Note 45 — PART III.—1822–1828

From the Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, edited by Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, we learn that Carlyle had, on the same day on which he wrote this letter to Procter, written to Goethe soliciting a testimonial from him for the same occasion. The testimonial was sent from Weimar, but not till the 14th of March; and it came too late to be of use. A copy of the original German, with an English translation, is printed in Mr. Norton’s volume. It is a document of five pages, and perhaps the most unbusiness-like thing ever sent in the shape of a testimonial on behalf of a candidate for a Scottish Professorship. It begins thus:—“True conviction springs from the heart; the Soul, the real seat of the Conscience, judges concerning what may be permitted and what may not be permitted far more surely than the Understanding, which will see into and determine many things without hitting the right mark. A well-disposed and self-observant man, wishing to respect himself and to live at peace with hims}elf, and yet conscious of many an imperfection perplexing his inner life, and grieved by many a fault compromising him in the eyes of others, whereby he finds himself disturbed and opposed from within and from without, will seek by all methods to free himself from such impediments.” Then follow two paragraphs of continued remarks on the intellectual or literary life in general; after which the testimonial becomes more specific, thus:—“It may now without arrogance be asserted that German Literature has effected much for humanity in this respect,—that a moral-psychological tendency pervades it, introducing not ascetic timidity, but free culture in accordance with nature, and a cheerful obedience to law; and therefore I have observed with pleasure Mr. Carlyle’s admirably profound study of this Literature, and I have noticed with sympathy how he has not only been able to discover the beautiful and human, the good and great, in us, but has also contributed what was his own, and has endowed us with the treasures of his genius. It must be granted that he has a clear judgment as to our Æsthetic and Ethic writers, and, at the same time, his own way of looking at them, which proves that he rests on an original foundation and has the power to develop in himself the essentials of what is good and beautiful. In this sense, I may well regard him as a man who would fill a Chair of Moral Philosophy with single-heartedness, with purity, effect, and influence, enlightening the youth entrusted to him as to their real duties, in accordance with his disciplined thought, his natural gifts, and his acquired knowledge, aiming at leading and urging their minds to moral activity, and thereby steadily guiding them towards a religious completeness.”—When one imagines the probable effects on the minds of the St. Andrews Principal and Professors of 1828 of such a testimonial from the German sage, known to them so dimly, and perhaps in ways that made them suspicious of him, one’s impression is that, if they had been thinking of appointing Carlyle, the presentation of this testimonial would have been likely to stop them. Never having been presented, it can have done no harm.