Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 01.djvu/27

Rh So too, we can plausibly identify the days of his schoolmaster-ship at Kirkcaldy; and the probable or possible original of 'Blumine,' the heroine of the exquisite chapter entitled 'Romance,'—that solitary meadow, green and sunlit, that breaks the stern mountain scenery of the Third Book—has been it seems discovered in the person of Miss Gordon, an ex-pupil of Edward Irving's. We can trace his earliest introduction to London society, and his discontent with it; we can find a distinct enough adumbration of his mother in Gretchen Futteral, if little or none of his father in Andreas; and, indeed, it is likely enough, I suppose, that an acute and diligent student of Sartor Resartus, with a biography at hand for constant reference, might be able to track Carlyle under the disguise of Herr Von Teufelsdröckh along the highway of life, past all those sixteen year-stones which divide the Edinburgh student days of 1818 from the date of the first startling apparition of Sartor in Eraser's Magazine for November 1833.

But it must of course be borne in mind that any strict parallelism between the author and his creation is not to be expected. With his head full of German literature and thought—the only subject on which for several years past he had been able to obtain a hearing in the London periodical press, it was natural enough that Carlyle should have made an imaginary German Professor the vehicle of his opinions. But to have 'stood' for the portrait in every detail would have defeated his own purpose, since it would have made it impossible for him without the appearance of undue egotism to enlarge as admiringly as, both for didactic and artistic reasons, he required to do on the moral attractions and intellectual powers of the author of the Clothes Philosophy. Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, for instance, in the following criticism of the Professor's literary style, he was humorously 'posing' Thomas Carlyle as the model for his portrait of Diogenes von Teufelsdröckh:—