u are ever had a better right, when the ng of that long day of persistent and valuwk had at last come, to look back with duction upon the things he had accomplished. (ARLYLE'S CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. Is Carlyle, one of the most distinguished the literary celebrities of the Victorian

b in the parish of Middlebie, near belan, in the district of Annandale, Dum-, on the 4th of December, 1795. His 17. an anest douce Scotsman, upright and orale n all his dealings, and of good reAg his neighbours. Carlyle himself, a'ways spoke of both his parents with great

and of his mother with warm affection, as hus sire as "a farmer sort of person." 1. be in which the future historian and fr was born is a plain substantial stone Le the generality of small farmers' - north of the Tweed. Carlyle more visited it during his latter days. Thamber of Carlyle appears to have been y gentle, and of refined mind; so gentle, *t that her gifted son records how he found pts of non-resistance exceedingly diffiarry out among his pugnacious fellowthe little school to which he was sent. the strictness of the Puritan was mingled harter of the elder Carlyle with the he bore his wife and family. Though, narity of bis nation, fond of reading, Toate inclined to works of a theological and veral character; fiction he eschewed eer and prohibited it in his family. In prohibition, however, his little son - to get hold of the first volume of that interesting, but not very delicate -koderick Random," by Dr. Tobias : in after days Carlyle left on the delight this work afforded him, and Ji at being unable to procure the second

It may be mentioned, as a coincidence, Marles Dickens, in one of the best of his in which he gives personal recollections sood, mentions the reading of "Rodem" as a memorable event in his Tears; and in reference to other works

whool which he was in the habit of ints earlier boyhood, wisely remarks: er harm there was in the books, was vere i me;" as indeed is the case with s read by a child. To the pure all Jue pare. te trvt schooling he received in his native Thence he went to Annan parish school,

about six miles off. His father, as a well-to-do man in his small way, and an elder of the kirk, and his mother as a woman of intellect, both had their little ambition with regard to their son Thomas, whose good abilities they did not fail to discern. Though their family was largefor the historian was one of eight children, all of whom justified the good stock they came of by turning out well-the parents managed to spare enough to give their gifted son a University education. Seventy years ago lads went to the Scottish seats of learning at an early age. Carlyle was only fourteen years old when he entered Edinburgh University.

He certainly did not acquire a very high opinion of that seat of learning as an institution for training the young intellect. In his Sartor Resartus, at a later period, he is evidently alluding to Edinburgh University when he speaks of "the worst of universities hitherto discovered out of England and Spain." Little or nothing, he says, was done by the teachers towards the real enlightenment of the students; but there was an excellent library; and given a sufficient number of books, and unlimited facilities for reading them, Carlyle was the man to educate himself with little or no extraneous assistance. "From the chaos of that library," he says in the Sartor, "I succeeded in fishing up more books, perhaps, than had been known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a literary life was hereby laid. I learned, in my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all sciences and subjects." Again, he observes, with regard evidently to Edinburgh, though the remark ostensibly refers to the Academia of the learned Professor Teufelsdroeck: "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 seven years; certain persons, under the title of professors being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a university, and exact considerable admission fees; you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary." And here, at the outset of his career, we notice one of the most valuable of Carlyle's qualities,-one that contributed in a most important degree to his literary success, and which he himself has designated, without any reference to himself, as a characteristic of genius,-the faculty of taking an enormous amount of trouble. No student of his works can fail to be impressed with the

vast amount of Carlyle's information, the almost infinite variety of his reading, the splendid perseverance with which he seeks out truth for himself, wading through piles of volumes, if necessary, to verify a fact, and never accepting the testimony of a single witness where two or more can be obtained. By the help of a most powerful and retentive memory, he laid during those years at Edinburgh the foundation of the materials afterwards worked up in the wonderful essays with which he astonished the reading and thinking world.

Already at Annan Carlyle had been noted for excellence in mathematics, a branch of learning to which the master of the school devoted especial attention. At Edinburgh he further developed his ability in this direction. But he never became a classical scholar, in the sense of a man thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great authors of Greece and Rome. It has been remarked that in his works he seldom used a classical quotation, or illustrated a scene or an event by reference to classical sources. Homer seems the only one among the ancients who rouses him to anything like enthusiasm, and allusions even to this poet are rarely found in his works.

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES; CARLYLE A SCHOOLMASTER AT KIRCALDY.

It had been the wish of his parents that the University course should be a preparation for entering the ministry; but already at college Carlyle appears to have had doubts as to his vocation for the work. The national creed was not altogether his creed. "I was not sure that I believed in the doctrines of my father's kirk," he himself says. And indeed he describes himself as at this time going through a crisis of doubt and striving in religious matters, that reminds us of a passage in the life of the author of The Pilgrim's Progress," tormented by "phantasms dire," by miserable doubts, and unholy impulses to scoffing. Convinced that he could not be a minister, he turned his attention for a time towards becoming a schoolmaster. For two years he taught mathematics at Annan, and afterwards pursued the same employment in Kircaldy, the "toun wi' the street as lang as a Covenanter's grace." He had here one friend, whose acquaintance he had already made as a boy in 1809, before his University days-Edward Irving, who afterwards became first famous, then notorions, as the founder of a peculiar sect, and whose undoubted genius was destined to be miserably wrecked. Carlyle himself, in his Miscellanies, afterwards drew a painful contrast

between the appearance of his early friend, whe he first saw him radiant with joy and health the gainer of many prizes, and the centre many hopes, and his look when the friends me for the last time in London, shortly befo Irving's death. "Friendliness still beamed his eyes," says Carlyle, but now amid unqui fire; his face was flaccid, wasted, unsound; h as with extreme age; he was trembling over t brink of the grave. Adieu, thou first friend adds the philosopher, “adieu, while this confes twilight of existence lasts! Might we meet whe twilight has become day!"

EDINBURGH; A LITERARY APPRENTICESHI GERMAN LITERATURE; TUTORING,

It was partly at the instigation of Irving th Carlyle took up his residence at Kircaldy, whe his friend was teaching in a school at the to Carlyle stuck to the work, which, however, not at any time congenial to him, for two ye and then proceeded to Edinburgh, leaving bett him in the long town somewhat the reputat of a "Plagosus Orbilius." The Scottish mothe not an exaggeratedly soft-hearted race, are to have been indignant at the unmistaka rigour and severity of his discipline. He t betook himself to Edinburgh, at that time in height of its fame as the Athens of the no Jeffery and Lockhart, and the great “ wimi the North," Scott himself, at that time the jovial and genial of men, in the heyday of a perity and honour, were among the many with the brilliant Sydney Smith and the indo table Brougham, had contributed to the Lite glories of the northern capital; and it is per fortunate that Carlyle, on determining to de himself to writing as the task of his life, sh have begun his work there; for he certa found Caledonia stern and wild a meeter n for the rugged poetry that was hidden wi him, than the "stony-hearted stepmother" De Quincey with bitter reason called Lond would probably have been. He was not in procuring employment for his pen Edinburgh Encyclopædia" was then co out, under the editorship of Sir David Brew who, quickly discovering the ability of the p vering young scholar, employed him to sixteen articles for the work. The major these contributions were biographical noti cluding lives of Montaigne. Lady Mary Wo Montagu, the great Earl of Chatham an son, William Pitt, Montfaucon, Montesquier Moore, and Sir John Moore. The no graphical articles were on the Netherl

66

Yeef andlan 1, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, and raimberland. They represent the period of strious author's apprenticeship to literaand give evidence of thoroughness, of preparation of his subject, and of the 4. and varied range of reading which was, at perol, to give such peculiar value to his Ls. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do h thy might," was already the maxim of as Carlyle.

intre

was at this period also that he devoted much a pursnit destined to become the foundawhich much of his later success was the study of the German language and In England, in 1820, it was hardly an that Germany possessed a literature at ■ Corde nad certainly translated Schiller's bestela, and the unerring eye of Scott had ted the weird and characteristic charm to ada Bürger's ballads; but, in general, -a authors and readers were alike ignorant subject; and the miserable Kotzebue, s fippant stage wit and mawkish sentialy, the scoffer and sneerer, a man without of generous feeling in his nature, the at soy of Lussia, and the willing tool of the Lomal and reactionary party in Germany, tally looked upon as a representative

le the names of Lessing and Richter known, and even Schiller and Goethe y vaguely acknowledged to be clever of an e-centric turn of mind, and very tunderstand. It was reserved for to introduce the great German authors

rks worthily to English readers and m; and if, in after times, he received a arging meed of honour and praise any, it was not a whit more than had fully and laboriously earned. A £ of Legendre's "Geometry and Trigo

th a prefatory article by himself on ~' formed another of his tasks at this lke all that he undertook, was ably y executed, afterwards receiving the Lo hiss an authority than Professor

who declared it to be a thoughtful mors essay; as good a substitute for the

Enclid as could be given in speech." these first years of his literary activity nag aathor earned little; indeed, the £50 for the Legendre book was looked upon cally liberal remuneration. But he arg pa glorious stock of knowledge for he was getting to see more and more ay the opportunities for usefulness that lay le distance before him. Above all, he had

already taken a high and manly view of the duty and responsibility of every man who aspires to direct the thoughts of his fellow-men. He was not above writing for bread, doing what he called "honest journey work," not of his own secking; but he would never write down to the popular taste, or utter the thing he did not believe, for the sake of popularity or profit. With him there was no compromise, no shadow of equivocation or faltering. His honest northern spirit rose indignantly against any shuffling or concealment; and many a polite subterfuge with which time-serving orators and writers strove to evade a difficult subject, was by him pronounced in his strong, vehement, earnest energy "a lie against God's truth." Like Chaucer's good parson, 'first he wrought and afterwards he taught." That splendid congruity between doctrine and practice which he looked upon as the highest characteristic in the lives of men of genius was nobly exemplified in his own.

An important change now occurred in his career. His friend, Edward Irving, had gone to London, where he had made the acquaintance of the Buller family. A tutor being required for young Charles Buller, the son of the house, Irving took the opportunity of recommending Carlyle, who accepted the trust, and fulfilled it in a manner that earned for him the lasting gratitude of his pupil; whom he prepared for Cambridge in so thorough a manner that Buller, an amiable and accomplished youth, always attributed his success at the University to the unwearied exertions of his instructor. Carlyle himself used afterwards to deplore the early death of Buller, to whom he became affectionately attached, as a calamity; declaring that the young man, had he lived, would have achieved great things. Even after Buller had begun his brief but brilliant Parliamentary carcer, his old tutor kept up a correspondence with him, watching his career with hopeful interest. It was during this first residence in London that Carlyle's first important book appeared: a work destined to have a great and enduring influence on the study of German classical literature in England-" The Life of Schiller."

Janus Weathercock, "light-hearted Janus," as good-natured Charles Lamb called him, until one day that light-hearted gentleman was arrested and lodged in Newgate, accused of a series of the most cynical and fiendish crimes ever laid to the charge of a miserable criminal, and stood revealed in his true colours as Wainewright, the poisoner. To this London Magazine, in 1823 and 1824, Carlyle contributed his life of Schiller. It at once attracted general attention, and was afterwards printed separately in a complete form. Carlyle himself always undervalued it, as indeed he was apt to do where his own productions were concerned. In later years, when a fresh edition of the book appeared, with additional chapters embodying new information on Schiller and his family, he spoke of the work, in the preface, as “this somewhat insignificant book,” and declared that he only re-published it because certain booksellers" of the pirate species" were preparing to do so for their own benefit. The work is a thoughtful and scholarly account of the life and productions of a much-tried genius. "Reading maketh a full man," said Bacon, himself one of the fullest" men the world has produced; and in this work, so lightly esteemed by its author, the thoroughness and the scholarly deliberation of the writer are apparent in every page. The critics of the day, even the best of them, had what Pope calls "the itching to deride, and needs would be upon the laughing side "-hurried work, spiced with flippancy, and too frequently howing a "malignant, dull delight" in scarifying the author, on whose work they professed to pass fair and impartial judgment. Not so Carlyle. Any intending reader of Schiller, or any one who has read that poet's works, will here find a thoroughly sympathizing biographer, one who has read and studied his author completely, who has pursued Schiller's career step by step, watching with eager and appreciative kindliness how that bright genius matured gradually, like generous wine, and how the doubts and perplexities of anxious youth gradually passed away, to be succeeded by a worthy, honoured, and fruitful manhood. Each work of Schiller, from that first chaotic effort, replete with genius and with blunders, The Robbers, to the grandly simple and heroic tragedy of William Tell, is brought before us in due order; the author's intention, the circumstances under which the work was written, the merits and faults of the composition, and its characteristic features, are succinctly and yet graphically stated. In a few pages the reader is furnished with the clue by which he can find his way through the work without danger of

missing its meaning. The commentary on Wallenstein, with the sketch of the character of that strange, ambitious adventurer, is i.. Pe T enough to ensure permanent vitality to the boo The style, too, is grave, calm, and bar ed without any striving after sensation, or attempt to startle the reader by paradox. And the effect produced by the whole is healthful and pleasing the lesson set forth from beginning to en 1 be.ng the salutary one that by persistent effort the worst fortune may be conquered, and that tra happiness is to be found in the performance of duty. In Schiller, Carlyle found a man after hit own heart, a true man, impressed with the dignity of his calling, too self-respecting to trackle dukes and princes, too plain and simple in habits to care for wealth, but punctilioj jealous concerning all that could affect his good name, and anxious that each successive w.d should be his best.

AMENITIES OF LITERATURE: CARLYLE AN HIS CRITICS.

No one could find fault with the Life 4 Schiller:" but the case was very different wit Carlyle's next German venture, a translation o Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre I strange piece of biography, in which some Goethe's own experiences are interwoven, t portraits of the hero's parents especially be drawn from life, startled English notions of [" priety not a little, and brought the critics hornets about the ears of author and transly alike. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Rerum, !| Thais in Alexander's feast, "led the way, toks them to their prey ;" and De Quincey, like M. donia's madman, "seized a flambeau with to destroy." Jeffrey's review begins with t fiercest denunciation. He is going to hew d. root and branch, this upas-tree of immoral and error, which he condemns "after the n mature consideration," as "eminently al puerile, incongruous, and affected . . . a'r. from beginning to end one flagrant of against every principle of taste, and every r of composition." There is, however, as m virtue in Jeffrey's almost as in honest I stone's if; before he gets to the end of slaughterous task, the critic has evidently char his opinion, and finds it difficult to prov case. "On the whole," he concludes, we c the book with some feeling of mollificati wards its faults, and a disposition to shar possible, some part of the censure we = impelled to bestow on it at the beginning." these days there is a ludicrous effect in a c

ng, if possible, that there may be some it merit in a work of Goethe. De Quincey, the London Magazine, also attacked Goethe my, and the translator came in for a share of the castigation. Blackwood, on the other

praised the work in a patronising way, and rated that "young gentleman," the slator, on his "very promising debut." a's criticism at a later period was the unseat of all, for he roundly complained Goethe had been transferred "from the landish dialect of High Dutch" (whatthat may have meant) "to the Allgemeine Ebanish of Auld Reekie."

at Carlyle persevered. Tieck, Hofmann, Aster, and various other writers of the Tattersand, were represented in his "German

e." published in 1827; and he had ulti2ay the satisfaction of vindicating the genius *German writers in the eyes of the British

and of removing in some measure the rite that could see nothing but "mysti

transcendentalism, and a host of other prehensible “isms" in all the productions dermany,

UAGE; LIFE IN EDINBURGH; RESIDENCE

AT CRAIGENPUTTOCH.

rmer days Carlyle had been introduced friend Edward Irving to a Dr. Welsh, of aten, to whose only daughter, Miss Jane be had been tutor. Dr. Welsh, a lineal infant of John Knox, and a man of cultimind, had been exceedingly anxious that led should be solidly educated; and **** laly having warmly and practically el his wishes by beginning the study of La grammar on her own account in secret, r accomplished young schoolmaster had been d, that the child's cleverness and zeal for * might not be lost for want of cultiva"Grave, quiet Carlyle found favour alike in

of parents and child; and in 1826, eight er his first introduction to Miss Welsh, armed her. Never was man more fortunate momentous question of his life. Carlyle t have made a better choice, or have abelpmate more thoroughly capable of ating his genius, and more fitted to aid wth sympathy and counsel, doubling the f his career and smoothing away its griefs al companionship; for there were trials mare before the well-carned success came; ⚫etimes even Poverty showed his threatenface at the door, though in this case at least Ta proverb was not verified; for he never

caused Love to fly out at the window. For forty years the faithful wife stood by Carlyle's side, enjoying the calm evening with him as she had cheered him at his toil, and borne a share of the burden and heat of the day. The end came at last quite unexpectedly. While her husband was absent in Edinburgh, to the Rectorship of whose University he had been elected the year before, and whither he had gone to deliver an address to the students, Mrs. Carlyle suddenly died, in London, while driving in the park. The depth of grief felt for her loss by the bereaved husband, who sorrowfully declared that all the brightness was gone out of his life, was further exemplified by the epitaph he caused to be inscribed on her grave at Haddington. "For forty years," says the touching record, "she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worth that he did or attempted."

During the first period of their married life they lived in Edinburgh, where they made many friends, to the great improvement of Carlyle's literary position; for it was impossible to be in his company, and listen to his talk, replete with wisdom and learning, and brightened by a quaint humour whose raciness was increased by his broad Doric dialect, without feeling conscious that this was no ordinary man. But, presently, Carlyle thought it well to withdraw from the bustle and turmoil of the capital, with its society and distractions, to some quiet Patmos, where he might muse in solitude over some grander labour than the "honest journey work" of German translations, in which he had been lately employed. Such a Patmos, fortunately for him, lay ready to his hand. Mrs. Carlyle had inherited in Dumfriesshire the small estate of Craigenputtoch. It was a lonely place enough. Sydney Smith, in describing his isolated position in his first Lincolnshire living of Foston le Clay, speaks of himself as ten miles distant from a lemon. The occupants of Craigenputtoch were much in the same condition, though Edinburgh was within attainable distance, and Dumfries not much more than fifteen miles off.

For six years Carlyle lived with his wife at Craigenputtoch; and these years were of immense importance in their influence on his subsequent career. The place was but a farm, and the physical outlook was bleak enough; but the moral prospect was better. The possession of this little place at any rate raised the occupiers above all fear of actual want; and the husband was relieved from the carking cares inseparable