Nor is this quite all.

Teufelsdroeckh is further utilised as the mouthpiece of some of Carlyle's more extravagant speculations and of such ideas as he wished to throw out as it were tentatively, and without himself being necessarily held responsible for them.

There is thus much point as well as humour in those sudden turns of the argument, when, after some exceptionally wild outburst on his _eidolon's_ part, Carlyle sedately reproves him for the fantastic character or dangerous tendency of his opinions.
It is in connection with the dramatic scheme of the book that the third element, that of autobiography, enters into its texture, for the story of Teufelsdroeckh is very largely a transfigured version of the story of Carlyle himself.

In saying this, I am not of course thinking mainly of Carlyle's outer life.

This, indeed, is in places freely drawn upon, as the outer lives of Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoi are drawn upon in "David Copperfield," "The Mill on the Floss," "Anna Karenina." Entepfuhl is only another name for Ecclefechan; the picture of little Diogenes eating his supper out-of-doors on fine summer evenings, and meanwhile watching the sun sink behind the western hills, is clearly a loving transcript from memory; even the idyllic episode of Blumine may be safely traced back to a romance of Carlyle's youth.