Goethe before him, that there happened that “Tragedy of the Night-Moth” which he has commemorated in one of his metrical fragments— “’Tis placid midnight; stars are keeping Their meek and silent course in heaven; Save pale recluse, for knowledge seeking, All mortal things to sleep are given. But see! a wandering night-moth enters, Allured by taper gleaming bright; A while keeps hovering round, then ventures On Goethe’s mystic page to light. With awe she views the candle blazing A universe of fire it seems To moth-_savante_ with rapture gazing, Or fount whence life and motion streams. What passions in her small heart whirling, Hopes boundless, adoration, dread? At length, her tiny pinions twirling, She darts, and,—puff!—the moth is dead.” Carlyle’s own distinct statement in the _Reminiscences_ is that Irving had encouraged him in the _Life of Schiller_, and had “prepared the way” for it in the _London Magazine_. How is this to be reconciled with his repeated references to the total cessation of correspondence between himself and Irving from the date of Irving’s definite settlement in London to that week, “late in autumn 1823,” when Irving, having married Miss Martin of Kirkcaldy, was on his marriage-jaunt with her in Scotland, and generously determined to pass near Kinnaird, so as to pick up his old friend and have a day or two of his society? One might have thought that it was in this renewed meeting of the two friends in Irving’s honeymoon jaunt that there came from Irving the suggestion of the _London Magazine_ as a place for the _Schiller_, or the intimation that he had already arranged for it and knew it would be welcome there. This supposition, however, will not cohere with the date of Irving’s marriage. It took place at Kirkcaldy on the 13th of October 1823, after the number of the _London Magazine_ containing the first part of the _Schiller_ had been out for a fortnight; and Irving’s marriage-tour in Scotland lasted through the rest of that month and the whole of November. There must, therefore, have been renewed correspondence between Irving and Carlyle, with arrangements about the _Schiller_, some while before October 1823, though Carlyle’s memory had become hazy about that matter too. It is pleasant to be sure of the main fact,—which is that it was to the ever-friendly Irving that Carlyle owed this second great service of his introduction to the _London Magazine_, just as he had already owed him the Buller tutorship.