A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 211 



Those who seek to explain Carlyle on the ground 

 of his humble origin shoot wide of the mark. 

 "Merely a peasant with a glorified intellect," says 

 a certain irate female masquerading as the " Day of 

 Judgment." 



It seems to me Carlyle was as little of a peas- 

 ant as any man of his time, a man without one 

 peasant trait or proclivity, a regal and dominating 

 man, "looking," as he said of one of his own books, 

 "king and beggar in the face with an indifference 

 of brotherhood and an indifference of contempt." 

 The two marks of the peasant are stolidity and 

 abjectness; he is dull and heavy, and he dare not 

 say his soul is his own. No man ever so hustled 

 and jostled titled dignitaries, and made them toe 

 the mark, as did Carlyle. It was not merely that 

 his intellect was towering ; it was also his character, 

 his will, his standard of manhood, that was tower- 

 ing. He bowed to the hero, to valor and personal 

 worth, never to titles or conventions. The virtues 

 and qualities of his yeoman ancestry were in him 

 without doubt; his power of application, the spirit 

 of toil that possessed him, his frugal, self-denying 

 habits, came from his family and race, but these 

 are not peasant traits, but heroic traits. A certain 

 coarseness of fibre he had also, together with great 

 delicacy and sensibility, but these again he shares 

 with all strong first-class men. You cannot get 

 such histories as Cromwell and Frederick out of 

 polished litterateurs ; you must have a man of the 

 same heroic fibre, of the same inexpugnableness of 



