reacher at Hatton Gardens, Carlyle now
became private tutor to the son of Mr. Charles Buller, an Anglo-Indian
merchant, on a salary of L200; and the tutor had the satisfaction of
seeing his pupil's political advancement as a member of the House of
Commons and one of the most promising men in England.

About this time Carlyle, who had been industriously studying German and
French, published a translation of Legendre's "Elements of Geometry;"
and in 1824 brought out a "Life of Schiller," a work that he never
thought much of, but which was a very respectable performance. In fact,
he never thought much of any of his works: they were always behind his
ideal. He wrote slowly, and took great pains to be accurate; and in this
respect he reminds us of George Eliot. Carlyle had no faith in rapid
writing of any sort, any more than Daniel Webster had in extempore
speaking. After he had become a master of composition, it took him
thirteen years of steady work to write "Frederick the Great,"--about the
same length of time it took Macaulay to write the history of fifteen
years of England's life, whereas Gibbon wrote the whole of his
voluminous and exhaustive "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" in twenty years.

"Schiller" being finished, Carlyle was now launched upon his life-work
as "a writer of books." He translated Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," for
which he received L180. I do not see the transcendent excellence of
this novel, except in its original and forcible criticism, and its
undercurrent of philosophy; but it is nevertheless famous. These two
works gave Carlyle some literary reputation among scholars, but not
much fame.

Although Carlyle was thus fairly embarked on a literary career, the
"trade" of literature he always regarded as a poor one, and never
encouraged a young man to pursue it as a profession unless forced into
it by his own irresistible impulses. Its nobility he ranked very high,
but not its remunerativeness. He regarded it as a luxury for the rich
and leisurely, but a very thorny and discouraging path for a poor man.
How few have ever got a living by it, unless allied with other
callings,--as a managing clerk, or professor, or lecturer, or editor!
The finest productions of Emerson were originally delivered as lectures.
Novelists and dramatists, I think, are the only class, who, without
doing anything else, have earned a comfortable support by their
writings. Historians have, with very few excep