was master of a venture school" in Kirkcaldy, known as "The Academy.”

The time spent by Carlyle in schoolmastering, and its probable influence on his habits of thought and feeling, have been a little exaggerated. He never liked it, and was barely three-and-twenty when he gave it up. In the end of 1818 he left Kirkcaldy, and went across to Edinburgh, with no definite prospects, but with a vague notion of trying to live by literature. He spent some three years in Edinburgh, mainly in what he would call " stony-ground husbandries," the three gloomiest years of his life-out of health, troubled in mind, finding comfort only in a "sacred defiance" of death as the worst that could happen. His only known literary work during those years was the composition of certain articles for Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia.' During this period also he resumed his reading in the University library; extended his knowledge of Italian, Spanish, and especially German; and devoured extraordinary numbers of books on history, poetry (in a moderate degree), romance, and general information as to all countries, and all things of popular interest. In 1822 he became tutor to Charles Buller, an appointment that relieved him from a good deal of distasteful drudgery, and left him time for literary plans.

In 1823 he sent to the 'London Magazine' the first instalment of his 'Life of Schiller.' In 1824 his publications were numerous; he finished his 'Life of Schiller,' and produced a translation of 'Legendre's Geometry,' with an original Essay on Proportion, as well as his first notable work, the translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' During the next two years, having broken off his connection with the Bullers, he laboured at translations from the German, "honest journey-work, not of his own suggesting or desiring." In 1825 his Schiller appeared in a separate form.

The most memorable incident in those years was Carlyle's acquaintance with the remarkable woman who afterwards became his wife, Miss Jane Welsh, only daughter of Dr Welsh, a lineal descendant of John Knox. The marriage took place in 1826, after three years of intellectual courtship, and did not prove a happy one for the lady. A brilliant, clever, sprightly woman, made much of by her father as an only child, and humoured by him in her love for literature, she despised commonplace suitors of her own degree, and was attracted by the force of Carlyle's unconventional talk in spite of his rugged exterior. She "married for ambition," as she afterwards said, and her discernment of Carlyle's power was ultimately fully justified, but she had not calculated rightly the extent of the bitter sacrifices she had to make for the companionship. That her life was not so wholly joyless as might appear from her published letters, we may well imagine; but as the household slave of a man of genius absorbed in his work, habitually gloomy

and irritable, taking all her sacrifices as matters of ordinary duty, never recognising them as sacrifices, ruthlessly rebuking her weaknesses, and making no acknowledgment of her ministrations to his comfort, her lot was far from cheerful. She did not and could not understand before actual experience the meaning of "marrying for ambition" a man with an ambition so hungry and ruthless as Carlyle's.

6

For some two years after his marriage Carlyle lived in Edinburgh, drudging at literature and casting about for some settled employment, such as a professorship. Then, in 1828, much against Mrs Carlyle's wish, finding neither pleasure nor profit in Edinburgh society, he retired to Craigenputtoch, a small property belonging to his wife, situated about a day's journey east of his native Ecclefechan. At Craigenputtoch he lived about six years. His manner of life he described in an often-quoted letter to Goethe, with whom he had been brought into correspondence by his translation of Wilhelm Meister.' He had retired to his own "bit of earth” to “secure the independence through which he could be enabled to remain true to himself." "Six miles from any one likely to visit him," "in the loveliest nook of Scotland," he yet kept himself informed of what was passing in the literary world; he had “piled upon the table of his little liorary a whole cartload of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals." "True to himself" Carlyle undoubtedly was then as at all times, setting his face with ferocious resolution against imitation of any style or vein of thought or sentiment that could be called popular, not merely determined to deliver his message in his own way, but as yet undecided what his message was to be, and searching for one with desperate sighing and groaning. Jeffrey took a warm interest in himself and his wife, and implored, scolded, and argued in a vain endeavour to persuade him to submit to commonplace taste. Carlyle would write in his own way and on his own themes or not at all. The consequence was, that all through those years he was in constant difficulties with publishers and editors, and in the direst pecuniary straits, all the more that he gave generous help to a younger brother, and refused to touch a penny of his wife's income as long as her mother was alive. The articles reprinted in the three first volumes of his Miscellanies' were written at this time. Several literary plans had to be abandoned because no publisher would take them up. The idea occurred to him of taking his own struggle for existence as a theme, and he gave in 'Sartor Resartus' his passionate commentary on a world in which he found it so hard to live in his own way, and which seemed to him so full of matter for scornful laughter and pity and indignation. This strangely original work, in which Carlyle was much more defiantly singular than he had ever been before, was re

6

jected by several publishers, but at length saw the light as a series of articles in Fraser's Magazine,' 1833-34, and its singularity and force drew upon the author more attention than he had hitherto received.

66

In 1834 he removed to the London suburb now associated with his name. The "Seer of Chelsea" is now as familiar a synonym as "the glorious Dreamer of Highgate." But when he came to London, it was almost as a last desperate move. He was known to the dispensers of literary work only as an obstinately peculiar and fantastic individual. In America he was more quickly appreciated. Emerson and others pressed him to settle there, and his 'Sartor' and his occasional essays were reprinted at Boston in 1836. His first success in London was as a lecturer. In 1837 he gave to a very crowded, yet a select, audience" in London a course of six public lectures on German literature; in 1838 a course of twelve "On the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture;" in 1839 a course on "the Revolutions of Modern Europe;" in 1840 a course on Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History." 1 These lectures made a sensation in fashionable literary circles; the rugged English, the Scotch accent, the emphatic sing-song cadence, combined with the loftiness and originality of the matter, drew crowds to hear the new prophet. "It was," said Leigh Hunt, "as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own intense reflections and experiences."

Meanwhile his master-works began to appear. During his first year's residence in London, he had written with fiercely earnest labour the first volume of a work on the French Revolution. There is not a more deeply interesting chapter in literary history than Mr Froude's account of the accidental destruction of this manuscript, "written as with his heart's blood," and of the almost unconquerable repugnance and heroic effort with which Carlyle set himself to do the work over again. At last, in 1837, the 'French Revolution' appeared, and Carlyle secured the fame for which he had wrestled so long. Henceforward publishers let him deliver his message as he liked. In 1838 Sartor Resartus,' "hitherto a mere aggregate of Magazine articles," emerged from its "bibliopolic difficulties," and became a book. The same year witnessed the first edition of his Miscellanies.' In 1839 he published, under the title of 'Chartism,' his first attack on the corruption of modern society, and the futility of all extant projects of reform. In 1843 he followed up Chartism' with 'Past and Present.' In 1845 he published his 'Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' which met with a more rapid sale than any of his previous works. In 1850 he returned, in his 'Latter-Day Pamphlets,' 1 The last course only has been published.

to the condition of society, pouring forth unmeasured contempt on "The Nigger Question," "The Present Time," "Model Prisons," "Downing Street," "The New Downing Street," "Stump Orators," "Parliaments," "Hudson's Statue," "Jesuitism.' Next year

appeared his Biography of John Sterling.' Thereafter he was occupied exclusively with his great historical work, ‘The History of Frederick II., commonly called The Great.' The two first volumes were published in 1858, other two in 1862, and in 1865 the work was completed.

In the session of 1865-66 he was elected Lord Rector by the students of Edinburgh University; and on April 2, 1866, delivered to a crowded and enthusiastic audience his famous Installation Address. He was not suffered long to enjoy the most affecting public manifestations that have ever honoured his name. His wife died before his return to London: in the very hour of his public triumph came the stroke of calamity; and the old man mourned that "the light of his life was quite gone out.” Not till after her death did he learn how much she had suffered for him.

He published nothing of importance during the last fifteen years of his life. Now and then he made his voice heard on questions of passing interest. In 1867 he wrote for 'Macmillan's Magazine' a very gloomy anticipation of the consequences of the Reform Bill, with the suggestive title, "Shooting Niagara, and After?" In 1869 he sent to the newspapers a letter on his favourite "Emigration." During the war between France and Germany, he wrote to rejoice over the French defeat, and quoted history to show that it had been well deserved. His last publication was a series of articles on the Portraits of John Knox and the Early Kings of Norway, which appeared as a small volume in 1875. He died at Chelsea, February 5, 1881.

In his Rectorial Address at Edinburgh, being then a patriarch of seventy, he addressed a kindly warning to his youthful hearers against the physical dangers of too severe study. His own strong frame and great constitutional robustness were early impaired by injudicious closeness of application. During the whole of his later life he suffered from dyspepsia. It says much for the native energy of his system that, in spite of this depressing-if not debilitating -disorder, he accomplished such an amount of solid work, retaining his powers to old age, and writing with unabated vigour at the extreme age of seventy. He had sufficient strength of will to sustain what De Quincey always recognised as the best remedy for his "appalling stomachic derangement"-namely, regular habits of active exercise.

We spoke of Macaulay as a man whose intellectual energies were

to some extent dissipated upon various fields of exertion. Carlyle's energies were concentrated with unparalleled intensity upon his books. For nearly half a century he gave the best part of his working time to literature, pursuing his appointed tasks with frequent fits of strong distaste, but with unalterable steadiness of aim. Probably more intellectual force has been spent upon the production of Carlyle's books than upon the productions of any two other writers in general literature.

His powers of memory were not of the same universally and immediately dazzling order as Macaulay's. Every person that met Macaulay went away in astonishment at "the stores which his memory had at instantaneous command." In private society Carlyle impressed his hearers by talk very much resembling the general texture of his writings. He had not Macaulay's wideranging readiness of recollection, could not quote with the same instantaneous fluency, and could not trust his memory so confidently without a written note. Again-to compare him in this particular with De Quincey-he does not strike us as possessing great multifarious knowledge. He makes comparatively few allusions beyond the circle of subjects that he has specially studied. His scrupulous love of accuracy may have hampered the flowing display of his knowledge; but within the circles of his special studies, his memory is pre-eminently wonderful. To hold in mind. the varied materials of his vivid historical pictures was a strain of retentive force immeasurably greater than was ever required of either De Quincey or Macaulay for the production of their works. His memory is singularly catholic as regards the kind of thing remembered; he remembers names, dates, scenical groupings, and the characteristic gestures and expressions of whole societies of men, to all appearance with equal fidelity.

Carlyle is sometimes loosely spoken of as a great "thinker," but his power does not lie in the regions of the dry understanding, in analysis, argument, or practical judgment. In his youth he was distinguished as a mathematician; but when he turned to the study of men, he took fire: on anything connected with man, he felt too profoundly to reason well. His whole nature rose in rebellion against cold-blooded analysis and matter-of-fact argument. In his works he is never tired of sneering at "Philosophism," the "Dismal Science" of Political Economy, "Attorney Logic," and such like. He had a natural antipathy to such ways of approaching men and the affairs of men. He was naturally incapable of De Quincey's pursuit of character or meaning into minute shades, and of Macaulay's elaborate refutations by copious instance and analogy. Take, for example, his Hero-worship. Instead of analysing, as De Quincey might have done, the elements of greatness in his heroes, or of producing, as Macaulay might have done, argumentative arrays of