Fifty years before, he had left the University a poor and unknown lad.  Now at seventy-one, a famous man, he returned to make his speech upon entering his office as Rector.

This speech was a splendid success, his reception magnificent, “a perfect triumph,” as a friend telegraphed to Mrs. Carlyle waiting anxiously for news in London.  For a few days Carlyle lingered in Scotland.  Then he was suddenly recalled home by the terrible news that his wife had died suddenly while out driving.  It was a crushing blow.  Only when it was too late did Carlyle realize all that his wife had been to him.  She was, as he wrote on her tombstone, “Suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.”

The light indeed had gone out.  The rest of his life was a sad twilight, filled with cruel remorse.  He still wrote a little, and friends were kind, but his real work in life was done, and he felt bitterly alone.

Honors were offered him, a title if he would, a pension.  But he declined them all.  For fifteen years life dragged along.  Then at the age of eighty-five he died.

He might have lain in Westminster among the illustrious dead.  But such had not been his wish, so he was buried beside his father and mother in the old churchyard at Ecclefechan.

BOOKS TO READ

Stories from Carlyle, by D. M. Ford.  Readings from Carlyle, by W. Keith Leask.

Chapter LXXXIII THACKERAY—­THE CYNIC?

A LITTLE time after Carlyle’s French Revolution was published he wrote to his brother, “I understand there have been many reviews of a very mixed character.  I got one in the Times last week.  The writer is one, Thackeray, a half-monstrous Cornish giant, kind of painter, Cambridge man, and Paris newspaper correspondent, who is now writing for his life in London. . . .  His article is rather like him, and I suppose calculated to do the book good.”

In these few sentences we have a sketch of William Makepeace Thackeray’s life, from the time he finished his education up to the age of twenty-six, when Carlyle met him.  He was the son of Richmond Thackeray, a collector in the service of the East India Company, and was born in Calcutta in 1811.

Little Billy-man, as his mother called him, in after years could remember very little of India.  He remembered seeing crocodiles and a very tall, lean father.  When Billy was quite a tiny chap, his father died.  Soon after, the little boy was sent home, as Indian children always are, but his mother remained out in India, and a year or two later married Major Henry Carmichael Smyth.  Major Smyth was a simple, kindly gentleman, and proved a good stepfather to his wife’s little boy, who, when he grew up and became famous drew his stepfather’s portrait in the character of Colonel Newcome.