free men. There ought, indeed, to be in history a spirit superior to petty distinctions and vulgar partialities; our particular affections ought to be enlightened and purified; but they should not be abandoned, or, such is the condition of humanity, our feelings must evaporate and fade away in that extreme diffusion. Perhaps, in a certain sense, the surest mode of pleasing and instructing all nations is to write for one." How well he has carried out these views, those who are best acquainted with the writings of Carlyle can bear witness. No one can accuse the author of "The French Revolution," and editor of "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," of having "abandoned his particular affections" while engaged on those histories.

In 1824 the translation of "Wilhelm Meister" made its appearance. It was published by Messrs. Oliver and Boyd of Edinburgh, but without the name of Mr. Carlyle, who was then utterly unknown to fame. "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel from the German of Goethe," was all the information which the title-page contained regarding the origin of the book. The translation was at once recognised as the work of a master-hand. The "Monthly Magazine," which had long been noted for its attention to German literature, spoke of it as "executed in a masterly way. Perhaps a little too much of the German mode of expression has been preserved; but there is a strength, originality, and raciness about it, which cannot fail to please the reader." The "London Magazine," although it included Mr. Carlyle in its list of contributors at that time, was much less friendly in its notice of the work. A most savage and unjust attack upon Goethe and his translator, from the pen of Mr. De Quincey, was allowed to appear in the columns of that periodical, to the great disgust of many of its readers,

who were unable to understand why the "English Opium Eater" should make such an onslaught on a brother translator. As there was a deadly feud at that period between the "London Magazine" and "Blackwood," and as the latter had previously given a highly favourable notice of the translation, the inference was, that Mr. De Quincey had deemed it his duty to abuse what the Edinburgh magazine had praised. Perhaps there might also be a spice of jealousy at the sudden intrusion of so vigorous a. rival upon the field of German literature, where Mr. De Quincey had been recognised as a master. The writer in "Blackwood," after speaking of the great influence which Goethe had exercised on European literature, referred to the translation of "Wilhelm Meister" in the following terms of laudation, which must have been highly flattering to one just entering upon a literary career:

"Goethe has, for once, no reason to complain of his translator. The version is executed, so far as we have examined it, with perfect fidelity; and, on the whole, in an easy, and even graceful style, very far superior, we must say, to what we have been much accustomed to in English translations from the German. The translator is, we understand, a young gentleman in this city, who now for the first time appears before the public. We congratulate him on his very promising début; and would fain hope to receive a series of really good translations from his hand. He has evidently a perfect knowledge of German; he already writes English better than is at all common, even at this time, and we know no exercise more likely to produce effects of permanent advantage upon a young mind of intellectual ambition, to say nothing of the very favourable reception which we are sure translations of such books so executed cannot fail to exercise upon the public mind."

The "series of really good translations" here antici

pated did not go farther than one other work, the "Specimens of German Romance," now many years out of print. These were published by William Tait of Edinburgh, in 1827, and consisted of four volumes, one of which contained "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," a sequel to the "Lehrjahre, or Apprenticeship." In the new revised edition of "Wilhelm Meister," published in 1842, the Apprenticeship and Travels are both given. The other three volumes of "German Romance" consisted of selections from Richter, Tieck, Musæus, and Hoffman.

The translation of "Wilhelm Meister" was made the text of Mr. Jeffrey's celebrated attack on Goethe, in the "Edinburgh Review," in which the same "slashing style of criticism was applied to the author of "Faust," as had been exercised upon Wordsworth and other men of genius. After stating that he had taken this novel as a fair specimen of German literature, because it was generally considered, by the Germans themselves, to be "the very greatest work of their very greatest writer, the most original, the most varied and inventive, the most characteristic, in short, of the author and his country," and having given it "the most deliberate consideration," Mr. Jeffrey came to the conclusion, that it was "eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, vulgar, and affected;" that, in fact, it was " almost from beginning to end one flagrant offence against every principle of taste, and every just rule of composition." To justify the sweeping severity of such censure, the reviewer gave a number of extracts from "Wilhelm Meister," evidently selected for the express purpose of making the author ridiculous, according to the approved Edinburgh fashion of 1825. As he read on however, he appears to have had a slight misgiving as to whether he might not have been using the lash a little more severely than was altogether prudent, and he winds

up with the humiliating implied confession in the following remarkable passage, that he has not done justice to the book, after all his pretended "deliberate consideration." But, right or wrong, what he had written must remain without correction, as he had neither space nor time to make amends to the author:

Many of the passages to which we have now alluded are executed with great talent; and we are very sensible are better worth extracting than most of those we have cited. But it is too late now to change our selections—and we can still less afford to add to them. On the whole, we close the book with some feelings of mollification towards its faults, and a disposition to abate, if possible, some part of the censure we were impelled to bestow on it at the beginning."

Of the translator, Mr. Jeffrey speaks in very high terms. He is described as "one who is proved by his preface to be a person of talents, and by every part of the work to be no ordinary master, at least, of one of the languages with which he has to deal." This was a satisfactory setoff against De Quincey's flippant attempt in the "London Magazine" to prove that Carlyle did not understand English.

Carlyle had now fairly embarked in literature as the business of life. Whatever the hardships or perils of such a career-and no one has ever painted them in gloomier colours-he had made up his mind to encounter them with a firm and resolute purpose. In 1827, an article on Jean Paul, the first of that brilliant series of critical and biographical essays, which have made his name so famous,— made its appearance in the "Edinburgh Review." This was followed up, in the succeeding number of that periodical, by his celebrated essay on "German Literature," which at once entitled the young reviewer to a place among

the first critics of the age. To those who never read that article till it appeared in the "Miscellanies," perhaps some twenty years or more after its first publication, the boldness and originality of the views enunciated may not appear so striking as they did to the readers of the review. That numerous class, who had been accustomed to look upon Mr. Jeffrey as an infallible guide in matters of taste, must have been considerably startled by the lofty, fearless tone assumed by the new contributor, who did not scruple to attack "the prince of critics" for his shameful abuse of Goethe, and whose manly assertion of the claims of genius must have been deemed flat rebellion by the courtly habitués of Holland House. In defending the Germans from the charge of bad taste brought against them by sundry critics, who had accounted for the assumed fact by "the quiet little theory," that German authors do not move in good society, Mr. Carlyle takes occasion to give his confession of faith regarding the respective merits of mere rank and intrinsic nobleness. The theory in question, that German authors "cannot acquire the polish of drawing-rooms, but must live in mean houses, and, therefore, think and write in a mean style,”* is so very melancholy, that he thinks it worthy of close examination. The passage in which he demolishes

*

Mr. Jeffrey, speaking of German authors, in the article on "Wilhelm Meister," to which reference has been made, says :-"Their works smell, as were, of groceries of brown papers filled with greasy cakes and slices of bacon-and fryings in back parlours. All the interesting recollections of childhood turn on remembered tit-bits, and plundering of savoury storerooms."-Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 417. He then goes on to explain how the German authors are so fond of such topics :-"The writers as well as the readers of that country, belong almost entirely to the plebeian and vulgar class. Their learned men are almost all wofully poor and dependent; and the comfortable burghers, who buy entertaining books by the thousand at the Frankfort Fair, probably agree with their authors in nothing so much as the value they set on those homely comforts to which their ambition is mutually limited by their poverty, and enter into no part of them so heartily as those which set forth their paramount and continual importance.”— Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 418.