There is nothing ridiculous in the word, for there breathes no truer knight or gentler soul than Cervantes's hero in all the pages of history or romance.

Why cannot all men see it?
Why must an infamous world be ever sneering at the sight, and smacking its filthy lips over some fresh gorge of martyrs?
Society has non-suited hell to-day, lest peradventure it should not sleep o' nights.
Thomas Carlyle, late of Chelsea, knew that.

How he hit and hammered and churned in his wrath, with his great cast-iron words.

How the world shrieked when he wound his tenacious fingers in the glory of her golden hair and twisted and wrenched and twisted till she yelled for mercy, promising to be good, like a whipped child.

There is a story told of him which might be true.
It was at a dinner-party, and Carlyle sat silent, listening to the talk of lesser men, the snow on his hair and the fire in his amber eyes.