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