Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/113

 esult was always remembered by Carlyle as a signal triumph over the fanatical party in the kirk (Autobiography, chap. viii.; Scots Magazine for 1757;, Annals of the General Assembly, 1838, ii. 122–9).

In the following year (1758) Carlyle paid a visit to London, where he made the acquaintance of Garrick and frequented the theatres, contributing to his friend Smollett's ‘British Magazine’ a criticism on John Home's ‘Agis,’ as then performed at Drury Lane. He also endeavoured, apparently with little success, to execute an informal commission from his Scotch ministerial brethren to plead their cause with those in authority, so as to avert the threatened enforcement against them of the window-tax. After his return home at the end of 1758 the outcry raised in consequence of the disastrous close of the St. Malo expedition led Carlyle to write the ironical pamphlet, ‘Plain Reasons for removing a certain Great Man from his M——y's presence and councils for ever. Addressed to the people of England. By O. M. Haberdasher.’ This is by far the most striking of Carlyle's productions. The ‘great man’ is the elder Pitt. Carlyle speaks of the pamphlet as having had ‘a great run,’ but it seems to have dropped into unmerited oblivion. From an inaccuracy in the transcript of the title it does not appear to have been seen by the editor of his ‘Autobiography’ (John Hill Burton), and in the new catalogue of the British Museum Library it is attributed to ‘O. M. Haberdasher,’ without any reference to Carlyle's authorship of it. In 1760 appeared at Edinburgh another pamphlet by Carlyle, ‘The Question relating to a Scots Militia considered in a Letter to the Lords and Gentlemen who have concerted the form of a law for that establishment,’ in which he unsuccessfully sought to persuade the government that the people of the country might be armed with perfect safety in spite of the fact of the rebellion of '45. Carlyle boasts that this pamphlet was republished both at Ayr and in London, in the latter case by the Marquis Townshend, who prefixed a preface. In 1762 he was appointed almoner to the king. In 1764 he published a pamphlet, ‘Faction detected,’ on the claim of the Edinburgh town council to present to the churches in their city. In 1769 he was appointed by the general assembly their commissioner to endeavour to procure during the ensuing session of parliament an exemption on the part of the Scottish clergy from the window-tax. The clergy subscribed about 400l. to defray his expenses. On his arrival in London, and doubtless to promote the success of his mission, he wrote a paper, signed Nestor, ‘in support of the Duke of Grafton, whose administration was then in a tottering state.’ Probably it was during this visit to London that, having to present himself at St. James's, ‘his portly figure, his fine expressive countenance, with an aquiline nose, his flowing silver locks, and the freshness of the colour of his face made a prodigious impression upon the courtiers’ (Chief Commissioner, Gift of a Grandfather, privately printed). His mission was so far successful that, though the Scottish clergy continued to be charged with the window-tax, the collectors were instructed not to enforce payment (, Edinburgh Portraits, i. 66). On 24 May 1770 he was elected moderator of the general assembly, and on 2 Dec. 1789 was named one of the deans of the Chapel Royal, when he resigned the office of almoner.

In 1766 Smollett had paid his last visit to Scotland, and in the description of Edinburgh given in ‘Humphry Clinker,’ published in 1771, he makes a complimentary reference to Carlyle. The account of the Select Society in the appendix to Dugald Stewart's memoir of Robertson the historian was furnished by Carlyle, who was a member of it. In 1789 he was a candidate for the principal clerkship to the general assembly. A severe contest took place between the moderate and the old presbyterian parties in the kirk, and the number of votes given was the largest ever known in the assembly. Carlyle was at first successful, but the result of a scrutiny asked for and granted threatened to be unfavourable, and he declined to face it. In 1771 he opposed the passing of a remonstrance by the general assembly against the necessity imposed on presbyterians of taking the communion in the Anglican form before they could hold office in England, saying that he ‘must be a very narrow-minded presbyterian who could not join in the religious worship of the church’ of England. In 1793 he gave a strenuous support to a scheme for the augmentation of the stipends of the Scottish clergy, and courageously protested against the want of sympathy with that body shown on the occasion by his friend Henry Dundas, then lord advocate, as the representative of the Pitt administration in the assembly. To the last he exerted himself to procure preferment, both in the English and the Scotch church, for young men of merit and of liberal views in theology, among them being the Rev. Archibald Alison, the father of the historian. Carlyle died on 25 Aug. 1805, and was buried in the churchyard of Inveresk, his friend Adam Ferguson, the historian of the Roman republic, writing the inscription on his tomb. He married, 14 Oct. 1760, Mary