have been for the majority of Scotch students much as it is now, a
compulsorily frugal life, with too little variety, relaxation, or society
outside Class rooms; and, within them, a constant tug at Science, mental
or physical, at the gateway to dissecting souls or bodies. We infer, from
hints in later conversations and memorials, that Carlyle lived much with
his own fancies, and owed little to any system. He is clearly thinking
of his own youth in his account of Dr. Francia: "Jose must have been a
loose-made tawny creature, much given to taciturn reflection, probably
to crying humours, with fits of vehement ill nature--subject to the
terriblest fits of hypochondria." His explosion in _Sartor,_ "It is my
painful duty to say that out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of
all hitherto discovered Universities," is the first of a long series of
libels on things and persons he did not like. The Scotch capital was
still a literary centre of some original brilliancy, in the light of
the circle of Scott, which followed that of Burns, in the early fame of
Cockburn and of Clerk (Lord Eldin), of the _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh
Reviews,_ and of the elder Alison. The Chairs of the University were
conspicuously well filled by men of the sedate sort of ability required
from Professors, some of them--conspicuously Brown (the more original if
less "sound" successor of Dugald Stewart), Playfair, and Leslie--rising
to a higher rank. But great Educational Institutions must adapt
themselves to the training of average minds by requirements and
restrictions against which genius always rebels. Biography more than
History repeats itself, and the murmurs of Carlyle are, like those
of Milton, Gibbon, Locke, and Wordsworth, the protests or growls of
irrepressible individuality kicking against the pricks. He was never in
any sense a classic; read Greek with difficulty--Aeschylus and Sophocles
mainly in translations--and while appreciating Tacitus disparaged Horace.
For Scotch Metaphysics, or any logical system, he never cared, and in his
days there was written over the Academic entrances "No Mysticism." He