MORE CARLYLE LETTERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 288, 29 August 1908, Page 12

MORE CARLYLE LETTERS.

Three unpublished 1 letters by Cartyle are printed in the "Revue Gcrmanique." They are addressed to Dr. Julius, of Hamburg, whoso acquaintance Carlyle made in Edinburgh, and who helped bim to import books at tho time when he was making his living by translating German, fiction. Some of- the books went' temporarily' astray in the Customs House; whereupon Carlyle exclaims:— " It is thus that the most cunning contrivances of mortals are dissipated into vanity, and gross officers of Customs can frustrate the most kind exertions of friends. Yet I must beg you to pardon those' Boeotian persons, as I have long since done; they know not the mischief they were occasioning, or the good they wore preventing." Later, when Dr. Julius was staying with Mrs. Sarah Austin in Bayswater, Carlyle sent a message inviting him to breakfast at Chelsea. "Tell him wo breakfast at eight," he writes; but it is not known whether Dr. Julius cared to turn out bo early in the morning. ' One of tho • letters to Br. Julius, dated 1827, contains somo literary noiys and gossip:— "The commercial world seems again gathering vigour. In the literary world there is nothing doing.' Our poets are silent, and nothing is heard for the time but tho chirping of a thousand thousand sparrows in the light printwork of the dawn. Southey is sunk; in the ' Catholic Question,' Milman lias written a frosty ' dramatic poem' which ho calls ' Anne Boleyn.V Scott is printing his 'Life of Napoleon,' which is expected soon. . . . . He is said also to bo engaged in a new novel, the scehe of which is Edinburgh. Have you heard of Dugald Stewart's late volumo of Philosophy? fie.is now our sole living psychologist—an old man- above seventy, a truly venerablo person." Carlylo also draws his correspondent's attention to the " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." Tho author, he remarks, "is a man of real talent, and ruined by opium as he says." ,