Thomas Carlyle, A Biography | Page 6

protested against the arrogance of mere majorities.
A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models to the mass Are singly of more value
than they all.
Carlyle set these notes to Tennyson and to Browning in his
_Hero-Worship_--a creed, though in thought, and more in action, older
than Buddha or than Achilles, which he first launched as a dogma on

our times, clenching it with the asseveration that on two men, Mirabeau
and Napoleon, mainly hung the fates of the most nominally levelling of
Revolutions. The stamp his teaching made remains marked on the
minds of the men of light who _lead_, and cannot be wholly effaced by
the clamour of the men of words who orate. If he leans unduly to the
exaltation of personal power, Carlyle is on the side of those whose
defeat can be beneficent only if it be slow. Further to account for his
attitude, we must refer to his life and to its surroundings, _i.e._ to the
circumstances amid which he was "evolved."

CHAPTER II
ECCLEFECHAN AND EDINBURGH
[1795-1826]
In the introduction to one of his essays, Carlyle has warned us against
giving too much weight to genealogy: but all his biographies, from the
sketch of the Riquetti kindred to his full-length _Friedrich_, prefaced
by two volumes of ancestry, recognise, if they do not overrate,
inherited influences; and similarly his fragments of autobiography
abound in suggestive reference. His family portraits are to be accepted
with the deductions due to the family fever that was the earliest form of
his hero-worship. Carlyle, says the Athenaeum critic before quoted,
divides contemporary mankind into the fools and the wise: the wise are
the Carlyles, the Welshes, the Aitkens, and Edward Irving; the fools all
the rest of unfortunate mortals: a Fuseli stroke of the critic rivalling any
of the author criticised; yet the comment has a grain of truth.
[Footnote: Even the most adverse critics of Carlyle are often his
imitators, their hands taking a dye from what they work in.]
The Carlyles are said to have come, from the English town somewhat
differently spelt, to Annandale, with David II.; and, according to a
legend which the great author did not disdain to accept, among them
was a certain Lord of Torthorwald, so created for defences of the

Border. The churchyard of Ecclefechan is profusely strewn with the
graves of the family, all with coats of arms--two griffins with adders'
stings. More definitely we find Thomas, the author's grandfather,
settled in that dullest of county villages as a carpenter. In 1745 he saw
the rebel Highlanders on their southward march: he was notable for his
study of _Anson's Voyages_ and of the _Arabian Nights_: "a fiery man,
his stroke as ready as his word; of the toughness and springiness of
steel; an honest but not an industrious man;" subsequently tenant of a
small farm, in which capacity he does not seem to have managed his
affairs with much effect; the family were subjected to severe privations,
the mother having, on occasion, to heat the meal into cakes by straw
taken from the sacks on which the children slept. In such an atmosphere
there grew and throve the five sons known as the five fighting
masons--"a curious sample of folks," said an old apprentice of one of
them, "pithy, bitter speaking bodies, and awfu' fighters." The second of
the group, James, born 1757, married--first, a full cousin, Janet Carlyle
(the sole issue of which marriage was John, who lived at Cockermouth);
second, Margaret Aitken, by whom he had four sons--THOMAS,
1795-1881; Alexander, 1797-1876; John (Dr. Carlyle, translator of
Dante), 1801-1879; and James, 1805-1890; also five daughters, one of
whom, Jane, became the wife of her cousin James Aitken of Dumfries,
and the mother of Mary, the niece who tended her famous uncle so
faithfully during the last years of his life. Nowhere is Carlyle's loyalty
to his race shown in a fairer light than in the first of the papers
published under the name of Reminiscences. It differs from the others
in being of an early date and free from all offence. From this pathetic
sketch, written when on a visit to London in 1832 he had sudden news
of his father's death, we may, even in our brief space, extract a few
passages which throw light on the characters, _i.e._ the points of
contact and contrast of the writer and his theme:--
In several respects I consider my father as one of the most interesting
men I have known, ... of perhaps the very largest natural endowment of
any it has been my lot to converse with. None of you will ever forget
that bold glowing style of his, flowing free from his untutored