John Aitken Carlyle

File:Florence Carlyle (1864-1923) - John Aitken Carlyle (1801–1879) (after a photograph by Elliot and Fry) - 263782 - National Trust.jpg

Portrait by Florence Carlyle

John Aitken Carlyle (7 July 1801 – 15 December 1879) was a Scottish physician and translator.

Biography

John Carlyle was born at the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire in southwest Scotland, the son of James (1758–1832) and Margaret Aitken Carlyle (1771–1853). The younger brother of Thomas Carlyle, he was was known in the family as Jack, or as Lord Moon because of the shape of his face.

Thomas Carlyle, when tutor to the children of Charles Buller (1774–1848), devoted a portion of his salary to enable John Carlyle to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he took his degree of M.D. in or about 1825. Two years later the same brother sent him to complete his medical education in Germany, and maintained him for several years in London, where he tried to obtain practice as a physician. Failing in this he attempted literature, and contributed a little to Fraser's Magazine and other periodicals. He also helped his older brother in translating Legendre's Geometry.

In 1831, on the recommendation of his brother's helpful friend, Francis Jeffrey, he was appointed travelling physician to the Countess of Clare, with a salary of three hundred guineas a year and his expenses. In the following year he remitted money to his mother, and paid off his debt to his brother. Occasionally visiting England and Scotland, he spent some seven years in Italy with Lady Clare, in the intervals of his attendance practising for some time on his own account as a physician in Rome, where, during an outbreak of cholera, he gave his medical services gratuitously among the poor. Returning to England in 1837, he became in 1838 travelling physician to the Duke of Buccleuch, with whom he revisited the continent. By 1843 he had resigned this position, and, possessed of a moderate competency, abandoned almost entirely the practice of his profession, declining an invitation from Lady Holland, given at the suggestion of Lord Jeffrey, to become her physician in attendance.

The first instalment of what he intended to be an English prose translation of the whole of Dante Alighieri's great poem appeared in 1849 as Dante's Divine Comedy, the Inferno, with the text of the original ​collated from the best editions, and explanatory notes, a volume which, under whatever aspect it is viewed, leaves little to be desired. The preface contains on estimate of Dante as a man and a poet, in which the influence of Thomas Carlyle is very conspicuous. After the preface come two appendices, useful contributions to the critical bibliography of the Divine Comedy and its commentators. A second edition, revised, appeared in 1867, with a prefatory notice, in which he spoke of issuing two volumes more, containing translations of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. But the hope was not fulfilled, though he had execution considerable portion of the task. A third edition of the Inferno, a reprint of the second edition, was issued in 1882.

In 1862 Dr. Carlyle married a rich widow with several children, and she died in 1854. After her death he resided for several years in Edinburgh, ultimately settling in Dumfrieshire. He devoted much of his time in later years to the study of the Icelandic language and literature. On the death of his sister-in-law, Jane Welsh Carlyle, he offered to take up his abode with his bereaved brother. The offer was declined. Complaints of his brother John's "careless helter-skelter ways" occur not infrequently in Carlyle's annotations to the letters of his wife, while he hears testimony in them to Dr. Carlyle's "good, affections to, manly character and fine talents," and his many letters to him, published by Froude, are uniformly affectionate in tone. By his friends, Dr. Carlyle was regarded as a man of amiable and tranquil disposition, as well as of ability and accomplishment.

In 1861 Dr. Carlyle edited his friend David Irving's posthumous History of Scottish Poetry, adding a little fresh matter to the and notes, and appending a brief glossary of Scotch words occurring in the volume. In 1878 he made over to the acting committee of the Association for the Better Endowment of the University of Edinburgh 1,600£, to found two medical bursaries of not less than 25£ each, now worth 32£ each, known by the founder's name, and tenable for one year.

Thomas Carlyle speaks of John in his will as having "no need of money or help," but left him a life-interest in the lease of the house at Chelsea, with his books and the fragments of his history of James I. He made him, too, his chief executor, and asked him to superintend the execution of the instruction in his will, saying, in respect to them, "I wish him to be regarded as my second self, my surviving self." Dr. Carlyle did not, however, survive his brother.

He died at Dumfries, 15 December 1879.

References

• Campbell, Ian (1982). "John Carlyle in Italy, 1834–35," Carlyle Newsletter, No. 3, pp. 14–18.
• Cunningham, Gilbert F. (1966). The Divine Comedy in English: A Critical Bibliography, 1782–1900. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
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External links

• Works by John Aitken Carlyle at Hathi Trust