The period following his university course was one of storm and stress for
Carlyle. Much to the grief of the father whom he loved, he had given up the
idea of entering the ministry. Wherever he turned, doubts like a thick fog
surrounded him,--doubts of God, of his fellow-men, of human progress, of
himself. He was poor, and to earn an honest living was his first problem.
He tried successively teaching school, tutoring, the study of law, and
writing miscellaneous articles for the _Edinburgh Encyclopedia_. All the
while he was fighting his doubts, living, as he says, "in a continual,
indefinite, pining fear." After six or seven years of mental agony, which
has at times a suggestion of Bunyan's spiritual struggle, the crisis came
in 1821, when Carlyle suddenly shook off his doubts and found himself. "All
at once," he says in _Sartor_, "there arose a thought in me, and I asked
myself: 'What _Art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore like a coward dost thou
forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped!
What is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well,
Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may,
will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer
whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample
Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come then; I
will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream
of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever."
This struggle between fear and faith, and the triumph of the latter, is
recorded in two remarkable chapters, "The Everlasting No" and "The
Everlasting Yea," of _Sartor Resartus_.
Carlyle now definitely resolved on a literary life, and began with any work
that offered a bare livelihood. He translated Legendre's _Geometry_ from
the French, wrote numerous essays for the magazines, and continued his
study of German while making translations from that language. His
translation of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ Appeared in 1824, his _Life of
Schiller_ in 1825, and his _Specimens of German Romance_ in 1827. He began
at this time a correspondence with Goethe, his literary hero, which lasted
till the German poet's death in 1832. While still busy with "hack work,"
Carlyle, in 1826, married Jane Welsh, a brilliant and beautiful woman,
whose literary genius almost equaled that of her husband. Soon afterwards,
influenced chiefly by poverty, the Carlyles retired to a farm, at Craigen-
puttoch (Hawks' Hill), a dreary and lonely spot, far from friends and even
neighbors. They remained here six years, during which time Carlyle wrote
many of his best essays, and _Sartor Resartus_, his most original work. The
latter went begging among publishers for two years, and was finally
published serially in _Fraser's Magazine_, in 1833-1834. By this time
Carlyle had begun to attract attention as a writer, and, thinking that one
who made his living by the magazines should be in close touch with the
editors, took his wife's advice and moved to London "to seek work and
bread." He settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea,--a place made famous by More,
Erasmus, Bolingbroke, Smollett, Leigh Hunt, and many lesser lights of
literature,--and began to enjoy the first real peace he had known since
childhood. In 1837 appeared _The French Revolution_, which first made
Carlyle famous; and in the same year, led by the necessity of earning
money, he began the series of lectures--_German. Literature_ (1837),
_Periods of European Culture_ (1838), _Revolutions of Modern Europe_
(1839), _Heroes and Hero Worship_ (1841)--which created a sensation in
London. "It was," says Leigh Hunt, "as if some Puritan had come to life
again, liberalized by German philosophy and his own intense reflection and