tion was to study for the Bar, if perchance he could eke
out a livelihood by private teaching. He obtained one or two pupils,
wrote a stray article or so for the 'Encyclopaedias'; but as he barely
managed to pay his way, he speedily gave up his law studies. He was at
this time--the winter of 1819--'advancing,' as he phrases it, 'towards
huge instalments of bodily and spiritual wretchedness in this my
Edinburgh purgatory.' It was about a couple of years thereafter ere
Carlyle went through what he has described as his 'spiritual new birth.'

When Carlyle was in diligent search for congenial employment, a certain
Captain Basil Hall crossed his path, to whom Edward Irving had given
lessons in mathematics. The 'small lion,' as he calls the captain, came
to Carlyle, and wished the latter to go out with him 'to Dunglas,' and
there do 'lunars' in his name, he looking on and learning of Carlyle
'what would come of its own will.' The said 'lunars' meanwhile were to
go to the Admiralty, 'testifying there what a careful studious Captain
he was, and help to get him promotion, so the little wretch smilingly
told me.' Carlyle adds: 'I remember the figure of him in my dim lodging
as a gay, crackling, sniggering spectre, one dusk, endeavouring to
seduce me by affability in lieu of liberal wages into this adventure.
Wages, I think, were to be smallish ("so poor are we"), but then the
great Playfair is coming on visit. "You will see Professor Playfair." I
had not the least notion of such an enterprise on these shining terms,
and Captain Basil with his great Playfair _in posse_ vanished for me
into the shades of dusk for good.'[2] When private teaching would not
come Carlyle's way, he timorously aimed towards 'literature.' He had
taken to the study of German, and conscious of his own powers in that
direction, he applied in vain to more than one London bookseller,
proposing a complete translation of Schiller. Irving not only did his
utmost to comfort Carlyle in his spiritual wrestlings, but he tried to
find him employment. The two friends continued to make pleasant
excursions, and in June 1821 Irving brought Carlyle to Haddington, an
event which was destined to colour all his subsequent life; for it was
then and there he first saw Jane Welsh, a sight, he acknowledged, for
ever memorable to him.

'In the ancient County Town of Haddington, July 14, 1801, there was
born,' wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1869, 'to a lately wedded pair, not
natives of