On the Choice of Books | Page 4

which possesses some importance
in the sphere of Scottish industry. Our residence is not in the town itself,
but fifteen miles to the north-west, among the granite hills and the
black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway, almost to
the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate stands
forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed, and planted
ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a shade, although
surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small
effort, have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling; here, in
the absence of professorial or other office, we live to cultivate literature
according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a
joyful growth to the rose and flowers of our garden; we hope for health
and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in
part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies,
which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best
medicines for weak nerves. This daily exercise--to which I am much
devoted--is my only recreation: for this nook of ours is the loneliest in
Britain--six miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here
Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of St. Pierre. My
town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition,
and forbode me no good result. But I came hither solely with the design
to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through

which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is
our own; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves,
even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of
literature. Nor is the solitude of such great importance; for a
stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our
British Weimar. And have I not, too, at this moment piled up upon the
table of my little library a whole cart-load of French, German,
American, and English journals and periodicals--whatever may be their
worth? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our
heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where
Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I
was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. And so
one must let time work."
The above letter was printed by Goethe himself, in his Preface to a
German transition of Carlyle's "Life of Schiller," published at Frankfort
in 1830. Other pleasant records of the intercourse between them exist in
the shape of sundry graceful copies of verses addressed by Goethe to
Mrs. Carlyle, which will be found in the collection of his poems.
Carlyle had now fairly started as an original writer. From the lonely
farm of Craigenputtoch went forth the brilliant series of Essays
contributed to the Edinburgh, Westminster, and Foreign Reviews, and
to Fraser's Magazine, which were not long in gaining for him a literary
reputation in both hemispheres. To this lonely farm came one day in
August, 1833, armed with a letter of introduction, a visitor from the
other side of the Atlantic: a young American, then unknown to fame,
by name Ralph Waldo Emerson. The meeting of these two remarkable
men was thus described by the younger of them, many years
afterwards:--
"I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a
letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtoch. It
was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant.
No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn.
I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar
nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an
author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man
of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his
own terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a

cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of
conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with
evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humour,
which floated everything he looked upon. His talk playfully exalting
the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance
with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was
predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely
the man, 'not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the
minister of Dunscore; so that books inevitably made his topics.
"He had names of his own for