infusion of German phraseology which had been imported into the
English version. This acquired idiom never left our author, even in
his original works, although the "Life of Schiller," written but a few
months before, is almost entirely free from the peculiarity. "Wilhelm
Meister," in its English dress, was better received by the English
reading public than by English critics. De Quincey, in one of his
dyspeptic fits, fell upon the book, its author, and the translator,[B]
and Lord Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, although admitting Carlyle
to be a talented person, heaped condemnation upon the work.

[Footnote A: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. 3 Vols., Edinburgh,
1824.]

[Footnote B: Curiously enough in the very numbers of the "London
Magazine" containing the later instalments of Carlyle's Life of
Schiller.]

Carlyle's next work was a series of translations, entitled "German
Romance: Specimens of the chief Authors; with Biographical and
Critical Notices." 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1827. The Preface and
Introductions are reprinted in the second volume of Carlyle's
Collected Works: the Specimens translated from Hoffmann and La Motte
Fouqué, have not been reprinted.

"This," says Carlyle, in 1857, "was a Book of Translations, not of my
suggesting or desiring, but of my executing as honest journey-work in
defect of better. The pieces selected were the suitablest discoverable
on such terms: not quite of _less_ than no worth (I considered) any
piece of them; nor, alas, of a very high worth any, except one only.
Four of these lots, or quotas to the adventure, Musæus's, Tieck's,