DUTY OF his biogrAPHER.

7

points in which Carlyle sinned, and without Carlyle's excuses, who do not know that they have anything to repent of. The more completely it is understood, the more his character will be seen to answer to his intellectual teaching. The one is the counterpart of the other. There was no falsehood and there was no concealment in him. The same true nature showed itself in his life and in his words. He acted as he spoke from his heart, and those who have admired his writings will equally admire himself when they see him in his actual likeness.

I, for myself, concluded, though not till after long hesitation, that there should be no reserve, and therefore I have practised none. I have published his own autobiographical fragments. I have published an account of his early years from his Letters and Journals. I have published the Letters and Memorials of his wife which describe (from one aspect) his life in London as long as she remained with him. I supposed for a time that if to these I added my personal recollections of him, my task would be sufficiently accomplished; but I have thought it better on longer consideration to complete his biography as I began it. He himself quotes a saying of Goethe that on the lives of remarkable men ink and paper should least be spared. I must leave no materials unused to complete the portrait which I attempt to draw.

CHAPTER I.

A.D. 1834. ET. 39.

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Beginning of life in Cheyne Row-First winter in London-John Sterling-Offers of employment on the Times' not accepted, and why-Begins History of the French Revolution'-Carlyle's interpretation of it-Extracts from Journal-London societyLiterature as a profession-John Mill-The burnt manuscript— Resolution to continue the book-Meets Wordsworth.

IN the summer of 1834 Carlyle left Craigenputtock and its solitary moors and removed to London, there to make a last experiment whether it would be possible for him to abide by literature as a profession, or whether he must seek another employment and perhaps another country. I have already told how he set up his modest establishment in Cheyne Row in the house where he was to remain till he died. He had some 2007. in money for immediate necessities; of distinct prospects he had none at all. He had made a reputation by his articles in reviews as a man of marked ability. He had been well received on his visit to London in 1832, and was an object of admiring interest to a number of young men who were themselves afterwards to become famous, to John Mill, to Charles Buller, to Charles Austin, Sir William Molesworth, and the advanced section of the Philosophic Radicals, and he doubtless hoped that

UNCERTAIN PROSPECTS.

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when he was seen and more widely known, some editorship, secretaryship, or analogous employment might fall in his way, which would enable him to live. Even Brougham and Macaulay and the orthodox Whigs of the Edinburgh Review,' admitted his talents, though they disliked the use which he made of them, and would have taken him up and provided for him if he would have allowed Jeffrey to put him into harness. But harness it was impossible for him. to wear, even harness as light as was required by booksellers and editors. They had wondered at him and tried him, but since the appearance of Sartor' they had turned their backs upon him as hopeless, and had closed in his face the door of periodical literature. He was impracticable, unpersuadable, unmalleable, as independent and wilful as if he were an eldest son and the heir of a peerage. He had created no 'public' of his own; the public which existed could not understand his writings and would not buy them, nor could he be induced so much as to attempt to please it; and thus it was that in Cheyne Row he was more neglected than he had been in Scotland. No one seemed to want his services, no one applied to him for contributions. At the Bullers' house, at the Austins', and in a gradually increasing circle, he went into society and was stared at as if he were a strange wild animal. His conversational powers were extraordinary. His unsparing veracity, his singular insight, struck everyone who came in contact with him, but were more startling than agreeable. He was unobtrusive, but when asked for his opinion he gave it in his metaphoric manner, and when contradicted was contemptuous and over

bearing, too sarcastic for so young a man,' too sarcastic by far for the vanity of those whom he mortified. A worse fault was that he refused to attach himself to any existing sect, either religious or political. He abhorred cant in all its forms. and as cant in some shape gathers about every organised body of English opinion, he made many enemies and few friends; and those few, fearful of the consequences, were shy of confessing themselves his disciples. Month after month went by, and no opening presented itself of which he was able to avail himself. Molesworth founded a Radical Review,' but the management of it was not offered to Carlyle, though he hoped it might be offered. His money flowed away, and with the end of it would end also the prospect of making a livelihood in London.

I said no opening of which he could avail himself, but one opening there was which if he had chosen would have led him on to fortune, and which any one but Carlyle would have grasped at. In the small number of men who had studied 'Sartor' seriously, and had discovered the golden veins in that rugged quartz rock, was John Sterling, then fresh from Cambridge and newly ordained a clergyman, of vehement but most noble nature, who though far from agreeing with Carlyle, though shrinking from and even hating, so impetuous was he, many of Carlyle's opinions, yet saw also that he was a man like none that he had yet fallen in with, a man not only brilliantly gifted, but differing from the common run of people in this, that he would not lie, that he would not equivocate, that he would say always what he actually thought, careless whether he pleased or offended. Such a quality,

OFFERS OF EMPLOYMENT.

II

rare always, and especially rare in those who are poor and unfriended, could not but recommend the possessor of it to the brave and generous Sterling. He introduced Carlyle to his father, who was then the guiding genius of the Times;' and the great editor of the first periodical of the world offered Carlyle work there, of course on the implied conditions. When a man enlists in the army, his soul as well as his body belong to his commanding officer. He is to be no judge of the cause for which he has to fight. His enemies are chosen for him and not by himself. His duty is to obey orders and to ask no questions. Carlyle, though with poverty at his door, and entire penury visible in the near future, turned away from a proposal which might have tempted men who had less excuse for yielding to it. He was already the sworn soldier of another chief. His allegiance from first to last was to truth, truth as it presented itself to his own intellect and his own conscience. He could not, would not, advocate what he did not believe; he would not march in the same regiment with those who did advocate what he disbelieved; nor would he consent to suppress his own convictions when he chose to make them known. By this resolution not the 'Times' only, but the whole world of party life and party action, was necessarily closed against him. Organisation of any kind in free communities is only possible where individuals will forget their differences in general agreement. Carlyle, as he said himself, was fated to be an Ishmaelite, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him; and Ishmaelites, if they are to prosper at all in such a society as ours, and escape being trampled under the horses'