ABBREVIATIONS. C. E. L. . . . Thomas Carlyle. A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, by James Anthony Froude. 2 vols. Lond., 1891. C. L. L. . . . Thomas Carlyle. A History of His Life in London by James Anthony Froude. 2 vols. Lond., 1891. Essays. L. W. C.. Rem. E. Lett. . . Lett. G.-Corr... Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished by Thomas Carlyle. 4 vols. The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle. Boston, 1860. N. Y., 1892. Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by Charles Eliot Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1814-1826. Edited by Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1826-1836. Edited by Charles Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle. Edited by C.-Trans. . . Tales by Musaeus, Tieck, Richter, translated from the German by Thomas Carlyle. pls. Lond., 1874. C.-Jour. MS. Copy of Carlyle's Journal, partly printed in C. E. L., in the possession of Prof. Norton. NOTES. PRELIMINARY. Mein Vermächtniss. This motto is prefaced to Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and in Carlyle's translation of that novel runs as follows: My inheritance, how wide and fair! It is an expansion of Cardan's phrase, “Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus"; see Forum, Feb., 1893, p. 719. For a slight variant, see West-Oest. Divan, Hikmet Nameh; Goethe, Sämmt. Werke, II, 238; Stuttgart, 1873. Carlyle quotes this distich in his essay on Richter, Essays, II, 199, in Characteristics, ib. III, 48 ; and repeatedly in his correspondence. Lett., 177, G.-Corr., 253, 259. 12. the torch of Science. An adaptation of "Truth like a torch, the more it's shook, it shines." Carlyle would be familiar with it, as the motto to Sir William Hamilton's Lectures. Goethe adapts it in Maximen u. Pflexionen, II. "Das Wahre ist eine Fackel, aber eine ungeheure, esswegen suchen wir alle nur blinzend so daran vorbei zu kommen, in Furcht sogar, uns zu verbrennen." See De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, p. 210; London, 1872. I have been unable to trace it further. I hope in his hand the torch of eloquence will burn bright — and shed a strong ray of intellectual light over the whole district." E. Lett., 43. 1 7. kindled thereat. "We have sometimes felt as if his light were, to a certain extent, a borrowed one; a rush-light kindled at the great pitch link of our own Blackwood's Magazine." Essays, German Playwrights, I, 401. 1 15. Lagrange (1736-1813), French mathematician and critic of Newton he received many marks of distinction from Frederick the : Great, the French Republic and Napoleon. His contribution to mathematical knowledge is his theory of the oneness of the universe. 1 16. Laplace (1749-1827), the Newton of France. With the appearance of his treatise, Mécanique Céleste, the last threat of instability of the universe was removed. Carlyle saw him at a meeting of the Institut at Paris in 1824. See Rem. II, 163. He brackets the two names in Signs of the Times (Essays, II, 143) written in 1829. Illustrations from mathematics came readily to Carlyle. While at the University of Edinburgh, he devoted much time to the study of mathematics and attracted the attention of Professor John Leslie by his powers in that department. He translated Legendre's Elements of Geometry (1824); and his correspondence with Robert Mitchell bristles with allusions to mathematical reading, working of problems, etc. (see E. Lett., pp. 8–100, passim). He mentions Lagrange's Mécanique Analytique and Laplace's Mécanique Céleste together, p. 72. For Carlyle's account of his enthusiasm for this study see G.-Corr., 156, n. 1 19. our nautical Logbooks. "His view of the world is a cool, gently scornful, altogether prosaic one: his sublimest Apocalypse of Nature lies in the microscope and telescope; the Earth is a place for producing corn; the Starry Heavens are admirable as a nautical time-keeper." Essays, Voltaire, II, 36. corn. What is grander than the sun?' added Wotton; 'yet we all see it daily, and few think of the heavenly lamp save as a ripener of The moon, too, and the stars are measured in their courses: but astronomy is praised or tolerated because it helps us in navigating ships, and the divine horologe is rated as a supplement or substitute for Harrison's time-keep L. W. C., Wotton Reinfred, 70. 2 1. Werners and Huttons. One of Carlyle's chief mannerisms is to make names of persons, events, etc., plural, for the sake of avoiding vagueness, and attaining picturesque effect. See p. 2, 1. 7 ff., p. 3, 1. 11 f. and passim. These names are not taken at random ; they were the rallying cries of rival theorists. Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750-1817), the father of German geology, was inspector of the mining school at Freiberg. His theory was called the Neptunist, and upheld the aqueous origin of the earth. Geognosy was a term invented by him to mean "the natural position of minerals in particular rocks, together with the grouping of those rocks, their geographical distribution and various relations." See Lyell, Principles of Geology, pp. 46–48, N. Y., 1860. James Hutton (1726– |