the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, then in course of publication. The subjects seem to have been regulated and chosen rather by the necessity of the letters of the alphabet through which the Encyclopædia was passing at that particular period, than by any special or peculiar fitness. It is natural enough, perhaps, to find Carlyle writing on Montaigne, Montesquieu, or Necker; or even on Sir John Moore, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or Nelson; but it would baffle human ingenuity to discover by what process of natural selection, and not of mere compulsory alpha betical necessity, such astonishing subjects as "Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland," and even "Newfoundland," should have been allotted to him.

"Que diable allait-il faire
Dans cette galère ?"

"In the earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle," says Mr. James Russell Lowell, alluding to these papers, "we find some not obscure hints of the future man. The outward fashion of them is that of the period;

Mr. Lowell

on Carlyle's early papers.

Vols. xiv. to xvi. The fourteenth volume bears at the end the imprint, "Edinburgh, printed by Balfour and Clarke, 1820"; and the sixteenth volume, "Printed by A. Balfour and Co., Edinburgh, 1823." Most of these

articles are distinguished by the initials “T. C."; but they are all attributed to Carlyle in the List of the Authors of the Principal Articles, prefixed to the work on its completion.

:

but they are distinguished by a certain security of judgment, remarkable at any time, remarkable especially in one so young. British criticism

has been always more or less parochial; has, never, indeed, quite freed itself from sectarian cant. Carlyle, in these first essays, already shows the influence of his master Goethe, the most widely receptive of critics. In a compact notice of Montaigne there is not a word as to his religious scepticism. scepticism. The character is looked at purely from its human and literary sides."

From this paper on Montaigne we extract the following passage:

"He was the third son of Pierre Eyquem, a man of rank and probity, who appears to have discharged the paternal duties with extraordinary care. Young Michel was awakened every morning by soft music, lest sudden excitation might injure his health; and a

Montaigne.

German domestic, unacquainted with the French language, taught him to express his first ideas in Latin. At the age of six years, he was sent to the College of Bourdeaux, then conducted by the most celebrated preceptors in France, one of whom was our distinguished countryman, George Buchanan. Montaigne's knowledge of Latin, acquired in a manner so

uncommon, was here of some avail to him; and though we may be allowed to doubt his assertion, that the masters' were afraid to accost him,' the instructions of his nurse must have materially contributed to form that minute and extensive acquaintance with classical literature, and that strong tinge of Latinity, for which his writings are so remarkable.

"After seven years occupied in such studies, Montaigne, with the view of becoming a lawyer, engaged in the requisite course of preparation; but his love of jurisprudence, and his progress in that science, appear to have been equally small. The Parliament of Bourdeaux seldom witnessed his official exertions; and after his elder brother's death, from the stroke of a tennisball, he gladly exchanged the advocate's gown for the sword of a country gentleman. A short time after 1560, he married Françoise, daughter of a celebrated pleader, Joseph de la Chassagne; and, possessing the Chateau de Montaigne, which his father bequeathed to him in 1569, enjoying a competent fortune and domestic happiness, he had full leisure to combine rural and intellectual employment, in the most suitable proportion. Study seems, however, to have attracted nearly all his attention; riding afforded a healthful and favourite exercise; he lived

remote from the political quarrels which, at that period, distracted his country; and few avocations enticed him from reading, or committing to paper such reflections as that reading excited, in whatever order they occurred. Before the decease of his father, Montaigne had translated the Natural Theology of Raymond de Sebonde; and, in 1571, he superintended the posthumous publication of his friend, the Sieur de la Boëtie's works. He did not appear in the character of an original author till 1580, when the fruit of his meditations was published under the title of Essays, at Bourdeaux. Eight years afterwards, in a new edition prepared under his eye at Paris, the work was augmented by a third book, and many additions to the part already published.

"In this singular production, Montaigne completely fulfils the promise of 'painting himself in his natural and simple mood, without study or artifice.' And though Scaliger might perhaps reasonably ask, 'What matters it whether Montaigne liked white wine or claret?'-a modern reader will not easily cavil at the patient and goodnatured, though exuberant egotism, which brings back to our view the form and pressure' of a time long past. The habits and humours, the mode of acting and thinking which characterized a Gascon gentleman in the

sixteenth century, cannot fail to amuse an inquirer of the nineteenth; while the faithful delineation of human feelings in all their strength and weakness, will serve as a mirror to every mind capable of selfexamination.*

"The desultory, careless mode, in which the materials of the Essays are arranged, indicates a feature in the author's character to which his style has likewise a resemblance. With him, more than with any other, words may be called the garment of thought; the expression is frequently moulded to fit the idea, never the idea to fit the expression. The negligence, and occasional obscurity of his manner, are more than compensated by the warmth of an imagination, bestowing on his language a nervousness, and often a picturesque beauty, which we should in vain seek elsewhere.'

Our next extract is from the article on Montesquieu :

"The chief basis of Montesquieu's fame is the

O Mr. Lowell, after quoting the passage italicised, "as illustrating the bent Mr. Lowell on of the author's Carlyle's early mind," remarks that "we find here no uncertain indication of that eye for the moral pic.

papers.

turesque, and that sympathetic appreciation of character, which within the next few years were to make Carlyle the first in insight of English critics and the most vivid of English historians." -North American Review, April 1866, p. 425.