und his chief solace in reading such books as he
could get. In 1816 he was appointed, through the recommendation of
Leslie, to a school at Kirkcaldy, where Edward Irving, Carlyle's senior
by three years, was also master of a school. Irving's severity as a
teacher had offended some of the parents, who set up Carlyle to be his
rival. A previous meeting with Irving, also a native of Annan, had led
to a little passage of arms, but Irving now welcomed Carlyle with a
generosity which entirely won his heart, and the rivals soon became the
closest of friends. The intimacy, affectionately commemorated in the
_Reminiscences_, was of great importance to Carlyle's whole career. "But
for Irving," he says, "I had never known what the communion of man with
man means." Irving had a library, in which Carlyle devoured Gibbon and
much French literature, and they made various excursions together.
Carlyle did his duties as a schoolmaster punctiliously, but found the
life thoroughly uncongenial. No man was less fitted by temperament for
the necessary drudgery and worry. A passing admiration for a Miss Gordon
is supposed to have suggested the "Blumine" of _Sartor Resartus_; but he
made no new friendships, and when Irving left at the end of 1818 Carlyle
also resigned his post.

He had by this time resolved to give up the ministry. He has given no
details of the intellectual change which alienated him from the church.
He had, however, been led, by whatever process, to abandon the dogmatic
system of his forefathers, though he was and always remained in profound
sympathy with the spirit of their teaching. A period of severe struggle
followed. He studied law for a time, but liked it no better than
schoolmastering. He took a pupil or two, and wrote articles for the
_Edinburgh Encyclopaedia_ under the editorship of Brewster. He
occasionally visited his family, and their unfailing confidence helped
to keep up his courage. Meanwhile he was going through a spiritual
crisis. Atheism seemed for a time to be the only alternative to his old
creed. It was, however, profoundly repugnant to him. At last, one day in
June 1821, after three weeks' total sleeplessness, he went through the
crisis afterwards described quite "literally" in _Sartor Resartus_. He
cast out the spirit of negation, and henceforth the temper of his misery
was changed to one, not of "whining," but of "indignation and grim
fire-eyed defiance." That, he says, was his spiritual new-birth, thou