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Article: THE ART OF CRITICISM: 13 PROPHECY
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- April 9, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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THIS is British bandit country. As a popular historian and
social critic, Carlyle wrote about heroes, myth and - wait for it -
race. In the previous paragraph he mentions that the
Nottinghamshire dialect word "eager" - it means a dangerous swirl
in a river - derives from the Norse god Aegir. Then he adds that
"our English blood in good part is Danish, Norse."
Carlyle was aggressively Scottish, but as he was addressing a
London audience he became English, and though he later came to
distrust his own mixture of "prophecy and play-acting" we needn't
let him off too easily. Anyone looking at this once hugely
influential figure is bound to distrust the simple-minded sentences
clanging out on ...