ardly any one saw at that time what Carlyle
was. He was too transcendental for The Edinburgh Review, to which he
had occasionally contributed, and the payment for Sartor in Fraser's
Magazine was beggarly.* For some years after his marriage in 1826
Carlyle was within measurable distance of starvation. Jeffrey had to
explain to him, or did explain to him, that he was unfit for any
public employment. He could not dig. To beg he was ashamed. When his
father died in 1832 he refused to touch a penny of what the old man
left, lest there should not be enough for his brothers and sisters.
His personal dignity made it impossible for any stranger to assist
him, except by giving him work. He worked incessantly, devouring
books of all sorts, especially French and German, translating
Wilhelm Meister so superbly well as to make it almost an English
book. There was no greater intellect then in the British Islands
than Carlyle's and very few with which it could be compared. Yet it
was difficult for him to earn a bare subsistence for his wife and
himself. Froude has brought out with wonderful power and beauty the
character which in Carlyle was above and beyond all the gifts of his
mind. If he was a severe critic of others, he was a still sterner
judge of himself. It would have been easy for him to make money by
writing what people wanted to read. He was determined that if they
read anything of his, they should read what would do them good. His
isolation was complete. His wife encouraged him and believed in him.
Nobody could help him.

--
* I need hardly say that this was long before Froude's connection
with Fraser.
--

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

Carlyle, unlike Coleridge, was a real moralist, and it was duty, not
hope, that guided his pen. Health he had, though he never would
admit it, and with excellent sense he invested his first savings in
a horse. His frugal life was at least wholesome, and the one comfort
with which he could not dispense was the cheap comfort of tobacco.
Idleness would have been impossible to him if he had been a
millionaire, and labour was his refuge from despondency. Like most
humourists, he had low spirits, though his "genial sympathy with the
under side of things," to quote his own definition of the
undefinable, must have been some solace for his woes. He could read
all day without wearying, so that he need never be alone. As a
talker no one surpass