PREFACE. THIS attempt to give an account of Thomas Carlyle and his Works that might be of some slight service as a guide to the study of his writings was printed before the appearance of the posthumous Reminiscences edited by Mr Froude. These throw much new light on the early life of their Author, some chapters of which had previously been obscure; but this fresh information does not materially affect what appears in the following pages. For the first time, however, it is now possible to state with precision that Carlyle went to the Grammar School. at Annan in 1806, and to Edinburgh University in 1809. In 1814 he was usher at Annan, in 1816 schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, and in 1818 he took pupils at Edinburgh. In 1822 he became the private tutor of Charles Buller, and after his marriage he lived for eighteen months near Edinburgh before removing to Craigenputtoch. Into one misapprehension respecting the burnt MS. of the French Revolution, I was beguiled by the report of Mr Milburn, of America, whose statement I accepted as a correction of my own previous information; the latter now turns out to have been accurate. It was the MS. of the first, not of the second, volume that was destroyed by fire. It will be observed that I have had the good fortune to discover what I believe to be a hitherto unknown Poem by Carlyle; and the reasons for ascribing the piece to him have now received an accession in the account which he gives in the posthumous Reminiscences of his father's connection with the building of the Bridge at Auldgarth. To Mr Boehm, A.R.A., the friend of Carlyle, my best acknowledgments are due for his kind and courteous permission to allow the use of his StatuePortrait of the subject of this volume, and also of the Medal designed by him to commemorate the Eightieth Birthday of the immortal Sartor. These works of art. were thought highly of by him whose features they so truthfully delineate; and I shall be content and grateful if my endeavour to pourtray the same subject should commend itself to the reader as not altogether unworthy the companionship of Illustrations so full of genius and of life. March 9, 1881. W. H. W. CONTENTS. I. THE CARLYLES AND THEIR COUNTRY, II. CARLYLE'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE, JI 23 34 41 77 IX. HIS MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S ANCESTORS, 90 THE COUNTRY OF THE CARLYLES-WHAT SCENERY OWES TO NOBLE LIVES THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF CARLYLE -A CARLYLE BROTHER OF THE BRUCE-THE LORDS OF TORTHORWALD-LORD SCROPE AT ECCLEFECHAN DECLINE OF THE FAMILY-THE FARMERS OF HODDAM. FIFTY years ago the words, "Thomas Carlyle, Nutholm," painted by a village artist on a rustic cart as homely as his letters, would not have been likely to attract any particular notice from the passing pilgrim who had just emerged from the pastoral valley of the Clyde into that comparatively level, well cultivated, and sylvan country from which you first descry the sparkling waters of the Solway. Yet it was with a positive thrill that, on a summer day a little more than twenty years ago, two young students from Edinburgh, making their first tour on foot into England, read the name on that old, battered cart, as it went jolting painfully past a clump of pines, in whose shade they had lain down to rest, away from the heat of the noonday sun. That name was the first strong reminder that we were now actually on the confines of a region which we had greatly desired to see. It told us A |