What he lacked most, as he told Mrs. Montagu, was a fit occupation. His four volumes of _Specimens of German Romance_, consisting of translations from Musæus, La Motte Fouqué, Tieck, Hoffman, Jean Paul, and Goethe, with biographical and critical notices of these authors, had been already printed, and stored in Ballantyne’s warehouses, before he had settled in Comely Bank, and were published by Tait early in 1827. As they had been done originally on commission, they may have brought something more considerable in the way of payment than if they had been a voluntary labour. But, when these were out, what was he to do next? Fortunately, that question was soon answered. It was in the spring of 1827 that, by means of a friendly letter of introduction sent from London by Mrs. Montagu’s son-in-law, Procter, _alias_ “Barry Cornwall,” Carlyle formed his memorable acquaintance with Jeffrey. The incidents of that acquaintance, from Carlyle’s first call on Jeffrey in George Street with Procter’s note, when Jeffrey received him so kindly, and said “We must give you a lift,” on to the ripening of the acquaintance by Jeffrey’s calls at Comely Bank, his pretty gallantries and wit-encounters with the fascinating young bride, and the frequent colloquies and amicable little disputations between Jeffrey and Carlyle in Jeffrey’s leisurely rides to his country-house at Craigcrook, or in that picturesque old mansion itself, have all been immortalised in the _Reminiscences_. Nowhere is there such a sketch of Jeffrey in our literature, such perfect portraiture and appreciation of that celebrated man; and the only question that remains is whether Carlyle has quite done justice there to Jeffrey’s kindness to himself. No doubt he wrote with a strict conscience, and knew better what he was about than readers can now know for him. Still one does carry away an impression that very seldom has there been so much attention by a celebrity of fifty-three years of age to a rising junior, or so much of care in befriending him practically, as the good Jeffrey bestowed, in 1827 and for some subsequent years, on a young man of letters so utterly different from himself in character, so intractable to his Whig teaching, and so wrapt up in a certain foreign and unintelligible Mr. Goethe. Something of this feeling, indeed, does appear in many passages of Carlyle’s sketch, as when he says: “Jeffrey’s acquaintanceship seemed, and was for the time, an immense acquisition to me, and everybody regarded it as my highest good fortune.” And no wonder. From being a mere translator from the German, or writer of hack articles in obscure places, Carlyle became a contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_. In June 1827, or within a month or two after his introduction to Jeffrey, appeared his first article in the Review, _Jean Paul Friedrich Richter_, in twenty pages; and in the very next number, in October 1827, appeared his more full and elaborate