(1833)
From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return I came from
Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which I
had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigen-puttock. It was a farm in
Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public
coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I
found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar
nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an
author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a
man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding
on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with
cliff-like brow, self-possest, and holding his extraordinary powers of
conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with
evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor,
which floated everything he looked upon. His talk playfully exalting
the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance
with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was
predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely
the man, "not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the
minister of Dunscore"; so that books inevitably made his topics.
[Footnote 73: From Chapter I of "English Traits," published by
Houghton, Mifflin Company. At the time of this visit, Emerson had
published none of his books, but Carlyle was known as the author of
many of the "Essays" now included among his collected writings, and
had published the "Life of Schiller" and his translation of Goethe's
"Wilhelm Meister." "Sartor Resartus" in that year was beginning its
course through the monthly numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_.]
He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse.
_Blackwood's_ was the "sand magazine"; _Fraser's_ nearer approach to
possibility of life was the "mud magazine"; a piece of road near by
that marked some failed enterprise was the "grave of the last
sixpence." When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he profest
hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time
and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his
pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a
board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the
most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death,
"_Qualis artifex pereo!_" better than most history. He worships a man
that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and
read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion,
and _that_ he feared was the American principle. The best thing he
knew of that country was that in it a man can have meat for his
labor. He had read in Stewart's book that, when he inquired in a New
York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the street and had
found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey.
We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged
Socrates; and, when prest, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon
he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own
reading had been multifarious. "Tristram Shandy" was one of his first
books after "Robinson Crusoe," and Robertson's "America" an early
favorite. Rousseau's "Confessions" had discovered to him that he was
not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by
the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what
he wanted.
He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment;
recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great
booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted
now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of
bankruptcy.
He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the
selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should
perform. "Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish
folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give
to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next
house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat,
and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They
burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to
attend to them."
We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat
down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's
fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural
disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls,
and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he
was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages
together, and saw how every event affects all the future. "Christ died
on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me
together. Time had only a relative existence."
He was already turning his eyes toward London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful
only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each
keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a
fixt hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to
know on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain
individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind
he knew, whom London had well served.