which the later semi-civilisation of life imposes. "They obey the impulse
of rude Nature which bids the deer herd fall upon any stricken hart, the
duck flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all
hands the strong tyrannise over the weak." Young Carlyle was mocked for
his moody ways, laughed at for his love of solitude, and called "Tom the
Tearful" because of his habit of crying. To add much to his discomfort,
he had made a rash promise to his pious mother, who seems, in contrast to
her husband's race, to have adopted non-resistance principles--a promise
to abstain from fighting, provocative of many cuffs till it was well
broken by a hinterschlag, applied to some blustering bully. Nor had he
refuge in the sympathy of his teachers, "hide-bound pedants, who knew
Syntax enough, and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty
called Memory, which could be acted on through the muscular integument by
appliance of birch rods." At Annan, however, he acquired a fair knowledge
of Latin and French, the rudiments of algebra, the Greek alphabet, began
to study history, and had his first glimpse of Edward Irving, the bright
prize-taker from Edinburgh, later his Mentor and then life-long friend.
On Thomas's return home it was decided to send him to the University,
despite the cynical warning of one of the village cronies, "Educate a
boy, and he grows up to despise his ignorant parents." "Thou hast not
done so," said old James in after years, "God be thanked for it;" and the
son pays due tribute to the tolerant patience and substantial generosity
of the father: "With a noble faith he launched me forth into a world
which he himself had never been permitted to visit." Carlyle walked
through Moffat all the way to Edinburgh with a senior student, Tom Smail
(who owes to this fact the preservation of his name), with eyes open
to every shade on the moors, as is attested in two passages of the
_Reminiscences_. The boys, as is the fashion still, clubbed together in
cheap lodgings, and Carlyle attended the curriculum from 1809 to 1814.
Comparatively little is known of his college life, which seems to