who do, prefer his poetry to his prose.
The preference is a just one, but it proves nothing, for literary
history shows that a good poet is always a good prose-writer.

Mr. Bryant's last great labor--it is almost superfluous to state--was
a new translation of Homer. The task was worthy of him; for, though it
has been performed many times, it has never been performed so well
before. Scores have tried their hands at it, from Chapman down; but
all have failed in some important particular--Pope, perhaps, most of
all. Lord Derby's version of the "Iliad" was the best before Mr.
Bryant's; it is second best now, and will soon be as antiquated as
Pope's, or Cowper's, or Chapman's. No English poet ever undertook and
performed so great a task as this of Mr. Bryant's so late in life. It
is like Homer himself singing in his old age.

THOMAS CARLYLE

By W. WALLACE

(1795-1881)

[Illustration: Thomas Carlyle.]

Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795, at Ecclesfechan, in the
parish of Hoddam, Annandale, Dumfriesshire, a small Scottish
market-town, the Entipfuhl of "Sartor Resartus," six miles inland from
the Solway, and about sixteen by road from Carlisle. He was the second
son of James Carlyle, stone-mason, but his first son by his second
wife, Margaret Aitken. James Carlyle, who came of a family which,
although in humble circumstances, was an offshoot of a Border clan,
was a man of great physical and moral strength, of fearless
independence, and of, in his son's opinion, "a natural faculty" equal
to that of Burns; and Margaret Aitken was "a woman of the fairest
descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Frugal,
abstemious, prudent, though not niggardly, James Carlyle was
prosperous according to the times, the conditions of his trade, and
the standard of Ecclesfechan. He was able, therefore, to give such of
his sons (he had a family of ten children in all, five sons and five
daughters) as showed an aptitude for culture an excellent Scottish
education. Thomas seems to have been taught his letters and elementary
reading by his mother, and arithmetic by his father. His home-teaching
was supplemented by attendance at the Ecclesfechan school, where he
was "reported complete in English" at about seven, made satisfactory
progress in arithmetic, and took to Latin with enthusiasm. Thence he
proceeded, in 1805, to Annan Academy, where he learned to read Latin
and French fluently, "some geometry, algebra, arithmetic t