Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who
could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his
savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among
the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic
Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of
chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost
semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in
the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight
and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria,
_un_formed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was
it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his
wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with things,--the
quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the
mastery he would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The
man's misery, as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. Samuel
Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the
wide element of mournful _black_ enveloping him,--wide as the world. It
is the character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul
_seeing_, and struggling to see.
On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion
of speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the
material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He
had _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his
days; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or
uttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of
action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and
speak fluently enough;--he did harder things than writing of Books.
This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all
things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and
logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, _Vir-tus_, manhood,
_hero_-hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of
all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing, or
_Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the
matter Cromwell had in him.
One understands moreover how, tho he could not speak in Parliament, he
might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great
in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what
is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth,
sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a
notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with
prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he
used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some
definite resolution rose among them, some "door of hope," as they
would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent
prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His
light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt
themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn
the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian, but
Mammonish, Devilish,--they cried to God in their straits, in their
extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which
now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get
better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the
best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more? To
them it was as the shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the
waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide
them on their desolate perilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's
soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than
intrinsically by that same,--devout prostration of the earnest
struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such
_prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one?
There is no other method. "Hypocrisy?" One begins to be weary of all
that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters.
They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went
about balancing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering votes,
advices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a thing at
all.--Cromwell's prayers were likely to be "eloquent," and much more
than that. His was the heart of a man who _could_ pray.
But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so
ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers
aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from
the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was
always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what. He
disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always
without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too,
in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given
the Printer precisely what they have found on their own note-paper.
And withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the
premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the
world, that to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How
came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to
the public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift
for themselves.
But with regard to Cromwell's "lying," we will make one remark. This,
I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All
parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to
be meaning this, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to
have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But
how, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a
false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must
have _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve
for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use
for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man
always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to
other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are
impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer
_un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed,
but precisely as dark as he was!
This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and
faithful man would aim to answer in such a case.
Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small
subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little
party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find
him not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all
seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how if he
explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have
shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact
hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked
in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not have now worked
in their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man
among small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen
everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to
you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. But
would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to
disturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands
only on some thin traditionality, conventionality to him indubitable,
to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless
depths! "I might have my hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and
open only my little finger."
And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in
all departments of practise! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to
himself_ cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. And we call
it "dissimulation," all this? What would you think of calling the
general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal
and private soldier who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts
were about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all
this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex
of such questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him through
his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great
true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as
I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a
coil of things will you say so much?
But in fact there are two errors widely prevalent, which pervert to
the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about
their "ambition," "falsity," and suchlike. The first is what I might
call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and
starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that
he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he
was plowing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all
mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step
dramatically unfolded with all manner of cunning, deceptive
dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow scheming _Hypocrites_, or
Play-actor, that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but
universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the
fact is! How much does one of _us_ foresee of his own life? Short way
ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of
apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell
had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he
needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact
dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it
was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves,
were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History!
Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but
look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this
Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History
only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous
perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty;
rare, nay impossible. A very Shakespeare for faculty; or more than
Shakespeare; who could _enact_ a brother man's biography, see with the
brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw;
in short, _know_ his course and him, as few "Historians" are like to
do. Half or more of all the thick-piled perversions which distort our
image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to
represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as
they are thrown down before us.
But a second error which I think the generality commit refers to this
same "ambition" itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we
mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that
sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man
who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who
goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and
claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody
for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the
heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen
under this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man;
fitter for the ward of a hospital than for a throne among men. I
advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths;
unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about
him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his
greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts
that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no
great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real
substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in
this way.
Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be "noticed" by noisy
crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was
already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was.
Till his hair was grown gray, and Life from the down-hill slope was
all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable
matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plow the ground, and
read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer,
without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt
carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers
haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of
heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for
this man? From of old was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a
terror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man
set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment, and Eternity:
these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did.
All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no
speech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of
that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him.
To call such a man "ambitious," to figure him as the prurient wind-bag
described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will
say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape
clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me
alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!" Old
Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not
ambitious. "Corsica Boswell" flaunted at public shows with printed
ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The
world-wide soul, wrapt-up in its sorrows;--what could ribbons in the
hat, do for it?
Ah, yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on
the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions
with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of
_Silence_. The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his
own department; silently thinking; silently working; whom no Morning
Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country
that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had
no _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must
soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we
can _show_, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher
than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great;
all else is small.--I hope we English will long maintain our _grand
talent pour le silence_. Let others that cannot do without standing on
barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate
speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon
says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of
some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson
says he was by _want of money_ and nothing other, one might ask, "Why
do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your
sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am _continent_ of my thought
hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no
compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for
promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That
is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honor'? Alas,
yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of
yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"
But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that
there are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable, the other
laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent
Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over
others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. "Seekest
thou great things, seek them not": this is most true. And yet, I say,
there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself
according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out,
to act out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit,
inevitable; nay, it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a
man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting
in this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the
faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of
our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to
_speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide
about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take
into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness for
the man of the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place
was _his_, perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation to seek
the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we
blame it, if he were "the only man in France that could have done any
good there"? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much
good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had
even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because
they had flung him out and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon
mourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent
great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather!