Note 44 — PART III.—1822–1828

As the dates in this sentence will suggest, the last few paragraphs, narrating the story of Goethe’s frustrated attempt to bring Scott and Carlyle together, did not appear in the paper as originally published in Macmillan, but are an insertion into the present reprint made possible by the information furnished by the two recent publications named. I did, indeed, give an outline sketch of some such affair as it had hung in my memory from talk either with Carlyle himself or with his brother Dr. John Carlyle. But the sketch was hazy, and I now find that it was inaccurate in some points.—Scott and Carlyle, I may here add, were once together in the same room in Edinburgh in a semi-private way. The fact has been communicated to me by Mr. David Douglas, the editor of Scott’s Journal, who had it from Dr. David Aitken, already mentioned in this paper as an intimate friend of Carlyle’s in the Comely Bank days. The scene of the meeting was the shop of Mr. Tait, the publisher, then in an upper floor in Hanover Street. Carlyle and Mr. Aitken, who had been walking in Princes Street, turned aside for a call at Mr. Tait’s. While they were there and talking with Mr. Tait, Scott came in,—well known to both by sight. “Mr. Tait, have you got a copy of Horace at hand? I want to make a quotation,” were Scott’s words on entering. The book having been brought,—a handsome quarto, Dr. Aitken remembered,—Scott sat down with it in his lap, and began to turn over the leaves, Carlyle and Mr. Aitken standing a little way off meanwhile, and Carlyle continuing his talk with Mr. Tait. Soon, as if attracted by the voice or by something said, Scott began to look up, the volume still resting in his lap. Several times he raised his eyes in the same fashion from the book to the two strangers, or to the one who was talking. The expression, as Dr. Aitken interpreted it in recollection, was as if he were saying to himself: “He is a kenspeckle-looking chiel that; I wonder who he is.”—The date of this encounter I do not know. If it was after the affair of the Goethe medals and the unanswered letters (and that is not impossible if we suppose some occasion for a brief visit from Craigenputtock to Edinburgh in 1829 or 1830), one can imagine with what studious aloofness from his great senior Carlyle would comport himself in the accidental interview.