and there can be little doubt that they would have
ultimately been married, were it not that the eldest daughter of a
Kirkcaldy parson, Miss Martin, had 'managed to charm Irving for the time
being,' and an engagement followed.

Before Carlyle had drifted into Edinburgh he had, of course, heard of
the fame of Francis Jeffrey. He heard him once speaking in the General
Assembly 'on some poor cause.' Jeffrey's pleading seemed to Carlyle
'abundantly clear, full of liveliness, free flowing ingenuity.' 'My
admiration,' he adds, 'went frankly with that of others, but I think it
was hardly of very deep character.' When Carlyle was in the 'slough of
despond,' he bethought him of Jeffrey, this time as editor of the
_Edinburgh Review_. He resolved to try the 'great man' with an actual
contribution. The subject was a condemnation of a new French book, in
which a mechanical theory of gravitation was elaborately worked out by
the author. He got 'a certain feeble but enquiring quasi-disciple' of
his own to act as amanuensis, from whom he kept his ulterior purpose
quite secret. Looking back through the dim vista of seven-and-forty
years, this is what Carlyle says of that anxious time: 'Well do I
remember those dreary evenings in Bristo Street; oh, what ghastly
passages and dismal successive spasms of attempt at "literary
enterprise"!... My "Review of Pictet" all fairly written out in George
Dalgliesh's good clerk hand, I penned some brief polite Note to the
great Editor, and walked off with the small Parcel one night to his
address in George Street. I very well remember leaving it with his valet
there, and disappearing in the night with various thoughts and doubts!
My hopes had never risen high, or in fact risen at all; but for a
fortnight or so they did not quite die out, and then it was in absolute
zero; no answer, no return of MS., absolutely no notice taken, which was
a form of catastrophe more complete than even I had anticipated! There
rose in my head a pungent little Note which might be written to the
great man, with neatly cutting considerations offered him from the small
unknown ditto; but I wisely judged it was still more dignified to let
the matter lie as it was, and take what I had got for my own benefit
only. Nor did I ever mention it to almost anybody, least of all to
Jeffrey in subsequent changed times, when at anyrate it was fallen
extinct.'[4]

Carlyle's star was, however, in the ascendant, for in 1822 he became
tuto