disturbing. In May 1828 the eccentric and unamiable couple-for the marriage had

already proved of dubious felicityremoved to Craigenputtock. Here he mainly continued to live until 1834, in an existence which was a sulky dream to him, a long-drawn drudgery to his indignant wife, although looking back, long afterwards, Carlyle was able to say, "perhaps our happiest days were spent at the Craig." Here in 1830 he was writing Sartor Resartus, but could get no publisher to accept it, until in 1833-1834 it was printed in Fraser's Magazine, to the weary indignation of the subscribers to that periodical. Meanwhile Carlyle was living by contributions to what he called the "mud, sand, and dust magazines," and making such friends as Emerson, Mill, and Leigh Hunt. Still quite obscure and unsuccessful at the brink of forty years, Carlyle came up to London in 1834, and settled at No. 5 (now No. 24) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where he was to reside

for the next forty-seven years. In the early part of 1835 Carlyle was "at work stern

and grim"; it was necessary that he should do something. For two years he had earned nothing by literature, and he thought that "Providence warns me to have done with it." The first volume of The French Revolution, which was to be his final effort, upon which all the future was to hang, was finished in the spring of 1835, but the MS. was burned as waste paper (under mysterious circumstances) by the servant of the Mills, to whom it had been lent. Carlyle behaved well under this terrific blow, and began again; in January 1837 the whole book was finished. He determined to throw it at the feet of the public, "buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the TransAtlantic wilderness." The French Revolution, however, was a success, but brought in little money. But Carlyle stayed in England, and was persuaded to give four courses of lectures, which brought him in a sum of more than £800. Sartor

Jane Welsh Carlyle

K. Macleay

Resartus was now (1838) for the first time published in book form, and though it puzzled readers at first was gradually accepted. Carlyle found a publisher for his miscellaneous criticisms and lectures; and the Essays of 1839, Chartism of 1840, and Hero-Worship of 1841, made him, as he approached fifty years of age, a popular or, at least, established writer at last; although he still described himself as "a man foiled," and poverty still skulked about outside the door in Cheyne Row. It was finally driven

away by the death of Mrs. Carlyle's mother, Mrs. Welsh, in February 1842, which secured for them a competence of nearly £300 a year. He thought of returning to Craigenputtock, but his wife was wisely averse to it, and he came to see that London was the best place for writing books in. Under the new conditions, Carlyle's earliest publication was Past and Fresent (1843), an attack on orthodox political economy. But he was already engaged on a far more important enterprise, The Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell, which appeared in 1845. This is the time when Froude, Milnes, and Ruskin became his disciples, and in some measure took the place of John Sterling (1806-1844), the person whom, it is probable, Carlyle loved best in the course of his life. At this period, also, begins the friendship with Lady Harriet Baring (afterwards Lady Ashburton) which ultimately "churned to froth" the mind of Mrs. Carlyle. Lady Ashburton continued to be a fearful thorn in Jane Carlyle's side until 1857, when she died; Lord Ashburton married again, a lady who won the friendship of both the Carlyles, and retained it to the end. In 1846 he made a tour through Ireland, and another in 1849; in 1850, "after a period of deep gloom and bottomless dubitation," were published Latter-day Pamphlets, which finally divided Carlyle from all branches of the Radical party, and displayed him as the pronounced enemy of revolution, and the sensation caused by this book was increased by his polemical Life of Sterling (1851), which proved "utterly revolting to the religious people." He went, with the Brownings, to Paris, and saw some interesting public men; he now began to collect materials for his Friedrich the Great. His mother died at Scotsbrig on

Christmas Day 1853, and this event left him "very lonely, very lame and broken." He buried himself, however, in his historical work; for several years "that tremendous book made prolonged and entire devastation of any semblance of home happiness." The first two volumes appeared in 1858, and enjoyed a great success, with much praise, to Carlyle "no better than the barking of dogs"; it was continued in 1862-1864, and concluded in 1865. After refusing the honour twice, he was now persuaded to become a Scots Lord Rector, and delivered at Edinburgh in 1866 his very remarkable address on The Reading of Books. But, on the 21st of April of that year, during his absence in Scotland, Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly in her carriage as she was driving round Hyde Park, and Carlyle was stricken with an unavailing agony of remorse for all his bad temper and selfish neglect of her. Mrs. Carlyle was not known as an author during her lifetime, but the publication of her Correspondence in 1883, and again in 1903, revealed her as a letter-writer of bitter wit and most penetrating and shrewd observation. The Reform Bill of 1867 was the source of great anger to Carlyle, who was roused by it into publishing his Shooting Niagara. In 1868 he saw Queen Victoria at the Deanery of Westminster, and was offered various distinctions, which he declined; his strength began to fail, to become (in 1869) "quite a stranger to me." Still he lived on. His latest book, The Early Kings of Norway, was published for him in 1875. He was attended to the last, almost like a son, by Froude, on whose arm the crumpled-up figure might be seen shuffling along the Thames embankment on late afternoons. His mind gradually failed, and he died unconscious, on the 4th of February 1881. He had refused to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and the body was laid in the village churchyard of Ecclefechan. After Carlyle's death, Froude immediately published the Reminiscences, which threw a flood of light, some of it lurid, over his early struggles, and the persistent traits of his character. Froude followed this by the Letters and Memorials (1882-1884), which removed a good deal of the romance from the popular notion of Carlyle, and for the time being, at all events, awakened no little prejudice against him. Much has been said for and against the personal temperament of Carlyle, but part of it can be explained by the facts that he was dyspeptic and a peasant. Neither in the physical nor in the social world was he ever properly at his ease. His marriage, a singularly unfortunate union, emphasised his faults; it was, as he said, "a sore life-pilgrimage together,

of

- to

much bad road." There is no question that his temper was vile, and as uncertain as the mood of a weather-cock, and that it made him harshly inconsiderate others. The worst trait in his character is his rude ingratitude to the memory of all those who were good to him in his early years; to some of them he was at the time obsequious and flattering, only to insult them after their death. This not even a dyspeptic peasant can be forgiven for doing. But he was not insincere; if we know his faults it is largely because he has confessed them to the world; 1; and there was a certain greatness even in his egotism and his vociferous complaining. In the physical sense, Carlyle was in youth "a loose-made, tawny creature borrow a phrase of his own-moody, rough, and unattractive. With years, the fascinating quality increased, but it stood him in ill stead when it lured Miss Jane Welsh away from her other lovers. His wonderful eyes were the most extraordinary feature of his shaggy countenance, "devouring eyes, thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portraitpainting eyes," as Emerson said. Carlyle was always, by fits and starts, a talker, and in later life he poured forth an amazing flood of rich paradoxical monologue, full of brilliant images, stirring ideas, and surprisingly bold mis-statements. He could be, on occasion, courteous and even tender, and in the presence of genuine attainment and proved excellence of conduct he was occasionally known to be almost appreciative. In his old age he grew to be a mysteriously awful figure, seldom seen, greatly dreaded, much respected.

Photo]

[Walker & Cockerell

24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where Carlyle died

FROM "THE FRENCH REVOLUTION"

On the whole, is it not, O Reader, one of the strangest Flame-Pictures that ever painted itself; flaming off there, on its ground of Guillotine-black? And the nightly Theatres are Twenty-three; and the Salons de danse are sixty: full of mere Egalité, Fraternité, and Carmagnole. And Section Committee-rooms are Forty-eight; redolent of tobacco and brandy: vigorous with twenty-pence a-day, coercing the suspect. And the Houses of Arrest are Twelve for Paris alone; crowded and even crammed. And at all turns, you need your "Certificate of Civism"; be it for going out, or for coming in; nay without it you cannot, for money, get your daily ounces of bread. Dusky red-capped Baker's-queues; wagging themselves; not in silence! For we still live by Maximum, in