days, very far from us. The sincere alone can recognise sincerity. Not
a Hero only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of
_Valets_;--the Hero comes almost in vain to it otherwise! Yes, it is
far from us: but it must come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till
it do come, what have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French
Revolutions:--if we are as Valets, and do not know the Hero when we
see him, what good are all these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a
hundred-and-fifty years he cannot have a vote from us. Why, the
insincere, unbelieving world is the _natural property_ of the Quack,
and of the Father of quacks and quackeries! Misery, confusion,
unveracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes we alter the
_figure_ of our Quack; but the substance of him continues. The
Valet-World _has_ to be governed by the Sham-Hero, by the King merely
_dressed_ in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief, one of two
things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and
Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever
governed by the Unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at every
street-corner, there were no remedy in these.
Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who
could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with
his savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange,
among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic
Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of
chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost
semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in
the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight
and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria,
_un_formed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what
was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of
his wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with
things,--the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of
things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his
hypochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery always does, came of
his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken,
half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_ enveloping
him,--wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic man; a man
with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see.
On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion
of speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the
material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He
had _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his
days; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or
uttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of
action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and
speak fluently enough:--he did harder things than writing of Books.
This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all
things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and
logicising; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, _Vir-tus_, manhood,
_hero_-hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of
all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or
_Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the
matter Cromwell had in him.
One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament,
he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be
great in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of
what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth,
sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a
notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with
prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he
used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some
definite resolution rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they
would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent
prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His
light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt
themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn
the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian, but
Mammonish, Devilish,--they cried to God in their straits, in their
extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which
now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get
better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the
best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more? To
them it was as the shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the
waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide
them on their desolate perilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's
soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than
intrinsically by that same,--devout prostration of the earnest
struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such
_prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one?
There is no other method. 'Hypocrisy'? One begins to be weary of all
that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters.
They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went
about balancing expediences, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices;
they never were alone with the _truth_ of a thing at all.--Cromwell's
prayers were likely to be 'eloquent,' and much more than that. His was
the heart of a man who _could_ pray.
But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so
ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers
aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from
the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was
always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what. He
disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always
without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too,
in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given
the Printer precisely what they found on their own notepaper. And
withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the
premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the
world, That to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How
came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to
the public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift
for themselves.
But with regard to Cromwell's 'lying,' we will make one remark. This,
I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All
parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to
be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to
have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But
now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a
false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must
have _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve
for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use
for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man
always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to
other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are
impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer
_un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed;
but precisely as dark as he was! This, could one hit the right phrase
of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in
such a case.
Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small
subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little
party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find
him not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all
seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how, if
he explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have
shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact
hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked
in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not now have worked
in their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man
among small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen
everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to
you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. But
would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to
disturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands
only on some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable,
to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths!
"I might have my hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only
my little finger."
And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in
all departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to
himself_ cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. And we call
it 'dissimulation,' all this? What would you think of calling the
general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal
and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his
thoughts were about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say,
managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An
endless vortex of such questioning 'corporals' rolled confusedly round
him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as
a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved
falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself
through such a coil of things will you say so much?--
* * * * *
But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to
the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about
their 'ambition,' 'falsity,' and such-like. The first is what I might
call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and
starting point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that
he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he
was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all
mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step
dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive
dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow, scheming [Greek: Hypokritês],
or Play-actor that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but
universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the
fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way
ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of
apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell
had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he
needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact
dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it
was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall-away of themselves,
were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History!
Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but
look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this
Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History
only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous
perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty;
rare, nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than
Shakspeare; who could _enact_ a brother-man's biography, see with the
brother-man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw;
in short, _know_ his course and him, as few 'Historians' are like to
do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our
image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to
represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as
they are thrown-down before us.
But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to
this same 'ambition' itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men;
we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in
that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the
man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who
goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and
claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody
for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the
heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen
under this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man;
fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I
advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths;
unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about
him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his
greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts
that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no
great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real
substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in
this way.
Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be 'noticed' by noisy
crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was
already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was.
Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the downhill slope was all
seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable
matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plough the ground, and
read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer,
without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt
carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers
haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of
heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for
this man? From of old, was there not in his life a weight of meaning,
a terror and a splendour as of Heaven itself? His existence there as
man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment and Eternity:
these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did.
All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no
speech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of
that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him.
To call such a man 'ambitious,' to figure him as the prurient windbag
described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will
say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape
clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me
alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!" Old
Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not
ambitious. 'Corsica Boswell' flaunted at public shows with printed
ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The
world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;--what could
paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it?
Ah yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on the
noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with
little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of _Silence_.
The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his
department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning
Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country
that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had
no _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must
soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we
can _show_, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher
than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great;
all else is small.--I hope we English will long maintain our _grand
talent pour le silence_. Let others that cannot do without standing on
barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate
speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon
says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of
some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson
says he was, by _want of money_, and nothing other, one might ask,
"Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found
your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am _continent_ of my thought
hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no
compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for
promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That
is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honour'? Alas,
yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of
yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"--
But, now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that
there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other
laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent
Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over
others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. 'Seekest
thou great things, seek them not:' this is most true. And yet, I say,
there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself
according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak-out,
to act-out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit,
inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a
man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting
in this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the
faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of
our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to
_speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide
about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take
into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness of the
man for the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place was
_his_; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation, to seek
the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we
blame it, if he were 'the only man in France that could have done any
good there'? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much
good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had
even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because
they had flung him out, and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon
mourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent
great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather!
Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson,
in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do
priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the
perfect Heavenly Law might be made law on this earth; that the prayer
he prayed daily, 'Thy kingdom come,' was at length to be fulfilled! If
you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible,
practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a
part in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a
divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act;
casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all
affliction and contradiction small,--the whole dark element of his
existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It
were a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with
Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of God's Church, true zealous
preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories,
their ears cropt off, God's Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the
unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had
looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth;
trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come,--that
such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now
behold the dawn of it; after twelve years silent waiting, all England
stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will
get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come
again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member
of? Cromwell threw down his ploughs and hastened thither.
He spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth,
where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove,
like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all
else,--on and on, till the Cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable
enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become
clear light of victory and certainty. That _he_ stood there as the
strongest soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,--what
of this? It was possible that the law of Christ's Gospel could now
establish itself in the world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his
pulpit might dream of as a 'devout imagination,' this practical man,
experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to
consider as capable of being _realised_. Those that were highest in
Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in
some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not
_true_, God's truth? And if _true_, was it not then the very thing to
do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes!
This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, In its own dialect, the
noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a
Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great
sound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--History, I think,
shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating
point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that 'Faith in the
Bible' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were
made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely
victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as
the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable fact!
Well, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its
alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a
rather sorry business. We have had one such Statesman in England; one
man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any
such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years;
and this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten;
opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why,
then, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine
knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, 'Given a world of
Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;'--how cumbrous a
problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places!
Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great
grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to
all men a _palpably_ hopeless one.--
* * * * *
But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume and a multitude
following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell _was_
sincere at first; a sincere 'Fanatic' at first, but gradually became a
'Hypocrite' as things opened round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite
is Hume's theory of it; extensively applied since,--to Mahomet and
many others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not
much, not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink in
this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully
incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun
at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never
befell a great, deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature's own
lion-hearted Son! Antæus-like, his strength is got by _touching the
Earth_, his Mother; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up into
Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We will not assert that
Cromwell was an immaculate man; that he fell into no faults, no
insincerities among the rest. He was no dilettante professor of
'perfections,' 'immaculate conducts.' He was a rugged Orson, rending
his rough way through actual true _work_,--doubtless with many a
_fall_ therein. Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and
hourly: it was too well known to him; known to God and him! The Sun
was dimmed many a time; but the Sun had not himself grown a Dimness.
Cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for death, are those of a
Christian heroic man. Broken prayers to God, that He would judge him
and this Cause, He since man could not, in justice yet in pity. They
are most touching words. He breathed out his wild great soul, its
toils and sins all ended now, into the presence of his Maker, in this
manner.
I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! Hypocrite, mummer, the
life of him a mere theatricality; empty barren quack, hungry for the
shouts of mobs? The man had made obscurity do very well for him till
his head was gray; and now he _was_, there as he stood recognised
unblamed, the virtual King of England. Cannot a man do without King's
Coaches and Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever
pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple Diocletian
prefers planting of cabbages; a George Washington, no very
immeasurable man, does the like. One would say, it is what any genuine
man could do; and would do. The instant his real work were out in the
matter of Kingship,--away with it!
Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a _King_ is, in
all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in this very War, what
becomes of men when they cannot find a Chief Man, and their enemies
can. The Scotch Nation was all but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous
and of one mind about it, as in this English end of the Island was far
from being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among them; poor
tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and suchlike; none of them
had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the
truth. They had no leader; and the scattered Cavalier party in that
country had one: Montrose, the noblest of all the Cavaliers; an
accomplished, gallant-hearted, splendid man; what one may call the
Hero-Cavalier. Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a
King; on the other a King without subjects! The subjects without King
can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something. This Montrose,
with a handful of Irish or Highland savages, few of them so much as
guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild
whirlwind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, from
the field before him. He was at one period, for a short while, master
of all Scotland. One man; but he was a man: a million zealous men, but
_without_ the one; they against him were powerless! Perhaps of all the
persons in that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the single
indispensable one was verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and decide; to
be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty;--a King among them,
whether they called him so or not.
* * * * *
Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other
proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified;
but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the
Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to
be King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but
it seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to
perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was.
England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the
Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done
with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a
wondrous way has given-up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred
surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme
authority, cannot continue for ever to sit. What _is_ to be done?--It
was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy
to answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical
facts of it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the
Parliament, What it was they would decide upon? It was for the
Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula,
they who had purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to
them that they also should have something to say in it! We will not
"For all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We
understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has
given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself,
in this land!
For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the
ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk,
talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps
no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of
talk, talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You
sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole
nation, whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, _you_ cannot
continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? 'Free
Parliament,' right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or
the other,--the thing is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must
answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of
Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill
your King, to make Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the law of
the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper: there are but
fifty or three-score of you left there, debating in these days. Tell
us what we shall do; not in the way of Formula, but of practicable
Fact!
How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent
Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is,
that this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not
dissolve and disperse; that when it came to the point of actually
dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned
it,--and Cromwell's patience failed him. But we will take the
favourablest hypothesis ever started for the Parliament; the
favourablest, though I believe it is not the true one, but too
favourable.
According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and
his Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump
Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in
its despair _was_ answering in a very singular way; that in their
splenetic envious despair, to keep-out the army at least, these men
were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill,--Parliament to
be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into
districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or
indeed for _them_ an unquestionable thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage
of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not
exterminated, perhaps out_number_ us; the great numerical majority of
England was always indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and
submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of heads,
that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills,
the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself
to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a
likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we
have won, by God's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold
_here_. Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted
them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill;--ordered them to
begone, and talk there no more.--Can we not forgive him? Can we not
understand him? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could
applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. I
fancy, most men who were realities in England might see into the
necessity of that.
The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and
logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine
fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is
curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way;
find some Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament,
the one they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a
_Convocation of the Notables_. From all quarters of England the
leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most
distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to the
true Cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned
what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were
scornfully called _Barebones's Parliament_, the man's name, it seems,
was not _Barebones_, but Barbone,--a good enough man. Nor was it a
jest, their work; it was a most serious reality,--a trial on the part
of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the
Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some
quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them were. They
failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavouring to reform the Court of
Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up
their power again into the hands of the Lord-General Cromwell, to do
with it what he liked and could.
What _will_ he do with it? The Lord-General Cromwell, 'Commander-in
Chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;' he hereby sees
himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one available
Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy
but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and
England's, there and then. What will he do with it? After
deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with
public solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, the Fact is
so, and I will do the best I can with it!" Protectorship, Instrument
of Government,--these are the external forms of the thing; worked-out
and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges,
by the leading Official people, 'Council of Officers and Persons of
interest in the Nation:' and as for the thing itself, undeniably
enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there _was_ no
alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or
not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide
thereby!--I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate,
grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this
anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together made it
good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary
_articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully
what to say to it!--
Oliver's second Parliament, properly his _first_ regular Parliament,
chosen by the rule laid-down in the Instrument of Government, did
assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions
as to the Protector's _right_, as to 'usurpation,' and so forth; and
had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding
Speech to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third
Parliament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies.
Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking.
You would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to _speak_ the
great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness
of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about
'births of Providence:' All these changes, so many victories and
events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of
_me_ or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling
them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this.
As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been
playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_
it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppetshow by wood
and wire! These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could
tell what a day would bring forth: they were 'births of Providence,'
God's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of
victory, God's Cause triumphant in these Nations; and you as a
Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this
could be _organised_, reduced into rational feasibility among the
affairs of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing that.
"You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever
had." Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some measure made
the Law of this land. In place of that, you have got into your idle
pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and
questionings about written laws for _my_ coming here;--and would send
the whole matter into Chaos again, because I have no Notary's
parchment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being
President among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when it
will return. You have had your constitutional Logic; and Mammon's Law,
not Christ's Law, rules yet in this land. "God be judge between you
and me!" These are his final words to them: Take you your
constitution-formulas in your hand; and I my _in_formal struggles,
purposes, realities and acts; and "God be judge between you and me!"--
We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed
Speeches of Cromwell are. _Wilfully_ ambiguous, unintelligible, say
the most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon!
To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they afforded the first
glimpses I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into
the possibility of him. Try to believe that he means something, search
lovingly what that may be: you will find a real _speech_ lying
imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the
great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for the first time,
begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera,
unintelligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and
Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical
generations that could not know or conceive of a deep believing man,
are far more _obscure_ than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them
only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. 'Heats and
Jealousies,' says Lord Clarendon himself: 'heats and jealousies,' mere
crabbed whims, theories and crochets; these induced slow sober quiet
Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury
of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! _Try_ if you
can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may have great
gifts; but it is really _ultra vires_ there. It is Blindness
laying-down the Laws of Optics.--
Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever
the constitutional Formula: How came _you_ there? Show us some Notary
parchment! Blind pedants:--"Why, surely the same power which makes you
a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!" If my
Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your
Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?--
Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of
Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district, to _coerce_ the
Royalists and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of
Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall _not_ carry it, while the
Reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants
abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing
true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a
Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant
Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I while God leaves me
life!--Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since
the Law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they
mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime Ministers have
governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law
while it held: but this Prime Minister was one that _could not get
resigned_. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers
waited to kill him; to kill the Cause _and_ him. Once embarked, there
is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could _retire_ nowhither
except into his tomb.
One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant
of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must
bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it,
Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some
indispensable business, much against his will,--Cromwell 'follows him
to the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs
that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how
much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true
fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson,
cased in his republican formula, sullenly goes his way.--And the man's
head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I
think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that
Palace of his; a right brave woman: as indeed they lived all an honest
God-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought
it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a day, that
she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old
Mother!----What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life
of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in
History? His dead body was hung in chains; his 'place in
History,'--place in History forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy,
accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if
it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to
pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man!
Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us?
_We_ walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his
body sunk in the ditch there. We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on
it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not to _men's_ judgment that he
appealed; nor have men judged him very well.
* * * * *
Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself
hushed-up into decent composure, and its results made smooth in 1688,
there broke-out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to
hush-up, known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name
of French Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of
Protestantism; the explosive confused return of Mankind to Reality and
Fact, now that they were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We call our
English Puritanism the second act: "Well then, the Bible is true; let
us go by the Bible!" "In Church," said Luther; "In Church and State,"
said Cromwell, "let us go by what actually is God's Truth." Men have
to return to reality; they cannot live on semblance. The French
Revolution, or third act, we may well call the final one; for lower
than that savage _Sansculottism_ men cannot go. They stand there on
the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and
circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently to build-up
from that. The French explosion, like the English one, got its
King,--who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. We have still
to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King.
Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as Cromwell. His
enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode
mainly in our little England, are but as the high _stilts_ on which
the man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered
thereby. I find in him no such _sincerity_ as In Cromwell; only a far
inferior sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful
Unnamable of this Universe; 'walking with God,' as he called it; and
faith and strength in that alone: _latent_ thought and valour, content
to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven's lightning!
Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning
of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin
not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical
_Encyclopédies_. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious
to get so far. His compact, prompt, everyway articulate character is
in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic inarticulate
Cromwell's. Instead of '_dumb_ Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a
portentous mixture of the Quack withal! Hume's notion of the
Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better
to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like,--where
indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at all. An element of
blamable ambition shows itself, from the first, in this man; gets the
victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin.
'False as a bulletin' became a proverb in Napoleon's time. He makes
what excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the
enemy, to keep up his own men's courage, and so forth. On the whole,
there are no excuses. A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It
had been, in the long-run, _better_ for Napoleon too if he had not
told any. In fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the hour
and day, meant to be found extant _next_ day, what good can it ever be
to promulgate lies? The lies are found-out; ruinous penalty is exacted
for them. No man will believe the liar next time even when he speaks
truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old
cry of wolf!--A Lie is _no_-thing; you cannot of nothing make
something; you make _nothing_ at last, and lose your labour into the
bargain.
Yet Napoleon _had_ a sincerity; we are to distinguish between what is
superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity. Across these outer
manoeuvrings and quackeries of his, which were many and most blamable,
let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive
ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so
long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his
culture was. His _savans_, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to
Egypt were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no
God. They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of
logic. Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, "Very ingenious,
Messieurs: but _who made_ all that?" The Atheistic logic runs-off from
him like water; the great Fact stares him in the face: "Who made all
that?" So too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have
victory in this world, sees, through all entanglements, the practical
heart of the matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward of
his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises,
and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, Napoleon,
making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clipt one of the
gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked
on. Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the
horror of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! In
Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on
the practical, the real. "Why talk and complain; above all, why
quarrel with one another? There is no _result_ in it; it comes to
nothing that one can _do_. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" He
speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers; he is like a
piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid querulousness
there.
And accordingly was there not what we can call a _faith_ in him,
genuine so far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting
itself here in the French Revolution is an insuppressible Fact, which
the whole world, with its old forces and institutions cannot put down;
this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm
along with it,--a _faith_. And did he not interpret the dim purport of
it well? '_La carrière ouverte aux talens_, The implements to him who
can handle them:' this actually is the truth, and even the whole
truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution, or any Revolution,
could mean. Napoleon, in his first period, was a true Democrat. And
yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, he knew
that Democracy, if it were a true thing at all could not be an
anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth of
June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat in a coffee-house, as the mob
rolled by: Napoleon expresses the deepest contempt for persons in
authority that they do not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of
August he wonders why there is no man to command these poor Swiss;
they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democracy, yet
hatred of Anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all his great
work. Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of
Leoben, one would say, his inspiration is: 'Triumph to the French
Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that
pretend to call it a Simulacrum!' Withal, however, he feels, and has a
right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is; how the Revolution
cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle-in that great
devouring, self-devouring French Revolution; to _tame_ it, so that its
intrinsic purpose can be made good, that it may become _organic_, and
be able to live among other organisms and _formed_ things, not as a
wasting destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed at,
as the true purport of his life; nay what he actually managed to do?
Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes; triumph after triumph,--he triumphed so
far. There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He
rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he _was_ such. The
common soldiers used to say on the march: "These babbling _Avocats_,
up at Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all wrong? We
shall have to go and put our _Petit Caporal_ there!" They went, and
put him there; they and France at large. Chief-consulship,
Emperorship, victory over Europe;--till the poor Lieutenant of _La
Fère_, not unnaturally, might seem to himself the greatest of all men
that had been in the world for some ages.
But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got the upper
hand. He apostatised from his old Faith in Facts: took to believing in
Semblances; strove to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties,
Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities which he once saw clearly to
be false;--considered that _he_ would found "his Dynasty" and so
forth; that the enormous French Revolution meant only that! The man
was 'given-up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie;' a
fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when
he looked at them,--the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to
untruth of heart. _Self_ and false ambition had now become his god:
_self_-deception once yielded to, _all_ other deceptions follow
naturally more and more. What a paltry patch-work of theatrical
paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great
reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow
Pope's-_Concordat_, pretending to be a re-establishment of
Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, "_la
vaccine de la religion_:" his ceremonial Coronations, consecrations by
the old Italian Chimera in Notre-Dame,--"wanting nothing to complete
the pomp of it," as Augereau said, "nothing but the half-million of
men who had died to put an end to all that"! Cromwell's Inauguration
was by the Sword and Bible; what we must call a genuinely _true_ one.
Sword and Bible were borne before him, without any chimera: were not
these the _real_ emblems of Puritanism; its true decoration and
insignia? It had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended
to stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon mistook: he believed too
much in the _Dupeability_ of men; saw no fact deeper in men than
Hunger and this! He was mistaken. Like a man that should build upon
cloud; his house and he fall down in confused wreck, and depart out of
the world.
Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and _might_ be
developed, were the temptation strong enough. 'Lead us not into
temptation'! But it is fatal, I say, that it _be_ developed. The thing
into which it enters as a cognisable ingredient is doomed to be
altogether transitory; and, however huge it may _look_, is in itself
small. Napoleon's working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise
it made? A flash as of gunpowder wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry
heath. For an hour the whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame;
but only for an hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old mountains
and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there.
The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage; this
Napoleonism was _unjust_, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true
doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it
tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be,
one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest. I am
not sure but he had better have lost his best park of artillery, or
had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German
Bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice,
which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make-out to be other.
It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it;
suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of
it,--waiting their day! Which day _came_: Germany rose round
him.--What Napoleon _did_ will in the long-run amount to what he did
_justly_; what Nature with her laws will sanction. To what of reality
was in him; to that and nothing more. The rest was all smoke and
waste. _La carrière ouverte aux talens_: that great true Message,
which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a
most inarticulate state. He was a great _ébauche_, a rude-draught
never completed; as indeed what great man is other? Left in _too_ rude
a state, alas!
His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St. Helena,
are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the most unaffected
surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung-out on the rock
here, and the World is still moving on its axis. France is great, and
all-great; and at bottom, he is France. England itself, he says, is by
Nature only an appendage of France; "another Isle of Oleron to
France." So it was _by Nature_, by Napoleon-Nature; and yet look how
in fact,--HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable
that the reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that
France was not all-great, that he was not France. 'Strong delusion,'
that he should believe the thing to be which _is_ not! The compact,
clear-seeing, decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which
he once had, has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid
atmosphere of French fanfaronade. The world was not disposed to be
trodden-down underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together,
as _he_ liked, for a pedestal to France and him: the world had quite
other purposes in view! Napoleon's astonishment is extreme. But alas,
what help now? He had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone
her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in
Vacuity; no rescue for him. He had to sink there, mournfully as man
seldom did; and break his great heart, and die,--this poor Napoleon: a
great implement too soon wasted, till it was useless: our last Great
Man!
* * * * *
_Our_ last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide roamings of
ours through so many times and places, in search and study of Heroes,
are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this
business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave
and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have named
_Hero-worship_. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of
Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth
explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might
have done better. I promised to break-ground on it; I know not whether
I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the rudest
manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt
utterances thrown-out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been
put to the trial. Tolerance, patient candour, all-hoping favour and
kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished and
distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in
England, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings,
I heartily thank you all; and say, Good be with you all!
INDEX
ABDALLAH, father of Mahomet, 286
Abelard, theology of, 389
Abu Thaleb, uncle of Mahomet, 286, 387, 294
Action the true end of Man, 119, 121
Actual, the, the true Ideal, 148, 149
Adamitism, 43
Afflictions, merciful, 145
Agincourt, Shakspeare's battle of, 341
Alexis, Luther's friend, his sudden death, 359
Ali, young, Mahomet's kinsman and convert, 293
Allegory, the sportful shadow of earnest faith, 243, 267
Ambition, Fate's appendage of, 78;
foolish charge of, 447;
laudable ambition, 449
Apprenticeships, 92
Aprons, use and significance of, 31
Arabia and the Arabs, 282, 310
Art, all true Works of, symbolic, 163
BALDER, the white Sungod, 255, 271
Baphometic Fire-baptism, 128
Barebone's Parliament, 456
Battle-field, a, 131
Battle, Life-, our, 65;
with Folly and Sin, 94, 97
Being, the boundless Phantasmagoria of, 39
Belief and Opinion, 146, 147
Belief, the true god-announcing miracle, 292, 311, 375, 401;
war of, 430.
_See_ Religion, Scepticism.
Benthamism, 309, 400
Bible of Universal History, 134, 146
Biography, meaning and uses of, 56;
significance of biographic facts, 152
Blumine, 104;
her environment, 105;
character and relation to Teufelsdröckh, 106;
blissful bonds rent asunder, 109;
on her way to England, 116
Bolivar's Cavalry-uniform, 37
Books, miraculous influence of, 130, 149, 388, 392;
our modern University, Church and Parliament, 390
Boswell, his reverence for Johnson, 410
Banyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, 244
Burns, Gilbert, 417
Burns, Robert, his birth, and humble heroic parents, 415;
rustic dialect of, 416;
the most gifted British soul of his century, 417;
his resemblance to Mirabeau, 418;
his sincerity, 419;
his visit to Edinburgh, 420;
Lion-hunters the ruin and death of, 421
CAABAH, the, with its Black Stone and Sacred Well, 284, 285
Canopus, the worship of, 247
Charles I. fatally incapable of being dealt with, 439
Childhood, happy season of, 68;
early influences and sports, 69
China, literary governors of, 397
Christian Faith, a good Mother's simple version of the, 75;
Temple of the, now in ruins, 145;
Passive-half of, 147
Christian Love, 143, 145
Church. _See_ Books.
Church-Clothes, 161;
living and dead Churches, 162;
the modern Church, and its Newspaper-Pulpits, 189
Circumstances, influence of, 71
Clergy, the, with their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on, 32, 158
Clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the human animal, but an
artificial device, 2;
analogy between the Costumes of the body and the Customs of the
spirit, 25;
Decoration the first purpose of Clothes, 28;
what Clothes have done for us, and what they threaten to do, 30, 43;
fantastic garbs of the Middle Ages, 34;
a simple costume, 35;
tangible and mystic influences of Clothes, 36, 45;
animal and human Clothing contrasted, 41;
a Court-Ceremonial _minus_ Clothes, 45;
necessity for Clothes, 47;
transparent Clothes, 49;
all Emblematic things are Clothes, 54, 203;
Genesis of the modern Clothes-Philosopher, 61;
Character and conditions needed, 153, 156;
George Fox's suit of Leather, 159;
Church-Clothes, 161;
Old-Clothes, 179;
practical inferences, 203
Codification, 50
Combination, value of, 101, 221
Commons, British House of, 31
Concealment. _See_ Secrecy.
Constitution, our invaluable British, 187
Conversion, 149
Courtesy, due to all men, 179
Courtier, a luckless, 36
Cromwell, 430;
his hypochondria, 437, 442;
early marriage and conversion, 437;
an industrious farmer, 438;
his victories and participation in the King's death, 439;
practicalness of, 440;
his Ironsides, 440;
his speeches, 444, 459;
his 'ambition' and such-like, 446;
a 'Fanatic,' but gradually became a 'Hypocrite,' 452;
his dismissal of the Rump Parliament, 456;
Protectorship and Parliamentary Futilities, 457;
his last days, and closing sorrows, 460
Custom the greatest of Weavers, 194
DANDY, mystic significance of the, 204;
dandy worship, 206;
sacred books, 208;
articles of faith, 209;
a dandy household, 213;
tragically undermined by growing Drudgery, 214
Dante and his Book, 318;
biography in his Book, and Portrait, 319;
his birth, education and early career, 319, 320;
his love for Beatrice Portinari, 320;
unhappy marriage, 320;
banishment, 321;
uncourtier-like ways of, 321;
his _Divina Commedia_ genuinely a song, 322;
the Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle
Ages, 329;
the 'uses' of Dante, 332
David, the Hebrew King, 281
Death, nourishment even in, 81, 127
Della Scala, the court of, 321
Devil, internecine war with the, 9, 90, 128, 139;
cannot now so much as believe in him, 127
Dilettantes and Pedants, 52;
patrons of Literature, 96
Diodorus Siculus, 284
Diogenes, 159
Divine Right of Kings, 424
Doubt can only be removed by Action, 147.
_See_ Unbelief.
Drudgery contrasted with Dandyism, 210;
'Communion of Drudges,' and what may come of it, 214
Duelling, a picture of, 136
Duty, no longer a divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly
Fantasm, 122, 123;
infinite nature of, 147, 309;
definition of, 267, 298;
sceptical spiritual paralysis, 398
EDDA, the Scandinavian, 253
Editor's first acquaintance with Teufelsdröckh and his Philosophy of
Clothes, 4;
efforts to make known his discovery to British readers, 7;
admitted into the Teufelsdröckh watch-tower, 14, 25;
first feels the pressure of his task, 37;
his bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, 55;
strenuous efforts to evolve some historic order out of such
interminable documentary confusion, 59;
partial success, 67, 76, 117;
mysterious hints, 152, 177;
astonishment and hesitation, 163;
congratulations, 201;
farewell, 219
Education, influence of early, 71;
insignificant portion depending on Schools, 77;
educational Architects, 79;
the inspired Thinker, 171
Eighteenth Century, the sceptical, 398, 404, 433
Eisleben, the birthplace of Luther, 358
Eliot, 433, 434
Elizabethan Era, the, 334
Emblems, all visible things, 54
Emigration, 173
Eternity, looking through Time, 15, 55, 168
Evil, Origin of, 143
Eyes and Spectacles, 51
FACTS, engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key, 153
Faith, the one thing needful, 122
Fantasy, the true Heaven-gate or Hell-gate of man, 109, 165
Fashionable Novels, 208
Fatherhood, 65
Faults, his, not the criterion of any man 281
Feebleness, the true misery, 124
Fichte's theory of literary men, 385
Fire, and vital fire, 53, 129;
miraculous nature of, 254
Force, universal presence of, 53
Forms, necessity for, 431
Fortunatus' Wishing-hat, 195, 197
Fox's, George, heavenward aspirations and earthly independence, 159
_Fraser's Magazine_, 6, 227
Frederick the Great, symbolic glimpse of, 61
Friendship, now obsolete, 89;
an incredible tradition, 125, 174;
how it were possible, 161, 221
Frost. _See_ Fire.
Futteral and his Wife, 61
Future, organic filaments of the, 183
GENIUS, the world's treatment of, 94
German speculative thought, 2, 9, 20, 24, 41;
historical researches, 26, 56
Gerund-grinding, 80
Ghost, an authentic, 198
Giotto, his portrait of Dante, 319
God, the unslumbering, omnipresent, eternal, 40;
God's presence manifested to our eyes and hearts, 49;
an absentee God, 122
Goethe's inspired melody, 190;
'characters,' 337;
notablest of literary men, 386
Good, growth and propagation of, 75
Graphic, secret of being, 325
Gray's misconception of Norse lore, 270
Great Men, 134.
_See_ Man.
Grimm the German Antiquary, and Odin, 260
Gullibility, blessings of, 84
Gunpowder, use of, 29, 136
HABIT, how, makes dullards of us all, 42
Hagar, the Well of, 284, 285
Half-men, 139
Hampden, 433, 434
Happiness, the whim of, 144
Hegira, the, 295
Heroes, Universal History of the united biographies of, 139, 266;
how 'little critics' account for great men, 250;
all Heroes fundamentally of the same stuff, 265, 277, 312, 346,
383, 418;
Intellect the primary outfit, 338;
Heroism possible to all, 358, 375;
no man a hero to a valet-soul, 411, 433, 441
Hero-worship, the corner-stone of all Society, 189;
the tap-root of all Religion, 248-252, 277;
perennial in man, 252, 317, 357, 428
Heuschrecke and his biographic documents, 7;
his loose, zigzag, thin-visaged character, 18;
unaccustomed eloquence, and interminable documentary
superfluities, 56;
bewildered darkness, 223
History, all-inweaving tissue of, 15;
by what strange chances do we live in, 36;
a perpetual Revelation, 134, 148, 190
Homer's Iliad, 169
Hope, this world emphatically the place of, 122;
false shadows of, 140
Horse, his own tailor, 41
Hutchinson and Cromwell, 433, 460
ICELAND, the home of Norse Poets, 253
Ideal, the, exists only in the Actual, 148, 149
Idolatry, 351;
criminal only when insincere, 353
Igdrasil, the Life-Tree, 257, 334
Imagination. _See_ Fantasy.
Immortality, a glimpse of, 196
Imposture, statistics of, 84
Independence, foolish parade of, 175, 188
Indifference, centre of, 128
Infant intuitions and acquirements, 68;
genius and dulness, 71
Inspiration, perennial, 147, 157, 190
Intellect, the summary of man's gifts, 338, 397
Invention, 29, 120
Invisible, the, Nature the visible Garment of, 41;
invisible bonds, binding all Men together, 45;
the Visible and Invisible, 49, 164
Irish, the, Poor-Slave, 213
Islam, 291
Isolation, 81
JESUS OF NAZARETH, our divinest Symbol, 168, 171
Job, the Book of, 284
Johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypochondria, 405, 406;
rude self-help; stands genuinely by the old formulas, 406;
his noble unconscious sincerity, 408;
twofold Gospel, of Prudence and hatred of Cant, 409;
his _Dictionary_, 410;
the brave old Samuel, 411, 450
Jötuns, 254, 272
Julius the Second, Pope, 361
KADIJAH, the good, Mahomet's first Wife, 288, 292
King, our true, chosen for us in Heaven, 187;
the, a summary of all the various figures of Heroism, 424;
indispensable in all movements of men, 453
Kingdom, a man's, 91
Know thyself, and what thou canst work at, 124
Knox's influence on Scotland, 374;
the bravest of all Scotchmen, 376;
his unassuming career, 377;
is sent to the French Galleys, 377;
his colloquies with Queen Mary, 378;
vein of drollery, 380;
a brother to high and to low, 380;
his death, 381
Koran, the, 298
Koreish, the, Keepers of the Caabah, 293, 294, 354
Kranach's portrait of Luther, 372
LABOUR, sacredness of, 171
Ladrones Islands, what the natives of, thought regarding Fire, 254
Lamaism, Grand, 242
Land-owning, trade of, 96
Language, the Garment of Thought, 54;
dead vocables, 80
Laughter, significance of, 24
Leo X., the elegant Pagan Pope, 363
Liberty and Equality, 357, 428
Lieschen, 17
Life, Human, picture of, 14, 115, 129, 141;
life-purpose, 101;
speculative mystery of, 125, 181, 198;
the most important transaction in, 128;
nothingness of; 138, 139
Light the beginning of all Creation, 148
Literary Men, 383;
in China, 397
Literature, chaotic condition of, 387;
not our heaviest evil, 398
Logic-mortar and wordy Air-Castles, 40;
underground workshop of Logic, 50, 166
Louis XV., ungodly age of, 123
Love, what we emphatically name, 102;
pyrotechnic phenomena of, 103, 166;
not altogether a delirium, 109;
how possible, in its highest form, 145, 161, 221
Ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, 36, 136
Luther's birth and parentage, 358;
hardship and rigorous necessity;
death of his friend Alexis, 359;
becomes a monk;
his religious despair;
finds a Bible, 360;
his deliverance from darkness;
at Rome, 361;
Tetzel, 362;
burns the Pope's Bull, 363, 364;
at the Diet of Worms, 364;
King of the Reformation, 368;
'Duke Georges for nine days running,' 370;
his little daughter's deathbed;
his solitary Patmos, 371;
his Portrait, 372
MAGNA CHARTA, 203
Mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, 286;
marries Kadijah, 288;
quiet, unambitious life, 288;
divine commission, 290;
the good Kadijah believes him, 292;
Seid, his slave, 293;
his Cousin Ali, 293;
his offences and sore struggles, 293;
flight from Mecca; being driven to take the sword, he uses it, 295;
the Koran, 298;
a veritable Hero, 305;
Seid's death, 306;
freedom from cant, 306;
the infinite nature of duty, 309
Malthus's over-population panic, 170
Man, by nature _naked_, 2, 42, 46;
essentially a tool-using animal, 30;
the true Shekinah, 49;
a divine Emblem, 54, 165, 167, 180, 199;
two men alone honourable, 171.
_See_ Thinking Man.
Mary, Queen, and Knox, 378
Mayflower, sailing of the, 373
Mecca, its rise, 285; Mahomet's flight from, 294, 295
Metaphors, the stuff of Language, 54
Metaphysics inexpressibly unproductive, 40, 51
Middle Ages, represented by Dante and Shakspeare, 329, 333
Milton, 124
Mirabeau, his ambition, 450
Miracles, significance of, 191, 197
Monmouth Street, and its 'Ou' clo'' Angels of Doom, 181
Montrose, the Hero-Cavalier, 453, 454
Mother's, a, religious influence, 75
Motive-Millwrights, 166
Mountain scenery, 115
Musical, all deep things, 317
Mystery, all-pervading domain of, 51
NAKEDNESS and hypocritical Clothing, 42, 47;
a naked Court-Ceremonial, 45;
a naked Duke addressing a naked House of Lords, 46
Names, significance and influence of, 65, 195
Napoleon and his Political Evangel, 135;
compared with Cromwell, 461;
a portentous mixture of Quack and Hero, 462;
his instinct for the practical, 463;
his democratic _faith_ 463;
his hatred of Anarchy, 464;
apostatised from his old faith in Facts, and took to believing in
Semblances, 464, 465;
this Napoleonism was _unjust_, and could not last, 466
Nature, the God-written Apocalypse of,39, 49;
not an Aggregate but a Whole, 52, 116, 185, 193;
Nature alone antique, 79;
sympathy with, 115, 135;
the 'Living Garment of God,' 142;
Laws of Nature, 192;
all one great Miracle, 245, 302, 371;
a righteous umpire, 296
Necessity, brightened into Duty, 74
Newspaper Editors, 33;
our Mendicant Friars, 189, 190
Nothingness of life, 138, 139
Nottingham bargemen, 255, 256
Novalis, on Man, 248;
on Belief, 292;
on Shakspeare, 339
OBEDIENCE, the lesson of, 74, 75
Odin, the first Norse 'man of genius,' 258;
historic rumours and guesses, 259;
how he came to be deified, 261;
invented 'runes,' 263;
Hero, Prophet, God, 264
Olaf, King, and Thor, 275
Original man the _sincere_ man, 280, 356
Orpheus, 197
Over-population, 170
Own, conservation of a man's, 151
PAGANISM, Scandinavian, 241;
not mere Allegory, 243;
Nature-worship, 245, 266;
Hero-worship, 248;
creed of our fathers, 253, 272, 274;
Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature, 254;
contrasted with Greek Paganism, 256;
the first Norse Thinker, 258;
main practical Belief; indispensable to be brave, 267;
hearty, homely, rugged Mythology, 270;
Balder and Thor, 271;
Consecration of Valour, 276
Paradise and Fig-leaves, 27;
prospective Paradises, 102, 110
Parliaments superseded by Books, 392;
Cromwell's Parliaments, 454
Passivity and Activity, 74, 121
Past, the, inextricably linked with the Present, 129;
forever extant, 196;
the whole, the possession of the Present, 277
Paupers, what to do with, 173
Peace-Era, the much-predicted, 133
Peasant Saint, the, 172
_Pelham_, and the Whole Duty of Dandies, 209
Perseverance, law of, 178
Person, mystery of a, 48, 101, 103, 179
Philosophies, Cause-and-Effect, 26
Phoenix Death-birth, 178, 183, 201
Pitt, Mr., his reply when asked for help to Burns, 396
Plato, the child-man of, 245
Poet, the, and Prophet, 313, 332, 342
Poetry and Prose, distinction of, 315, 323
Popery, 367
Poverty, advantages of, 334
Priest, the true, a kind of Prophet, 346
Printing, consequences of, 392
Private judgment, 354
Progress of the Species, 349
Property, 150
Prose. _See_ Poetry.
Proselytising, 6, 221
Protestantism, the root of Modern European History, 364;
not dead yet, 367;
its living fruit, 373, 425
Purgatory, noble Catholic conception of, 328
Puritanism, founded by Knox, 373;
true beginning of America, 373;
the one epoch of Scotland, 374;
Theocracy, 381;
Puritanism in England, 430, 432, 453
Pym, 433, 434
QUACKERY originates nothing, 242, 279;
age of, 403;
Quacks and Dupes, 441
RADICALISM, Speculative, 10, 20, 47, 188
Ragnarök, 275
Raleigh's, Sir Walter, fine mantle, 36
Ramadhan, the month of, 290
Raphael, the best of Portrait-Painters, 326
Reformer, the true, 347
Religion, dead letter and living spirit of, 87;
weaving new vestures, 162, 207;
a man's, the chief fact with regard to him, 240;
based on Hero-worship, 248;
propagating by the sword, 295;
cannot succeed by being 'easy,' 304
Reverence, early growth of, 75;
indispensability of, 188
Revolution, 423;
the French, 423, 461
Richter, 24, 369
Right and Wrong, 309, 329
Rousseau, not a strong man, 411;
his Portrait;
egoism, 412;
his passionate appeals, 413;
his books, like himself, unhealthy; the Evangelist of the French
Revolution, 414
Runes, 263, 264, 388
SABEANS, the worship of, 247, 283
Sæmund, an early Christian priest, 253, 254
St. Clement Danes, Church of, 407
Saints, living Communion of, 185, 190
Sarcasm, the panoply of, 99
_Sartor Resartus_, genesis of, 7;
its purpose, 201
Saturn or Chronos, 98
Savage, the aboriginal, 28
Scarecrow, significance of the, 46
Sceptical goose-cackle, 51
Scepticism, a spiritual paralysis, 398-405, 433
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 341
School education, insignificance of, 78, 80;
tin-kettle terrors and incitements, 78;
need of Soul-Architects, 80
Science, the Torch of, 1;
the Scientific Head, 51
Scotland awakened into life by Knox, 374
Secrecy, benignant efficacies of, 164
Secret, the open, 313
Seid, Mahomet's slave and friend, 293, 306
Self-activity, 20
Self-annihilation, 141
Shakspeare and the Elizabethan Era, 334;
his all-sufficing intellect, 335, 338;
his Characters, 337;
his Dramas, a part of Nature herself, 340;
his joyful tranquillity, and overflowing love of laughter, 340;
his hearty Patriotism, 342;
glimpses of the world that was in him, 342;
a heaven-sent Light-Bringer, 343;
a King of Saxondom, 345
Shame, divine, mysterious growth of, 30;
the soil of all Virtue, 165
Shekinah, Man the true, 247
Silence, 135;
the element in which all great things fashion themselves, 164;
the great empires of, 333, 449
Simon's, Saint-, aphorism of the golden age, 178;
a false application, 223
Sincerity, better than gracefulness, 267;
the first characteristic of heroism and originality, 280, 289, 356,
358, 384
Smoke, advantage of consuming one's, 114
Snorro, his description of Odin, 260, 264, 268
Society founded upon Cloth, 38, 45, 47;
how Society becomes possible, 162;
social Death and New-Birth, 163, 178, 183, 201;
as good as extinct, 174
Solitude. _See_ Silence.
Sorrow-pangs of Self-deliverance, 115, 120, 121;
divine depths of Sorrow, 143;
Worship of Sorrow, 146
Southey, and Literature, 396
Space and Time, the Dream-Canvas upon which Life is imaged, 40, 49,
192, 195
Spartan wisdom, 172
Speculative intuition, 38.
_See_ German.
Speech, great, but not greatest, 164
Sphinx-riddle, the Universe a, 97
Star worship, 247, 283
Stealing, 151, 172
Stupidity, blessings of, 123
Style, varieties of, 54
Suicide, 126
Summary, 231
Sunset, 70, 116
Swallows, migrations and co-operative instincts of, 72
Swineherd, the, 70
Symbols, 163;
wondrous agency of, 164;
extrinsic and intrinsic, 167;
superannuated, 169, 175
TABÛC, the War of, 306
Tailors, symbolic significance of, 217
Temptations in the wilderness, 138
Testimonies of Authors, 227
Tetzel, the Monk, 362, 363
Teufelsdröckh's Philosophy of Clothes, 4;
he proposes a toast, 10;
his personal aspect, and silent deep-seated Sansculottism, 11;
thawed into speech, 13;
memorable watch-tower utterances, 14;
alone with the Stars, 16;
extremely miscellaneous environment, 17;
plainness of speech, 21;
universal learning, and multiplex literary style, 22;
ambiguous-looking morality, 23;
one instance of laughter, 24;
almost total want of arrangement, 25;
feeling of the ludicrous, 36;
speculative Radicalism, 47;
a singular Character, 58;
Genesis properly an Exodus, 62;
unprecedented Name, 65;
infantine experience, 66;
Pedagogy, 76;
an almost Hindoo Passivity, 76;
schoolboy jostling, 79;
heterogeneous University Life, 83;
fever-paroxysms of Doubt, 87;
first practical knowledge of the English, 88;
getting under way, 90;
ill success, 94;
glimpse of high life, 96;
casts himself on the Universe, 101;
reverent feeling towards Women, 102;
frantically in love, 104;
first interview with Blumine, 106;
inspired moments, 108;
short of practical kitchen-stuff, 111;
ideal bliss and actual catastrophe, 112;
sorrows and peripatetic stoicism, 113;
a parting glimpse of his Beloved on her way to England, 116;
how he overran the whole earth, 118;
Doubt darkened unto Unbelief, 122;
love of Truth, 124;
a feeble unit, amidst a threatening Infinitude, 125;
Baphometic Fire-baptism, 128;
placid indifference, 129;
a Hyperborean intruder, 136;
Nothingness of life, 138;
Temptations in the wilderness, 138;
dawning of a better day, 141;
the Ideal in the Actual, 148;
finds his true Calling, 149;
his Biography a symbolic Adumbration, significant to those who can
decipher it, 152;
a wonder-lover, seeker and worker, 156;
in Monmouth Street among the Hebrews, 181;
concluding hints, 219;
his public History not yet done, perhaps the better part only
beginning, 223
Theocracy, a, striven for by all true Reformers, 382, 451
Thinking Man, a, the worst enemy of the Prince of Darkness, 91, 150;
true Thought can never die, 185
Thor, and his adventures, 255, 271-274;
his last appearance, 275
Thought, miraculous influence of, 258, 266, 393;
_musical_ Thought, 316
Thunder. _See_ Thor.
Time, the great mystery of, 246
Time-Spirit, life-battle with the, 65, 98;
Time, the universal wonder-hider, 197
Titles of Honour, 186
Tolerance, true and false, 368, 379
Tools, influence of, 30;
the Pen, most miraculous of tools, 150
Trial by Jury, Burke's opinion of, 422
Turenne, 312
UNBELIEF, era of, 86, 112;
Doubt darkening into, 121;
escape from, 139
Universities, 83, 389
Utgard, Thor's expedition to, 273, 274
Utilitarianism, 121, 176
VALKYRS, the, 267, 268
Valour, the basis of all virtue, 268, 271;
Norse consecration of, 276;
Christian Valour, 351
_Vates_, the, 313, 314, 317
View-hunting and diseased Self-consciousness, 117
Voltaire, 146;
the Parisian Divinity, 189;
Voltaire-worship, 251, 252
WAR, 131
Wisdom, 50
Wish, the Norse god, 255;
enlarged into a heaven by Mahomet, 310
Woman's influence, 102
Wonder the basis of Worship, 50;
region of, 51
Words, slavery to, 40;
Word-mongering and Motive-grinding, 123
Workshop of Life, 149.
_See_ Labour.
Worms, Luther at, 364
Worship, transcendent wonder, 247.
_See_ Hero-worship.
YOUNG Men and Maidens, 97
ZEMZEM, the sacred Well, 284
THE END