after his death, and are still preserved. That Lockhart had read them is proved by a reference in his _Life of Scott_. So slight is the reference, however, and so vaguely worded, that it told virtually nothing. Not till the publication in 1887 of the _Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle_, edited by Mr. C. E. Norton, was any real light thrown on the subject; and not till the appearance in 1890 of _The Journal of Sir Walter Scott from the Original Manuscript_, edited and published by Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh, and containing a copy of Carlyle’s first letter to Scott, were the facts fully revealed.[44] The removal of Carlyle from Edinburgh to Craigenputtock, while connecting itself rather remarkably with the abortive issue of Goethe’s attempt to introduce him to Sir Walter Scott, is of such importance otherwise in his biography that a word or two as to the causes and circumstances may not be superfluous. Carlyle’s later memories of the eighteen months, or more strictly nineteen, spent in Comely Bank, are summed up by him in the _Reminiscences_ in one doleful sentence. “Comely Bank,” he says, “except for one darling soul, whose heavenly nobleness, then as ever afterwards, shone on me, and should have made the place bright (ah me, ah me! I only now know how noble she was!), was a gloomy intricate abode to me, and in retrospect has little or nothing of pleasant but her.” So far as this is not a picture tinged, like all the rest of his life, by the final darkness in which it was painted, and to be corrected by the facts as they are otherwise ascertained, the reference may be to the causes which made him suddenly give up his Comely Bank house and remove himself again from Edinburgh. These, there can be no doubt, were economical perplexities. Thrift, frugality, abhorrence from debt or extravagance, was always one of Carlyle’s characteristics; and he had found the expenses of married life in Edinburgh beyond his means. On this point some light can be thrown by information from himself, and an annexed calculation.