Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic

representation of his Belief about this Universe:--some Critic in a

future age, like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased

altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 'Allegory,'

perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of

the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge worldwide

architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to

be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns;

that these two differ not by _preferability_ of one to the other, but

by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent

and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and

the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with

everlasting Pity,--all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had

it, is emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day,

with what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming!

Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems;

was there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their

being emblems? Were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart

of man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere

confirming them? So is it always in these things. Men do not believe

an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who

considers this of Dante to have been all got-up as an Allegory, will

commit one sore mistake!--Paganism we recognised as a veracious

expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the

Universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us.

But mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism; one great

difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the

destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in

this world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law

of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of

the _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognised virtue, Courage,

Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but

for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!--

* * * * *

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very

strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's

writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only

the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the

smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning

methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past

inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all

things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they

lived by stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his,

terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of

all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also is

not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not

dead, yet living voiceless.

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this Mystic Song, at once of one

of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had

hitherto realised for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is

another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard

Christianism' half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert

seven-hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto

among men, is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the

noblest men. In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad

to possess it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of

years. For the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's

soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The

outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away,

in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, today and

forever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this

Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his

thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity;

they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in

Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The

oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours,

does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's

hearts. It is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante,

for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too; his words,

like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if it were

predicted that his Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe

has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All

cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement

never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable

heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of

importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable

combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much;

great cities, great empires, encyclopædias, creeds, bodies of opinion

and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought.

Homer yet _is_, veritably present face to face with every open soul of

us; and Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands of years; away,

vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and

existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King

Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not.

The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his 'uses.' A human

soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and

sung-forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our

existence; feeding through long times the life-_roots_ of all

excellent human things whatsoever,--in a way that 'utilities' will not

succeed well in calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the

quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no

value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the

Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we

saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem

to be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's

effect on the world was small in comparison? Not so: his arena is far

more restricted: but also it is far nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less

but more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the

coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies,

crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there

with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble,

the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow

obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there

in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages kindle

themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for

uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In

this way the balance may be made straight again.

But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the

world by what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his

work are measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man _do_ his

work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its

own fruit; and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian

Conquests, so that it 'fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers,' and

all Histories, which are a kind of distilled Newspapers; or not

embodied so at all;--what matters that? That is not the real fruit of

it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was

something. If the great Cause of Man, and Man's work in God's Earth,

got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no matter how many

scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed, and what uproar

and blaring he made in this world--he was but a loud-sounding inanity

and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not at all. Let us honour the great

empire of _Silence_, once more! The boundless treasury which we do

_not_ jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men! It is

perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in these

loud times.----

* * * * *

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically

the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe,

its Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer

Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies,

humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at

the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece;

so in Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern

Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has

given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has

given us the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have: a man

was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of

life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking

down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this

other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing

voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of

it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world;

Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of

the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the

honour of producing the other.

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us.

I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this

Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for

deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods

and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough

for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English

Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as

of its own accord? The 'Tree Igdrasil' buds and withers by its own

laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and

every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir

Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not

sufficiently considered: how everything does coöperate with all; not a

leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and

stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal

out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or

irrecognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and

influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the

lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion

of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the

Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest

Heaven!--

In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with

its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded

it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The

Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced

this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then,

as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital

fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that

Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament

could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made

his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her

own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him

forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys,

Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of

Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they

make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings

or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into being? No

dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of

shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavouring!

This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came

without proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was

the free gift of Nature; given altogether silently;--received

altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. And

yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at that

side of matters too.

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a

little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the

best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is

slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all

Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has

left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know

not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all

the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth;

placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so

true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said,

that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from

all other 'faculties' as they are called, an understanding manifested,

equal to that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_. That is true; and it is not

a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we

tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic

materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! The built house seems all

so fit,--everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law

and the nature of things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was

shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself

had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any

other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by

instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what

his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory

glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of

the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in

short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will

construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will

give of it,--is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in

the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which

unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true _beginning_, the

true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force

of insight that is in the man. He must _understand_ the thing;

according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his

answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does

the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment

becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat lux_, Let there be light; and

out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is _light_ in himself,

will he accomplish this.

Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting,

delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is

great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is

unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare.

The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its

inmost heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light

before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative,

we said: poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing

sufficiently? The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of

itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not

Shakspeare's _morality_, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness;

his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over

such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No

_twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its

own convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror;--that is

to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all

things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this

great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an

Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their

round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. _Novum

Organum_, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite

secondary order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this.

Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same

rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of

him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself

says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates

of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the

inward mechanism also is all visible.'

The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things;

what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these

often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye

that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You

can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or

other genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your

peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till

the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At

bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have

intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or

failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at

all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on

accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on

his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his

boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart

of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists

has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and

exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of

Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort

soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _See_. If

you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together,

jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet;

there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in

action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old

Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are

ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing

in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider

it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is,

in this world, no other entirely fatal person.

For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a

correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty,

I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all

under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they

were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect,

imagination, fancy, &c, as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a

capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 'intellectual nature,'

and of his 'moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and

existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms

of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to

speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It

seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for the most part,

radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep for

ever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that

man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is

essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy,

understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same

Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other,

physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know

all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man,

what is this but another _side_ of the one vital Force whereby he is

and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see

how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or

want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he

has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is _one_; and

preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.

Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but,

consider it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a

thoroughly immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a

thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing,

sympathise with it: that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have

not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the

courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he

know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge.

Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the

pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is

mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.--But does

not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where

the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the

world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it

should be considered, too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine

_morality_, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the

geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his

own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so

forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other

suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say

of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same

dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine

life!--These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts

with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limitations,

modifications they require, your own candour will supply.

If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I

have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare's

intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious

intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of.

Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are

Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth

in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of

it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps

of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature.

The latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare,

new elucidations of their own human being; 'new harmonies with the

infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas,

affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.' This well

deserves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple

great soul, that he get thus to be a _part of herself_. Such a man's

works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought

shall accomplish, grow up withal unconsciously, from the unknown deeps

in him;--as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the

mountains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on

Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in

Shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to

himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all; like

_roots_, like sap and forces working underground! Speech is great; but

Silence is greater.

Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not

blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true

battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater

than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he

had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify

expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for

his life;--as what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to

me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the

bough; and sang forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of

other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel

forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not

fall-in with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man

delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic

hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in

contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine

overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does he

_exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that

pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare; yet he is always in

measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good

hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps

all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering,

tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with

his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is

always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty;

never. No man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at

these things. It is some poor character only _desiring_ to laugh, and

have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good

laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot.' Even at

stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than

genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss

them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows

only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well

there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like

sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.

* * * * *

We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though

perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we,

for instance, all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm

Meister_, is! A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm

Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the

others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National

Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but

what he had learned from Shakspeare. There are really, if we look to

it, few as memorable Histories. The great salient points are admirably

seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it

is, as Schlegel says, _epic_;--as indeed all delineation by a great

thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces,

which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of

Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort,

we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The description of the two hosts:

the worn-out, jaded English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when

the battle shall begin; and then that deathless valour: "Ye good

yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" There is a noble Patriotism

in it,--far other than the 'indifference' you sometimes hear ascribed

to Shakspeare. A true English heart breathes, calm and strong, through

the whole business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for

that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too had

a right stroke in him, had it come to that!

But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full

impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works

are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that

was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory,

imperfect, written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and

there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that

come upon you like splendour out of Heaven; bursts of radiance,

illuminating the very heart of the thing: you say, "That is _true_,

spoken once and forever; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open

human soul, that will be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however,

make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is,

in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to write for

the Globe Play-house: his great soul had to crush itself, as it could,

into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us

all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his

own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he could translate it

into the stone that was given, with the tools that were given.

_Disjecta membra_ are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man.

* * * * *

Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may recognise that he

too was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the

Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to

this man also divine; unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: 'We

are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' That scroll in Westminster

Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer.

But the man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante

the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call

Shakspeare the still more melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism,

the 'Universal Church' of the Future and of all times? No narrow

superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or

perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold

hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men

worship as they can! We may say without offence, that there rises a

kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too; not unfit to make

itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony

with these, if we understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this

Shakspeare a 'Sceptic,' as some do; his indifference to the creeds and

theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither

unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic,

though he says little about his Faith. Such 'indifference' was the

fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand

sphere of worship (we may call it such): these other controversies,

vitally important to other men, were not vital to him.

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious

thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? For

myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact

of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all;

a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--And, at bottom, was it not

perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man,

was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,

because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was

the 'Prophet of God:' and was he not greater than Mahomet in that?

Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case,

more successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of

Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood: and has come down to us

inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it

such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a

questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that

Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious

charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even

in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and

become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante may still be

young;--while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of

Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come!

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Æschylus or

Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like

them? He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the

universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been

better for him _not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that

he was _conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality,--as

indeed such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious:

that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with

that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be

great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great!

His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not

believe, like him, that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as

always, is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him

springs-up from the inarticulate deeps.

* * * * *

Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of

a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of

Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many

thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account

him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there

were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of

the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare

has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this

land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not give-up rather

than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest

Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we

have yet done. For our honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to

our English Household, what item is there that we would not surrender

rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give-up your

Indian Empire or your Shakspeare, you English; never have had any

Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakspeare? Really it were a

grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official

language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer:

Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakspeare!

Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakspeare does

not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give-up our Shakspeare!

Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real,

marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before long, this

Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English: in

America, in New Holland, east and west to the very Antipodes, there

will be a Saxondom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what

is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so

that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike

intercourse, helping one another? This is justly regarded as the

greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and

governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish

this? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot.

America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it

not fantastic, for there is much reality in it: Here, I say, is an

English King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combination of

Parliaments, can dethrone! This King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in

crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet

strongest of rallying-signs; indestructible; really more valuable in

that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We

can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, a

thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever,

under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are,

they will say to one another: "Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we

produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind

with him." The most common-sense politician too, if he pleases, may

think of that.

Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate

voice; that it produce a man who will speak-forth melodiously what the

heart of it means! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered,

scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity

at all; yet the noble Italy is actually _one_: Italy produced its

Dante; Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong,

with so many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in

keeping such a tract of Earth politically together; but he cannot yet

speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had

no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to

speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks

will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is still

audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb

Russia can be.--We must here end what we had to say of the

_Hero-Poet_.

LECTURE IV

THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.

[_Friday, 15th May 1840_]

Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have

repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts of Heroes are

intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to

the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to

speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a

great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,--the

outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he

finds himself in. The priest too, as I understand it, is a kind of

Prophet; in him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as

we must name it. He presides over the worship of the people; is the

Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of

the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King with many captains:

he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through this Earth and its

work. The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice

from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in

a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen

Heaven,--the 'open secret of the Universe,'--which so few have an eye

for! He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splendour; burning with

mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I say,

is the ideal of a Priest. So in old times; so in these, and in all

times. One knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great

latitude of tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is not

this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a

character--of whom we had rather not speak in this place.

Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully

perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better

here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as

Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally

notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader

of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light

from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward,

as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when

this same _way_ was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the

spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who

live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He

is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet

faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict,

in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more

memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our

best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask,

Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a _Priest_ first of

all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible

force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is

a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_, seeing through the

shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine

truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he

will never be good for much as a Reformer.

Thus, then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building

up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories

of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a

Shakspeare,--we are now to see the reverse process; which also is

necessary, which also may be carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious

how this should be necessary; yet necessary it is. The mild shining of

the Poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the

Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot

fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but

the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy with its

fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaïd Eremites, there had

been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and

other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled

Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a

symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished;

that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed.

Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of

_music_; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were

by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic _musical_ way, how

good were it could we get so much as into the _equable_ way; I mean,

if _peaceable_ Priests, reforming from day to day, would always

suffice us! But it is not so; even this latter has not yet been

realised. Alas, the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a

needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting: the

very things that were once indispensable furtherances become

obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,--a

business often of enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely,

how a Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we may call it, which

once took in the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory in

all parts of it to the highly-discursive acute intellect of Dante, one

of the greatest in the world,--had in the course of another century

become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; and is now, to

every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as Odin's Theorem! To

Dante, human Existence, and God's ways with men, were all well

represented by those _Malebolges_, _Purgatorios_; to Luther not well.

How was this? Why could not Dante's Catholicism continue; but Luther's

Protestantism must needs follow? Alas, nothing will _continue_.

I do not make much of 'Progress of the Species,' as handled in these

times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear much about it.

The talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant,

confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain enough;

nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of

things. Every man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner

but a doer: he learns with the mind given him what has been; but with

the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of

his own. Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man

whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather

believed: he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the

Universe, and consequently his Theorem of the Universe,--which is an

_infinite_ Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by

any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges

somewhat, I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather

incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he

has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the

history of Mankind we see it summed-up into great historical

amounts,--revolutions, new epochs. Dante's Mountain of Purgatory does

_not_ stand 'in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has

once sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant in the other

Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease to be believed to be there.

So with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,--all Systems of Belief,

and Systems of Practice that spring from these.

If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes uncertain,

Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries

everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for

revolution. At all turns, a man who will _do_ faithfully, needs to

believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage;

if he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own

suffrage serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him

will be _mis_done. Every such man is a daily contributor to the

inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye

to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to

somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable;

and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion.

Dante's sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced

still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be

torn asunder by a Luther; Shakspeare's noble feudalism, as beautiful

as it once looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The

accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally _exploded_,

blasted asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods

before matters come to a settlement again.

Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the

matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements merely the

fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law of death!

At bottom, it is not so: all death, here too we find, is but of the

body, not of the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent

revolution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale.

Odinism was _Valour_; Christianism was _Humility_, a nobler kind of

Valour. No thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of

man but _was_ an honest insight into God's truth on man's part, and

_has_ an essential truth in it which endures through all changes, an

everlasting possession for us all. And, on the other hand, what a

melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all

countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in

blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Mahometans,

only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge! All generations

of men were lost and wrong, only that this present little section of a

generation might be saved and right. They all marched forward there,

all generations since the beginning of the world, like the Russian

soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill-up the ditch

with their dead bodies, that we might march-over and take the place!

It is an incredible hypothesis.

Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce

emphasis; and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of

individual men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, towards

sure victory: but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate

infallible credo, sank into the ditch, and became a dead body, what

was to be said?--Withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man,

that he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon it as

such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way; but it

must be in some wider, wiser way than this. Are not all true men that

live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under

Heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the Empire of

Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one another, fight not

against the enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference of

uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant

men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's

strong hammer smiting down _Jötuns_, shall be welcome. Luther's

battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are with us,

not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same

host.--Let us now look a little at this Luther's fighting; what kind

of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. Luther too was

of our spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to his country and time.

As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry will perhaps be

in place here. One of Mahomet's characteristics, which indeed belongs

to all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is

the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols

as the Divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with, but have to

denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the

chief of all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth

noting. We will not enter here into the theological question about

Idolatry. Idol is _Eidolon_, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God,

but a Symbol of God; and perhaps one may question whether any the most

benighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol. I fancy, he did

not think that the poor image his own hands had made _was_ God; but

that God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some way or another.

And now in this sense, one may ask, Is not all worship whatsoever a

worship by Symbols, by _eidola_, or things seen? Whether _seen_,

rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye; or visible

only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the intellect: this

makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. It is still a

Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan

has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine

things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible

for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that

fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense _eidola_, things

seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols:--we

may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only

_more_ idolatrous.

Where, then, lies the evil of it? some fatal evil must lie in it, or

earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. Why is

Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It seems to me as if, in the worship

of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the

Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was

not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of

him in words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen that

worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was

superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay there was a

kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is

still meritorious in Poets: recognition of a certain endless _divine_

beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever.

Why should the Prophet so mercilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal

worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an

object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot

surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart _be_ honestly full of it,

the whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one

word, let him entirely _believe_ in his Fetish,--it will then be, I

should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be

made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there.

But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era

of the Prophets, no man's mind _is_ any longer honestly filled with

his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through

it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt

that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is _insincere_ Idolatry.

Doubt has eaten-out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging

spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half-feels now to

have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls

are no longer _filled_ with their Fetish; but only pretend to be

filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "You

do not believe," said Coleridge; "you only believe that you believe."

It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure

symptom that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call

Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more

immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning

of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any

morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralysed thereby,

cast into fatal magnetic sleep! Men are no longer _sincere_ men. I do

not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes

it with unextinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, are at

death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is _Cant_, and even what one may call

Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of

Worship ends with this phasis.

I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any other

Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax,

were not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons of Sin, made of

sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero,

in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to

reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According

as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless

thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of

things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or

Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is

the work of a Prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. The

first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and

idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true,

and authentically divine!--

At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely

destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the

basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One

often hears it said that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically

different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of 'private

judgment,' as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man

became his own Pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must

never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is

not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men,

henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it said.--Now I need not deny

that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, Popes

and much else. Nay I will grant that English Puritanism, revolt

against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the

enormous French Revolution itself was the third act, whereby all

sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or

made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our

whole subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will

always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual

is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is

everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth:

instead of _Kings_, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages; it seems

made out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man,

in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away forever from

the world. I should despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my

deepest convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true

sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an

anarchy: the hatefulest of things. But I find Protestantism, whatever

anarchic democracy it have produced, to be the beginning of new

genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against

_false_ sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparative

for _true_ sovereigns getting place among us! This is worth explaining

a little.

Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of 'private

judgment' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at

that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar

in the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition

to Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine

Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will

consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had

not put-out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in

that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, if many a poor

Hogstraten, Tetzel and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of

judgment? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever

compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own

indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe

there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine,

preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some

kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be convinced. His

'private judgment' indicated that, as the advisablest step _he_ could

take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full force,

wherever true men subsist. A true man _believes_ with his whole

judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him,

and has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to 'believe

that he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way.

Protestantism said to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done!

At bottom, it was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings

that ever had been said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more,

the meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his

whole mind,--he, and all _true_ Followers of Odinism. They, by their

private judgment, had 'judged'--_so_.

And now, I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment,

faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish

independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite

of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error,

insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting

against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that

believe in truth. There is no communion possible among men who believe

only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power of

sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not

hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much less with his

fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a

world of sincere men is unity possible;--and there, in the longrun, it

is as good as _certain_.

For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather

altogether lost sight of, in this controversy: That it is not

necessary a man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to

believe in, and never so _sincerely_ to believe in. A Great Man, we

said, was always sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man

need not be great in order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of

Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of

Time. A man can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way,

what he has received from another;--and with boundless gratitude to

that other! The merit of _originality_ is not novelty; it is

sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he

believes, he believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of

Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this sense; no

mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole ages, what we call ages

of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the most of men in them,

sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: every worker, in all

spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on substance; every work

issues in a result: the general sum of such work is great; for all of

it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of it is _additive_, none

of it subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all

true and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth can produce

blessedness for men.

Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or

what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing

him to reverence and believe other men's truth! It only disposes,

necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead

formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes

open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before

he can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right

gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has

delivered him out of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true

Hero and Serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! The black monster,

Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate by his valour;

it was he that conquered the world for us!--See, accordingly, was not

Luther himself reverenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, _being_

verily such? Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism,

became a King. Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and

Sovereignty are everlasting in the world:--and there is this in them,

that they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on

realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your 'private

judgment;' no, but by opening them, and by having something to see!

Luther's message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and

Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new genuine

ones.

All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence

and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon,

by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad

enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of

sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are

coming. In all ways, it behoved men to quit simulacra and return to

fact; cost what it might, that did behove to be done. With spurious

Popes, and Believers having no private judgment,--quacks pretending to

command over dupes,--what can you do? Misery and mischief only. You

cannot make an association out of insincere men; you cannot build an

edifice except by plummet and level,--at _right_-angles to one

another! In all this wild revolutionary work, from Protestantism

downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing itself: not abolition

of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of Heroes.

If Hero mean _sincere man_, why may not every one of us be a Hero? A

world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will

again be,--cannot help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers

for Heroes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all

were True and Good!--But we must hasten to Luther and his Life.

* * * * *

Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into the world

there on the 10th of November 1483. It was an accident that gave this

honour to Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-labourers in a village of

that region, named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the

tumult of this scene the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found

refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN

LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she

had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to

sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small

winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole

world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking

pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all

Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here,

once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over

long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its

history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great. It leads

us back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen

Hundred years ago,--of which it is fit that we _say_ nothing, that we

think only in silence; for what words are there! The Age of Miracles

past? The Age of Miracles is forever here!--

I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this Earth, and

doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over

him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought-up poor,

one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the schoolchildren in

those times did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door.

Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's companion; no man nor

no thing would put-on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among

things, not among the shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude

figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all

faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his task to

get acquainted with _realities_, and keep acquainted with them, at

whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole world back to reality,

for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth nursed-up in wintry

whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may

step-forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man,

as a god: a Christian Odin,--a right Thor once more, with his

thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough _Jötuns_ and

Giant-monsters!

Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death

of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had

struggled-up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite

of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father

judging doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him

upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little

will in it either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of

age. Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt;

were got back again near Erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on; the bolt

struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet. What is this Life of

ours?--gone in a moment, burnt-up like a scroll, into the blank

Eternity! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships,

Kingships? They lie shrunk together--there! The Earth has opened on

them; in a moment they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the

heart, determined to devote himself to God and God's service alone. In

spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk

in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt.

This was probably the first light-point in the history of Luther, his

purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present,

it was still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. He says

he was a pious monk, _ich bin ein frommer Mönch gewesen_; faithfully,

painfully struggling to work-out the truth of this high act of his;

but it was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had rather,

as it were, increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as

novice in his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his

grievance: the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner

of black scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die

soon, and far worse than die. One hears with a new interest for poor

Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the unspeakable

misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not

the humble sincere nature of the man? What was he, that he should be

raised to Heaven! He that had known only misery, and mean slavery: the

news was too blessed to be credible. It could not become clear to him

how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man's soul could

be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to wander

staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair.

It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible

which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never

seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts

and vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful.

Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by

the infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually

got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the

Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the

Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to

hold by that; as through life and to death he firmly did.

This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over

darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important

of all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness;

that, unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he

should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found

more and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural

result. He was sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of

talent and fidelity fit to do their business well: the Elector of

Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had

cast his eye on him as a valuable person; made him Professor in his

new University of Wittenberg, Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both

which capacities, as in all duties he did, this Luther, in the

peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining more and more esteem with

all good men.

It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent

thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the

Second, and what was going-on at Rome, must have filled the mind of

Luther with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of

God's Highpriest on Earth; and he found it--what we know! Many

thoughts it must have given the man; many which we have no record of,

which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this

scene of false priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in

far other vesture, is _false_: but what is it to Luther? A mean man

he, how shall he reform a world? That was far from his thoughts. A

humble, solitary man, why should he at all meddle with the world? It

was the task of quite higher men than he. His business was to guide

his own footsteps wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure

duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in

God's hand, not in his.

It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman

Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful

orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault

it! Conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his

peace about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to

deal with them! A modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack

irreverently persons in authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do

his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and

save his own soul alive. But the Roman Highpriesthood did come athwart

him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in honesty

for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck-at,

struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them! This is

worth attending to in Luther's history. Perhaps no man of so humble,

peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with contention. We

cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in

the shade; that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety.

Notoriety: what would that do for him? The goal of his march through

this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a

few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it forever! We

will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of

its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against

the Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced

the Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it,

if indeed any such exist now: Get first into the sphere of thought by

which it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like

Luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with

you.

The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo

Tenth,--who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest

seems to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was

anything,--arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade

there. Luther's flock bought Indulgences: in the confessional of his

Church, people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins

pardoned. Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a

false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of

ground that was his own and no other man's, had to step-forth against

Indulgences, and declare aloud that _they_ were a futility and

sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by _them_. It

was the beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how it went;

forward from this first public challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of

October 1517, through remonstrance and argument;--spreading ever

wider, rising ever higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped

all the world. Luther's heart's-desire was to have this grief and

other griefs amended; his thought was still far other than that of

introducing separation in the Church, or revolting against the Pope,

Father of Christendom.--The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this

Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the noise

of him: in a space of some three years, having tried various softer

methods, he thought good to end it by _fire_. He dooms the Monk's

writings to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to

Rome,--probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended

with Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire.

Poor Huss: he came to that Constance Council, with all imaginable

promises and safe-conducts; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man:

they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon 'three-feet wide, six-feet

high, seven-feet long;' _burnt_ the true voice of him out of this

world; choked it in smoke and fire. That was _not_ well done!

I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the

Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into

noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The

bravest, if also one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled.

These words of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully,

as human inability would allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and

save men's souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the

hangman and fire? You will burn me and them, for answer to the

God's-message they strove to bring you? _You_ are not God's

vicegerent; you are another's than his, I think I take your Bull, as

an emparchmented Lie, and burn _it_. You will do what you see good

next: this is what I do.--It was on the 10th of December 1520, three

years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, 'with a great

concourse of people,' took this indignant step of burning the Pope's

fire-decree 'at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.' Wittenberg looked on

'with shoutings;' the whole world was looking on. The Pope should not

have provoked that 'shout'! It was the shout of the awakening of

nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at

length got more than it could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and

other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough: and here

once more was a man found who durst tell all men that God's world

stood not on semblances but on realities; that Life was a truth, and

not a lie!

At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet

Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of

great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood;

you put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not

God, I tell you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This

thing of yours that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of

rag-paper with ink. It _is_ nothing else; it, and so much like it, is

nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual

Fatherhood of God's Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and

parchment? It is an awful fact. God's Church is not a semblance,

Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive

me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German monk am stronger than you

all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God's Truth; you with your

tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders

spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and are not so

strong!--

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April

1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European

History; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of

civilisation takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations,

disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth,

with all the Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual

and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for

himself, whether he will recant or not. The world's pomp and power

sits there on this hand: on that, stands-up for God's Truth, one man,

the poor miner Hans Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss,

advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of

friends rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he

answered, "Were there as many Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles,

I would on." The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the

Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to

him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever denieth me before

men!" they cried to him,--as in a kind of solemn petition and

adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of

the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a

black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself

Father in God, and what not: "Free us; it rests with thee; desert us

not!"

Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished

itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to

whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more

than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived

from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered

into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it

were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what

stood on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How

could he? "Confute me," he concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else

by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither

safe nor prudent to do ought against conscience. Here stand I; I can

do no other: God assist me!"--It is, as we say, the greatest moment in

the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and its

Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries; French

Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it

all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been

otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower

into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or,

with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured

and live?--

* * * * *

Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation;

which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and

crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable,

undeniable; but after all what has Luther or his cause to do with

them? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all

this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas's

stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable

all around: but I think it was not Hercules's blame; it was some

other's blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when

it came, but the Reformation simply could not help coming. To all

Popes and Popes' advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the

answer of the world is: Once for all, your Popehood has become untrue.

No matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe

it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk-by from Heaven

above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not believe

it, we will not try to believe it,--we dare not! The thing is

_untrue_; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst

pretend to think it true. Away with it; let whatsoever likes come in

the place of it: with _it_ we can have no farther trade!--Luther and

his Protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false Simulacra

that forced him to protest, they are responsible. Luther did what

every man that God has made has not only the right, but lies under the

sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost

thou believe me?--No!--At what cost soever, without counting of costs,

this thing behoved to be done. Union, organisation spiritual and

material, a far nobler than, any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest

days, I never doubt, is coming for the world; sure to come. But on

Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to

come, or to stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and

ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do.

Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peaceable.

We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!

And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let

us not be unjust to the Old. The Old _was_ true, if it no longer is.

In Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding, or other

dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there

is in the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of 'No Popery' is

foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the

increase, building new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the

idlest ever started. Very curious: to count-up a few Popish chapels,

listen to a few Protestant logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning,

drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say: See,

Protestantism is _dead_; Popeism is more alive than it, will be alive

after it!--Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves

Protestant are dead; but _Protestantism_ has not died yet, that I hear

of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its

Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the French Revolution;

rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive

_but_ Protestantism? The life of most else that one meets is a

galvanic one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life!

Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery

cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,--_which_ also still

lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as

with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither,

thither on the beach; for _minutes_ you cannot tell how it is going;

look in half an hour where it is,--look in half a century where your

Popehood is! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe

than the poor old Pope's revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.--And

withal this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not

die away entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it.

We may say, the Old never dies till this happen, Till all the soul of

good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical New.

While a good work remains capable of being done by the Romish form;

or, what is inclusive of all, while a _pious life_ remains capable of

being led by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other

human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it

will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our

practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then,

but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It

lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can.--

* * * * *

Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and

bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he

continued living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as

he was there. To me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this

fact. How seldom do we find a man that has stirred-up some vast

commotion, who does not himself perish, swept-away in it! Such is the

usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree,

sovereign of this greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank

or function soever, looking much to him for guidance: and he held it

peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. A man to do this must

have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at all turns

where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself

courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may

rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise.

Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of

_silence_, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable

in these circumstances.

Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes

what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much

as it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed

Preacher, 'will not preach without a cassock.' Well, answers Luther,

what harm will a cassock do the man? 'Let him have a cassock to preach

in; let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them!' His

conduct in the matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the

Anabaptists; of the Peasants' War, shows a noble strength, very

different from spasmodic violence. With sure prompt insight he

discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks-forth what is

the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's Written

Works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations

is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a singular

attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible

enough; Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest; his

dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written,

these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite

other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more

robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A

rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and

strength. He flashes-out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic

phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humour

too, nay tender affection, nobleness, and depth: this man could have

been a Poet too! He had to _work_ an Epic Poem, not write one. I call

him a great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens

that.

Richter says of Luther's words, 'his words are half-battles.' They may

be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight

and conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valour. No more

valiant man, no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has

record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is

valour. His defiance of the 'Devils' in Worms was not a mere boast, as

the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there

were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men.

Many times, in his writings, this turns-up; and a most small sneer has

been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat

translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall;

the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating

one of the Psalms; he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness,

abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable

Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther

started-up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre,

and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument

of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we

are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the man's

heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can

give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before

exists not on this Earth or under it.--Fearless enough! 'The Devil is

aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of

fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,'

of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, 'Duke George is not equal to one

Devil,'--far short of a Devil! 'If I had business at Leipzig, I would

ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke-Georges for nine days

running.' What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into!--

At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage

was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many

do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from

the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and

stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With

Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than

this of mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle

heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart

ever is. The tiger before a _stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not

what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more

touching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or

a mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest,

unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as

water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that downpressed

mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the

outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and

fine? It is the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall into.

Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man;

modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of

him. It is a noble valour which is roused in a heart like this, once

stirred-up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze.

In Luther's _Table-Talk_, a posthumous Book of anecdotes and sayings

collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the Books

proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of

the man, and what sort of nature he had. His behaviour at the deathbed

of his little Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the

most affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should

die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live;--follows, in

awe-struck thought, the flight of her little soul through those

unknown realms. Awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and

sincere,--for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what

nothing it is that we know, or can know: His little Magdalene shall be

with God, as God wills; for Luther too that is all; _Islam_ is all.

Once, he looks-out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in

the middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of

clouds sailing through it,--dumb, gaunt, huge:--who supports all that?

"None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports

it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where

we cannot see.--Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the

beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn,

on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving

there,--the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once

again; the bread of man!--In the garden at Wittenburg one evening at

sunset, a little bird was perched for the night: That little bird,

says Luther, above it are the stars and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it

has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its

home: the Maker of it has given it too a home!--Neither are mirthful

turns wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. The

common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive,

genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels

him to be a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is not this,

as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild

unutterability he spoke-forth from him in the tones of his flute. The

Devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand,

and such love of music on the other; I could call these the two

opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had

room.

Luther's face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach's best portraits

I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like

brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a

repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent

sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine

affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter

was in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also

were appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was

Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and

victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers

that God alone can and will regulate the course things are taking, and

that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for

one thing: that God would release him from his labour, and let him

depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man who cite this

in _dis_credit of him!--I will call this Luther a true Great Man;

great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our

most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an

Alpine mountain,--so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be

great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! Ah

yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet

in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with flowers! A

right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once more, a true Son of Nature and

Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be

thankful to Heaven.

The most interesting phasis which the Reformation anywhere assumes,

especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther's own

country Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a

religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument,

the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical

contention: which indeed has jangled more and more, down to

Voltaireism itself,--through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onward to

French-Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism,

which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National

Church among the Scotch; which came forth as a real business of the

heart; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. In some

senses, one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever

got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with

Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a

few words for Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more

important as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to

be, of the Faith that became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver

Cromwell's. History will have something to say about this, for some

time to come!

We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose,

but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men,

may understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it,

and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by

wager-of-battle in this world; that _strength_, well understood, is

the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is

a right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; and at that little Fact

of the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft

Haven in Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had

found a Poem here; one of Nature's own Poems; such as she writes in

broad facts over great continents. For it was properly the beginning

of America: there were straggling settlers in America before, some

material as of a body was there; but the soul of it was first this.

These poor men, driven-out of their country, not able well to live in

Holland, determine on settling in the New World. Black untamed forests

are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Starchamber

hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled

honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch there too, overhead;

they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well

in this world of Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not

the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together; hired a

ship, the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail.

In Neal's _History of the Puritans_[5] is an account of the ceremony

of their departure: solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a

real act of worship. Their minister went down with them to the beach,

and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in

solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children, and _go_

with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He

was there also as well as here.--Hah! These men, I think, had a work!

The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be

a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but

nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and

sinews; it has fire-arms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten

fingers, strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests,

remove mountains;--it is one of the strongest things under the sun at

present!

[5] Neal (London, 1755), i. 490.

In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch: we

may say it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this

Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils,

dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and

destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry

fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each

other _how to divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but

obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at this day, to make of every

alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging

the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no

very singular significance! 'Bravery' enough, I doubt not; fierce

fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of their

old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors; _whose_ exploits we have not

found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul:

nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And

now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were,

under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of

causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet

attainable from Earth;--whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen

only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he

prove a true man!

Well; this is what I mean by a whole 'nation of heroes;' a _believing_

nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a

god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a

great soul! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again

seen, under wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting

good done till then.--Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not

_been_, in this world, as a practised fact? Did Hero-worship fail in

Knox's case? Or are we made of other clay now? Did the Westminster

Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made

the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a

Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the

fatal work and fruit of such!----

But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really

call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but

it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far

rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price;--as life is. The people

began to _live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and

costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James

Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the

Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons

and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have

been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of

England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh

spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these

realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we call

the '_Glorious_ Revolution,' a _Habeas-Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments,

and much else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men

in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of

Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may

pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? How many earnest rugged

Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenants, wrestling, battling for

very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and

fall, greatly censured, _bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of

Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk-stockings,

with universal three-times-three!

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after

three-hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the

world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then

possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor

Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many

others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without

blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and

the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him

for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable' Scotchmen that

need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in

French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was

censured, shot-at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life:

if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad

venture of it. I cannot apologise for Knox. To him it is very

indifferent, these two-hundred-and-fifty years or more, what men say

of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and

living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own

sake, ought to look through the rumours and controversies enveloping

the man, into the man himself.

For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation

was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure,

before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got

a college education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and

seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise

unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's

families; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his

doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when

called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable

of more. In this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty;

was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St

Andrew's Castle,--when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after

finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said

suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had

a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak;--which gifts and

heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had: Had he

not? said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is

_his_ duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal

forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him

silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand-up; he attempted to reply; he

could say no word;--burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is

worth remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some

days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He

felt what a baptism he was called to be baptised withal. He 'burst

into tears.'

Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies

emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever

might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men.

With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth

alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive

nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and

that only _can_ he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire,

whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St Andrew's was

taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves,--some officer or priest, one

day, presented them an Image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that

they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother

of God? said Knox, when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of

God: this is 'a _pented bredd_,'--a piece of wood, I tell you, with

paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being

worshipped, added Knox, and flung the thing into the river. It was not

very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing to

Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a

_pented bredd_; worship it he would not.

He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage;

the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the

whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is

alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are

fitter to swim than to be worshipped!--This Knox cannot live but by

fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He

is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic:

it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest

intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable

man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence

to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one

might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet

cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who

never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the

moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance,

rigid narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the

name of God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the

guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to

take him for that; not require him to be other.

Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her

own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such

cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the

actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant,

I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not

so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the

circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he

came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with

the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a

delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them

altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the

Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of

Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a

hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God

trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had

no method of making himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said

Morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the

constitutional opposition-party in Scotland: the Nobles of the

country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in

it; Knox had to go or no one. The hapless Queen;--but the still more

hapless Country, if _she_ were made happy! Mary herself was not

without sharpness enough, among her other qualities: "Who are you,"

said she once, "that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of

this realm?"--"Madam, a subject born within the same," answered he.

Reasonably answered! If the 'subject' have truth to speak, it is not

the 'subject's' footing that will fail him here.--

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each

of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk

there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to

tolerate the _un_essential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance

has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can

tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to

tolerate! We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do

not 'tolerate' Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on

us; we say to them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are

here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise

way! I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing

is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.

A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, for teaching the

Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humour! I am

not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he

had what we call an ill-temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not.

Kind honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn,

ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight

among those proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they

were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and

Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only 'a subject born within

the same:' this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at

hand, to be no mean acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong,

sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him

for pulling-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious

rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in

regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no

pulling-down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be

thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element; it was the

tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in

that. Every such man is the born enemy of Disorder; hates to be in it:

but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general

sum-total of _Dis_order. Order is _Truth_,--each thing standing on the

basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together.

Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him;

which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a

true eye for the ridiculous. His _History_, with its rough

earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates,

entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly

up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and

at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great

sight for him everyway! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though

there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh

mounts-up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a

laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man;

brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy

with both. He has his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old

Edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved

him! They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic,

shrieking fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men.

Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing,

quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of

character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic

taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he

himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many

things which do not vitally concern him,--"They? what are they?" But

the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of;

and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more

emphatic for his long silence.

This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man!--He had a sore

fight of an existence: wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in

defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave,

wandering as an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?"

they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He

lifted his finger, 'pointed upwards with his finger,' and so died.

Honour to him! His works have not died. The letter of his work dies,

as of all men's; but the spirit of it never.

One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable

offence in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of

Kings. In other words he strove to make the Government of Scotland a

_Theocracy_. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the

essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he

did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or

Government of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all

manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever

else they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of

Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws.

He hoped once to see such a thing realised; and the Petition, _Thy

Kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he

saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church's property; when

he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was

spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses,

education, schools, worship;--and the Regent Murray had to answer,

with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" This was

Knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavoured after,

to realise it. If we think this scheme of truth was too narrow, was

not true, we may rejoice that he could not realise it; that it

remained after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, and is a 'devout

imagination' still. But how shall we blame _him_ for struggling to

realise it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be

struggled for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that

purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for

it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether

called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially

wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God's Law, reign supreme

among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, and

namable in all times, a revealed 'Will of God') towards which the

Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true

Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive

for a Theocracy.

How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what

point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is

always a question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce

themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true

faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where

they are not found introduced. There will never be wanting Regent

Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, "A devout

imagination!" We will praise the Hero-priest, rather, who does what is

in _him_ to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny,

contradiction, a noble life, to make a God's Kingdom of this Earth.

The Earth will not become too godlike!

LECTURE V

THE HERO AS A MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.

[_Tuesday, 19th May 1840_]

Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong

to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of

them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show

themselves in this world. The Hero as _Man of Letters_, again, of

which class we are to speak today, is altogether a product of these

new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of _Writing_, or of

Ready-writing which we call _Printing_, subsists, he may be expected

to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages.

He is, in various respects, a very singular phenomenon.

He is new, I say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world

yet. Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure

of a Great Soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endeavouring to

speak-forth the inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find

place and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for

doing that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own

bargain in the marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul

never till then, in that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and

copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for

this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and

generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living,--is

a rather curious spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can be more

unexpected.

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange

shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so

foreign is his aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men,

in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god,

and worship him as such, some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired,

and religiously follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise

great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle

non-descript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few

coins and applauses thrown in, that he might live thereby; _this_

perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis

of things!--Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that

determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be

regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be,

is the soul of all. What he teachers, the whole world will do and

make. The world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant

feature of the world's general position. Looking well at his life, we

may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life

of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we

ourselves live and work.

There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in every kind

there is a genuine and a spurious. If _Hero_ be taken to mean genuine,

then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a

function for us which is ever honourable, ever the highest; and was

once well known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such a way

as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can

do. I say _inspired_; for what we call 'originality,' 'sincerity,'

'genius,' the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that.

The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True,

Divine and Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the

Temporary, Trivial: his being is in that; he declares that abroad, by

act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself abroad. His life, as

we said before, is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself:

all men's life is,--but the weak many know not the fact, and are

untrue to it, in most times; the strong few are strong, heroic,

perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Letters,

like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can.

Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named

a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity for doing; which all manner of Heroes,

by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do.

Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty years ago at

Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject:

'_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_, On the Nature of the Literary Man.'

Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he

was a distinguished teacher, declares first: That all things which we

see or work with in this Earth, especially we ourselves and all

persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous Appearance: that under

all there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the 'Divine Idea

of the World;' this is the Reality which 'lies at the bottom of all

Appearance.' To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognisable in

the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among the superficialities,

practicalities and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is

anything divine under them. But the Man of Letters is sent hither

specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us,

this same Divine Idea: in every new generation it will manifest itself

in a new dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such

is Fichte's phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way

of naming what I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to

name; what there is at present no name for: The unspeakable Divine

Significance, full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that lies in

the being of every man, of every thing,--the Presence of the God who

made every man and thing. Mahomet taught this in his dialect; Odin in

his: it is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or

another, are here to teach.

Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as he

prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continually unfolding the Godlike to

men: Men of Letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age,

teaching all men that a God is still present in their life; that all

'Appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for

the 'Divine Idea of the World,' for 'that which lies at the bottom of

Appearance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged

or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the

world's Priest:--guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark

pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp

zeal the _true_ Literary Man, what we here call the _Hero_ as Man of

Letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly

in this Divine Idea, or living partially in it, struggles not, as for

the one good, to live wholly in it,--he is, let him live where else he

like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no Literary Man; he is,

says Fichte, a 'Bungler, _Stümper_.' Or at best, if he belong to the

prosaic provinces, he may be a 'Hodman;' Fichte even calls him

elsewhere a 'Nonentity,' and has in short no mercy for him, no wish

that _he_ should continue happy among us! This is Fichte's notion of

the Man of Letters. It means, in its own form, precisely what we here

mean.