him a horse and was always hospitable and friendly. Other friends were J. G. Lockhart, Connop Thirlwall, and Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, whom in 1841 and afterwards he visited at Fryston. The most important friendship was with William Bingham Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton [q. v.], and his wife, Lady Harriet Baring. They appear first to have met in 1839. Carlyle was thus becoming known in society as well as sought out by young inquirers. Dinner-parties produced indigestion, and his resentment of patronage, fully shared by his wife, made him a rather dangerous guest. His conversation could be most impressive, though he was too intolerant of contradiction. He could not enjoy thoroughly, or tempered enjoyment with remorse, and the spasms of composition were followed by fits of profound gloom and dyspeptic misery.
The conclusion of the ‘French Revolution’ was followed by a period of rather desultory work. Two articles in the ‘Westminster’ (Scott and Varnhagen von Ense) were the chief product of 1838. In 1839 his collected essays first appeared; and in the winter he began to agitate for the formation of the London Library, now almost the only institution where any but the newest books can be freely taken out in the metropolis. The need of such a library had been strongly impressed upon him by his previous labours, and it was successfully started in 1840. Carlyle was its president from 1870 till his death. J. S. Mill had resigned the editorship of the ‘Westminster’ to a young Scotchman named Robertson (Mill, Autobiog. p. 207). He had previously asked Carlyle to write upon Cromwell. Robertson informed Carlyle that he meant to write the article himself. Carlyle was naturally annoyed; but his attention having been drawn to the subject, he began some desultory studies, which ultimately led to the composition of his next great book. Some occasional writings intervened. He had written what was intended as an article for Lockhart. It soon appeared, however, to be unsuitable for the ‘Quarterly.’ Lockhart ‘dared not’ take it. Mill would have accepted it for the ‘Westminster,’ which he was now handing over to Mr. Hickson (ib. p. 220). Mrs. Carlyle and John declared that it was too good for such a fate, and it appeared as a separate book, under the name ‘Chartism,’ at the end of 1839. It may be taken as Carlyle's explicit avowal of the principles which distinguished him equally from whigs, tories, and the ordinary radicals. A thousand copies were sold at once, and a second edition appeared in 1840. In 1841 he published the lectures on ‘Hero-worship’ delivered in the previous year, and his other books were selling well. In 1841 he declined a proposal to stand for a professorship of history at Edinburgh; and in 1844 a similar offer from St. Andrews. He was no longer in need of such support. In 1842, while still preparing for ‘Cromwell,’ and greatly moved by the prevalent misery and discontent, he came across the chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, published in 1840 by the Camden Society, and made the story of Abbot Sampson the nucleus of a discourse upon his familiar topics. It was written in the first seven weeks of 1843, and published as ‘Past and Present’ immediately afterwards. The brilliant picture of a fragment of mediæval life helped the rather confused mass of gloomy rhetoric, and the book made more stir than most of his writings, and has preserved a high position.
Meanwhile he was labouring at ‘Cromwell.’ He had first begun serious work in the autumn of 1840 (Froude, iii. 201). He was now making acquaintance with ‘Dryasdust’ for the first time. He had never been enslaved to a biographical dictionary; and the dreary work of investigating dull records provoked loud lamentations and sometimes despair. His thoughts lay round him ‘all inarticulate, sour, fermenting, bottomless, like a hideous enormous bog of Allen.’ He resolved at last ‘to force and tear and dig some kind of main ditch through it.’ In plain words, it seems, he gave up hopes of writing a regular history; burnt much that he had written; and resolved to begin by making a collection of all Cromwell's extant speeches and letters with explanatory comments. Having finished this, he found to his surprise that he had finished his book (ib. pp. 224, 334). He stayed in London during 1844 and 1845 till the task was done. The book appeared in the autumn of 1845, and was received with general applause. Carlyle's position as a leader of literature was now established. His income was still modest, but sufficient for his strictly economical mode of life. In 1848 he had a fixed income from Craigenputtock of 150l., besides a fluctuating income from his books, ranging from 100l. to 800l. (ib. p. 420). After finishing the ‘French Revolution’ he visited Scotland almost annually to spend some weeks alone with his mother and family. In 1840 his holiday was sacrificed to the preparation for press of the lectures on ‘Hero-worship,’ when he took care to send to his mother part of the sums saved from travelling expenses. In 1844 he was kept at home by ‘Cromwell.’ He paid a few other visits: to the Hares in Sussex in 1840, to Milnes at Fryston in 1841, to an admirer named Redwood, near Cardiff, whence he visited Bishop Thirl-
