Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/119

 declined. Meanwhile Irving, on preaching experimentally in Hatton Garden, had made acquaintance with two sisters, Mrs. Strachey and Mrs. Charles Buller. Mrs. Buller consulted Irving upon the education of her two eldest sons, Charles [q. v.] and Arthur, afterwards Sir Arthur. Irving recommended Edinburgh University with Carlyle for a tutor, and in January 1822 Carlyle accepted the proposal. The two lads joined him in the following spring. His salary was 200l. a year. The parents of his pupils came to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1822. Carlyle lodged at 3 Moray Place, Pilrig Street, spending the day with his pupils. In the spring of 1823 the Bullers took Kinnaird House, near Dunkeld. Carlyle spent the rest of the year there with them, and on the whole happily, though occasionally grumbling at dyspepsia and the ways of fine ladies and gentlemen. At the end of January 1824 the Bullers finally returned to London, Carlyle staying at Mainhill to finish a translation of ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ At the beginning of June he followed the Bullers to London in a sailing ship, and found them hesitating between various schemes. After a week at Kew with Charles Buller, who was now intended for Cambridge, he resolved to give up his place. He had been much attracted by his pupil Charles, but to his proud spirit a life of dependence upon grand people, with constantly unsettled plans and with no definite outlook for himself, had naturally become intolerable.

His improved income had enabled him to help his family. Out of his 200l. a year he supported his brother John as a medical student in Edinburgh, and stocked a farm for his brother Alexander, besides sending many presents to his parents. He had been actively writing. He had translated Legendre's ‘Geometry,’ for which he received 50l., and wrote in one morning an introduction on the doctrine of Proportion, of which he speaks with complacency. Irving, who had finally settled in London, in the summer of 1822 had mentioned Carlyle to Taylor, proprietor of the ‘London Magazine.’ Taylor offered him sixteen guineas a sheet for a series of ‘Portraits of Men of Genius and Character.’ The first was to be a life of Schiller, which appeared in the ‘London Magazine’ in 1823–4. An Edinburgh publisher, Boyd, accepted the translation of ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ Carlyle was to receive 180l. for the first edition, 250l. for a thousand copies of a second, and afterwards to have the copyright. Carlyle, therefore, accustomed to the severe economy of his father's house, was sufficiently prosperous. On leaving the Bullers he was thrown on his own resources.

He stayed on in London trying to find some occupation. In the summer of 1824 he spent two months at Birmingham with Mr. Badams, a manufacturer, of some literary knowledge and scientific culture. Badams hoped to cure Carlyle's dyspepsia by a judicious regimen, and though he failed to do much, Carlyle was touched by his kindness. (For Badams, see Reminiscences, ii. 164;, ii. 176.) From Birmingham Carlyle went to Dover, where the Irvings were staying, and made a brief visit to Paris, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Strachey and Mrs. Strachey's cousin, Miss ‘Kitty’ Kirkpatrick. He remembered every detail with singular fidelity, and his impressions were of service in the history of the French revolution. On returning, he took lodgings in Islington, near Irving, and stayed there, occupied in publishing negotiations, till his return to Scotland in March 1825. His ‘Schiller,’ reprinted from the ‘London Magazine,’ was issued before his departure, bringing him about 100l'.

Carlyle received strong impressions from his first view of London society. He judged it much as Knox judged the court of Mary, or St. John the Baptist (see, ii. 334) the court of Herod. He is typified by Teufelsdröckh, ‘a wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a baptist living on locusts and wild honey.’ The rugged independence of the Scotch peasant, resenting even well-meant patronage, colours his judgments of the fashionable world, while an additional severity is due to his habitual dyspepsia. The circle to whom Irving had introduced him are described in the ‘Reminiscences’ with a graphic power in which a desire to acknowledge real kindness and merit struggles against a generally unfavourable opinion. Of Mrs. Strachey, indeed, he speaks with real warmth, and he admired for the present ‘the noble lady,’ Mrs. Basil Montagu, of whom there is a striking and generally favourable portrait (Reminiscences, p. 227). But the social atmosphere was evidently uncongenial. He still admired Irving, whom he always loved; but felt keenly that his friend was surrounded by a circle whose flattery was dangerous to his simplicity, and which mistook a flush of excitement for deep religious feeling. Yet Carlyle still believes that he will escape from the ‘gross incense of preaching popularity’ (, i. 258). Carlyle formed a still more disparaging estimate of the men of letters. Upon these ‘things for writing articles’ he lavished his most exaggerated expressions of scorn. Coleridge was dawdling upon Highgate Hill, wasting his genius upon aimless talk; Hazlitt a mere Bohemian; Campbell's powers had left him; Charles Lamb (of whose pathetic