details.'[7]

The Jeffreys were not slow in appearing at Craigenputtock. Their 'big Carriage,' narrates the humorous host, 'climbed our rugged Hill-roads, landed the Three Guests—young Charlotte ("Sharlie"), with Pa and Ma—and the clever old Valet maid that waited on them; ... but I remember nothing so well as the consummate art with which my Dear One played the domestic field-marshal, and spread out our exiguous resources, without fuss or bustle; to cover everything with a coat of hospitality and even elegance and abundance. I have been in houses ten times, nay, a hundred times, as rich, where things went not so well. Though never bred to this, but brought up in opulent plenty by a mother that could bear no partnership in housekeeping, she, finding it become necessary, loyally applied herself to it, and soon surpassed in it all the women I have ever seen.'[8] Of Mrs Carlyle's frankness her husband gives this amusing glimpse: 'One day at dinner, I remember, Jeffrey admired the fritters or bits of pancake he was eating, and she let him know, not without some vestige of shock to him, that she had made them. "What, you! twirl up the frying-pan, and catch them in the air?" Even so, my high friend, and you may turn it over in your mind!' When the Jeffreys were leaving, 'I remarked,' says Carlyle, that they 'carried off our little temporary paradise; ... to which bit of pathos Jeffrey answered by a friendly little sniff of quasi-mockery or laughter through the nose, and rolled prosperously away.'

The Carlyles in course of time visited the Jeffreys at Craigcrook, the last occasion being for about a fortnight. Carlyle says it was 'a shining sort of affair, but did not in effect accomplish much for any of us. Perhaps, for one thing, we stayed too long, Jeffrey was beginning to be seriously incommoded in health, had bad sleep, cared not how late he sat, and we had now more than ever a series of sharp fencing bouts, night after night, which could decide nothing for either of us, except our radical incompatibility in respect of World Theory, and the incurable divergence of our opinions on the most important matters. "You are so dreadfully in earnest!" said he to me once or oftener. Besides, I own now I was deficient in reverence to him, and had not then, nor, alas! have ever acquired, in my solitary and mostly silent existence, the art of gently saying strong things, or of insinuating my dissent, instead of uttering it right out at the risk of offence or otherwise.' Then he adds: 'These "stormy sittings," as Mrs Jeffrey laughingly called them, did not improve our relation to one another. But these were the last we had of that nature. In other respects Edinburgh had been barren; effulgences of "Edinburgh Society," big dinners, parties, we in due measure had; but nothing there was very interesting either to Her or to me, and all of it passed away as an obliging pageant merely. Well do I remember our return to Craigenputtock, after nightfall, amid the clammy yellow leaves and desolate rains with the clink of Alick's stithy alone audible of human.'[9]

It was during his first two years' residence at Craigenputtock that Carlyle wrote his famous essay on Burns; but his principal work was upon German literature, especially upon Goethe. His magazine writings being his only means of support, and as he devoted much time to them, it is not surprising that financial matters worried him. About this time Jeffrey, to whom doubtless he confided his trouble, generously offered to confer upon him an annuity of £100, which Carlyle declined to accept. Jeffrey repeated the offer on two subsequent occasions, with a like result. Carlyle in his Reminiscences says that he could not doubt but Jeffrey had intended an act of real generosity; and yet Carlyle penned the ungracious remark, that 'perhaps there was something in the manner of it that savoured of consciousness and of screwing one's self up to the point; less of god-like pity for a fine fellow and his struggles, than of human determination to do a fine action of one's own, which might add to the promptitude of my refusal.' It is not surprising, therefore, to find Carlyle suspecting that Jeffrey's feelings were cooling towards him. Jeffrey had powers of penetration as well as the friend whom he was anxious to assist.

By the month of February 1831, Carlyle's finances fell so low that he had only £5 in his possession, and expected no more for months. Then he borrowed £100 from Jeffrey, as his 'pitiful bits of periodical literature incomings,' as he puts it, 'having gone awry (as they were liable to do), but was able, I still remember with what satisfaction, to repay punctually within a few weeks'; adding, 'and this was all of pecuniary chivalry we two ever had between us.' The chivalry was all on the one side—of Jeffrey. The outcome of his labours at Craigenputtock, in addition to the fragmentary articles already referred to, was the essays which form the first three volumes of the 'Miscellanies.' They appeared chiefly in the Edinburgh Review, the Foreign Review, and Fraser's Magazine. Jeffrey's resignation of the editorship of the 'Review' was a great disappointment to Carlyle, because it stopped a regular source of income.

German literature, of which Carlyle had begun a history, not being a 'marketable commodity,' he cut it up into articles. 'My last considerable bit of Writing at Craigenputtock,' says Carlyle, 'was "Sartor Resartus"; done, I think, between January and August 1830; (my sister Margaret had died while it was going on). I well remember where and how (at Templand one morning) the germ of it rose above ground. "Nine months," I used to say, "it had cost me in writing." Had the perpetual fluctuation, the uncertainty and unintelligible whimsicality of Review Editors not proved so intolerable, we might have lingered longer at Craigenputtock, perfectly left alone, and able to do more work, beyond doubt, than elsewhere. But a Book did seem to promise some respite from that, and perhaps further advantages. Teufelsdröckh was ready; and (first days of August) I decided to make for London. Night before going, how I still remember it! I was lying on my back on the sofa in the drawing-room; she sitting by the table (late at night, packing all done, I suppose); her words had a guise of sport, but were profoundly plaintive in meaning. "About to part, who knows for how long; and what may have come in the interim!" this was her thought, and she was evidently much out of spirits. "Courage, Dearie, only for a month!" I would say to her in some form or other. I went next morning early.'[10]

Jeffrey, who was by that time Lord Advocate, Carlyle found much preoccupied in London, but willing to assist him with Murray, the bookseller. Jeffrey, with his wife and daughter, lived in Jermyn Street in lodgings, 'in melancholy contrast to the beautiful tenements and perfect equipments they had left in the north.' 'If,' says Carlyle, 'I called in the morning, in quest perhaps of Letters (though I don't