Archibald MacMechan surmised that the novel's invention had three literary sources. The first of these was "A Tale of a Tub" by Jonathan Swift, whom Carlyle intensely admired in his college years, even going by the nicknames "Jonathan" and "The Dean". In that work, the three main traditions of Western Christianity are represented by a father bestowing his three children with clothes they may never alter, but proceed to do so according to fashion. Carlyle's second influence, according to MacMechan, was his own work in translating Goethe, particularly "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", "The Sorrows of Young Werther", and "Faust", all of which Carlyle quotes and explicitly refers to, especially when Teufelsdröckh's names his own crisis "The Sorrows of Young Teufelsdröckh". The third major influence was "Tristram Shandy" from which Carlyle quotes many phrases, and he referred to earlier in his letters.