took the second prize; but he observed, that while Mr Carlyle seemed to master the subject without much effort or application, the other lad laboured at his problems with desperate zeal, sometimes sitting up all night at the task. I happened to mention this (about 1869) to Mr Carlyle, who remembered Dr Nicholson well, and described him accurately. He also remembered their residence in Edinburgh; but he said that Dr Nicholson was greatly deceived if he thought he mastered his mathematical difficulties with ease, or that it did not cost him much exertion. He said that he laboured most intensely at the study of mathematics, and that he has gained nothing in this world worth speaking about without the hardest of labour."* The fact that a sharer of his humble lodging could be so much in the dark as to his modes of working, is an indication of the self-contained nature of young Carlyle; and therefore we need not be surprised to find few reminiscences of his student life by personal acquaintances either at Edinburgh or near his father's home, where he spent each of the long summer vacations that extend in the Scottish Universities from April to November. There is but one anecdote of that period of his life which throws much light on his College work. To some congenial friend, most likely his first classical tutor, Mr Johnston, he so far unbosomed himself, on returning to Ecclefechan at the close of a session, as to intimate, with justifiable exultation, that the Principia of Newton were "all prostrate at his feet!" He may have been irregular in his application to the work of his * Observations on the Public Affairs and Public Men of England. By David Buchanan. Sydney: 1871. His Loneliness in Youth. 61 classes, turning to it only at intervals, and then with desperate energy; but this was a great thing for a youth to be able to say who left the University in his nineteenth year. It is hardly necessary to add, that Carlyle never entered into the social life of the University. None of its associated societies, formed for the cultivation of oratory, is able to boast that his name stands on its list of members; though the Dialectic, which had been founded in 1787, included at the time more than one fellow-student from his own district of country, and had among the rest Macdiarmid, who became a journalist of note at Dumfries. If he was too young to become connected with these debating clubs, there was a social bar, as well as that of youth, to hinder his admission to the Speculative Society, which had, and probably still has, a standard of gentility to maintain. But even if the door had been open, Carlyle would not have chosen to enter; for the testimony of each of the few contemporaries who had any knowledge of him, goes to show that he was lonely and contemplativeL in his habits. When his University career had come to a close, we see the solitary youth, already with a stamp. of sadness on his countenance that was never to leave it in this life, turning to his native hills. There, free at last from the "neck halter" which had "nigh throttled him, till he broke it off," he will in solitude face the problem that yet remains to be solved. CHAPTER VII. BECOMES A SCHOOLMASTER-AT ANNAN AND KIRKCALDY -FRIENDSHIP WITH EDWARD IRVING A - SEVERE DISCIPLINARIAN-INDIGNATION OF THE MOTHERS- A NEW plan of life had to be formed, and it was no easy task getting under way. It was, doubtless, only as a tentative that he turned to the occupation of schoolmaster. When he went home to Annandale from the University, or soon thereafter, the post of Mathematical Teacher in the Burgh School of Annan, where he himself had been a pupil, happened to become vacant; and for this he presented himself as a candidate, receiving the appointment after a competitive trial, which is said to have taken place at Dumfries. The young man who had mastered Newton's Principia, and who knew himself to be the superior of his teachers in the Metropolitan University, must have felt the stirrings of a lofty ambition within him. Yet we cannot doubt that he gratefully accepted the work that offered itself, even though it was but that of the pedagogue in an obscure provincial town, yielding small honour in the eye of the world, and, "at best, bread and water wages," as is stated by Teufelsdröckh. Nor, although it is hinted in Sartor that the work "was performed ill, at best unpleasantly," are we inclined to Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. 63 accept this view of the result as other than fictitious; for the young man was in earnest, and, in spite of the transcendentalism that had already begun to dominate his being, he cherished a reverence the most profound for all learning, and especially for the branch he had been appointed to teach to his successors in the school at Annan. More than thirty years afterwards, conversing one autumn day in a little company in Yorkshire, at a time (1847) when the Education controversy was waxing furious, he went in strongly for education in any or all forms, "saying, among other characteristic things," as we are told by one who was present, "that the man who had mastered the 47th proposition of Euclid, stood nearer to God than he had ever done before." So that this new mathematical master at Annan must have been cheered at his work by the reflection, that it was indeed of a sacred character. It must be confessed, however, that it is difficult to gather from such materials as are available, any definite notion of Carlyle as a schoolmaster. Even the dates are somewhat obscure. It would seem, from all we can learn, that he remained in his Annan situation only two years, if so long; and it is certain that, having been recommended by his friend Professor Leslie, he was, in 1816, appointed Rector of their Burgh School by the Town Council of Kirkcaldy. At this date Edward Irving had been four years the teacher of what was called "The Subscription School," a genteel private academy for the superior families in the same Fifeshire burgh-a place noted for its great length, and as the birthplace of Adam Smith. Though Mrs Oliphant makes no allusion to the circumstance of Carlyle's advent and residence in Kirkcaldy, beyond saying that he came to be the master of a school "set up in opposition" to Edward Irving's ;* there can be no doubt that the two friends were now brought more closely into contact, and that, in the little Fifeshire seaport, their intercourse strengthened that attachment which has caused some writers to speak of them as David and Jonathan. They were frequently seen walking together on the beach. There is some significance in the local tradition that Carlyle, in spite of the contemptuous picture he has drawn of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium at Annan, was himself too much given to the evil practice of acting on the memory through the "muscular integument." this respect he resembled his friend Irving; and stories are still current at Kirkcaldy respecting the severity of the discipline which they both administered. One of these has been related by Mrs Oliphant. A joiner, the deacon of his trade, a man of great strength, appeared one day at the door of Irving's schoolroom, while shrieks were resounding from within, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows and an axe on his shoulder, and with dreadful irony inquired, "Do ye want a hand the day, Mr Irving?" We are also told of the strong indignation that was excited among the mothers of the pupils on more than one occasion by the excessive punishment of their *This remark is calculated to convey a distinctly false impression, for it was at Irving's instigation, and with a view to be near him, that Carlyle had exchanged Annan for Kirkcaldy. An anonymous writer says:-"Kirkcaldy seems at this time to have been, in educational matters, entirely under Annan influences, since there were no less than six teachers in it all hailing from that place. Whether they were all as firm believers in the efficacy of the birch rod as Irving, tradition says not." |