For mony a place stands in hard case
Where joy was wont beforrow,
With Humes that dwelt on Leader braes,
And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow.”
[34]. See the article Some Fifty Years Ago in Fraser’s Magazine for June 1879, by Mr. Allingham, then Editor of the Magazine.
[35]. Dr. Hill Burton’s Reminiscences of Professor Wilson, published in Wilson’s Life by Mrs. Gordon, ii. 25.
[36]. Peter Nimmo: A Rhapsody is duly registered among Carlyle’s anonymous contributions to Fraser’s Magazine in Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd’s Bibliography of Carlyle (1881). Should any one entertain doubts, even after such excellent authority, a glance at the prose preface to the thing, signed O. Y. (“Oliver Yorke”), in Fraser for February 1831, will remove them. After specifying Edinburgh University as Peter’s local habitat, and estimating the enormously diffused celebrity he has attained by his long persistence there, the preface proceeds: “The world itself is interested in these matters: singular men are at all times worthy of being described and sung; nay, strictly considered, there is nothing else worthy.... The Napoleon, the Nimmo, are mystic windows through which we glance deeper into the hidden ways of Nature, and discern under a clearer figure the working of that inscrutable Spirit of the Time, and Spirit of Time itself, who is by some thought to be the Devil.” There may remain some little question as to the date of the Rhapsody. That it was written by Carlyle in Annandale seems proved by the phrase “in heaths and splashy weather” in the prologue. The date may have been any time before 1831; but before 1821 seems the most likely.
[37]. Quoted by Mr. Froude in his Nineteenth Century article.
[38]. Mr. Ireland’s copies of early Carlyle Letters, in Mr. Conway’s Memoir, p. 185.
[39]. Ibid.