Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/85

Rh stonemason, a man of intellect and strong character, and his mother was, as he said, "of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." His earliest education was received at the parish school of Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl of Sartor Resartus). Thence he went to the Grammar School of Annan, and in 1809 to the Univ. of Edin., the 90 miles to which he travelled on foot. There he read voraciously, his chief study being mathematics. After completing his "Arts" course, he went on to divinity with the view of entering the Church, but about the middle of his course found that he could not proceed. He became a schoolmaster first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy, where he formed a profound friendship with (q.v.), and met Margaret Gordon, afterwards Lady Bannerman, believed by some to be the prototype of Blumine in Sartor. Returning in 1819 to Edin. he for a time studied law and took pupils; but his health was bad, he suffered from insomnia and dyspepsia, and he tired of law. He was also sorely bestead by mental and spiritual conflicts, which came to a crisis in Leith Walk in June 1821 in a sudden uprising of defiance to the devil and all his works, upon which the clouds lifted. For the next two years, 1822-24, he acted as tutor to Charles Buller (whose promising political career was cut short by his premature death) and his brother. On the termination of this engagement he decided upon a literary career, which he began by contributing articles to the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. In 1824 he translated Legendre's Geometry (to which he prefixed an essay on Proportion), and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister; he also wrote for the London Magazine a Life of Schiller. About this time he visited Paris and London, where met, , , and others. Thereafter he returned to Dumfriesshire. In the following year (1826) he m. Jane Baillie Welsh, and settled in Edin. Here his first work was Specimens of German Romance (4 vols.) A much more important matter was his friendship with Jeffrey and his connection with the Edinburgh Review, in which appeared, among others, his essays on Richter, Burns, Characteristics, and German Poetry. In 1828 C. applied unsuccessfully for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in St. Andrews, and the same year he went to Craigenputtock, a small property in Dumfriesshire belonging to Mrs. C., where they remained for several years, and where many of his best essays and Sartor Resartus were written, and where his correspondence with Goethe began. In 1831 he went to London to find a publisher for Sartor, but was unsuccessful, and it did not appear in book form until 1838, after having come out in Fraser's Magazine in 1833-34. The year last mentioned found him finally in London, settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, his abode for the rest of his life. He immediately set to work on his French Revolution. While it was in progress he in 1835 lent the MS. to, by whose servant nearly the whole of the first vol. was burned, in spite of which misfortune the work was ready for publication in 1837. Its originality, brilliance, and vividness took the world by storm, and his reputation as one of the foremost men of letters in the country was at once and finally established. In the same year he appeared as a public lecturer, and delivered four courses on German Literature, Periods of European Culture, Revolutions of Modern Europe, and Heroes and Hero-Worship, the C 2