very best grammar of any language for teaching purposes he had ever seen. While we know so little of Carlyle’s Greek and Latin studies in his first University session, it is something to know that he was a pretty diligent reader of books that session from the College Library. Having examined a dusty old folio of the library receipts and outgoings, which chances to have been preserved, I am able to report that Carlyle had duly paid, before December 1809, his deposit or security of one guinea, entitling him to take books out, and that, in that month and the succeeding month of January 1810, he had out the following books, in parcels or in succession, in the following order:—Robertson’s _History of Scotland_, vol. ii.; Cook’s _Voyages_; Byron’s _Narrative_, _i.e._ “the Hon. John Byron’s Narrative of the Great Distresses suffered by Himself and his Companions on the Coast of Patagonia, 1740–6”; the first volume of Gibbon; two volumes of Shakespeare; a volume of the _Arabian Nights_; Congreve’s Works; another volume of the _Arabian Nights_; two volumes of Hume’s _England_; _Gil Blas_; a third volume of Shakespeare; and a volume of the _Spectator_. This is a sufficiently remarkable series of volumes for a boy of fourteen to have had out from the College library; and other books from other libraries may have been lying at the same time on the table in the small room in Simon Square which he shared with Tom Smail. What is most remarkable is the run upon books of voyages and travels, and on classic books of English literature, or books of mere literary amusement, rather than on academic books. Clearly there had been a great deal of previous and very miscellaneous reading at Ecclefechan and Annan, with the already formed result of a passion for reading, and very decided notions and tastes as to the kinds of books that might be worth looking after. But how, whether at Ecclefechan or in Annan, had the sedate boy been attracted to Congreve?