red from insomnia and dyspepsia, and he tired of
law. He was also sorely bestead by mental and spiritual conflicts, which
came to a crisis in Leith Walk in June 1821 in a sudden uprising of
defiance to the devil and all his works, upon which the clouds lifted.
For the next two years, 1822-24, he acted as tutor to Charles Buller
(whose promising political career was cut short by his premature death)
and his brother. On the termination of this engagement he decided upon a
literary career, which he began by contributing articles to the
_Edinburgh Encyclopaedia_. In 1824 he translated Legendre's _Geometry_ (to
which he prefixed an essay on Proportion), and Goethe's _Wilhelm
Meister_; he also wrote for the _London Magazine_ a _Life of Schiller_.
About this time he visited Paris and London, where he met Hazlitt,
Campbell, Coleridge, and others. Thereafter he returned to Dumfriesshire.
In the following year (1826) he _m._ Jane Baillie Welsh, and settled in
Edin. Here his first work was _Specimens of German Romance_ (4 vols.) A
much more important matter was his friendship with Jeffrey and his
connection with the _Edinburgh Review_, in which appeared, among others,
his essays on _Richter_, _Burns_, _Characteristics_, and _German Poetry_.
In 1828 C. applied unsuccessfully for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in
St. Andrews, and the same year he went to Craigenputtock, a small
property in Dumfriesshire belonging to Mrs. C., where they remained for
several years, and where many of his best essays and _Sartor Resartus_
were written, and where his correspondence with Goethe began. In 1831 he
went to London to find a publisher for _Sartor_, but was unsuccessful,
and it did not appear in book form until 1838, after having come out in
_Fraser's Magazine_ in 1833-34. The year last mentioned found him finally
in London, settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, his abode for the rest of his
life. He immediately set to work on his _French Revolution_. While it was
in progress he in 1835 lent the MS. to J.S. Mill, by whose servant nearly
the whole of the first vol. was burned, in spite of which misfortune the
work was ready for publication in 1837. Its originality, brilliance, and
vividness took the world by storm, and his reputation as one of the
foremost men of letters in the country was at once and finally
established. In the same year he appeared as a public lecturer, and
delivered four courses on _German Literature_, _Periods of European
Culture_, _