course of the same year, on _The State of German Literature,_ marks the beginning of a long series of splendid historical and critical essays--closing in 1855 with the _Prinzenraub_--which set Carlyle in the front of the reviewers of the century. The success in the _Edinburgh_ was an "open sesame;" and the conductors of the _Foreign_ and _Foreign Quarterly_ Reviews, later, those of _Fraser_ and the _Westminster_, were ready to receive whatever the new writer might choose to send. To the _Foreign Review_ he contributed from Comely Bank the _Life and Writings of Werner_, a paper on _Helena_, the leading episode of the second part of "Faust," and the first of the two great Essays on _Goethe_, which fixed his place as the interpreter of Germany to England. In midsummer 1827 Carlyle received a letter from Goethe cordially acknowledging the _Life of Schiller_, and enclosing presents of books for himself and his wife. This, followed by a later inquiry as to the author of the article on _German Literature_, was the opening of a correspondence of sage advice on the one side and of lively gratitude on the other, that lasted till the death of the veteran in 1832. Goethe assisted, or tried to assist, his admirer by giving him a testimonial in a candidature for the Chair (vacant by the promotion of Dr. Chalmers) of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. Jeffrey, a frequent visitor and host of the Carlyles, still regarded as "a jewel of advocates ... the most lovable of little men," urged and aided the canvass, but in vain. The testimonials were too strong to be judicious, and "it was enough that" the candidate "was described as a man of original and extraordinary gifts to make college patrons shrink from contact with him." Another failure, about the same date and with the same backing, was an application for a Professorship in London University, practically under the patronage of Brougham; yet another, of a different kind, was Carlyle's attempt to write a novel, which having been found--better before than after publication--to be a failure, was for the most part burnt. "He could not," says Froude, "write a novel any more than he could write poetry. He had no _invention._" [Footnote: Carlyle's verses also demonstrate that he had no metrical ear. The only really good lines he ever wrote, save in translations where the rhythm was set to him, are those constantly quoted about the dawn of "another blue day." Those sent to his mother on "Proud Hapsburg," and to Jane Welsh before marriage are unworthy of Macaulay's school-boy, "Non di non homines;" but it took much hammering to persuade Carlyle of the fact, and when persuaded he concluded that verse-writing was a mere tinkling of cymbals!] "His genius was for fact; to lay hold on truth, with all his intellect and all his imagination. He could no more invent than he could lie."