Moreover, Carlyle had done something which was unusual at that time.  He had taught in several local schools; but presently he came back to Edinburgh and openly made literature his profession.  It was a daring thing to do; but Carlyle had unbounded confidence in himself—­the confidence of a giant, striding forth into a forest, certain that he can make his way by sheer strength through the tangled meshes and the knotty branches that he knows will meet him and try to beat him back.  Furthermore, he knew how to live on very little; he was unmarried; and he felt a certain ardor which beseemed his age and gifts.

Through the kindness of friends, he received some commissions to write in various books of reference; and in 1824, when he was twenty-nine years of age, he published a translation of Legendre’s Geometry.  In the same year he published, in the London Magazine, his Life of Schiller, and also his translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.  This successful attack upon the London periodicals and reviews led to a certain complication with the other two characters in this story.  It takes us to Jane Welsh, and also to Edward Irving.

Irving was three years older than Carlyle.  The two men were friends, and both of them had been teaching in country schools, where both of them had come to know Miss Welsh.  Irving’s seniority gave him a certain prestige with the younger men, and naturally with Miss Welsh.  He had won honors at the university, and now, as assistant to the famous Dr. Chalmers, he carried his silk robes in the jaunty fashion of one who has just ceased to be an undergraduate.  While studying, he met Miss Welsh at Haddington, and there became her private instructor.

This girl was regarded in her native town as something of a personage.  To read what has been written of her, one might suppose that she was almost a miracle of birth and breeding, and of intellect as well.  As a matter of fact, in the little town of Haddington she was simply prima inter pares.  Her father was the local doctor, and while she had a comfortable home, and doubtless a chaise at her disposal, she was very far from the “opulence” which Carlyle, looking up at her from his lowlier surroundings, was accustomed to ascribe to her.  She was, no doubt, a very clever girl; and, judging from the portraits taken of her at about this time, she was an exceedingly pretty one, with beautiful eyes and an abundance of dark glossy hair.

Even then, however, Miss Welsh had traits which might have made it certain that she would be much more agreeable as a friend than as a wife.  She had become an intellectuelle quite prematurely—­at an age, in fact, when she might better have been thinking of other things than the inwardness of her soul, or the folly of religious belief.

Even as a young girl, she was beset by a desire to criticize and to ridicule almost everything and every one that she encountered.  It was only when she met with something that she could not understand, or some one who could do what she could not, that she became comparatively humble.  Unconsciously, her chief ambition was to be herself distinguished, and to marry some one who could be more distinguished still.