[8]. Opening Address to Session 1890–1 of The Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh.
[9]. From Macmillan’s Magazine for November and December 1881 and January 1882.
[10]. Another incident which he told me of his first boyish saunterings about Edinburgh is more trivial in itself, but of some interest as showing his observant habits and sense of humour at that early age:—For some purpose or other, he was going down Leith Walk, the long street of houses, stone-yards, and gaps of vacant space, which leads from Edinburgh to its sea-port of Leith. In front of him, and also walking towards Leith, was a solid, quiet-looking countryman. They had not gone far from Edinburgh when there advanced to them from the opposite direction a sailor, so drunk that he needed the whole breadth of the footpath to himself. Taking some umbrage at the countryman, the sailor came to a stop, and addressed him suddenly, “Go to H——,” looking him full in the face. “’Od, man, I’m gaun to Leith,” said the countryman, as if merely pleading a previous engagement, and walked on, Carlyle following him and evading the sailor.
[11]. Quoted by Mr. Froude in his article, “The Early Life of Thomas Carlyle,” in the Nineteenth Century for July 1881.
[12]. Quoted by Mr. Froude, ut supra.
[13]. Printed in an appendix to Mr. Moncure D. Conway’s Memoir of Carlyle (1881), with other fragments of letters which had been copied from the originals by Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester, and which Mr. Ireland put at Mr. Conway’s disposal. The date of this fragment is “August 1814”; and, as it is evidently a reply to Murray’s letter of “July 27,” I have ventured to dissent from Mr. Froude’s conjectural addition of “1816?” to the dating of that letter.
[14]. The first secession from the National Presbyterian Church of Scotland, as established at the Revolution, was in 1733, when differences on account of matters of administration, rather than any difference of theological doctrine, led to the foundation by Ebenezer Erskine of the dissenting communion called The Associate Presbytery or Secession Church. In 1747 this communion split itself, on the question of the obligation of the members to take a certain civil oath, called The Burgher’s Oath, into two portions, calling themselves respectively the Associate or Burgher Synod and the General Associate or Anti-Burgher Synod. The former in 1799 sent off a detachment from itself called the Original Burgher Synod or Old Light Burghers, the main body remaining as the Associate Burgher Synod; and it was to the second that Carlyle’s parents belonged, their pastor in Ecclefechan being that Rev. Mr. Johnston to whose memory Carlyle has paid such a tribute of respect, and whose grave is now to be seen in Ecclefechan churchyard, near Carlyle’s own.
[15]. This is not the first passage at arms on record between a Carlyle and an Irving. As far back as the sixteenth century, when Irvings and Carlyles were even more numerous in the West Border than they are at present, and are heard of, with Maxwells, Bells, Johnstons, and other clans, as keeping those parts in continual turmoil with their feuds, raids, and depredations, it would happen sometimes that a Carlyle jostled with an Irving. Thus, in the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, under date Aug. 28, 1578, we have the statement from an Alexander Carlyle that there had been a controversy “betwix him and Johnne Irvin, callit the Windie Duke.” What the controversy was does not appear; but both parties had been apprehended by Lord Maxwell, then Warden of the West Marches, and lodged in the “pledge-chalmer,” or prison, of Dumfries; and Carlyle’s complaint is that, while the said John Irving had been released on bail, no such favour has been shown to him, but he has been kept in irons for twenty-two weeks. This Alexander Carlyle seems to be the same person as a “Red Alexander Carlyle of Eglisfechan” heard of afterwards in the same Record, under date Feb. 22, 1581–2, as concerned in “some attemptatis and slauchter” committed in the West March, and of which the Privy Council were taking cognisance. On this occasion he is not in controversy with an Irving, but has “Edward Irving of Boneschaw,” and his son “Christie Irving of the Coif,” among his fellow-culprits. Notices of the Dumfriesshire Carlyles and Irvings, separately or in company, are frequent in the Register through the reign of James VI.
[16]. I have been informed, however, that Leslie must have misconceived Carlyle when he took the solution as absolutely Carlyle’s own. It is to be found, I am told, in an old Scottish book of geometry.
[17]. A letter of Carlyle’s among those contributed by Mr. Alexander Ireland to Mr. Conway’s Memoir proves that the momentous reading of Gibbon was before Feb. 20, 1818; and in a subsequent letter in the same collection, of date “July 1818,” he informs his correspondent, “I have quitted all thoughts of the Church, for many reasons, which it would be tedious, perhaps [word not legible], to enumerate.” This piece of information is bedded, however, in some curious remarks on the difficulties of those “chosen souls” who take up opinions different from those of the age they live in, or of the persons with whom they associate. See the letter in Mr. Conway’s volume, pp. 168–170.