criticisms of character that make most readers rejoice in having escaped
the author's observation.

During the two years of his residence in Fifeshire, Carlyle encountered
his first romance, in making acquaintance with a well-born young lady,
"by far the brightest and cleverest" of Irving's pupils--Margaret
Gordon--"an acquaintance which might easily have been more" had not
relatives and circumstances intervened. Doubtless Mr. Froude is right in
asserting this lady to have been the original of _Sartor's_ "Blumine";
and in leaving him to marry "Herr Towgood," ultimately governor of Nova
Scotia, she bequeathed, though in antithetical style, advice that attests
her discrimination of character. "Cultivate the milder dispositions of
the heart, subdue the mere extravagant visions of the brain. Genius
will render you great. May virtue render you beloved. Remove the awful
distance between you and other men by kind and gentle manners. Deal
gently with their inferiority, and be convinced that they will respect
you as much and like you more." To this advice, which he never even
tried to take, she adds, happily perhaps for herself, "I give you not my
address, because I dare not promise to see you." In 1818 Carlyle, always
intolerant of work imposed, came to the conclusion that "it were better
to perish than to continue schoolmastering," and left Kirkcaldy, with L90
saved, for Edinburgh, where he lived over three years, taking private
pupils, and trying to enter on his real mission through the gates of
literature--gates constantly barred; for, even in those older days of
laxer competition, obstinate eccentricity unredeemed by any social
advantages led to failure and rebuff. Men with the literary form of
genius highly developed have rarely much endurance of defeat. Carlyle,
even in his best moods, resented real or fancied injuries, and at this
stage of his career complained that he got nothing but vinegar from his
fellows, comparing himself to a worm that trodden on would "turn into a