come." Something strange did come. He records in his diary under date of Oct. 28, 1830: "Written a strange piece on Clothes. Know not what will come of it. I could make a kind of book, but cannot afford it." At the end of the year he sums up, One of the most worthless years I have spent for a long time." It had been disastrous from the severe illness of his wife, the death of his sister Margaret ("caught in the great ocean gently and as among thick clouds whereon hovered a rainbow"), and much disappointment from the unprofitable investment of his intellectual capital in the "History of German Literature." On Feb. 7th following he notes, "I have some five pounds to front the world with." On the 26th the whole available capital of his and his brother Alick's households is reported as twelvepence in coppers. Alick's attempt to farm Craigenputtock had failed, and was to be given up at Whitsuntide. Some months earlier Jeffrey had wished to settle an annuity of one hundred pounds upon Carlyle, a munificent offer which could but be met by "the meekest, friendliest, most emphatic refusal for this and all coming times."

Carlyle's next essay, the review in the Edinburgh of the "Historic Survey of German Poetry," by William Taylor of Norwich, is one of the most entertaining of his performances. Erst the morning star of German literature in England, Taylor, like the morning star, had been drowned in the light he announced. For thirty years he had slept an Ephesian sleep. He took Kant for a political reformer, lamented that Goethe had not fulfilled the promise of his youth, had heard nothing of

Tieck, and a great deal too much of Kotzebue, as also did his readers. "I could but," says Carlyle to Goethe, "with such artillery as I had, batter him down into his original rubbish." Yet he could discern Taylor's personal worth. "A great-hearted, strong-minded man; one, he might have added, whose originally lively powers had withered in a coterie. Taylor's "mild dogmatism, peaceable, incontrovertible, uttering the palpably absurd as if it were a mere truism" has been pourtrayed by an artist second to Carlyle alone in graphic power. (Borrow's "Lavengro," ch. 23).

The original sketch of "Sartor Resartus" had been extricated from Fraser's “durance” without protest on the latter's part, about January, 1831, and Carlyle set to work to expand it into a book. "A half-reckless casting of the brush, with its many frustrated colours, against the canvas." It seemed another hopeless investment of time and toil. But he could no other

"His own mind did like a tempest strong

Come to him thus, and drive the weary wight along."

On August 4th, having for almost the only time in his. life placed himself under a pecuniary obligation by borrowing £50 from the ever-helpful Jeffrey, he departed to seek a publisher in London. He lodged at 4, Ampton Street, Gray's Inn. "My dear," Mrs. Carlyle had said in finishing the manuscript, "this is a work of genius." I This was all the encouragement he had, and

• "The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, mixed with doubt; at length she answered, Yes, it was true

of all the wonders of the wonderful book none is more wonderful than its high spirits. Carlyle had indeed a well-founded conviction that his teaching fitted the time. He wrote to his wife: "The doctrine of the Phoenix," (a thought borrowed from Vico, by the way), "of Natural Supernaturalism, and the whole Clothes Philosophy (be it but well stated) is exactly what all intelligent men are wanting." But was it well stated? Fraser was so impressed by the lucidity of Carlyle's exposition that he offered to publish the book if Carlyle would give him a sum not exceeding £150 sterling. "I think you had better wait a little," suggested a friend. "Yes," answered Carlyle, "it is my purpose to wait till the end of eternity for it." Jeffrey commended the MS. to Murray, on the strength of the twenty-eight pages he had managed to get through himself. Murray actually accepted it, then became alarmed, and withdrew under pretext of not having been informed that the manuscript had been declined by Longman. Sartor's day was yet to break, but Carlyle had a great stroke of good fortune in his brother John's engagement, thanks to Jeffrey's recommendation, as travelling physician to Lady Clare. Expense was now stopped in that quarter, and there was a prospect of the money advanced coming back. Though denouncing the London literati as a body, Carlyle could not but be cheered by the interest they took in him. Hayward and Fonblanque encouraged this that he said. One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all kindnesses she had done him, this, of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke, was the greatest."—"Hero Worship," appositely quoted by Mr. Larkin.

him, his pupil Charles Buller sang his praises everywhere, Leigh Hunt showed him genuine affection; but the great conquest was Stuart Mill, in whom Carlyle, on the strength of his papers in the Examiner, had expected to find a mystic, and who had been described to him as "a converted utilitarian." Neither the mysticism nor the conversion seemed so evident when they met. "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." There was great mutual liking nevertheless, but the perfect friendship which might have so largely supplied the deficiencies of each never came, mainly through Carlyle's abruptness. He lost a great opportunity; never again, except in Emerson, was he to meet so loyal, manly, and chivalrous a soul. Mill records his own impressions with charming modesty. "I did not deem myself a competent judge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such he not only saw many things long before me which I could only, when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out." Mrs. Carlyle joined her husband in October, to her delight and his, "wrapping my bleeding mood with the softest of bandages," and finding for the first time a female friend on her own intellectual level in Sarah Austin. One stab to Carlyle's "bleeding mood" was his estrangement from Irving, who, a man of Patmos lost in Babylon, in the midst of human interests

and stern realities lived an absurd, apocalyptic life, taking the Reform Bill for a vial and the riot in Coldbath Fields for a trumpet, and heedless of Lord Melbourne's shrewd suggestion, "Were there not to be many false prophets about that time?" Carlyle was confounded by the information that an old Annandale acquaintance, one or two removes from an idiot, had actually cast out a devil; but he was somewhat comforted by learning that it had come back next week. One undeniable

miracle did come to pass. "Characteristics," the most Sartor-like of the miscellaneous essays, written for the Edinburgh, was accepted without demur, and published without the alteration of a syllable. "Baddish," pronounced Carlyle, "with a certain beginning of deeper insight." "I do not understand it," said Napier, "but it has the stamp of genius." It is the most condensed example of Carlyle's peculiar teaching to be found, gaining perhaps in pith what it loses in sustained eloquence. It calls down fire from heaven upon the intellectual anarchy of the times, but no less powerfully illustrates the writer's great and growing defect, his injustice to his own age. Heroism had to retire two centuries and put on a buff coat, that Carlyle might receive as Oliver Cromwell what he rejected as Abraham Lincoln. An essay on Schiller, written for Fraser a few months previously, is remarkable as containing the germ. of "Hero Worship."

On January 24, 1832, Carlyle, still sojourning in London, received tidings of the death of his father, at the age of seventy-three. By January 29th he had written the affecting tribute which stands first