Carlyle, like Burns, came of peasant stock--strong, simple,
Godfearing folk, whose influence in Carlyle’s later life is
beyond calculation. Of his mother he says, “She was too mild
and peaceful for the planet she lived in”; and of his father,
a stone-mason, he writes, “Could I write my books as he built
his houses, walk my way so manfully through this shadow world,
and leave it with so little blame, it were more than all my
hopes.”--WILLIAM J. LONG, “English Literature.”
(977)