ABSTRACT
The absurdity of the delusion is evident in the length at which Carlyle explosively and gesturally expounded his Gospel of Silence. One can hardly imagine Philina, Mariana dropping in for tea with Mr and Mrs Carlyle at Craigenputtock, Cheyne Row. Carlyle always spoke of Britain as “England” Though he had lived much in his own country, and knew its history and literature fairly well, Scotland, for him, was a country of the mind, of the past. The process came to a head in Thomas Carlyle, the Ecclefechan stone-mason’s son. Carlyle, indeed, despite his eloquent diatribes against war, may be regarded, much more than Nietzsche, as the prophet of Fascism and Hiderism. A Scot may even persuade himself that had Carlyle managed to make Edinburgh his Weimar, to gather round him there a few understanding literary friends, there would have been no disastrous lacuna in Scots culture, but vigorous extension of Edinburgh’s great literary period right through the nineteenth century.
