He has gone into the hills against 'shams,'
as they did against Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives
in a quieter age, and in a literary position. So he can give play
to the humour which existed in them as well, and he overflows with
a range of reading and speculation to which they were necessarily
strangers."
'Chartism,' published in 1839, and which, to use the words of a critic
of the time, was the publication in which "he first broke ground on
the Condition of England question," appeared a short time before the
lectures on 'Heroes and Hero-worship' were delivered. If we
remember rightly, Mr. Carlyle gave forth "those grand utterances"
extemporaneously and without an abstract, notes, or a reminder of any
kind--utterances not beautiful to the flunkey-mind, or valet-soul,
occupied mainly with the fold of the hero's necktie, and the cut
of his coat. Flunkey-dom, by one of its mouthpieces, thus speaks of
them:--
"Perhaps his course for the present year, which was on Hero-worship,
was better attended than any previous one.
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