Laudator Temporis Acti

John Buchan (1875-1940), Memory Hold-the-Door (London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1940), p. 39:

Again, my philosophical reading left me with certain intellectual habits—a dislike of grandiose mechanical systems, and a distrust of generalities. Having only one or two strong convictions, which might well be called prejudices, I was inclined to be critical of a superfluity of dogmas. Arthur Balfour's Defence of Philosophic Doubt and Foundations of Belief which fell into my hands, increased this temperamental bias. I developed in most subjects, and notably in politics, a kind of relativism—a belief in degrees of truth and differing levels of reality—which made me judge systems by their historical influence and practical efficiency rather than by their logical perfections. I began to admire Carlyle's "swallowers of formulas." There were eternal truths, I decided, but not very many, and even these required frequent spring-cleanings. I became tolerant of most human moods, except intolerance. It was a point of view which I have since seen cause to modify, but it was perhaps a salutary one at that stage in my life.

I can't find "swallowers of formulas" in Carlyle. The sentence puzzles me. I can understand if Buchan admired the phrase (whoever said it), but not if he admired the swallowers themselves. Admire meaning regard with surprise is rare or obsolete in English.

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From Kenneth Haynes:

Regarding your Buchan post ... can I point you to Carlyle's portrait of Mirabeau in The French Revolution (1.4.4)? "Swallowers" has the sense of "devourers," "destroyers."

But consider how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has "made away with (humé, swallowed, snuffed-up) all Formulas"—a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he was will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles; but with an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there: a Reality not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas," shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same.

Carlyle translates in the quotation a phrase from a letter by Mirabeau's father about his son, "il a humé toutes les formules."

Kevin Muse and Joel Eidsath also identified the relevant passage.