I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where
the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from
his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as
absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as
if holding on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall
and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his
extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his
northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with
a streaming humour, which floated everything he looked upon. His talk
playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once
into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very
pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few
were the objects and lonely the man, 'not a person to speak to
within sixteen miles except the minister of Dunscore; so that books
inevitably made his topics.
"He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his
discourse. 'Blackwood's' was the 'sand magazine;' 'Fraser's' nearer
approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine;' a piece of
road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave of the
last sixpence.
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