thus familiar with “Sir Peter” in 1830–1, was clearly not aware of his real standing by his University antecedents. Whatever he was latterly, he had at one time been a regularly matriculated student. I have traced him in the University records back and back long before Dr. Burton’s knowledge of him, always paying his matriculation-fee and always taking out one or two classes. In the _Lapsus Linguæ, or College Tatler_, a small satirical magazine of the Edinburgh students for the session 1823–24, “Dr. Peter Nimmo” is the title of one of the articles, the matter consisting of clever imaginary extracts from the voluminous notebooks, scientific and philosophical, of this “very sage man, whose abilities, though at present hid under a bushel, will soon blaze forth, and give a very different aspect to the state of literature in Scotland.” In the session of 1819–20, when Carlyle was attending the Scots Law Class, Peter Nimmo was attending two of the medical classes, having entered himself in the matriculation book, in conspicuously large characters, as “PETRUS BUCHANAN NIMMO, ESQUIRE, &C., DUMBARTONSHIRE,” with the addition that he was in the 17th year of his theological studies. Six years previously, viz. in 1813–14, he is registered as in the 8th year of his literary course. In 1811–12 he was one of Carlyle’s fellow-students in the 2d Mathematical Class under Leslie; and in 1810–11 he was with Carlyle in the 1st Mathematical Class and also in the Logic Class. Peter seems to have been lax in his dates; but there can be no doubt that he was a known figure about Edinburgh University before Carlyle entered it, and that the whole of Carlyle’s University career, as of the careers of all the students of Edinburgh University for another generation, was spent in an atmosphere of PETER NIMMO. What Peter had been originally it is difficult to make out. The probability is that he had come up about the beginning of the century as a stupid youth from Dumbartonshire, honestly destined for the Church, and that he had gradually or suddenly broken down into the crazed being who could not exist but by haunting the classes for ever, and becoming a fixture about the University buildings. He used to boast of his high family. Such was the pitiful object that had been chosen by Carlyle for the theme of what was perhaps his first effort in verse. For the essential portion of his article on Peter Nimmo is a metrical “Rhapsody,” consisting of a short introduction, five short parts, and an epilogue. In the introduction, which the prefixed motto, “_Numeris fertur lege solutis_,” avows to be in hobbling measure, we see the solitary bard in quest of a subject:—