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.
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