old way, but it has been such a year as I do not remember for bad weather. It has grown worse and worse. Nevertheless it is better than we deserve, for we are froward children, a sinful generation. God be merciful to us sinners. He has never dealt with us as we deserve. I have been full well all this winter, till I got a face cold and toothache. It is better now, almost gone. I keep good fires and am very dry and comfortable.

Give my love to your Goody. I am glad to hear she is rather better. I will be glad to see you both here to rest a while when the fight is over. There perhaps never was a greater scrawl. God bless you, my dear children.

Wink at it.

Your affectionate Mother,

MARGARET A. CARLYLE.

Another shorter letter followed, to which and to this one Carlyle answered.

I got your three words, mother, and was right glad of them in the absence of more. I assure you I will be 'canny'-nay I must, for a little overwork hurts me, and is found on the morrow to be quite the contrary of gain. I have many a rebellious, troublesome thought in me, proceeding not a little from ill health of body. But I deal with them as I best can, and get them kicked out. Pride! pride! as I often say. It lies deep in me, and must be beaten out with many stripes. The young clergyman, John Sterling [did he wish innocently to please his mother by the clerical character of his friend?], comes very much about me, and proves by far the lovablest man I have met for many a year. His speech always enlivens me and shortens the long walks we sometimes take.

It was very difficult for Carlyle (as he told me) to speak with or write to his mother directly about religion. She quieted her anxieties as well as she could by recognising the deep unquestionable piety

PROJECTED EMPLOYMENTS.

65

of her son's nature. It was on the worldly side, after all, that there was real cause for alarm. The little stock of money would be gone now in a few months; and then what was to be done? America seemed the only resource. Yet to allow such a man to expatriate himself—a man, too, who would be contented with the barest necessaries of life because in England he could not live, would be a shame and a scandal ; and various schemes for keeping him were talked over among his friends. The difficulty was that he was himself so stubborn and impracticable. He would not write in the Times,' because the 'Times' was committed to a great political party, and Carlyle would have nothing to do with parties. Shortly after he came back from Scotland, he was offered the editorship of a newspaper at Lichfield. This was unacceptable for the same reason; and if he could have himself consented, his wife would not. She could never persuade herself that her husband would fail to rise to greatness on his own lines, or allow him to take an inferior situation. In mentioning this Lichfield proposal to his brother John, she said:

I declare to you, my dear brother, I can never get myself worked up into proper anxiety about how soul and body are to be kept together. The idea of starvation cannot somehow ever be brought home to my bosom. I have always a sort of lurking assurance that if one's bread ceases it will be possible to live on pie-crust. Besides, whose bread ever does entirely cease who has brains and fingers to bake it, unless indeed he be given over to Salthound' in the shape of strong liquors, which is not my case happily?

A more singular proposition reached Carlyle from

1 Carlylean name for Satan.

another quarter, kindly meant perhaps, but set forward with an air of patronage which the humblest of men would have resented unless at the last extremity; and humility was certainly not one of Carlyle's qualities. The Basil Montagus had been among the first friends to whom he had been introduced by Irving when he came to London in 1824. Great things had been then expected of him on Irving's report. Mrs. Montagu had interested herself deeply in all his concerns. She had been initiated into the romance of Jane Welsh's early life, and it was by her interference (which had never been wholly forgiven) that her marriage with Carlyle had been precipitated. For some years a correspondence had been kept up, somewhat inflated on Mrs. Montagu's side, but showing real kindness and a real wish to be of use. The acquaintance had continued after the Carlyles settled in Chelsea, but Mrs. Montagu's advances had not been very warmly received, and were suspected, perhaps unjustly, of not being completely sincere. The sympathetic letter which she had ventured to write to Mrs. Carlyle on Irving's death had been received rather with resentment than satisfaction. Still the Montagus remained in the circle of Carlyle's friends. They were aware of his circumstances, and were anxious to help him if they knew how to set about it. It was with some pleasure, and perhaps with some remorse at the doubts which he had entertained of the sincerity of their regard, that Carlyle learned that Basil Montagu had a situation in view for him which, if he liked it, he might have—a situation, he was told, which would secure him a sufficient income, and

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would leave him time besides for his own writing. The particulars were reserved to be explained at a personal interview. Carlyle had been so eager, chiefly for his wife's sake, to find something to hold on to, that he would not let the smallest plank drift by without examining it. He had a vague misgiving, but he blamed himself for his distrust. The interview took place, and the contempt with which he describes Mr. Montagu's proposition is actually savage.

To John Carlyle.

Chelsea: January 26, 1836.

Basil Montagu had a life benefaction all cut out and dried for me-No: it depended on the measure of gratitude whether it was to be ready for me or for another. A clerkship under him at the rate of 200l. a year, whereby a man lecturing also in mechanics' institutes in the evening, and doing etceteras, might live. I listened with grave fixed eyes to the sovereign of quacks, as he mewed out all the fine sentimentalities he had stuffed into this beggarly account of empty boxes-for which too I had been sent trotting many miles of pavement, though I knew from the beginning it could be only moonshine—and, with grave thanks for this potentiality of a clerkship, took my leave that night; and next morning, all still in the potential mood, sent an indicative threepenny. My wish and expectation partly is that Montagudom generally would be kind enough to keep its own side of the pavement. Not very expressible is the kind of feeling the whole thing now raises in me-madness varnished over by lies which you see through and through. One other thing I could not but remark-the faith of Montagu wishing me for his clerk; thinking the polar bear, reduced to a state of dyspeptic dejection, might safely be trusted tending rabbits. Greater faith I have not found in Israel. Let us leave these people. They shall hardly again cost me even an exchange of threepennies.

The 'polar bear,' it might have occurred to Carlyle, is a difficult beast to find accommodation for. People do not eagerly open their doors to such an inmate. Basil Montagu, doubtless, was not a wise man, and was unaware of the relative values of himself and the person that he thought of for a clerk. But, after all, situations suited for polar bears are not easily found outside the Zoological Gardens. It was not Basil Montagu's fault that he was not a person of superior quality. He knew that Carlyle was looking anxiously for employment with a fixed salary, and a clerkship in his office had, in his eyes, nothing degrading in it. Except in a country like Prussia, where a discerning government is on the look-out always for men of superior intellect, and knows what to do with them, the most gifted genius must begin upon the lowest step of the ladder. The proposal was of course an absurd one, and the scorn with which it was received was only too natural; but this small incident shows only how impossible it was at this time to do anything for Carlyle except what was actually done, to leave him to climb the precipices of life by his own unassisted strength.

Thus, throughout this year 1836, he remained fixed at his work in Cheyne Row. He wrote all the morning. In the afternoon he walked, sometimes with Mill or Sterling, more often alone, making his own reflections. One evening in January, he

writes:

I thought to-day up at Hyde Park Corner, seeing all the carriages dash hither and thither, and so many human bipeds cheerily hurrying along, 'There you go, brothers, in your gilt carriages and prosperities, better or worse, and make an