Any time for the last fifteen or sixteen years Carlyle had, of course, been familiar with the stalwart figure of Scott, as he might be seen in the legal crowd in the Parliament House, or in his slow walk homewards thence, by the Mound and Princes Street, to his house in Castle Street. Further, it must have been in the Comely Bank days that Carlyle and his wife, when they chanced now and then to be in Princes Street together, would bestow those more particular glances of curiosity on Scott’s approaching figure of which I have heard Carlyle speak. The little dogs that were passing would jump up, they observed, to fawn on the kindly lame gentleman whom they knew by instinct to be a friend to all their species; and Scott, they observed, would stoop to pat the animals, or would look down on them benevolently from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. Observing this so admiringly more than once, why should they themselves have had to pass the great man on such occasions without interchange of personal greetings?
Recently, it is true, circumstances had been less propitious than formerly for access to Scott by persons desiring his acquaintance. When Carlyle and his wife took up house in Edinburgh, that fatal year for Scott was just closing in which there had come the sudden crash of his fortunes. This, followed by the death of Lady Scott, had converted him into a lonesome and bankrupt widower, incapable any longer of his customary hospitalities in Castle Street, and indeed bereft of that house, as of all else, for the behoof of his creditors, and toiling to redeem himself by his Life of Napoleon and other colossal drudgery in lodgings in North St. David Street. But that crisis of his downfall had passed; and the year 1827 had seen him more like himself, and domiciled again, more in household fashion, first in Walker Street, and then in Shandwick Place. There had been the great Theatrical Fund Dinner in Edinburgh on the 23d of February 1827, when Sir Walter was in the chair, and when, in responding to the toast of his health, he divulged formally, amid plaudits such as had never been heard in that hall before, the already open secret that he was the sole author of the Waverley Novels. Later in the same year the voluminous Life of Napoleon was published, with the first series of the Chronicles of the Canongate besides, and the Tales of a Grandfather had been begun. Any time, therefore, shortly before or shortly after that month of July 1827 when Goethe was so much gratified by the receipt of Scott’s letter, there was nothing but the most untoward fate to hinder such a meeting between Scott and Carlyle as would have been pleasant to both. Untoward fate did intervene, however, and with almost diabolic malignity. The story is as follows:—
Struck with the anomaly that two such men should be living together in Edinburgh without knowing each other, Goethe himself had taken very special pains to put the matter right. On the 1st of January 1828, resuming his correspondence with Carlyle after a break of some months, he sent off from Weimar a letter to Carlyle about various matters then in discussion between them, but chiefly to announce that it was to be followed speedily by a box containing several parcels of presents. Most of the presents were to be for Carlyle himself or Mrs. Carlyle, in the form of volumes or sets of volumes selected for them; but one of the parcels was to consist of six bronze medals, respecting which Carlyle was requested to take some special trouble. “I send also six medals, three struck at Weimar and three at Geneva,” Goethe wrote; “two of which please present to Sir Walter Scott, with my best regards; and, as to the others, distribute them to well-wishers.” A fortnight afterwards, i.e. on the 15th of January, the box was duly dispatched from Weimar; but not till the 12th of April did it reach the Carlyles at 21 Comely Bank, though they had received the letter announcing it about two months before. On being opened, it was found to contain, besides the promised medals and other parcels, all neatly and separately packed, another letter from Goethe by way of continuation of the former post-letter. “If you see Sir Walter Scott,” were the first words of this second missive, “pray offer him my warmest thanks for his valued and pleasant letter, written frankly in the beautiful conviction that man must be precious to man. I have also received his Life of Napoleon; and during these winter evenings and nights I have read it through attentively from beginning to end.” Then follows an expression at some length of Goethe’s enjoyment of the great book and high appreciation of its merits. These are characterised glowingly and yet carefully; and altogether the criticism was calculated to please Scott extremely, and to be received by him as a most friendly acknowledgment of his attention in having sent a copy of his Life of Napoleon to his great German contemporary. What interests us, however, is Goethe’s obvious purpose in having made Carlyle the medium of communication between himself and Scott. He wanted to bring the two men together; and with what delicacy of courteous invention he had manœuvred for his object! It was Carlyle that was to deliver to Scott the two medals intended as Goethe’s recognition of Scott’s supremacy in the Literature of Great Britain; and it was Carlyle to whom Goethe sent his first impressions of Scott’s latest large work, and that in a manner almost amounting to an injunction that they should be reported to Scott textually.
If Goethe’s purpose failed, it was not through any fault or negligence on Carlyle’s part. On the 13th of April 1828 he wrote the following letter to Sir Walter:
Edinburgh: 21 Comely Bank:
13th April 1828.
Sir,—In February last I had the honour to receive a letter from Von Goethe, announcing the speedy departure from Weimar of a packet for me, in which, among other valuables, should be found “two medals,” to be delivered, mit verbindlichsten Grüssen, to Sir Walter Scott. By a slow enough conveyance this Kästchen, with its medals in perfect safety, has at length yesterday come to hand, and now lays on me the enviable duty of addressing you.
Among its multifarious contents, the Weimar Box failed not to include a long letter,—considerable portion of which, as it virtually belongs to yourself, you will now allow me to transcribe. Perhaps it were thriftier in me to reserve this for another occasion; but, considering how seldom such a Writer obtains such a Critic, I cannot but reckon it a pity that this friendly intercourse between them should be anywise delayed.
[Carlyle here extracts from Goethe’s second letter, in the original German, the whole of the portion relating to Scott’s Napoleon.]
With regard to the medals,—which are, as I expected, the two well-known likenesses of Goethe himself,—it could be no hard matter to dispose of them safely here, or transmit them to you, if you required it, without delay; but, being in this curious fashion appointed as it were Ambassador between two Kings of Poetry, I would willingly discharge my mission with the solemnity that beseems such a business; and naturally it must flatter my vanity and love of the marvellous to think that by means of a Foreigner whom I have never seen I might now have access to my native Sovereign, whom I have so often seen in public, and so often wished that I had claim to see and know in private and near at hand.