" The
posthumous publication of some of his writings, e.g. of the fragment of
the novel _Wotton Reinfred_, reconciles us to the loss of those which have
not been recovered.
In the vacations, spent at Mainhill, he began to study German, and
corresponded with his College friends. Many of Carlyle's early letters,
reproduced in the volumes edited by Mr. Charles E. Norton, are written in
that which, according to Voltaire, is the only unpermissible style, "the
tiresome"; and the thought, far from being precocious, is distinctly
commonplace, e.g. the letter to Robert Mitchell on the fall of Napoleon;
or the following to his parents: "There are few things in this world more
valuable than knowledge, and youth is the season for acquiring it"; or
to James Johnstone the trite quotation, "Truly pale death overturns with
impartial foot the hut of the poor man and the palace of the king."
Several are marred by the egotism which in most Scotch peasants of
aspiring talent takes the form of perpetual comparison of themselves
with others; refrains of the ambition against which the writer elsewhere
inveighs as the "kettle tied to the dog's tail." In a note to Thomas
Murray he writes:--
Ever since I have been able to form a wish, the wish of being known
has been the foremost. Oh, Fortune! bestow coronets and crowns and
principalities and purses, and pudding and power, upon the great and
noble and fat ones of the earth.
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