"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Monday, November 5, 2012

R.E. Slater - Autumn Memories (a collection of Haiku-like poems)




Autumn Memories
by R.E. Slater


Green leaves fell hard
One sunny frosted morning
When all was death and quiet.

* * *

A large leafed tree stood proud
Late in the rising autumn sun
Then quickly became undressed.

* * *

The morning quiet was loud
But not as loud as nearby tree
Exploding leaves into the ground.

* * *

By the hundreds the leaves fell
Without air to hold them up
Falling noisily to the ground below.

* * *

One frosted, chilly morning
I stood breathless to watch
The sudden death of autumn.

* * *

When all was peace and wonder
I laid me down in leafy bed
Resting in pillowed content.

* * *

Dead leaves crunched under my step
The woodland did not stop nor care
Nor did I – filled with its brilliance.

* * *

Hunters once were here
And now were gone
And life spread round-and-round.

* * *

Youth was once all I had -
Before the wonders of fall
The improbable beauty of winter.

* * *

Hickory nuts rested in a battered pail
Freshly picked from the cold ground
While grandma chattered in delight.

* * *

Dark shadows crossed the hillocks
Dimming autumn’s lingering lights
Orange moonrise brought all back.

* * *

My chilly breath like a chimney stack
Lifted and rose into the autumn airs
On friendship’s many dappled wings.

* * *

The red tractor’s large black tires
Were muddy and packed tight –
Dad did not care and went to bed.

* * *

We left in early morning’s cold darks
Carrying heavy guns in small hands
Watching wet dogs sniff and run.

* * *

The cotton band uniform held the cold
Wet winter rain pressed against my skin
Brightly stepping to drums and bugles!

* * *

Autumn sunrise met autumn sunset
Orangish yellows blazed dusky reds
Not one day ended as it began.

* * *

Autumn days warm the soul
Autumn evenings clear the head
Decay and rot sweetly fill the air.

* * *

The clasp of cold autumn air
Pulls at my jacket’s warm collar
Lifts my face to its breath.


- R.E. Slater
November 5 & 19, 2012;
March 3, 2014


@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved







Sunday, October 28, 2012

T.S. Eliot - Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat

There's a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail's ready to depart,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can't start."
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster's daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble for unless he's very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can't go."
At 11.42 then the signal's nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man—
Then Skimble will appear and he'll saunter to the rear:
He's been busy in the luggage van!

He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes "All Clear!"
And we're off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!

You may say that by and large it is Skimble who's in charge
Of the Sleeping Car Express.
From the driver and the guards to the bagmen playing cards
He will supervise them all, more or less.
Down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces
Of the travellers in the First and the Third;
He establishes control by a regular patrol
And he'd know at once if anything occurred.
He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking
And it's certain that he doesn't approve
Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet
When Skimble is about and on the move.
You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks!
He's a Cat that cannot be ignored;
So nothing goes wrong on the Northern Mail
When Skimbleshanks is aboard.

Oh, it's very pleasant when you have found your little den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet
And there's not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light-you can make it dark or bright;
There's a handle that you turn to make a breeze.
There's a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.
Then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly
"Do you like your morning tea weak or strong?"
But Skimble's just behind him and was ready to remind him,
For Skimble won't let anything go wrong.
And when you creep into your cosy berth
And pull up the counterpane,
You ought to reflect that it's very nice
To know that you won't be bothered by mice—
You can leave all that to the Railway Cat,
The Cat of the Railway Train!

In the watches of the night he is always fresh and bright;
Every now and then he has a cup of tea
With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he's keeping on the watch,
Only stopping here and there to catch a flea.
You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.
But you saw him at Dumfries, where he speaks to the police
If there's anything they ought to know about:
When you get to Gallowgate there you do not have to wait—
For Skimbleshanks will help you to get out!
He gives you a wave of his long brown tail
Which says: "I'll see you again!
You'll meet without fail on the Midnight Mail
The Cat of the Railway Train."
 
 
 

Monday, October 22, 2012

R.E. Slater - Sea Change (a poem)




Sea Change
by R.E. Slater


It was there. Seen almost immediately in the
greying disappointment pooling in her eyes -
shading a sullen face wrenched in faraway muse.
Seen in the profound sadness wasting away,
leaving me feeling lost and alone. Refusing
chaste solace when dully looking away, guardedly
watching the cold, heavy tides break - entwining
castaway lovers until dawn’s early lights.

A familiar feeling sounding lost souls, plunged
love’s deepest fathoms cast its hastening bights.
Constant as the endless tide’s fey running seas -
ebbing and flowing enchanted shoreline lees.
Adrift true loves that never truly abides -
eternally searching forlorn worlds fled a’flight.
Pierced Venus’ oft scouring shoals, chastened
bright coral’d reefs of valiant dreams dispelled.

Drowned in dark melancholy’s deepest waters -
(whose old despairs I fought vainly to avoid).
Overwhelmed in the lostness of my kindred soul
alive the brimming haunts of betrayal’s sad eyes.
Bravely resisting time’s cruel, crooked hand -
numbed a greying sea’s massing rolling pitch.
Casting long and low against its swelling pride -
washing in-and-out, tide-upon-tide, too gladly
exhausted upon a sandy surf’s glistening foams.

Abroad, it was, that I found myself discovered
(almost immediately as I discovering looked).
Transfixed a nethering shoal’s nearest redoubts,
cradling fey promising songs of virginal rebirth.
Like quicksilver’d flashes lit a ruddy dawn’s rays,
whispering demurely ’neath morning’s low hums.
Flashing on lifted waves thrusting ashore, met
a lifting fog’s muted, misty skirt, casting astern.

A’ sudden plunged love o’er the face of the deep,
slipping, sliding, unbroken its vast running tides.
Cast a turbulent ocean’s moaning deep loss -
awash blissful songs sung amid carefree daze.
Making me know no other place so safe -
cradled within my castaway lover’s moiling gaze.
Bearing me up even as I was birthed, across
undying storms bursting Atlantic’s grey bows.

Once a’ locked hoary time’s toiling, carnal seaways -
(bestirr’d sirens’ healing songs of blackest depths).
Offering wanton treasures flung flotsam’d regrets
lest thrust upon carrying seas I wouldst forever sail.
Where no wind nor trouble could rightly prevail -
so deep, and great, this thrice-bound love brought.
Newborn into the shadows of my riparian haunts -
bending southwards bound upon steady rhythm
safely haven’d within heaven’s flaming descents.


- R.E. Slater
Oct 22, 2012
rev. Oct 25, Nov 5-6, 19, 2012; Jan 8, 2013

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved



Sunday, October 21, 2012

Nicholas Sparks & Gabriel Yared - Message in a Bottle - Letters, Quotes, Videos


[Edited for Video June 22, 2021; if the
videos expire please let me know by comment]



Gabriel Yared - Message in a bottle soundtrack - Theresa & Garrett



Message in a bottle - Catherine's letter





Catherine's Letter to Garrett

To all the ships on the sea and to all the ports. To all my friends, my family and strangers. This is a message and a prayer. The message is that during my trips I found a great truth. I have already found what everybody is looking for… and few find: the person for whom I was born to love. Somebody like me, from Outer Banks county… from the mysterious Atlantic. A person rich in simple values… a person who learnt on his own. A port in which I am always at home. The wind, the problems… or a little death can’t destroy this house. I pray for all the people to know such love and to recover from it. If my prayer is listened to, there won’t be guilt any more, or regrets. Neither anger. Please, God. Amen!

Catherine 


Message in a bottle Catherine's letter
(as read by Catherine)


Garrett's 1st Letter to Catherine

Dear Catherine,

 Imdb - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139462/
I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you in so long. I feel I’ve been lost… no bearings, no compass. I kept crashing into things, a little crazy, I guess. I’ve never been lost before. You were my true North. I could always steer for home when you were my home. Forgive me for being so angry when you left. I still think some mistake’s been made… and I’m waiting for God to take it back. But I’m doing better now. The work helps. Most of all, you help me. You came into my dream last night with that smile… That always held me like a lover… rocked me like a child. All I remember from the dream…is a feeling of peace. I woke up with that feeling… and tried to keep it alive as long as I could.

I’m writing to tell you that I’m on a journey toward that peace. And to tell you I’m sorry about so many things. I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you… so you never spent a minute being cold or scared or sick. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to find the words… to tell you what I was feeling. I’m sorry I never fixed the screen door. I fixed it now.

I’m sorry I ever fought with you. I’m sorry I didn’t apologize more. I was too proud. I’m sorry I didn’t bring you more compliments… on everything you wore and every way you fixed your hair. I’m sorry I didn’t hold on to you with so much strength that even God couldn’t pull you away.

All my love,

Garrett


Music from "Message in a bottle" Gabriel Yared
Where the Boundries Are



Teresa



Message in a Bottle ... my favorite scene (3/5) second letter



Garrett's 2nd Letter to Catherine

My Darling Catherine,

Where are you? And why, I wonder as I sit alone in a darkened house, have we been forced apart?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, no matter how hard I try to understand. The reason is plain, but my mind forces me to dismiss it and I am torn by anxiety in all my waking hours. I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.

I try to remember the way we once were, on the breezy deck of Happenstance. Do you recall how we worked on her together? We became a part of the ocean as we rebuilt her, for we both knew it was the ocean that brought us together. It was times like those that I understood the meaning of true happiness. At night, we sailed on blackened water and I watched as the moonlight reflected your beauty. I would watch you with awe and know in my heart that we’d be together forever. Is it always that way, I wonder, when two people are in love? I don’t know, but if my life since you were taken from me is any indication, then I think I know the answers. From now on, I know I will be alone.

I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn’t enough. It will never be enough, this I know, yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside.

Is it possible that you know how I feel without you? When I dream, I like to think you do. Before we came together, I moved through life without meaning, without reason. I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step toward finding you. We were destined to be together.

But now, alone in my house, I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him, and I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

Garrett


Message in a Bottle ... my favorite scene (4/5) third letter



Garrett's 3rd and Final Letter to Catherine (Undelievered)

Dear Catherine,

My life started when I knew you and it ended when you died. I thought that keeping our memories we would both live. But I was wrong. A woman called Theresa showed me that if I opened my heart I could love again, irrespective of the intensity of suffering. 


Storm - Gabriel Yared - Message in a Bottle - Soundtrack - (1999)



Message in a Bottle ... my favorite scene (5/5) final scene



Message in a Bottle Quotes

If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her---then don't let her go.

True love is rare, and it's the only thing that gives life real meaning.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go. I love you, T.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.

Someday you'll find someone special again. People who've been in love once usually do. It's in their nature.

But because they didn't see each other very often, their relationship had more ups and downs than either of them had experienced before. Since everything felt right when they were together, everything felt wrong when they weren't.

There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.

I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step towards finding you.

The ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...

Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.
If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.

But even though she was attractive, there was something else about her that caught his eye. She was intelligent, he could sense that right away, and confident, too, as if she were able to move through life on her own terms. To him, these were the things that really mattered. Without them, beauty was nothing.

That initial anger she had felt turned to sadness, and now it had become something else, almost a dullness of sorts. Even though she was constantly in motion, it seemed as if nothing special ever happened to her anymore. Each day seemed exactly like the last, and she had trouble differentiating among them. 


New Dream
Message in a Bottle-Soundtrack: Gabriel Yared






I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless them, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

It is at moments like these that I know my what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return.I am here because there is no other place to be.

She was everything I wanted. She was beautiful and charming, with a quick sense of humor, and she supported me in everything I did.

It's impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.

If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been.

Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.

As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man -- the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world, however, men like that simply didn't exist.

At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.

And suddenly she knew exactly why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It wasn't that he was unusually attractive, or ambitious, or even charming. He was partly those things, but more important, he seemed to live life on his own terms.

Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part...I do not know where I am going or when I will get there.

Theresa Osborne: If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.

I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you.

I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away.

Love is Love no matter old you are, and I knew if I gave you enough time, you'd come back to me.

To all the ships at sea, and all the ports of call. To my family and to all friends and strangers. This is a message, and a prayer. The message is that my travels taught me a great truth. I already had what everyone is searching for and few ever find. The one person in the world who I was born to love forever. A person, like me, of the outer banks and the blue Atlantic mystery. A person rich in simple treasures. Self-made. Self-taught. A harbor where I am forever home. And no wind, or trouble or even a little death can knock down this house. The prayer is that everyone in the world can know this kind of love and be healed by it. If my prayer is heard, there will be an erasing of all guilt and all regret and an end to all anger. Please, God. Amen.

I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.

...if they were meant to be together they would find a way to do it.

I wish we didn't live so far apart... You're kind of addicting.

Who do you think it was that brought the bottle to her?

I think... that when it comes to us, anything is possible.

They continued to watch each other from across the room, both frozen for a moment by the shadow of distant possibilities.

There are lots of real men out there - men who could fall in love with you at the drop of a hat.

I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him.

Real people had real agendas, real demands, real expectations about how other people should behave.

Someday you'll find someone special again. People who've been in love once usually do. It's in their nature.

The ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...
I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away.

Each recognized the fact that real commitment could be proven only through the passage of time.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

Thomas Carlyle Quotations & Biography

 
QUOTATIONS
 
Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)
Scottish author, essayist, & historian


Scottish author, essayist, & historian; wrote "Sartor Resartus" 1833-1834,
"On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History" 1841

- 22 Quotations in other collections
- Search for Thomas Carlyle at Amazon.com
 
(for many more Carlyle quotes go to link above)
 
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
 
He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.
 
No pressure, no diamonds.
 
A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.
 
If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
 
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.
 
There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.
 
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.
 
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
 
Every noble work is at first impossible.
 
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
 
Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
 
A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
 
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.
 
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
 
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
 
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

Read more at - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_carlyle.html#foZeK2TED8vm5Ccr.99



From QuotationsPage - http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Thomas_Carlyle/
 
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
 
All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.
 
Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
 
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Speech
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Ignorance
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

Conceit
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity. The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Leadership
The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Silence
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is as shallow as time. (Essay on Sir Walter Scott, 1881)

Work
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. (Past and Present, 1843)

Government
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government. (Past and Present, 1843)



BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)
Scottish author, essayist, & historian

From Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.[1] He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.
 
Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected to become a preacher by his parents, but while at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. His combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity, made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order. He brought a trenchant style to his social and political criticism and a complex literary style to works such as The French Revolution: A History (1837). Dickens used Carlyle's work as a primary source for the events of the French Revolution in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.

 


CarlyleThomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, critic, and sociological writer. was born in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, eldest child of James Carlyle, stonemason, and Margaret (Aitken) Carlyle. The father was stern, irascible, a puritan of the puritans, but withal a man of rigid probity and strength of character. The mother, too, was of the Scottish earth, and Thomas' education was begun at home by both the parents. From the age of five to nine he was at the village school; from nine to fourteen at Annan Grammar School. where he showed proficiency in mathematics and was well grounded in French and Latin. In November 1809 he walked to Edinburgh, and attended courses at the University till 1814, with the ultimate aim of becoming a minister. He left without a degree, became a mathematical tutor at Annan Academy in 1814, and three years later abandoned all thoughts of entering the Kirk, having reached a theological position incompatible with its teachings. He had begun to learn German in Edinburgh, and had done much independent reading outside the regular curriculum. Late in 1816 he moved to a school in Kirkcaldy, where he became the intimate associate of Edward Irving, an old boy of Annan School, and now also a schoolmaster. This contact was Carlyle's first experience of true intellectual companionship, and the two men became lifelong friends. He remained there two years, was attracted by Margaret Gordon, a lady of good family (whose friends vetoed an engagement), and in October 1818 gave up schoolmastering and went to Edinburgh, where he took mathematical pupils and made some show of reading law.
 
During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."
 
For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.
In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.
 
Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth Carlyle at first made an ill impression; but a literary correspondence was begun, and on October 17, 1826, after a courtship that was in some sort a battle of strong wills, the two were married and went to live at Comely Bank, Edinburgh starting with a capital of £200. Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, was a cousin of the Welshes. He accepted Carlyle as a contributor, and during 1827 printed two important articles — on "Richter" and "The State of German Literature."
 
The Foreign Review published two penetrating essays on Goethe; and in 1827 a cordial correspondence was begun with the great German writer, who backed Carlyle (unsuccessfully) for the vacant Chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. Another application for a university chair, this time at the new University of London, failed equally. An attempt at a novel was destroyed.
 
In May 1828 the Carlyles moved to Craigenputtock, an isolated farm belonging to the Welsh family, which was their permanent home until 1834. Carlyle lived the life of a recluse and scholar, and his clever wife, immersed in household duties and immured in solitude, led a dull and empty existence. Jeffrey, who paid visits in 1828 and 1830, said: "Bring your blooming Eve out of your blasted Paradise, and seek shelter in the lower world," but Carlyle was lacking in consideration for his partner, and would not. Jeffrey even thought of Carlyle as his successor in the editorship of the Edinburgh, when he gave it up in 1829, but the matter could not be arranged. A memorable visit, in August 1833, was that of the young Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was kindly received and became a fast friend.
 
At Craigenputtock was written the first of Carlyle's great commentaries on life in general, Sartor Resartus, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine between November 1833 and August 1834. The idea of a philosophy of clothes was not new; there are debts to Swift, Jean Paul Richter, and others; but what were new were the amazing, humorous energy, the moral force, the resourceful (if eccentric) command over English. It was damned by the press, and was not issued in book-form until 1838; but it is now numbered among his most significant works. Other notable writings of this time were essays on Voltaire, Novalis, and Richter (a new paper) in the Foreign Review.
 
After visits to Edinburgh and London, and an unsuccessful application for a professorship of astronomy at Edinburgh in January 1834, Carlyle decided to set up house in London, settling at 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea. His struggle to live was made more severe by his refusal to engage in journalism: even an offer of work on The Times was rejected; and instead a grandiose history of the French Revolution was begun. In the spring of 1835 occurred one of the great heroisms of literature. The manuscript of the first volume of the new work had been lent to the philosopher, J. S. Mill, who in his turn had lent it to a Mrs. Taylor. An illiterate housekeeper took it for waste paper, and it was burnt. Mill was inconsolable; Carlyle behaved with the utmost stoicism and nobility, and was only with difficulty induced to accept £ 100 as a slight pecuniary compensation.
 
The French Revolution was re-written, and its publication in January 1837 brought the praise of Thackeray, Southey, Hallam, and others of weight, and consolidated Carlyle's reputation as one of the foremost men of letters of the day. Even so, it sold slowly, and he had to resort to public lecturing (arranged by Harriet Martineau) to raise funds; and it was only in 1842, when Mrs. Welsh died and left them an annuity, that the Carlyles were able to rid themselves of financial worry.
 
Of outward event Carlyle's life contains little. From his establishment in London his history was one of enormous work and the gradual building up of a literary fame that became world-wide. In the 'forties and onward he became more and more sought after by men of letters, statesmen and the aristocracy, and his friends included such names as Monckton Milnes, Tyndall, Peel, Froude, Grote, Browning, and Ruskin. One friendship, with the clergyman, John Sterling, was close and warm, and left its record in the Life published in 1851. Another, with Lady Harriet Ashburton, caused grave dissension in the Carlyle home, being strongly disapproved by Mrs. Carlyle, though there was no suggestion of anything more than high mutual regard.
 
In literature Carlyle moved more and more away from democratic ideas. Chartism, On Heroes Past and Present, and Cromwell all developed his thesis that the people need a strong and ruthless ruler and should obey him. Latter-day Pamphlets, which includes "Hudson's Statue," poured out all his contempt on the philanthropic and humanitarian tendencies of the day. His last monumental exaltation of strength was a six-volume history of Friedrich II of Prussia: Called Fredrick the Great. Following his custom, he paid two visits to Germany to survey the scene (in 1852 and 1858), and turned over great masses of material. The first two volumes appeared in the autumn of 1858, were at once translated into German, and were hailed as a masterpiece. The remaining volumes appeared in 1862, 1864, and 1865. In this last year Carlyle was made Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh. While he was still in the north, after delivering his inaugural address, he learned of the sudden death of his wife, from heart disease, and was thereby plunged into the deepest distress.
 
Thenceforward a gradual decadence supervened. In the autumn of 1866 Carlyle joined the committee for the defense of Governor Eyre, of Jamaica, who had been recalled for alleged cruelty in the suppression of a rebellion. The next year he wrote the tract, Shooting Niagara, against the Reform Act (which had introduced improvements into the British franchise system). He sided with the Prussians in the war of 1870-71; in 1874 he was awarded the high Prussian order "Pour le Merite," and the same year refused Disraeli's offer of a Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and a pension. He died on February 4, 1881, and was buried at Ecclefechan.
 
Carlyle's personal character and his philosophy are alike full of contradictions and hardly susceptible to summary exposition. The most high-minded devotee of the ideal, he could yet be in the last degree churlish and uncharitable to the work and personalities of others — even to such a man as Charles Lamb. An apostle of courage and endurance, he was yet the most vociferous and ungracious of grumblers. His love for his wife was deep and abiding, yet her life with him was often a torment. While he abhorred philanthropy and liberal legislation along utilitarian lines, and came more and more to admire despotism, he could be scathing about the "game-preserving aristocracy" and in his personal life was quick to relieve distress.
 
No coherent body of philosophy can be extracted from his teachings: it is rather as a prophet and a seer that he has his place. He was blind to the greatest phenomenon of his age — the rise of science as an interpreter of the universe — and spoke insultingly of Darwin. Formal economics also incurred his censure. His theological attitude is hardest of all to define. At an early age he found himself unable to subscribe to any of the orthodox creeds, but he was even more condemnatory of atheism than of the Kirk, and never ceased to believe passionately in a personal God. His central tenet was the worship of strength; and, after beginning as a radical, he came to despise the democratic system and increasingly to extol the value and necessity of strong and stern government, in which the people themselves should have no share.
 
In literature he was the pioneer who explored and made known the work of modern Germany. His literary judgments were penetrating, and (when he had a congenial subject) just; and on men like Voltaire, Burns, and Johnson he gave verdicts that approached finality. At a historian he is in the highest rank. Bating certain unimportant errors of detail, he illumined the past with astonishing insight and made his personages actual and his scenes dramatic. His style is an extraordinary farrago, leaping not flowing, coining strange words and performing extravagant evolutions; yet cumulatively it impresses as a great style, suffused with humor, irony, and passion; impossible to imitate, utterly personal, burning, and convincing.
 
"Carlyle's genius," wrote Hector Macpherson, "was many-sided. He touched and ennobled the national life at all points. He lifted a whole generation of young men out of the stagnating atmosphere of materialism and dead orthodoxy into the region of the ideal. With the Master of Balliol, we believe that 'no English writer has done more to elevate and purify our ideas of life and to make us conscious that the things of the spirit are real, and that in the last resort there is no other reality.'" (From British Authors of the Nineteenth Century, 115-118