 the year. As you are the punctuallest of all, I will now specify the 
 whole to you, that you may bestir yourself, and stir up others in 
 the proper quarter to be getting them ready. Here is the list of our 
 wants, as I have extracted it by questions out of Jane: First, sixty 
 pounds of butter in two equal pigs (the butter here is 16d a pound!); 
 secondly, a moderately sized sweet-milk cheese; next, two smallish 
 bacon-hams (your beef -ham was just broken into last week, and is 
 in the best condition); next, about fifteen stone of right oatmeal (or 
 even more, for we are to give Hunt some stones of it, and need al- 
 most a pound daily: there is not now above a stone left); and, after 
 that, as many hundredweights of potatoes as you think will keep 
 (for the rule of it is this : we take two pounds daily, and they 
 sell here at three-halfpence, or at lowest a penny, a pound, and 
 are seldom good): all this got ready and packed into a hogshead 
 or two will reach us by TV hitehaven, and we will see how it an- 
 swers." 
 
 John Carlyle meanwhile was prospering with Lady Clare, and 
 was in a position to return to his brother the generosity of earlier 
 days. It was perfectly true, as Carlyle had said, that what any one 
 of the family possessed the others were free to share with him. In 
 September John sent home 13(M. for his mother. 1 
 
 i Carlyle carried it to the City to bo forwarded to the bank at Dumfries, and ho 
 enlarged his experiences of London on the way. "In my perambulations." he said. 
 "I came upon a strange anarchy of a place the Stock Exrhanjie. About a hundred 
 men were jumping and jiKH'"K about in a dintcy, eontnirtrd apartment, ;m<l yelping 
 out all manner of souiul.s, which buoined to lie auctioneer's oilers, not without imirh 
 
 II. 12
 
 266 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 "Chelsea: September 21, 1834. 
 
 "Your kind letter, my dear Jack, was read over with a feeling 
 such as it merited: it went nearer my heart than anything address- 
 ed to me for long. I am not sure that there were not tears in 
 the business, but they were not sad ones. Your offers and purposes 
 are worthy of a brother, and I were but unworthy if I met them in 
 any mean spirit. I believe there is no other man living from whom 
 such offers as yours were other to me than a pleasant sound which 
 I must disregard; but it is not so with these; for I actually can 
 (without damage to any good feeling in me), and will, if need be, 
 make good use of them. We will, as you say, stand by one another; 
 and so each of us, were all other men arranged against us, have one 
 friend. Well that it is so. Wohl ihm dem die (feburt den Brud<r 
 gab. I will not speak any more about this, but keep it laid up in 
 my mind as a thing to act by. I feel, as I once said, double-strong 
 in the possession of my poor Doil, 1 and so I suppose we shall quar- 
 rel many times yet, and instantly agree again, and argue and sym- 
 pathize, and on the whole stand by one another through good and 
 evil, and turn two fronts to the world while we are both spared in it. 
 Amen ! There are many wallowing in riches, splendent in dignities, 
 who have no such possession as this. Let us be thankful for it, and 
 approve ourselves worthy of it. 
 
 "I have not yet earned sixpence since I came hither, and see not 
 that I am advancing towards such a thing : however, I do not ' tine 
 heart.' Indeed, that money consideration gives me wonderfully 
 little sorrow; we can hold out a long time yet. It is very true, also, 
 what you say, that soliciting among the bibliopoles were the worst 
 policy. Indeed, I have no deeper wish than that bread for me of 
 the brownest sort were providable elsewhere than with them. We 
 shall not cease to try. One comfortable thing is the constant convic- 
 tion I have that here or nowhere is the place for me. I must swim 
 or sink Jtere. Withal, too, I feel the influences of the place on me 
 rebuking much in my late ways of writing and speech: within my 
 own heart I am led to overhaul many things, and alter or mourn for 
 them. I might say, generally, that I am leading a rather painful 
 but not unprofitable life. At spes infracta ! I look up to the ever- 
 lasting sky, and, with the azure infinitude all around me, cannot think 
 that I was made in vain. These things, however, I do not well to 
 speak of yet, or perhaps at all. The best news is that I have actu- 
 ally begun that 'French Revolution,' and after two weeks of blotch- 
 ing and bloring have produced two clean pages! Ach Oott! But 
 my hand is out; and I am altering my style too, and troubled about 
 many things. Bilious, too, in these smothering, windless days. It 
 shall be such a book : quite an epic poem of the Revolution : an apoth- 
 eosis of Sansculottism ! Seriously, when in good spirits I feel as if 
 
 laughter and other miscellaneous tumult. I thought of the words ' trades' contentious 
 hell;' but had no room for reflections. A red-necked official coming up with tho 
 assurance that this place was 'private, sir,' I departed with a ' thousand pardons' and 
 satisfaction that I had seen the Domdauiel. These were my discoveries in the city. " 
 i Family nickname for John Carlyle.
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 267 
 
 there were the matter of a very considerable work -within me; but 
 the task of shaping and uttering will be frightful. Here, as in so 
 many other respects, I am alone, without models, without limits 
 (this is a great want), and must just do the best I can." 
 
 The expected provision-barrels from Scotsbrig were long in arriv- 
 ing, and Carlyle had to quicken the family movements in the end of 
 October by a representation of the state of things to which he and 
 his wife were reduced. ' ' It will seem absurd enough to tell you, " he 
 wrote to his mother, "that we are in haste now after waiting so 
 long; but the truth is, our meal has been done for a fortnight, and 
 we have the strangest shifts for a supper. Amongst others, flour- 
 porridge, exactly shoemaker's paste, only clean; and at last have 
 been obliged to take to some of the Scotch oatmeal sold in the shops 
 here very dear, fivepence a quart by measure which, though 
 rough, is quite sound, which therefore we can thankfully use; so 
 you need not suppose us starving. The butter, too, is almost always 
 excellent (churned, I believe, out of milk), at the easy rate of sixteen- 
 pence a pound! In regard to provision, I shall only add that the 
 beef-ham daily plays its part at breakfast, and proves thoroughly 
 genuine. The butcher came here one day to saw the bone of it, and 
 asked with amazement whether it was pork or not. He had never 
 heard of any ham but a bacon one, and departed from us with a 
 new idea. N.B. We get coffee to breakfast (at eight or nearly so), 
 have very often mutton-chops to dinner at three, then tea at six ; we 
 have four pennyworth of cream, two pennyworth of milk, daily. 
 This is our diet, which I know you would rather know than not 
 know." 
 
 For the rest, life went on without much variety. "Bessy Barnet " 
 left Cheyne Row after two months, being obliged to return to her 
 mother, and they had to find another servant among the London 
 maids of all work. Carlyle crushed down his dispiritment ; found, 
 at any rate, that ' ' nothing like the deep mlkiness of Craigenput- 
 tock" troubled him in London. He felt that "he was in the right 
 workshop if he could but get acquainted with the tools." "Teu- 
 felsdrockh," circulating in a stitched-up form, made out of the sheets 
 of Fraser, was being read, a few persons really admiring it; the 
 generality turning up their eyes in speechless amazement. Irving 
 had departed, having gone to Scotland, where he was reported as 
 lying ill at Glasgow, and, to Carlyle's very deep distress, likely to 
 die. 
 
 Among minor adventures, Carlyle was present at the burning of 
 the Houses of Parliament. "The crowd," he says, "was quiet, 
 rather pleased than otherwise; whewed and whistled when the 
 breeze came, as if to encourage it. 'There's a flare-up for the 
 House of Lords!' ' A judgment for the Poor-law Bill!' ' There go
 
 268 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 their ffacts!' Such exclamations seemed to be the prevailing ones: 
 a man sorry I did not see anywhere." 
 
 Horny-handed Radicalism gave Carlyle a grim satisfaction. He 
 considered modern society so corrupt that he expected, or rather 
 desired, an immediate end to it. But Radicalism, too, had its un- 
 favorable aspects, especially when it showed itself in the direction 
 of female emancipation. 
 
 "Mill and one or two of his set [lie said] are, on the whole, the 
 reasonablest people we have. However, we see them seldom, being 
 so far off, and Mill himself, who would be far the best of them all, 
 is greatly occupied of late times with a set of quite opposite charac- 
 ter, which the Austins and other friends mourn much and fear much 
 over. Fox the Socinian, and a flight of really wretched-looking 
 ' friends of the species, ' who (in writing and deed) struggle not in 
 favor of duty being done, but against duty of any sort being required. 
 A singular creed this; but I can assure you a very observable one 
 here in these days: by me deeply hated as the GLARE which is its 
 color (die seine Farbe isf) and substance likewise mainly. Jane and 
 I often say, 'Before all mortals, beware of friends of the species!' 
 Most of these people are very indignant at marriage and the like, 
 and frequently, indeed, are obliged to divorce their own wives, or 
 be divorced; for though this world is already blooming (or is one 
 day to do it) in everlasting 'happiness of the greatest number,' 
 these people's own Jwnises (I always find) are little hells of improvi- 
 dence, discord, and unreason. Mill is far above all that, and I think 
 will not sink into it; however, I do wish him fairly far from it, and, 
 though I cannot speak of it directly, would fain help him out. He 
 is one of the best people I ever saw." 
 
 The next letter is from Mrs. Carlyle, which Carlyle interprets. 
 
 "Mournfully beautiful [he says] is this letter to me; a clear lit- 
 tle household light shining pure and brilliant in the dark obstructive 
 places of the past. The two East-Lothian friends are George Ren- 
 nie the sculptor, and his pretty sister, wife of an ex-Indian ship- 
 captain. 
 
 " Eliza Miles and the Mileses are the good people in Ampton Street 
 with whom we lodged. Eliza, their daughter, felt quite captivated 
 with my Jane, and seems to have vowed eternal loyalty to her al- 
 most at first sight; was for coming to be our servant at Craigenput- 
 tock; actually wrote proposing it then the most tempting off er to 
 us, had not the rough element and the delicate aspirant been evi- 
 dently irreconcilable ! She continued to visit us here at moderate 
 intervals ; wrote me, after my calamity befell, the one letter of con- 
 dolence I could completely read. She was a very pretty and to us 
 interesting specimen of the London maiden of the middle classes; 
 refined, polite, pious, clever both of hand and mind. No gentle- 
 woman could have a more upright, modest, affectionate, and uncon- 
 sciously high demeanor. Her father had long been in a prosperous 
 upholsterer's business, but the firm had latterly gone away. He was 
 a very good-natured, respectable man, quietly much sympathized
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 269 
 
 with in his own house. Eliza, with her devout temper, had been 
 drawn to Edward Irving; went daily, alone of her family, to his 
 chapel in those years 1831-2, and was to the last one of his most 
 reverent disciples. She did, in her soft, loyal way, right well in the 
 world ; married poorly enough, but wisely, and is still living a rich 
 man's wife and the mother of prosperous sons and daughters. 
 
 " ' Buller's Radical meeting ' was a meeting privately got up by 
 Charles Buller, but ostensibly managed by others, which assembled 
 itself largely and with emphasis at the London Tavern, to say what 
 it thought of the first reappearance of Peel and Co., after the Re- 
 form Bill 'first Peel Ministry,' which lasted only a short time. I 
 duly attended the meeting (never another in my life), and remem- 
 bered it well. Had some interest not much. The two thousand 
 human figures, wedged in the huge room into one dark mass, were 
 singular to look down upon, singular to hear their united voice com- 
 ing clearly as from one heart, their fiery ' Yes,' their sternly bellow- 
 ing ' No. ' I could notice too what new laws there were of speak- 
 ing to such a mass: no matter how intensely consentaneous your 
 two thousand were, and how much you agreed with every one of 
 them, you must likewise begin where they began, follow pretty ex- 
 actly their sequence of thoughts, or they lost sight of your intention, 
 and for noise of contradiction to you and to one another you could 
 not be heard at all. That was new to me, that second thing, and 
 little or nothing else was. In the speeches I had no interest except a 
 phenomenal ; indeed, had to disagree throughout more or less with 
 every part of them. Roebuck knew the art best, kept the two 
 thousand in constant reverberation, more and more rapturous, by his 
 adroitly correct series of commonplaces. John Crawford, much 
 more original, lost the series, and had to sit down again ignomiu- 
 iously unheard. I walked briskly home much musing. Found her 
 waiting, eager enough for any news I had. T. C." 
 
 " To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Chelsea : November 21, 1834. 
 
 "My dear Mother, Now that franks are come back into the 
 world, one need not wait for an inspired moment to write ; if one's 
 letter is worth nothing, it costs nothing; nor will any letter that tells 
 you of our welfare and assures you of our continual affection be 
 worth nothing in your eyes, however destitute of news or anything 
 else that might make it entertaining. 
 
 "The weather is grown horridly cold, and I am chiefly intent, 
 at present, on getting my winter wardrobe into order. I have made 
 up the old black gown, which was dyed puce for me at Dumfries, with 
 my own Juinds. It looks twenty per cent, better than when it was 
 ne\y; and I shall get no other this winter. I am now turning my 
 pelisse. I went yesterday to a milliner to buy a bonnet. An old, 
 very ugly lady, upwards of seventy I am sure, was bargaining about 
 a cloak at the same place; it was a fine affair of satin and violet; 
 but she declared repeatedly that ' it had no air,' and for her part she 
 could not put on such a thing. My bonnet, I flatter myself, has an 
 air. A little brown feather nods over the front of it, and the crown 
 points like a sugar-loaf I The diameter of the fashionable ladies at
 
 270 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 present is about three yards; their bustles are the size of an ordinary 
 sheep's fleece. The very servant-girls wear bustles. Eliza Miles 
 told me a maid of theirs went out one Sunday with three kitchen 
 dusters pinned on as a substitute. 
 
 "The poor Mileses are in great affliction. Mr. Miles, about the 
 time we came to London, got into an excellent situation, and they 
 were just beginning to feel independent, and look forward to a com- 
 fortable future, when one morning, about a week ago, Mr. Miles, in 
 walking through his warerooms, was noticed to stagger, and one of 
 the men ran and caught him as he was falling. He was carried 
 to a public-house close by, his own house being miles off, and his 
 wife and daughter sent for. He never spoke to them, could nev- 
 er be removed, but there, in the midst of confusion and riot, 
 they sate watching him for two days, when he expired. I went 
 up to see them so soon as I heard of their misfortune. The 
 wife was confined to bed with inflammation in her head. Poor 
 Eliza was up and resigned-looking, but the picture of misery. A 
 gentleman from Mr. Irving's church was with her, saying what he 
 could. 
 
 "Mrs. Montagu has quite given us up; but we still find it possible 
 to carry on existence. I offended her by taking in Bessy Barnet, 
 in the teeth of her vehement admonition, and now I suppose she is 
 again offended that I should receive a discharged servant of her 
 daughter-in-law's. I am sorry that she should be so whimsical, for 
 as she was my first friend in London I continue to feel a sort of 
 tenderness for her in spite of many faults which cleave to her. But 
 her society can quite readily be dispensed with nevertheless; we 
 have new acquaintances always turning up, and a pretty handsome 
 stock of old ones. 
 
 "A brother and sister, the most intimate friends I ever had in 
 East Lothian, live quite near (for London), and I have other East- 
 Lothian acquaintances. Mrs. Hunt I shall soon be quite terminated 
 with, I foresee. She torments my life out with borrowing. She 
 actually borrowed one of the brass fenders the other day, and I had 
 difficulty in getting it out of her hands; irons, glasses, teacups, silver 
 spoons, are in constant requisition, and when one sends for them the 
 whole number can never be found. Is it not a shame to manage so 
 with eight guineas a week to keep house on? It makes me very in- 
 dignant to see all the waste that goes on around me, when I am 
 needing so much care and calculation to make ends meet; when we 
 dine out, to see as much expended on a dessert of fruit (for no use 
 but to give people a colic) as would keep us in necessaries for two 
 or three weeks. My present maid has a grand-uncle in town -with 
 upwards of a hundred thousand pounds, who drives his carriage and 
 all that. At a great dinner he had he gave five pounds for a couple 
 of pineapples when scarce; and here is his niece working all the 
 year through for eight, and he has never given her a farthing since 
 she came to London. 
 
 "My mother gave a good account of your looks. I hope you 
 will go and see her again for a longer time ; she was so gratified by 
 your visit. I have just had a letter from her, most satisfactory, tell- 
 ing me all she knows about any of you. She gives a wonderful
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 271 
 
 account of some transcendentally beautiful shawl which Jean had 
 made her a present of. I am sure never present gave more content- 
 ment. 
 
 " Carlyle is going to a Radical meeting to-night; but there is no 
 fear of his getting into mischief. Curiosity is his only motive ; and 
 I must away to the butcher to get his dinner. I wish you may be 
 able to read what I have written. I write with a steel pen, which 
 is a very unpliable concern, and has almost cut into my finger. God 
 bless you all. A kiss to Mary's new baby when you see it. 
 
 "Yours affectionately, JANE CARLYLE." 
 
 "Above a month before this date," Carlyle adds, "Edward Irving 
 rode to the door one evening, came in and stayed with us some 
 twenty minutqs the one call we ever had of him here ; his farewell 
 before setting out to ride towards Glasgow, as the doctors, helpless 
 otherwise, had ordered. He was very friendly, calm, and affection- 
 ate; chivalrously courteous to lier, as I remember. 'Ah yes,' look- 
 ing round the room, 'you are like an Eve make every place you 
 live in beautiful.' He was not sad in manner, but was at heart, as 
 you could notice, serious, even solemn. Darkness at hand, and the 
 weather damp, he could not loiter. I saw him mount at the door; 
 watched till he turned the first corner, close by the rector's garden 
 door, and had vanished from us altogether. He died at Glasgow 
 before the end of December." 
 
 Irving was dead, and with it closed the last chapter of Jane 
 Welsh's early romance. Much might be said of the effect of it both 
 on Irving and on her. The characters of neither of them escaped 
 unscathed by the passionate love which had once existed between 
 them. But all that is gone, and concerns the world no longer. I 
 will add only an affectionately sorrowful letter which Carlyle wrote 
 at the time to his mother when the news from Glasgow came. 
 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 "Chelsea: December 24, 1834. 
 
 ' ' Poor Edward Irving, as you have heard, has ended his pilgrim- 
 age. I had been expecting that issue, but not so soon ; the news of 
 his death, which Fraser the bookseller (once a hearer of his) com- 
 municated quite on a sudden, struck me deeply; and the wae feeling 
 of what it has all been, and what it has all ended in, kept increasing 
 with me for the next ten days. Oh, what a wild, weltering mass of 
 confusion is this world! how its softest flatterings are but bewitch- 
 ments, and lead men down to the gates of darkness! Nothing is 
 clearer to me than that Irving was driven half mad, and finally 
 killed, simply by what once seemed his enviable fortune, and by the 
 hold it took of him; killed as certainly (only a little more slowly) as 
 if it had been a draught of sweetened arsenic ! I am very sad about 
 him. Ten years ago, when I was first here, what a rushing and run- 
 ning ! his house never empty of idle or half -earnest, wondering peo- 
 ple, with their carriages and equipments; and now, alas, it i
 
 272 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 marched like a deceitful vision; and all is emptiness, desertion, and 
 his place knows him no more ! He was a good man too; that I do 
 heartily believe : his faults, we may hope, were abundantly expiated 
 in this life, and now his memory as that of the just ought shall be 
 hallowed with us. One thing with another, I have not found another 
 such man. I shall never forget these last times I saw him; I longed 
 much to help him, to deliver him, but could not do it. My poor 
 first friend my first, and best ! Fraser applied to me to write a word 
 about him, which I did; and, after much hithering and thithering, I 
 ascertain to-day that it is at last to be printed 1 (in some tolerable 
 neighborhood, for we discorded about that) in his magazine. I will 
 send you a copy of it, and another for his mother, which you may 
 deliver her yourself. Go and see the poor old forsaken widow : it 
 will do her good, and yourself. Tell her that her son did not live 
 for Time only, but for Eternity too; that he has fought the good 
 fight, as we humbly trust, and is not dead, but sleepeth. There are 
 few women whom I pity more than poor old Mrs. Irving at this mo- 
 ment : few years ago all was prosperous with her ; she had sons, a 
 cheerful household; could say, Oh, Edward, lam proud of ye : now 
 ' ruin's ploughshare ' has passed over her, and it is all fled." 
 
 Tenderly, beautifully, Carlyle could feel for his friend. No more 
 touching "funeral oration" was ever uttered over a lost companion 
 than hi the brief paper of which here he spoke ; and his heart at the 
 time was heavy for himself also. He had almost lost hope. At no 
 past period of his life does the Journal show more despondency 
 than in this autumn and winter. He might repeat his mother's 
 words to himself, "tine heart, tine a'." But the heart was near 
 "lined," for all that. 
 
 Extracts from Journal. 
 
 "Monday, September 8, 1834. Pain was not given thee merely to 
 be miserable under; learn from it, turn it to account. 
 
 "Yesterday set out to go and see Mrs. Taylor Jane with me. 
 Broke down in the park; Mnnte nichts mehr, being sick and weak 
 beyond measure ; sate me down in a seat looking over the green with 
 its groups, Jane gone to make a call hi the neighborhood; Mrs. Tay- 
 lor with her husband make their appearance, walking; pale she, and 
 passionate and sad-looking: really felt a kind of interest in her. 
 
 ' ' ' French Revolution ' begun, but, alas 1 not in the right style, 
 not in the style that can stand. The mind has not yet grappled with 
 it heartily enough : must seize it, crush the secret out of it, and make 
 or mar. 
 
 " Acknowledgments of ' Teuf elsdrockh ' worthless to me one and 
 
 all. ' Madam,' said I the other night to poor hollow Mrs. , ' it 
 
 is a work born in darkness, destined for oblivion, and not worth 
 wasting a word on.' " 
 
 "September 10. 'French Revolution' shapeless, dark, unman- 
 ageable. Know not this day, for example, on what side to attack it; 
 
 i Republished in the fourth volume of Carlyle's "Miscellanies."
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 273 
 
 yet must forward. One of the things I need most is to subdue my 
 polemics, my ill-nature." 
 
 "September 27. Walk in the evening by Millbank and the dusty, 
 desolate shore with Jane : gloom ; rest. One day in the little garden 
 see a huge spider kill a fly ; see it kill a second, lift something and 
 angrily kill it. Consider what a world of benevolence this is ; how 
 many forces are at work in Nature; how multiplex, unfathomable 
 is she." 
 
 " October 1. This morning think of the old primitive Edinburgh 
 scheme of engineership ; l almost meditate for a moment resuming it 
 yet ! It were a method of gaining bread, of getting into contact with 
 men, my two grand wants and prayers. In general, it may be said 
 no man ever so wanted any practical adviser, or shadow of one ; it 
 is utterly, from of old (and even the very appearance of it), with- 
 held from me. Sad ; not irremediable now. My isolation, my feel- 
 ing of loneliness, unlimitedness (much meant by this), what tongue 
 shall tell? Alone, alone ! "Woes too deep woes which cannot be 
 written even here. Patience, unwearied endeavor ! 
 
 "Surprised occasionally and grieved to find myself not only so dis- 
 liked suspected but so known. Though at Puttock I saw no au- 
 dience, I had one, and often '(in all Whig circles) a most writhing 
 one. Dommage ? Yes and no. 
 
 ' ' Didst thou ever hitherto want bread and clothes? No. Courage, 
 then! But, above all things, diligence. And so to work." 
 
 "Sunday, October 5. Calm, smoky weather. A pale sun gets 
 the better of the vapors towards noon, the sad sinking year. See 
 M'Culloch and speak with him. Promise to see him again. A 
 hempen man, but genuine hemp. Hunt invites us over pressingly 
 for the evening. Go, and sit talking ; not miserable, yet with 
 the deepest sea of misery lying in the background. ' Kemote, un- 
 friended, solitary, low.' Courage ! Do not tine lieart. On the 
 whole, how much have I to learn! Let me not think myself too old 
 to learn it." 
 
 " Meanwhile here is another blessed, still day given me. Let me 
 work wisely therein while it lasts. Oh that I could weep and pray ! 
 Does a God hear these dumb troublous aspirations of my soul? 
 Credamus ! ut vicamus /" 
 
 "November 1. What a long-drawn wail are these foregoing pages, 
 which I have just read ! Why add another note to it at present? In 
 general, except when writing, I never feel myself that I am alive. 
 So the last week too has been a doleful one. Complain not. Strug- 
 gle, thou weakling." 
 
 " November 27. It is many days since I have written aught here; 
 days of suffering, of darkness, despondency ; great, not yet too great 
 for me. Ill-health has much to do with it, ill-success with the book 
 
 After throwing up the law, Carlyle had for a few days thought of becoming an 
 engineer. 
 
 II. 12*
 
 274 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 has somewhat. No prospect, no definite hope nor the slightest ray 
 of such. Stand to thy tackle! Endure! Endeavor! It must alter, 
 and shall; but on with this present task, at any rate. That thou hast 
 clear before thee. 
 
 " Radical meeting (Buller's) at the City of London Tavern on Fri- 
 day night last. Meaning of a multitude of men : their fierce bark 
 (what in Annandale we call a gollie), primary indispensability of 
 lungs. Radical Murphy, with cylindrical high head (like a water- 
 can), pot-belly, and voice like the Great Bell of Moscow. All in 
 earnest. Can Wellington stay in? for long, may be doubted. Peel 
 not yet heard of." 
 
 "1835. Twelve o'clock has just struck: the last hour of 1834, the 
 first of a new year. Bells ringing (to me dolefully). A wet wind 
 blustering. My wife in bed, very unhappily ill of "a foot which the 
 puddle of a maid scalded three weeks ago. I, after a day of fruit- 
 less toil, reading and rereading about that Versailles 6th of October 
 still. It is long time since I have written anything here. The future 
 looks too black round me, the present too doleful, unfriendly. I am 
 too sick at heart, wearied, wasted in body, to complain, even to my- 
 self. My first friend Edward Irving is dead above three weeks ago. 
 I am friendless here, or as good as that. My book cannot get on, 
 though I stick to it like a bur. Why should I say Peace, peace, 
 when there is no peace? May God grant me strength to do or to 
 endure aright what is appointed me in this coming, now commenc- 
 ing, division of time. Let me not despair nay, I do not in general. 
 Enough to-night, for I am doiw! Peace be to my mother and all my 
 loved ones that yet live. What a noisy inanity is this world !" 
 
 With these words I close the story of Carlyle's apprenticeship. 
 His training was over. He was now a master in his craft, on the 
 eve, though he did not know it, of universal recognition as an origi- 
 nal and extraordinary man. Henceforward his life was in his 
 works. The outward incidents of it will be related in his wife's 
 letters and in his own explanatory notes. My part has been to fol- 
 low him from the peasant's home in which he was born and nurt- 
 ured to the steps of the great position which he was afterwards to 
 occupy; to describe his trials and his struggles, and the effect of 
 them upon his mind and disposition. He has been substantially his 
 own biographer. But no one, especially no one of so rugged and 
 angular a character, sees the lights and shadows precisely as others 
 see them. When a man of letters has exercised an influence so vast 
 over successive generations of thinkers, the world has a right to 
 know the minutest particulars of his life; and the sovereigns of 
 literature can no more escape from the fierce light which beats upon 
 a throne than the kings and ministers who have ruled the destinies 
 of states and empires. Carlyle had no such high estimate of his own 
 consequence. His poor fortunes he considered to be of moment to
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 275 
 
 no one but himself; but he knew that the world would demand an 
 account of him, and, with characteristic unreserve, he placed his 
 journals and his correspondence in my hands, with no instructions 
 save that I should tell the truth about him, and, if shadows there 
 were, that least of all should I conceal them. 
 
 If in this part of my duty I have erred at all, I have erred in ex- 
 cess, not in defect. It is the nature of men to dwell on the faults of 
 those who stand above them. They are comforted by perceiving 
 that the person whom they have heard so much admired was but of 
 common clay, after all. The life of no man, authentically told, will 
 ever be found free from fault. Carlyle has been seen in these vol- 
 umes fighting for thirty-nine years fighting with poverty, with dys- 
 pepsia, with intellectual temptations, with neglect or obstruction 
 from his fellow-mortals. Their ways were not his ways. His atti- 
 tude was not different only from their attitude, but was a condem- 
 nation of it, and it was not to be expected that they would look 
 kindly on him. His existence hitherto had been a prolonged battle ; 
 a man does not carry himself in such conflicts so wisely and warily 
 that he can come out of them unscathed ; and Carlyle carried scars 
 from his wounds both on his mind and on his temper. He had 
 stood aloof from parties; he had fought his way alone. He was 
 fierce and uncompromising. To those who saw but the outside of 
 him he appeared scornful, imperious, and arrogant. He was stern 
 in his judgment of others. The sins of passion he could pardon, 
 but the sins of insincerity, or half-sincerity, he could never pardon. 
 He would not condescend to the conventional politenesses which re- 
 move the friction between man and man. He called things by their 
 right names, and in a dialect edged with sarcasm. Thus he was 
 often harsh when he ought to have been merciful; he was contempt- 
 uous where he had no right to despise ; and in his estimate of mo- 
 tives and actions was often unjust and mistaken. He, too, who was 
 so severe with others, had weaknesses of his own of which he was 
 unconscious in the excess of his self-confidence. He was proud 
 one may say savagely proud. It was a noble determination in him 
 that he would depend upon himself alone; but he would not only 
 accept no obligation, but he resented the offer of help to himself, or 
 to any one belonging to him, as if it had been an insult. He never 
 wholly pardoned Jeffrey for having made his brother's fortune. 
 His temper had been ungovernable from his childhood ; he had the 
 irritability of a dyspeptic man of genius; and when the Devil, as he 
 called it, had possession of him, those whose comfort he ought most 
 to have studied were the most exposed to the storm : he who preached 
 so wisely " on doing the duty which lay nearest to us," forgot his 
 own instructions, and made no adequate effort to cast the Devil out. 
 Nay, more : there broke upon him in his late years, like a flash of
 
 276 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 lightning from heaven, the terrible revelation that he had sacrificed 
 his wife's health and happiness in his absorption in his work ; that 
 he had been oblivious of his most obvious obligations, and had been 
 negligent, inconsiderate, and selfish. The fault was grave and the 
 remorse agonizing. For many years after she had left him, when 
 we passed the spot in our walks where she was last seen alive, he 
 would bare his gray head in the wind and rain his features wrung 
 with unavailing sorrow. Let all this be acknowledged; and let 
 those who know themselves to be without either these sins, or others 
 as bad as these, freely cast stones at Carlyle. 
 
 But there is the other side of the account. In the weightier mat- 
 ters of the law, Carlyle's life had been without speck or flaw. From 
 his earliest years, in the home at Ecclefechan, at school, at college, 
 in every incident or recorded aspect of him, we see invariably the 
 same purity, the same innocence of heart, and uprightness and in- 
 tegrity of action. As a child, as a boy, as a man, he had been true 
 in word and honest and just in deed. There is no trace, not the 
 slightest, of levity or folly. He sought his friends among the wor- 
 thiest of his fellow-students, and to those friends he was from the 
 first a special object of respect and admiration. His letters, even in 
 early youth, were so remarkable that they were preserved as treas- 
 ures by his correspondents. In the thousands which I have read, 
 either written to Carlyle or written by him, I have found no sen- 
 tence of his own which he could have wished unwritten, or, through 
 all those trying years of incipient manhood, a single action alluded 
 to by others which those most jealous of his memory need regret to 
 read, or his biographer need desire to conceal. Which of us would 
 not shiver at the thought if his own life were to be exposed to the 
 same dreadful ordeal, and his own letters, or the letters of others 
 written about him, were searched through for the sins of his youth? 
 These, it may be Said, are, but negative virtues. But his positive 
 qualities were scarcely less beautiful. Nowhere is a man known 
 better than in his own family. No disguise is possible there; and 
 he whom father and mother, brother and sister, love, we may be sure 
 has deserved to be loved. 
 
 Among the many remarkable characteristics of the Carlyle house- 
 hold, whether at Mainhill or Scotsbrig, was the passionate affection 
 which existed among them, and the special love which they all felt 
 for "Tom." Well might Jeffrey say that Carlyle would not have 
 known poverty if -he had not been himself a giver. His own habits 
 were Spartan in their simplicity, and from the moment when he be- 
 gan to earn his small salary as an usher at Annan, the savings of his 
 thrift were spent in presents to his father and mother and in helping 
 to educate his brother. I, too, can bear witness that the same gener- 
 ous disposition remained with him to the end. In his later years ho
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 277 
 
 had an abundant income, but he never added to his own comforts or 
 luxuries. His name was not seen on charity lists, but he gave away 
 every year perhaps half what he received. I was myself in some in- 
 stances employed by him to examine into the circumstances of per- 
 sons who had applied to him for help. The stern censor was in 
 these instances the kindest of Samaritans. It was enough if a man 
 or woman was miserable. He did not look too curiously into the 
 causes of it. I was astonished at the profuseness with which he 
 often gave to persons little worthy of his liberality. 
 
 Nor was there, even in those more trying cases where men were 
 prospering beyond their merits, any malice or permanent ill-will. 
 He was constitutionally atrabilious and scornful; but the bitterness 
 with which he would speak of such persons was on the surface 
 merely. "Poor devil!" he would say of some successful political 
 Philistine, "after all, if we looked into the history of him, we should 
 find how it all came about. " He was always sad : often gloomy in 
 the extreme. Men of genius rarely take cheerful views of life. 
 They see too clearly. Dante and Isaiah were not probably exhila- 
 rating companions; but Carlyle, when unpossessed and in his nat- 
 ural humor, was gentle, forbearing, and generous. 
 
 If his character as a man was thus nobly upright, so he employed 
 his time and his talents with the same high sense of responsibility 
 not to make himself great, or honored, or admired, but as a trust com- 
 mitted to him for his Maker's purposes. ' ' What can you say of 
 Carlyle, " said Mr. Ruskin to me, ' ' but that he was born in the clouds 
 and struck by the lightning?" "struck by the lightning" not 
 meant for happiness, but for other ends; a stern fate which never- 
 theless in the modern world, as in the ancient, is the portion dealt 
 out to some individuals on whom the heavens have been pleased to 
 set their mark. Gifted as he knew himself to be with unusual abili- 
 ties, he might have risen to distinction on any one of the beaten roads 
 of life, and have won rank and wealth for himself. He glanced at 
 the Church, he glanced at the Bar; but there was something working 
 in him like the Aalfj.uv of Socrates, which warned him off with an 
 imperious admonition, and insisted on being obeyed. Men who fan- 
 cy that they have a "mission" in this world are usually intoxicated 
 by vanity, and their ambition is in the inverse ratio of their strength 
 to give effect to it. But in Carlyle the sense of having a mission 
 was the growth of the actual presence in him of the necessary pow- 
 ers. Certain associations, certain aspects of human life and duty, 
 had forced themselves upon him as truths of immeasurable conse- 
 quence which the world was forgetting. He was a nates, a seer. He 
 perceived things which others did not see, and which it was his busi- 
 ness to force them to see. He regarded himself as being charged 
 actually and really with a message which he was to deliver to man-
 
 S78 LIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 kind, and, like other prophets, he was "straitened" till his work 
 was accomplished. A Goethe could speak in verse, and charm the 
 world into listening to him by the melody of his voice. The deep 
 undertones of Carlyle's music could not modulate themselves under 
 rhyme and metre. For the new matter which he had to utter he had 
 to create a new form corresponding to it. He had no pulpit from 
 which to preach, and through literature alone had he any access to 
 the world which he was to address. Even "a man of letters" must 
 live while he writes, and Carlyle had imposed conditions upon him- 
 self which might make the very keeping himself alive impossible; 
 for his function was sacred to him, and he had laid down as a fixed 
 rule that he would never write merely to please, never for money, 
 that he would never write anything save when specially moved to 
 write by an impulse from within; above all, never to set down a sen- 
 tence which he did not in his heart believe to be true, and to spare 
 no labor till his work to the last fibre was as good as he could possi- 
 bly make it. 
 
 These were rare qualities in a modern writer whose bread depend- 
 ed on his pen, and such as might well compensate for worse faults 
 than spleen and hasty temper. He had not starved, but he had come 
 within measurable distance of starvation. Nature is a sharp school- 
 mistress, and when she is training a man of genius for a great moral 
 purpose, she takes care, by "the constitution of things," that he shall 
 not escape discipline. More than once better hopes had appeared 
 to be dawning. But the sky had again clouded, and at the time of 
 the removal to London the prospect was all but hopeless. No man 
 is bound to fight forever against proved impossibilities. The " French 
 Revolution " was to be the last effort. If this failed, Carlyle had 
 resolved to give up the game, abandon literature, buy spade and rifle, 
 and make for the backwoods of America. " You are not fit for that 
 either, my fine fellow," he had sorrowfully to say to himself. Still, 
 he meant to try. America might prove a kinder friend to him than 
 England had been, in some form or other. Worse it could not 
 prove. 
 
 For two years the writing of that book occupied him. The ma- 
 terial grew on his hands, and the first volume, for the cause men- 
 tioned in the "Reminiscences," had to be written a second time. 
 All the mornings he was at his desk; in the afternoons he took his 
 solitary walks in Hyde Park, seeing the brilliant equipages and the 
 knights and dames of fashion prancing gayly along the Row. He 
 did not envy them. He would not have changed existences with 
 the brightest of these fortune's favorites if the wealth of England 
 had been poured into the scale. But he did think that his own lot 
 was hard, so willing was he to do anything for an honest living, yet 
 with every door closed against him. "Not one of you," he said
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 279 
 
 to himself as he looked at them, "could do what I am doing, and 
 it concerns you too, if you did but know it." 
 
 They did not know it, and they have not known it. Fifty years 
 have passed since Carlyle was writing the "French Revolution." 
 The children of fashion still canter under the elms of the Park, as 
 their fathers and mothers were cantering then, and no sounds of 
 danger have yet been audible to flutter the JVIayfair dovecotes. 
 "They call me a great man now," Carlyle said to me a few days 
 before he died, "but not one believes what I have told them." But, 
 if they did not believe the prophet, they could worship the new star 
 which was about to rise. The Annandale peasant-boy was to be 
 the wonder of the London world. He had wrought himself into a 
 personality which all were to be compelled to admire, and in whom 
 a few recognized, like Goethe, the advent of a new moral force the 
 effects of which it was impossible to predict.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ADVOCATES' LIBRARY, the, Carl vie and, 
 ii. 190, 194. 
 
 Agnosticism, Carlyle on, ii. 126. 
 
 Agriculture, English and Scotch, Car- 
 lyle on, i. 140. 
 
 Aitken, James, i. 187 ; marries Jean 
 Carlyle, ii. 219; described by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 219; his talent for picture- 
 painting, ii. 223. 
 
 Alison, Rev. A., i. 215 ; his essay " On 
 Taste," i. 217. 
 
 Allen, Mr., of York, i. 149. 
 
 Althorp, Lord, ii. 100. 
 
 Andrew's, St., professorship at, i. 243 ; 
 Carlvle unsuccessful in obtaining, i. 
 245." 
 
 Annan, Carlyle at school at, i. 8; his 
 tutorship at, i. 19 ; Irving at, i. 51 ; 
 Carlyle's friends in, ii. 221. 
 
 Annan, river, i. 1. 
 
 Annandale, L 1, 20; a round of visits 
 iu, ii. 161. 
 
 "Annual Register," a literary, Carlyle 
 projects, i. 219. 
 
 Apocrypha controversy, the, i. 249. 
 
 Aristocracy, a true, wanted, ii. 53. 
 
 Aristotle quoted, i. 215. 
 
 Art, in the Greek sense, ii. 121. 
 
 Astronomy, professorship of, in Edin- 
 burgh, ii. 227; Carlyle's failure to 
 obtain this post, ii. 228, Carlyle's 
 knowledge of, theoretical, ii. 229 ; his 
 inexperience with instruments and 
 in observing, ii. 231. 
 
 Atheneeum, the, Carlyle's estimate of, 
 ii. 134. 
 
 Austin, Mrs., ii. 109 ; Carlyle visits, ii. 
 110, 131 ; C. Buller's estimate of, ii. 
 137 ; a Radical and absolutist, ii. 188 ; 
 characterized, ii. 251, 259. 
 
 Authors, on remuneration of, ii. 166. 
 
 Badams, Mr., Carlyle's first meeting 
 with, i. 132 ; invites Carlyle to Bir- 
 mingham, i. 132, 133; treats him 
 medically, i. 135; Carlyle's portrait 
 of, i. 135 ; ii. 96 ; his intemperate 
 habits, ii. 101; his death, ii. 101 
 note. 
 
 Barjarg, library at, placed at Carlyle's 
 service, ii. 216, Carlvle at, ii. 221, 
 226, 236. 
 
 Barnet, Bessy, ii. 253, 254 and note, 257, 
 267. 
 
 Barry Cornwall (Procter), L 127. See 
 Procter. 
 
 Basket-maker, the, ii. 120. 
 
 Beattie, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 236. 
 
 Becker, Dr., death of, ii. 143. 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles, i. 63. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, his significance, ii. 
 52 ; in his dotage, ii. 134 ; his death 
 and bequest of his body, ii. 174. 
 
 Bentinck, the Lords, i. 154. 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini, ii. 56. 
 
 Biography the only history, ii. 134. 
 
 Birmingham, Carlyle's visit to, i. 133 ; 
 picture of, i. 134. 
 
 BlackwooiTs Magazine, i 42; Irving 
 and, i. 108. 
 
 Bonnymuir, rising on, i. 41. 
 
 Booksellers, Carlyle on, i. 172 ; puffing 
 by, ii. 120. 
 
 Bookselling slain by puffery, ii. 162. 
 
 " Boots," the, at New York, ii. 209. 
 
 " Boswell," Croker's, ii. 133. 
 
 Bowring, John, ii. 55, 91 ; described by 
 Carlyle, ii. 99. 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, employs Carlyle, 
 i. 34 ; his " Encyclopaedia," i. 34, 51, 
 53, 79, 219; ii. 192; the Astronomy 
 professorship and, ii. 231, 232. 
 
 Bristol, fatal riots at, ii. 129.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Brougham, Henry, i. 240 ; Carlyle rec- 
 ommended to, i. 241 ; unappreciative 
 of Carlyle, i. 241; Lord Chancellor, 
 ii. 53 ; his character, ii. 83. 
 
 Brown, Dr., ii. 194. 
 
 Browne, Sir T., his " Urn - burial," i. 
 215; his character, i. 216. 
 
 Buller, Arthur, ii. 135. 
 
 Buller, Charles, i. 81 ; Irving's opinion 
 of, i. 81; Carlyle 's opinion of, i. 82; 
 his regret at parting with Carlyle, i. 
 181, 248 ; letter to Carlyle from, ii. 
 19; advocates Utilitarianism, ii. 20, 
 92 ; an advanced Radical, ii. 125 ; his 
 agnosticism, ii. 125, 126; Carlyle'a 
 affection for, ii. 125 ; his early death, 
 ii. 126; his appearance, ii. 127; his 
 poor opinion of magazine writers, ii. 
 136, 138; his letter to Carlyle, ii. 
 137; opinion of Mrs. Austin, ii. 137 ; 
 his praise of Mill, ii. 137, 138; his 
 legal studies, ii. 137; invitation to 
 stand for Liskeard, ii. 137 ; stands 
 for Liskeard, ii. 162; praised by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 251. 252 ; his " Radical meet- 
 ing," Carlyle's description of. ii. 269. 
 
 Buller, Mr., father of Charles Buller, i. 
 81; his character, i. 96; friendship 
 for Carlyle, i. 96; removes to Kin- 
 tiaird House, i, 102; leaves Kimiainl, 
 L 120. 
 
 Buller, Mrs., i. 81 ; consults Irving 
 about her sons' education, i. 81 ; en- 
 gages Carlyle as their tutor, i. 81 ; 
 her career and character, i. 95; 
 verses by John Leyden on, i. 95 note ; 
 interested in Carlyle, i. 96; her pa- 
 tience with him, i. 112: her house- 
 hold management, i. 117 ; compared 
 with her sister, Mrs. Strachey, i. 
 135. 
 
 Bulwer, Lytton, Sir E., ii. 133; his 
 "England and the English," Car- 
 lyle's opinion of, ii. 236. 
 
 Burns, Robert, ii. 17; Lockhart's Life 
 of, ii. 17 ; Carlyle's essay on, ii. 18, 21 ; 
 Goethe translates essay on, ii. 22; 
 altercation with Jeffrey about essay 
 on, ii. 23, 25; on noble-mindedness 
 in blackguards, ii. 133 ; a Burns 
 dinner, ii. 153. 
 Burton quoted, i. 215. 
 
 Byron, Lord, death of, L 124 ; its effect 
 on Carlyle and Miss Welsh, i. 124, 
 216; definition of, ii. 54. 
 
 " Cabinet Encyclopedia," ii. 143. 
 
 Cagliostro, ii. 190; Carlyle studies his- 
 tory of, ii. 193; article on, ii. 193, 
 198"-200. 
 
 Cameronians, i. 1. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, Carlyle's introduc- 
 tion to, i. 127 ; his wife, i. 127 ; esti- 
 mate of, i, 153, 170. 
 
 Canning, death of, i. 238. 
 
 Caricatures of Scotch ministers, i. 249. 
 
 Carlyle, James (father of Thomas Car- 
 lyle), i. 2 ; his early hardships, i. 3 ; 
 apprenticed, i. 4; anecdote of, i. 4; 
 sets up in business, i. 4; marries his 
 first wife, i. 5; birth of a son and 
 death of his wife, i. 5; marries Mar- 
 garet Aitken, i. 5; his character, i. 
 11 ; gives up business and takes farm 
 at Mainhill, i. 19, 20 : letter to his 
 son Thomas, i. 101 ; his reception of 
 Miss Welsh, i. 180 ; removes to Scots- 
 brig, i. 191, 192; serious illness, ii. 
 138 ; his last letter to his son Thom- 
 as, ii. 139; change of manner, ii. 139; 
 his last letter from T. Carlyle, ii. 139 , 
 death of, ii. 143; his personal quali- 
 ties, ii. 144 ; memoir of, in " Rem- 
 iniscences," ii. 144; his will, ii. 158. 
 
 Carlyle, Jane Welsh (wife of Thomas 
 Carlyle), as a hostess, i. 219, 222; 
 her letters to Carlyle's mother, i. 
 220, 222 ; her household manage- 
 ment, i. 224 ; her aversion to Craig- 
 enputtock, i. 225; introduction to 
 Jeffrey, i. 229 ; present from Goethe, 
 i. 232, 236 ; her attempt at bread- 
 making, ii. 17 note ; laborious house- 
 hold duties, ii. 27 ; leajns Spanish, 
 ii. 28 ; complains of loneliness, ii. 35 ; 
 severe illness, ii. 38 ; Jeffrey's anxi- 
 ety respecting, ii. 58, 72; her pres- 
 ent to Goethe, ii. 58; lines from 
 him, ii. 61, 62; correspondence with 
 Lord Jeffrey, ii. 92; her judgment on 
 "Sartor Resartus," ii. 93 ; a former 
 suitor, ii. 101; a pecuniary offer 
 from Mrs. Montagu declined, ii.102; 
 prepares to join Carlyle in London,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 283 
 
 ii. 114; voyage to Liverpool, ii. 118 
 note ; arrival in London, ii. 118; 
 in London society, ii. 119 ; at En- 
 field, ii. 129 ; on London climate, ii. 
 129, 130 ; on London people, ii. 130 ; 
 her estimate of Mrs. Montagu and 
 Mrs. Austin, ii. 130, 131 ; returns to 
 Scotland, ii. 154; her dreary life and 
 delicate health on the moors, ii. 155; 
 her desire for intellectual compan- 
 ionship disappointed, ii. 155; her 
 correspondence with Jeffrey, ii. 155, 
 156, 167 ; her trials and stoicism, ii. 
 167 , her friendship for Miss Miles, 
 ii. 168 ; corresponds with, ii. 168 ; on 
 fine ladies, ii. 168 ; on their home life, 
 ii. 169, her verses " To a Swallow," 
 ii. 170 ; goes to Templand, ii. 185; 
 death of her grandfather, Mr. Welsh, 
 of Templand, ii. 185; letter from 
 Mrs. Austin, it. 188; continued ill- 
 health, ii. 202 ; her letter to Miss 
 Miles, ii. 205 ; studies Italian, ii. 
 206; to Moffat with her mother, ii. 
 213, 215 ; letter to, from H. Inglis, 
 quoted, ii. 216 note; her hard time 
 on the moors, ii. 244; her verses in 
 answer to Carlyle's " Cui Bono?" ii. 
 245; her kindness to Old Esther, ii. 
 246 ; her arrival in London, ii. 253 ; 
 approves of house at Chelsea, ii. 253 ; 
 her maid, Bessy Barnet. ii. 253, 254 
 and note, 257 ; Mrs. Montagu and, ii. 
 270; Mrs. Hunt and, ii. 270; acci- 
 dent to, ii. 274. 
 
 Carlyle, Jean (sister of T. Carlyle), her 
 character, ii. 219; marries James 
 Aitken, ii. 219; her household, ii. 
 223. 
 
 Carlyle, John Aitken (brother of Thom- 
 as Carlyle), i. 26. 44; his studies, i. 
 80 ; resides with T. Carlyle in Moray 
 Street, i. 97 ; his sobriquet of " Lord 
 Moon," i. 122, 227 note; at Comely 
 Bank, i. 221 ; sent to Germany by his 
 brother, i. 241, 242; at Munich, ii. 
 15; returns from Germany, ii. 34; 
 goes to London, but fails to obtain 
 employment, ii. 36 ; contemplates a 
 literary life, ii. 66 ; advice from his 
 brother, ii. 66 ; with Irving in Lon- 
 don, ii. 70 ; hankers after magazine 
 
 writing, ii. 83; cautioned against it 
 by his brother, ii. 83 ; receives pe- 
 cuniary help from Jeffrey, ii. 104; 
 appointed travelling physician to 
 Countess of Clare, ii. 104; his sal- 
 ary, ii. 104 ; accompanies Lady Clare 
 to" Italy, ii. 118; at Rome, ii. 141; 
 his brother's counsel, ii. 141, 151 ; at 
 Naples, ii. 159; his prosperous cir- 
 cumstances, ii. 160; pays off his 
 debts to Jeffrey and to his brother, 
 ii. 163, 173 note; at Florence, ii. 199 ; 
 returns to Scotland, and visits T. 
 Carlyle at Craigenputtock, ii. 203 ; 
 returns with Lady Clare to Italy, ii. 
 206 ; 'his prosperity there, ii. 265 ; a 
 remittance to his mother, ii. 265. 
 
 Carlyle, John of Cockennouth (half- 
 brother of T. Carlyle), ii. 147 ; at his 
 father's funeral, ii. 149. 
 
 Carlyle, Margaret (mother of Thomas 
 Carlyle), her marriage, i. 5 ; first letter 
 to her son, i. 26; severe mental ill- 
 ness, i. 27 ; alarm at Carlyle's opin- 
 ions, i. 35; her estimate of "Wilhelm 
 Meister," i. 128, 129 ; Carlyle's affec- 
 tion for, i. 134, 135 ; her visit to him 
 at Comely Bank, i. 246 ; her anxious 
 cares for her children, ii. 141 ; death 
 of her husband, ii. 143 ; provided for 
 by his will, ii. 158; her range of 
 reading, ii. 186, 238 ; her last visit 
 to Craigenputtock, ii. 247 ; her forti- 
 tude on parting with her son, ii. 247. 
 
 Carlyle, Margaret (sister of T. Carlyle), 
 her character, ii. 35; shows symp- 
 toms of consumption, ii. 35; visits 
 Craigenputtock, ii. 35 ; her last ill- 
 ness and death, ii. 62-65. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, ancestors of, i. 1 ; 
 birth of, at Ecclefechan, i. 2; his fa- 
 ther and grandfather, i. 3 ; sent to 
 village school, i. 5 ; his boyhood, i. 6 ; 
 character of his parents, i. 6 ; his 
 progress in "figures" and Latin, i. 
 8; at Annan grammar-school, i. 8; 
 school recollections) i. 9, 10 ; sees Ir- 
 ving for first time, i. 10; his awe 
 of his father, i. 11 ; journey to Edin- 
 burgh, i. 13; first impressions of Ed- 
 inburgh, i. 13, 14; enters the Uni- 
 versity, i. 14"; his course of study, i.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 14; his progress, i. 15; failure in 
 prize-taking, i. 15 ; influence on fel- 
 low-students, i. 17; letters from 
 
 Hill ("Peter Pindar"), i. 17, 18; 
 seeks pupils, i. 19 ; elected as math- 
 ematical tutor at Annan, i. 19; un- 
 congenial life there, i. 19 ; his new 
 home at Mainhill, i. 20 ; correspond- 
 ence with T.Murray, i. 21; first meet- 
 ing with Irving, i. 22, 23 ; pursues 
 divinity course, i. 23 ; his first ser- 
 mon, i. 23; appointed to school at 
 Kirkcaldy, i. 23; friendship with 
 Irving there, i. 24; correspondence 
 with members of his family, i. 24- 
 27; first extant letter from his fa- 
 ther, i. 25 ; his dislike of teaching, i. 
 27 ; his friends at Kirkcaldy, i. 27 ; 
 friendship with Miss Gordon, i. 29 ; 
 abandons the idea of entering the 
 ministry, i. 30 ; displeases Kirkcaldy 
 burghers, i. 30 ; resignation of mas- 
 tership, i. 31 ; removes to Edin- 
 burgh, i. 31 ; studies law, i. 32 ; ma- 
 ternal counsels, L 32 ; first attack of 
 dyspepsia, i. 33 ; takes pupils, i. 34 ; 
 religious doubts and mental strug- 
 gles, i. 36 ; attends Hume's lectures, 
 i. 36 ; disgust with study of law, i. 
 36 ; religious doubts, i. 37 ; home to 
 Mainhill, i. 38 ; distress of his par- 
 ents, i. 38; letter from Irving, i. 38; 
 returns to Edinburgh, advice from 
 Irving, i. 42, 45, 51 ; severe dyspep- 
 sia, i. 44 ; visit to Irving at Glasgow, 
 i. 48 ; return to Ecclefechan, i. 49 ; 
 commences study of German litera- 
 ture, i. 51 ; encouragement from Sir 
 D. Brewster and Tait, i. 53 ; visit to 
 Irving at Glasgow, i. 55; offers to 
 translate Schiller for booksellers, i. 
 55 ; offer from Captain Basil Hall, i. 
 55 ; end of gloomy period, i. 56 ; con- 
 solatory letters from Irving, i. 56, 57; 
 his " new birth," i. 58 ; visit to Had- 
 dington and introduction to Miss 
 Welsh, i. 73, 74; corresponds with 
 her, i. 74 ; range of his studies, i. 74 ; 
 reads Schiller and Goethe, i. 75 ; 
 adopts literature as a profession, i. 
 75; his admiration for Schiller's 
 character and writings, i. 75; stud- 
 
 ies Goethe's works, i. 76 ; his opin- 
 ion of " Wilhelm Meister," i. 76 ; 
 letters from Irving respecting Miss 
 Welsh's German studies, i. 76, 77 ; 
 summer at Mainhill, i. 78; writes for 
 Brewster, i. 79; returns to Edin- 
 burgh,, i. 79; care for his brother 
 John, i. 80; accepts tutorship in 
 Buller family, i. 81 ; at work with 
 his pupils, i. 83 ; their characters, i. 
 83 ; literary projects, i. 84, 85 ; liter- 
 ary correspondence with Miss Welsh, 
 i. 86 ; introduction to proprietor of 
 London Magazine, i. 92 ; his contri- 
 butions accepted, i. 92 ; happy with 
 his pupils, i. 93, 95; finishes trans- 
 lation of Legendre, i. 93 ; hopes and 
 fears, i. 93 ; sleeplessness, i. 94 ; a 
 dog story, i. 94 ; makes acquaintance 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Buller, i. 95; his 
 opinion of them, i. 96 ; considerately 
 treated by them, L 96; visits Main- 
 hill, i. 97 ; " midnight smokes" with 
 his mother, i. 97 ; her distress about 
 his spiritual state, i. 97 ; Carlyle's 
 letter thereon, i. 97 ; his mode of life 
 at the Bullers', i. 98; twenty-seventh 
 birthday, i. 98 ; ill-success in poeti- 
 cal composition, i. 99 ; verses on bat- 
 tle of Morgarten, i. 99 ; verses on 
 Miss Welsh, i. 99; begins Life of 
 Schiller, i. 100; his impressions of 
 MacCulloch, of the Scotsman, i. 101 ; 
 his sister Jane, i. 101 ; begins trans- 
 lation of "Wilhelm Meister," i. 102 ; 
 joins the Bullers at Kinnaird House 
 his life there, i. 103 ; relations 
 with Miss Welsh, i. 103; effects of 
 dyspepsia, i. 105; translation of 
 "Meister," i. 105; life at Kinnaircl, 
 i. 106 ; first sight of people of fash- 
 ion his opinion of them, i. 107 ; on 
 Irving's book on Last Judgment, i. 
 108 ; contrasts his lot with Irving's, 
 i. 109 ; renewed restlessness, i. 110, 
 111; Life of Schiller, i. 112; on 
 character of Schiller, i. 112; on 
 Kant's philosophy, i. 113 ; the motto 
 " Terar dum prosim," i. 113; de- 
 spondency, L 114; effects of mer- 
 cury, i. li6; farewell to old year, i. 
 116; sufferings from bad medical
 
 INDEX. 
 
 285 
 
 treatment, i. 116, 117; uncertain 
 prospects, i. 118; invitation from 
 Irving, i. 118; on value of a profes- 
 sion, advice to his brother John, i. 
 118, 119 ; Irving's expectations for 
 him, i. 120; return to Edinburgh, i. 
 120; marriage prospects, i. 121; re- 
 muneration for " Wilhelm Meister," 
 i. 122 ; estimate of that work, i. 122 ; 
 life and work at Mainhill, i. 123; on 
 death of Lord Byron, i, 124; range 
 of his reading, i. 124 ; sails from 
 Leith, i. 125; account of voyage, i. 
 125; first impression of London and 
 its society, i. 126 ; Mrs. Strachey, i. 
 126 ; Miss Kirkpatrick, i. 127 ; Mrs. 
 Montagu, i. 127; his opinions of 
 Procter (Barry Cornwall), Allan Cun- 
 ningham, and T. Campbell, i. 127 ; 
 portrait of Coleridge, i. 128 ; sends 
 " Wilhelm Meister " to Mainhill, its 
 reception there, i. 128, 129 ; removes 
 to Kew Green, i. 129; leaves the 
 Bullers and returns to London, i. 
 130; meets Mr. Badams, i. 132 ; vis- 
 its him at Birmingham, i. 133; his 
 impressions of Birmingham, i. 134 ; 
 medically treated by Mr. Badams, 
 i. 135; invitation to Dover from 
 the Stracheys, i. 135; his friend- 
 ship for Mrs. Strachey, i. 135 ; 
 leaves Birmingham, i. 136; at Strat- 
 ford -OH -Avon, i. 137; at Oxford, 
 i. 137 ; offers to board with Irving at 
 Pentonville, i. 137, 138 ; visits Dover, 
 i. 139 ; the party at Dover, i. 139 ; on 
 agriculture and peasantry in Kent, i. 
 141 ; humorous sketches of Irving, i. 
 141, 148, 149 ; visit to Paris decided 
 on, i. 142; route taken, i. 142; impres- 
 sions of, i. 142, 144 ; visits Legendre, 
 i. 142, 145 ; at the Morgue, i. 142 ; 
 sketch of Cuvier and his lecture, i. 
 145 ; at the Palais Royal, i. 144 ; pre- 
 sented to Dupinand other French sa- 
 vants, L 145; excitement at Mainhill 
 about French journey,!. 145; returns 
 to London, i. 146 ; prospects as a man 
 ofletters, L146; his bad opinion of his 
 Life of Schiller, i. 147 ; Goethe's judg- 
 ment of it, i. 147 : invitation from Al- 
 len, of York, to reside with him at 
 
 Epping Forest, i. 149 ; London expe- 
 riences, i. 149, 150; letters to Miss 
 Welsh, i. 151-154 ; views for the fut- 
 ure, i. 152; his antipathy to London 
 men ofletters, i. 154 ; first letter from 
 Goethe, i. 154 ; purposes farming at 
 Craigenputtock, i. 157; but dissuaded 
 byMiss Welsh, i. 160 ; correspondence 
 with her, i.157-169 ; impatience with 
 London, i. 170 ; " seven years of pain," 
 i. 171 ; on booksellers, i. 172; " Ger- 
 man Romance " projected, i. 172 ; re- 
 turns to Annandale, i. 172 ; removes 
 to Hoddam Hill, i.173; life there, i. 
 174-176; work at "German Ro- 
 mance," i. 174; letters from Mrs. 
 Montagu, i. 177; Miss Welsh's con- 
 fession, i. 179 ; her visit to Hoddam, 
 i. 179 ; coterie speech in Carlyle fam- 
 ily, i. 184; as a horseman, i. 186 
 note; his sister Jean, i. 186; poem 
 on "My own Four Walls," i. 189; 
 visits Irving at Annan, i. 190; 
 leaves Hoddam Hill, i. 191 ; removes 
 to Scotsbrig, i. 191, 192; spiritual 
 deliverance, i. 192; time of mar- 
 riage fixed, i. 193 , plans for settle- 
 ment, i. 195; "nauseous intruders," 
 i. 196; proposes settling at Scots- 
 brig, i. 199 ; Jhe marriage treaty, i. 
 196-205; Wightman the hedger, i. 
 205; preparations for marriage, i. 
 205-208 ; tries to read Kant's " Kri- 
 tik," i. 210 ; married in Templand 
 church, i. 212 ; arrival at Comely 
 Bank. i. 212 ; beginning of married 
 life, i, 214; despondency, i. 215; 
 commences a novel, i. 215, 221 ; wide 
 course of reading, i. 215,216; criti- 
 cism of various Elizabethan writers, 
 i. 216 ; his opinion of Scott and By- 
 ron, i. 216 ; on Herder's " Ideen," 
 and Alison's "Essay on Taste," i. 
 216, 217; on political economy, i. 
 218; economic prospects, i. 219 ; life 
 and society at Comely Bank, i. 220 ; 
 projects a literary "Annual Regis- 
 ter," i. 219 ; letters home, i. 220-222 ; 
 receives introduction to Jeffrey, i. 
 222; his conversational powers, i. 
 223; on hnmor, i. 224; absence of 
 malice, i. 224; bis novel a failure, L
 
 INDEX. 
 
 225 ; resolves on settling at Craigen- 
 puttock, i. 226; prospects brighten, 
 i. 228; introduction to Jeffrey, i. 
 228; Jeffrey's recognition of his 
 qualities, i. 228, 229 ; contributes to 
 Edinburgh Review, i. 229 ; his essay 
 on Richter, i. 230; his style, when 
 formed, i. 231; visits John Wilson 
 (Christopher North), i. 231; letter 
 and present from Goethe, i. 232 ; ar- 
 ticle on German literature, Goethe's 
 inquiry respecting, i. 237; with Jef- 
 frey at Craigcrook, i. 237; visit to 
 Dumfriesshire, i. 238; letter from 
 Irving, i. 239 ; consults Jeffrey about 
 professorship, i. 240; recommended 
 to Lord Brougham, i. 241 ; but with 
 no result, i. 241; sends his brother 
 to Germany at own cost, i. 241, 242 ; 
 his estimate of De Qiiincey, i. 242 ; 
 hopes of professorship at St. An- 
 drew's, i. 243 ; efforts of his friends, 
 i. 243; testimonials from Jeffrey, 
 Goethe, Irving, and Brewster, i. 
 243 ; from Sir J. Leslie, i. 243, 244 ; 
 fails to obtain professorship, i. 245; 
 visit from his mother, i. 246; jour- 
 ney of insp:ction to Craigenputtock, 
 i. 250; visit from his sister Jean, i. 
 250; Goethe's insight into his tem- 
 perament, i. 252; presents from 
 Goethe, i. 252 ; leaves Comely Bank, 
 and goes to live at Craigenputtock, 
 i. 252; Goethe on his genius, ii. 1 ; 
 maturity of his powers, ii. 1 ; his re- 
 ligion, Calvinism without theology, 
 ii. 1, 2 ; on miracles, ii. 2 ; " gospel of 
 force," ii. 4 ; on " spiritual optics," ii. 
 5; on intolerance, ii. 5; on the char- 
 acter of the Jews, ii. 9; letter to 
 George A. Duncan on Prayer, ii. 12 ; 
 removes to Craigenputtock, ii. 14, 
 15; early days there, ii, 15; on Ir- 
 ving's preaching, ii. 17 ; his essay on 
 Burns, ii, 18; Jeffrey's friendliness 
 and esteem, ii. 19; letter from 
 Charles Buller, ii. 20; editorial dis- 
 pute with Jeffrey, ii. 23 ; Goethe 
 and essay on Burns, ii. 22, 23 ; visit 
 from the Jeffreys at Craigenputtock, 
 ii. 24; visit from his father, ii. 26; 
 his two horses, ii. 26 ; anecdote of 
 
 pony and sow, ii. 26 note; winter 
 life, ii. 28; learns Spanish, ii. 28; 
 visit from H. Inglis, it. 28 ; deaths 
 of neighbors, ii. 28, 29; essay on Vol- 
 taire, ii. 30 ; on functions of revolu- 
 tion, ii. 31; his " Reminiscences of 
 Lord Jeffrey," ii. 33 ; suggested edi- 
 torship of Edinburgh Revine, ii. 33 ; 
 his " Signs of the Times," ii. 34 ; his 
 sister Margaret, her character, ii. 35 ; 
 her illness, ii. 35 ; her visit to Craig- 
 enputtock, ii. 35 ; refuses offered an- 
 nuity from Jeffrey, ii. 36, 47; en- 
 couraging letter to John Carlyle, ii. 
 38 ; severe illness of his wife, ii. 39 ; 
 his father's ill-health, ii. 39 ; tragical 
 death of a neighbor, ii. 39; letter of 
 "Vox " in Dumfries Courier, ii. 39; 
 extracts from journal, ii. 41 ; on poli- 
 tics, institutions, and the understand- 
 ing, ii. 44: on waste lands, and on 
 quacks, ii. 44; on political philoso- 
 phy, ii. 45; on Utilitarianism, ii. 45; 
 on religion and quarrels, ii. 46; 
 doubts as to his love of poetry, ii. 
 46; his "History of German Litera- 
 ture," ii. 47; on Scott's ''History of 
 Scotland," ii. 50 ; on Silence, ii. 52 ; 
 first sketch of " Sartor Resartus," ii. 
 53; financial straits, ii. 55; on rela- 
 tion of moral to poetic genius, ii. 56; 
 his " Teufelsdrockh " refused by edi- 
 tors, ii. 57 ; contemplates a " Life of 
 Luther," ii. 57 ; intended visit to 
 German}' not carried out, ii. 58; at- 
 tempt at book on German literature, 
 ii. 58 ; letter from Goethe, with pres- 
 ent, ii. 60; illness and death of his 
 sister Margaret, ii. 62; coolness of 
 editors and publishers, ii. 66; fin- 
 ishes " History of German Litera- 
 ture," ii. 69 ; his brother Alick leaves 
 him, ii. 70, 71 ; money help to his 
 brothers, ii. 71; pecuniary needs, ii. 
 71 ; battle with the nettles, ii. 71 
 note ; his Radicalism, ii. 71 ; second 
 visit of the Jeffreys, ii. 72; his 
 analysis of Jeffrey's talent and char- 
 acter, ii. 73; on emigration, ii. 80 ; his 
 means improve, ii. 81 ; literary pros- 
 pects, ii. 81 ; resolves to visit Lon- 
 don, ii. 82 ; on character of Brough-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 287 
 
 am, ii. 83 ; advice to his brother ! 
 agaiHSt magazine writing, ii. 84 ; re- 
 views Taylor's " Survey of German ] 
 Poetry," ii. 87 ; death of his horse 
 Larry, it. 87; bad prospects, anil 
 despondency, ii.88 ; consolation from 
 Jeffrey, ii. 88 ; the progress of " Sar- 
 tor Resartus," ii. 90; its completion, 
 ii. 92 ; accepts loan from Jeffrey, ii. 
 93 ; his visit to London, ii. 93 ; com- 
 pared to Parson Adams, ii. 93; jour- 
 ney to Liverpool, ii. 94; arrival in 
 London, ii. 94; villany of coach 
 agents, ii. 95 ; visits Jeffrey, ii. 96 ; 
 sends "Sartor" to John Murray, ii. 
 96; offers "German Literature" to 
 Longmans, ii. 97; visit to Mrs. 
 Strachey, ii. 97; encounter with 
 "little Button," ii. 98 ; visits Irving, 
 ii.98; his description of Godwin and 
 Bowring, ii. 98 ; at House of Com- 
 mons, ii. 100; impatience with Mur- 
 ray, ii. 100; death of his friend 
 Badams, ii. 101; talk with Irving, 
 ii. 102; at dinner with Henry Drum- 
 naoiul, ii. 102 ; " Sartor" declined by 
 Murray, and offered to Longmans, ii. 
 103; his brother's appointment as 
 physician, ii. 104; his contempt for 
 " literary men," ii. 108 ; " Sartor " 
 refused by Colburn and Bentley, ii. 
 Ill; correspondence with Murray 
 respecting, ii. 112, 113 ; Hurray final- 
 ly declines it, ii. 113 ; writes paper 
 on "Characteristics," ii. 114; arrival 
 of his wife in London, ii. 118; his 
 London lodgings, ii. 118; his harsh 
 estimate of Lamb, ii. 122; his fears 
 for Irving, ii. 12."), 128 ; remonstrates 
 with him, ii. 125; visit from Irving, 
 ii. 127, 128 ; renews intercourse with 
 Buller family, ii. 125 ; his great liking 
 for Charles Buller, ii. 120 ; on agnos- 
 tic doctrines, ii. 126 ; remarks on the 
 cholera, ii. 128, 131 ; finishes " Char- 
 acteristics," ii. 133 ; contributes to 
 the A thenceum, ii. 134 ; evening with 
 Hayward, ii. 134 ; visits Dr. John- 
 son's house, ii. 134 ; dinner-party at 
 Eraser's, ii. 135, 153 ; letter from C. 
 Buller, ii. 137 ; his father's illness, 
 and last letter, ii. 138, 139 ; lib last 
 
 letter to his father, ii. 139 ; manner of 
 communicating with his family, ii. 
 139 note; his mode of life in London, 
 ii. 140; calls on Bulwer, ii, 143; his 
 gratitude to Hayward, ii, 143 ; death 
 of his father, ii. 146; his memoir of, 
 ii. 144; consolatory letters to his 
 mother, ii. 145, 148; his half-brother 
 John,ofCockermouth, ii. 147; rever- 
 ence for his father's memory, ii. 14rt; 
 reflections on death, ii. 150 ; counsels 
 to his brother John, ii. 151 ; acknowl- 
 edges deep indebtedness to German 
 writers, ii. 152; results of the Lon- 
 don visit, ii. 152; brightening pros- 
 pects, ii. 152; reviews Crokers 
 " Life of Johnson," for Fraser, ii. 153 ; 
 his scornful temper with editors, ii. 
 153; his attitude towards literary 
 London, ii. 153; return to Scotland, 
 ii. 154; stay at Liverpool, ii. 154 ; 
 his self-absorption, ii. 154; trans- 
 lates " Das Miihrchen," ii. 155 ; re- 
 sumes work at Craigenputtock, ii. 
 156; homage and sympathy from 
 Mill, ii. 159 ; a round of visits in An- 
 nandale, ii. 161 ; on names of streets, 
 ii. 163; feels want of libraries and 
 books, ii. 164; at Tcmpland, ii. 164; 
 feeling of supernaturalism, ii. 165 ; 
 life on the moor, ii. 173; details of 
 work, ii. 173 ; dissatisfied with his 
 Goethe article, ii. 174, 175; reads 
 Diderot's works, ii. 174, 175 ; lets the 
 Craigenputtock shooting, ii. 174; a 
 tour into Galloway, ii. 176 ; at Dum- 
 fries as juryman, ii. 181 ; repays Jef- 
 frey's loan, ii. 181 ; finishes Diderot 
 article, ii. 181; visit to Annandale, 
 ii. 181, 182; thoughts about Jeffrey, 
 ii. 183 ; arrival in Edinburgh, ii. 189 ; 
 studies French Revolution litera- 
 ture, ii. 190 ; his criticism of Thiers's 
 History, ii. 190 note; assisted by 
 Mill, ii. 190; Edinburgh society less 
 congenial than that of London, ii. 
 190; unfortunate as to lodgings, ii. 
 190; his Edinburgh friends, ii. 
 192,196; his discontent with Edin- 
 burgh, ii. 195-202; his alternations 
 of belief and disbelief, ii. 202, 207; 
 thoughts of London as a dwelling-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 place, ii. 202 ; returns to the moors, 
 ii. 202; "Sartor Resartus" in print, 
 ii. 203 ; return of John Carlyle from 
 Italy, his visit to Craigenputtock, ii. 
 203; self-examination, ii. 203 ; self- 
 accusation of vanity, ii. 204; the 
 mouse in the porridge, ii. 205 ; visit 
 from Emerson, ii. 208 ; close corre- 
 spondence with Mill, ii. 210 ; its nat- 
 ure, ii. 211 ; his religious views, ii. 
 211 ; unfavorable literary prospects, 
 ii. 212, 218 ; verses on Crichope Linn, 
 ii. 212, 213 ; spiritual restlessness, ii. 
 215, 216 ; neglected by editors, ii. 216 
 note ; uses library at Barjarg, ii. 216 ; 
 quality of his verse, ii. 216 note; 
 marriage of his sister Jean, ii. 219 ; 
 his anxiety for his mother, ii. 219; 
 a tour in Annandale, ii. 221 ; assists 
 an old friend, ii. 221; his thirty- 
 eighth birthday, ii. 226 ; bad pros- 
 pects, ii. 227 ; his mathematical abil- 
 ity, ii. 228 ; applies to Jeffrey re- 
 specting Astronomy professorship, 
 ii. 228, 230 ; his application declined, 
 ii. 228 ; his resentment against Jef- 
 frey, ii. 228 ; his great arrogance, ii. 
 229 ; its quality, ii. 229 ; his last at- 
 tempt at obtaining office, ii. 234, 236 ; 
 thoughts as to settlement in Amer- 
 ica, ii. 234; his financial position, ii. 
 235 ; his kindness to William Glen, 
 ii. 235 ; learns Greek with Glen, ii. 
 235; studies Homer, ii. 236; his 
 opinion of, ii. 236, 237 ; on the char- 
 actersin Homer, ii. 237; first thoughts 
 of London, ii. 237; last winter at 
 Craigenputtock, ii. 238, 241 ; agrees 
 to contribute to a new Radical Re- 
 view, ii. 239 ; resolves to remove to 
 London, ii. 240, 241 ; " burning of 
 the ships," ii. 241, 242; journeys 
 alone to London, house-seeking, ii. 
 242; his mental wealth, ii. 243; his 
 " History of the French Revolution," 
 ii. 243; his poem "Cui Bono?" ii. 
 245; Mrs. Carlyle's Answer to this, 
 ii. 245 ; his verses " The Sigh," ii. 
 245; his sketch of Old Esther, ii. 
 246 ; partings with his relatives, ii. 
 247 ; arrival in London, ii. 248 ; 
 house-hunting, ii. 248, 219 ; meeting 
 
 with Irving, ii. 248 ; a frugal dinner, 
 ii. 248; his description of Cheyne 
 Row, and house in it, ii. 249; futile 
 efforts to see Irving, ii.250; London 
 friends, ii. 250, 251 ; his final visit to 
 Jeffrey, ii. 251; successful visit to 
 Irving, ii. 253; arrival of his wife 
 from Scotland, ii. 253; removes to 
 house at Cheyne Row, ii. 253 ; the 
 drive from Ampton Street, ii. 253, 
 254 and note; resumes studies on 
 French Revolution, ii. 254; his friend- 
 ship with Leigh Hunt and family, 
 ii. 256; uncertain humors and re- 
 newed despondency, ii. 258, 259 ; his 
 friends, ii. 259; an Irishman from 
 Cork, ii. 259 ; recognition from Em- ' 
 erson, ii. 260; disappointment re- 
 specting new Radical Review, ii. 
 260 ; his sense of the ridiculous, ii. 
 261 ; Annan friends in London, ii. 
 264 note ; the Cheyne Row commis- 
 sariat, ii. 265, 266 ; repaid money ad- 
 vanced to his brother, ii. 265 ; daily 
 habits, ii. 267 ; at burning of Parlia- 
 ment Houses, ii. 267 ; sketch of Miss 
 Miles, ii. 268, 273; at a Radical 
 meeting, ii. 269 ; on public speaking, 
 ii. 269 ; his account of Irving's fare- 
 well visit and death, ii. 271 ; letter 
 to his mother respecting Irving's 
 life and character, ii. 271 ; his article 
 on, in Fraser, ii. 272; Ruskin's 
 saying respecting, ii. 277 ; his labors 
 on the "French Revolution," ii. 278; 
 various aspects of his life and char- 
 acter, ii. 274-279. 
 
 Cat linns, Alex. Carlyle's farm at, ii. 
 161, 172 note, 223, 225. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., i. 40, 43, 47, 48 ; Carlyle's 
 opinion of, i. 49, 57, 80, 243. 
 
 " Characteristics," finished, ii. 133 ; sent 
 to Napier, ii. 142; its text, ii. 142; 
 Mill's estimate of, ii. 142 ; accepted 
 by Napier, ii. 143 ; warmly received, 
 ii. 155 ; admired bv a tailor at Thoru- 
 hill, ii. 165. 
 
 Charles X.,i. 142,145. 
 
 Chateaubriand, i. 217. 
 
 Chelsea, description of, ii. 249, 250. 
 
 Cheyne Row, Carlyle's description of. 
 fifty years ago, ii. 249, 254 ; his house
 
 INDEX. 
 
 289 
 
 in, ii. 249 ; he removes to, ii. 253 ; 
 " raising reek " in, ii. 253, 254 note ; 
 garden at, ii. 253. 
 
 Chico, the canary-bird, ii. 242, 253, 254 
 and note. 
 
 Cholera, the, in England, ii. 128; its 
 effects on people's minds and on 
 trade, ii. 128 ; at Sunderland, ii. 129 ; 
 apprehensions respecting, ii. 131; 
 Jeffrey on, ii. 134 ; at Carlisle, ii. 163, 
 166, 170 ; ravages by, at Dumfries, ii. 
 166 note, 185 ; a Catholic priest and, 
 ii. 166 note; spreading in the north, 
 ii. 170; four carriers die of, ii. 170; 
 its subsidence, ii. 185 ; at Penpont, 
 near Templand, ii. 205. 
 
 Clare, Countess of, engages John Car- 
 lylc as travelling physician, ii. 104; 
 her character, ii. 105; her husband, 
 ii. 105; her return to England, ii. 
 199. 
 
 Clothes, ii. 49 ; essay on, ii. 53 ; philos- 
 ophy of, ii. 74, 75. 
 
 Coach agents, villany of, ii. 94, 95. 
 
 Cockneys, ignorance of, ii. 131. 
 
 Colburn and Bent ley, the publishers, 
 refuse " Sartor Resartus," ii. 111. 
 
 Coleridge, i. 128 ; mot of Lamb respect- 
 ing, i. 128 ; portrait of, by Carlyle, i. 
 128,146,153,170. 
 
 Comely Bank, house at, taken, i. 193; 
 description of, i. 205 ; life and society 
 at, i. 218, 219, 221 ; Wednesday even- 
 ings at, i. 222 ; the Carl vies leave 
 for Craigenputtock, i. 252. 
 
 Corn-law rhymes, article on, ii. 158. 
 
 Coterie speech in Carlyle family, i. 184. 
 
 Craigcrook. i. 237. 
 
 Craigenputtock, i. 6 1 ; laird of. and the 
 dragoons, i. 6"2; Carlyle purposes 
 farming at. i. 1">7 ; finally resolves on 
 settling at, i. 226 ; the Carlyles' visit 
 of inspection to, i.250; their removal 
 to, i. 252 ; description of, ii. 14 ; its 
 inclement climate, ii. 14 ; aversion of 
 Mrs. Carlyle to, ii. 14; the Carlyles 
 remove to, ii. 14, 15; early days at, 
 ii. 15; its interior, ii. 21; Jeffrey at, 
 ii. 24; view of. engraved at Frank- 
 fort, ii. 53; Alick Carlyle leaves, 
 ii. 70 ; a " blasted Paradise," ii. 72 ; 
 the shooting of, let, ii. 133, 210 ; vio- 
 II. 13 
 
 lent storms at, ii. 225 ; gloom and 
 stillness of, ii. 245. 
 
 Crawford, John, as a public speaker, ii. 
 269. 
 
 Crichhope Linn, verses on, ii. 213. 
 
 "Cui Bono?" Carlyle's poem, ii. 245; 
 his wife's Answer to, ii. 245. 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, i. 127, 170 ; ii. 108 ; 
 a "genuine " man, ii. 121, 257, 262. 
 
 Cuvier, i. 142 ; his lecture, i. 145 ; Car- 
 lyle's sketch of, i. 145. 
 
 D'Alembert, i. 35. 
 
 Descartes, i. 218. 
 
 Detrosier, a Saint - Simonian, ii. 131 
 
 and note. 
 
 Devil's Den, the, ii. 19, 21, 27. 
 Diamond Necklace, the, ii. 190, 200 ; 
 
 article on, ii. 202, 204 ; finished, ii. 
 
 226 ; article on, refused at first by 
 
 Foreign Quarterly, ii. 227. 
 Diderot, essay on, ii. 155, 162 ; article 
 
 on, ii. 228 ; Jeffrey's suspected resent- 
 ment at, ii. 228. 
 Dilke, C. W., owner of AthetKeum, 
 
 reads MS. of " Sartor " at request of 
 
 Carlyle, ii. 134. 
 Dissent and Dissenters in Scotland, i. 
 
 7. 
 
 Divine right of kings, ii. 55. 
 <f Don Quixote," ii. 28, 32 ; quoted, ii. 
 
 45. 
 
 Dover, Carlyle's visit to, i. 139. 
 Dow of Irongray, ii. 102. 
 Drumclog Moss, i. 50. 
 Drummond, Henry, described by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 102 ; a dinner at his house, 
 
 ii. 103. 
 Dumfries, ii. 161, 162; streets in, ii. 
 
 163 ; ravages of the cholera at, ii. 
 
 166 note; 185,238. 
 Dumfries Courier, letter of " Vox " to, 
 
 ii. 39. 
 Duncan, G. A., his correspondence with 
 
 Carlyle on Prayer, ii. 12. 
 Dunscore Moss, ii. 165. 
 Dupin. i. 145. 
 Dtirer, Albert, ii. 257. 
 Duverrier visits Carlyle, ii. 131. 
 
 Early German Literature, essay on, ii. 
 67 note.
 
 290 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ecclefechau, i. 2; its etymology, i. 2 
 note ; Carlyles leave the town, i. 19 ; 
 Edinburgh, Carlyle's first visit to, i. 
 13 ; his first impressions of, i. 13, 14 ; 
 society in, i. 190, 195 ; Carlyle's dis- 
 content with, i. 195, 200. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, i. 42 ; Carlyle's ad- 
 mission and first contribution to, i. 
 229, 230 ; his essay on Jean Paul in, 
 i. 230, 231 ; ii. 26"; editorship of, ii. 
 32 ; Macvey Napier appointed editor, 
 ii. 33, 87, 90 note, 126 ; " Character- 
 istics " accepted for, ii. 143, 155 ; Car- 
 lyle on, ii. 184. 
 
 Editors, function of, ii. 133. 
 
 Education, on, ii. 132. 
 
 Eichthal, Gustave d', Mrs. Carlyle's 
 friendship for, ii. 131. 
 
 Elizabethan era, i. 216. 
 
 Elliot, Ebenezer, Carlyle's article on, ii. 
 155. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph W., his visit to the 
 Carlyles, ii. 208-210 ; his account of 
 Carlyle and life at Craigenputtock, 
 ii. 208; cordial letter from, ii. 
 260. 
 
 Empson, ii. 88, 104; described by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 108, 110, 116, 134, 251. 
 
 Engineering, Carlyle's thoughts re- 
 specting, ii. 273 and note. 
 
 England, the Church of, ii. 42. 
 
 Entsagen, ii. 172; its meaning, ii. 199; 
 Carlyle's insistence on, ii. 211. 
 
 Epictetus, "Enchiridion" of, i. 218. 
 
 Esther, Old, Carlyle's sketch of, ii. 246 ; 
 Mrs. Carlyle's kindness to, ii. 247; 
 her death, ii. 247 ; a " memorandum " 
 of her, ii. 247. 
 
 Evil and good inseparable, ii. 133. 
 
 Examiner newspaper, ii. 99, 121. 
 
 Ferrers, Earl, ii. 110. 
 
 Fichte, i. 215. 
 
 Fonblanque, ii. 99; described by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 121; accident to, ii. 127; his 
 appearance, ii. 128. 
 
 Forbes, Sir Wm., his " Life of Beattie," 
 ii. 236. 
 
 Foreir/n Quarterly Review, i. 237, 238 ; 
 ii. 55, 68, 81, 126, 158, 161; refuses 
 article on Diamond Necklace, ii. 
 227. 
 
 Foreign Review, the, i. 237; ii. 15, 21, 
 2t>; paper on Voltaire in, ii. 43; on 
 Novalis, ii. 44, 81. 
 
 Fox, W. J., appointed editor of a new 
 Radical Review, ii. 239, 260; Car- 
 lyle's description of, ii. 262 ; a " friend 
 of the species," ii. 268. 
 
 Fraser, James, proprietor of the maga- 
 zine, ii. 68 ; his offer for " Sartor," ii. 
 193, sends Croker's I3oswell to Car- 
 lyle, ii. 133; a dinner with, ii. 135, 
 153, 239 ; his conversation with Car- 
 lyle,~ii. 251 ; his offer for " History of 
 French Revolution," ii. 254. 
 
 Fruser's Magazine, its contents, ii. 51; 
 " Sartor" published in, piecemeal, ii. 
 203, 236 ; Carlyle's article on Irving 
 in, ii. 272. 
 
 Fraser, William, his want of punctual- 
 ity, ii. 159; loses Carlyle's letters, ii. 
 160. 
 
 French Revolution, the, T. Carlyle's 
 studies of, ii. 190, 216, 235, 254, 257, 
 259; his History of, ii. 243; per- 
 plexed by, ii. 262; inaccessible pam- 
 phlets on, in British Museum, ii. 263 ; 
 lie commences History of, ii. 261, 
 266, 272. 
 
 " Friends of the species," ii. 268; their 
 households, ii. 209. 
 
 Galloway, a tour in, ii. 176. 
 
 Gait, John, characterized, ii. 136, 153. 
 
 Gell, Sir William, ii. 160. 
 
 Genealogy of Carlyle family, i. 207 
 note. 
 
 German literature, Carlyle commences 
 study of, i. 51. 
 
 German literature, Irving's ideas on, i. 
 77. 
 
 German Literature, Carlyle's History 
 of, ii. 47, 49; finished, ii. 69; de- 
 clined by Gleig, ii. 70 ; recommend- 
 ed to Longmans by Jeffrey, ii. 72; 
 instalment of, appears in Edinburgh 
 Review, ii. 87 ; declined by the Long- 
 mans, ii. 97 ; to be published in 
 " Cabinet Encylopaedia," ii. 143 ; but 
 comes to nothing, ii. 143. 
 
 " German Romance," projected, i. 172 ; 
 work at, i. 174 ; finished, i. 206 ; in- 
 scribed to James Carlyle, i. 220;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 291 
 
 financially a failure, i. 225; sent to 
 Goethe, i. 232. 
 
 Gift of tongues, ii. 102. 
 
 Gigmauia, ii. 70 note. 
 
 Glasgow, Radical rising in, i. 41 ; dis- 
 tress in, i. 48; Carlyle's visit to, i. 
 49. 
 
 Gleig (afterwards Chaplain-General), 
 ii.68. 
 
 Glen, William, ii. 109, 116; his eccen- 
 tricity, ii. 131, 162 ; Carlyle's kind- 
 ness to, ii. 235 ; teaches Carlyle 
 Greek, ii. 235, 236; reads Homer 
 with, ii. 236. 
 
 Godwin, William, ii. 99; described by 
 Carlyle, ii. 99 ; Wollstonecraft's Life 
 by, i'i.119. 
 
 Goethe, J. W., Carlyle studies his 
 works, i. 76 ; contrasted with Schil- 
 ler, i. 76; his"\Vilhelm Meister," i. 
 76; his estimate of Carlyle's "Life 
 of Schiller," i. 147 ; first letter from, 
 Carlyle, i. 154; quoted, i. 215; 
 his " Dichtung und Wahrheit " 
 quoted, i. 218 ; De Quincey's opin- 
 ion of, i. 231; his letter and gifts 
 to Carlyle, i. 232-237; praises 
 "Life of Schiller," i. 232; sends 
 verses to Carlyle, i. 236 ; writes 
 testimonial to Carlyle for St. An- 
 drew's professorship, i. 243; his in- 
 sight into Carlyle's temperament, i. 
 251 ; his presents to Carlyle and to 
 Sir W. Scott, i. 252 ; on the genius of 
 Carlyle, ii. 1 ; sends medals to Sir 
 W. Scott, ii. 17, 19 ; article on, by 
 Carlyle, in Foreign Revieic, ii. 21 ; 
 his " Helena," ii. 22 ; translates Car- 
 lyle's " Essay on Burns," ii. 22 ; sends 
 the "ornamented Schiller TI to Car- 
 lyle, ii. 53; his morality, ii. 54; pro- 
 posals to Carlyle for a Life of, ii. 57 ; 
 letter to Carlyle, with copies of his 
 works, ii. 60; his " Farbenlehre," ii. 
 59, 60; lines to Mrs. Carlyle, ii. 62; 
 cautions Carlyle respecting the St.- 
 Simonians, ii. 79 ; letter to Carlyle, 
 ii. 90; on good and evil, ii. 133; Car- 
 lyle's indebtedness to, ii. 152; the 
 news of his death reaches Carlyle at 
 Scotsbrig, ii. 155; Carlvle's article 
 " The Death of Goethc,"'ii. 155, 158 ; 
 
 concluding article on, by Carlyle for 
 Foreign (Quarterly, ii. 155, 158, 161; 
 his " Italian Travels," ii. 160 ; quot- 
 ed, ii. 166; his last words, ii. 174; 
 Carlyle's last present from, ii. 187; 
 his estimate of Carlyle, ii. 187 ; and 
 of Bnlwer, ii. 187; the greatest of 
 contemporary men, ii. 217. 
 
 Gordon, John, i. 231, 232 ; ii. 194. 
 
 Gordon, Margaret, Carlyle's friendship 
 with, i. 29; her marriage, i. 29; origi- 
 nal of Blumine in " Sartor," i. 29 ; 
 meets Carlyle in London, i. 29 ; her 
 correspondence with him, i. 29. 
 
 " Gospel of force " defined, ii. 4. 
 
 Graham, W., of Burnswark, ii. 141. 
 
 Grey, Earl, and his followers, ii. 104. 
 
 Gusting bone, a, ii. 257, 258. 
 
 Haddington, the school at, i. 68 ; Irv- 
 ing schoolmaster at, i. 68, 69. 
 
 Hall, Captain Basil, offer to Carlyle 
 from, i. 55. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, i. 219, 242; his 
 earnestness, i. 191, 193, 199, 201. 
 
 Hans Sachs, i. 156, 157. 
 
 Hatton Garden Chapel, invitation to 
 Irving from, i. 81 ; his success there, 
 i. 81 ; the Duke of York at, i. 81 ; 
 Irving's appointment as minister of, 
 i.81. 
 
 Hayward, Abraham, Carlyle's even- 
 ing with, ii. 134; urges Carlylc to 
 write final article on Goethe, ii. 143. 
 his service to Carlyle, ii. 143. 
 
 Hazlitt, i. 153; Jeffrey's kindness to, ii. 
 72; doubtful anecdotes of, ii. 122. 
 
 Hegel, death of, ii. 143. 
 
 Heine, i. 215 ; essay on, ii. 21. 
 
 Heraud, J. A., characterized, ii. 250. 
 
 Herder, i. 215 ; his " Ideen," i. 217. 
 
 Herschel, and Astronomy professor- 
 ship, ii. 231. 
 
 Iloddam Hill, the farm taken by Car- 
 lyle, i. 173; he removes thither, i. 
 173 ; description of, i. 174 ; life at, 
 i. 174, 175, 188 ; Miss Welsh visits, 
 i. 179 ; Carlyle leaves, i. 191-193. 
 
 Hogg, James, characterized, ii. 135, 153 ; 
 his vanity, ii. 136; Carlyle's interest 
 in, ii. 136 ; his poetic talent, ii. 
 136.
 
 293 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Homer, Carlyle on, ii. 236; and his 
 studies of, "ii. 236, 237 ; on the char- 
 acters in his works, ii. 237. 
 
 Honesty, Society for the Diffusion of 
 Common, ii. 165. 
 
 Hooker quoted, ii. 44. 
 
 Hope, Adam, his friendship with Car- 
 lyle, i. 23. 
 
 Hope, David, anecdote of, i, 7. 
 
 Hope, Thomas, his book on Man, ii. 
 114. 
 
 House of Commons, Carlyle's descrip- 
 tion of, ii. 100. 
 
 House of Lords, Carlyle at, ii. 110. 
 
 Houses of Parliament, burning of, ii. 
 267. 
 
 "Hudibras,"i.231. 
 
 Hume, Joseph, i. 218 ; ii. 100. 
 
 Humor, definition of, i. 224. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, i. 153 ; his " Lord Byron," 
 ii. 17. 118 ; his household at Chelsea, 
 ii. 248; advocates " women's rights," 
 ii. 249 note ; the Carlyles' intercourse 
 with, ii. 253, 254; Carlyle's friend- 
 ship with, and description of, ii. 256, 
 258 ; his modesty, ii. 256 ; his family 
 and household, ii. 256 ; his theory 
 of life, ii. 258 ; characterized, ii. 259. 
 
 Inglis, Henry, on Irving's preaching, 
 ii. 17 ; visits Carlyle at Craigenput- 
 tock, ii. 28, 192; his enthusiastic 
 opinion of " Sartor Resartus," ii. 197 ; 
 on blockheads, ii. 216 note. 
 
 Inspiration, ii. 50. 
 
 Irving, Edward, i. 7, 10 ; his early ca- 
 reer, i. 22 ; manages school at Had- 
 dington, i. 22 ; becomes tutor to Miss 
 Jane B. Welsh, i. 22 ; removes to 
 Kirkcaldy, i. 22 ; first meeting and 
 intimacy with Carlyle, i. 22, 23 ; 
 disagrees with Kirkcaldy folk, i. 31 ; 
 accused of severity to pupils, i. 30 
 note; resigns schoolmastership, i. 31; 
 letter to Carlyle, i. 39 ; appointed as- 
 sistant to Dr. Chalmers, i. 40 ; his ad- 
 vice to Carlyle, i. 42, 51; at Annan, 
 i. 51 ; invites Carlyle to Glasgow, i. 
 55 ; consolatory letters to Carlyle, i. 
 56, 57 ; becomes tutor to Miss Welsh, 
 i. 69; his engagement to Miss Mar- 
 tin, and his wish for release, i. 73 ; 
 
 his love for Miss Welsh, i. 73 ; his 
 misgivings as to her German studies, 
 i. 77 ; his uneasiness at Glasgow, i. 
 80; accepts invitation to preach in 
 Hatton Garden Chapel, i. 81 ; his 
 success in preaching, i.81 ; introduc- 
 tion to Mrs. Buller, i. 81 ; he recom- 
 mends Carlyle as tutor to her sons, 
 i. 81 ; his opinion of Charles Buller, 
 i. 81, 82; his appointment to Hatton 
 Garden Chapel, i. 87 ; letters to Miss 
 Welsh, i. 88, 90 ; his great popularity 
 in London, i. 89 ; mental struggles, 
 i. 92; his marriage, i. 92; change; in 
 character, i. 93 ; Carlyle on his Lon- 
 don career and on his book on Last 
 Judgment, i. 108, 109; contrast of 
 his lot with Carlyle's, i. 109 ; the 
 theological lion of the age, i. 109 ; 
 hollowness of his success, i. 109 ; his 
 wedding tour, i. 109 ; letter to Miss 
 Welsh, i. 109 ; his expectations for 
 Carlyle, i. 120; with Carlyle in Lon- 
 don, i. 126, 138 ; birth of his son, i. 
 135 ; at Dover, i. 139 ; his parental 
 affection, i. 142 ; humorous sketches 
 of, by Carlyle, i. 141-149; ceases to 
 be lionized, i. 150; his followers, i. 
 152; takes to interpretation of proph- 
 ecy, i. 172 ; his singularity, i. 189 ; 
 at Annan, i. 190 ; visit from Carlyle, 
 i. 190 ; his influence on Carlyle's 
 style, i. 231 ; urges Carlyle to apply 
 for a London professorship, i. 239 ; 
 his voluminous testimonial to Car- 
 lyle for a St. Andrew's professorship, 
 i. 244; at Edinburgh, ii. 17; fatality 
 at Kirkcaldy when preaching, ii. 22; 
 Carlyle's reflections on, ii. 70; on 
 " Sartor Resartus," ii. 81 ; visit from 
 Carlyle, ii. 98 ; continued success 
 among fanatical class, it. 98 ; on the 
 supernatural, ii. 102; on miracles, ii. 
 1 16 ; his increased extravagances, ii. 
 124; a "speaking with tongues" 
 meeting described by Carlyle, ii. 124 ; 
 the newspapers on, ii. 125; Carlyle's 
 fears for him, and remonstrances, ii. 
 125 ; visit to Carlyle, and advice 
 from him, ii. 127, 129 ; his altered 
 appearance, ii. 141 ; with Carlyle on 
 his father's burial day, ii. 148; in
 
 INDEX. 
 
 293 
 
 danger of ejectment, ii. 153 ; his 
 " Morning Watch " characterized, ii. 
 153; his father's death, ii. 163, 174; 
 summoned before Annan Presbytery, 
 ii. 163 ; preaches in the fields, his 
 precentor in a tree, ii. 163 ; preaches 
 in bazaar in Gray's Inn Road, ii. 174 ; 
 his adherents, ii. 174 ; at Newman 
 Street, ii. 177 ; his papers in Eraser 
 on the Tongues, ii. 177 ; his speech 
 at the Annan Presbytery, ii. 199, 201 ; 
 his letter to the newspapers, ii. 201 ; 
 meets Carlyle in London, ii. 248; his 
 illness and avoidance of Carlyle, ii. 
 250 ; long conversation with him, ii. 
 252, 262, 263 ; his last visit to the 
 Carlyles, ii. 271 ; his death at Glas- 
 gow, ii. 271 ; Carlyle's letter to his 
 mother on his life and character, ii. 
 271 ; Carlyle's love for, ii. 272. 
 Isaiah, Prophecies of, their modern 
 value, ii. 166. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis (afterwards Lord Jef- 
 frey), Carlyle's letter of introduction 
 to,"i. 222, 228 ; visit from Carlyle, i. 
 228, 230; his estimate of Carlyle, i. 
 2-29 ; his character, i. 228, 229; em- 
 ploys Carlyle on Edinburgh JReview, 
 i. 229 ; intimacy with Carlyle, i. 237 ; 
 his testimonial to Carlyle for St. An- 
 drew's professorship, i. 243 ; his so- 
 briquet of " the Duke," i. 244 ; efforts 
 to be of use to Carlyle, ii. 19 ; alter- 
 cation with Carlyle about article on 
 Burns, ii. 23, 25 ; visits him at Craig- 
 enptittock, ii. 24; his spiritual creed, 
 ii. 25, 32; on Carlyle's mysticism, ii. 
 25 ; New-year's greeting to Carlyle, 
 ii. 32 ; charm of his style, ii. 32; his 
 wish to serve Carlyle, ii. 33 ; ceases 
 to edit Edinburgh Revieic, ii. 33; of- 
 fers annuity to Carlyle, ii. 3(5, 47 ; 
 becomes Lord - advocate and M.I'., 
 ii. 50 ; his second visit to Craigen- 
 puttock, ii. 72; his social qualities, 
 ii.72; his kindness to Hazlitt, ii.72; 
 takes charge of " History of German 
 Literature,"ii.72; histalentanalyzed, 
 ii. 73 ; as a mimic, ii. 73 ; his social 
 qualities, conversation, and popu- 
 larity, ii. 74 ; his abhorrence of Radi- 
 
 calism, ii. 77 ; lectures Carlyle, ii. 77 ; 
 political speculations, ii. 78; a Mal- 
 thusian, ii. 79 ; removes to London, 
 ii. 80; assists John Carlyle, ii. 86 ; 
 correspondence with Mrs. Carlyle, ii. 
 87 ; his loan to Carlyle, ii. 93 ; in- 
 troduces him to Murray the pub- 
 lisher, ii. 90 ; at home in Jermyn 
 Street, ii. 98 ; recommends John Car- 
 lyle as physician to Lady Clare, ii. 
 104, 105 ; his criticism of " Sartor 
 Resartus," ii. 107 ; on the cholera, ii. 
 135 ; his regard for Mrs. Carlyle, ii. 
 155, 167 ; a candidate for Edinburgh 
 membership, ii. 163 ; irritated with 
 Carlyle, ii. 167 ; dinner to him at Ed- 
 inburgh, ii. 226 ; to be made a judge, 
 ii. 22G ; his opinion of Macaulay, ii. 
 226 ; declines to recommend Carlyle 
 for Astronomy professorship, ii. 228, 
 230; his letter to Carlyle charac- 
 terized, ii. 228, 230 ; vindication of 
 his conduct, ii. 229; his secretary as 
 an astronomer, ii. 232 ; on Carlyle's 
 manner, ii. 232 ; acknowledges sub- 
 sequently his error in his judgment 
 of Carlyle, ii. 234 ; in London, ii. 251 ; 
 Carlyle's last visit to, ii. 251. 
 
 Jews, sense of the ridiculous wanting 
 in, i. 65 ; their character and relig- 
 ious conceptions, ii. 8. 
 
 Jewsbury, Miss, on the character of 
 Miss Welsh, i. 70 ; on life at Craigen- 
 puttock, ii. 244. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., Carlyle visits his house 
 in Gough Square, ii. 134 ; Carlyle's 
 review of Croker's Life of, for Eraser, 
 ii. 153 ; the article warmly received, 
 ii. 155 ; Mill's delight with it, ii. 159. 
 
 Johnstone, George, ii. 94. 
 
 Johnstone, John, teaches Carlyle Lat- 
 in, i. 5, 9, 10 ; his congregation, 
 i.7. 
 
 Kant, his philosophy, i. 1 13 ; his " Kritik 
 der rcincn Vermin ft," i. 210, 215; 
 pamphlet about, ii. H*. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas h, Carlyle sends fa- 
 mous book by, to his mother, ii. 190 ; 
 his opinion of it, ii. 197. 
 
 Kenny, Mrs., ii. 199. 
 
 Kew Green, Carlyle removes to, with
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Buller family, L 129 ; his description 
 
 of, i. 130. 
 
 Kilbride, Church of, ii. 182. 
 King's College, London, ii. 19, 20. 
 Kinnaird House, Carlyle there with 
 
 Buller family, i. 103." 
 Kirkcaldy, Carlyle and Irving at, i. 24 ; 
 
 description of, i. 28 ; fatal accident 
 
 at, ii. 22. 
 Kirkpatrick, Miss, i. 139 ; visits Paris 
 
 with Mr. Stracbey and Carlyle, i. 
 
 141 ; ii. 20. 
 Knox, John, L 61, 62. 
 
 Ladies' maids and literature, ii. 219. 
 
 Lafayette characterized, ii. 217. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, his mot about Coleridge, 
 i. 128 ; Carlyle's harsh estimate of, 
 ii. 122; his irregular habits, ii. 122; 
 the tragedy of his life, ii. 122. 
 
 Laplace, i. 142, 144. 
 
 Lardner, Dr., proposes to publish " His- 
 tory of German Literature," ii. 143. 
 
 Last Judgment, Irving's book on, i. 
 108. 
 
 Laughter, varieties of, L 64. 
 
 Legendre, his " Elements of Geometry," 
 i. 79 ; translated by Carlyle, i. 84 ; 
 Carlyle visits, at Paris, i. 142, 144 ; 
 ii.228. 
 
 Leibnitz, i. 218. 
 
 Leslie, Professor, i. 15, 22; Carlyle's 
 mathematical teacher, i. 244; his 
 testimonial for St. Andrew's profess- 
 orship, i. 244. 
 
 Leyden, John, verses on Mrs. Buller, i. 
 95 note. 
 
 Libraries and jails, ii. 164. 
 
 "Literary men," Carlyle's contempt 
 for, ii. 108. 
 
 Literature, Old English, its character- 
 istics, i. 216. 
 
 Liverpool, T. Carlyle at, ii. 94 ; the Car- 
 lylcs at, ii. 154* 
 
 Llandaff, Bishop of, ii. 20. 
 
 Lockhart, becomes editor of Quarterly 
 Review, \. 195, 237 ; writes a Life of 
 Burns, ii. 17; as editor of Quar- 
 terly Kevieto, ii. 11G; introduced to 
 Carlyle, ii. 136; characterized, ii. 
 136, 153. 
 
 London, Carlyle's first visit to, i. 126 ; 
 
 his impressions of it and its society, 
 i. 126; Carlyle's second journey to, 
 ii. 93 ; his arrival at, ii. 94; men 
 born in, ii. 261. 
 
 London Magazine, i. 92 ; his " Life of 
 Schiller" published in, i. 112. 
 
 London University, i. 238, 239, 248 ; ii. 
 20. 
 
 Longmans, " German Literary His- 
 tory" declined by, ii. 97; "Sartor 
 Itesartus " offered to, ii. 104. 
 
 Louis XVIII., i. 142. 
 
 Luther, his practice of fasting, ii. 43 ; 
 his character, ii. 43 ; Carlyle con- 
 templates Life of, ii. 57, 68 ; Carlyle 
 offers article on, to Napier, ii. Ill; 
 but declined by him, ii. 114. 
 
 Lytton Bulwer, E., solicits interview 
 with Carlyle, ii. 143 ; presses for an 
 article on Frederick the Great, ii. 143. 
 
 Macanlay, T. B., ii. 117; character- 
 ized, ii. 134; his paper on Horace 
 Walpole, ii. 218; Carlyle's opinion 
 of, ii. 218; Jeffrey's opinion of, ii. 
 226. 
 
 MacCrie, Dr., 198. 
 
 Macculloch, of the Scotsman, i. 101 ; 
 characterized, ii. 273. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, Carlyle's de- 
 scription of, ii. 119; death of, ii. 165. 
 
 "Miihrchen," Das, translated by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 155 ; revised, ii. 162. 
 
 Mali ih ill. the Carlyles remove to, i. 20; 
 family life there, i. 25, 27 ; T. Car- 
 lyle's life and work at, i. 123. 
 
 Martin, Rev. Mr., i. 27. 
 
 Martineau, Miss, ii. 251. 
 
 Mendelssohn, Moses, i. 215 ; his " Phse- 
 don,"i. 217. 
 
 Miles, Miss E.,Mrs. Carlyle's friendship 
 for, ii. 167 ; offers to go to Scotland 
 with her, ii. 168; sketch of, by Car- 
 lyle, ii. 268; a follower of Irving, ii. 
 268 ; her marriage, ii. 269 ; sudden 
 death of her father, ii. 270. 
 
 Mill, J. S., ii. 110 ; his appearance, ii. 
 Ill; his conversation, ii. 110, 116, 
 127; his Catholicism and love of 
 truth, ii. 137; C. Buller's praise of, 
 ii. 137, 138 ; his sympathy with Car- 
 lyle, ii. 159; his delight with article
 
 INDEX. 
 
 295 
 
 on Johnson, ii. 159, 165 ; a disciple 
 of Carlyle, ii. 159; cannot admit 
 Goethe's greatness, it. 159; assists 
 Carlyle with books, etc. ii. 190 ; 
 characterized, ii. 195; disappointed 
 with Reform Bill, ii. 19C ; introduces 
 Emerson to Carlyle, ii. 208 ; his close 
 correspondence with Carlyle, ii. 211 ; 
 his views on Christianity, ii. 211 ; 
 " tragical " story respecting, ii. 250 ; 
 Carlyle's esteem for, ii. '252 ; offers to 
 print " Diamond Necklace " at his 
 o\vn expense, ii. 261 ; his reasonable- 
 ness, ii. 2ls. 
 
 Miracles, Carlyle on, ii. 2, 40. 
 
 Mirth, false, ii'. 135. 
 
 Moir, George, ii. 192-194. 
 
 Molesworth, Sir \Vm., Carlyle's esteem 
 for, ii. 252 ; the Radical Review and, 
 ii. 252. 
 
 Montagu, Basil, Carlyle's estimate of, i. 
 150. 
 
 Montagu, Mrs. Basil, i. 127; her so- 
 briquet of "the noble lady," i. 127 
 note, 149; ii. 96; pecuniary offer to 
 Mrs. Carlyle, ii. 102, 131 ; her friend- 
 ship cools, ii. 270. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, characterized, ii. 134. 
 
 Morgarten, verses by Carlyle on battle 
 of, i. 99. 
 
 Morgue, Carlyle at the, i. 142. 
 
 Muffins in London, ii. 132. 
 
 Murray, John, Carlyle sends "Sartor" 
 to, ii. 96, 100; his delay respecting 
 it, ii. 100, 103 ; his offer for it, ii. Ill ; 
 his correspondence with Carlyle re- 
 specting it, ii. 111. 
 
 Murray, Thomas, Carlyle's correspond- 
 ence with, i. 21. 
 
 Museum, British, Carlyle at, ii. 261; 
 impatience with, ii. 263. 
 
 Napier, Macvey, appointed editor of 
 FAixbunjh Review, ii. 33,90, 91, 104, 
 111 ; on prevailing literary taste, ii. 
 114; declines article on Luther, ii. 
 114; suggests another subject, ii. 
 114; "Characteristics" sent to, ii. 
 142 ; accepted by, ii. 143 ; remiss in 
 payment for articles, ii. 190, 193; 
 characterized, ii. 194, 200, 201 ; Car- 
 lyle dines with, ii. 201, 251. 
 
 Narration, art of, i. 218. 
 Nelson, Ben, ii. 161, 1G5. 
 Nettles, Carlyle's battle with, ii. 71 
 
 note, 
 New Monthly Magazine, ii. 51 ; its 
 
 character, ii. 142, 188. 
 " Nibelungen-Lied," essay on, ii. 68 
 
 note. 
 
 Nicknames, ii. 50. 
 Nicol, Dr., principal of St. Andrew's 
 
 University, i. 243 ; his character and 
 
 influence, i. 244. 
 Nigger question, the, ii. 80. 
 " Noble lady," the (Mrs. Montagu), ii. 
 
 130, 176. See Montagu, Mrs. 
 " Noctes Ambrosianje," ii. 143. 
 North, Christopher, see Wilson, John. 
 Novalis, his "Schriften," ii. 43; his 
 
 character, ii. 44 ; on religion, ii. 46 ; 
 
 quoted, ii. 50, 148. 
 Novel, Carlyle commences a, i. 215, 
 
 221; failure of, i. 225. 
 " Novelle " translated by Carlyle, ii. 
 
 162. 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, ii. 100; a real 
 demagogue, ii. 135 ; his " cunning," 
 ii. 135. 
 
 Optics, spiritual, ii. 5. 
 
 Orr, John, i. 3. 
 
 Oxford, i. 137. 
 
 Palais Royal, Carlyle at the, i. 144. 
 
 Paley, his"" Hor.-c Paulinae," i. 103, 218. 
 
 Paris, trip to, decided on, i. 142 ; jour- 
 ney thither, i. 142 ; Carlyle's impres- 
 sions of, i. 142. 
 
 Phaeton a " gigman," ii. 165. 
 
 Poetry, ultimate object of, i. 216 ; Car- 
 lyle's doubtful love of, ii. 46. 
 
 Pole, Reginald and Anna, i. 107. 
 
 Politeness, ii. 50. 
 
 Political economy, estimate of, i. 218 ; 
 Carlyle on, ii. 48. 
 
 Political life, courtesies of, i. 218. 
 
 Pope, his " Homer's Odyssey," ii. 56. 
 
 Prayer, Carlyle on, ii. 13. 
 
 Precentor, Irving's. in a tree, ii. 163. 
 
 Procter. Bryan \V. (Barry Cornwall), 
 Carlyle's estimate of, i. 127, 153 ; 
 characterized, ii. 153, 177. 
 
 Property, ii. 53.
 
 296 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Prophetesses, ii. 124 
 Puttock, i. 61 note. 
 
 Quacks, ii. 45. 
 
 Quarterly Review, Southey's article in, 
 ii. 116. 
 
 Quincey (De), Thomas, reviews Car- 
 lyle's " Meister " unfavorably, i. 133 ; 
 his career, i. 153, 219 ; his opinion of 
 Rfchter and Goethe, i. 231; de- 
 scribed by Carlyle, i. 242, 249 ; his 
 ill-fortune, ii. 200. 
 
 Eadical disturbances at Glasgow, i. 
 41. 
 
 Radical Review, a new, instituted by 
 Mill, Duller, and others, ii. 239, 257 ; 
 Carlyle agrees to contribute to, ii. 
 239 ; Sir W.Molesworth and, ii. 252 ; 
 Carlyle hopes for editorship of, ii. 
 254 ; W. J. Fox appointed editor of, 
 ii. 239, 260; its fate, ii. 261. 
 
 Radicalism, Carlyle and, ii. 268. 
 
 Radicals, Carlyle on, ii. 239 ; meeting 
 of, ii. 269. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir W., i. 215; his "Advice 
 to his Son," i. 216. 
 
 Reeve, Henry, ii. 189. 
 
 Reform, agitation for, ii. 71 ; the ques- 
 tion of, ii. 55,76. 
 
 Reform Bill, the, thrown out, ii. 119. 
 
 " Reineke Fuchs," ii. 81 ; fts influence 
 on Carlyle, ii. 217. 
 
 Religion, Carlyle's, ii. 1 ; Jewish, ii. 8 ; 
 ancient conceptions of, ii. 10. 
 
 " Reminiscences," i. 28, 41, 51, 64, 66, 73, 
 84, 126, 127, 139, 143 ; quoted, i. 174, 
 191,230,250; memoir of James Car- 
 lyle in, ii. 144. 
 
 Rennie, George, the sculptor, a friend 
 of the Carlyles, ii. 2G8. 
 
 Rhetoric, a chair of, Jeffrey hesitates 
 to recommend Carlyle for, ii. 233, 
 236. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, Carlyle's essay on, 
 i. 230, 236, 237 ; De Quincey's opin- 
 ion of, i. 231 ; quoted, ii. 44. 
 
 Ridiculous, sense of the, definition of, 
 i. 65 ; not possessed by Jews, i. 65 ; 
 Carlyle's, ii. 261. 
 
 Robinson, Crabb, i. 248. 
 
 Roebuck, J. A., his oratory, ii. 269. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, characterized, ii. 134. 
 Romilly, Sir John, ii. 147. 
 " Rotten-hearted Lords," ii. 138. 
 Ruskin, J., his saying respecting Car- 
 lyle, ii. 277. 
 Russell, Dr., of Thornhill, ii. 182. 
 
 Saint-Simonianism, failure of, ii. 103. 
 
 Saint-Simonians, letter from, ii. 47 ; 
 Goethe cautions Carlyle as to, ii. 79 ; 
 article in Quarterly on, ii. 116 ; Mrs. 
 Carlyle and, ii. 131 ; they give lect- 
 ures in London, ii. 222. 
 
 " Sartor Resartus," i. 8-10 ; not histor- 
 ical, i. 15; extract from, i. 15, 32, 58 ; 
 passage from, i. 58; growth of, ii. 
 74 ; defective as a work of art, ii. 75 ; 
 anti-Malthusian, ii. 79; quoted, ii. 
 79 ; Irving on, ii. 81 ; Carlyle at 
 work on, ii. 90; completed, ii. 92; 
 Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 93 ; sent 
 to John Murray, ii. 96 ; declined by 
 him, ii. 103 ; offer from Fraser re- 
 specting, ii. 103 ; offered to Long- 
 mans, ii. 104 ; Jeffrey's criticism of, 
 ii. 108; declined by Longmans, ii. 
 108 note ; subsequent offer by Mur- 
 ray for, ii. Ill ; refused by Colburn 
 and Bentley, ii. Ill ; correspondence 
 with Murray respecting, ii. 112-114 ; 
 finally declined by him, ii. 113 ; crit- 
 ical opinion on, ii. 113 ; published 
 piecemeal in Fraser's Magazine, ii. 
 203; its unfavorable reception, ii. 
 212, 227, 236, 239, 250, 251 ; appre- 
 ciated in America, ii. 251. 
 
 Scaliger, i. 215. 
 
 Schelling,i.215, 248. 
 
 Schiller, character and writings of, i. 
 75; his influence on Carlyle, i. 75; 
 contrasted with Goethe, i. 76 ; Car- 
 lyle's Life of, begun, i. 100, 112; 
 Carlyle's judgment of his own work, 
 i. 147 ; Goethe's opinion of it, i. 147, 
 232. 
 
 Schlegel, F., i. 113, 217; death of, ii. 
 43. 
 
 Scotland, social state of, i. 36; aristoc- 
 racy of, ii. 42, 51 ; character of peo- 
 ple of, ii. 42; Scott's History of, ii. 
 50. 
 
 Scotsbrig,the Carlyles remove to, i. 191.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 297 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his works character- 
 ized, i. 21(5 ; Goethe sends medals to, 
 i. '252; Carlyle's letter to, not an- 
 swered, i. 252 ; receives medals from 
 Goethe, ii. 17, 19; his "History of 
 Scotland," ii. 50; his journey to 
 Naples, ii. 121; his failing health, 
 ii. 121; struck with apoplexy, ii. 
 174; death of, ii. 181 ; characterized, 
 ii. 181. 
 
 Self-denial, ii. 179. 
 
 Seneca, ii. 180. 
 
 Shaftesbury, i. 215. 
 
 Shakespeare, and Stratfonl-on-Avon, i. 
 137 ; compared with Homer, ii. 56 ; 
 poetry his religion, ii. 121. 
 
 Sharpe, General, i. 173; his differences 
 with Carlyle, i. 191, 192 note. 
 
 Sickingen, Franz von, ii. 50. 
 
 " Sigh, The," Carlyle's poem, ii. 246. 
 
 " Signs of the Times," in Edinburgh 
 Review, ii. 34, 44, 48. 
 
 Silence, ii. 52 ; a talent for, ii. 98 ; the 
 nobleness of, ii. 133. 
 
 Smail, Betty, ii.85. 
 
 Smail, Tom", i. 13. 
 
 Socrates compared with Christ, ii. 217. 
 
 " Sorrows of Werter," The, ii. 51. 
 
 Southoy on the Saint-Simonians, ii. 
 11G. 
 
 Sports, popular, on, ii. 132. 
 
 Stae'I, Mine, de, article on, ii. 58. 
 
 Stock Exchange, Carlyle .on, ii. 265, 
 266 note. 
 
 Strachey, Mr., accompanies Carlyle to 
 Paris, i. 142 ; his imperfect French, 
 L 143; death of, ii. 143. 
 
 Strachey, Mrs., i. 81, 127, 132; con- 
 trasted with Mrs. Buller, her sister, 
 i. 135; ii. 20, 98, 115; her anxiety 
 respecting Charles Buller, ii. 125, 
 126 ; character of, ii. 253. 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon, i. 136. 
 
 Streets, on names of, ii. 163. 
 
 Style, Carlyle's, where learned, ii. 144. 
 
 Swan, Mr., i. 27, 51, 56 ; provost of 
 Kirkcaldy, ii. 213 note. 
 
 Tait, the bookseller, i. 53. 
 Talma, i. 142, 144. 
 
 Taylor, William, his " Historical Sur- 
 vey of German Poetry," ii. 54, 55, 87. 
 
 Taylor, Mrs., a friend of the Carlyles, 
 ii. 257 ; characterized, ii. 257, 262 ; 
 her dinner-party, ii. 262; her hus- 
 band, ii. 262, 272. 
 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, ii. 126, 127. 
 
 Templand, i. 64. 
 
 Temple, Sir William, i. 215. 
 
 " Terar dum prosim," the motto, i. 113, 
 183. 
 
 " Teufelsdrockh," ii. 54; the first 
 sketch of" Sartor Resartus " refused 
 by magazine editors, ii. 57. 
 
 Thiers, Carlyle's criticism on, ii. 190 
 note. 
 
 Thought, thinking and, ii. 133. 
 
 Tieck, quoted, i. 215, 216. 
 
 Times and " Life of Schiller," i. 116. 
 
 Titles, their derivation, ii. 55. 
 
 Toleration, ii. 179 and note. 
 
 Tongues, gift of, ii. 124, 128 ; Irving'a 
 papers on, in Fraser's Magazine, ii. 
 177. 
 
 Tories, the moderate, ii. 52. 
 
 Tower of Repentance, i. 173. 
 
 " Tristram Shandy," i. 231. 
 
 Truth, rarity of, ii". 122. 
 
 Unitarians, Carlyle's estimate of, ii. 
 135. 
 
 University life in Scotland, i. 12, 48. 
 
 Utilitarianism, Charles Buller'a advo- 
 cacy of, ii. 20. 
 
 Verse, quality of Carlyle's, ii. 216 note. 
 Virtue, no theory of, ii. 218. 
 Voltaire, his philosophy, i. 217; essay 
 on, ii. 30. 
 
 Washington, George, his character, ii. 
 217. 
 
 Waste lands, improvement of, ii. 44. 
 
 Water of Milk, ii. 172, 174. 
 
 Waugh, Dr., of Annan, a friend of 
 Carlyle and Irving, ii. 221 ; his des- 
 titute condition relieved by Carlyle, 
 ii. 221 ; his book, ii. 221, 223. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, Parliament and, 
 ii. 164 ; unpopularity of, as a politi- 
 cian, ii. 164, 172; characterized, ii. 
 164. 
 
 Welsh, Jane Baillie (afterwards wife 
 of T. Carlyle), i. 22 ; her ancestry,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 i. 61, 62; John Knox, i. 62; her 
 grandfather, John Welsh, i. 63; her 
 lather's early career, i. 63 ; her moth- 
 er descended from Wallace, i. 63- 
 66 ; her uncle, John Welsh, of Liv- 
 erpool, i. 65 ; her mother described 
 by Carlyle, i. 65 ; death of her fa- 
 ther, i. 65; Carlyle on her father's 
 character, i. 66; attachment to her 
 father, i. 66 ; her early years, i. 66 ; 
 personal attractions, i. 66; anec- 
 dotes of her childhood, i. 67; 
 learns Latin, i. 68 ; punishes an im- 
 pertinent lad, i. 68; Edward Irving 
 becomes her private tutor, i. 69 ; 
 her zeal in study, i. 69 ; reads Vir- 
 gil, i. 69 ; its effect on her mind, i. 
 69; the doll's funeral pyre, i. 69; 
 writes a tragedy at age of fourteen, 
 i. 70; her gift of verse-making, i. 
 
 lyle, i. 187 ; selects a house at Come- 
 ly Bank, i. 193; her "enumeration 
 of her wooers," i. 197; her estimate 
 of Carlyle, i. 206, 207 ; letter to her 
 aunt, i. 207 ; good resolutions, i. 
 209 ; " last marrying words," i. 212 ; 
 her marriage with Carlyle, i. 212. 
 See Carlyle, Jane Welsh. 
 
 Welsh, Dr., of Haddington, Carlylc's 
 description of, i. 66 ; his death, i. 66 ; 
 anecdote of, i. 66. 
 
 Welsh, John, of Liverpool, ii. 94, 95. 
 
 Welsh, Walter, of Templand ( grand- 
 father of Jane Welsh), Carlyle's 
 opinion of him, i. 64 ; his laughter, 
 i. 64 ; his son John's bankruptcy, 
 subsequent success, and repayment 
 of his creditors, at Liverpool, i. 65 ; 
 anecdote of, i. 67. 
 
 Werner, i. 215, 217. 
 
 70 ; her love for her father, i. 70 ; j Werter, ii. 51. 
 accompanies her father on his last | Westminster Revieic, ii. 55. 
 journey, i. 70, 71 ; her father's last i Wetherell, Recorder of Bristol, ii. 100, 
 illness, L 71; her first extant letter, | 129. 
 
 i. 71 ; inherits her father's property, 
 i. 72 ; her many suitors, i. 72 ; called 
 the " flower of Haddington," i. 72 ; 
 her warm attachment to Irving, i. 
 73 ; her introduction to Carlyle. i. 
 73 ; corresponds with him, i. 74 ; 
 Irving's misgivings as to her Ger- 
 man studies, i. 76; literary corre- 
 spondence with Carlyle, i. 86; let- 
 ters from Irving, L 88, 89 ; professes 
 sisterly love for Carlyle, i. 104 ; 
 makes a will leaving her property to 
 him, i. 105 ; quarrel and reconcilia- 
 tion with him, i. 120; her estimate 
 of " Wilhelm Meister," i. 122 ; on 
 death of Byron, i. 124 ; correspond- 
 ence with Carlyle, i. 151-154, 156- 
 169; nature of her regard for Car- 
 lyle, i. 167 ; letters from Mrs. Mon- 
 tagu, i. 176, 177 ; confesses her pre- 
 vious attachment to Irving, i. 178 ; 
 visits Carlyle at Hoddam, i. 179 ; 
 and his father at Mainhill, i. 181 ; 
 her mother's displeasure at her pro- 
 posed marriage, i. 182; letter to 
 Carlyle's mother, i. 185; at Had- 
 dington, i. 186 ; letter to Jean Car- 
 
 Whig Ministry, ii. 83. 
 
 Whigs, the, ii. 52, 83. 
 
 Wightman the hedger, i. 205, 213. 
 
 "Wilhelm Meister," Carlyle's opinion 
 of, i. 76 ; begins translation of, 1, 100, 
 103; arrangements with publisher 
 respecting, i. 105, 122 ; Miss Welsh's 
 opinion of, i. 122; Carlyle on, i. 
 122; its reception at Mainhill, i. 
 129 ; Mrs. Strachey's opinion of, i. 
 148 ; read by Mr. Welsh, of Temp- 
 land, i. 209 ; "ii. 97 note. 
 
 Wilson, Professor, i. 219; Carlyle's de- 
 scription of, i. 231, 242 ; his testimo- 
 nial to Carlyle, i. 244; his charac- 
 ter, L 249; Goethe and, ii. 143, 192- 
 197 ; Carlyle's estimate of, ii. 203. 
 
 Winckelmann, ii. 217, 224. 
 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, Life of, by God- 
 win, ii. 119. 
 
 Women's rights, ii. 249 note. 
 
 Wonder, the basis of worship, ii. 
 49. 
 
 Wordsworth, characterized, ii. 198. 
 
 Yeomanry, Lothian, called out, i. 41. 
 York, Duke of, i. 81.
 
 CARLYLE'S REMINISCENCES. 
 
 REMINISCENCES BY THOMAS CARLYLE. Edited by 
 J. A. FROUDE. With Copious Index. 4 to, Paper, 20 cents; 
 12mo, Cloth, with Thirteen Portraits, 50 cents. 
 
 These papers do in fact throw a great deal of light on Carlyle's life and charac- 
 ter, and they will be read with eagerness. * * * Few of his most finished and ele- 
 gant compositions vibrate with such intense and characteristic energy of emotion 
 and conviction as marks these pages. Jf. Y. Sun. 
 
 The "Reminiscences" consist of sketches, and they give us an insight into the 
 man's labors and domesticity such as the world has rarely enjoyed respecting any 
 literary man. * * * This work is one of the notable events in literary history. It 
 will instruct and delight the studious reader. Louisville Courier-Journal. 
 
 They display Carlyle's remarkable power of depicting character by a few rapid 
 stroke?, ami they are full of interesting information as to the circumstances of his 
 own life. * * * There are occasional outbursts of pathetic sentiment which it would 
 be difficult tomtitch in English literature. St. James's Gazette, London. 
 
 To lovers and students of Carlyle these "Reminiscences "Sire of the first value. 
 In the form of sketches of James Carlyle, Edward Irving, Jeffrey, and Jane Welsh 
 Carlyle his father ; his friend ; his literary patron ; his wife, consoler, and guar- 
 dian angel we have, in fact, a most vivid autobiography. We see Carlyle strug- 
 gling with poverty, with scepticism, with the "mud-gods," with unpopularity, 
 with dyspepsia, until he triumphed over all except the last. * * * As for style, this 
 work gives Carlyle at his best. Academy, London. 
 
 The graphic power of the book is as remarkable as in any of Carlyle's most 
 famous works. Athenceum, London. 
 
 There can be no donbt of its permanent vitality. Spectator, London. 
 
 If to unveil the inner life of a man truly great hitherto little known except 
 through his books ; to paint vivid pictures of that man's family and associates- 
 many of them great ; to tell the brave struggle which he held with poverty and 
 obscurity up and on to fame ; to set down in the bold capitals of genius the very 
 face, gait, and action of his times as they touched him in the realm where he be- 
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 much worth. Literary World, Boston. 
 
 Reading these interesting posthumous papers of a great thinker, is almost like 
 reading In Memoriam rolled out in sinewy prose, its fine cadences roughened and 
 set to the wailing music of the lond Highland winter blast, but softened here 
 and there, and made sadly harmonious, by a deep human sorrow breathed as 
 through the very flutes of Arcady. Hartford Times. 
 
 This book is very precious. It is bright with the significant art which sharpens 
 all his descriptions; it is honest as the utterances of his own soul to himself; it 
 is such a work as a man can write but once, and which even the fullest revelations 
 of personal letters can hardly equal as truthful outpourings of the heart. * * * The 
 style is clear, pure, forcible English of the best kind. * * * The "Reminiscences" 
 practically cover his whole life. Hardly a notable person with whom he came in 
 contact is unnoticed. A book with greater variety of incidents which contribute to 
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 THOMAS CARLYLE. By M. D. CONWAY. Illustrated. 
 12rno, Cloth, $1 00. 
 
 Mr. Conway's book is the most interesting that has yet been called forth by 
 the death of Carlyle. His facilities for obtaining a just impression of the man, 
 perhaps, exceeded those of any one else. He enjoyed years of intimate compan- 
 ionship with him in his own home, and the character of his mind is such that he 
 is intensely appreciative of Carlyle'a peculiar genius. The book is, to those who 
 admire Carlyle, like a conversation with a mutual friend who was closely asso- 
 ciated with a departed friend. The style is specially easy and fluent, and the 
 well-known facts acquire a new significance when presented in this attractive 
 form. Providence Journal, 
 
 A thoroughly valuable and entertaining volume. * * * Mr. Conway writes with 
 an intimate personal knowledge of his subject. * * * We believe he has come 
 nearer to the real nature, aims, and life-work of the author of "Sartor Resartas" 
 than most who have been moved by Carlyle's death to present their opinions to 
 the world Boston fraveller. 
 
 He certainly succeeds in presenting the tender side of Carlyle's nature, while 
 not ignoring its rnggeduess. He lived on terms of close intimacy with him, ac- 
 companied him in his little tonrs sibout the country, and reports his conversations 
 at first hand Portland Transcript. 
 
 We have no sort of donbt that the final judgment of Carlyle will settle down 
 somewhere around the points of the portrait here presented, and that Mr. Con- 
 way's appreciative but discriminating estimate may be takeu as a safe guide 
 thereto. We have seen no sketch of Carlyle which gives a more nearly complete 
 and well-balanced idea of the man, as a man, and his place in the intellectual life 
 of his time. Congregationalist, Boston. 
 
 Mr. Conway enjoyed exceptional opportunities for knowing Carlyle, and he has 
 made an exceptionally pleasant and interesting book. Boston Journal. 
 
 An admirable sketch, written in a sympathetic spirit, and containing many in- 
 teresting notes of the author's intercourse with Carlyle. It ought to do good 
 service by correcting the one-sided impression which has been produced by the 
 "Reminiscences." St. James's Gazette, London. 
 
 We have here no mere compilation, but the recollections of one who loved Car- 
 lyle, and has power to unveil some part of the lovable nature that was iu the 
 man. The glimpses of the home at Chelsea given here are more vivid and life- 
 like than anything else that has been published iu that kind. Spectator, London. 
 
 Few men had the good fortune to see so much of Thomas Carlyle in the close 
 intimacy of private talk and association as Mr. Moucure Conway. * * * The wel- 
 come result is the transferring to paper many valuable remarks made by Carlyle 
 iu conversation, and the putting on record many incidents and traits that were 
 otherwise doomed to oblivion. Westminster Review, London. 
 
 We get much of the inner thought of the great man here, with pictures of his 
 every-day existence that are truly inspiring. It is au admirable free-hand sketch, 
 and is likely to be accepted as authentic and reliable. Boston Commonwealth. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NKW YORK. 
 
 t^~ HAEPEB & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
 part of the United States, on receipt of the price.
 
 WYLIE'S CARLYLE. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. The Man and his Books. Illustrated 
 by Personal Reminiscences, Table-Talk, and Anecdotes of 
 Himself and his Friends. By W. H. WYLIE. 4to, Paper, 
 20 cents. 
 
 There is much in Mr. Wylie's volume that we have found a welcome reminder 
 of what was best iu Carlyle. Spectator, London. 
 
 Contains a really graphic account of Carlyle's life at Craigenputtock and his 
 correspondence with Goethe; and the best estimate we have yet seen of the sig- 
 nal historical service done by Carlyle hi rehabilitating the defaced image of Crom- 
 well. Academy, London. 
 
 If this book is to be taken as an example of the kind of work we are to expect 
 in the biographies of Carlyle, Carlyle will have been, on the whole, more fortunate 
 than his fellow victims. Mr. Wylie's book is really a thoughtful and remarkably 
 accurate performance. Athenceum, London. 
 
 He has got together most of the facts of Carlyle's life, and has exposed them in 
 a very readable piece of literary work. * * * This book gives, on the whole, a very 
 fair and sufficient account of Mr. Carlyle's life Pall Mall Budget, London. 
 
 A timely volume of reminiscences, table-talk, and anecdotes of the sage and 
 his friends. It is a very interesting sketch of Carlyle's life and work. Montreal 
 Witness. 
 
 A valuable contribution to literature. Brooklyn Times. 
 
 A remarkable compilation of facts concerning Carlyle. * * * The author has been 
 indefatigable iu collecting material, and not a fact is lost. An acquaintance with 
 Carlyle gives him opportunity to put in numerous little aside?, and to give some 
 conversations as they fell from the month of the sage. Saturday Evening Gazette, 
 Boston. 
 
 The narrative is rendered attractive, as well as instructive, by the happy min- 
 gling of personal incident, anecdote, and table-talk with the ordinary biographical 
 data. New England Methodist, Boston. 
 
 Contains a great deal of personal and literary information regarding Carlyle 
 Philadelphia News. 
 
 A book that every lover of Carlyle should obtain Home Farm, Augusta, Me. 
 
 Will be read with much interest Portland Press. 
 
 A most interesting book. Brooklyn Union and Arfiun. 
 
 This work was prepared before the death of its distinguished subject, and not 
 written hastily since that event. It abounds in personal recollections, and is per- 
 haps the best description of the famous Scotchman at present to be had. Chris- 
 tian Intelligencer, N. Y. 
 
 A Boswelliau collection from Carlyle's own lips, from reports, letters of his 
 friends, and from the public press, of the incidents of his life and his notable 
 words. It presents the rough, self-willed, extravagant, powerful man in a grateful 
 light. Zion's Herald, Boston. 
 
 An admirable study of a man who made his impression on the age. Lutheran 
 Observer, Boston. 
 
 A very entertaining.work. Chicago Journal. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, KEW YORK. 
 
 t3f~ HAEPEE & BEOTIIKRS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
 part of tlie United States, on receipt of the price.
 
 CAROLINE FOX'S JOURNALS. 
 
 MEMORIES OF OLD FRIENDS : BEING EXTRACTS FROM 
 THE JOURNALS AND LETTERS OF CAROLINE FOX, 
 OF PENJERRICK, CORNWALL, FROM 1835 TO 1871. To 
 which are added Fourteen Original Letters from J. S. Mill, never 
 before published. Edited by HORACE N. PYM. 4to, Paper, 30 
 cents. 
 
 Hardly a page can be turned without meeting a name that Btill retains some 
 importance; and though at times, of course, we find little but a name, yet even 
 then the mention is not devoid of interest, and in some cases it affords views of 
 character from which the historian of onr time might stop to gather hints for the 
 coloring of his picture. Spectator, London. 
 
 There are not many things rarer than a thoroughly delightful book, but Mr. 
 Pym must have the credit (sinoe the author herself is past receiving it) of having 
 provided readers of to-day with this rarity. Athenaeum, London. 
 
 The great book of the year. N. Y. Mail and Express. 
 
 A life spent among persons whose conversations and thoughts were for the 
 most part well worth recording; while certain peculiarities of position, and an 
 evident power of personal attraction mainly due, as it would seem, to delicate 
 perceptions and to a sympathetic and inquiring spirit, together with a lively tem- 
 per and a great sense of fun and humor gave the journalist some unusual advan- 
 tages. Saturday Review, London. 
 
 The volume has been produced with everything in its favor to insure it a wide 
 popularity. We have rarely met with any work which exercised so irresistible a 
 fascination over our will. It has been well edited. Academy, London. 
 
 One of the brightest, most interesting, and permanently valuable diaries ever 
 given to the public. * * * We have read 110 book of the kind richer in material for 
 the historian and biographer, and in pictures of men and women whom the world 
 would wish to know. So rich was her environment that it must have been a lib- 
 eral education to have lived in the house. The Coleridges, Hartley and Derwent, 
 John Stuart Mill, John Sterling, Sir John Bowring, Dr. Buckland, Professor Owen, 
 James Anthony Fronde, Carlyle and his wife, F. D. Maurice, W. E. Forster, Bishop 
 Stanley, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Arthur Helps, Baron Bunseu, Dean Stanley, 
 Jenny Lind, Louis Blanc, Tennyson, Thackeray, Faraday, Charles Kingsley, John 
 Bright, and scores of others, were guests of her father, or were her own correspond- 
 ents. They appear in these pages with an interest which will hold the reader to 
 the end. * * * We find on every page matter of weight and of interest. These 
 "Memories of Old Friends" are fascinating beyond the ordinary meaning of that 
 word. To all who would understand the literary and scientific life of England 
 from 1S35 to 1871 they will be a necessity. Christian Advocate, N. Y. 
 
 Carlyle pervades the entire book, and a large number of his opinions on every 
 variety of subject are given. * * * A mine of literary anecdote and reminiscence, 
 nearly every page containing some quotable extracts.* * * Miss Fox's picture of 
 Carlyle is probably more truthful than many of the more elaborate sketches 
 which have been recently given to the world. San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HAKPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
 H AUPKU & BEOTUERS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
 part of tlie United States, on receipt of the price.
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 The following volumes are now ready: 
 
 JOHNSON LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 GIBBON J. C. MOBISON. 
 
 SCOTT R. H. HDTTON. 
 
 SHELLEY J. A. SYMONI.S. 
 
 HUME Professor HUXLEY. 
 
 GOLDSMITH WILLIAM BLACK. 
 
 DEFOE WILLIAM MINTO. 
 
 UrUNS Principal SHAIKP. 
 
 SPENSER. The DEAN OP ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 THACKERAY ANTHONY TEOM.OPK. 
 
 HURKE JOHN MOBLEY. 
 
 MI LTON MARK PATCTSON. 
 
 SOUTHEY Professor DOWT>EN. 
 
 CHAUCER Professor A. W. WARI.. 
 
 lil'NYAN J. A. FEOUDB. 
 
 CO WPER. GOLI>WIN SMITH. 
 
 POPE LESLIE STF.IMIF.N. 
 
 BYRON JOHN NIOIIOL. 
 
 in H' K K THOMAS FOWLER. 
 
 W( )RDS\VOHTH F. MYERS. 
 
 D K VDKX G. SAINTSBUBY. 
 
 LANDOK Professor SIDNEY COLVIN. 
 
 DE QUINCEY Professor D. MASSON. 
 
 LAMI? The Rev. ALFRED AING.EB. 
 
 BENTLEY Professor JEBB. 
 
 12mo, Cloth, T5 cents per volume. 
 
 HAWTHORNE. By HKNEY JAMKS, Jr 12mo, Cloth, $1 00. 
 
 VOLUMES IN PREPARATION: 
 
 SWIFT JOHN MOBI.KY. 
 
 GRAY JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 ADAM SMITH LEON ABU H. COURTNEY. 
 
 DICKENS Professor A.W. WABI>. 
 
 Others will be announced. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
 f~ HAKPF.B & BROTHERS will seitd any of the above works by mail, postage 
 prepaid, to any }>art of the United States, on receipt of the price.
 
 The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Edited 
 by ROBERT CHAMBERS. 4 vols., 12mo, Cloth, 
 $6 00 ; Half Calf, $13 00. 
 
 Mr. Chambers's edition is the completest presentation of the Scot- 
 tish poet in existence. The various compositions are here strung in 
 strict chronological order upon the Memoir, that they may render- up 
 the whole light which they are qualified to throw upon the history of 
 the life and mental progress of Burns, while a new significance is 
 given to them by their being read in connection with the current of 
 events and emotions which led to their production. The result of 
 this plan is not merely a great amount of new biographical detail, 
 but a new sense, efficacy, and feeling in the writings of the poet 
 himself. 
 
 All that remains of* Burns, the writings he has left, seem to us 
 no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him ; brief, 
 broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete ; 
 that wanted all things for completeness culture, leisure, true effort, 
 nay, even length of life. * * * There is something in his poems which 
 forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. * * * 
 The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in 
 poetry or prose ; but, at the same time, it is plain, and easily recog- 
 nized his indisputable air of truth. THOMAS CARLTLE. 
 
 Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom 
 of the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. He was 
 born a poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is ow- 
 ing the perpetuity of his fame. * * * Whatever be the faults or the 
 defects of the poetry of Burns and no doubt it has many it has, 
 beyond all that was ever written, this greatest of all merits, intense, 
 life-pervading, and life-breathing truth. Professor WILSON (Christo- 
 pher North). 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
 tW Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, 
 on receipt of the price.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY