His Kindness to Cooper the Chartist. 241 of those that have gone before, suggests the reflection that, if Carlyle's political sentiments frequently gave pain to the friends of Reform, he seems, somehow, all along to have had an exceedingly warm side to Reformers. The poem written by Cooper in jail, The Purgatory of Suicides, he dedicated to Carlyle, from whom he received in return a kind letter, and subsequently many substantial tokens of friendly consideration. "I owe many benefits to Mr Carlyle," he says in the Autobiography published by him in 1872. "Not only richly directoral thoughts in conversation, but deeds of substantial kindness. Twice he put a five-pound note into my hand, when I was in difficulties; and told me, with a look of grave humour, that if I could not pay him again, he would not hang me. Just after I sent him the copy of my Prison Rhyme, he put it into the hands of a young, vigorous, inquiring intelligence who had called to pay him a reverential visit at Chelsea. The new reader of my book sought me out and made me his friend. That is twenty-six years ago, and our friendship has continued and strengthened, and has never stiffened into patronage on the one side, or sunk into servility on the other—although my friend has now become 'Right Honourable,' and is the Vice-President of 'Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.'" It was at Carlyle's house that an incident occurred which Mr Cooper puts on record, because of the previous want of kindness which another Mr Forster had exhibited. "My novel of The Family Feud," he says, "drew a handsome critique in the Examiner from Mr John Forsterfor a wonder! I may as well tell how it came about. I went to 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, one evening, with the intent of spending a couple of hours with my illustrious Q friend Thomas Carlyle. But I had not been with him more than half-an-hour when Mr John Forster was announced. I met him without any high degree of pleasure. And although there was no treat on earth I could have desired more than to listen to the interchange of thought between two such intellects as those of Carlyle and John Forster, -I felt inclined, with the remembrance of the past, to 'cut my stick!' And I certainly should have decamped hastily, had it not been for an incident worth mentioning. A loaded truck stopped at the street door-there was a loud knock-and the maid-servant ran up stairs, breathless, to say that a huge parcel had been brought. Mr Carlyle seemed all wonder and muttered, 'A huge parcel! what huge parcel ?-but I'll come down and see.' And, somehow or other, we all went down to see-for there was a large wooden case, evidently containing a picture. A hammer and a chisel were soon brought, and I offered to take them, and open the case-but, no! my illustrious friend would open it himself. 'It's doubtless the picture from that old Landor,' said he; and he worked away vigorously with his implements till there was revealed a very noble picture indeed, with its fine gilded frame. It was a portrait of David Hume, in full dress-the dress he is said always to have worn when he sat down to write : so strangely were his polished style and his full dress associated. Only think of that old Landor sending me this!' broke out Carlyle again and again, as we all stood gazing on the portrait with admiration. This incident. served to 'break the ice' so far that I joined a little in the conversation that followed; and when Mr Carlyle quitted the room to fetch a book he wanted to show his friend, Mr John Forster said to me, in a marked tone, Anecdote of John Forster. 243 'You have just had a novel published by Routledge-do you happen to know whether a copy has been sent to the Examiner?' I replied that I did not know; but I would inquire. Take care that it is addressed to me, will you?' said Mr Forster; 'you understand what I mean? Take care that it is addressed to me personally'—and he nodded and smiled. 'Thank you, sir,' said I; ‘I will address a copy to you, myself' for I thought I did understand what he meant. I rose to go soon after, and my illustrious friend, with the perfect kindness he has always shown me, would go with me to the street door to say 'good night.' So I whispered to him, in the passage, and requested him to strengthen the good intent there seemed to lie in John Forster's mind towards me. Carlyle gave me one of his humorous smiles, and squeezed my hand, as an assurance that I might depend upon him. And so the favourable critique on my Family Feud appeared in the Examiner." CHAPTER XVI. HIS NEWSPAPER ARTICLES-INTEREST IN THE TEMPERANCE TEMPT FOR THE FOURTH ESTATE-FRIENDSHIP WITH "OF all priesthoods, aristocracies, governing classes at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that priesthood of the writers of books." When he penned this sentence, Carlyle included in the modern priesthood the writers for the newspapers; indeed he gave them an honourable place on his list. "The writers of newspapers, pamphlets, books, these are the real, working, effective Church of a modern country." But the young man who had arrived at this revolutionary conclusion, was not destined to do much for the Fourth Estate-except abuse it in such a wholesale and vituperative style, as no other public personage of his generation ventured to adopt. Had he been born a little later into the world, it is possible he might not have escaped being drawn into the vortex of journalism; but its attractive power was not in Carlyle's youthful days what it has since become-so the peril was one easily avoided. Poor as the pecuniary reward of the pedagogue might be in a country town on the Border or in Fife, it was perhaps as good as any the student could His Newspaper Articles. 245 have got by contributing even to a metropolitan journal; as for the country papers in the opening quarter of the century, they were generally edited by the printer with a pastepot and a pair of scissors. That Carlyle had early formed a plan of life, with which the incessant distractions of the journalist's career would not have harmonised, has, we trust, been made sufficiently clear at the outset of our narrative; but it may be questioned if he would have rested content with hack-work for Dr Brewster, had the Edinburgh newspapers of that time been able to afford the scope for his talents, and the respectable pecuniary rewards which they are able to give to a brilliant young writer to-day. The lightest bits of press work executed by Carlyle at the beginning of his career as man of letters, were the couple of book notices he wrote for that New Edinburgh, which was not permitted to grow old; and we hear of nothing in the way of contributions to the newspapers till we arrive at the year of Charles Buller's death, and no more after that till the appearance of the series of articles which heralded the Latter-Day Pamphlets. The number of these contributions was six in all. The first appeared in the Examiner on March 4, 1848, and the last in the same journal of December 2 of the same year. "Louis Philippe" was the theme of the former article; the latter was the tribute to the writer's old pupil. On April 29, he printed in the Examiner an article on "Repeal of the Union ;" and on May 13 there came three articles at a rush-two in the Spectator and one in the Examiner. The titles of these ran thus :"Ireland and the British Chief Governor," "Irish Regiments (of the New Era)," and "Leglislating for Ireland." None of the six articles has been reprinted in the Mis |